Mufti of Australia says women with no hijab are "uncovered meat"

Australia's leading Muslim cleric, the Mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, told a group of 500 worshipers,

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

The uncovered meat is the problem.

If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.

No hijab means Judge Judy is uncovered meat?Sheik, the judge would be happy to give you the high-jab.

The Mooftie was referring to the gang rapes by and subsequent prosecution and incarceration of Muslim men. Mercy! Why haven't we nuked these stupid sons-of-bitches yet? The term "bomb them back to the stone age" doesn't apply here because that's where they're all living now. The Moofty continued:

Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years".

"But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he asked.

It's "with whom" you ignorant pig. But I digress. More from the Moofftii:

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

Igraa, eh? I'll show you some igraa, Sheeck Mooftea.

IGRAA!
Ms. Rice will have to give the OK to start dropping
big ones on your brethren's diaper covered heads.
Uncovered meat?

IGRAA!
USAF Brigadier General Dana Born
She may command the ones dropping big ones on your brethren's diaper covered heads.
Uncovered meat?

IGRAA!
Mia Hamm
Look at those thighs. She'd kick your nutz up through your shoulder blades.
Uncovered meat?


IGRAA!
1st Lt. Laura Springer
Stryker armored combat vehicle driver
Uncovered meat?


IGRAA!
Police Officer Kathleen Conway
She was riding in the passenger seat of a car when she pulled out a pistol and shot the driver twice in the head. The car was her police cruiser. The driver had just walked up to her open window, smacked her in the face with his handgun, then pumped 3-.357 magnum slugs into her. He opened the door, pushed her apparently lifeless body aside, and drove off. Just not very far.
Uncovered meat?


IGRAA!
Two IDF Joo princesses
Getting ready to chew up some Arab hog meat.
Maybe they'll leave it uncovered when they're through.

More, much more at:
HotAir realizes the veil is there for a reason . . . darlin'.
HyScience with most favored Arab headresses (NSFW).
Flora of Cordoba at PajamasMedia: The Sheik need to get his head out from between his legs.
PeakTalk understates it as "Quite rich."
Dhimmi Watch says the sheik has a history of outrageous statements. Does that make him a bit dhimm?
Tim Blair says, "A lot of things don’t occur if you never leave your room. Ask any prisoner."

Note: To be fair, many high ranking Muslim officials in Australia are condemning the Moof-tease comments. To be even more fair, many aren't. Follow the links in Tim Blair's post.

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TAGS: Mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, Muslim pig, uncovered meat

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO's early birds get the worm - or weld the gates closed

At the primary school Francisco Zarco, which I wrote about on Monday, the APPO traveling thug review arrived earlier than the teachers, parents and children this morning. Arriving in 3 hijacked buses before the parents could get there, a gang of APPO thugs armed with clubs, boulders and a welder, set up boulders around the front entrance to the school and proceeded to weld the front gates closed.







The APPO thugs identified themselves as "colonos", or people who live in the neighborhood. No reporter thought to ask them why, if they truly lived in the neighborhood, they had arrived in hijacked buses instead of walking a couple of blocks to the school like everyone else. They told reporters that, "We built this school and we didn't give anyone permission to reopen it." The parents who had reopened the school on Monday after a confrontation with another mob said that they did not know any members of this group and that they were not locals.

The parents of the school children gathered a couple of blocks away and were holding a meeting to decide what to do. In the meantime, the parents had also armed themselves with whatever they could find lying around. This may not be over, yet.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, thugs

Oaxaca, Mexico: Teachers union president vows, "We won't be held hostage by anyone."

Enrique Rueda Pacheco came out swinging, finally, in response to the riot that took place early Sunday morning outside the hotel where the striking teachers were counting the votes to determine whether or not to return to the classrooms. In a classic example of blatant hypocrisy, APPO, which had been trumpeting the independence of the teachers union and telling one and all that APPO would "respect"the teachers' vote, "however it turns out", instead attacked the union's headquarters when the vote didn't go their way. There were not enough APPO thugs to get inside through the teachers who were performing guard duty and Rueda Pacheco's own bodyguards.

Rueda Pacheco's handlers had to quickly hustle him away through the hostile crowd, however, because the hijacked public radio station was calling for APPO reinforcements to arrive at the hotel to help. The APPO radio broadcasts were exhorting the APPO followers to bring weapons and Molotov cocktails to help with the impending assault.

