Handful of Links

Wow, I missed this one. A site that lists the Top Ten Conservative Idiots each week, along with what they did to deserve being on the list and why their act was so idiotic.

Speaking of idiots, Death of a President is apparently an incredibly boring movie, not at all worth watching. The highlights are the technical skills in creating it, and you can see all that showcased without having to sit through the movie. I don't have any desire to see it, personally.

Voting problems in Florida already, in early voting. When people vote for Democrats, the machines register the votes as Republican. I say dump the machines.

Voted

I just got back from the post office, where I went to send Eric and my votes off. We've voted, and now we're going to completely ignore political ads for the rest of the week. Not that we weren't ignoring them, mostly, anyway.

In the Polls

If this works, you should see two boxes above with the current prediction from Electoral-Vote.com. These predictions will update as new polls come in.

Also check out CQPolitics.com and their flash map showing their own current predictions, which are often different from Electoral-Vote.com's.

At this point, based on the polls alone and ignoring any "problems" with voting machines, it looks like the Democrats will probably just take the House, but not the Senate.

I H8 Robocalls

Note: I don't care if you are left or right, if you have a robot call me, I will not vote for you. If you want to get my vote, you have a person on the other end of the phone. I will listen to a political recording only long enough to find out who you are so I won't vote for you.

A Few...

William Saletan has a very good article on Rush Limbaugh's moronic insults of Michael J Fox.

Today's Foxtrot is a must-read.

Martial Law. Yep, America died on October 17th. More at Slashdot.

Trauma

Sending troops back with traumatic disorders. If you are voting Republican, you are voting for this.

NBC Refuses to Air Ad for Dixie Chicks Movie

NBC refuses to air ads for the Dixie Chicks' Movie, "Shut Up & Sing", because the ads "are disparaging to President Bush."

Decide for yourself: Here's the Ad.

Links

Quebec bans electronic voting. Until the problems are fixed, this is the best solution.

Slashdot debates an article on how to hack the election.

Cheney approves the use of waterboarding, a torture technique that the Japanese used on Americans in WWII, and for which we sentenced the torturers to prison and hard labor. Cheney should be in prison.

Animated Editoral Cartoon on our loss of Rights.

We're losing Freedom of the Press, and Reporters Without Borders lets us know the score.

Hush Money. Republicans once again try to buy the silence of their victim.

Who Supports The Troops?

Who Supports The Troops? According to IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), the Democrats support the troops far more than any Republican, by their actions in Congress. Check out the handy chart:

