I hate it when the Star’s editorial line shoves its ignorant nose in affairs it is barely equipped to understand or comment on. Actually I hate most of the Star, but since it is the country’s most widely-circulated newspaper it bears some scrutiny.

Here I’m going to do a quick dissection of gringo-jr’s editorial on the going-ons in Mexico.

Mexico’s shaken faith
Aug. 9, 2006. 01:00 AM

Weeks of political turmoil after Mexico’s photo-finish presidential election in early July has had its effect. The public’s faith has been shaken in the integrity of the electoral system.

And Mexico’s respected Federal Electoral Tribunal fed that concern Saturday when it ordered a partial recount beginning today at 12,000 of 130,000 polling stations, agreeing that complaints of error and fraud warrant a fresh look.

Shaken faith? When did this happen!? Weeks after? Dear me!
Go read Narco News, morons, they’ve been saying it since day one. Oh but of course, they’re actually out on the street reporting shit rather than sitting in some bureau office in Mexico City.

And the Tribunal is respected? By whom? Your corporate paymasters? And yet they “fed” that concern — fed, like you’d feed a dog or a donkey.

The conservative National Action party candidate, Felipe Calderon, a protégé of outgoing President Vicente Fox, beat leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the July 2 election by 244,000 votes of the 41 million cast, or 0.6 per cent. The partial recount is unlikely to reverse the result. But if it gives Lopez Obrador more votes, pressure will grow for a complete recount or a new election.

“Beat”? What the hell is wrong with you? You just pointed out that there’s clear, frickin’ clear evidence of fraud and error going on that warrants reconsideration — then you say he “beat” him? What was it, a boxing match? You win elections, you don’t “beat” your opponent. The guy loses the election. Having said that, it’s nice to make it seem like Obrador and Calderon got in a ring and, you know, Calderon might have done a couple of nasty things but nevertheless beat him. LIKE A MAN. Great imagery. Morons.

Meanwhile, chaos builds.

Calderon has been accusing Lopez Obrador of leading a shabby “sore loser” campaign of “anti-democrats, anarchists and intolerance” to overturn an election most observers deemed clean and transparent.

So Calderon made that accusation — of anti-democrats, anarachists and intolerant nits — and what did the Star do? All but confirm it — because CHAOS naturally stems from ANARCHISTS — those dogs and donkeys referred to earlier, who have been let out in the streets. Really, A causes B. Most observers deemd the election clean and transparent, but most observers probably didn’t venture far from some Northern voting sites and Mexico City because they like UNAM so much. (Actually I don’t know what the observers did, but whatever it was they missed the crap going down at 12,000 polling stations.

Lopez Obrador, claiming to “defend democracy,” has sent his Democratic Revolution party supporters into the streets complaining that the election was rigged by the ruling party. They call Fox a “traitor to democracy,” election officials “criminals,” and threaten to besiege Congress and the courts.

Thus begins anarchy, and Mexicans are understandably worried.

Notice the subtle difference of quotation marks here. For Calderon’s accusations all go in the same phrase, for Obrador’s accusations they are all separated to make them seem less credible. Because, Obrador is only “claiming” to defend demcoracy, whereas Calderon of course — by refusing repeatedly over and over the past while to submit to any kind of recount — was actually defending it. If Obrador hadn’t made a big fuss of it, wouldn’t this shit have gone unnoticed? Yes, it would’ve, because those E.U. Observers were obviously not doing their frickin’ job properly.

Also, Obrador “sent” his supporters out there. Like, he actually told all hundreds of thousands, or even millions of them, to go out there. And they did. Because they like him, personally, that much. They’re not defending a democratic principle, they’re just there because they’re his lapdogs.

And THAT’s when anarchy began — no, not when some elitist dickwads stole the election — but when the people poured into the streets to reclaim it. That’s when anarchy starts, when the dogs and donkeys start making noise; not when the vultures suck the blood dry.

Who’s worried and why, anyway?

Although many Mexicans recoil from Lopez Obrador’s nakedly self-serving tactics, a third are convinced the election was rigged. More to the point, half now support his call for a “vote by vote” recount at all 130,000 polls, for the sake of social peace. Their view cannot be ignored.

Mexicans were split along north-south lines in this vote, and across social classes. Healing cannot begin until most accept the result.

Okay, so let’s get this. Many Mexicans recoil, we don’t know how many, but we obviously know it’s the upper classes (voting split across social classes) who voted for the frickin’ Conservatives. Hence, those braying donkeys and barking dogs implicated earlier are the ones who — as above — are going to “besiege” the courts and Congress. The uneducated vulgar anarchistic poor and the dark indigenous moronic southies — like those Chiapan Zapatistas who just can’t shut the hell up and bend over to neoliberal NAFTAism. Which is what’s got those upper class Mexicans worried, of course, is their interests being threatened. And what’s got the lower ones worried? Well, the fate of their democracy. Duh.

Okay, so half the country wants a vote-by-vote recount now — obviously their “faith” has been shaken. But they’ve been calling for it for a month, you morons. Where were you then?

If the partial recount turns up serious irregularities in the next few days, a full recount should be held.

