Narconews report on Oaxaca,...

Next report on Oaxaca’s situation highlights price raise as the element bringing back people on the streets. As I pointed out earlier, impacts on the poor are enormous if on the one hand government fails to promote creation of new jobs and hence households’ income struggle to cope with any adverse situation. Further, instead of proper policy, in Oaxaca there has been brutal repression of anyone who dares to raise his voice.

The good thing in all this is that people have got organised themselves and confronted government. APPO is an example of struggle,… the poor struggle against a system that impoverishes them even more. And the best part of it, all this is done appealing at the avoidance in the usage of firearms. It is, has been, and hopefully will continue to be a PEACEFUL movement towards democracy.

Understanding democracy as a system of decisions made by the people and consulted with the people, which are prone to affect peoples’ life. Sounds good, ehh?? Well that’s Oaxaca’s struggle now. (Note by Wet_Ahuizote)

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A New Strategy for the Popular Movement in Oaxaca?
Something for Everyone as the APPO and the Teachers Hit the Streets for 2008

By Nancy DaviesCommentary from Oaxaca
January 18, 2008

A well-planned movement march of Oaxaca local Section 22 of the Mexican teachers’ union (SNTE in its Spanish initials) and the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) walked on January 16 from the stadium on Vasconcelos avenue at Niños Heroes de Chapultepec, to the zocalo in the center of Oaxaca, a distance of about two miles. Many parents carried children, and some little kids walked holding their mother’s hand. It was a day of “something for everyone”; the marchers represented the spectrum of civil society in Oaxaca. So did the solutions: demands to withdraw government imposition of higher costs or fewer benefits, and to maintain intact the historic city center.

The range of protests includes: removing price increases for basic foods such as tortillas, and for gasoline; freeing political prisoners; returning the disappeared alive; canceling changes to the national social security institute (the ISSSTE); protecting streets in the center of the city; rescinding the increase in bus fares; and handing the schools still held by the breakaway teachers union Section 59 (promoted by governor Ulises Ruiz, who the teachers and APPO tried to force out of office in their 2006 uprising) back to Section 22.

Leading the march were two university youngsters I recognized, one of whom I’ll call Luis. Luis has told me he is a Stalinist; he wears braces on his teeth, which indicates his parents are middle-class (and they are teachers). I often see him around Florentino Lopez of the communist Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR), but today I didn’t see Florentino. Luis was sucking a lollypop as he strolled along. Except for dental care, that was a good sign: a relaxed atmosphere. I also spotted the head of the human rights organization LIMEDDH, Yesica Sanchez, at a street corner going to join the march, and among the several reporters I saw Pedro Matias of Noticias de Oaxaca, who always covers the APPO beat.

Behind the two lead youngsters, a truck moved along with a loudspeaker, with alternating speakers from the APPO and the teachers. Marcelino Coache of the APPO proclaimed the reasons for the march: most important, to protest the new “ISSSTE Law,” which is a national modification of social security benefits. That law affects all government employees, not just teachers, and is nationally opposed. Tomorrow, Coache informed us, 7,000 Oaxaca teachers will head to Mexico City to join protests there.

Directly behind the truck came the families of political prisoners. Five are still captive, although repeated court orders have declared invalid the grounds for keeping the two APPO men, Flavio Sosa and David Venegas. The Oaxaca government, as fast as the court throws out one allegation, files another criminal charge against those two. The accusations fluctuate but tend to focus around sedition and setting fires. Sosa was arrested in December of 2006; Venegas was grabbed in April of 2007 – guilty of offending the ruling powers.

The families were followed by a body of teachers who come from the Central Valley and the Sierra Norte regions. Some were obviously feeling the obligatory attendance required by union decisions; some seemed vigorous and willing to shout the often heard slogan “shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, we are all the APPO” (hombro con hombro, codo con codo, la APPO, la APPO, la APPO somos todos), plus the newer slogans which demand the rescinding of the one-peso increase in bus fares.

The bus fares, now 4.5 pesos each way, might not seem like much. But they come just after a minimum wage increase of only two pesos, the same as the difference for a round-trip the bus fare. Those two pesos represent a 29 percent bus fare hike, but only a four percent rise in wages. So, those who make the minimum of 50.96 pesos per day (about $4.70 in US dollars) and have to pay nine pesos a day to travel feel the pinch. The general cost of living has gone up in Oaxaca, which is one of the poorest states and whose capital city stands among the most expensive.

Also at issue is the almost ludicrous business of the parking meters, and the closing off of streets in the center to expand the pedestrian mall. The new mayor of Oaxaca City, Hernandez Fraguas, (from Governor Ruiz’ Institutional Revolutionary Party) admits that the parking meters represent a fiasco – they’ve been installed and uninstalled several times since 2006. Hernandez notes that not only do people not want them (those who have cars, plus the shops which would lose business to commercial malls), but the contracted beneficiaries of the profits are a private firm. This fact hints at the typical graft on the part of government officials. The meter machines themselves are a violation of the preservation of the historic city center. So Hernandez says the “contract” will be rescinded – maybe.

And lest we forget, the demand for the ouster of URO continues and is “irrevocable”. The families of the dead, tortured and disappeared proclaim, “We don’t forget and we don’t forgive.”

The clever part of the APPO strategy in all this was to link the parking meters with the closing of additional streets. Expanding the tourist pedestrian mall can only benefit expensive shops, restaurant and hotel owners who, the newspaper Noticias reported, plan three more five-star hotels. (If that involves investment by an international hotel chain, no one is saying so yet.) Small commercial shop-owners (think of an aquarium store with three kinds of tropical fish; think of a clothing shop where nothing costs more than twenty dollars) fear the prospect of being driven out of business – and now they can thank the APPO for taking up their cause.

Behind the teachers came the APPO activists, followed by the youth group Front of Youth and Student Organizations, and students for whom the fare raise is an important issue. A gun battle actually took place at the state university campus this week, of “thugs versus thugs,” and Noticias identified the two rival gangs. Subsequently one gang, whose members were identified by name, called in death threats to Noticias reporters. The gang dispute was over whether or not to sequester and/or burn the buses on the campus. Who hired the two sets of thugs is not known, but clearly rival motives were in play. Urban transport is owned by private persons. The government sent police to end the battle.

Red flags with hammer and sickle as usual brought up the rear of the APPO march, while the graffiti boys, wearing masks against the spray paint, dodged alongside marking the walls with the names of the political prisoners and the recently disappeared. (Since summer of 2007 one indigenous Chatino man, Lauro Juarez, and two Triqui sisters, Daniela and Virginia Ortiz Ramirez, have been disappeared. Also protested were the older disappearances of two members of the Popular Revolutionary Army; and other human rights violations).

The march was preceded and followed by the municipal transit police clearing the traffic. These are the same motorcycle cops who make sure that kindergarten children dressed up as bumblebees march safely – marches are the norm in Oaxaca where everything comes to a halt when a funeral takes the street with a marching band, or a children’s event passes. The hardcore state and preventive police were nowhere to be seen, and I take that as a sign that Governor Ruiz is not willing or able to play the hard hand in high tourist season. As an aside, the Human Rights Commission from Europe has scheduled another Oaxaca visit.

I spotted at least a hundred residents along the route who emerged to watch. Two men looked dismayed and frightened. Many looked bemused. Most looked curious and interested. That’s not what you would call a scientific study of Oaxaca public opinion, but my sense is that the public is united along the family’s economic issues, which the return of tourism in no way addresses; the APPO movement politic embraces their plight.

