..."among the list of attendees were prominent figures such as the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld;  Mexico's Secretary of Public Security, Eduardo Medina Mora;  and General Rick Hilliers, Chief of Canadian Forces."..."High executives from the military- industrial complex and from oil companies were present in the forum, including executives of Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Petroleos Mexicanos, Suncor Energy" reported Michel Chossudovsky, a professor at the University of Ottawa..."There were no journalists, there were no press releases, nor bulletins to inform the public, and there in fact was an information shutdown on the part of the news media.  The meeting program was as guarded as if it were a State secret."

...the electoral authorities have needlessly encouraged suspicions about Calderon's victory. The Federal Electoral Tribunal...failed to disclose details of its partial recount, which showed widespread irregularities in the computation of the votes. And even though it condemned illegal campaign advertisements and the intervention of President Vicente Fox, it failed to assess their overall impact. In an election decided by only 230,000 votes out of 41 million cast, even small discrepancies could have made a big difference...  The Florida ballots from the 2000 U.S. presidential elections were not destroyed... Ohio delayed the destruction of its presidential ballots from 2004 to allow further study of irregularities... Mexicans deserve no less.

Laura Carlsen, Mexico City director of the International Relations Center's Americas Program:

...one has to have power to leverage power. Most of the millions who voted a second time for Lopez Obrador on September 16 have, for the most part, only the two feet they stand on for leveraging power. They believe that Calderon's PAN is the party of the rich and powerful. The government-in-resistance is their bid for a voice in a political system that has systematically excluded them.

The Mexican energy sector, controlled by the government, is the object of desire of international capital.  Embracing the end of the formal electoral process and "the reformist spirit of the incoming government", one of the subsidiaries of Forbes, the media consortium of U.S. magnate and politician Steve Forbes, brought together a tight group of businessmen to invite them to "design a new Mexico."... [The forum document] offers its [own] solution to the economic problems of Mexico:  "The solution is to carry out structural reforms, specifically in matters relating to labor, government spending, and energy."..."

In the best case scenario, the administration of President Fox and his businessman's democracy will have generated 1 million formal jobs [i.e., listed with regulatory agencies] by the end of the 6 year period [of his presidency], in a period in which about 7 million Mexicans were added to the labor market... Without even considering the shameful historic retrogression in wages, during the "change" [i.e. the end of the 70-year PRI party electoral dictatorship] only 14 of every 100 Mexicans succeeded in finding a job in the formal sector of the economy, independently of the steep deterioration in the quality of those positions.  The rest survive as they are able.

Or an organized, mobilized grassroots "civil resistance" to Mexico's rabid supply sider government policies ("neoliberal" in Latin American discussions)?

What, then?

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, liberal-left activists are today heading toward Mexico City's downtown plaza (the Zócalo) to the National Democracy Convention to declare something.

Energies are up after Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his co-ralliers pressured outgoing President Fox to give the Independence Day speech (the "Grito") not in the Zócalo but in the alternate location of the small albeit historical town of Dolores Hidalgo.

President Vicente Fox backed away from another showdown with Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday, announcing that he wouldn´t hold the annual Independence Day celebration in the capital´s main Zócalo square to avoid protesters... López Obrador and his supporters had vowed to upstage Fox by refusing to take part in Friday´s annual salute of "Viva Mexico!" delivered each year by the president. They are planning to take over the Zócalo for their own celebration, and some had feared clashes if pro-government revelers showed up... Fox will move his ceremony to the small, central town of Dolores Hidalgo, 170 miles (270 kilometers) northwest of Mexico City, where Roman Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo launched the first call for independence from Spain in 1810. The town is located in Fox´s home state of Guanajuato, a bastion of support for his conservative National Action Party (PAN).

[O]rganizers of Saturday´s National Democratic Convention geared up for what they claim will be a watershed event... [T]he convention will mark a strategic turning point for the political movement led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost the presidency by a slim margin in what his supporters insist was a fraud-marred election... [T]he López Obrador forces will use Saturday´s assembly to launch an ongoing civil resistance or shadow government in opposition to conservative President-elect Felipe Calderón, whom they call a "usurper."... [O]rganizers said they expect more than 1 million volunteer delegates from all 31 states and the Federal District, many of whom were chosen in town hall meetings... [F]ormer López Obrador campaign coordinator Jesús Ortega said Wednesday that almost 800,000 delegates had been registered since the convention was announced on Aug. 19.