While avoiding pointing a finger directly at APPO, Rueda Pacheco today said that the SNTE Section 22 strikers "will not be the hostages of anybody and will make their decisions independently and without bowing to pressure." Rueda Pacheco called the radio broadcasts "irresponsible".

He also denied that any of his bodyguards and other security personnel were armed. He said, "Those with the bazookas (homemade rocket launchers) were outside the hotel and were not members of the teachers union," and that they, not the teachers, "created a climate of violence."

What started the melee was an unauthorized leak of the preliminary results of the poll several hours ahead of the scheduled release of that information. When the results appeared on the daily El Universal's website, all hell broke loose. This time, says Rueda Pacheco, security will be tightened to prevent the leak of information and the announcement will be made "clandestinely" to avoid a repeat of the episode that nearly got him killed.

In the two photos below, the "But what have you done for me lately" syndrome is more than apparent. In the first photo, taken at midday Saturday when Rueda Pacheco arrived at the hotel, he's in Cool Hand Luke mode, even signing an autograph. The sign pasted on the wall should have been a warning of trouble to come. It says, "We demand the resignation of URO (the guvnor) and Rueda. Murderer (the guvnor) and traitor (Rueda Pacheco)". In the second photo, taken 14 hours later when he tried to leave the hotel, he's in a jacket and cap to protect his head from flying missiles and his bodyguards are forcing their way through the mob to effect his escape.

HERO



GOAT


FLED



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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, Enrique Rueda Pacheco, APPO, SNTE

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO announces they'll turn up the heat (again) this weekend

APPO has announced several new initiatives, each one a little more confusing than the last.

First, APPO has called for a nation-wide strike for Friday. APPO says that the nation-wide strike will only affect 4 states; Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan and Mexico State. Huh? That leaves 27 states and the DF (Mexico City) uninvolved in the "nation-wide" strike. And Mexico State is heavily AMLO/PRD, supposedly APPO's buddies.

To further confuse even the most casual and disinterested observer, APPO is circulating a "manifesto" which lays out its strategy for taking power over the entire country. First, APPO plans to depose Oaxaca's governor, then the respective governors of Sonora and Puebla. But Sonora and Puebla aren't included in the 4-state-only nation-wide strike scheduled for Friday.

Who the hell's in charge here, anyway? Fire the Offensive Coordinator!

While you bat that question back and forth inside your punkin' heads, consider this; APPO says that it has formed an "Asamblea Nacional de los Pueblos" (National Village Assembly) which will convene in Mexico City and form its own "people's national government".

Lessee here. We've got the outgoing Vicente Fox government, the incoming Felipe Calderon government, the still-in-formation AMLO's people's government and now an APPO village government as well as the EZLN government down in Chiapas. That's like . . . 4 different passports everyone will have to carry.

For you foreign visitors, along with yours truly, your current visas will get you into either Fox's or Calderon's Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the formal name of Mexico). To enter either the APPO Village Territory or the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) Territory, you'll need a ski mask, aka a balaclava, and a tattoo. A black "Che" tee shirt will get you VIP treatment (that's a chicken wing along with your beans and rice). And to get into AMLO's People's Territory, you'll simply need to wear a big smile and look really stupid and you'll be in like Flynn.

Of more immediate and pressing concern to the unhappy citizens of Oaxaca, APPO will not remove its temporary street barricades Saturday morning. These barricades will remain in place all weekend along with the permanent barricades around the Zócalo. In addition, APPO will block access to and from the city on the major highways as well as the airport. APPO mobs will block the major shopping and commercial centers and "transnational businesses". What? No Big Macs this weekend? Shit.

APPO will give Governor Ruiz Ortiz 72 hours to resign. APPO has not announced what they will do when he doesn't.

And to top it all off, there is a group of APPO hunger strikers somewhere in Mexico City, I think, who have announced stronger actions until Governor Ruiz Ortiz resigns. They say they have lost an average of 6 Kg (12 lbs.) and will now stop imbibing even the liquid nourishment which has been keeping them alive. No one, with the sad exceptions of their family members, I would suppose, has been paying any attention to them at all. And no one will, at least until they begin to expire.

