Well, this will have to do until I get something with a perspective of what it means for the largest country in Latin America, the Bolivarian Alliance, the coincidence with Ecuador, possibly Nicaragua joining, all in a time of a weakening hold of a century-long control by the U.S., depleted by the massive and losing drain of Iraq. The sort of thing the young journalist just killed in Oaxaca might write. I'll pass that one on, if I get it. Meanwhile, a relatively balanced horse race report, plus a pretty neat take off of our looming holiday. Actually, a holiday commemorated by the Chinese from time immemorial, my great teacher James Wing Woo told me this morning. One visits family and friends who have passed on, as will he. All Hallows Eve I think goes back to pagan times. I think it's about the coming darkness and enclosure of winter. Humanity reflects and remembers. A nice thought. Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/americas/30brazil.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin Brazil's President Roars Back to Win Vote NY Times: Mon Oct 30, 2006 RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 29 - Overcoming a series of corruption and political scandals that tarred his image and undermined his credibility, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil won a landslide re-election victory in a runoff vote on Sunday. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Mr. da Silva, a former factory worker and labor union leader running as the candidate of the left-wing Workers Party, had 60.8 percent of the vote. The percentage of the vote going to his opponent, Geraldo Alckmin of the center-left Brazilian Social Democratic Party, dropped in comparison with the 41.6 percent he won in the first round of balloting on Oct. 1, when Mr. da Silva fell just short of the majority he needed to win outright. "This is an extraordinary result, one that gives him a legitimacy that all the accusations had perhaps broken," said Jairo Nicolau, a television commentator and political science professor at the Candido Mendes University here, referring to Mr. da Silva. "It's one thing to win a narrow victory and something else altogether to register this level of support after all that has happened." Wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed "The victory is Brazil's," Mr. da Silva spoke to supporters at a hotel in São Paulo on Sunday night, saying that "Brazil is living a magical moment" and expressing his gratitude to voters for their faith in him. "The people knew how to distinguish between what was true and what wasn't," he said, before adding that he had "learned a lot" in power and promising to make a greater effort to combat corruption. Mr. da Silva took office in January 2003, promising a new era of social justice and clean government in this nation of 185 million people, the world's fourth-largest democracy. But his luster began to fade a year later, when an aide was caught on film soliciting campaign donations from numbers-game kingpins here. Then, in May of last year, a much larger scandal erupted. Though it was initially limited to corruption in government contracts, investigations by congressional committees and the news media soon established the existence of an illegal multimillion-dollar slush fund used to finance Mr. da Silva's 2002 campaign, and to pay off legislators from small political parties to support his government. The metastasizing scandals forced the resignation of Mr. da Silva's chief of staff and his minister of finance, as well as the president, treasurer and secretary general of the party Mr. da Silva founded in 1980 and has led ever since. As a result, opinion polls taken late last year consistently indicated that the president would be defeated if he ran for re-election. To make matters worse, the police last month apprehended operatives of Mr. da Silva's party as they were about to pay $792,000 in cash for a dossier they apparently thought would damage Mr. Alckmin's chances. Though that weakened Mr. da Silva in the first round of balloting, he benefited from an improved economy and a welfare program that delivers a monthly stipend of about $45 to nearly 12 million poor families. "Lula's turnaround is based mostly on the economy," said Alberto Carlos Almeida, a political scientist. "That, combined with the social programs, gives the electorate the impression that he is really taking care of the poor. There is the appearance of stability, and so people want continuity." After being chastised by the first-round vote on Oct. 1, Mr. da Silva adopted a new campaign slogan: "Don't trade the sure thing for the dubious." That clearly resonated with the working-class voters who have always provided his electoral base. "Lula cares about the poor, and that's what matters to me, more than all this talk about corruption, which we've always had," Jane Cunha, a 56-year-old maid, said at a polling place here Sunday morning. "I earn the minimum wage, and thanks to him, my salary has gone up $20 a month and the price of food has gone down enough that I'm eating a lot more meat than in the past." Mr. da Silva has governed on the right, at least as regards his conservative