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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim
03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!
03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
03.03 It's Snow News
03.03 The Woeful Washington Post
Ref. : The Daily Howler
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"
03.09 Thinking About Countings
03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda
03.16 America's Secret Prisons
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem
03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid
03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda
02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks
03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
03.05 Is the Recovery Real?
03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You
03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"
03.01 Thinking About Fees
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
03.03 Muslim Disunity
03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist
COMMENTARY:
STEALING MEXICO: Bush Team Helps Ruling Party "Floridize" Mexican Presidential Election
All the target nations for "foreign counterterrorism investigation" listed in the FBI's "guidance" memo were Latin and had one thing in common, besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office.
It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and "Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the feds got right on the ball, if a little late.
What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold that thought.
This document is what's called a "guidance" memo for using a private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you'd think the "Intelligence Collection" would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf.
Not so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its classified appendix. The target nations for "foreign counterterrorism investigation" were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in Latin America -- Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others. See one of the documents yourself.
Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San Diego with exploding enchiladas?
All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico, the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was (and is) leading the race for the Presidency.
Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election. ChoicePoint's list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black. The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency.
Having chosen our President for us, our President's men chose ChoicePoint for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use of the Venezuela's and Mexico's voter registry files to fight terror is not visible -- but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris' cheeks.
In Venezuela, leading up to the August 2004 vote on whether to re-call President Chavez, I saw his opposition pouring over the voter rolls in laptops, claiming the right to challenge voters as Jeb's crew did to voters in Florida. It turns out this operation was partly funded by the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP. Where did they get the voter info?
In that case, access to Venezuela's voter rolls didn't help the Republican-assisted drive against Chavez, who won by a crushing plurality.
In Mexico this Sunday, we can expect to see the same: challenges of Obrador voters in a race, the polls say, is too close to call. Not that Mexico's rulers need lessons from the Bush Administration on how to mess with elections.
In 1988, the candidate for Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR), who opinion polls showed as a certain winner, somehow came up short against the incumbent party of the ruling elite. Some of the electoral tricks were far from subtle. In the state of Guerrero, the PDR was leading on official tally sheets by 359,369. Oddly, the official final count was 309,202 for the ruling party, only182,874 for the PDR. Challenging the vote would have been dangerous. Two top officials of Obrador's party were assassinated during the campaign.
Crucial to the surprise victory of the ruling party was the introduction of computer voting machines and the centralization of voter databases. Observer Andrew Reding of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that ruling party operatives had special access codes denied the opposition.
Whether the US "War on Terror" lists will find a use in Sunday's election, we cannot know. But the use of American government resources to interfere in south-of-the-border campaigns is an open secret. The GOP's International Republican Institute has run training sessions for the PAN youth wing, funded by US taxpayers through the "National Endowment for Democracy."
Foreign -- that is, American -- interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn't stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes -- and Mexico's attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party's looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron. Whether George Bush gave back his copy, no one will say.
Wholesale theft is expected on Sunday in forms both subtle and brutal. How the US' purloined "counterterrorism" lists will be used, we don't know. We are certain however, that the Administration did not siphon off these Latin voter files to fight a War on Terror. It appears, rather, part of the Bush Administration's and GOP's hemispheric War on Democracy -- along a battle line which runs from Florida to Ohio to Juarez.
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This story was published on June 30, 2006.