At that time, as the hunger strikers begin to drop dead, one by one, and if Mexicans follow their usual pattern, there will be much wailing and the wringing of hands and the calls for more discussions and negotiations and meetings in Mexico City and congressional committees etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Then, at some time in the future, they'll begin naming streets after the dates-of-death of the various martyrs; "Si señor. The museum is just down that street, at the corner of calle Martire de (insert date of death) and calle Martire de (insert date of death). You can't miss it. Would you like me to call a taxi for you, the driver of which is a heavily armed pirate?"

Note: Not spell-checked. So sue me.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, AMLO, EZLN

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO mob met at school by furious parents; mob sent packing.

Yet another confrontation occurred yesterday between a masked and armed APPO mob and parents trying to get their kids into school. This time the battleground was the primary school Emiliano Zapata, the pre-primary school Rufino Tamayo and the secondary school Telesecundaria, all located on Pino Suarez. That's the boulevard that runs on the backside of Parque Llano, shown on tourist maps as Parque Benito Juarez. The mob arrived in 3 hijacked city buses. The members of the mob were masked and armed with machetes, clubs, iron bars and pipes. The mums were armed with bad attitudes. The result? Another embarrassment for the APPO warriors.

I'll have that machete, thank you.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.

Note: The mom in the above photo is disarming the thug, not stabbing him in the back. Too bad, really.

The moms are the ones who sally forth to confront the mobs. The dads make themselves scarce. The reason for this is twofold. There are more moms than dads available because pop is usually at work and it is assumed that the mobs won't try to physically assault women. I don't know how many more confrontations like this can occur before one or more mothers of school children get hurt. I would think it's only a matter of time.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, angry mothers

Oaxaca, Mexico: Governor Ruiz says, "What, me resign? No way José!"

Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz: ¿Mi renuncia? Ni está en la mesa, ni se me ha sugerido, ni la voy a aceptar".

My resignation? It is neither on the table nor has it been suggested to me nor would I accept it if it were.

"ni aunque me pongan una pistola en la sien, les voy a dar mi renuncia".

“not even if they were to put a pistol to my temple would I give them my resignation.”

Governor Ruiz blames a lack of resources for the almost 5 month-long strike. He says that the state only had 65 million pesos and the teachers union demanded 115 million. He said that if the state had been able to offer the teachers 115 million pesos back in May, the problems would have only lasted 5 or 6 days.

Uh-huh.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, SNTE, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz

Oaxaca, Mexico: Who is Rosario? APPO wants to know.

APPO spokesman Florentino López insists that his organization will respect the decision of the striking teachers, "whatever it may be". Now, Florentino insisted the same all last week but APPO, along with dissidents among the dissident teachers, rioted when the initial vote didn't go their way. What are dissidents of dissidents, anyway? Trissidents? I dunno.

The happy welders shown in the preceding post must not have gotten the word. Or perhaps respect" has a different meaning here. I know that "boycott" doesn’t mean the same thing in both languages. A boycott here means that not only does the boycotter not shop here, but nobody else does, either. The business, or whatever is the target of the boycott, is blocked and shut down. Anyone attempting to do business with the target of the boycott is threatened and/or assaulted.

Rosario, also known as "Rosie the Welder"

Florentino took great pains to point out that APPO neither condones nor supports the woman known only as "Rosario". Rosario was widely quoted over the weekend and yesterday as calling for an assault on and occupation of the hotel where the striking teachers are headquartered and where their polls are taken. She was interviewed by reporters as she filled bottles with gasoline for her Harley Davidson Molotov cocktails.

Florentino said that APPO disassociates itself from provocateurs such as "that woman called Rosario" and "provocations" such as Molotov cocktails and assaults on hotels. Some other women members of APPO called Rosario an "infiltrator". Well, APPO has openly welcomed its infiltration by socialists, Communists, guerrilla warriors and anarchists as well as common street thugs like APPO's leader, Flavio Sosa. Why not “Rosy the Welder” as well.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, SNTE, Rosario

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO declares war on schoolkids

I'll update you a bit on where we are now, although the situation is very fluid, to put a fine point on it. Unstable and chaotic, not to put too fine a point on it.

There have been two more people shot dead, one in Oaxaca and another in an outlying town. On Wednesday night, a teacher was gunned down after leaving an APPO meeting. Yesterday, a campesino leader of another dissident organization allied with APPO was shot outside his home in San Agustín Loxicha.

