Meet Mexico's Fiery, Trump-Like Populist Who Looks Increasingly Likely To Win The Presidency In 2018

Last week brought fresh deterioration in diplomatic relations between the US and Mexico after Trump threatened to cancel a White House meeting with Mexican President Pena Nieto, saying if “Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting”.  And while Pena Nieto tried to save face by officially cancelling the meeting over twitter, Mexicans are growing increasingly frustrated with a candidate that they see as too soft in combatting an aggressive Trump Presidency. All of which has caused Pena Nieto"s approval ratings to plunge to historic lows of just 12%.

But, the growing populist sentiment that is sweeping Mexico and forcing Pena Nieto"s ratings to all-time lows, is the same sentiment that has vaulted Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to the top of the list of likely presidential candidates to be elected in 2018.  Per Bloomberg, Lopez Obrador is a two-time presidential loser but Trump"s aggressive stance toward relations with Mexico and the resulting national rage sweeping the country plays well for the man who has promised to end the "relationship of "subordination" to the U.S.."

The politician known locally as Amlo is the early frontrunner in Mexico’s 2018 presidential race. By itself, that may not mean much: Polls are unreliable, voting is a long way off, and Lopez Obrador is a two-time election loser in a country that stood aloof from Latin America’s populist turn and instead tethered its economy ever closer to the U.S..

But good luck selling that line to Mexicans right now. The momentum on Amlo’s side is palpable. Amid a spasm of national rage, voters are increasingly sympathetic to the cries of a radical outsider who promises to end a relationship of “subordination” to the U.S. and rebuild the domestic economy. In other words, Trump -- with his brash pledges to rewrite Nafta and stick Mexico with the bill for building the wall -- has created the perfect climate for an anti-Trump south of the border.

Among other things, Lopez Obrador, like Trump, has vowed to pursue more of a protectionist economic agenda saying that "Mexico will consume its own gasoline and food on his watch, instead of importing it."

Lopez Obrador would add the country’s U.S.-friendly energy and agriculture policies to the catalog of woes. He says Mexico will consume its own gasoline and food on his watch, instead of importing it.

That would mean changes to Nafta, probably not the ones Trump has in mind -- assuming the trade pact survives at all. Its impact on Mexico is hotly debated in any case, and both sides can cite data that backs up their arguments.

Nafta has made no inroads into Mexico’s poverty rate. It stood at 53 percent in 2014, pretty much unchanged from two decades earlier when the trade accord went into effect, according to the World Bank. But the country has attracted billions of dollars of foreign investment in that period, turning it into the worlds seventh-largest automaker and creating thousands of jobs.

Lopez Obrador and his supporters take the glass-half-empty view.

“Nafta is a straitjacket that has kept 50 percent of our society in poverty” said Senator Manuel Bartlett of the Labor Party. “This is not about being antagonistic to the United States, it’s about being nationalist in defense of Mexico’s interests.”

All of which bodes well with an electorate overtaken with a sense of national pride and fed up with a weak Pena Nieto which one voter described as a "boot licker" unwilling to "stand up to Trump and tell it like it is."

Popular feeling is running so strong that Mexican politicians have little choice but to fall in line. Online campaigns are calling on Mexicans to vacation at home (“Adios Disneylandia... Hola Mexico”).Local governments and activists demand boycotts of U.S. products. Many Mexicans have draped the national flag across their social media pages.

It just sounds less convincing coming from leaders who’ve made a career out of close U.S. ties. Pena Nieto’s approval rating is 12 percent. Jose Hernandez Solis, a 56-year-old street vendor at an Amlo rally in Mexico City on Monday, certainly wasn’t persuaded.

“The president is a boot-licker,” Solis said. “Lopez Obrador has the guts to stand up to Trump and tell it like it is.” Straight talk, of course, is exactly the reason many U.S. voters gave for backing Trump.

Something tells us that Lopez Obrador is going to be even more reluctant than Pena Nieto to pay for Trump"s "fuckin" wall", as Vicente Fox would say.  Should be a fun race to the bottom.

Czech Government Fears Muslim "Super-Holocaust", Urges Citizens To Shoot Them Yourselves

On the heels of Czech President Milos Zeman"s warnings of a possible "super-Holocaust" carried out by Muslim terrorists, urging citizens to arm themselves, WaPo reports the country"s interior ministry is pushing a constitutional change that would let citizens use guns against terrorists if police are delayed or unable to make their way to the scene of an attack.

Czech president Milos Zeman had previously proposed that economic migrants should be deported from Europe to “uninhabited Greek islands” or to “empty places” in North Africa. The spectacularly incredible president also proposed that the Greek debt should be progressively reduced in return for shouldering the cost of hosting hundreds of thousands economic migrants.

“We are in Greece, and Greece has plenty of uninhabited islands, and big foreign debt. So if you have ‘hotspots’ in Greek islands, this would be a sort of payment of foreign debt,” Zeman told Financial Times in an interview on the islands of Rhodes where he participated in the Rhodes Forum.

As The Guardian previously noted, the Czech president has unleashed a rhetorical fusillade against Muslim incomers of such intensity that it makes the anti-Islamic sentiments of Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, and even Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, seem mild in comparison.

