DOES ECO-TOURISM HELP LOCAL PEOPLE? PAGE 8

AUGUST 2006

The great Mexican election theft

AFTER HIZBULLAH AND HAMAS

Middle East: what will emerge from the ruins?

BY IGNACIO RAMONET

DR

MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN: Untitled (2000)

A month into war in the Middle East, the United States and France have come together to formulate a way out of the crisis in Lebanon, based on United Nations resolutions. They propose an end to the violence, followed by the deployment of an international force. Failure to gain Lebanese and Arab agreement has allowed Israel more time to pursue its military objectives.

BY ALAIN GRESH

THE election was a clear case of fraud on a massive scale, as the president

of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, agreed, while the 25

European Union foreign ministers expressed “grave concern”. Indeed the Netherlands

foreign minister declared: “It is important that we convey in the clearest possible

terms the concern of the European Union and member states over the result of the

presidential election”. Reporters without Borders noted that that

this election “followed four years of continuous and unprecedented degradation of the

press in the country”. Prominent fi gures in Washington, among

them Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, affi rmed that the US

could not recognise the offi cial results. The National Democratic Institute, chaired by

former secretary of state Madeleine Albright; Freedom House, chaired by James Woolsey,

former head of the CIA; the American Enterprise Institute, of which former president

Gerald Ford is a moving spirit; the Open Society Institute and its founder and chair

man George Soros, all made accusations about massive manipulation and called for

economic sanctions. President Bush’s special envoy, the chairman of the Senate foreign

relations committee, Senator Richard Lugar, also declared openly: “It is apparent that there

has been a concerted and forceful programme of election day fraud and abuse enacted with

either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities.”

Perhaps you don’t remember reading any of these reactions to the recent presidential elec

tions in Mexico? That’s because none of the eminent people or institutions I mentioned

said a single word about what just happened in Mexico. The quotes are perfectly authentic

but were actually made about the presidential elections in Ukraine on 23 November 2004 (1).

The international community and the usual organisations devoted to the defence of free

dom that have been so active in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and more recently in Belarus,

have been notably silent about the electoral coup conducted before our eyes in Mexico

(2). Imagine the global outcry if this election

had been held in Venezuela and the victor, by the slightest margin of 0.56%, had been Hugo

Chávez. There were two main candidates in the Mexican election on 2 July: Felipe Calderón of the ruling Catholic rightwing National Action

party (PAN), provisionally declared by the Federal Electoral Institute to be the winner, and

Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the moderate leftwing Democratic Revolutionary party.

Long before the campaign got under way, it was clear to President Vicente Fox (PAN) and

the ruling authorities that López Obrador and his programme to end poverty must be beaten,

by fair means or foul. Attempts were made to discredit him in 2004 by secret videotapes

broadcast on the government-backed Televisa and TV Azteca channels, but without success.

In 2005, on the absurd pretext that a hospital approach road had failed to comply with

building regulations, he was charged, found guilty, locked up and declared unfi t to stand

for election. Faced with massive demonstrations of support for him, the authorities were

fi nally forced to restore his rights. But the derogatory propaganda continued

through the campaign, reaching alarming proportions (3). Latin American oligarchs and the

US administration were panic-stricken, since the left was taking over almost everywhere, in

Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, as it once had in Cuba.

In this context, victory for López Obrador (if it is victory: the electoral court will deliver

its verdict on 6 September) would have serious geopolitical consequences, which is some

thing that Mexican bosses, the mass media and Washington want to avoid at all costs,

even if it means sacrifi cing democracy. However, López Obrador and the Mexican

people may still have something to say on the subject.

TRANSLATED BY BARBARA WILSON

(1) The idea of comparing reactions to the elections in

Ukraine and Mexico was developed in “Doing Maths in

Mexico”, Guardian , London, 17 July 2006.

(2) For an account of the fraud, see the report by the Centro

de derechos humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas,

www.sipaz.org/documentos/obsddcp/elec0606_s.html

(3) On the violence of the attacks, see John Ross, “All

Against López Obrador”, Counterpunch , 6 April 2006.

KILLERS daily slaughter dozens of civilians in Iraq just because

they are Sunni Muslims, a crime not seen in the Middle East since

the civil war in Lebanon in 1975-76, when Falangist militants executed Muslims

because of their faith. According to the United Nations, almost 6,000 Iraqis were

killed in May and June. In the south of Afghanistan, 100 civilians

have been collateral victims of an off ensive by coalition forces, led by the United States,

to prevent the return of the Taliban. Suicide attacks are increasingly common in Afghani

stan, where before they were unknown. On the Gaza Strip, 1.5 million Palestinians

are caught in a trap, hemmed in by the Israeli off ensive and the decision by the US and the

European Union to freeze all direct aid. The sudden escalation of hostilities between Israel

and Lebanon, with indiscriminate bombing of towns, villages and infrastructure, may drag

Syria and Iran into a regional confl ict. Meanwhile, Hizbullah’s rockets have paralysed the

north of Israel. And the Iran nuclear crisis remains unresolved: Tehran is threatening to

withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is just three years since President George

Bush landed triumphantly on a US aircraft carrier and announced “mission accomplished”,

signifying an end to the hostilities in Iraq,

where the full scale of the disaster unleashed by the allied invasion is now apparent. Not

since 1967 has the Middle East suff ered so many simultaneous high-intensity crises.

Though each has its own rationale, they are all linked by many threads, making partial solu

tions more diffi cult and dragging the region ever faster into the abyss.

For many western observers there is no doubt about the culprit; they believe Hizbul

lah aims to destroy Israel and to unsettle the whole western camp; Hizbullah and its back

ers are trying to “establish a universal Islamist dictatorship” (1). This analysis, currently pre

dominant among politicians and the media, is close to that of the US neo-conservatives: a

new world war has started. Michael Leeden, a researcher at the Ameri

can Enterprise Institute, wrote: “It’s war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through

Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are diff erent instruments, ranging from

Hamas in Gaza to Hizbullah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted insurgency

in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revo

lutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held

accountable” (2).

Continued on page 2

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

The failure of air power: a century

of useless bombing page 3

Israel: real-estate profi ts, big

cheap homes and settlers page 4

Israel: offshore industries move

to the West Bank page 5

Asia: the cult of the son and the

absence of the daughter page 6

Tourism: selling sex to more

downmarket punters page 10

Cuba: doctors available on free,

worldwide call page 11

France: loving and hating the

culture of the banlieues page 12

Health: would a GM mosquito

really defeat malaria? page 14

Artifi cial intelligence: a million

brains make cheap work page 15

Colonialism and socialism: reviving

the connections page 16