The courts must dispel any doubt about the fairness of this crucial election, only the second truly credible ballot in 77 years.

Mexico’s democratic future and social stability ride on it.

Good one. Dumbasses. What, did Torstar invest in Calderon or something? Does it own a maquiladora up in the North that it’s so threatened by Obrador and actual democracy? Polls pegged this guy as the frontrunner months in advance, and all of a sudden some chump ass hand-picked by Fox (as if that’s supposed to give the whole charade legitimacy) beat him?

Besides, I don’t think Mexico’s democratic future lies in this one election, it lies in millions of people, and their right to sovereignty that isn’t impeded upon by NAFTA and other shit like that. It depends on them being able to exercise their otherwise marginalized voices. Democracy, morons, depends on the people; not on rigged elections that have to go your way or the highway (like Hamas).

Gringo media gets paid not to understand, and here’s gringo-jr. to lend a hand.

In this ridiculously worded article the Israelis explain why they’ve been performing so poorly against Hizbullah:

Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said an Israeli soldier who just returned from Lebanon.

“They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

Why is it ridiculously worded? Well, because all the poor Israeli soldiers have are these ridiculous chef’s hats:

Not, of course, the world’s most advanced weapons from the United States.

I think the Israelis are exaggerating just a little bit about the prowess of Hizbullah. Kind of how the U.S. Army wanted us to believe, and provided Reuters with details to make ridiculously detailed diagrams of hi-tech, sprawling al-Qaeda cave complexes in Afghanistan. (“Sure, from the outside, it looks like a normal cave, but from the inside it is actually more like a four-storey mansion — complete with recreational facilities like a swimming pool and a sauna and a pool table and video games and a vending machine filled with candies.”)

Venezuela pulls out Israel ambassador

[Chavez] said: “The Israeli elite repeatedly criticise Hitler’s actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler’s actions must be criticised, not just against the Jews but against the world. It’s also fascism what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people … terrorism and fascism.”

Meanwhile, undemocratic and corrupt rulers of Arab countries — nevertheless more democratic than Chavez according to the U.S. State Department — continued to fall over their faces to support Israel.

Venezuela’s chocolate revolution

They no longer sell their cocoa to local intermediaries, which have been priced out of the market, but straight to foreign chocolate manufacturers, which are willing to pay high prices for organic produce.

The farmers have joined forces to form an association of organic farmers consisting of 50 families.

[…]

Much of the funding to kickstart this new wave of organic farming came from the Venezuelan government, which has injected some $10m on research and training, as well as from the European Union via a local non-governmental organisation called Tierra Viva.

[…]

The local cocoa producers are now making forays into the production of their own chocolate bars.

El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido never tasted better.

Saudi activist held over solo protest

Wajiha al-Huweidar, 45, said she was arrested after walking across the causeway carrying a placard urging King Abdullah, ruler of Saudi Arabia, to grant more rights to women in the conservative kingdom.

[…]

She said her brother later signed a pledge agreeing that she would not repeat her actions.

… you probably know jackshit about it.

It’s “hizb-ullah” not “hez-buh-la” or “hez-bowl-a” or “khis-ba-la” — seriously, what the hell is “khis-ba-la”? Some morons spell it “hisbala” too — what?

It’s one thing for random joes to pretend to know this and that about Hizbullah, but it’s really annoying when commentators and politicians come on TV and can’t even pronounce properly the name of the country they’re invading or the group they’re fighting that they supposedly have massive intelligence and background knowledge on.

Hizbullah is not a simple group to understand, here are some facts:

1. Hizbullah formed as a reaction to the Israel invasion and brutality toward Lebanon in 1982.

2. Hizbullah is not just a militia, but also has a political and social wing that provides social services (e.g., healthcare, education, etc.) for the traditionally marginalized Shi’ites of Southern Lebanon. Shi’ites form the plurality of Lebanese (perhaps the majority), but have been ignored by the political Sunni, Christian and Druze elites.

3. Hizbullah’s militia stays away from civilians. Contrary to Israeli and American propaganda, Hizbullah’s fighters do not hide behind civilians, it is dangerous and compromising — for them, nevermind the civilians. Hizbullah takes the utmost effort to evacuate civilians from battle sites.

4. Hizbullah has a great deal of support from Shi’ites, because of (2) but also because it drove out the Israeli occupiers who, through their own actions and their proxy fascist racist Christian South Lebanon Army (and others) were responsible for unimaginable brutalities against Lebanese and Palestinians.

5. Hizbullah has a great deal of respect from all sectors of Lebanese society because it drove out the Israelis. Hizbullah is a political party that has 14 seats in Lebanon’s 128 seat parliament. This may seem like it is a relatively marginal party, but Lebanon’s parliament and government operates weirdly along sectarian lines. Also first-past-the-post electoral systems are not representative of proportional voting. It is an integral part of the Lebanese government.

6. Hizbullah has been alleged to have been involved in terrorist operations, such as blowing up American marines in ’83 and such. This has never been proven.