This seemed to me to be the best organized and most comprehensive march the APPO could have desired at this time in its existence. To revise the structure of the APPO and devise tactics to cope with the ongoing government of Ulises Ruiz, the council meets on January 19. The Popular Assembly of Oaxaca City neighborhoods meet this week, as does the Popular Assembly of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The important Oaxaca City issue: the neighborhoods, or colonias, elect representatives to the city council and don’t want PRIistas, or Institutional Revolutionary Party members. What they do want is an end to the neglect of streets, schools, and the water supply. The Isthmus is struggling with land and water issues caused by the foreign-owned wind-generators, the affects of the enlarged port infrastructure at Salina Cruz, and the juggernaut of “Plan Mexico.” This last, which is supposedly a war on narcotics, evokes at the moment the question of whether any of the Ministerial Police are not involved in drug trafficking; the murder rate has achieved horrendous proportions.

As the pundits endlessly repeat, since the causes of the 2006 uprising remain, the movement won’t vanish. That being so, it was nice to see that the APPO regrouping served well for the first megamarch of 2008: the more the problems, the more the community organizing.

Repression in Oaxaca : One Year Anniversary of State’s Bloody Attack on Popular Movements

Next is an excellent piece of writing that puts the conflict in Oaxaca as clear as it can gets. It is taken from globalresearch.com,.. al although is from june 2007 it presents a version of the origins of the problem, hence information contained in it is important.
(Note by Wet_ahuizote),...
_______________
by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

There's an Aztec legend of a warrior who was in love with a princess. When he left to go into battle, the lovers promised each other eternal love. The warrior died in battle, but to fulfill his promise to the princess, he came back as a brilliant orange flower. That flower now graces Flamboyan trees throughout Latin America . Another Flamboyan legend speaks of the struggle of the Puerto Rican people against colonial domination.

On Sunday, June, 10, 2007, under a Flamboyan tree, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) held a press conference to announce the liberation of one of the leaders of the year-long popular struggle for social and economic justice in Oaxaca . Marcelino Coache Verano, secretary general of the free union of Oaxaca municipal workers, had been arrested, severely beaten, and held for six months in prison before he was released on May 31, with all charges against him dismissed.

The press conference kicked off a week of actions to commemorate the brutal June 14, 2006 attack by 1,000 armed police against people peacefully demonstrating in support of the demands of some 70,000 teachers for higher wages, improvement of school buildings, and better resources for children. A teacher typically earns the equivalent of $220 every two weeks, and must purchase school supplies herself. Although the Mexican constitution guarantees free education, mothers have to pay registration fees.

State governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz sent in state police, accompanied by dogs, who viciously attacked the sleeping teachers and supporters. They tear-gassed everyone in the vicinity, including pregnant women and children; one woman miscarried as a result. Ninety-two people were wounded. Members of the community reacted with outrage, fighting back with anything they could find. They chased the police from the square, and re-established the camp.

On June 17, several hundred local organizations came together to form the APPO, comprising almost 350 different civil organizations working in areas of indigenous issues, sustainable community development, human rights, and social justice. APPO demanded that Governor Ulises Ruiz step down. Meanwhile, the movement continued to grow, with large but peaceful demonstrations. On August 1, hundreds of women marched, and when denied air time by the government radio station, occupied the station and broadcast their position themselves.
Throughout this period, police raids, beatings, and shooting continued. On October 28, four people were killed, including indymedia journalist and U.S. citizen Brad Will and a Mexican teacher, Emilio Alonso Fabian.

The Mexican government sent in the Federal Preventive Police. On November 25, they appeared in full riot gear and encircled the entire area, firing tear gas. As people fled, many were arrested and beaten. Among the prisoners were some simply on their way to work or to the market place that morning. One hundred seventy people were arrested that day, and most were taken to the far away prison of Nayarit. Thirty four were women, and five were minors.

At various times during the seven month period, nearly 1,500,000 teachers, workers, professors and artists, many of them Indigenous people, occupied Oaxaca 's main plaza. Although the movement crystallized to support the striking teachers, the frustration of the people resulted from deep economic and social problems the government has aggravated and allowed to fester. These problems that have harmed workers were exacerbated by NAFTA and the Bush administration's neoliberal policies. The majority of the population of Oaxaca is Indigenous, most of whom live in extreme poverty.

Last week, I participated in a human rights delegation of lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the National Association of Democratic Lawyers in Mexico to investigate alleged violations of international law by police against the people of Oaxaca during the past year. We met with lawyers, workers and prisoners.

Coache Verano related how he and three other activists had been arrested in Mexico City , on their way to meet with government officials to negotiate an end to the strife. They were stripped naked, beaten, and guards walked on their backs. Coache Verano's finger was broken. One of the other men was released with Coache Verano. The other two, including APPO leader Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, remain in custody. Coache Verano's wife and young children told us how they were terrorized for months with death threats and shots fired at their home.

The two prisoners we interviewed at the Tlacolula prison, about 20 miles outside of Oaxaca , also described how they were beaten by police. Flabiano Juárez Hernández was not part of the demonstration. He was working in the market near the plaza when he was arrested on November 20 and charged with auto theft, a crime considered so serious, there is no possibility of bail. The blows to his head required several stitches and left a scar. Juárez Hernández is indigenous and doesn't speak fluent Spanish; yet he was denied the services of an interpreter.

Wilbert Ramon Aquino Aragón is a worker who participated in the demonstrations on November 20 and 25. On January 10, he was arrested for the attempted murder of a taxi driver he never met. He was told he would be released if he identified people in police photographs. Since he refused, he continues to be held at Tlacolula. The police beat Aquino Aragón so badly he is scheduled for surgery next week. His head bears scars from the blows the police dealt.

Twenty year-old Pedro Garibo Pérez was not involved in the demonstration. Yet on November 20, he was arrested and kept face down for 6 hours with his leg on a hot muffler. The 20 centimeter burn on his leg was left unattended for more than two and a half months. When lawyers finally were able to visit him, they saw a large areas of exposed raw flesh on his leg. As a result of their demands, he finally received medical attention. Garibo Pérez spent 10 days in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a hematoma and received a skin graft.

A 50-year-old widow named Aurelia was working as a maid inside a house on November 25, and didn't know what was happening outside. She had just left work when they arrested her a half a block away. She was walking down the street and saw people running all over the place. The police started firing tear gas at everyone. She said, "I felt myself asphyxiating and my eyes filled with tears. I couldn't move. I was so scared."

The police grabbed Aurelia by the hair, cursed at her and kicked her. They forced her and several other women to kneel for two hours on the cobblestone. Then they were thrown into a truck in a pile, "like animals, with their hands and feet tied." Many were crying out that they could not feel their legs. The police officers responded, "You may as well die you old hags."

Aurelia had to sleep on a cement block in a cold room with no blanket. "Later that night," Aurelia said, "you could hear the men screaming nearby. I thought about my family members who were there yelling, beaten." Many of the women were beaten; some had head injuries.

They were flown to Nayarit and held there for 21 days. During that time, the women heard nothing about the men or the rest of their families.

The treatment to which these people were subjected violates the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which I explain in my book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Three of the techniques used by the police in Oaxaca apparently originated in the United States . They include terrorizing people with ferocious dogs, threats to throw prisoners from helicopters into the sea, and a humiliation technique of denying toilet privileges, leaving people to defecate in their pants.

Nine men remain in custody. There are only 13 lawyers representing the 350 people who still have charges pending against them. Many of the lawyers have suffered some form of harassment, including threats, beatings, and sexual harassment. Five inmates were made to sign statements denouncing lawyer Yésica Sánchez Maya, president of the Mexican League for Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH), in exchange for their release from prison. The 29-year-old Sánchez Maya, a passionate and effective leader of the movement, told us she knows she might be arrested at any moment. She remains unbowed.

The International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights concluded that 20 people have been illegally executed in the past few months. APPO has documented 29 who have been assassinated and 100 tortured throughout this struggle. The murders have been carried out by paramilitary or parapolice groups presumably linked to the state government.