The teachers voted, supposedly, on Thursday and Friday to return to their classrooms. Enrique Rueda Pacheco, leader of the striking teachers of Section 22 of the SNTE, had announced earlier in the week that the teachers would no doubt approve the idea of returning to their classrooms. He more or less announced in advance the results of the poll taken amongst the rank and file. As the results came in from the various polling places around the state, Rueda Pacheco began to announce the results. His numbers showed that some 25,000 teachers voted to end the strike while some 15,000 voted to continue. The murmurings commenced. Every time Rueda Pacheco stood to announce the final results, he gave a different number. Eventually, Rueda Pacheco announced that the final, final and final tally was 25,692 in favor of returning to classes and 17,483 against.

Just one little problem. The questions that the teachers were asked to answer were: 1.) Do you accept the agreement made with the Secretary of Interior?; 2.) What date should we return to classes - next Monday (today) or the following Monday?; 3.) Do you wish to continue the strike until Governor Ruiz Ortiz leaves office?

12,129 teachers voted both to return to classes today and also to continue the strike until the governor is forced to step down. Rueda Pacheco, after all the wining and dining by Interior in Mexico City, having his ass kissed by Secretary of the Interior Abascal himself as well as having already announced to the press the results of the as yet uncounted votes, chose to ignore the 12,129 votes to continue until Governor Ruiz says, "Adios!" He announced that the teachers would return to work today, Monday.

The shouts and rocks, bottles and fists began to fly. "Rueda Pacheco you cursed traitor!" and "How much did you sell out for?" were among the printable epithets hurled at the until now popular social activist. Rueda Pacheco was reminded by a member of his staff -- no doubt a mathmetics teacher -- that 15,000 votes against returning to work and 12,000 votes for continuing the insurrection until the governor's ouster equalled 29,000 votes, a larger number than 25,692. Rueda Pacheco was forced to scrap the poll and announce a new one to be held this coming Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, the new poll will be a bit easier for the teachers to answer unequivocally, easier for the counters to count and easier for Rueda Pacheco to understand.

When he finally left "election central", he was again bombarded with epithets, missiles and kicks and punches. Hence, no school today.

"What did I do to deserve this?"

To help assure that there will be no public schools, APPO mechanics have spread out through the city with portable welders and are welding the gates shut at every public school property they can find.









Meanwhile, at the permanent (24/7) barricades around the city's center, more and more APPO thugs can be seen carrying homemade rocket launchers to use against a possible assault by federal police. There were many gunshots in and around the barricades in the pre dawn hours yesterday but no casualties were reported. All that the APPO security details found was a pickup truck on fire.



And in those schools where parents, teachers and students had arrrived before the APPO gate welding specialists, armed mobs of APPO supporters strode upon the scene, forcing the parents to evacuate their children. At 11:00 this morning, a mob armed with clubs, rocks, pipes, iron bars and machetes approached the primary school Francisco Zarco, in colonia Pueblo Nuevo. There were 800 kids inside and a number of parents performing cleanup and guard duty. The parents had to evacuate the children. A mother went after a machete armed masked APPO thug and tried to take away his weapon. She failed but she did send him packing, running away and hurling threats at her over his shoulder.
APPO warriors celebrate great victory. 30 lightly armed warriors routed 800 vicious killers, kindergarden through 6th graders.

And, in a somewhat humorous note, angry parentrs turned the tables on striking teachers in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec this morning. When some teachers arrived to reopen the secondary school Secundaria Técnica Número 5 and the primary school 20 de Noviembre, parents who had opened the schools themselves back on the 7th of September threw the teachers out. The parents accuse the teachers of showing up just to perform minor clerical duties so that they can claim to be working and begin receiving their salaries. One angry mother who has been teaching in the school since September 7 told the teachers, "We're not going to allow you to come in here just to perform student signup work so that you can receive your last two weeks' pay."

Sources: El Univeral
La Crónica
Reforma

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, Sección 22, SNTE

Rachel Corrie: Some other Rachels finally get their due

Kesher Talk posts a copy of a flyer that was handed out every evening at the stagings of the Alan Rickman play, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie". The title of the flyer is, All The Rachels.

I wrote about some other Rachels here and here. I was contacted by Ginette Thaler, the mother of Rachel Thaler, whose picture you will see on the flyer handed out at the play. I think that you should all read what Rachel Thaler's mother had to say. I'll excerpt some of her comments from the post but you should really read it all.