Links for Politicians

(AZ-01): Rick Renzi
(AZ-05): J.D. Hayworth
(AZ-08): Gabrielle Giffords
(AZ-Sen): Jon Kyl
(CA-04): John Doolittle
(CA-11): Richard Pombo
(CA-50): Brian Bilbray
(CO-03): John Salazar
(CO-04): Marilyn Musgrave
(CO-05): Doug Lamborn
(CO-07): Ed Perlmutter
(CO-07): Rick O'Donnell
(CT-04): Christopher Shays
(CT-04): Diane Farrell
(CT-05): Chris Murphy
(CT-Sen): Ned Lamont
(FL-13): Vernon Buchanan
(FL-13): Christine Jennings
(FL-16): Joe Negron
(FL-16): Tim Mahoney
(FL-22): Ron Klein
(FL-22): Clay Shaw
(GA-03): Jim Marshall
(GA-12): John Barrow
(IA-01): Bruce Braley
(IA-01): Mike Whalen
(IA-03): Leonard Boswell
(ID-01): Bill Sali
(IL-06): Peter Roskam
(IL-06): Tammy Duckworth
(IL-08): Melissa Bean
(IL-10): Mark Kirk
(IL-14): Dennis Hastert
(IL-17): Phil Hare
(IN-02): Joe Donnelly
(IN-02): Chris Chocola
(IN-07): Julia Carson
(IN-08): John Hostettler
(IN-08): Brad Ellsworth
(IN-09): Baron Hill
(KS-02): Jim Ryun
(KY-03): Anne Northup
(KY-03): John Yarmuth
(KY-04): Geoff Davis
(MD-Sen): Ben Cardin
(MD-Sen): Michael Steele
(MI-Sen): Debbie Stabenow
(MN-01): Gil Gutknecht
(MN-06): Michele Bachmann
(MN-06): Patty Wetterling
(MO-Sen): Claire McCaskill
(MO-Sen): Jim Talent
(MT-Sen): Conrad Burns
(MT-Sen): Jon Tester
(NC-01): Heath Shuler
(NC-08): Robin Hayes
(NC-11): Charles Taylor
(NC-13): Brad Miller
(NH-02): Charlie Bass
(NJ-07): Mike Ferguson
(NJ-Sen): Bob Menendez
(NM-01): Patricia Madrid
(NM-01): Heather Wilson
(NV-03): Jon Porter
(NY-03): Peter King
(NY-20): John Sweeney
(NY-20): Kirsten Gillibrand
(NY-24): Michael Arcuri
(NY-26): Tom Reynolds
(NY-26): Jack Davis
(NY-29): Randy Kuhl
(OH-01): Steve Chabot
(OH-02): Jean Schmidt
(OH-15): Deborah Pryce
(OH-15): Mary Jo Kilroy
(OH-18): Joy Padgett
(OH-18): Zack Space
(PA-04): Melissa Hart
(PA-06): Lois Murphy
(PA-07): Curt Weldon
(PA-07): Joe Sestak
(PA-08): Patrick Murphy
(PA-08): Mike Fitzpatrick
(PA-10): Chris Carney
(PA-10): Don Sherwood
(PA-12): John Murtha
(RI-Sen): Lincoln Chafee
(TN-Sen): Harold Ford
(TN-Sen): Bob Corker
(VA-02): Phil Kellam
(VA-10): Frank Wolf
(VA-Sen): George Allen
(VA-Sen): James Webb
(WA-08): Dave Reichert
(WA-Sen): Mike McGavick
(WI-08): Steve Kagen
(WV-01): Alan Mollohan

The Lancet Study

I didn't want to believe it, and finally somebody has looked at the stats and the methods used to gather the data, and found problems with it.

Angry Rants with lots of Links

Will the Democrats take Congress? I doubt it very much. Electoral Vote shows the polls would give us an even Senate, but a Democrat House. CQ Politics is less certain about the House.

Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly wants to kill me with a hand grenade. And people wonder why bloggers think the guy is a moron and a propagandist? He also doesn't realize that most of the blogosphere isn't paid for what they write. I suppose he's so used to getting bribed by Republicans that he can't believe everybody isn't on the take.

Speaking of which, who pays? The Corporate Owned Media controls exactly what you see and hear and read, and the folks running the media are birds of a feather. Six companies control 90% of the media holdings in the United States. Six white male billionaires shape the media.

Another terrorist. But no Republican seems inclined to stop this guy or his ilk, and I've seen Republicans cheer him on and encourage his behavior.

The value of local businesses:

• 6 cents of every dollar spent with a big box retailer is retained or recirculated in a community. [Rocky Mountain Institute]
• 20 cents of every dollar spent with a chain store is retained or recirculated in a community. [Small Business Administration]
• 60 cents of every dollar spent with a sole proprietorship is retained or recirculated in a community. [Small Business Administration]

Buying local is 10 times more useful to your community than going down to buy the cheap and shoddy goods at your local Generic-Mart.

Arizona is stealing money from wire transfers, if either name is vaguely Hispanic. They've stole $17 million dollars from average citizens so far with a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude.

A Republican candidate for state superintendent of schools in Oklahoma has proposed using textbooks as shields against bullets in school shootings. To promote his idea, he got together a group of like-minded friends and they shot up a bunch of textbooks to show that the books might stop a pistol bullet (but not much else). That's the Republican way... shoot up books instead of reading them.

Medical help is rare in Iraq. Why are so many Iraqis dying needlessly? Maybe it's because they have no health care. At all.

