US quakes as Mexico seeks new messiah (Telegraph, right-wing spin)

US quakes as Mexico seeks new messiah
By Alec Russell in Pachuca
(Filed: 28/06/2006)

Mexico's Left-wing populist candidate closes an increasingly rancorous campaign today, hoping his impassioned appeals to rein in globalisation will spread Latin America's socialist tide.

Of all the elections in Latin America this year this is the one that matters most to the US, which has had to watch its backyard slide to the Left in the last few years.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is neck-and-neck with Felipe Calderon, the favourite of the business elite, is an old-fashioned Left-winger who rails against the free-market policies that Washington has sponsored in the last decade.
(snip)

Garlanded in red flowers, he was treated as a cross between a pop star and a revivalist preacher as his campaign arrived in the small central town of Pachuca. He delighted the crowd with his calls for a return to state intervention, his denunciation of Nafta, the North American free trade agreement, and his reminders of the country's ever starker divide between "haves" and "have-nots".
(snip/...)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/28/wmex28.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/28/ixnews.html

exist in Mexico and Venezuela, if any? I'm curious...

Which doesn't stop politicians from receiving illegal money from outside of the country.

that have been repeatedly broken by the Bush junta and the Diebold Congress, who have poured money into the campaigns of the Venezuela's tiny rich oil elite.

Not surprising, but revealing. Sounds like a good place to focus in the upcoming election.

It does possess a certain distinctive right-wing stench.

What is it with corporatists, fascists, republicans, and other assorted right-wingers and their penchant for viewing other countries as their "back yard"? I guess that's one of their many methods of justifying in their own minds the commission of crimes against other nations. After all, if something is in your back yard, technically you own it and can do with it as you please.

Of all the elections in Latin America this year this is the one that matters most to the US, which has had to watch its backyard slide to the Left in the last few years.


And what the hell are "messianic tendencies"?

It's amazing how they can distort things just by subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) manipulation of such innocent things like adjectives, phraseology. The one that drives me bonkers is whenever they describe Hugo Chavez. They invariably, always use a tag for him, like "Firebrand", Or "Strong-arm" or "leftist", I've even seen Dictator. Unbelievable.

It's almost like an appellation like "Mr." or "Ms.".

You're right. To rephrase a quote from the Middle Ages, "He who does the writing gets to chronicle history".

This was in reference to the Monks who were attacked at Lindisfarne in 985 AD. It seems the Vikings came in and attacked them. The Monks sat down & wrote what happened.

Ever since then, the Vikings have had a very bad reputation. Over 1,000 years later, it's still hard to shake that image.

Words. Very powerful.

Although his party is overall fairly liberal. This article is pure hubris, as aparently anyone left of Thatcher is "a left winger who rails against the free market."

The first few paragraphs don't seem so bad. Then we get classic disinformation techniques, for instance attributing criticism of the Leftist (whoever he may be) to "critics" in the plural, and then offering none, or only one, actual quotation of these "critics" (in truth, the "critics" are the wealthy owners and editors of the newspaper):

"...his critics give warning that he is blind to reality, particularly the question of how to pay for his campaign promises." (--Paul Wolfowitz--Neo-Con Bushite/World Bank--said almost the exact same thing of Hugo Chavez--almost word for word--interesting.)

And here's the sole "critic" they dredge up--an American professor: "'He has strong messianic tendencies,' said George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, who has written a biography of Mr Lopez Obrador, called Mexican Messiah." (--you gotta laugh! 'Mexican Messiah'! I mean, really...)

Here's disinformation item #2 (not about Amlo--but another campaign of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies...)

"Unlike Chavez and other regional populists"--says the author of "Mexican Messiah"--"he (Amlo) doesn't just talk the talk of fighting for the dispossessed, he walks the walk."

