How do you think the Bushists like the democratic movement in Mexico?

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mexico.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

April 7, 2005
Move Against Mexico City Mayor Sets Off Protests
By REUTERS

Filed at 1:02 p.m. ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - About 150,000 Mexicans poured into the streets on Thursday to support Mexico City's leftist mayor, who furiously decried a drive to knock him out of the 2006 presidential race as an assault on democracy.

Chanting protesters packed the capital's Zocalo, one of the world's biggest squares, in a sea of yellow balloons and homemade banners. Police helicopters hovered above but the mayor repeatedly ordered the crowd to be calm.

Congress will vote on Thursday and is expected to lift the legal immunity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador so he can face a contempt of court charge. If impeached, he would likely be fired as mayor, go to jail pending trial, and he could be banned from next year's election.

``We are about to see an attack against the democratic advances that have been won with so much sacrifice by the people of Mexico,'' Lopez Obrador said.

[Ripley]

1. Cool pic...

but I know nothing about him. Is he a crook or not?

[BurtWorm]

3. The article says he's in trouble for not halting construction on a road

to a hospital on disputed expropriated land on the outskirts of the city.

[TroubleMan]

15. The road was never even built, and the guy never owned the land

He accused of illegally using an "eminent domain" rule to build a road to a hospital (that would have used about 200 cubic feet of "private property").

The road was never built. They found an alternate route. Also, the person who made the claim didn't own the land in the first place.

This is total bullshit.

And he lost, too.....

[BurtWorm]

17. Without knowing the details of the case, all I could think was

wow, what a crime to use eminent domain to make a hospital more accessible. :sarcasm: It sounded trumped up. I'm not surprised it is.

[arcos]

6. All Mexican politicians are crooks...

So if I have to choose between two right wing crooks and one left wing crook, I will always prefer the left wing crook.

He has done a great job as Mexico City mayor, and would be a great President too. No doubt there would be corruption, but there is corruption with Fox's PAN, and there were decades of corruption with the PRI.

[Ripley]

7. Oh, okay.

:)

[Selatius]

2. If he's even modestly leftist, I wish him the best

Allende's government was center-left at best, but it was overthrown by our own government because Allende didn't want to play ball.

[montanacowboy]

4. Vincente Fox's

party in the congress are trying to get rid of this guy's immunity and send him to jail so he can't run against Fox in the elections.

Another good leftist (ala Chavez) - let's see what they do to him and his movement

[zippy890]

5. 'He's a populist like Chavez'

Uh oh, Chimpy is NOT going to like it if this socialist is elected president in 2006, which it looks like he will be by his popularity.

Might just have to call those troops home to invade Mexico!!

From what I have read he is a decent guy and I hope he wins.

[BurtWorm]

11. Well it will be very interesting to listen to the silence coming from the

Bushists as the people's choice is prevented from being put up to elect.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. That's one BIGASS flag.

Is its base in the middle of the crowd like it seems to be?

[BurtWorm]

10. I was there once and remember seeing a BIGASS flag.

It's kind of frightening to behold, especially after half a bottle of tequila.

[BurtWorm]

16. By the way, the Zocalo is immense. I can't think of any public space

in the US that compares to it. It takes an enormous amount of people to fill it. This is a powerful expression of democratic fervor.

[Darranar]

9. No more than they do in Venezuela...

They - and the obscenely rich elite they are allied with - are in trouble all over Latin America, and that is a good thing.

[arcos]

12. kicked and recommended... nt

[Horse with no Name]

13. This is photoshopped

Since we all know that every Mexican is scrambling for the border to take everyones job here--how can that many be in the city?:sarcasm:

Seriously, that's the sound of freedom ringing. However, in Mexico, the sound of freedom ringing is usually followed by the sound of gunfire.
I hope this works out.
This guy looks good.

[Beam Me Up]

14. Black Thursday 2005: A Coup d'Etat Begins Today in Mexico

Black Thursday 2005: A Coup d'Etat Begins Today in Mexico
By Al Giordano,
Posted on Thu Apr 7th, 2005 at 09:37:53 AM EST

The Whole World Is Watching

There is little question in this correspondent’s analysis that the pressure on Fox and the PRI to cement their little coup d’etat today comes from above, from the Bush administration in Washington, which has decided it cannot abide another democratic decision by another large Latin American country that would place Mexico with Brazil,  Argentina and Venezuela (among others such as Uruguay) in a Bolivarian bloc of resistance to the imposed policies from the North.

Today, April 7, 2005, is the date that Vicente Fox – if he gets his way in Congress - destroys his own historic legacy as a transitional pro-democracy figure and goes down in history the same kind of authoritarian cretin as presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo before him.

But while the government of Washington appears hell-bent on ripping democracy from Mexican hands once again, the reaction from Civil Society in the United States is, for the second time in the five-year history of this newspaper (the first being the rejection of the US-backed coup d’etat in Venezuela in 2002),  emerging in opposition to the dirty tricks from inside the beltway.

It is, indeed, front-page news today throughout Mexico that yesterday’s Washington Post, accurately calling the supposed case against the Mexico City governor “trivial,” editorialized against the desafuero of López Obrador:

“FIVE YEARS AFTER Mexico established itself as an electoral democracy, its Congress faces a decision that could undermine that hard-won progress and invite political turmoil. As soon as tomorrow, the Chamber of Deputies will vote on whether to lift the legal immunity of Mexico City's mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who currently leads the polls for next year's presidential election. If the measure passes, prosecutors plan to criminally charge Mr. Lopez Obrador with contempt of court in a municipal land dispute, a step that could block his presidential candidacy. The short-term winners of this maneuver would be the presidential candidates from the party of the current president, Vicente Fox, and the largest opposition party, which between them control a majority in Congress. But Mr. Lopez Obrador's disqualification would be a disaster for Mexico's political system, and perhaps for its long-term stability.”

More: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/4/7/93753/46058

[Lisa0825]

18. wowwwwww... I have been in that zocalo.... amazing to see it that way.

here's a good quote from Obrador:

"The little that is given to the poor, they always call that populism or paternalism," Lopez Obrador said, "and the large amounts handed out to the rich, that's development and bailout programs. That's an old trick."

[rucky]

19. Pretty soon we'll be sneaking across the border to live in Mexico n/t