Free Republic

Mexicans should heed the words of Benjamin Franklin. They're so rattled by drug violence that has caused the deaths of nearly 13,000 people that they're willing to trade freedom for security. So, Franklin would say, they don't deserve either. And, frankly, it looks like they're no more deserving of democracy. The Mexican people have entered into a Faustian bargain with the disgraced Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which scored big victories in this month's midterm elections. The PRI promised "peace" and "security." Those are code words for stopping the drug war started by President Felipe Calderón, who carries the banner of...

The former ruling party appears set to govern the nation again after winning in Congress and leading gubernatorial races in two states deemed to be strongholds of the PAN, President Calderon's party. Reporting from Mexico City -- It was an old-style landslide for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which used to rule Mexico from top to bottom. The party's hopes for once again ruling Mexico soared Monday after official tallies confirmed a sweeping nationwide victory in midterm elections a day earlier. In addition to a win in Congress, the party, known as the PRI, held leads in five of six governorships,...

Thursday May 7, 2009 Commentary: Obama Supports Kidnapping Commentary by Steven W. Mosher, President, Population Research Institute (PRI) May 7, 2009 (PRI) - Our own Colin Mason is back from China. His week-long undercover investigation revealed fresh abuses in China's One-Child policy and new proof of the U.N. Population Fund's complicity in these abuses. Remember that the UNFPA has been in China since 1979, helping the Beijing authorities to implement their program. Colin visited three counties where the U.N. Population Fund claims to run "voluntary" family planning programs, and found that they were anything but. What struck me about...

McCain's health proposal aims to tackle costs MarketWatch News Clipping By: Kristen Gerencher 4.3.2008 MarketWatch, April 3, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Given the amount of attention focused on the differences between the Democratic presidential candidates' health-care proposals, you might think presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain didn't have one of his own. But he does. As Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spar over whose proposal would cover more people, McCain has taken a different tack that's in line with a traditional Republican approach, experts say. He doesn't talk much about universal coverage. Instead, he's said he wants...

The newly elected mayor of a Mexican city in the country's southwestern part of the state of Puebla was returned to New York yesterday to face charges of trafficking multikilogram quantities of cocaine into the United States. Ruben Gil, 41, who was elected in November, is charged with participating in a "far-reaching narcotics trafficking conspiracy" that involved the transportation and delivery of cocaine to co-conspirators in the New York metropolitan area in 2006 and 2007. "This arrest exemplifies the commitment of global law enforcement to identify and arrest those individuals responsible for trafficking cocaine into New York," said Drug Enforcement...

Opposition protesters egged and then tore down a bronze statue of former Mexican President Vicente Fox down on Saturday, just hours after it was erected.

Chávez lashes out at Mexico On the same day the Calderón administration took steps to ease rocky relations with Venezuela and Cuba, Venezuela´s Hugo Chávez on Thursday hurled personal insults at his Mexican counterpart Wire reports El Universal Viernes 02 de febrero de 2007 On the same day the Calderón administration took steps to ease rocky relations with Venezuela and Cuba, Venezuela´s Hugo Chávez on Thursday hurled personal insults at his Mexican counterpart. Chávez´s ire was raised as he attacked Calderón for comments the latter made in Davos, Switzerland, last week criticizing countries that "nationalize industries" and "interfere in the...

ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico -- Andr?s Sauzo collects newspapers, astoundingly grisly newspapers. There's the one with the close-up shot of a severed human head. There's the one with the wide-angle of a man hacked to death with a machete. But the worst in his bulky archive of drug-war gore rolled off the presses the day after someone found pieces of what used to be Sauzo's 24-year-old namesake. A hit man had decapitated Sauzo's son, then chopped off his arms and legs. The killer was so unconcerned about being brought to justice that he scrawled his own name and nickname -- "El Barby"...

<p>Three simultaneous explosions occurred late Sunday night in Mexico City, destroying an entrance at the headquarters of a leading political party and apparently affecting the Federal Electoral Tribunal and a bank branch.</p> <p>The government news agency Notimex said there were no immediate reports of injuries.</p>

The Oaxacanization of the Country: From the Myth of Fraud to that of Ingovernability It was left clear this week, the connection between the insurrectional strategy of Oaxaca and that of AMLO, which already seems to be weakening between desertions and the universal loss of prestige. The difference is one of perspective: For AMLO and his landscaped spaces it was considered vital to exhibit as a survival certificate the oxygen tank which he offered to the Popular Assembly of the People (sic) of Oaxaca (APPO) to identify its goal with that of the defeated presidential candidate: that of preventing...