Iraqi bloggers discuss the current situation in Iraq and whether or not the war was worth it.

And on the home front, WHY ARE FAMILIES OF AMERICAN SERVICEMEN HAVING TO BEG FOR FOOD?!???!???? We can spend billions of dollars on Halliburton giving our troops dirty water, but we can't pay our soldiers enough to support their families? This is compassionate conservatism? Support the troops by saying you support the troops, but if they need any real help, just let them starve?

Pat Tillman's Birthday.

He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice... until we get out.

Political Links

Reward offered for proof of fraud in the last election. At least one person has already testified under oath that he was asked to hack voting machines, but that's not proof that the machines were actually hacked.

On the same topic, Wired news has an article on building a better voting machine. I'm for it. The machine they describe sounds reasonable.

Iraqi Bloggers have a Dust-Up. And RiverBend Returns.

And if you aren't reading The Sandbox, start reading it now. These are the people who are fighting and dying for us, you can at least pay attention to what they have to say.

Mercury News reports that 14,000 Hispanics in Orange County were sent a letter that claimed that immigrants cannot vote, and would be arrested if they did. The irony? The Republican campaign that sent the letter is for an immigrant candidate.

An idiot makes a terror threat.

A Washington state Supreme Court candidate told 5th-graders that he would get rid of all the Democrats when asked what he'd change about Washington.

Another view on the death of American Freedom.

Olbermann on the Death of America

Another special comment.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that "the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values" and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and ship them somewhere — anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria... ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

America Is Dead

List of Republican Corruption.

We no longer live in the American Republic. I don't know what it is, now, but as long as habeas corpus is gone, the country I grew up in is gone. God bless the memory of America. Let's hope we can someday get it back.

Some Links

More on McGavick's Inability to tell the whole truth.

A Soldier's Peace - Walking Across Utah.

Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State, is trying (through his supporters) to get his opponent eliminated from the governor's race by using a false technicality.

Shrubya's SS Thugs

Here's a scary story.

A girl stupidly posts a threat against the President on her MySpace account. As soon as she realizes it's a crime, she takes it down. That was LAST SPRING. On Wednesday, the SS (Secret Service) finally got around to questioning her about it.

Fine so far, right? She was stupid, posted a threat, makes sense she should be questioned to make certain she isn't going to act on it, right?

Here's the kicker. The agents went to her home first and talked with her mother, and told her mother they would wait until the girl came home from school. Then they promptly went to the girl's school and pulled her out of class to question her. They lied to the mother and needlessly caused the child and the school extra stress.

They waited MONTHS to question the kid. And they couldn't be bothered to wait a few hours for the child to get out of school before harrassing her, not even after they told the mother they would wait?!?? The thugs LIED.

Shrubya's SS agents abused their power. They should be punished, perhaps even fired. Of course, Shrubya will probably give them medals for stopping the severe threat against his holy person.

Linkage

Missed this one on the first go through: The Secret Letter from Iraq. A ground's eye view of what's really happening over there. That includes good as well as the bad.

I have to disagree with Kos on this one. My standard for things like this is to ask myself if I would support it if whatever my favorite party of the moment was doing it... and in this case I think it's just informing voters. I don't like it, and perhaps it should be accomplished through a mass mailing and not signs at polls, but I can't call it electioneering. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, though.

The Dutch attempt to fix their voting machines.

More Links

The Worsening Situation for Women in Iraq.

Foleygate: As far as Denny Hastert is concerned, there are two possibilities. One is that he ignored or intentionally hid the evidence that Foley was a pedophile preying on the House pages for years after people told him about it. The other is that his staff was so incompetent that the news of Foley never actually reached him. In either case, the guy should NOT be Speaker of the House. The fact that he refuses to resign is telling. Corruption and incompetence don't matter to the Republicans.

Neocons actually hate the truly religious. Not that that's a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to their actions. I mean, forget fighting poverty or acting even slightly Christian... shift the taxes from the rich to the poor, start a war for oil, ignore the deaths of 9/11 except to use them politically, let the mastermind of 9/11 wander free, pass laws that hurt charities... that's the Neocon way, and that's what we'll have as long as the Republicans stay in power.