Dissing Hugo Chavez again. The truth: Chavez really DOES fight for the dispossessed--in every way you could think of, including masses of new medical clinics in poor urban and rural areas, never before served by government, masses of new schools for both young and adult education, new community centers, and new grants and loans for small business and in particular for agriculture. Chavez is committed to using portions of Venezuela's oil profits to benefit its huge poor population who have been neglected for centuries. He has ALREADY implemented this policy in a big way. And it is one of the reasons that Chavez is so hugely popular in Venezuela, which is mostly poor. Chavez has been president for about as long as Bush has. All indicators of social well-being, economic growth and political stability are UP--significantly so--in Venezuela, whereas the U.S. continues to deteriorate. Venezuela has TRANSPARENT elections--closely monitored by the OAS, EU election monitoring group and the Carter Center (all of whom have deemed Venezuela's elections to be honest and aboveboard). Not so in the U.S. Chavez has genuine, widespread support. Bush has the phony, manufactured narrative of the corporate news monopolies. So I don't know where the Telegraph is getting this completely wrong information that Chavez has somehow not "walked the walked." It is just patently untrue. (Wolfowitz again? Does the Telegraph take dictation from the White House like OUR corporate news monopolies do?)

The slandering "scholar" of "Mexican Messiah" goes on to say (quoted in the Telegraph), about Amlo, that, "The trouble is that he doesn't understand what has happened in the global economy in the last 40 years or so."

Disinformation item #3. Patently absurd. It's not that Lopez Obrador doesn't understand global corporate predation, it's that he DOESN'T AGREE with it and thinks it's bad for Mexico! Doesn't understand it, my ass. He understands it perfectly well. What condescending rubbish! Where did William and Mary get this asshole? They used to be a good college. Have the Corporate Rulers been taken over EVERY institution in the U.S.?

Finally, disinformation item #4 (actually, again, just plain wrong information):

The Telegraph speaks: "It is this concern" (that Amlo "doesn't understand" global corporate predators) "that has allowed Mr Calderon" (the corporate candidate/Fox's party) "to claw his way back into contention. // He was trailing badly earlier this year until he started to demonise his rival as a danger to Mexico. The polls are now too close to call."

This article was published yesterday--in plenty of time to catch up with the most recent polls, which show that Amlo has forged ahead of Calderon by 5%! The polls are still close. But these statements about Calderon put a completely untrue coloration on the clear trend, which is pro-Amlo. Also, Calderon's "demonisation" of Amlo has had the exact opposite effect from what the Telegraph asserts. Amlo's rise in the polls comes close upon Calderon's attempt to "demonise" him. (--unless, of course, the Telegraph is privy to planned election fraud, as our news monopolies are, and is just pre-writing the phony post-election story--we shall see.) The Telegraph article further colors the story (against Amlo) by portraying the two people they quote in his favor as "star-struck" hero-worshipers (in contrast to the lofty professor from William and Mary).

It is, indeed, a hit piece--perhaps not quite as vicious as some I've seen on Hugo Chavez--but still vicious and patronizing. The Telegraph (on behalf of the Corporate Rulers): 'Forget it, Amlo, you are just too weak-minded to understand the brutal realities of BushWorld, and we, the Corporate Rulers, are going to do our damnedest to make sure you can't deliver on your promises to the poor!'

:puke:

You'll see from this that The Telegraph has only got 7.5 % of our total newspaper circulation. http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/mediaown.html
Scroll down to The Telegraph Group for details.

Aside from that I can assure you that a substantial number of their loyal readers actually get the paper for the cross word puzzle - that has been so going back to at least the sixties. The number of people in the UK who will attached any importance whatsoever to that article is minimal.

Edit - I've noticed that the link also mentions the Fox / Jane Acre affair which was gone into in detail in the film The Corporation.

My sole use for any newspapers is to line the cat's litter tray. Thye are of no other use to me. As an aside. of late, out papers tend to compete against each other by giving away free CDs and DVDs. My Mother gives them to me.

care about convincing people of anything. They're like the Bush junta in that sense. What they are doing is writing plausible-sounding phony narratives of events, and also legitimizing their favorite "professors" for the salient quotes they need to pad the narrative. The "talking points" they put out there then get picked up by other corporate rags. The Lopez Obrador as "messiah" hit Europe today--via NYT to IHT, now unattributed, but furthered along by another "messiah" talking point pusher. See
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/28/opinion/edkrauze.php

writing, isn't it? Now Lopez Obrador is too dangerous to elect! On one hand, he's stupid, and on the other, he's nutty! And, on the third hand, he's sinister!

Someone must really, really be terrified of what is happening in Latin America in the countries which are slipping beyond U.S. control, on their way to independence and self-respect.

have-nots' and stem the flow of cheap illegal immigration into this country, eh Republicans?