Cinco de Mayo celebrations to hit the streets of Watsonville an...

Like many Latinos, Watsonville City Councilman Oscar Rios knows Cinco de Mayo isn't Mexico's Independence Day.

[tucanofulano]

Hey, ICE ! Here's another opportunity to collect illegal trash and dispose of it.

[zorro american]

in god we trust.
all men are created equal.
written by the first illegal Europeans aliens..........
At Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890, the majority of Big Foot’s band of Miniconjou Lakotas was massacred by the Seventh Cavalry of the United States Army. Wounded Knee has gained great symbolic significance over the years. It is often linked with the end of the frontier and the Lakota nation, and as symbolic of broken treaties, US military aggression, and subsequent injustice toward Native Americans.

[The Man]

zorro american wrote:

in god we trust.
all men are created equal.
written by the first illegal Europeans aliens..........
At Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890, the majority of Big Foot’s band of Miniconjou Lakotas was massacred by the Seventh Cavalry of the United States Army. Wounded Knee has gained great symbolic significance over the years. It is often linked with the end of the frontier and the Lakota nation, and as symbolic of broken treaties, US military aggression, and subsequent injustice toward Native Americans.

How were the first Europeans explorers illegal? Your post makes no sense. Don't the Lakotas have Casinos now?

[Kelso]

Hey! I have an idea! Let's have a contest to guess how many people will be stabbed or shot or raped in Watsonville by the end of the Cinco de Mayo weekend. First prize goes to whoever can guess the total bodycount AND the number of expensive, taxpayer funded helicopter flights that will be needed to bring the victims to a trauma center in San Jose for free medical care. Second prize goes for the guessing how many of the wives of these "macho" boys will get beaten after one too many beers. Let's celebrate a culture that has failed even in its own country to produce opportunity for its children or peace in its neighborhoods!

[jarbee]

Cinco de Mayo. Such an interesting holiday that began as an anti-French celebration in California. Why were the French sending troops to Mexico?

"In late 1861 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, sent troops to Mexico, alongside British and Spanish forces, to collect debts owed by a previous Mexican government. President Benito Juárez had announced the annulment of these debts, and vowed to pay nothing to European powers. Napoleon’s troops occupied the port city of Veracruz on December 8, 1861. Soon thereafter, the British and Spanish forces returned home, having established a truce with Mexico....
While the Battle of Puebla did not prevent the imminent French takeover of Mexico, it did go as an important morale victory for the Mexican Army. It also gave the Juárez government much needed time to organize its new government that many nations recognized as legitimate. The United States, embroiled in its own conflict, supported the Republican Mexican forces with much of its arms and equipment, including the very uniforms and weapons used by the Union Army in the Civil War." (Wikipedia, Battle of Puebla)

A bunch of Mexicans (that's Europeans mixed with aboriginals and several dashes of Catholicism) didn't want to pay their debts so they killed the debt collector. Despite France contributing decisively in America's Revolutionary War (eternal thanks to Ben Franklin for that bit of diplomacy) and giving us a great deal with the Louisiana Purchase, America gave military assistance to the Mexicans.

We should update the holiday and call it abandon your mortgage day. Perfect for Watsonville and the Central Valley. That would be a historical celebration. Mexicans have a long and proud history of not paying their debts. Let's have a beer!

[jarbee]

The Man wrote:

<quoted text>
How were the first Europeans explorers illegal? Your post makes no sense. Don't the Lakotas have Casinos now?

Lakota have rejected the pushers (developers) of casinos. Instead we have the Oglala Lakota College.
http://www.olc.edu/
This college is preserving the culture and language of the Lakota.

After over a century of fighting to get the U.S.A to honor the Constitutionally backed treaties, ratified by Congress, and signed in good faith, the Lakota have decided to take the first steps on the journey back to independence.
http://www.republicoflakotah.com/

[jarhead]

Kelso wrote:

Hey! I have an idea! Let's have a contest to guess how many people will be stabbed or shot or raped in Watsonville by the end of the Cinco de Mayo weekend. First prize goes to whoever can guess the total bodycount AND the number of expensive, taxpayer funded helicopter flights that will be needed to bring the victims to a trauma center in San Jose for free medical care. Second prize goes for the guessing how many of the wives of these "macho" boys will get beaten after one too many beers. Let's celebrate a culture that has failed even in its own country to produce opportunity for its children or peace in its neighborhoods!