On March 14, 2007 Mexico 's National Human Rights Commission reported that 12 people had been killed and documented 1,600 rights violations. The Commission demanded that the Senate punish the killings and other human rights abuses in Oaxaca . APPO criticized the report for overlooking killings and failing to implicate Ruiz.

Mexican Supreme Court Justice minister Juan Silva Meza said on May 28 that federal, state and municipal authorities committed grave civil rights violations during the Oaxaca conflict. Silva Meza recommended that the Court create a committee to investigate the responsible public officials.

Lawyers for LIMEDDH and APPO have filed deununcias against Ruiz, the president of Mexico , and the attorney general, seeking to remove Ruiz and hold them criminally accountable. The charges include assassination, torture, forced disappearance, and denial of justice. These requests have not been acted upon although a special prosecutor was named, (who is not independent) and the Supreme Court has indicated its intention to form a committee to investigate.

Marcelino Coache Verano has his freedom for now. But, he told the reporters, "there is no freedom for us if there isn't freedom for our comrades. There is no justice until those responsible for the assassinations and torture are brought to justice."

The government has criminalized the social movement. And the problems underlying the struggle remain unsolved. But like the Flamboyan tree, the movement in Oaxaca will continue to flower. "I never went to the marches before," Aurelia said, "but now after what the government has done to me, I'll be there to show my support. I don't know what the APPO is because I've never been to anything that has to do with APPO, but now I'm going to support them. I've heard of the teachers and I'll support them too, now, because it hurt so much what the government did to me."

video on ilegal detentions in Oaxaca

This video from Frida, shows how police continue to target Oaxacans and treat them as criminals. These people wanted to set up an offering 'Ofrenda' to conmemorate the day of the death and those who passed away in the last years.

It was a cultural event, but of course Ulises the governor has chosen all cultural days to carry on with his assassinations and repression.

the video is in spanish and is been taken from:
http://fridaguerrera.blogspot.com/
and
http://oaxacaenpiedelucha.blogspot.com/




don't forget to support Tabasco!!

One more year of repression in Oaxaca

Aiming at conmemorating one more year of the battle at UABJO university in Oaxaca, people got togheter at 'cinco senhores' round about. Their conmemoration coincided with the day of the death celebration. So, they wanted to set up a big offering 'ofrenda'. But the police had a different idea. They started sorrounding the area and iligally detaining people who look-like APPO supporter. It is estimated tha about 17 persons were arrested, some have left free at the moment of writing these lines. It seems that Ulises Ruiz gang just got stronger as not even international organisations such as Amnisty International or Human Rights Watch made it to weaken. And as my granny used to say,.. what doesn't kill you, just make you stronger. So I believe that Ulises and his friends feel with enough strengh as to carry on with their repression,... here some photos of Oaxaca city,... note how the environment is rather repressive with all that police,... (photos taken from http://oaxacaenpiedelucha.blogspot.com/)

And despite all that police, Oaxacans went out to demostrate that they are people with dignity and traditions. So, they set up the 'ofrenda' to honour and receive our deads and to tell assassins that they no longer fear,... here are some photos,..

the above picture shows Emeterio Merino who after been brutally beaten by police (see below posts) spent monts in hospital. Now is disable and no one is been named responsible for that. Mexican justice works not in favour of the poeple, but against them.

Mexican tomato pickers in Canada,... new kind of slavery???

Few weeks ago in a seminar that ran every monday organised by Hazel at UEA, a video of Mexican tomato pickers in Canada was screened. At first, I thought that,.. ok, Canada was (in my mind) a country with relatively low incidents of human right violations. Then I went to watch the docuementary, expecting a general description of the labour Mexicans do in Leamington, Canada.

Instead, the video show a group of mexicans trying to do the living the best they could, meaning seasonal labouring in Canada was only that: a job. In addition, a group of Canadians trying to get the most out of cheap labour force. And finally, some Mexican government representatives more concern in looking after the contract with the greenhouses than the workers human rights.

here is the video,...




What is happening with labour conditions? was the question I had in my mind as the video continued. Later in the open discussion, the theme of the chinese slaves who died working at the beach in England arose, along with some other examples,.. So I though maybe it is a pattern now,... globalisation needs of these new kind of slavery arrangements to keep going, to make profits.

Then another question came to me, is this globalisation what we want? Are these the migratory agreements our governments will set up? What about human rights? What about people? Is there any place for people (apart from being consumers) in globalisation?

Oaxaca, one year aniversary of repression

One year from now violence raised from street demonstrations to open repression, selective kidnapings, and killings. Despite all evidence pointing to Ulises Ruiz in the first place and Calderon in the second, no important accions have been done. International media just don't want to know about this, I suppose it is uncomfortable to watch Oaxacans shouting against their government all the time.

Or perhaps it is not really something that goes ideologically with mass media. For example, next documentary from 'mal de ojo television'. Puts everything that has happened in Oaxaca into perspective. But not even mexican media seems to care about that, and only few commentators marginally mention about al the human rights violations that took and still take place in Oaxaca.



Of course there are priorities in bringing the news to the public, and those 'priorities' seems to be defined by editorialists within the media enterprises. One case in point is Venesuelan issue with rctv, a enterprise that openly called for the coup, and further for the assassination of Chavez. Despite all this, international media tend to present the no renovation of its licence to do business as a huge strike against liberty and human rights.



Interestingly, some people have already started to make some hard questions as for example by comparing US government with Chaves, New York councilman says that president Bush does worse (than Chavez),... when bush lied to the country to go to war in Iraq, millions went out to the streets, (compared with the few in Venezuela).

Bush does worse with the patriot act, which supposedly is designed to defend americans, but in reality gives absolute power to the governemnt. The big question here is WHY americans do not do anything about that. Did brainwahing techniques by the media function?

Maybe just look carefully a the video (when it remains some 1:48 mins to end), in which the reporter in the ground shows not only that he is, and by far, politically biased, but more importantly that he is an intolerant facist,.. just put attention how he actually insults the councilman by calling him 'that son of a bitch'. Of course he though his voice was off,...

Later, fox news needed some little help form its friends,... and put through a congressman, republican of course, to try and silence such unconfortable voice. In the end, that republican only did what is business as usual for republicans: to lie. He came uo with that story of 'Chaves is a danger', further accused the councilman of being bought off and attempted to appeal to the public. what he got was that councilman stated clearly that Chavez is his hero not because he gives oil to Harlem, but because he (Chavez) is using Venezuelan oil to support the poor all over the world. Finally, 'you must stop in participating in white male suppremacy' said the counicilman to that Bush's boy.



I wonder, why fox news is so keen on having those news from Venezuela, and even uses untruthful events to support the idea of a dictator,... and on the other hand, in Oaxaca where there is an assassin governing, just doesn't care. Maybe the political alligneation is the unique criterion FOX news has.

Chomsky and the media

Chomsky has become a big figure. Politically speaking he has challenged the status of the general believe that the mass media communication enterprises provide information. Instead he has pointed out that their main product is to ‘construct consent’.

What in earth that means? Well in my very limited understanding of the problem I believe that it is the utilisation of the tools communication industry provides to influence and direct public opinion, either in favour of someone’s cause or against that of other’s.

==Chomsky and the media



Next is a sample of Chomsky’s book chapter one, ‘Necessary Illusions
Thought Control in Democratic Societies’. Full version of the book can be read from Chomsky’s website at: http://www.chomsky.info/

Democracy and the Media

Under the heading "Brazilian bishops support plan to democratize media," a church-based South American journal describes a proposal being debated in the constituent assembly that "would open up Brazil's powerful and highly concentrated media to citizen participation." "Brazil's Catholic bishops are among the principal advocates [of this]...legislative proposal to democratize the country's communications media," the report continues, noting that "Brazilian TV is in the hands of five big networks [while]...eight huge multinational corporations and various state enterprises account for the majority of all communications advertising." The proposal "envisions the creation of a National Communications Council made up of civilian and government representatives [that]...would develop a democratic communications policy and grant licenses to radio and television operations." "The Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly stressed the importance of the communications media and pushed for grassroots participation. It has chosen communications as the theme of its 1989 Lenten campaign," an annual "parish-level campaign of reflection about some social issue" initiated by the Bishops' Conference.