It's funny because it was always important to Rachel to be wanted and to have a lot of friends around her. The day before the bombing we had passed a cemetery where many cars were parked outside. Jokingly, we said wow, it must be someone important. She said to me, "Mom, if it was your funeral, there would be few people, but if it were mine, it would be more crowded than this," or words to that effect. That was the day before the bombing.....

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TAGS: Rachel

Iowahawk: Howard Dean's letter to American conservatives warns of "scourge of international homo-ism"

David Burge publishes a letter to all American conservatives from Dr. Howard Dean, Chairman, Democratic National Committee. The letter addresses American conservatives' concern for the welfare of their children,

whether they are plucking their banjos on the back porch, speaking tongues to snakes at Jesus Camp, or torching crosses at your local Nascar racing contest.

Dean, as is his style, pulls no punches when naming names:

Mark Foley: "the Florida Republican gay pervert congressman who spent night after night on the godless internet discussing unnatural sex acts and interior decoration with innocent underaged pages."

Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig: "is less interested in Boise than he is in "boy-sies." Now that his sickening secret is out, the good conservative folks of Idaho can send this pansy packing to San Francisco where he can be Potato Queen in the the next pride parade."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert: "the mincing minnie who ran the GOP's Foley coverup? A former high school 'wrestling coach.'"

California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger: "A curious fondness for flexing his oiled pecs while parading around in a pair of skimpy Speedos."

Dick Armey: "You do the math."

Dean also has some less than kind words for "negros" Michael Steele, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell. As they say, read it all.

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TAGS: Iowahawk, David Burge, Howard Dean, Deliverance

US Congress: 16% of voters approve of this Congress!

I wonder where those morons live. Massachusetts and New York, no doubt.

Still, other reports have it that 60% of voters approve of THEIR representatives in the House and Senate. It's yours who are the lying, stealing, corkscrewing flim-flam men (or, in the case of Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer et al, flim-flam women).

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TAGS: US Congress, Why do we bother?

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO tries to turn up the heat

APPO spokesman Florentino López has called upon APPO followers all over the state to take over and occupy the city halls of every city, town and village in the state. He also announced that the "roving brigades" would be reintroduced on the streets of this city to again begin shutting down government offices.

He also announced that there will be a "massive" gathering in the city tomorrow and that in the next few hours APPO would make public a "manifesto" directed at all the people of Mexico. He said that APPO would lead nationwide "mobilizations" on October 21 and 28 which would be "directed from Mexico city". Directed from Mexico City, eh? Hmmm. This is beginning to look and sound more and more like a revolution. The federal government must think so, too, because it is being reported that President Fox will convene his "Security Committee" to discuss the situation in Oaxaca. The Security Committee last met to approve sending federal troops to Nuevo Laredo to wrest control of that city's streets from the drug barons who had taken control. We all know how well that's going. The troops and federal police patrol the city's streets by day, rushing forensic teams from one murder scene to the next, then turn the city over to the drug gunmen for the night.

As a sidelight, the APPO occupied Juarez University radio station that has been on the fritz for a month or so began broadcasting again last night. That gives APPO 2 illegally occupied radio stations in decent working order. It's a far cry from the 10 they held this time last month.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, revolution

Mexico: After the debacle in Tabasco, AMLO's PRD self-destructs

After the crushing loss in his Tabasco stronghold, where his PRD gubernatorial candidate lost by more than 10 points, Andrés Manuel López Obrador's party begins to commit suicide. One of the party's founders and a long time AMLO sidekick, Auldárico Hernández Gerónimo, has demanded that the ex-PRI and now current PRD party leadership be tossed out in the wake of the election fiasco. He has called for the removal of the state's PRD party director as well as the losing gubernatorial candidate. Hernández Gerónimo says that he warned PRD candidate Raúl Ojeda Zubieta several times prior to this past Sunday's election to "come down off your cloud and mingle with the common folk", but, "as an ex-Priista, he refused to do so."

The PRD party machinery, switching immediately into tit-for-tat mode, has convened its Disciplinary Committee to propose the ouster from the party of Hernández Gerónimo as well as several other PRD founders and long-time AMLO supporters who refused to support the party's candidate.

The questions remain: Who is feeding and paying the bills for AMLO's supporters still camped out all over downtown Mexico City? And who is feeding and paying the bills for the APPO and SNTE Section 22 campers spread out all over Oaxaca as well as Mexico City? Who is paying for the 3 or 4 times per week round trip plane tickets to Mexico City for APPO leader Flavio Sosa and his staff? Who is funneling him money in sufficient quantities to enable his children to attend a private school here in Oaxaca while 1.3 million public school children have no classes?