your on!!I love a GOOD wager, I say 17 arrest,3 stabbings,(um, all gang related)not counting dui

[zorro american]

The International Tribunal for Justice charges Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) with perpetrating cultural genocide upon the American natives. His crimes began in 1492 and ended in 1504. The specific charges include:

-- Destroying native traditions and cultures in the Western Hemesphere

-- Eliminating traditional religions

-- Destroying traditional family structure

-- Imposing colonialism

-- Harming the health and livelihood of native peoples

-- Inhibiting native progress by destroying their society

-- Genocide

-- Trafficking in slaves

-- Rape

-- Plunder

true illegals

[America in Decline]

Only an idiot with the name Zorro would have the audacity to talk about imperialism and genocide.

Zorro, a Spanish aristocrat living in Spanish California(not Mexico), was a fictional character made up by an American white dude who got his inspiration from two other fictional European white dudes, Robin Hood and the Count of Monte Christo.

By the way, Christopher Columbus has been dead for 500 years, so get a life.

zorro american wrote:

The International Tribunal for Justice charges Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) with perpetrating cultural genocide upon the American natives. His crimes began in 1492 and ended in 1504. The specific charges include:
-- Destroying native traditions and cultures in the Western Hemesphere
-- Eliminating traditional religions
-- Destroying traditional family structure
-- Imposing colonialism
-- Harming the health and livelihood of native peoples
-- Inhibiting native progress by destroying their society
-- Genocide
-- Trafficking in slaves
-- Rape
-- Plunder
true illegals

[corndog831]

stink O de brown I.
so what thay beat the french.
come on the french?
the french army was somthing like 10 guys
on a canoe with BB gunns.the french never won a battle at all.
i can see why the mexicans are so proud

[bill]

blah blah blah

[hereforgood]

By Greg Palast

Monday April 21, 2008

(for TomPaine.com )

Psst! George Bush has a secret.

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.

Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe.

And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”

Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.

[hereforgood]

Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution:“harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.

Can they do that? Can Bush just say,“Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.

The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty corporate chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our borders, to expand the “NAFTA highway.” Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set of legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA highway expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the US and Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to bring in even cheaper Chinese goods.

Say what?

As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new “NAFTA highway” will allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-free “Mexican” products. That’s one of the quiet agendas of this “Summit for Security and Prosperity,” the official Orwellian name for this meet. Think of the SSP “harmonization” as the Trojan Taco of trade.

Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the “Ralph Nader of Canada”(not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler Candidate, but Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this lobby-fest on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this greed-grab.

[hereforgood]

I caught up with this courageous Canadian (I’ve seen her face down corporate bullying we can’t imagine in the US) on her way down to New Orleans. Barlow’s particular concerns are first, the NSS agreement promotes a five-fold increase in the mining of Canadian tar sands for import, as liquid crude oil, into the USA, an idea filthier than a re-make of Debbie Does Dallas.“This is an insane model of development,” she says, especially given Bush’s recent claim that he wants to slow global warming.

Bush himself is pushing his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to adopt US-style “Homeland Security” measures so that, says Barlow,“we’ll all be zip-locked together in one security bag.”
There will be other anti-SSP protesters in New Orleans as well, from America’s populist Right. They are concerned that the Security and Prosperity Summit is worse than the “NAFTA on steroids” that Barlow fears. The populists see in the SPP a nascent “North American Union,” and the elimination of the good old US of A.

They’re wrong, of course. The U.S. of A. has been long eliminated, at least economically. The Competitiveness Council is a multinational crew, with one shared set of country clubs, beach homes, art collections, union busters and lobbyists knowing no borders.

The populist radio hosts railing against the coming North American Union don’t realize that these CEOs won’t take away their flags or Fourth of July or Star-Spangled Banner. The rags and flags will always be kept around to con the schmucks along the Yahoo Belt into donating their children to the Iraq Occupation or other misadventures. A billionaire like Carlos Slim, the richest man on the planet (sorry, Mr. Gates), didn’t buy the Mexican government to “protect” his nation from Gringos but to protect his media monopoly.

[hereforgood]

So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at least as we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-governing democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There’s just the diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.

