Today's Stories

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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"Chingan a Sus Madres!"

Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

"Chingan a sus Madres!" ("Fuck Your Mothers!"), the inebriated governor of Jalisco, Emilio Gonzalez Marquez, a charter member of the extreme right-wing clique "El Yunque" ("The Anvil") snarled at detractors during a Guadalajara public presentation this past April 24th while a nervous Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez fidgeted in his seat.  Irate citizens of that west central state have been harshly critical of the governor's use of state funds to underwrite several projects near and dear to the Cardinal's heart, including the "Sanctuary of the Martyrs" to be built in the Guadalajara suburb of Tlaquepaque in memory of 26 Catholic martyrs slain during the 1926-29 Cristero war.  Opponents dub Gonzalez's gift to the Church as the "Macro-limosna" ("super charitable donation.")

Floor plans for the sanctuary, a 2.2 billion peso mega-project of which Gonzalez has pledged 90 million pesos of taxpayers' money, reveal a 200,000 square meter domed structure, twice as big as Mexico City's Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the most lucrative shrine in Christendom, raking in two billion pesos in an average year.  The "Sanctuary of the Martyrs" would be topped by a 65 meter illuminated cross visible from the moon and will have space for 118,000 reserved burial crypts to be subscribed at 25,000 pesos each with all proceeds accruing to Sandoval's archdiocese.  Governor Gonzalez justifies the "Macro-limosna" as stimulating religious tourism and creating jobs.

"Alelujah! Alelujah Chinga la Madre Tuya!" ("Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Go Fuck Your Own Mother!") protestors assembled by the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) howled on the threshold of Guadalajara's colonial cathedral the next day in response to the governor's outburst.  Police cordoned off the PRDers from furious counter-demonstrators chanting "Viva Cristo Rey!" ("Long Live Christ the King!"), the battle cry of the Cristero movement.

The Cristero conflict erupted after post-revolutionary strongman General Plutarco Elias Calles closed down all Mexican Roman Catholic churches and seized Church property in 1926.  Mexico's just-reorganized revolutionary army was dispatched to Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacan to combat Cristo Rey guerrilleros who had risen in rebellion against Calles, blowing up troop trains and burning protestant missionaries and rural school teachers alive to rid the region of "Bolsheviks."  According to a count kept by historian Jean Meyer, a total of 30,000 Mexicans on both sides were killed during the three year-long skirmish, including the 26 martyred Christ-the-King warriors. Decades later the martyrs were beatified by the late Pope John Paul II over the objections of secularists who consider the Cristeros to have been "bandits, terrorists and traitors" to the "patria" (fatherland.) 

This past April, Pope John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI AKA Josef Ratzinger, a member of a Nazi youth group in his native Germany, offered a Vatican Mass for the martyrs of Fascism and Communism, amongst whom he pointedly included the slain Christ-the-Kingers.

The revival of the Cristero crusade (for Catholic zealots in central Mexico it has never gone away) obeys the hierarchy's strategy to reaffirm the Catholic Church's place in Mexican history as the upcoming bicentennial of independence from the Spanish Crown and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution coalesce in 2010.  Indeed, both of those watershed events were motivated by anti-Church sentiments.  In 1810, a soon-to-be defrocked priest Miguel Hidalgo led the brown and black underclass (Mexico was a third black at liberation) against the Crown and the Church, the largest landowner in the colony whose bishops openly collaborated with Spain.  A century later, impoverished Mexicans rose up against a dictator who had ruled for 34 years with the backing of the Catholic Church.        

Plans for the Sanctuary and the "Route of the Pilgrims", a 90 kilometer knock-off of Spain's highly profitable Camino to Santiago Compostela pilgrims road, will put the Catholic Church's signature on the upcoming celebrations.

Despite encroachment on Catholic hegemony by Evangelical "sects" (as the hierarchy here labels Protestant denominations), the Church of Rome has gained remarkable traction during the presidencies of Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderon, elected in highly questioned 2006 balloting.  Both are members of the National Action Party founded in 1939 by a pair of Catholic bankers to oppose the "Bolshevik" polices of then-president Lazaro Cardenas.  Under Fox, who campaigned for high office literally wrapped in the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Pope John Paul paid his final visits to the Aztec nation.  Secular Mexicans were appalled at the spectacle of their president kneeling to kiss the Pope's ring. 