For the new president, the task of governance will not be an easy one. The country is divided in half geographically (Calderón won the industrial north, López Obrador the highly indigenous, resource-rich south) and by critical issues of class and race. The breach between the brown underclass and the tiny white elite that Calderón represents will limit his ability to institute the free-market neoliberal policies that his campaign championed... Calderón will have more support outside Mexico than inside...Now that the [the Electoral Court] has confirmed his "victory," Washington and European Union members--like Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero--are eager to get in on the ground floor of the PEMEX [state owned gigantic oil producer] fire sale and will seek to legitimize Calderón's presidency beyond Mexico's borders.

Not giving up, not going away. More below.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Robert Rubin is arguably the most successful Treasury Chief since Hamilton, and, in my opinion, it would behoove Democratic candidates to adhere to the economic policies which proved so successful for President William Jefferson Clinton and him.

What are the philosophical underpinnings of these policies?

A belief in the Power of Government.

Robert Rubin, President Clinton, Soros, and AMLO (in Mexico), all believe in free markets.  But, unlike Bush in the US or Calderon in Mexico, they also realize that laissez-faire economics often fails, and when it does, it is the responsibility of government to intervene, to "cure" the market imbalances.

My favorite quote:

El reciente desarrollo económico de México abre posibilidades para avanzar en esas reformas, dijo Wolfowitz, para quien "México no sufre de demasiadas reformas, sufre de demasiado pocas". Además, dijo, debe invertirse en salud y educación dirigida a los sectores poblacionales más vulnerables.

Translation:
The recent economic development in Mexico opens opportunities of moving forwards with the reforms, said Wolfowitz who said, "Mexico hasn't suffered from too many [economic] reforms, it suffers of having too few." Furthermore, he said, Mexico must invest in health and education focusing on the poorest sectors of the population.

Found it at:
Sendero De Fecal

Source, Publico, Guadalajara's newspaper within the Milenio Group:
Publico-Milenio Group

Proceso, a Mexican political weekly magazine, used the transparency laws to request a copy from every ballot so that it could conduct an independent recount of the ballots, similar to that done in the media in Florida in 2000.

IFE has rejected the request, claiming that the ballots are not public records(!?) And that the Consejo General has the duty to process, guard, and destroy the ballots.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/...

Back in July, Mexico went to the polls to elect a new President.  The result was close - very close - and following allegations of fraud, defeated candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his followers took to the streets to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount. Meanwhile, the results were also challenged in the Federal Electoral Tribunal. Last night, the tribunal delivered its ruling, upholding the result and declaring Felipe Calderon the winner. While they found some discrepancies in the count, they were not deemed to have affected the overall result.

Strangely enough, it doesn't look like the protest movement is dying down just yet.  They still proclaim the 16 September "National Democracy Convention" which has been variously viewed as a circus of loony activists which will make noise and have no effect, or as a dangerous rebellion which will declare a parallel government and thus destabilize the nation, or as the launching pad for a grassroots social movement to press for needed reforms such as helping Mexico's large population of desperately poor people -- whom the outgoing President Fox neglected to report on in his last report.  Comment and gloat away below.

The Federal Judicial Authority Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF in Spanish) published Monday the convocation for the magistrates to pronounce a ruling on the final count of the presidential election, and, in such case, the declaration of validity of the election and the president-elect....The Superior Court of the TEPJF will open its public session beginning at 8 am local time.

Informally I submit the song "Quien engaña no gana" from Ojos de Brujo, a Barcelona music collective, as one of the Mexico News Roundup unofficial theme songs.

Below the fold, an editorial from the New Mexico-based International Relations Center.

 Mexico tense ahead of key speech
By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Mexico City

Hundreds of riot police have surrounded Mexico's Congress building ahead of a speech from the outgoing President, Vicente Fox.

They are on guard against thousands of supporters of the left-wing candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Some of his party's deputies have threatened to disrupt Mr Fox's speech inside the chamber.

Mr Lopez Obrador claims he was robbed of victory by massive fraud in the recent presidential election.

continued below

Of the 600 registered voters polled by El Universal on Aug. 9, 59 percent said there was fraud while 39 percent said the election was clean. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, El Universal said today.

El Universal Poll

It also showed that 65% of those polled disapproved of the on going protests lead by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) demanding a total recount.

Meanwhile, AMLO resolves to carry on, in a speech yesterday he said the fight could go on for years, including blockading of patriotic and government events scheduled in September, such as the "State of the Nation" (informe) address on 9/1, the celebrations in the zocolo of the grito on 9/16 and the annual military parade.