Barlow said that the US Ambassador to Canada told her the legal changes wrought in New Orleans will not be put before the three national Congresses for a vote.“We don’t want to open up another NAFTA.” So, they’ll skip the voting stuff. Democracy is so, like, 20th Century.

Is Bush just a reluctant participant in this “harmonizing” of our economic fate? The meetings are secret, so I can’t say for sure. But I note that, at the opening ceremony, if you read his lips, you can see our president singing the national anthem as,“José, can you see?”

**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Sign up for Palast’s investigative reports for BBC on RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast-articl...

Make a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund and receive a DVD of the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans, Big Easy to Big Empty, made for Democracy Now! at http://www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org .

Note: On May 1, in New York, Palast will speak at the international conference of the victims of Barrick Gold mining operations, the Canadian-American company whose board members included the former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and the former President of the United States, George Bush Sr. Information soon at www.GregPalast.com

[hereforgood]

By Greg Palast

Monday April 21, 2008

(for TomPaine.com )

Psst! George Bush has a secret.

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.

Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe.

And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”

Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.

Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution:“harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.

[hereforgood]

Can they do that? Can Bush just say,“Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.

The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty corporate chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our borders, to expand the “NAFTA highway.” Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set of legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA highway expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the US and Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to bring in even cheaper Chinese goods.

Say what?

As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new “NAFTA highway” will allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-free “Mexican” products. That’s one of the quiet agendas of this “Summit for Security and Prosperity,” the official Orwellian name for this meet. Think of the SSP “harmonization” as the Trojan Taco of trade.

Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the “Ralph Nader of Canada”(not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler Candidate, but Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this lobby-fest on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this greed-grab.

[hereforgood]

So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at least as we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-governing democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There’s just the diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.

Barlow said that the US Ambassador to Canada told her the legal changes wrought in New Orleans will not be put before the three national Congresses for a vote.“We don’t want to open up another NAFTA.” So, they’ll skip the voting stuff. Democracy is so, like, 20th Century.

Is Bush just a reluctant participant in this “harmonizing” of our economic fate? The meetings are secret, so I can’t say for sure. But I note that, at the opening ceremony, if you read his lips, you can see our president singing the national anthem as,“José, can you see?”

**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Sign up for Palast’s investigative reports for BBC on RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast-articl...

Make a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund and receive a DVD of the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans, Big Easy to Big Empty, made for Democracy Now! at http://www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org .

Note: On May 1, in New York, Palast will speak at the international conference of the victims of Barrick Gold mining operations, the Canadian-American company whose board members included the former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and the former President of the United States, George Bush Sr. Information soon at www.GregPalast.com

[Local]

Pat Kiddle's not posting - must be at the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Watsonville...cause you know Pat loves a party!

[4-h mama]

jarbee wrote:

Cinco de Mayo. Such an interesting holiday that began as an anti-French celebration in California. Why were the French sending troops to Mexico?
"In late 1861 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, sent troops to Mexico, alongside British and Spanish forces, to collect debts owed by a previous Mexican government. President Benito Juárez had announced the annulment of these debts, and vowed to pay nothing to European powers. Napoleon’s troops occupied the port city of Veracruz on December 8, 1861. Soon thereafter, the British and Spanish forces returned home, having established a truce with Mexico....
While the Battle of Puebla did not prevent the imminent French takeover of Mexico, it did go as an important morale victory for the Mexican Army. It also gave the Juárez government much needed time to organize its new government that many nations recognized as legitimate. The United States, embroiled in its own conflict, supported the Republican Mexican forces with much of its arms and equipment, including the very uniforms and weapons used by the Union Army in the Civil War." (Wikipedia, Battle of Puebla)
A bunch of Mexicans (that's Europeans mixed with aboriginals and several dashes of Catholicism) didn't want to pay their debts so they killed the debt collector. Despite France contributing decisively in America's Revolutionary War (eternal thanks to Ben Franklin for that bit of diplomacy) and giving us a great deal with the Louisiana Purchase, America gave military assistance to the Mexicans.
We should update the holiday and call it abandon your mortgage day. Perfect for Watsonville and the Central Valley. That would be a historical celebration. Mexicans have a long and proud history of not paying their debts. Let's have a beer!

SO even back then they were scamming the system. HMMMMM lets think about that.