Zeman has warned that the Czech Republic – home to fewer than 4,000 Muslims out of a population of 10.5 million, according to official figures – could be targeted in a jihadi attack and urged Czechs to arm themselves against what he referred to as a possible "super-Holocaust." The concern is believed to have prompted the unprecedented introduction of metal detectors to screen the crowds of foreign tourists that visit Prague castle each day.

The alarmist message is particularly striking because unlike most anti-immigrant politicians in western Europe, Zeman, 71, is a social democrat (and former communist) rather than a rightwinger, and the Czech Republic has been largely spared the waves of refugees that have swept into neighbouring Austria and Hungary en route to Germany.

But now, as The Washington Post reports, the rhetoric is getting even louder as the country"s interior ministry is pushing a constitutional change that would let citizens use guns against terrorists.

Proponents say this could save lives if an attack occurs and police are delayed or unable to make their way to the scene. To become law, Parliament must approve the proposal; they"ll vote in the coming months.

The Czech Republic already has some of the most lenient gun policies in Europe. It"s home to about 800,000 registered firearms and 300,000 people with gun licenses. Obtaining a weapon is relatively easy: Residents must be 21, pass a gun knowledge check and have no criminal record. By law, Czechs can use their weapons to protect their property or when in danger, although they need to prove they faced a real threat.

This puts the country at odds with much of Europe, which has long supported much more stringent gun-control measures.  In the wake of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, France pushed the European Union to enact even tougher policies. The European Commission"s initial proposal called for a complete ban on the sale of weapons like Kalashnikovs or AR-15s that are intended primarily for military use. Ammunition magazines would be limited to 20 rounds or less.

The Czech Republic came out hard against the directive. Officials warned — somewhat ominously — that the measure would limit the country"s ability to build "an internal security system" and make it nearly impossible to train army reservists. And a total ban on military-style rifles that can fire large numbers of rounds would make illegal thousands of weapons already owned by Czech citizens, potentially creating a black market for terrorists to exploit.

Of course, the populist rhetoric may be the driving force behind this bill, as for now the Czech republic is the only country to oppose the EU"s directive for being too strict.

This is not the first "extreme" move by Czech politicians with regard refugees/muslims/terrorists, as we noted previously, police in the Czech Republic are investigating comments made on Facebook by an extremist politician calling for refugees to be placed in Terezin, the former Nazi concentration camp.

Adam Bartos, the leader of the fringe yet vocal far-right nationalist National Democracy Party, published the comments about the site, located in the central European country, on Monday.

Reacting to the establishment of a refugee camp near the country’s border with Slovakia, Bartos wrote, “Why build tent camps for the aliens? We have the beautiful fortress town of Terezin where the aliens could concentrate before they are taken home by trains.”

A police spokeswoman told the Czech News Agency on Monday that the police will probe whether or not the comments constitute a criminal act. According to Czech law, hate speech and comments inciting national, racial or religious hatred can carry penalties of up to three years in prison.

Bartos is under investigation for four incidents involving allegedly racist, anti-Semitic and violence-inciting remarks. He also keeps a blog titled Hall of Jewish Fame that critics say lists politicians, journalists and other public figures of supposedly Jewish origin.

Bartos’ party failed to gain seats in the European elections last year, the only campaign it has run in under his leadership.

Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt in German, is located some 40 miles northwest of Prague.

The town was turned into a concentration and transit camp by the Nazis in 1941. Roughly 144,000 Jewish people were sent there during the Holocaust, most of whom were later transported to extermination camps in occupied Poland. Some 33,000 died in the Terezin camp.

Impeachment Process Starts On French President Hollande For Disclosing Classified Information To Journalists

Submitted by Michael Shedlock vioa MishTalk.com,

French president François Hollande whose approval rating is a scant 4% now faces impeachment for disclosing classified information to journalists.

Given national elections take place in 2017 and given socialists would be unlikely to convict him, one has to wonder “why bother?”, yet here we go: French Right Calls for François Hollande’s Impeachment.

 

Republican MP Pierre Lellouche on Monday started a process to activate Article 68 of the French constitution, allowing parliament to impeach the president. The move comes three days after Eric Ciotti, another Republican MP who is managing former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign for the rightwing presidential nomination, formally requested that prosecutors investigate a potential breach of security.

While the impeachment request would have to get over several obstacles and remains a long shot, the initiatives add to Mr Hollande’s woes following the publication of a 622-page book in which the president, among other things, criticised Socialist colleagues and hoped for his party’s “hara-kiri”.

The book, A President Should Not Say That, caused outcry within Mr Hollande’s camp, pushing his approval ratings down to a record low of 4 per cent and prompting calls on the left and right for him to rule out a second presidential bid.

In the book, Mr Hollande also admits that he ordered assassinations for security reasons and disclosed details of plans to destroy targets held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad after allegations that the Syrian leader bombed civilians with chemical weapons.

The impeachment of a president would be unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic. It would need backing from another 58 members of parliament before it could be assessed by the National Assembly’s law committee and possibly brought before all MPs.

But less than six months before presidential elections, the moves highlight Mr Hollande’s acute political weakness.

The president has been keeping his camp guessing over whether he intends to stand for a further term in office and has said he would give his decision in December.

It’s rather amazing how Obama, Bush, and now Hollande routinely order assassinations and undertake military actions for political purposes, without declarations of war, making themselves judge, jury, prosecutor, and hangman.