The Mexican Constitution delineates a sharp separation between Church and State and does not recognize the authority of "God" - some Church officials label Mexico's Magna Carta an "atheistic" document.

Vicente Fox, a native of the Guanajuato bajio or lowlands where the Cristero war is still a living memory, salted his administration with suspected members of the secretive Catholic organization El Yunque, among them Interior minister Carlos Abascal and Social Development secretary Ana Teresa Aranda who is now Calderon's Undersecretary of the Interior for Religious Affairs.  Other Yunquistas who have served or serve Felipe Calderon include former Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez Acuna, Gonzalez's predecessor as Jalisco governor, and Agricultural secretary Alberto Cardenas who was Fox's environmental chief.

The genealogy of the Mexican Right and its ties to ultra-conservative elements in the Catholic hierarchy can be traced from the Cristero conflict to the founding of the PAN at the beginning of the second World War where the movement bifurcated - those who chose to move Mexico to the right through electoral politics set about to build the National Action Party, a grueling process that would not bring the PAN to power for another 60 years. 

Radicalized militants aligned with the National Union of Sinarquists or "El Gallo" ("The Rooster" by virtue of the movement's logo), brownshirts who preached anti-Semitism and backed Hitler - the Sinarquistas were able to delay Mexico's participation in World War II through 1942.  One of the Sinarquistas' founding fathers was Salvador Abascal, father of Fox's Interior Secretary.  Although seriously diminished, the Sinarquist movement has never completely disappeared and the Gallo is applying for registration as a political party with an eye to running a candidate in 2012 presidential elections.

The Yunque which evolved from the Sinarquistas and the Christ the King Right was founded in Puebla in 1955 according to one-time militant Luis Paredes Moctezuma, former PAN mayor of Puebla city, and was financed by big landholders and industrialists         
such as Hugo Salinas Price, father of tycoon Ricardo Salinas Pliego, now the owner of TV Azteca, Mexico's second television network.

During the turbulent 1960s, a Yunque youth group, code-named MURO fought left-wing students at the University of Guadalajara - several leftist student leaders were assassinated.  The MUROs themselves split and one faction, the CARA ("Armed Revolutionary Action Commandos") took to kidnapping businessmen and sticking up telegraph offices much like their leftist counterparts, according to "El Yunque", a recently published volume assembled by investigative reporter Alvaro Delgado. 

Besides Abascal and Aranda, other prominent PANistas who make no bones about their Yunquista inclinations are Manuel Espino, former PAN party president and now secretary general of the Christian Democrat Organization of the Americas (ODCA), and Jose Reyes Espina, former head of the COPARMEX, one of Mexico's most conservative business federations. 

Also linked to the Yunque are litigating attorneys Jose Antonio Ortega Sanchez and Guillermo Velasco Arzac - both are the public face of the political action group "Better Government, Better Society" which recently ran a venomous primetime hit piece campaign attacking leftist former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as a follower of "Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet" (sic.)

Among supporting organizations that signed on to the group's registration papers are the National Union of Sinarquists and ProVida, an anti-abortion lobby whose board of directors lists Calderon's Undersecretary for Religious Affairs, the Yunquista Aranda, as a member.  Jalisco governor Gonzalez is also an avowed supporter of ProVida and recently fired his state AIDS commission chairman for distributing condoms to non-homosexuals, accusing him of fomenting immorality.

One creepy similarity between Gonzalez's governance and the conservative Catholic hierarchy: both defend pederasty.  For decades, the Catholic Church turned a blind eye to charges that Legionnaires of Christ founder Macial Marcial was sodomizing acolytes - Marcial was finally retired by Rome and ordered to spend the rest of his life in penitence.  Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera stands accused of protecting the serial rapist priest Nicolas Aguilar, charged with abusing over 90 young boys.  Governor Gonzalez has thrown up a protective wall around his attorney general and longtime associate Tomas Coronado who is under investigation for fondling two teenage girls at a private fiesta - Coronado remains Jalisco's attorney general.  

