Election Fraud in Mexico: NY Times balks again

If you insist on exercising your democratic rights,
we'll be forced to shoot you.

Election rigging has been a stolid feature of so-called democracies for a long time. But it has been rather recently that recognition and acknowledgement of the practice has become scant, unless, of course, the people doing the rigging are not part of the acceptable establishment. We saw Democrats laughed at in 2000 for claiming such a thing, so in 2004, they didn't; too afraid to be called names by the GOP machine. Meanwhile Republicans -- who actually conducted the worst of the rigging -- audaciously, though spottily, projected accusations of election fraud onto the hapless Dems. If I lived on the Moon and had watched this from afar, I would have been laughing myself. But there was nothing funny about either the sad sight of the sorry Democrats being slapped senseless or the bellicose and wholly contemptible players of the GOP in the charade that we still insist on calling an "election."

Despite the corporate media's inability to recognise election fraud here, it was easily spotted elsewhere when being conducted by unseemly regimes friendly toward Russia. We saw the Bush administration and the US media's haughty disregard of the Ukraine elections in 2004; exit polls were amiss, clearly there was a problem. US diplomats, led by Colin Powell, bewailed the vile practice of election fraud when it was the Russian-friendly incumbent Prime Minister Yanukovich who had been doing the rigging.

Reports then indicated that thugs loyal to Yanukovich had beaten Ukraine voters at the polls and US diplomatic remonstration was severe, but in Egypt -- an ally in the War on Terra -- where much worse took place as state police actually shot and killed voters and barracaded polling stations, Condoleezza Rice meekly admonished these shameful activities. But since those actions were directed at the party of the Muslim Brotherhood, well, no declarations about election fraud ensued. Of course, the Ukraine election result was recalled, the Egyptian one stood.

But our media in this country cannot and will not attempt the slightest investigation into wrongdoings in US elections. And there is a vast body of evidence pointing to election fraud in each of the elections in 2000, 2002, and 2004. But from the US media, barely a word. When it is reported, disclaimers that such activities could not possibly have affected the outcome are invariably attached. Local reporting in Ohio in 2004 was excellent, with Fitrakis and Wasserman leading the charge, but on the national level, the vast array of manipulations was buried. The reasons, no doubt, are as varied as they are weak-minded or, possibly, just plain dangerous. Ultimately, the establishment cannot allow or cannot admit that election fraud is a serious problem in American. This is, after all, the vanguard of democracy, or at least, that is what we like to tell ourselves, despite the fact that half or more of the population rarely bothers to vote. Elections in America are mythical and pure, never mind what actually happens. In reality, clean elections in the United States are purely mythical. The media, either consciously or not, sees to it that this myth must endure. Local reports of yet more egregious electoral behaviour will certainly be on order this November, only to be strenuously ignored and downplayed again; ahh, those loopy moonbats.

Today, the New York Times offers yet another excellent example of just how the media treats election fraud when those claiming it are not of the proper persuasion.

Mexican Leftist Remains Defiant

declaimed the Times. The implication is redolent with derision. Leftists are surely bad enough, but Mexican Leftists? Can there be a worse kind? And that was just the headline. Indeed, sifting through the ponderous he said/she said article couldn't have been a bigger waste of time, unless one is curious as to how the Times can publish an lengthy article on the Mexican election dispute and not tell the reader one single fact surrounding the nature of the dispute until the second to last paragraph, when we suddenly learn a rather disturbing thing:

in about 3,000 polling places examined during the partial recount there were nearly 46,000 more ballots cast for president than had been delivered to poll workers before the election. In another 4,300 polling places ... 80,000 ballots delivered to the polls were unaccounted for or missing.

But that is it as far as the Times is concerned. Not a word about Choicepoint or the FBI shenanigans in Mexico. Nothing about the millions of ballots found in dumpsters. Zero about Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) withholding 3.3 million ballots on election night and, under public pressure, releasing 2.5 million of them, which in turn reduced Calderón's initial margin from 377,000 to 257,000. Certainly nothing about the putative "winner" Calderón's brother-in-law and that his company, Hildebrando, was a partner in the "design" of the election tabulation software. Vote shaving? nada. Statistical improbabilities? nope.

But what did the Times do when the completed partial recount demonstrate the need for a full recount and that this would assuredly result in a win for Obrador? Bury the numbers. Fortunately, there are a few outlets that won't do that:

• In 3,074 precincts (29 percent of those recounted), 45,890 illegal votes, above the number of voters who cast ballots in each polling place, were found stuffed inside the ballot boxes (an average of 15 for each of these precincts, primarily in strongholds of the National Action Party, known as the PAN, of President Vicente Fox and his candidate, Felipe Calderón).
• In 4,368 precincts (41 percent of those recounted), 80,392 ballots of citizens who did vote are missing (an average of 18 votes in each of these precincts).
• Together, these 7,442 precincts contain about 70 percent of the ballots recounted. The total amount of ballots either stolen or forged adds up to 126,282 votes altered.
• If the recount results of these 10,679 precincts (8.2 percent of the nation’s 130,000 polling places) are projected nationwide, it would mean that more than 1.5 million votes were either stolen or stuffed in an election that the first official count claimed was won by Calderon by only 243,000 votes.

The evidence of election fraud is concrete, the numbers unassailable, and now government forces have decided that enough is enough and have begun to shoot protesters -- teachers -- in the street (something you also won't read about in the Times). Indeed, Mexico is very much looking like the Ukraine of 2004, but not to the American media this time. This time the fraud was perpetrated by the establishment's own, one of the chosen ones. The Bush administration has blessed the number of the count when clearly there are serious problems with those numbers, probably worse than was seen in Ukraine. But Calderón would be a good son to the corporate interests that wanted him President. He wasn't going to upset things, renegotiate NAFTA as Obrador had promised. And the New York Times, once again, appears more than happy to scoff at the facts and tow the party line, the party line that says only "they" rig elections.

Fortunately, Mexicans appear to be far more invested in their own democracy than Americans in theirs. They also appear to be far better informed about their own elections, too. Perhaps they still have a media that hasn't bailed on the ideal of democracy. They are fighting the obvious fraud but this time, it isn't the Ukraine. Look for no help from the Bush administration. Calderón is a "friendly" and not some crazed leftist upsetting the "business climate" by tyring to help the poor.