The questions raised by the Brazilian bishops are being seriously discussed in many parts of the world. Projects exploring them are under way in several Latin American countries and elsewhere. There has been discussion of a "New World Information Order" that would diversify media access and encourage alternatives to the global media system dominated by the Western industrial powers. A UNESCO inquiry into such possibilities elicited an extremely hostile reaction in the United States.2 The alleged concern was freedom of the press. Among the questions I would like to raise as we proceed are: just how serious is this concern, and what is its substantive content? Further questions that lie in the background have to do with a democratic communications policy: what it might be, whether it is a desideratum, and if so, whether it is attainable. And, more generally, just what kind of democratic order is it to which we aspire?

The concept of "democratizing the media" has no real meaning within the terms of political discourse in the United States. In fact, the phrase has a paradoxical or even vaguely subversive ring to it. Citizen participation would be considered an infringement on freedom of the press, a blow struck against the independence of the media that would distort the mission they have undertaken to inform the public without fear or favor. The reaction merits some thought. Underlying it are beliefs about how the media do function and how they should function within our democratic systems, and also certain implicit conceptions of the nature of democracy. Let us consider these topics in turn.

The standard image of media performance, as expressed by Judge Gurfein in a decision rejecting government efforts to bar publication of the Pentagon Papers, is that we have "a cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press," and that these tribunes of the people "must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." Commenting on this decision, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times observes that the media were not always as independent, vigilant, and defiant of authority as they are today, but in the Vietnam and Watergate eras they learned to exercise "the power to root about in our national life, exposing what they deem right for exposure," without regard to external pressures or the demands of state or private power. This too is a commonly held belief.

There has been much debate over the media during this period, but it does not deal with the problem of "democratizing the media" and freeing them from the constraints of state and private power. Rather, the issue debated is whether the media have not exceeded proper bounds in escaping such constraints, even threatening the existence of democratic institutions in their contentious and irresponsible defiance of authority. A 1975 study on "governability of democracies" by the Trilateral Commission concluded that the media have become a "notable new source of national power," one aspect of an "excess of democracy" that contributes to "the reduction of governmental authority" at home and a consequent "decline in the influence of democracy abroad." This general "crisis of democracy," the commission held, resulted from the efforts of previously marginalized sectors of the population to organize and press their demands, thereby creating an overload that prevents the democratic process from functioning properly. In earlier times, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," so the American rapporteur, Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, reflected. In that period there was no crisis of democracy, but in the 1960s, the crisis developed and reached serious proportions. The study therefore urged more "moderation in democracy" to mitigate the excess of democracy and overcome the crisis.

Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.

The Trilateral Commission study reflects the perceptions and values of liberal elites from the United States, Europe, and Japan, including the leading figures of the Carter administration. On the right, the perception is that democracy is threatened by the organizing efforts of those called the "special interests," a concept of contemporary political rhetoric that refers to workers, farmers, women, youth, the elderly, the handicapped, ethnic minorities, and so on -- in short, the general population. In the U.S. presidential campaigns of the 1980s, the Democrats were accused of being the instrument of these special interests and thus undermining "the national interest," tacitly assumed to be represented by the one sector notably omitted from the list of special interests: corporations, financial institutions, and other business elites.

The charge that the Democrats represent the special interests has little merit. Rather, they represent other elements of the "national interest," and participated with few qualms in the right turn of the post-Vietnam era among elite groups, including the dismantling of limited state programs designed to protect the poor and deprived; the transfer of resources to the wealthy; the conversion of the state, even more than before, to a welfare state for the privileged; and the expansion of state power and the protected state sector of the economy through the military system -- domestically, a device for compelling the public to subsidize high-technology industry and provide a state-guaranteed market for its waste production. A related element of the right turn was a more "activist" foreign policy to extend U.S. power through subversion, international terrorism, and aggression: the Reagan Doctrine, which the media characterize as the vigorous defense of democracy worldwide, sometimes criticizing the Reaganites for their excesses in this noble cause. In general, the Democratic opposition offered qualified support to these programs of the Reagan administration, which, in fact, were largely an extrapolation of initiatives of the Carter years and, as polls clearly indicate, with few exceptions were strongly opposed by the general population.
____________

However, I would have to say that not all people working inside the media industry pursue the aim Chomsky clearly explains. A good couple of examples are these following videos; the first is a bout Jean Dominique Louissaint a journalist whose struggle focused on bringing information to Haitian people. As Jean described these activities, it was a ‘risky business’ in which journalist at radio Haiti own life was at stake. Jean’s life was often targeted until; finally some assassin bullets reached him. However, and as frequently happens when somebody honest dies, his example serves to Haitians as a guide in their fight for their freedom. It is an excellent documentary.

Here is the documentary,

==The agronomist,



The other example I wanted to refer to is an investigation on a massacre leaded by US personnel. The documentary shows Afghan Taliban fighting Afghan soldiers supported and leaded by US and British soldiers. This battle is the outcome of an uprising of Taliban prisoners who managed to kill guards and start the rebellion. Those prisoners came to gave up and were secured and promised to take to jail where no one was going to hurt them.

Despite all that, after the uprising warlords were angry at them and decided otherwise. Thousands were killed in containers while transferring to a prison and their bodies spread all over a big deserted land.

Of course, the official truth by US government is that they didn’t know anything about those events and that their personnel have no involvement in any massacre. Afghan government, in turn, shows some desire in bringing warlords to ‘justice’ but its tragedy is that it is too weak to challenge the real power in Afghanistan: the warlords. As with Saddam, United States sponsor those men and provide full ‘technical support’.

The journalistic part of the documentary moves in a very dangerous terrain. The researcher of the team in Afghanistan was beaten while trying to get some incriminatory videos of the killings.

==Afghan massacre by US personnel video



All in all, it seems to me that Chomsky makes the most important point in finger pointing mass media as a sort of machinery for brainwashing. Our point, and it is not attempting to challenge but to contribute to what Chomsky have said is that at the margins of that industry there are few valuable efforts that bring a bit of hope for the general opinion in having alternative views of the world we live in,… or rather we die in,…

Social movements in USA,... and anti inmigration efforts

In the States social movements are rather civil disobidience days and they seem to me to be disconnected. For example, next video shows what is now a big issue there, the problem of illegal inmigration mainly from Mexico. Reactions from institutions and general public are in general violent but at different degrees. While Police in California reacts with violence against demonstrators, in Arizona the minutemen chase inmigrants. For example the following video shows how policemen attact protestors and journalists alike.



At different level, some people use excuses to fight inmigrants and hence somehow hide their racism. For example, also in youtube there are a series of videos that supposedly fight the trafiking of Mexican girls to the states to then force them into a sex slavery life.

In reality, however, what this people does is to chase inmigrants and accuse them to the police of being some sort of pims.

What I believe happened during the shooting of the videos was that the girl desperately tryied to force the two inmigrants to implicate themselves which is patetic. On the other hand, not even the police bought her story.

