Mexican Protesters Take 2 Policemen Hostage

Mexican protesters, brandishing machetes, took two policemen hostage on Tuesday in a small town South of Oaxaca City. The protesters (and a police chief) claim the policemen were searching for a protest leader, but the police themselves claim they were off-duty at the time. The protests have been steadily widening in scope, and the actions taken by protesters have grown increasingly more disruptive.



This is a very confusing, and tense situation, made all the more so by the conflicting stories coming out of Mexico. The protests had been almost entirely peaceful, up until just a few days ago, when police used force to break up a rally.

Now, the protesters have taken police hostage, on the belief that they may have entered the house of a protest organizer illegally. The wife of the protest organizer even claims she had a gun pointed at her. The policemen themselves are, understandably, reluctant to admit to whatever it is they were doing. It appears though, that elements of the police force may have been acting on their own, or were at the very least engaged in some subterfuge.

This is obviously doing nothing to help the situation, and if protesters switch tactics, and start using violence in response to this increased pressure put on them by the police, this entire thing is going to blow up in a big way. Obrador shows no signs of backing down, and neither does his opponent. It will be very telling to see what happens in the next day or two, in regards to how to both sides handle this hostage situation.

This is exactly why we need to build a wall and not include Mexico into a possible North American Union.

This is not the first time the protesters have taken hostages, but it is the first time (that I know of) that they've taken policemen hostage.

This is just the sort of spark required to turn this situation into a conflagaration.

I have to wonder what the cops were doing there in the first place. On top of that, I have to wonder if they really did point a firearm at the wife of a protest leader - they had to know this would happen.

I don't want to say the woman is lying, because obviously I have no idea, but I will say that the cops in question would have to be extraordinarily stupid if they thought they could walk into that situation, acting like that, and get away with it.

Some of the protesters have their heads in the right place, they want free and fair elections, and they want some measure of equality. But others are intent on turning this into a full-blown class-war, and that has far-reaching implications. It remains to be seen if cooler heads will prevail, or not.

Maybe I'm too cynical for my own good, but I see this situation heading downhill and gathering momentum as it goes. The protesters are planning on parading the cops around in the town square, and this is going to make the police very, very agitated.

Did a bit of reading, and found this quite interesting.

www.narconews.com...

In some past post-electoral disputes for state and local offices, the Trife electoral court has opted, based on this kind of evidence, to annul the results from those precincts where stuffing or looting occurred.

If the Trife follows the law and its own established precedents, and annuls the results in these 7,442 precincts where the fraud took place, it would reverse the official results and López Obrador would emerge the victor by more than 425,000 votes nationwide.

Specifically, Calderón would lose 1,225,326 votes from his tally, while López Obrador would lose just 556,600; a difference of 668,726. When factoring in IFE’s claim that Calderón has a more than 243,000 vote advantage, López Obrador would still win the election by those 425,000 votes plus some.

In other words, if the Supreme Electoral Court determines that only half of the problematic precincts are to be annulled, López Obrador would still be declared the presidential victor. To continue to impose Calderón, at this point, would require the court’s endorsement of results from at least 4,000 precincts that the recount has demonstrated were scenes of the electoral crimes of ballot-stuffing and ballot-theft. By failing to annul those precincts, the court would, in effect, annul the legitimacy of the Mexican State, lighting the fuse on a social conflict much larger than anything that has yet occurred in the wake of the fraudulent election.

I have no idea if these numbers are true. I'm almost sure though, that Obrador's supporters believe them to be true, in any case. So...

Buckle up?

So i guess Diebold is running the election machines down there...

seriously though, it seems that having honest elections is far more important that having democracy these days...

a dishonest election system makes the whole idea of elections null... and thereby nulls the democracy as well...

I am not sure if there is a solution for such a problem, as election results always seem to have opportunity for tainting...

It is strange that so many countries have had very close contested elections lately...
is humanity truly that split on issues... have we become a totally equally polarized world?

if philosophy and history is our guide, then we could predict that politics would eventually become this equally divided...

Too bad the rest of them can't take control of the situation down there and clean up their government forcefully like these people are. Maybe then there wouldn't be 30 million of them in the US running around like they own the place.

Well as sad as the situation is in that area I have to say that at least somebody got the guts to protest voting frauds.

For some reason in the US we just sit and wait for the same dirty corrupt politicians to do justice.

That should teach some. . . something about democracy.

Marg, I pray that when/if we ever get as bad as Mexico, we will have the courage to overthrow our government long before it gets as bad as they let it get there. It's a pretty good sign that when 5% of your country is wealthy and 95% is poor that it is time for a forceful change. I'd bet my last dollar that this Obrador guy probably won the election and that the PTB down there pulled a GWBush and 'adjusted' the results to maintain the status quo. It's up to the people to make sure this doesn't stand. It will be interesting to see what happens and how long Calderon stays in office or alive if he's aloud to take control.