While infantile papolatry still holds sway at the major ‘liberal’ dailies, the coup in Mexico went off like a wet firecracker. Via the King we went to Al Giordano’s Narco News. explains:
On Monday the owners of Televisa and TV Azteca, Emilio Azcárraga Jean and Ricardo Salinas Pliego, respectively, were called to Los Pinos (the Mexican presidential palace). One doesn't need to guess the motive for the discussion.
Next it was the radio broadcasters' turn, and one of them commented: "The President told us: Andrés Manuel must be disappeared!"
Neither station has aired nary a minute of the proceedings now underway in the National Congress (since 10:15 this morning), where the "desafuero" will be debated for many hours and voted on today.
President Vicente Fox, one of the intellectual and material authors of this coup d'etat against Mexican democracy, in an attempt to change the subject, then fled to Rome for the memorial services for the pope.”

Sounds like an Otto Reich special. You remember Reich – the king of soft coups Just as Syria regards Lebanon as too important to leave to the Lebanese, the U.S. sees itself as the natural colonial master of the Southern Hemisphere, and reserves for itself the right to intervene both militarily and with behind the scenes puppet pulling. Instead of blowing Lopez Obrador up, Bush’s ally, Fox, and the PRI, decided to take out his batteries. Fox, whose campaign relied on the same dirty money from the same oligarchs that financed Salinas and Zedillo’s campaigns in previous years, has had the gall to state that “no man is above the law” as he helped arranged this revealing blow against an honest election. As usual, the best reporting on the affair in the U.S. has been at the L.A. Times. Here’s a nice graf from their report:

“In response to Fox's argument, several legal experts noted that in contrast to this case, allegations of massive fraud in Mexico, such as the $140-million Pemexgate scandal, have gone unpunished. In that case, funds earmarked for oil union workers were allegedly funneled to the PRI. Fox himself has been implicated in a campaign spending case dating from the 2000 election, which has yet to come to trial.”

If Lopez Obrador does make a run for the presidency from prison, it will make for some very pretty tergiversation in the American press, which was so gung ho about democracy in the Ukraine. The American press doesn’t like lefty populist types in South America: too much U.S. money is at stake to fuck around. That’s when you roll out the defense of free markets. So nice, those free markets. And you can’t have the Chavez’ of the world mucking about with em. Somehow, Chavez works his magic even though, according to the Washington Post, he’s made his country much poorer. That’s actually pretty funny, considering the stream of billions pumped out of the country by the free marketers that ruled the country like brothel keepers in the eighties and nineties, with nary a bad word from the Post. Funny how those deluded poor keep voting for Chavez, too.

A friend of ours in Mexico City, who has expressed rather vehement disgust with various of the Mayor’s failings (she pointed out to us, when we were down there, some obvious make work road construction – for instance, long orphaned concrete ramps for bike riders that were accessible only via flights of stairs and/or the highway), is also disgusted with the move to impeach him.

Now, back to the ever fascinating topic of both beatifying the late pope and giving him a lifetime Oscar for best performance in medieval clothing.