If and when those persons can be found and, uh, removed from the loop, the refusal of APPO and the striking teachers to negotiate a meaningful agreement should mysteriously disappear. Unfortunately, one might have to travel all the way to Havana and then to Caracas to find those sources.

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TAGS: Tabasco, Mexico, PRD, AMLO

Oaxaca, Mexico: Fireworks here and political wriggling in Mexico City

There are fireworks going off all over the city right now (10:30 AM). I don't know why. The APPO occupiers in the downtown and those manning the permanent barricades all over the city use rockets and bombs to signal one another. This goes on especially heavily during the night or whenever there is something that gets them all stirred up. No one has yet been able to determine exactly what the signals, er, signify.

Originally, APPO said that the fireworks would be used by any blockade or roving brigade that ran into trouble and needed help. By now, however, the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air occur sporadically, day and night, and with no clear meaning, other than, "Hey, I gots me some dry matches!"

Meanwhile, in Mexico City, Governor Ruiz Ortiz met with the Undersecretary of the Interior, one Arturo Chávez Chávez (I kid you not, that's his name). That kind of reminds me of a fellow I used to see on TV a lot. His name was Raymond J. Johnson Johnson, Jr. -- "Just don't call me 'Johnson'." Anyway, Ruiz Ortiz Ortiz and Chávez Chávez Chávez jointly announced that the state governor would abide by the Senate's pending decision on his fate, no matter the outcome. They added that, regardless of that outcome, the problems in Oaxaca would not go away. Profound.

At Los Pinos (the presidential palace), President Fox met with the Senate's leading PAN representatives to ask that the PAN senators vote on the Ortiz Ruiz matter as a united bloque and that there be no "waste". His comments were reported in the Senate by Senator Santiago Creel as "Every senator is free to vote his conscience on this matter." Uh-huh.

Undersecretary Chávez Chávez Chávez Chávez's boss, Secretary of the Interior Carlos Abascal, held a press conference on the Oaxaca issue with reporters where he refused to answer any questions. He asked, instead, for more time to do his work and complained that press conferences were interfering with his thought processes and work ethic. He also reportedly exclaimed, "Progress? We don't have no progress. I don't have to show you no stinkin' progress!"

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, APPO, Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz

Oaxaca, Mexico: National Senate refuses to remove Governor Ruiz Ortiz

The Mexican Senate will officially announce later today that it cannot justify the removal from office of Oaxaca's Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. According to sources inside the Senate, the holdup on the official announcement is due to ongoing negotiations over whether or not to request that Governor Ruiz Ortiz voluntarily step down and in what, if any, language that request should be broached.

The basis for the petition presented to the Senate demanding the governor's dismissal was the alleged "non-performance of the three powers of the state" -- the legislative, ejecutive and judicial powers. As evidence of the "disappearence" of these powers, the petitioners provided documentation that many state offices were forced to move their operations to alternate sites because of the insurrection in the streets.

The Senate replied that, on the contrary, relocating state offices proved that the state continues to perform its official duties. Had the state simply shut down the various branches of its government as offices and other facilities were attacked, occupied and/or barricaded, that might have been a different matter.

We'll see how APPO and Section 22 of the SNTE respond. Supposedly, the teachers union will hold forums with its rank and file later today to consider, again, their return to classrooms. It has been the position, self-declared as non-negotiable by APPO and the teachers, that they would not return to their jobs without the removal of Ruiz Ortiz from office

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, SNTE, Section 22

Enron: Ken Lay's conviction erased

Ken Lay innocent! Stll dead at last report, however.

This means that his wife gets to keep the $44 million he stole from Enron employees and stockholders. How nice for her. This also means that patrician-coiffed but IQ-challenged Democratic Senators will be lining up their marriage proposals, ala John Kerry/Teresa (Tay-RAY-sah) Heinz. Git it while it's hot!

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TAGS: Enron, Kenneth Lay

Computer crashes: You've got to RAM your ROM

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data are corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

When the copy on your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk,
and the macro code instruction's causing unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

By Graham Hicks, published in the Edmonton Sun, Oct. 16, 2006

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TAGS: computer crash, RAM your ROM

Mexico election: AMLO and his PRD -- slowly twisting, twisting in the wind

Andrés Manuel López Obrador -- AMLO -- is from the state of Tabasco. He is revered as a near saint in that poor southeastern Mexican state. It was from Tabasco that he launched his presidential aspirations which he so bitterly watched crash and burn in July.