What made me suspicius is the statement in her youtube profile which says "Opposition to illigal immigration is opposition to lawlessness and the ghettoization of Ameraican life as symbolised by child prostitution,... "

It made me question,... are mexican illegal immigrants the one causing the problem of poverty and all related issues the United States suffers from? My straight answer is NO, their govenrment and their institutional arragemenent are the ones not doing enough to offer good employment opportunities and stop their poverty and social issues. So why then this lady blame on Mexicans for that?????

the videos are these:









After watching all the videos and making comments on them I received a message from 'girldefense' saying that she had deleted my comments. So I reply back and the following is her last message,...


again, i believe in the totality of the circumstances as well as in context the videos show it all. in regards to giving a view of human trafficking/forced prostitution/child prostitution, they only show what everyone knows already. children are abducted at a high rate in mexico and many are forced into prostitution. someone in law enforcement told me that 35 were abducted in sinaloa once and were nearly tracked to vista itself and then they disappeared. the reeds raid in 2001 revealed girls as young as 9 years old being prostituted in oceanside in the san luis rey river. these things continue because the border isn't being controlled.

my record stands for itself in regards to seeking to reveal the exploitation of women and children and seeking victims. i think if i went back to why i started i think it starts with the horror of thing since the girls are exactly like my students in all respects. i don't present mexican people in any negative way. perhaps i portray particular people in a negative way because they know what is going on and refuse to act by omission or their own acts to cover it up. i'm not paranoid. i live in an immigrant culture everyday in the city and more.

ghettoization is my word and i don't feel bad for using it because if you allow child labor, child prostitution, breaking of laws when it is convenient many things give way. the people are poor but we can't take all poor of the world and they can't expect their poverty to be an excuse for everything. i support amnesty. i'm against guest worker programs. i used to say why does gil cedillo push for drivers licenses when he should be demanding the whole thing - legalization. i'm for a very liberal amnesty combined with true border enforcement. i'm against the iraq war because it proves what a hoax W really is. he talks about fighting terror but the border is left open.

i'm against any restriction of services to illegal immigrants. yes, i'm against illegal immigration but i look at it pragmatically in human terms. there are legal terms to see things but their are human terms. leaving the border open is leaving a rape/murder/mayhem zone open, while saying no to amnesty leaves a large number of people outside the system.

lastly, i'm not pretending. i'm just doing my duty. the girls do deserve our empathy regardless of who they are and what has already happened to them. this is just youtube - my record stands firmly.

Kasparov: what is his next move?

Update,... here is teh video of Kasparov's arrest


_________________
I would like to comment on Kasparov and Russians struggle for democracy.

Firstly, it demonstrates that the struggle of people almost all over the world against antidemocratic impositions rightly carried on street demonstrations. Being one of the best strategists Mr. Kasparov followed what workers and ordinary people have been doing for long time.

A good example is Mexican movement of civil resistance against the imposition of a president. Such movement started as street demonstrations and so far organisers have manage to build up a huge movement, and even a national democratic convention attended by millions in Mexico City square.

In addition, Oaxaca's APPO struggle (also in Mexico) seems to have passed from an open confrontation with federal and state police to a more underground repression not only in Oaxaca city but more importantly in the medium and small villages. A Oaxacan teacher told me about two weeks ago, that in the villages where schools are still occupied by pri-supporters and where teachers have came back to carry on with classes, they have done so under threat. The situation is that teachers are now been threatened that in case they decide to go on strike again, pri-supporters will take action against them. Such action means a number of things: while less violent groups are talking of legal actions, violent groups are talking physical actions and even dead threats.

Next move in Oaxaca's struggle seems to be to go for the electoral path after grounding upong a wide social movement. It seems that leftist party PRD has come to accept candidates proposed by APPO to run in next August election.

The question now for Mr Kasparov and his allies is: will they manage to organise a social movement or will they stay on the electoral side of their struggle? maybe Oaxacans have something to say to russians strategists. After all, we all are facing the same enemy: imposition.

below is an article about Kasparov and Russians struggle. (Comment by Wet_Ahuizote)

PopWire: News, Reviews and Commentary
Kasparov arrested as police break up Dissenters' March in Moscow
by Alex Rodriguez








MOSCOW - Waves of truncheon-wielding police swiftly broke up a march protesting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government Saturday, arresting Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and one of the march’s organizers, as well as at least 170 other demonstrators.
Kasparov and other liberal politicians leading the Dissenters’ March movement tried to assemble demonstrators at Moscow’s Pushkin Square but they were met by cordons of riot police swinging their clubs to disperse the crowds. Kasparov was quickly arrested and accused of encouraging demonstrators to break through a police cordon.

The massive police presence in downtown Moscow sent a clear message that authorities were determined to quell the protest before it began. As many as 9,000 riot police were deployed, Russian news agencies reported. Armored police vehicles, police buses and water cannon trucks lined a stretch of Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s equivalent of Michigan Avenue.

Though demonstrators numbering in the thousands remained peaceful throughout the afternoon, on several occasions police were seen clubbing clusters of marchers.

“Right in front of me I saw elderly people being struck by policemen for no reason,” said Maria Snegovaya, a 23-year-old college student studying economics in Moscow. “I don’t understand why they won’t give us even just a little bit of freedom. It’s our right to express that we do not agree with what our authorities do.”

The march was the latest in a series of anti-Putin demonstrations organized by a disparate group of activists and politicians that includes Kasparov, former prime minister and presidential hopeful Mikhail Kasyanov and National Bolshevik Party leader Eduard Limonov.

The group’s recent attempts to hold similar marches in St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod also were quickly dispersed by large contingents of Russian riot police.

Moscow authorities denied permission for Kasparov and other march organizers to hold their rally at Pushkin Square. Instead, they allowed a pro-Kremlin youth movement called Young Guard to hold a rally on the square on Saturday.

City officials did give Dissenters’ March organizers permission to demonstrate at Turgenev Square, a less prominent location about a mile from Pushkin Square. However, after demonstrators were dispersed from Pushkin Square, their attempts to march to Turgenev Square were thwarted by cordons of police along the way.

“Police carried out a bandit-style attack on Russian citizens today,” Russian media quoted Kasparov as saying as he was on a police bus, speaking on his cell phone. “Martial law was declared in the city today. People were not just blocked but arrested.”

March organizers plan to hold another unauthorized rally in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Russia’s liberal movement has struggled to gain traction against Putin, whose approval ratings continue to hover above 70 percent. Infighting among the country’s liberal parties have further dimmed their chances in upcoming parliament and presidential elections.

Nevertheless, liberal party leaders in Russia say the Kremlin remains wary of the country’s opposition movement gaining momentum through rallies and is bent on keeping it from building popularity.

“After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, any activity in the streets is perceived by authorities to be a revolution,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal member of Russia’s lower house of parliament. “That’s the peculiarity of their mentality.”

Chicago Tribune (MCT)
16 April 2007

On pederastia, and the abortion law

(Comment by Wet_ahuizote)

Nowadays there is a heated fight in Mexico to reform the law and recognizing the right women have to decide themselves about whether or not to have an abortion. As usual, catholic church is using all its weapons to avoid such changes. The strategy church follows is rather simplistic and yet effective, it goes from blackmailing on the name of unborn innocents to open threatening parishioners with excommunication.

Of course, support from a number of phantom organisations is there would the good churchmen need it. For example, pro-vida group is present in the media, also other groups such as ‘la asociacion de padres de familia’, which has been finger pointed to be a screen for a darker organisation called ‘el yunque’.

El yunque is quite a separate story. It has been said that it is a political group supported by the catholic church. In fact I personally believe that they team up as situations requires.

Ironically, about the same time in California some legal proceedings are taking place and the Mexican cardinal Norberto Rivera has been called to testify. He has been accused of covering up a huge amount of pederasty cases. About 60 children were raped, then threatened and psychologically abused by Carlos Nicolas Aguilar Rivera who was partially prosecuted eleven years ago. At that time, Rivera sent Nicolas with archbishop Mahoney to los Angeles, in order to protect him from Mexican laws.

