All Notebook Entries

The new poll, taken by Instituto de Mercadotecnia y Opinión (IMO, in its Spanish initials, or the Marketing and Opinon Institute) shows that the man known as "El Peje," López Obrador, is running away with the 2006 presidential race. The survey was taken March 29 and 30. The margin of error is three percent. Here are the results:

Which of these candidates would you vote for in the 2006 presidential election?

• Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD) 46.4%
• Santiago Creel (PAN) 16.7%
• Roberto Madrazo (PRI) 15.1%

We also look forward to the poll after that: the one taken after López Obrador is sent to jail awaiting trial for a "crime" (his administration disobeyed a court order involving a very small tract of land) that his accusers, too, are guilty of, but they control the government, and therefore - of course - they weren't charged.

Key words: Coup d'etat.

Story: Drifting out of Power's control.

The final vote count was 360 votes in favor of the "desafuero," to 127 votes against, with two absentions.

It means that, for now, López Obrador will be removed from his elected post pending court actions. Unless and until he is absolved of the charge of disobeying an order against a hospital access road (one that he never built, having instead constructed an alternate route), he could be barred from being a presidential candidate in 2006, although he towers over all other candidates in the public opinion polls.

At a demonstration today in Mexico City, López Obrador called upon his supporters to remain peaceful and to not block streets or highways, or occupy government buildings at present. That he makes such an appeal is an indication of the mood of much of the country, angered by this political assassination. He called for a silent march on April 24 in Mexico City.

Meanwhile, a country awaits to see what ace, if any, he has up his sleeve, to beat back what effectively was a preemptive coup d'etat against Mexican democracy.

The world may learn today that the work of the Mexican revolution is unfinished. Eighty-six years ago this week Mexican revolutionary General Emiliano Zapata was assassinated in a State-plotted ambush, on April 10, 1919. Eleven years ago, also at this springtime of year, leading presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated on the campaign trail, in Tijuana: on March 23, 1994. What President Vicente Fox, together with his former adversaries of the once-monolithic PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for seven decades prior to Fox’s 2000 electoral victory), are attempting today is nothing less than a pre-emptive coup d’etat: a political assassination, dressed up in legal technicalities no more serious than a parking ticket, to remove Mexico’s leading presidential candidate from the 2006 contest.

At 9:30 a.m. (Central Time Zone) Mexico City Governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador will address a multitude in the Zocalo, the village square of this country of 100 million Mexicans, a crowd that as of 7:30 this morning included at least a million of them...

A poet said long ago that April is the cruelest month. Nevertheless, in the midst of the nothingness of the world we must live in, Al Giordano chose this month five years ago to launch The Narco News Bulletin into the four winds... in the midst of cruelty and rage, our dear comandante decided that the time had come to sow something new. And he began to drop seeds loaded with dynamite, with the devoted patience of a Vietnamese guerrilla and the firm tenderness of a Zapatista.  

And so pages with black petals and letters of red, white, and yellow began to bloom. Giordano, along with just a laptop and his strength, created us all taking flesh and blood from his fingertips. The sharp edge of the petals of each rose that Al collected from this earth, signed by a few brave authentic journalists, began breaking down, little by little, that brick and barbed-wire fence that the big commercial media put up around the badly-named “war on drugs.”

According to several reports filed this weekend, five of the hundreds of U.S. troops stationed in the country as part of “Plan Colombia” have been arrested for using a military aircraft to transport the sixteen kilos of cocaine they were caught with to the U.S. via the military base in El Paso, Texas where they landed.

The hiring of private-sector contractors to perform these “personnel recovery” missions for the U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) is coinciding with other initiatives in and around Colombia; for instance, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) simultaneously is arranging to buy millions of gallons of jet fuel through 2009 to supply Colombian national police and military posts, camps and stations, the documents show.

VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: Since the beginning of 2005 the main US dailies such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have continued their media onslaught against Venezuela and the government of Hugo Chavez...

By contrast, the government-licensed drug industry has produced and sold many diet drugs which were later recalled because they caused organ (heart, liver, and kidney) damage in consumers including deaths.

Following is the list of government agencies who don’t want you to know this secret, and which have to date, to one degree or another, contributed to keeping it covered up: The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio, the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and at least two agencies charged with investigating corruption in federal law enforcement -- the U.S. Office of Special Counsel and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.

But before revealing the details of the secret, some background is in order. Last month, Narco News reported the following:

A startling claim has surfaced in a document filed in federal court by a former DEA supervisor. The claim raises serious questions about a U.S. Attorney’s handling of evidence in the case of accused murderer and drug-trafficker Heriberto Santillan-Tabares.

A alguien le dolió nuestro trabajo en Bolivia. ¿Al masacrador Gonzalo Sánhez de Lozada? ¿A Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, hombre fuerte del masacrador? ¿A sus lacayos en la revista Datos? ¿A la gente que trabaja para el Presidente Carlos Mesa? ¿Al Virrey David Nicol Greenlee? ¿A la derecha golpista boliviana? ¿A todos? No sabemos nada todavía, lo cierto es que por eso desde hoy por la tarde está circulando una falsa alerta, sin nombre, que salió de este correo electrónico: capt_bol@yahoo.com.

Dear Colleagues,

Our work in Bolivia has hurt someone. Was it the butcher Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada? Carlos Sánchez Merzaín, the butcher's strongman? His lackeys at the magazine Datos? The people who work for President Mesa? Viceroy David N. Greenlee? The coup-plotting Bolivian right wing? All of them? We're still figuring it out, but what is certain is that since this afternoon a false Narco News alert, not bearing any name, has been circulating, and that it came from this email address: capt_bol@yahoo.com.

Alors que Jacques Chirac a pris la peine d’appeler Carlos Mesa pour lui demander à propos de la « sécurité des investissements français en Bolivie », la presse française semble ignorer le phénomène, à peine mentionné lors de la tentative de démission du président bolivien…

Pour combler ce vide médiatique, et à l’occasion du deuxième Forum Alternatif de l’Eau, qui se tient actuellement et jusqu’au 20 mars à Genève,  voici un petit tour d’horizon du conflit bolivien…