Tag Archives: Pemex

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

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Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

Mexico’s oil is running out so up goes the Border Wall

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Americans are under the impression that Mexico is an extremely poor country. It is not. It is the world’s 5th largest oil producer, and the US economy’s 2nd largest foreign supplier of oil. Canada is #1, while Saudi Arabia comes in at #3. It’s per capita income is significantly higher than that of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina. China is considered an economic super power, yet Mexico has 4 times the per capita income of that country. Mexico even has the world’s 2nd largest oil field. There is only one problem though. Mexico’s oil reserves are running out.

Yes, it is predicted that Mexico may only have about 10 more years before its 2 major oil fields go dry. What then? It is a country of over 100,000,000 people, and its government gets over half of what it spends from its oil revenues. As a result, the national oil company, PEMEX, is billions upon billions in dept, even as it funds the nation. Mexico wants to join up with US prosperity, even as the US itself is running into problems finding new sources of cheap oil to float its own economy. And Mexico is in much worse shape in that regard.

In this desperate world of energy depletion we are now entering into, it’s all for one’s self, so up goes The Wall. A decade ago, the promises were made that all would enter into a new world of prosperity through NAFTA. Free flow of everything! But how quickly dreams built on mirages can fall. We are now in a war to steal the energy resources away from the people of Iraq and Iran, and there is not about to be any US elite misgivings, if they have to screw over the Mexicans in a few short years ahead. A brave new world awaits us.

A small note… wikipedia states that with current rates of consumption, the world’s oil reserves will run out in 32 years. Be sure to check your tire pressures .

Also of interest… Mexicans stage tortilla protest

Mexican government documents its criminal behavior in official report

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In the waning last 2 weeks of the Fox Adminstration in Mexico, the Mexican government put a report quietly online admitting government criminality over 2 decades in the past. The criminality consisted of murder, torture, death squad activity, etc. in what is referred to as a ‘dirty war’ against Left activists. The time frame investigated by the authors of the report was from the late ’60s into the early ’80s, but nothing really has changed at all since then. The NY Times article about this report can be easiest read by going to antiwar.com. It is listed under their ‘Americas’ section.

Just this year, Mexican governmental forces have engaged in the same sort of activities, using them against striking miners and other Left activists in Atenco, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, where scores have been disappeared, beat up, tortured, and murdered. And that is not to mention other regions of Mexico which are less under observation by international observers. Actually the report is being used to make it appear as if Fox has taken responsibility for admitting occurrences of the past that are no longer being engaged in today. So the report is actually a style of coverup, rather than admittance of any guilt. That’s why no charges are being brought against any of the guilty parties.

All this being said, just what has been the role of the US press and the US government in its continual backing of the Mexican government? Let’s look at the New York Times, which while running the reportage of this Mexican government ‘confession’, just days previouusly was mocking Manuel Lopez Obrador for refusing to accept the fraud that put the losing candidate in office at Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. And what about admitting the US government’s role in accepting and even sponsoring the Mexican government’s terroristic counter insurgency campaigns? Silence. And the role of the American press in never coveri ng this terrorism, and in not informing the US public of the true state of affairs down South? Silence. The New York Times often times acts as if Mexico was on the other side of the moon when it comes to reporting activities there.

It always amazes me to hear our own, mainly ignorant US population spout off constantly that the Mexican government operates independently of the White House,and is independent of ‘our’ control. Yet, the same ignorant types that do this realize that the US government micro-manages areas off in the total boonies of Asia and other parts of the world. Our corporate daily press is totally complicit in keeping the US public this uninformed and backward in their views, and in keeping them believing that Mexico, which is the most important country to the US outside our own, is somehow on independent auto-pilot rather than in US control, unlike Afghanistan or Kosovo, say!

The truth is far different, and I just got through reading a John Ross report about how Halliburton is all over the still nationalized Mexican petroleum and gas industry. In fact, the man, Felipe Calderon, who stole Mexico’s presidency’s with the total support of Bush and the NY Times, has his principal goal to privatize Pemex, the government owned oil company. The Mexican government under the push by the US to do so, has already done the same with previously nationalized industries in power, communication, and transport. Now only PEMEX remains in state hands, and Halliburton certainly wants that to change as fast as possible.

The US antiwar movement needs to watch Mexico closely, and oppose our US government’s militarism promoted to the South of us. That’s where the counter insurgency programs that the Mexican government of Fox just admitted ran the country in a totally criminal manner throughout Mexico for 2 decades sprung from. That’s where the same criminality of the present springs from, US support for Mexican state terorism used against its own population. The US is messing up Mexico, messed up Mexico, and will not stop doing that until the American people begin to observe, resist their own government,and demand that the US intervention into the internal affairs of Mexico stop.

Stop the US militarization of the US-Mexican Border. Stop the phoney ‘drug war’ that is destroying Mexico, and stop training and supporting the Mexican military’s counter-insurgency against its own population!