Once secure at los Angeles, Nicolas continued with his abominable practice, so that now he faces charges for raping about 90 children in Mexico and the United States.
Also, in Mexico there exist a large pederasty network which involves politicians at highest level. Lydia Cacho has denounced that fact, and in so doing has put her life in risk.

So in the end, why the church is so keen on banning women rights, and on the other hand protects despicable behaviours?

Following is an article from ‘glamour’ magazine on Lydia Cacho.

Global diary: Mexico

She stands up to the toughest criminals
Mexican thugs and corrupt politicians hate Lydia Cacho—and fear her exposes. Mariane Pearl talks to a woman who hasn’t let jail or threats of rape and death stop her from writing the truth. Watch the video.

By Mariane Pearl
When I first heard about Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, I knew I wanted to meet her. This remarkable woman created an international uproar last year after she wrote a book claiming that local power brokers were tied to a pedophile ring in the popular resort town of Cancun. But she, and I, had a problem: Too many people wanted Lydia dead.

For the past two decades, this beautiful 43-year-old has given a voice to Mexico’s women, children and victims of abuse. She has written about everything from domestic violence to organized crime and political corruption. As a result, she has been jailed and threatened with rape and death. Now she travels with bodyguards almost everywhere she goes.

Clearly, if I planned to see Lydia, I had to be willing to take a risk. I considered this as I sat in my apartment in Paris one evening and watched my four-and-a-half-year-old son, Adam, play by my side. He was wearing a Superman cape on top of a Zorro outfit, and was chasing bad guys with his water gun. Adam never met his father. I was five months pregnant when my husband, Danny, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was murdered in Pakistan as he was investigating Islamic terrorists after 9/11.

I thought about the many journalists around the world who have been killed since Danny’s death. Iraq has been especially dangerous for reporters, but so has Mexico, where more than a dozen journalists have died in the last few years for writing about the drug trade and other criminal activities. I started to worry that reporters could become an endangered species. And so I decided to fly to Mexico.

At Lydia’s suggestion, we agreed not to meet in her home base of Cancun, but in the capital, Mexico City, which was in the midst of its own ordeal during my visit in August. Following the country’s recent presidential elections, thousands of protesters had transformed the city’s main avenue into a vast camping site. People demanding a recount of the votes had come together to shout slogans, wave signs or gather signatures. Everywhere I walked, I felt men’s eyes upon me. Some of the stares were harmless, but others were lecherous, making me feel like one of those scary sex dolls with a round mouth. Such a testosterone-filled atmosphere made me appreciate why Lydia has focused her work on women.

When she and I met, Lydia struck me as incredibly composed for someone who is forced to consider that every morning might be her last. I sat by her side in the car as we inched along the busy streets of Mexico City, on our way to a quiet suburb. Lydia talked constantly on her cell phone. Each time she hung up, the phone would ring again, and she would reassure the worried people on the other end.

She began to tell me how she got her start in this business. “At first,” she said, smiling, “I wasn’t sure my writing could make a difference.” In fact, when she moved to Cancun in her early twenties, Lydia didn’t intend to change the world in any major way. “I am a melancholic at heart,” she said half-jokingly. “I pictured myself living by the sea, writing novels and painting.” But Lydia had come from a family of strong women who were feminists before the term became trendy. Her French grandmother opposed the Nazis in Europe during World War II, then married a Portuguese man and eventually moved to Mexico. Lydia’s mother, who grew up in Mexico, became an activist for women’s rights. She felt strongly that it was better to expose her children to the world than to protect them from it, and so the family lived in a poor neighborhood, even though they could afford better. Lydia’s mother used to tell her, “Once you have witnessed something, you bear a responsibility for it.”

No wonder that soon after Lydia moved to Cancun—a paradise of lush beach resorts—she began to feel a sense of unease. “This was a man-made heaven built solely to make money,” she told me. “It was a city without a heart. Nobody had bothered to think much about schools or social services or even culture.” Her journalistic instincts began to kick in, and she set out to find local residents who had been displaced by the builders. She discovered a handful of them in an impoverished community two hours from the tourist zone. “There was no running water. No food. I saw a malnourished woman whose baby had just died of hunger,” she said. She decided to write a column about it for a local newspaper. “The reaction was extraordinary,” Lydia said. Readers were so moved that they donated supplies and medicine. Thus she changed the course of her own life for good.

When Lydia and I finally made it out of the traffic jam in Mexico City, I realized that there were no bodyguards following us. “I lost them!” she said with a childlike smile, and for a moment we felt free, as if we were in one of my favorite movies, Thelma and Louise.

Later, as we walked together along the suburb’s cobblestone streets, an old man on crutches approached me. “Is that Lydia Cacho?” he asked. I nodded. “Please tell her to be careful,” he whispered. “There are evil people.”

Lydia continued to tell me her story, explaining how she made waves again early in her career by writing about the proliferation of HIV in the Cancun area. The local governor called her at 11 P.M. the night the story ran, she said. He told her, “There is no AIDS in my province.” She replied, “In yours maybe not, but in mine, yes!” The next day she appeared on a radio show and talked about the call. This very public act surprised her fellow journalists. “Even my colleagues didn’t understand me,” Lydia said. “Sadly, many Mexican journalists are easy to buy. Some of my counterparts live on bribe money, and those who won’t give in to bribes usually get killed.”

Lydia kept writing, mainly about government corruption and domestic violence, but soon the phone calls she received threatened her life.

In 1998 Lydia was brutally beaten and raped in the bathroom of a bus station. Despite suffering a concussion and broken ribs, she got herself to a hospital. Lydia does not know whether the attack was related to her work.

This experience made her even more determined to stand up for women. At the same time, Lydia decided that reporting wasn’t enough. So she raised money to build a center for battered women. “Women had no rights, and if they stood up for themselves, they could be beaten or killed,” she said. Women now come to the shelter from all walks of life: wives of drug dealers and farmers, as well as American girls who get assaulted on spring break. The center provides health care and schooling for children.

In 2004 Lydia set off the biggest firestorm of her career with her book about the pedophile ring in Cancun, Los Demonios del Eden (The Demons of Eden). She was arrested on libel charges a year later (under Mexican law, Lydia explained, reporters have to prove that they didn’t intend to damage the reputation of their subject). She said she was driven by police to a jail 20 hours from Cancun, while the officers hinted at a plan to rape her. She was released unharmed. Then, last February, the media got hold of a tape on which a businessman named in her book appeared to be plotting with a Mexican governor to have her arrested and raped. (The men dispute the legality of the tape.) Amnesty International filed protests on her behalf, and Lydia talked about it on shows such as ABC’s Nightline. “This is my strategy,” Lydia said. “Each time someone threatens me, I talk about it publicly.”
Lydia, who still faces some libel charges, said that Mexico’s Supreme Court is investigating whether her civil rights were violated during her arrest. She is continuing to work as a reporter while also teaching journalism
workshops. “Reporters are not world-peace missionaries,” she said. “But by conveying people’s struggles, we create awareness, which is the first step to bringing about change.”

When I left Mexico City, I feared for Lydia’s life, but I also felt inspired by her mission. I understood her humble sense of triumph. Knowledge and responsibility bring hope, while ignorance feeds on fear. If Lydia stopped halfway, she would be like someone who sees light at the end of a tunnel but chooses to remain in the dark.
Back in Paris with Adam, I thought about what I would say to my son if he ever wanted to become a reporter. I would tell him that journalism was the cement of my relationship with his father. I so believe in the importance of this profession that I could never oppose the same ambition in my child. As we were having dinner one night, Adam asked me about my trip to Mexico. He wanted to know if I had caught any bad guys. “No,” I answered. “But wait a few years, and I’ll tell you about a woman named Lydia.”

