of running the country.

...the divided Left in Mexico and Amlo's position in the PRD and the country. Amlo left office as mayor of Mexico City with an 80% approval rating. He came within a half a percent of winning the presidency in the previous election. And he is the 'scariest' Leftist to the Corporate Rulers and War Profiteers who run the U.S.

But it is precisely the shadowy hand of the U.S. and its rulers that the article does not sufficiently address. Bush Jr--who never touched anything that he didn't destroy--helped rig the election that Amlo "lost" by a hairsbreadth and installed Calderon, whose mission was to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource. He failed. The opposition to it was too strong. So, as a parting shot, Jr. tossed a couple of billions of our tax dollars to the fascists in Mexico--for the corrupt, murderous, failed (and in Bush's hands, reversed) U.S. "war on drugs"--in order to smash up and brutalize Mexican society and likely to segue into his activities in Colombia (consolidation of the cocaine trade into fewer hands and direction of its trillion+ dollar illicit revenue stream to the Bush Cartel, the CIA, U.S. banksters and other beneficiaries).

Things have gotten so bad in Latin America, with the U.S. "war on drugs," that the rightwing president of Colombia is calling for the legalization of drug use. So has a commission of former presidents of Mexico (immediate legalization of marijuana and re-thinking of the entire "war on drugs&quot and the rightwing president of Guatemala (complete legalization, now). This is now the common and overwhelming opinion in LatAm. And the underlying reason for it is that the "war" has been reversed (by the Bush Junta). It was turned into a "war" FOR the big, well-connected drug lords. There may also be a Big Pharma hand behind these rightwing politicians--they are now ready for legalization--but the sheer destruction of LatAm countries by this U.S. "war" is the main motive for this common opinion across the political spectrum. Legalization is the only solution.

Among the horrible messes that Bush Jr. made around the world, that the Obama administration feels obliged to clean up (or cover up), this a bigger one than most of our people realize. During the Bush Junta, the U.S. "war on drugs" in Colombia was additionally used to destroy the Left--to outright murder thousands of trade unionists, community activists, teachers, human rights workers, peasant farmer organizers and other advocates of the poor. This was also the Bush Junta's intention in Mexico--and in the Bush Junta-designed coup in Honduras, which unfolded only six months into the Obama administration and was openly used by the rightwing here--led by Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold)--to blackmail Obama on LatAm appointments, as well as to secure cocaine routes for the big, protected drug lords through Honduras. (One of the objects of the blackmail was to retain the Bush Jr-appointed U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, in that position to complete some cleanup actions regarding Bush Junta crimes in Colombia, and I believe that this is why the first visible action of CIA Director Leon Panetta (strong connection to Bush Sr) was to go to Bogota.)

I don't think that the Obama administration is dirty on cocaine (but it's only a guess--a general impression). But they are hogtied to our war profiteers and clearly made some kind of deal to prevent investigation/prosecution of Bush Junta principles for war crimes and massive (and truly unbelievable) theft. Colombia comes within the purview of this "deal." And it was/is the intention of the Bushwhacks to Colombia-fy Mexico and Honduras, and as much of Central America/the Caribbean as they could manage. Central America/the Caribbean is the U.S. "circle the wagons" region in its fight against the increasingly successful and powerful Left in LatAm and its increasing unity and cooperation against U.S. domination and for good government, social justice and LatAm independence--with stunning electoral victories for the Left in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua and other countries. The re-election of Leftists in these countries have led to a region-wide movement toward LatAm independence in the context of new institutions such as CELAC.

The Obama administration shares the Bushwhacks' plan and its goals ("circling the wagons" in Central America/the Caribbean) but probably not the underworld (and not so easy to see) criminal connection and "war" FOR drugs. Typical of the Democratic Party leadership (so divorced from its membership), Obama & Co. benefits its Corporate/War Profiteer sponsors by following up on murder and mayhem with "free trade for the rich" agreements. This is precisely what happened with Colombia. Bush Jr. decapitated the Left; Obama then got the U.S. "free trade for the rich" agreement with Colombia signed, sealed and delivered. (And this may include a Big Pharma deal on legalization, now that the smaller players--the peasant farmers, for instance--have been eliminated. FIVE MILLION peasant farmers--food growers with small coca leaf patches--were brutally displaced by state terror, in Colombia, during the Bush Junta, with at least $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid.)

Mexico is significantly different from Colombia in that the Left is much stronger and the country has both a revolutionary tradition and a tradition of peaceful change. (No outright civil war, as in Colombia.*) It was a harder "nut" for the Bush Junta to "crack." Their "war on drugs," with its dual purpose (drug profiteering and murder and mayhem social destruction) was the ideal weapon.

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*(When Amlo lost the rigged election, there could well have been a civil war. Amlo and Mexico's tradition of peaceful change prevented it. Colombia, on the other hand, has suffered a 70 year civil war--right vs left--and this made it fertile, bloody ground for Bush Junta exploitation, including installing a mafia don, Alvaro Uribe, as president. Panetta went to Bogota to gently remove him--in my opinion--because of what he knows about Bush Jr. and U.S. crimes in Colombia during the Bush Junta and because Colombia's prosecutors are on Uribe's trail. Uribe was rewarded with academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard and other perks and protections, and hopes to regain power in Colombia. But he's not a very good front for U.S. "free trade for the rich." Too dirty. Some 70 of his closest political cohorts are already in jail or under investigation (or on the run) for drug trafficking, ties to the rightwing death squads, illegal domestic spying and other crimes. Uribe was the immediate Bushwhack operative who used the U.S. "war on drugs" to consolidate the cocaine trade, to massively remove the peasants from the land and to slaughter thousands of peaceful Leftists in the names of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror." I think Amlo--in addition to being a peaceful man--was very smart to fend off a disruptive and potentially violent reaction to the rigged election in Mexico. The Bush Junta was poised for war, at that point. It would have been awful. What Amlo couldn't see in the future--and no one could foresee--was that the Bushwhacks would find another way to inflict murder and mayhem on Mexico, with their billions of dollars in "war on drugs" funding in 2008.

(In this sense, the Zapatistas have a point--that, no matter what you do, the U.S. and its Corporate/War Profiteer tools in Mexico will fuck you over. The Zapatistas themselves have been mostly peaceful and I think they had hoped that the MILLIONS of people who protested the rigged election would peacefully force a new election and would thereby create a peaceful revolution. I tend to side with Amlo, on this matter, because I think that there were (and he may have known that there were) Bushwhack operatives intent on instigating violence. The result would have been another Oaxaca (violent repression), only on a much larger scale. The Oaxaca protesters were also peaceful and took over the local government for a while. They were utterly smashed by Calderon's national police. The Bush Junta/Calderon would have done the same in Mexico City, if the protests had continued and even if they had remained peaceful. Amlo refused to give them that excuse--but then they found another.)