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president-elect says murder and mayhem fueled by drug smuggling have overwhelmed the governments of the nation’s capital and key states across the country. Felipe Calderón said the wave of bloodshed knows no politics; it is ravaging state governments controlled by each of Mexico’s three major parties. He singled out Mexico City, the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the southern state of Guerrero and his home state of Michoacan, as being especially hard-hit. “It seems to me that drug violence has overwhelmed the governments of the PAN, the PRI and the PRD,” Calderón said in a...

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: "They are stealing the presidency from me" Which are the elements making it possible to establish that there was fraud at the time of the elections of July 2 in Mexico? For more than three years we were victims of a campaign of all the state apparatus with the active participation of the President of the Republic because we represent an alternative project. Our adversaries wanted to destroy us politically. They tried to discredit me with the help of videos, but it was demonstrated that it was the acting out of a plot of former...

Mexican judges face tough test in disputed presidential race By JULIE WATSONTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS MEXICO CITY  -  The future of Mexico’s young democracy lies in the hands of seven judges who have the final word on a disputed presidential election that has strained class divisions and threatened the nation’s stability, with one candidate calling for millions to protest.The magistrates  -  including Mexico’s first female district judge and a respected author on ethics and democracy  -  have shown toughness and independence in thousands of electoral disputes, ruling against all three major parties.But they have never faced a challenge like this. Mexicans...

I am posting this independent blog for the benefit of my fellow Freepers who have been watching the post-election controversy in Mexico, following a ping I received from Freeper SAJ -- thanks again SAJ -- to another thread posted earlier today on a Christian Science Monitor article reporting the closure of a popular foklore festival in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca due to local political protests and relating the matter to the larger post-election controversy in Mexico. To get to the point of why I am posting this separate from that thread, beyond the mere length of what I...

While the U.S. Congress dithers over how best to stop illegal immigration, the Mexican people may have already decided the issue this past weekend. Mexicans went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president, only the second presidential election in the last 75 years that could be characterized as a truly free and democratic contest. The more conservative, free-trade-oriented candidate, Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN), appears to have eked out a slim victory with a few hundred thousand more votes than the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Although Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City...

Mexico for most of its history was ruled by a small number of wealthy elites. They controlled most of Mexico's economy and politics, which is typical of most of Latin America. Many Mexicans lived in poverty. The rift between rich and poor grows wider.  Then in 1910, General Porfirio Diaz becomes president of Mexico. Opposition towards Diaz grows. Then Francisco Madero, an American and European educated man, leads the opposition and pressures for an election. Diaz has Madero imprisoned as a result, which he is later released and goes to America. He does not see Diaz as legitimate and makes...

Dear Colleague: Seventeen European nations are now having so few wee bairns that there is little prospect of a demographic comeback.  Cardinal Trujillo is among those who recognize that Europe's days could be numbered. Steven W. Mosher President PRI Weekly Briefing   3 March 2006  Vol. 8 / No. 9 Facing the Facts of Europe's Suicide By Joseph A. D'Agostino Will the Muslims inherit Western Europe?  "If [Western people] don't do something, probably," replies Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Senior Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. "That's a very probable outcome.  The West doesn't...

MEXICO CITY — Everywhere citizens look, they see reminders that there are too few jobs, too much crime and no way to know if things will get better. As they prepare to choose a new president, many are doubting even a superhero could make a difference. Doctors, engineers and lawyers are joining the ranks of the unemployed. Some work as cabbies to put food on the table — and for many, the four food groups are rice, beans, eggs and tortillas. Poor mothers recently marched to the capital's historic central plaza to demand affordable housing, calling themselves part of the...

Fully aware she was walking a thin ethical line and would face a highly skeptical audience, a Mexican congresswoman made a solo foray into San Antonio on Friday to convince her countrymen to vote in next year's presidential election. It was a bold move criticized by other politicians as potentially violating Mexican electoral laws. Consuelo Camarena Gómez, a member of Mexico's House of Representatives from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN), said her country's get-out-the-vote campaign outside its borders has failed, prompting her to take action. Her Alamo City visit was part of a larger PAN effort. Representatives also...

Mexico City -- Arturo Montiel, a former governor and one of the leading contenders in next year's presidential race in Mexico, announced Thursday that he is withdrawing his candidacy in the face of corruption allegations against his family. The decision appeared to leave the nomination of the powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to Montiel's bitter rival, Roberto Madrazo, an ex-governor of the state of Tabasco.