Mariane Pearl is a documentary filmmaker and the author of A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl.

On developed and developing countries difference

Some friends have asked me, why all this violence in Mexico? Are Mexican people prone to revolting in such a way that some have to die?

My answer is NO, Mexicans want peace at all cost. Demonstrations in Oaxaca have started peacefully and then with the intervention of hitmen, and police in plain clothes some violence has arisen. This is not, however, something that happens only in Oaxaca. I believe that elsewhere where people gather and further protest for something there is room for violence and related situations.

I have transferred the following video of British people protesting against the ‘poll tax’. Such demonstration ended up in violence and robberies. But I do not, by any mean, believe that British people are prone to violence or robberies. Instead, I believe that it has to do with human nature to behave that way in a specific circumstances regardless of ethnic or political backgrounds.





Talking of human nature, another video shows something that happened just about a month or so ago. It is taken from British television (BBC news) and it shows how people behave when opportunity arises. In Mexico, or any country in Latin America we would say that because people is poor they behave like that, but in England such excuse is not valid. Hence I strongly believe that it has little to do with wellbeing and much to do with human nature.



Further to my believe about human nature is also my understanding of development and moreover of the difference between developed and developing countries such as U.K. and Mexico. The difference, I think, is not that people in U.K. don’t protest or even revolt, as there are several episodes of revolt in British history, starting from the revolt of the peasants to the latest one about the poll tax. Instead is that in some way government reacts to those social demonstrations by changing policies or even changing leaderships, as it was the case of Mrs. Thatcher.

On the other hand in Mexico, we had have two big civil wars (independence 1810-1824, and revolution 1910-1921), with outbreaks every now and then (1968, 1971, Aguas Blancas, and Acteal massacres, Atenco, and Oaxaca revolts) and still have the same kind of government that only acts in the best interest of the richest people and organisations. This makes most of Mexicans behave defensibly before foreigners and especially multinational enterprises.

Below there are some explanations of the revolt itself and what a ‘poll tax’ is.

Rebel London
(http://www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/guide/themes/rebel-london-history.html)

Poll Tax to Poll Tax - Potted History of Rebellion
London's history is littered with popular uprisings, seditious conspiracies and radical assemblies, usually ending in the bitter taste of defeat for the change-hungry multitudes.

The first major uprising to visit the streets of London was the Peasants Revolt of 1381 when Watt Tyler marched at the head of a rag-taggle army demanding an end to the hated Poll Tax, a blanket charge levelled on every man in England regardless of wealth. More of that later. Tyler's army had the run of the city for almost a week before envoys of King Richard II lured him to his death and the revolt soon petered out.

In 1450 the government of Henry VI faced down the rebellion of Jack Cade who, like Tyler before him, was sent to his maker by the country's rulers in suitably violent fashion.

Parliamentary palaver
The ruling elite itself nearly succumbed to rebel ministrations in 1605 but Guy Fawkes' plot to blow up Parliament was foiled at the last moment and the traitor was torched to death, an event still commemorated with effigy burnings every year on November 5th.

The role of Parliament was at the centre of the English Revolution which ran from 1642-49 when Parliament leader Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army overthrew royal rule in the world's first bourgeois revolution, helped by the capital's citizenry who blocked a huge Royalist force at Turnham Green, west London.

Over a century later, the monarchy long restored and Parliament rife with corruption, the capital witnessed the Wilkes Riots of 1768 in which large groups of workers fought for reform of the discredited institution. A simlilar cry was to be heard during the 1831 Reform Riots as pressure for large scale change neared boiling point, a point reached in 1848, the year of revolution throughout Europe, when the Chartists gathered in their hundreds of thousands in central London.

Fighting for universal suffrage plus a range of economic demands, the Chartists had planned to march on the House of Commons but were held back by a huge show of police strength, a theme that was to become familiar in the next 150 years.

Police palaver
In 1887 a combination of the police and the army crushed the Bloody Sunday Riots of unemployed workers and state forces were again on hand in 1936 to defend the rights of Facsists to march in Cable Street, part of the then Jewish enclave of east London. As it turned out anti-fascists mobilised to defeat the scourge but the pattern of police intervention against progressive forces was confirmed.

On to the 60s, when student-led demonstrations first became a feature of life in London. Some particularly brutal clashes between police and anti-Vietnam war protestors took place in Grosvenor Square outside the US Embassy in this era but students were not to be put off and continued to invade the capital over issues such as nuclear weapons and animal rights.

While students often favoured the big moral gesture, black Londoners took to the streets (Brixton 1981, 1985 and Tottenham,1986) to demand changes in their everyday lives, specifically treatment at the hands and batons of an overwhelmingly white police force.

Then it was back to the future in 1990 when Trafalgar Square became the battleground during the second street disturbances to be casued by a Poll Tax.
Furious Five

- LondonNet's Round Up of Rebellion Sites
Trafalgar Square - Scene of some historic political street battles such as 1990s Poll Tax riots and the Bloody Sunday clashes of 1887 when unemployed protestors were crushed by police.

Hyde Park - Meeting place for huge demonstrations including the Hyde Park riots of 1866 and anti-nuclear demos during the 1980s. Also home to Speaker's Corner, where radicals down the ages have climbed on their soapboxes to spread the word, although it is now more common to see quasi-religious cranks spouting their stuff.
Brixton - Scene of two major riots in the past two decades. Now basking in new found role as one of London's coolest districts, in part based on its rebel status.

Clerkenwell Green - Site of various rebellious gatherings in the 19th century from Chartist meetings to the Clerkenwell Riots of 1832. Now, incidentally, home to the Marx Memorial Library.

Cable Street - Sunday 5th October 1936 saw bitter clashes between Fascist and anti-Fascist demonstartors around Cable Street in London's east end.

FAQs
Where do I go for a good demo nowadays?
It's still the usual suspects of Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. Demo organisers want to be as high profile possible and the two central London venues are the best bet.

Why has London never succumbed to a good old popular uprising?
Leaders of the biggest rebelions down the ages from the Peasants' Revolt to the Chartist challenge have succumbed rather meekly to the authorities. Peasant chief Watt Tyler, for example, agreed to meet the King to discuss things but when he turned up was killed by His Majesty's sidekicks. Confronted by armed police, Chartist leaders agreed to hand in a petition instead of marching on Parliament.
Conversely, smaller scale uprisings have often flopped through lack of organised leadership.

What constitutes a riot?
The offence of riot is set out in Section 1 of the Public Order Act 1986:
"(1) Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them taken together is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety, each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot.

(2) It is immaterial whether or not the 12 or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously.

(3) The common purpose may be inferred from conduct"
What is the punishment for riot?

Up to ten years' imprisonment, or an unlimited fine, or both.

Poll tax in the United Kingdom
The poll tax was essentially a lay subsidy (a tax on the movable property most of the population) to help fund war. It had first been levied in 1275 and continued, under different names, until the 17th century.

People were taxed a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods. That percentage varied from year to year and place to place, and which goods could be taxed differed between urban and rural locations.

Churchmen were exempt, as were the poor, workers in the Royal Mint, inhabitants of the Cinque Ports, tin workers in Cornwall and Devon, and those who lived in the Palatinate counties of Cheshire and Durham.

The 14th Century
John of Gaunt, the regent of Richard II of England, levied his poll tax in 1377 to finance the war against France. These poll tax payments covered almost 60% of the population, which is far more than the lay subsidies that came before it.

It was levied three times, in 1377, 1379 and 1381. Each time the basis was slightly different. In 1377, everyone over the age of 14 and not exempt had to pay a groat (2p) to the Crown. By 1379 that had been graded by social class, with the lower limit raised to 16, (and 15 two years later).
The levy in 1381 was perceived was particularly unpopular, as each person aged over 15 was required to pay the amount of one shilling, which was a large amount then. This provoked the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, due in part to attempts to restore feudal conditions in rural areas.

