Arrest Warrants Issued For Fifty Movement Leaders
'what we have now is a low-intensity dirty war'
By Winter Patriot on 8/13/2006, 1:40am PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

As always, the news you get depends on where you go looking.

Here's some from the BBC: Violence flares in south Mexico

11 August 2006: Gunmen have fired on striking teachers marching through the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca, killing one man.

Protesters responded by setting fire to a house where the gunmen fled. They blamed Governor Ulises Ruiz for the attack, a charge his office rejected.
...
Mr Ruiz is accused of rigging the 2004 election to gain office and of using force to suppress dissent.

No kidding? Rigging the 2004 election to gain office? Who could imagine such a thing?

A radio station and a newspaper which have expressed support for the protests have been attacked by gunmen - two reporters have been injured and equipment damaged and stolen.

On Wednesday, a group of Triqui Indians driving to the city to join the protests was ambushed and three people, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed. It is not clear whether their deaths were linked to the protests.

Here's a newer report, also from the BBC: Hostages freed in southern Mexico

12 August 2006: Activists in the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca have handed over to police four people they took hostage for 18 hours amid continued political tension.

The crisis began when a man was shot dead on Thursday during a march by striking teachers who are demanding the resignation of Oaxaca's state governor.

The activists seized the four, accusing them of involvement in the man's death.
...
Protesters said gunmen had opened fire without provocation as several thousand teachers marched through Oaxaca.

But the state prosecutor said initial investigations indicated he was shot during an argument.

Was this the same argument that claimed the lives of the three Triqui Indians?

If the highly-polished reporting of the BBC leaves something to be desired, you can always check out some other sources, such as this report from Reuters: Mexico leftist claims election recount proves fraud

MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Mexico's opposition leader said on Friday a partial recount of votes from the presidential election he narrowly lost has shown so many errors that the top electoral court will have to declare him president-elect.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist who claims he was robbed in the July 2 election, said the recount of 9 percent of ballot boxes was only half complete but inconsistencies from the original tallies already topped 100,000 votes.

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon won by 244,000 votes, or 0.58 of a percentage point, and his ruling party says the recounts are showing only minor changes in the results.

But Lopez Obrador, a fiery former mayor of Mexico City, said more than 40,000 votes had surfaced inside some ballot boxes and 60,000 disappeared from others.

He wants results annulled at those polling stations with the biggest irregularities. Many of them are in areas where Calderon won convincingly.

"What happens if the court applies the law and annuls those polling stations with grave irregularities? Well, the result is different," Lopez Obrador told thousands of supporters in Mexico City's vast Zocalo square on Friday night.

"So even with their own numbers ... they have to recognize that we won the presidency," he said.

Will they recognize it or not? Are the facts important enough to matter? Or is political corruption prepared to trump reality?

For a different look at the story, consider this report from the Cuban news agency, Prensa Latina: Mexican Elections Becoming Farce

Mexico, Aug 12 (Prensa Latina) Irregularities detected in 60 percent of the election packages opened so far are enough to demand the reopening of all 130,000 packages, assured Mexico's Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Leonel Cota, a national PRD leader, said on Saturday that the anomalies found in some 11,000 packages opened by the magistrates during the partial vote counting are enough evidence of alleged fraud in the July 2 elections.

He pointed out that the Election Judicial Court of the Federation (TEPJF) must annul several thousand votes, as countless errors were detected again on the third day of the vote counting process, including 2,300 extra votes in favor of the official candidate, Felipe Calderon.

The PRD also denounced the discovery of an empty package, extra ballots and other signs of manipulation in several Mexican states, in addition to votes that were discounted to the candidate for the Por el Bien de Todos coalition, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Until Friday, the TEPJF had counted more than 33,000 ballots that were not backed by voters and more than 20,000 votes with inexistent ballots, a situation that shows the manipulation of the elections to benefit Calderon.

Analysts said that the incoherence found so far raise doubts about the legality of the presidential elections, as the fraud against Lopez Obrador is evident.

Not happy with Prensa Latina? Here's one from NarcoNews.com: Attorney General of Oaxaca Issues Arrest Warrants For Fifty Movement Leaders

OAXACA CITY, August 10, 2006: The government of Oaxaca has advised the public that it will arrest all the leaders of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) to "guarantee the safety" of the state, the Secretary of Public Security Lino Celaya Luria said yesterday.

This clarifies the sudden rash of plainclothes operators snatching men off the streets. That’s what they mean by "arrests."
...
The Las Noticias headline from August 9 proclaims, "[Governor] Operating Undercover Terrorist Plan."

No shit, guys.

Whoa! What's happening? And why haven't we been hearing about it?

Here's some background from Nancy Davies, also of NarcoNews: Movement in Oaxaca Faces Threats and Gunfire as 300 Federal Police Arrive in the State Capital

I went down to Plaza de la Danza, and from there to the zocalo [town square]. Both places were calm. The newly arrived campesinos [subsistence farmers] in the zocalo were armed with sticks and iron rods, and were accompanied by women and children.

So, in my opinion (as always, a subjective view), what we have now is a low-intensity dirty war. Several opportunities to kill people have been bypassed. I believe the game plan is to exhaust people by fear and high tension levels, supplemented by a few deaths in which there is no risk that URO [Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz] can be accused of anything – indeed, today there are denials that he ordered the police to attack at the Finance Building. He can deny he even asked for the PFP to be sent here, or that once sent, they had been involved, since they seem to be doing much of their dirty work in civilian clothing.

But the movement is also capable of psychologically exhausting URO, who is followed everywhere. In the style of a good revolution, he is continuously mocked and called bad names, along with his former secretary of civil protection José Franco Vargas (currently carrying on in an unofficial capacity) who is now referred to as "Chuckie II," in honor of the American horror movie. Furthermore, the people most stalwart in their denial must now, as Channel 9 repeatedly says, open their eyes. The television station not only shows every march and every instance of repression, but videos of other repressions, including one on the 1968 attack on students in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square, and another on the oppression in Palestine by the Israelis. It’s an educational project which is playing on radio, television broadcasts, and public screens in the zocalo. The entire state is involved in open warfare where the goal is throwing out the remaining Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) bosses, and establishing a more just order.

You couldn't make this stuff up. Or at least I couldn't.

So, apparently, Mexico is in the throes of a low-intensity dirty war. Who would have known it?

Could the same thing happen here? And if it did, would you even know about it?

I'm sorry, my friends. I don't have the answers. But I do have a lot of questions.

Maybe some day we'll find out the truth. But I'm not holding my breath.

As we all know, the truth is the very first casualty.

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