"I have here this pinche papelito" ("damn piece of paper") Gonzalez hiccupped, waving a check for down payment on the Sanctuary of the Martyrs at Cardinal Sandoval, "if there are people who don't like it, well then chingan a sus madres!"  In accepting the check, the Cardinal absolved the governor of blasphemy. 

Sandoval himself has been less than polite in ripping his enemies - pro-choice advocates, feminists, gays and lesbians, condoms, and the infernal PRD against which he conducts, in his own words, "a holy war."

At 75, the Cardinal is determined to complete his pet projects before he is obligated to retire by the Church, a process that has apparently been stayed by Pope Benedict - unlike liberationist Chiapas bishop Samuel Ruiz who Ratzinger forced out the day he turned 75. 

But Sandoval's "Mega-limosna" is not assured.  Congress has ordered an audit of the Jalisco budget to ascertain whether or not the donation violates the constitutional separation of Church and State.  Still, even if Sandoval is rebuffed, he will always have the "Narco-limosnas" (charitable donations by drug lords) with which to build his sanctuary.  Although never substantiated, it has often been suggested that the Cardinal is the recipient of top dollar donations from the nation's narco lords seeking to buy their way into heaven. 

Juan Sandoval Iniguez was appointed Guadalajara Cardinal following the May 23rd, 1993 assassination of his predecessor Juan Jesus Posadas, gunned down at the Guadalajara airport 15 years ago in what authorities described as a "mistaken identity" killing when he was purportedly caught in a crossfire between rival drug gangs.  Posadas was also suspected of drawing down big bucks from the narcos - the Cardinal performed Mass once a month at the Colinas de San Javier neighborhood chapel which was regularly attended by some of the most notorious names in Narcodom. 

It is conjectured that Posadas' facility for raising narco-limosnas for the Church was instrumental in his promotion from Archbishop of Guadalajara to Cardinal.  But when he subsequently began turning down the tainted donations, the drug lords, operating on the time-honored principal of "plata o plomo" (money or lead) had him whacked.     

Following the Posadas assassination, two Arellano Felix brothers representing the Tijuana Cartel, which had been implicated in the hit, visited Papal Nuncio Giralamo Prigione to ask absolution. 

Although Posadas' murder was pinned on a case of mistaken identity, the Cardinal, who was shot from close range, was plainly identifiable in his Church robes with a foot-long pectoral cross around his neck, and Sandoval has always insisted that Posadas was a victim of a "Jacobin" (anti-clerical) plot organized by then-president Carlos Salinas.  Posadas' successor has intensified his campaign to clear up the matter from year to year and the lawyer in the case, the aforementioned Jose Antonio Ortega Sanchez, remains on perpetual retainer thanks to the deep pockets of Governor Emilio Gonzalez - in 2008, the 15th anniversary of the Cardinal's assassination, the Jalisco state government has kicked in 700,000 pesos of taxpayers' money for Ortega Sanchez's services.

The specter of the Narco-limosnas has troubled the Mexican Council of Bishops or CEM for years.  Ramon Godinez, the late Bishop of Aguascalientes, was out front in his acceptance of donations from local narcos, insisting that he "purified" the dirty money by doing good works with it.  More recently, current CEM president Carlos Aguir confessed that the nation's narcos have approached Church leaders for "guidance and orientation" and praised kingpins as being "very generous" in building chapels and supporting the Church's social service programs in remote communities. 

When leftists charged that such donations constitute nothing less than money laundering, particularly during a narco-war that is drowning Mexico in blood, Calderon's Undersecretary for Religious Affairs the Yunquista Ana Teresa Aranda refused to intervene, claiming that holding bishops accountable would be in violation of the "secret of the confessional", a response that not all the members of the CEM were happy with.  "How can a father go to a church that was built with the blood of his children?" challenged Saltillo bishop Raul Vera, a liberationist and one-time coadjutor of Samuel Ruiz. 

Despite ocular evidence that the narcos are financing construction, the CEM has not ordered any Catholic church structure suspected of being tainted with Narco-limosnas to tear itself down. 

John Ross will be watching the NBA finals in California for the next three weeks.  These dispatches will be published every ten days during his spree.  For further disinformation write johnross@igc.org

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