Do my eyes deceive me?

The most leftwing alternative-media newspaper, SFWeekly, in the U.S.’ most leftwing alternative city, San Francisco, has given one heck of a thrashing to the world’s most leftwing alternative Sandalista nuisance group, Global Exchange.

The leftwing newspaper’s charge? Rampant Sandalista meddling!

SFWeekly is laying it on thick against the leftwing “revolutionary” tourism group, led by Medea Benjamin, whose other group, Code Pink, famously photoshopped one of the Iranian freedom babes seen on this site here into a war protestor, which she was not.

The alt-media newspaper warns that Global Exchange is spreading LIES about the Mexican election, claiming that there was rampant cheating going on, when in reality, there wasn’t. It says that the left (as well as the right) has always had a need to say Mexico is tottering, the better to promote their political agendas. It’s a profound observation, I think it’s totally true. SFWeekly takes Global Exchange to task for claiming they are impartial election observers but in reality, are just activists promoting a political agenda, unable to distinguish partisan political activity with objective observation.

The SFWeekly writer, Matt Smith, admits he wanted AMLO to win, but can’t stand this persistent and crazy effort by GX to denounce Mexico’s hard-won and strengthening political institutions, which have come such a long way since Mexico’s become a democracy. In Mexico, there was no systemic fraud. There was no massive cheating. There was no grand conspiracy. And there is no need to break Mexican election laws by making up new requests for them that the electoral rules cannot support. That’s what AMLO is doing, and the Financial Times can no longer conceal its scorn about this – they ran the headline: “Mexico’s leftwing leader plots as he sulks in his tent.” (They’ve since softened that title on their Web site but the Google search, scroll down, clearly shows the original FT headline.)

I can barely believe what I am reading! SFWeekly – I know this paper, they are rabidly leftwing! – is laying on the charges against Global Exchange, and those charges are 100% correct, fully discrediting this Sandalista meddler group. In doing so, this newspaper just goes to show that there is hope for the democratic left, in that they are willing to clean house of the bounders in their ranks in the name of fair elections and real democracy. It’s absolutely revolutionary.

Look how good this SFWeekly piece is! Here is an excerpt:

This idea ???????? that Mexico is a simmering cauldron of discontent poised on the precipice of societywide instability ???????? is an old canard, inaccurately invoked by both left- and right-wing U.S. opinion makers for most of the previous century.

The administration of the first President George Bush used it to help explain its backing with money and political support the corrupt, authoritarian, right-leaning government of Mexican President Carlos Salinas. Without the PRI’s brand of soft-dictatorship, I heard bankers and politicians assert time and again during those years, Mexico would fall apart.

Yet somehow, for the past six years since Vicente Fox was elected as an opposition candidate, the country has enjoyed democratically elected government yet remained quite intact.

Left-wing activists from all over the world invoked this teetering-Mexico idea to aggrandize the importance of a tiny, 1994 local dispute over access to arable land, in which peasants for several hours occupied municipal buildings in the small town of Ocosingo, Chiapas.

Anti-capitalists worldwide cast the Ocosingo incident as the “Zapatista Rebellion,” a supposed example of simmering unrest in Mexico. At that time Global Exchange led “reality tour” visits by foreigners to the Chiapas region, an effort that may have admirably helped prevent a brutal government crackdown against the peasants. The Mexican instability myth touted by visiting foreigners, however, was based more on leftist public relations than reality. In this spirit soon after the rebellion, its leader, the pseudonymous Subcomandante Marcos, morphed from peasant leader to celebrity pundit.

The Mexico Burning fable is likewise meager pudding as the basis for Global Exchange’s argument that 41 million votes from a fair election should be retallied.

Good work, SFWeekly! And boy that article, “Mexico burning? Don’t believe it” is a thing of beauty to read, don’t miss it, read it here!