The five scandals that should be investigated, but probably won't.

The Lancet Study (PDF file) claims that 600,000 more Iraqis are dead since the US invaded than would have died without the invasion. I've seen plenty of negative response to the study, but no debunking of the scientific method they used to come up with the estimate. I want to not believe it, so if anyone runs across an article that gives it a solid logical debunking, please let me know.

More on Voting Machines. I've reported this one before, but this article has more content that I think people ought to check out.

Linkdump

FilkerTom explains what taxes are for, and why Pelosi's pandering doesn't hold up.

Mandatory drug tests drive away library volunteers in Florida.

Immigration Cartoon at Reason.

One in Five Soldiers Disabled after serving. That's horrendous.

No October Surprise: the Foley scandal has been quietly gaining steam for months, according to Harpers Magazine, who were set to run a story in June but didn't have enough evidence.

Will the Democrats control Congress after the election? Extremely unlikely. Electoral-Vote.com has the Democrats getting 50 seats in the Senate, they need at least 51. And in the House (scroll to the bottom of the page) only 217 seats, they need at least 218. And this is at the height of Foleygate. And Republicans control the election machinery in many of the battleground states using Diebold Fraud Machines. CQPolitics has an even grimmer outlook, with Republicans favored in both the House and Senate. Even after all the lies, the illegal war, the lack of effort in hunting down actual terrorists, the huge deficit, the tax increases for everyone but the rich, even after all that people are still stupid enough to vote Republican.

Some Links

Doonesbury's Sandbox is up and running.

The Yakima School district and The Laramie Project. God forbid we teach tolerance in schools.

Colbert on Arming Teachers.

Why does Habeas Corpus Hate America?

More Links

Undernews has a link to a guide to Republican Pedophilia. Thought Foley was it? Think again.

Undernews also tells us that it's very unlikely the Democrats will gain control of Congress.

Healing Iraq posts a number of warning messages left around Baghdad. If nothing else, it shows how similar the thought processes of the different sides in the civil war are. How can we possibly clean up this mess?

Voting Machine Whistleblower now running against the man who asked him to alter the programming of a voting machine.

Should churches be tax exempt and their public business (like day care) unregulated?

Foleygate

The Foley case was missing actual sex, until now. Yes, Foley was "grooming" the pages, and it seems that in at least one case he succeeded.

And the Republicans HID this for a decade.

More "Mike!" Lies

Talking Points Memo has the scoop.

Linklinklinklink

Dave Ex Machine passes along a word or two about torture.

Another Olbermann Commentary. Some folks are concerned for Olbermann, the former sportscaster who is now one of the only real journalists on TV.

Election Forecast Map. It still doesn't look good for the Democrats. I'll be very surprised if they take Congress in November.

FilkerTom talks about Shrubya's use of signing statements to declare that he doesn't have to obey laws that he doesn't like. He also links (in the comments) to this list of Shrubya's signing statements.

Big Linkdump

There's an effort to Googlebomb Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good Googlebombing.

Boing Boing on torture. Sort of.

Mark Evanier on Shrubya's lies about warrentless wiretapping.

I love The Word on Stephen Colbert's snarky show, and this one was a real winner.

Speaking of snarky comedians, The Daily Show has as much news content as regular broadcast news. Only it's actually fun to watch. And the only spin is to make fun of whoever the newsmaker is.

Arrested for smiling. How soon before the US does something similar?

The Dutch have voting machine problems, just like Diebold in the United States. Unlike most of the US, though, they Dutch are fighting mad over the problem.

Building a wall. Yeah, let's spend $1.2 BILLION to build a worthless wall along the Mexican border. There's your Republican values, right there. They'd fit right in with the folks who built the Berlin wall.

TalkLeft on Gay Republicans (no, that's not a contradiction in terms, oddly enough).

FoleyGate: The Whistleblower was Republican.