The 20th Century: Community Charge
The abolition of the rating system of taxes (based on the notional rental value of a house) to fund local government had been in the manifesto of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1979 general election. A Green Paper, Alternatives to Domestic Rates, issued in 1981, considered a flat-rate poll tax as a supplement to another tax, noting that a large flat-rate poll tax would be seen as unfair.

The 1980s saw a period of general confrontation between central government and Labour-controlled local authorities, that eventually led to the abolition of the Greater London Council and the six metropolitan county councils. The commitment to abolish the rates was replaced in the 1983 general election manifesto with a commitment to introduce the ability for central government to cap rates which it saw as excessive. This was introduced by the Rates Act 1984. However, Mrs Thatcher's government thought spending was still generally excessive and that poor voters would be deterred from voting in high spending councils if they had to pay a greater share of the tax.

Although the ratings system was supposed to have regular revaluations in order to minimise discrepancies, the revaluations in England and Wales had been cancelled in 1978 and 1983. The Scottish revaluation of 1985/1986 led to a great deal of criticism, and gave added urgency to rates reform or replacement.

The Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government, produced by the Department of the Environment from consulations between Rothschild, William Waldegrave and Kenneth Baker, proposed the Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was a reduction for poor people. This charged each person for the services provided in their community. Due to the amount of local taxes paid by businesses varying, and the amount of grant provided by central government to individual local authorities sometimes varying capriciously, there were dramatic differences in the amount charged between boroughs.
This proposal was contained in the Conservative Manifesto for the 1987 General Election. The legislation introducing the Community Charge was passed in 1988 and the new tax replaced the rates in Scotland from the start of the 1989/90 financial year and in England and Wales from the start of the 1990/91 financial year. Additionally the uniform business rate, levied by local government at a rate set by central government and then apportioned between local authorities in proportion to their population, was introduced.

The tax was not implemented in Northern Ireland, which continued, as it still does, to levy the rating system, despite some unionists calling for the province to have the same taxation system as the rest of the United Kingdom. That the tax was introduced in Scotland a year before England and Wales is often described as causing the death of the Tories in Scotland, and cementing their image as an English party. However, in 1992 the Tory vote increased in Scotland compared to 1987 (before the introduction of the poll tax), and it was not until 1997 that they were wiped out completely.

Protesters complained that the tax shifted from the estimated price of a house to the number of people living in it, with the perceived effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. It did not help that Mrs Thatcher, close to the end of her period in office and losing popularity, chose to champion the Community Charge herself and apparently chose to be both ruthless in imposing it and adamant that there would be no "U-turns" (reversals in policy).

Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than many earlier predictions. Some have argued that local councils saw the introduction of the new system of taxation as the opportunity to make significant increases in the amount taken, assuming (correctly) that it would be the originators of the new tax system and not its local operators who would be blamed.

The charge was bitterly opposed and people sought to protest through mass protests called by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation to which the vast majority of local Anti Poll Tax Unions were affiliated. In Scotland, where the tax was implemented first, the APTU's called for mass non-payment. These calls rapidly gathered widespread support in Scotland and then in England and Wales, even though non-payment meant that people could be prosecuted.

As the charges began to rise, large numbers of people refused to pay the tax (up to 30% of former ratepayers in some areas according to the BBC)[3], enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, and unrest mounted and culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots. The most serious of these happened in London on March 31, 1990, during a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, which more than 200,000 protesters attended. The Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax.

For this among other reasons, Mrs. Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the Tory leadership. Although she prevailed by a margin of 50 votes, her opponent had far too many votes for comfort, and on November 22, 1990 Mrs Thatcher resigned and all three contenders to succeed her pledged to abandon the tax.

The successful candidate, John Major, appointed his defeated rival Michael Heseltine to the post of Environment Secretary responsible for replacing the Community Charge. In 1991 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont announced a raise in Value Added Tax from 15% to 17.5% to pay for a £140 reduction in the tax. By the time of the 1992 General Election, legislation had been passed replacing Community Charge with the Council Tax from the start of the 1993/94 financial year.

The Council Tax strongly resembled the rating system that the Poll Tax had replaced. The main differences were that it was levied on capital value rather than notional rental value of a property, and that a 25% discount for single occupancy dwellings was introduced.

Report from the BBC on the Tortilla walk out in Mexico City

The audio of the report can be downloaded from quicksharing.com and the link to the file is:

http://s2.quicksharing.com/v/5758807/bbctortillareport.mp3.html

Duncan Kennedy argues that the vast majority of Mexicans live with so little money and yet they have to face the rise in the price of the tortilla which is a basic food for Mexicans. In that I fully agree with him.

As to the causes for such a rise, Mr. Kennedy points out that it is the production of ethanol in USA, which uses maize, the one causing the trouble in Mexican tortilla market. Further, he argues that Calderon (the appointed president) cannot control what is happening with tortilla. In that I fully disagree with Mr. Kennedy.

I would like to say that Mexican tortilla market in many ways does not depend of USA maize production.

1) maize has been culturally always a 'must' for Mexican farmers and 'campesinos', either as a subsistence product or for commercialisation.

2) Mexican maize market is controlled by few families, I would say that no more than 10 families control maize market. The biggest one is the Hank family who owns maseca.

3) Calderon can either give some incentive to campesinos and farmers to reinforce their production and provide maize to local markets OR can start fighting the big monopoly of maize.

Hence there is plenty to do, and if Calderon does nothing is only because, as all high-mid classes he is got the stereotype that tortilla is for the underclasses and it does not represent a move towards a 'global culture'. We only have to look at comments from people in Mexico (mainly tv presenters) arguing that 'people should thing about changing their food habits'.

The pirate and the Emperor,...

On purpose of Saddam’s execution, I would put things in Chomsky terms,… is the pirate’s life the one being taken by the emperor. Next video gives us an express explanation of why the pirate and the emperor only difference is the scale they do their business (robbery, killing, repressing, etc.).

Oaxaca to Continue Talks in January,... from Prensa Latina

It all started when teachers went on strike back in May. Then Ulises used antiriot police as his mean of negotiating with strikers, and as a result of that APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca) was created by several organisations in June.

By July hitmen and paramilitary started the kidnapping and drive-by shootings against the APPO barricades and teachers. August-September are the months when the federal police and marine started to asses the situation with the purpose of intervening.

In October the federal police entered. In November two battles took place and the teachers started to chicken out. It seems that Enrique Rueda negotiated something with either the governor or the federal government as teachers’ withdrawal weaken APPO.

Despite not having successfully achieved their original demand, teachers seem now more pro-government than pro-APPO. (Comment by Wet_ahuizote)

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Oaxaca to Continue Talks in January

Mexico, Dec 27 (Prensa Latina) Mexico´s Interior Ministry announced talks will continue with the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) on January 8 to try to resolve the issues provoking the conflict still damaging that Mexican state.

Minister Francisco Javier Ramirez Acuña and the APPO leadership will examine the files of arrested APPO members to determine legal possibilities for their release

APPO spokesman Jesus Lopez Rodriguez said he expected positive progress on the issue of their release.

Meanwhile, Section 22 of the SNTE (teachers union) will hold a state assembly to decide on restructuring and the role it will play considering the political reality in the country.

Oaxaca union leader Miguel Rueda said the teachers meeting will decide the Section s course in the national struggle for the "democratization of SNTE along with the National Education Workers Coordinator."

Oaxaca teachers will be back in the classrooms on January 2, one week before the rest of the teachers in the country, in order to fulfil their commitment with the academic year 2006-2007.

However according to union broadcast released in the capital, teachers consider some school centers remain insecure and there are also salary issues still pending.