7. Hizbullah’s capture of Israeli soldiers was not unprovoked. This idea of a random, nakedly provocative act is unfounded. For the past six years (since Israel’s exit from Lebanon in 2000), Israel and Hizbullah have been engaged in low-level warfare. Israel has violated the Blue Line on far, far more occassions (by air, land, sea) than Hizbullah. Probably by one or two orders of magnitude (that means, if Hizbullah has done it 100 times, Israel has done it 1,000 to 10,000 times). Israel has been kidnapping — from Lebanese soil, and also when they inadvertently walk into Israeli territory — Lebanese civilians (shepherds and fisherman), among others (including Hizbullah fighters) and holding many without charges. Israel also refuses to give up maps of landmines it planted in South Lebanon that kill people to this day. Hizbullah has been calling for a prisoner exchange, and access to those maps.

8. Hizbullah does rocket civilians in Haifa and other Israeli cities. This is unconscionable and just because we support Lebanese resistance does not mean we should blindly support all of Hizbullah’s activities. Israeli terrorist forces have no morals, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.

9. The Lebanese Army is practically a joke, its Air Force consists of 30-odd helicopters — the types you see in 1970s films. If it were not for Hizbullah, Lebanon would not have any defence whatsoever against Israel. Not that it has much of one now.

10. Hizbullah’s militia is actually proving to be very costly, in terms of human and economic capital, for the Israeli Army. It is probably the most intelligent and formidable Arab army Israel has ever faced.

11. While many Lebanese were at first resentful at Hizbullah for seemingly having started this war, it becomes more and more clear that Israel had this in the cards for a long time. Now, it seems that most Lebanese are actually supporting Hizbullah, or, at the very least, not deciding to fight it but deciding to fight Israel. Israel and the U.S. are seen as the instigators, the perpetuators, the aggressors — and they are. It is not uncommon to hear, in Lebanon and in the Lebanese diaspora, “Labbaik, labbaik, labbaik, ya Nasrallah!” (Here we come, here we come, here we come, o Nasrallah!) and “Birroh, biddam, nafdeek ya Hizbullah/Nasrallah/Lubnaan!” (By our souls and by our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you o Hizbullah/Nasrallah/Lebanon!). Israel’s campaign is doing nothing to make people resent Hizbullah, it is increasing its popularity not only in Lebanon but across the Arab world.

Israeli logic is great. They can bomb indiscriminately, they argue, because they warned civilians to evacuate the areas. (Nevermind that they destroyed roads, bomb civilian refugee convoys, aid workers, and fuel storage sites.)

By this token, Hizbullah should be able to bomb where ever it wants in central Israel now that it has warned them in advance. Besides, people in Haifa have been warned for far too long. Therefore, any Hizbullah strike in Northern or Central Israel is a-okay, by Israeli standards, that is.

edit: Later saw this on Norman Finkelstein’s web site:

fact: Hizbullah does not hide among civilians.

>The “hiding among civilians” myth

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths — the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far — on “terrorists” who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters — as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers — avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators — as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they’ll get some fighters, too. […] But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. […] In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. […]

The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah’s social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The “terrorist” organization Hezbollah is Lebanon’s second-biggest employer. […]

Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered “Hezbollah” installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. […] “You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon,” a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. […]

So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah “hiding within the civilian population” clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don’t know what they’re talking about. Hezbollah doesn’t trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield.[…]

fact: Israel deliberately and indiscriminately targets civilians.

>Israelis withdraw from Hizbollah border stronghold

A field researcher from the American based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Lucy Mair, sent pictures to military experts at the organisation’s New York office of munitions being transported to Israel’s northern border and fired into Lebanon from howitzers. She was shocked to discover they were cluster munitions. […]

‘The overwhelming impression is that time and time and again civilians are attacked and only civilian infrastructure is targeted. In cases of civilian casualties our investigators have studied, they have not been able to find the presence of Hizbollah rockets or launchers – only civilian targets,’ she said.

fact: Hizbullah’s actions were not unprovoked or unreasonable

>Lebanon wants return of Shebaa Farms

[Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora] said: “Hezbollah has expressed many times that it has the following objectives: liberating Lebanese occupied land, getting maps of all landmines planted in southern Lebanon during the Israeli occupation, and securing the release of our detainees who are held in Israeli jails.”

Just the facts.

Just came across this comment piece by Greg Palast. He should stick to writing articles about vote fraud in the States and taking pictures in Venezuela, the guy comes across as an idiot when talking about the Middle East — and he admits it himself. There are things in this article that have merit, but the rest of it is utterly simplified and stupid. He ends up denying not just the Palestinians, but the Shi’ite Lebanese and the Israelis as well of agency and ignores the myriad motivations and distills everything down to oil (the chemical irony of this statement just hit me). Too tired to comment fully on it all.

On Monday, July 24, there was a memorial to commemorate Black July, 1983 — where the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese ethnic nationalists massacred thousands of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The massacres continue to this day, and so this was also a rally of defiance and protest.

And it’s true. Most people largely ignore or are unaware of what’s going on in Sri Lanka.

Click here for more pictures from the memorial/rally.