FoleyGate: Republicans Pointing Fingers. For folks who don't "play the blame game", they sure are busy blaming each other.

FoleyGate: Olbermann on the scandal. From Crooks and Liars:

There are now reports that Republican members of Congress knew about this 11 years ago. That would put this in 1995. Now what other "sex scandal" has happened in Washington since then? Oh yeah - Monica Lewinsky (note: who was 22 at the time). So the Lewinsky incident was so severe to merit a multi-million dollar investigation and the attention of both halls of Congress, yet a Republican congressman having possible illicit contact with pages under the age of 18 doesn't get any attention by the GOP? There you have it - the perfect definition of hypocrisy.

The Political Links Never End

213 Things Skippy Can't Do In the Army.

Debunking Wal-Mart Myths.

FilkerTom links to a desperate montage.

Speaking of desperate: Fox news falsely labels Republican Mark Foley as a Democrat. Multiple times. Update: Boing Boing also noticed.

The Washington Post claims that Republican leaders knew Florida Republican Foley was a predator and warned pages about him back in 1995. And yet they still made him chair for missing and exploited children?!?????

The Wall Street Journal Free Online explains how IMs aren't very private, and are easy to save.

If you support Bush's war, you must read this blog every day for the remainder of the war. If you support the war and don't read this blog, you are less than human.

Cheney's Thugs: violating the first and fourth amendments.

Speaking of rights being taken away: Torture and Fascism.

The Daily Show

This is just too good to not post...

It's about 11 minutes long. Watch at least the first two and half minutes.

Using Children

Don't you think that using children as props at a press conference about covering up for a pedophile is a bit over-the-top?

Another Linkdump

Just How Bad Is Iraq?

Maps of War shows a flash presentation of the Middle East compressed and distorted, but enough to give an idea of who controlled the area through the last 5000 years.

What Republicans think the Constitution says.

The Foley incident was a dream come true for comedians (aside: just like Clinton's problems were back in his day). The Daily Show for October 2nd had a field day with it.

GOP = Gang of Pedophiles? They've been covering for a pedophile for at least five years... they even warned the pages about Foley in 2001. And yet they left him to harass the kids and even let him chair the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Sickos, all of them.

Linkdump

Speaking in a foreign language while in an airport is now cause for concern.

Torture Bill as C Code. There's a fatal bug in the program.

Torture bill: Non-allegiance to president = terrorism. I think I ought to get those t-shirts.

The Bad Astronomer responds to criticism about his political blogging.

A sermon on pedophiles in congress.

The Modulator thinks that conservatives will have a hard time voting for the name of a pedophile. Considering how long the Republican leadership hid the fact that they had a pedophile in their ranks, I wouldn't be surprised if conservatives have no problem whatsoever voting for a pedophile.

Speaking of nutcases, Bill Frist thinks we should surrender to the Taliban. Remember them? The ones who helped Al Qaeda so much that they might as well BE Al Qaeda? And now the Republicans think we should appease them... the ones who attacked us on 9/11.

It's going to be a L-O-O-O-O-N-G time before I vote Republican again, if I ever do. Torturers, Pedophiles, and Cowards. That's the modern Republican Party.

Republican House Leadership Blocking Investigation

Why is the Republican House leadership blocking investigations into the pedophile discovered in their ranks? What do they have to hide now that we know they were covering for a known predator for several years?

Torture Does Not Work

Canadian deported to Syria for torture is cleared. Syria tortured a confession out of him, but it was false. And this is an example of how an innocent person can be accused wrongly then tortured.

If you aren't frightened of Shrubya's new powers, you aren't paying attention.

ATTENTION US MILITARY PERSONNEL

The following was written by Jim Macdonald. Please post it on your livejournal or weblog.

You are not required to obey an unlawful order.

You are required to disobey an unlawful order.

You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The Constitution states (Article VI):

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Here is article 3, the common article, to the Geneva Conventions, a duly ratified treaty made under the authority of the United States:

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is straightforward and clear. Under Article VI of the Constitution, it forms part of the supreme law of the land.