economic policy. He has run up the kind of budget surpluses that delight Wall Street and the International Monetary Fund, and bank profits are at an all-time high. But in recent weeks, he has "campaigned on the left," in the words of Marco Aurelio Garcia, Mr. da Silva's national security adviser. A loan repayment to the I.M.F., for example, was repackaged as Mr. da Silva giving the organization its walking papers, and telling it to keep its nose out of Brazil's affairs. In addition, the president repeatedly accused Mr. Alckmin of planning to dismantle the government's social welfare programs and to privatize state-owned companies and banks. "Alckmin was pushed to the right and placed on the defensive, and was never able to get out of that posture," Mr. Nicolau said. "He could neither defend himself nor offer his own program." As is often the case, the candidates' personalities also played a part in voters' calculations. Mr. da Silva never passed up an opportunity to refer to his humble origins, similar to those of a majority of the electorate, while Mr. Alckmin, a physician whose specialty is anesthesiology, proved unable to shake his image as a bland and somewhat pedantic son of the middle class. Mr. Alckmin sought to capitalize on the corruption scandals, making them the centerpiece of his campaign. But he was perceived as being too aggressive on the subject, and the lack of progress in the official investigation of the dossier scandal undermined his argument that Mr. da Silva was ultimately responsible. "Because of all the corruption denunciations, I voted for Alckmin in the first round, based on emotion," said Valmir Moura, a 38-year-old office clerk here. "But this time I stopped to reason things through, and I realized his whole campaign is based on nothing but accusations and that he hasn't presented a program for governing. So I went back to Lula." *** ZNet Commentary Godzilla vs. The Condoleezzard (Halloween in the United States of Anxiety) October 29, 2006 By Mickey Z Halloween is an odd holiday. The ostensible concept, as it has evolved to become, is to shock, startle, frighten, petrify, horrify, and/or terrify...all while consuming enough high fructose corn syrup to keep the American Dental Association content for another century or two. Every year, as October 31 nears, loyal Americans eagerly squander a small fortune to adorn their humble abodes with Made-in-China images of tombstones, skulls, ghouls, goblins, monsters, zombies, and even the occasional bloody severed limb or two. While none of these cardboard depictions scare me as much as, say, the upcoming fifth installment of Stallone's "Rocky" series, I do believe there are plenty of real-life creatures that might warrant their own Halloween mask this year...and I'm not just talking about celluloid slashers. Ghosts, to me, are not a bigger or more urgent concern than irreparable environmental damage, and I certainly lose less sleep over the dead rising from their graves to eat me than I do a planet populated with oppressed and starving humans. Forget Freddie of Elm St., I give you Henry the Horrible (Kissinger, that is): "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World, because the U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." Never mind Jason and his hockey mask when Ann Coulter is playing right wing: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." No need to worry about a fire-breathing reptile like Godzilla when a Condoleezard is loose in DC: "There is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect." And, let's face it, a nocturnal bloodsucker named Dracula is nothing compared to the Big Bad Bushes of Yale roaming the earth both day and night: Bush the Elder: "I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are." Bush the Lesser: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Of course, if none of those political poltergeist sends a chill down your ever-loving spine, you can chew on this factoid as you devour those Twizzlers, Bon Bons, and Almond Joys: For the first time in history, there are as many underweight people in the world as there are overweight people: 1.1 billion of each. (Running parallel to that troubling trend comes the reality that 100 million Americans-one-third the population-are either underinsured or uninsured when it comes to health care.) In other words...step away from the candy corn. If you're still not quaking in your boots or pulling the covers over your head, let's take this hunt for horror global. Think about this as all those kids-in overpriced Barney costumes-come knocking on your door, expecting candy and more: Across the globe, an estimated 29,158 children under the age of 5 die from mostly preventable causes every single day. Cue the ominous music: 29,158 dead. Under the age of 5. Every single day. From mostly preventable causes. The next time you're at a sporting event or a concert, take a good, slow look around you and get a feel for what 29,158 looks like. It's a whole lot more terrifying than the whir of a chainsaw echoing down a desolate Texas highway. Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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