Now, AMLO has been abandoned by his own people.

AMLO spent the past 3 weeks on his home turf campaigning desperately to salvage the gubernatorial election for his PRD candidate, César Raúl Ojeda. And he was not alone. He was joined in the state by just about everybody who is anybody in the PRD, save Cuahtemoc Cárdenas, the grand old man of the PRD who has no use for AMLO.

Campaigning alongside AMLO were Leonel Cota Montaño, PRD National Director; Guadalupe Acosta, Secretary General of the PRD; Gerardo Fernández Noroña, national spokeman for the PRD; PRD Senate Coordinator Carlos Navarrete; Mexico City Coordinator Víctor Hugo Círigo; the PRD's representatives in the IFE (federal election institute) as well as various PRD Senators and Congressmen.

Ojeda was crushed yesterday by the candidate of the formerly hated PRI, Andrés Granier Melo. It looks like Granier has defeated AMLO's guy by at least 10 points and maybe as many as 14 and that would have to be considered a landslide victory or a humiliating defeat, depending upon your political persuasion.

From what I have been able to glean, it looks like AMLO has tried to take control of the PRD party in the much same manner that the caciques (despots) controlled the PRI (and probably still do) for so many decades. He has been accused of foisting an unpopular candidate on his formerly loyal supporters in Tabasco and running roughshod over state and local PRD officials. He is accused of using the infamous "dedazo" -- literally, "the tap", or the method by which a Mexican PRI president historically has tapped, or chosen, his successor.

PRD national officials lost no time in declaring that the Tabasco results would not affect AMLO's national standing. Right. This would be akin to Teddy Kennedy investing 3 weeeks of his precious time campaigning tirelessly throughout Massachusetts for his hand picked Democratic candidate and then seeing the Rev. Jerry Falwell get elected governor by a result of 55 to 45. Or, better, President George Bush moving to Texas and campaigning all over the state for his Republican gubernatorial choice and then watching in horror as the Rev. Al Sharpton got elected Texas governor, 57 to 43. It just couldn't happen.

But it has.

Perhaps the Tabasco state PRI director has said it best:

AMLO is just like an elephant. He came home to his own land to die.

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TAGS: Mexico election, AMLO, PRD, Tabasco

Oaxaca, Mexico: National SNTE threatens to dump local teachers

In many posts about this ongoing circus down here, I have referred to the striking teachers as the SNTE, which is the national teachers union led by Elba Esther Gordillo. That is technically correct. However, it would perhaps have been more precise to have referred to them as Section 22 of the SNTE, as the Oaxacan section is known. The SNTE national has never openly supported Oaxaca's Section 22. Nor, until yesterday, had the national union ever openly opposed Section 22.

Now comes the president of the SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo, who says the national has formed an executive committee to study the disenfranchisement of Section 22 here in Oaxaca. She listed several reasons, first and foremost being the violent coercion exercised by Section 22 against teachers who wish to return to their classrooms. She detailed threats, vandalism, beatings and murder committed by Section 22 against its own. She says she has asked the federal government to provide protection for those teachers who wish to return to work. She claims to have in her hands a petition signed by 15,000 Oaxacan teachers, all members of Section 22, asking the national to help them return to work in spite of the official position of the Section 22 leadership.

She also took great pains to point out that those who go on national TV and appear in other media outlets claiming that the actions of Section 22 in Oaxaca are representative of the SNTE national are lying. According to the SNTE president herself, the national union does not support its Section 22 in Oaxaca. She says the national union is studying the possibility of sending teacher brigades down here to help reopen the schools. Now that would result in bloodshed, for sure.

She also blamed the actions which the SNTE national may take against its Section 22 on the local teachers union's consistent rejections of every proposal made by the Secretary of Interior as well as by the national union itself. She claimed that the total package of financial inducements by the federal and state governments and the SNTE national itself, including the SNTE national's offer to pay all the Section 22 membership's union dues, state and federal salary hikes and "re-zonification" (I'll explain later) total more than 12 billion pesos annually. That works out to roughly 50,000 dollars US per Oaxacan teacher. Fifty grand per teacher would be a piece of change even in the USA. But Section 22 has rejected all the offers while insisting that the state's governor must leave office or be kicked out by the federal government.

