Fixing Venezuela's Elections

Greg Palast has another detective piece. This time is about "fixing" the Venezuela Election results.

Palast describes a document which landed on his desk:

[Dept of] Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?

What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush.

The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little 'error' cost Al Gore the White House.

An interesting document, worth a read.

In Mexico every effort and dirty trick is being thrown at Andres Manuel L�pez Obrador with overwhelming support from the Media. Currently Mexico City's governor and the man with the popular backup.

This past week to protest the dirty war waged by the federal government against L�pez Obrador a 42-kilometer (26 miles) human wall was constructed running from the South to the North of the Mexico City.

Mexico's federal policies on economy have been a disaster as well. The government is a blind follower of all the recommendations (mandates) from the International Money Fund and World Bank (polices well known to be a recipe for social disaster). Also the government managed to extend our foreign debt, just when you thought that the platform of Vicente Fox on an "Enterprise Government" would be able to keep the budget on track. Seems like running the economy is not the forte of the right-wing economic policies anywhere in the world.

Government's reply to the human chain run from funny to hillarious: `we need production chains, not human chains' stated Sonora's governor (in lieu of the president, which is known for his lack of verbal articulation power and being a master of sticking his foot on his mouth). Humor wise, you can not beat Vicente Fox's own justification for keeping the disastrous economic policies (notice that he criticized his predecesor for keeping these policies, policies that today he defends, follow the link for all the humor ;-)