You personally will be held responsible for all of your actions, in all countries, at all times and places, for the rest of your life. "I was only following orders" is not a defense.

What all this is leading to:

If you are ordered to violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, it is your duty to disobey that order. No "clarification," whether passed by Congress or signed by the president, relieves you of that duty.

If you are ordered to violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, this is what to do:

1. Request that your superior put the order in writing.

2. If your superior puts the order in writing, inform your superior that you intend to disobey that order.

3. Request trial by courtmartial.

You will almost certainly face disciplinary action, harassment of various kinds, loss of pay, loss of liberty, discomfort and indignity. America relies on you and your courage to face those challenges.

We, the people, need you to support and defend the Constitution. I am certain that your honor and patriotism are equal to the task.

This post may be quoted in full. A linkback would be appreciated. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives.

Situation in Oaxaca

Why is it that this is the first I've heard of this?

It is hard to describe briefly what is happening in Oaxaca. There have been a very good series of articles on www.narconews.com, if you are interested in depth and detail.

I am going to post here a letter I sent out his morning. It is a synopsis, and simplified, but will communicate basic information.

*For those of you who don't know ( and no surprise..it has been hardly covered in the American press),

what is happening in Oaxaca, I will give a brief rundown..

In a long series of corrupt Governors, the current appointed ( not legally elected) Governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, has been the worst. I won't even try to detail all the abuses committed under his regime, but there have been many.

One of the most public was the bulldozing of the old Zocalo of Oaxaca ( designated Patrimonio de

Humanidad, by UNESCO), without the consent of the people ( the bulldozers showed up in the night).

This was, to my mind, the most perfect, beautiful, constantly used zocalo in Mexico.

The Gov. said he was "renovating"; his brother got the expensive contract for the "renovation".

Oaxacans protested in the hundreds, but there was nothing they could do.

There has been an annual teacher's strike in Oaxaca, and with good reason. Underpaid, and under funded, the teachers of Oaxaca are highly dedicated, and of course absolutely essential. Without the strikes, they would not have been able to teach. ( As it is, most teachers have another job, or two..what is it with cultures that DO NOT value teachers???!!!).

This summer, during the strike, U.R. ( the Gov.), sent troops against the teachers who were occupying the Zocalo...one person was killed, many injured. Fortunately, many people filmed it...

At that point - it turned into a popular uprising. to get rid of the Governor. It is very long and complicated to describe ( for those who want excellent reportage, and are interested in the details, I refer you to www.narconews.com)

It has been going on for some month now. Oaxaca is pretty shut down...virtually no tourists . The American press, when it DOES report, would have us believe that it is an anti-American movement. ( The State

Department has issued a Travelers Advisory for Oaxaca) .But it is not about us...it is about the people of Oaxaca DEMANDING the resignation of the corrupt Governor of Oaxaca. They have seized state-owned radio stations to try and get the truth out. There is a big delegation walking to Mexico City right now, to let all of Mexico know what is really going on.

The Fox government is standing behind U.R., the Gov., of course. The president-elect ( I am not going to get into THAT right now), Calderon', is demanding that Fox do something, because he doesn't want this hot potato.

Which brings us to now...helicopter over Oaxaca, and troops sighted in many locations outside the City.

It is a very dangerous situation. What has been happening to Oaxaca is bad...removal of U.R. is very justified.

Fox offered to U.R. to kick him upstairs..U.R. refused.

What we are all afraid of now, is Federal government violence against the strikers of Oaxaca.

It is important that this not be hidden from view. Please TALK to people about it, if you have any Mexico

contacts, or political contacts, or news contacts , CALL or EMAIL them PLEASE.

We hope for a resolution "ni una gota de sangre", without one drop of blood.

Gracias....

y un abrazo fuerte.

by la urracca on Sun Oct 01, 2006 at 11:03:22 AM PDT

Why is the United States media so incredibly crappy? This is an important story no matter how they spin it, and I haven't seen anything about this before.