Gordillo says that it is not the proper position for herself, the SNTE national nor Section 22 to say whether or not the governor stays or goes. She says that the problems between Section 22 and the government are no longer labor related but have become political. As such, the national union cannot support the local, Section 22.

Now, let's try to keep in mind that Elba Esther Gordillo is a rank political player. She is a long-time member of the former ruling party, the PRI. She was "elected" head of the SNTE after being put forward for the job by former President Carlos Salinas, who headed what was possibly the most corrupt Mexican government in a long, long line of corrupt Mexican governments. She was put forward for the job when the former SNTE president became, er, unmanageable.

She also became the leader of the PRI contingent in the Mexican Congress. When it seemed she had grown too cozy with the PAN's President Vicente Fox, the old-time PRI leadership, called the "dinosaurs" here, stripped her of her position. Her opposition was led by Roberto Madrazo, the losing (badly) PRI candidate for president in the recently concluded 2006 election. In a snit, she formed a new political party so that she could put forward a fringe presidential candidate and take her union's 1.5 million votes with her. In this manner, she could deny the votes to Madrazo while not seeming to support the PAN (Calderon, the winner) or the PRD (AMLO, the winner wannabee). Madrazo and the PRI were badly embarrassed by their disastrous showing in the election and Gordillo's hatred of Madrazo was a key reason.

I might also add that she survived a serious bout with cancer that came very close to killing her and may yet.

Re-zonification? In Mexico there is a national minimum wage just as in the USA. However, the minimum wage here is not a coast-to-coast deal. It's also not a "pesos per hour" deal but rather a "pesos per day" one. The country is divided up into 3 economic zones, called A, B and C with Zone A being the ultimate. Zone A includes Mexico City, Acapulco, the Bajas and border cities Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros, among others. The minimum wage for Zone A is about 7% higher than for Zone C which includes Oaxaca and Chiapas. The SNTE negotiates its own zones, I think, somewhat comparable to the national zones, I think, but called I, II, III etc., I think -- getting definitive information on this is like pulling teeth. The minimum wage in Zone III (again, Mexico City and other places) is the highest while Oaxaca and Chiapas occupy the lowest paid zone . . . I think.

Most salaries, be they public or private, are based upon a particular zone's minimum wage and are so quoted; 3 times minimum wage, 2 times minimum wage etc. Even traffic fines and fines handed out by judges are quoted in minimum wage terms. "He was fined 120 days of minimum wage" is a common way to state a big fat fine handed out by a judge. A salary of, say, 3 times minimum wage in Oaxaca would be about 7% lower than a comparable salary in Mexico City because the minimum wage here is 7% lower, roughly. The cost of living here in Oaxaca, however, is probably 10% higher overall than in Mexico City. You see the problem(s).

One of the demands of the striking teachers from Section 22 has been that they be paid the same as the teachers in Zone III, wherever that is, hence, "re-zonification". That's probably fair. In fact, the entire national tiered minimum wage scheme should probably be scrapped. There are a lot of other economic schemes prescribed by law in Mexico that should also probably be scrapped because none of them work . . . but they won't be. If they were scrapped then the richer would get less rich, or richer at a slightly slower rate while the poor would become less poor, or become poorer at a slower rate. That could not be tolerated by those who have the gold and make the rules (see Google Search: rule, golden, how it really works).

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, SNTE, Section 22, Elba Esther Gordillo

Oaxaca, Mexico: Weekend casualties so far -- 1 dead and 2 hospitalized

Four guys left a strip joint at 2:30 AM yesterday. They arrived at street barricade. An ambulance came blaring through and the barricade was lifted for the ambulance. When the 4 men tried to take advantage of this by also passing through the barricade, the APPO aficionados tried to stop them. Shots were fired from the men's car. Alejandro García Hernández, one of the APPO followers, was left dead in the street with a gunshot to the head. Another protester was wounded in the shoulder.

In another incident the same morning, a drunk motorist ran over a person manning another street barricade leaving the squashed one hospitalized in fair condition.

Funeral on the Zócalo, Governor blamed, normal weekend, nothing to see here, move along.

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TAGS: Oaxaca, Mexico, Oaxaca teachers strike, APPO, SNTE, violence