Category: Military

Clay Jones Is Going to Be a National Treasure Before This Next Pres. Term is Up…

Not that he isn’t already, but this one is gold!

Mama Hegseth by Clay Jones

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Hegseth Read on Substack

When asked about sexual assault, sexual harassment, alcohol abuse, financial mismanagement, and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Defense and former Fox News fixture Pete Hegseth said, “Our left-wing media in America today, sadly, doesn’t care about the truth, All they were out to do was to destroy me because I’m a change agent and a threat to them. Despite the attacks, I stand committed to the truth and our warfighters.”

If Hegseth is so committed to the truth, then why did he refuse to answer so many questions during his confirmation hearing yesterday? Oh, yeah…because he’s a racist rapey liar. Also, if Hegeseth is so “committed” to the truth, then why is he working for the world’s biggest liar, Donald Trump?

Hegseth claimed he didn’t know if he had nondisclosure agreements with his two ex-wives. How do you not know that? He also dodged questions from my senator, Tim Kaine, about cheating on his wives, even shortly after one of them gave birth. Damn, he is like Donald Trump.

Hegseth refused to answer Senator Tammy Duckworth’s question about whether he had ever conducted a financial audit of the veterans organizations he once ran (that forced him out for being constantly drunk, sexually harassing female employees, and shouting, “Death to all Muslims”), given his insistence that the Pentagon undergo a deep-dive audit.

Pete is also a big fan of war criminals as he advocated on Fox News for Trump to pardon several in 2019 without disclosing he had private conversations with Trump on the matter. That was a violation of journalism ethics, even when working for Fox News.

Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin attempted to flip the script on Democrats, asking, “How many senators have shown up drunk to vote at night?”

Mullin also asked, “Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign from their job? And then how many senators do you know who have gotten a divorce for cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No.” I’m pretty sure Mullin never asked Donald Trump to step down.

Mullin and the other Republicans on the committee are perfectly fine with an unqualified racist rapey lying drunk leading the defense department, just as they are for president, but Democrats are not. That wasn’t entirely fair of me. Donald Trump isn’t a drunk.

Hegseth refused to answer if he’d take an illegal order from Trump to shoot protesters in their legs, as he wanted his previous Defense Secretary to do to anti-racism protesters in Lafayette Square who scared Trump to retreat and hide in the White House bunker. But he seems in favor of it as he seemed to justify shooting protesters while criticizing them instead of answering the question.

Question: Will you follow Trump’s orders to shoot protesters?
Pete: Well a lot of them aren’t nice and they say things we don’t like, “Trump sucks” and “Trump wears diapers.”
Question: But will you order them to be shot?
Pete: They attacked a church.
Question: Again, will you order them to be shot?
Pete: They scared Trump and made him wet himself in the basement, and we had to sing lullabies to get him to sleep.
Question: But would you have the protester shot?
Pete: They looked like a bunch of dirty hippies.
Question: But will you have them shot?
Pete: The sex was consensual…wait…What was the question?

He also refused to say if he’d direct the military to invade Panama and Greenland.

Pete previously claimed he’d quit drinking if he’s confirmed. When asked if he would resign as Defense Secretary if he started drinking again, he refused to answer and said, “I’m too drunk to taste this chicken.” I may have made up that answer.

Pete claimed he was a “changed man” and unlike the deviant he used to be, thanks to Jesus. He said, “I have failed at things in my life, and I am redeemed by my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.” Somehow, this redemption doesn’t affect his lying.

Pete claimed he was for women serving in combat despite only a few months ago saying he didn’t.

Pete said, “Writing a book is different than being Secretary of Defense,” which should be noted because writing a book doesn’t make you qualified to be Secretary of Defense anymore than being a racist barking yam qualifies you to be president.

At one point, Senator Mullin tried to say, “Give me a break,” but flubbed it and said, “Give me a joke.” During his monologue last night, Stephen Colbert delivered a joke for Senator Mullin, saying, “A drunk, a cheating husband, and an accused sexual predator walk into a bar, and the bartender says, ‘Table for one, Mr. Hegseth?’”

That’s funny, but the real joke is to believe that philandering seed spreading women-beating drunken lying rancid rotten no-good piece of shit Pete Hegseth is qualified to be Secretary of Defense. Colleagues, don’t steal that from me for a cartoon.

Creative notes: I think this is my fourth cartoon on Hegseth. I wrote this cartoon during my trip through the UK and Ireland, but I’m not sure which country or city it was written in. This was drawn in London, this was drawn in Dublin, and this was drawn in Reykjavik. I saved the idea for today’s cartoon for the confirmation hearing…and then I forgot about it. I remembered it just this morning.

On another note: I want to thank all my subscribers again, especially the paid subscribers for helping me continue to draw cartoons, write blogs, make videos, and continue my reign of sarcastic terror on MAGAts without the distractions of a real job and being required to show up at places I don’t want to be at specific times and attend boring meetings and stuff. I love you free subscribers too but honestly, the paid subscribers smell better. If you want to smell better too, like you’re wearing Irish Spring after an early morning rain while standing next to a bagel shop, then you should become a paid subscriber too.

I don’t know where I come up with this shit…but thank you again. Now I want a bagel.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go watch. Now I want a bagel, too!)

Peace & Justice History for 1/14

January 14, 1601
Roman Catholic church authorities burned sacred Hebrew books in Rome during the papacy of Clement VIII. He had forbidden Jews from reading the Talmud (a collection of centuries of interpretation of Jewish law). He had confirmed Pope Paul III’s relegation of Jews to a Roman ghetto (a walled-in portion of the city), and their banning from residence in papal-controlled states by Pope Pius V.
Other papal enemies of Jewish books included Innocent IV (1243-1254), Clement IV (1256-1268), John XXII (1316-1334), Paul IV (1555-1559), and Pius V (1566-1572).
January 14, 1784
The Confederation Congress, meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, ratified the Treaty of Paris with England, ending the Revolutionary War
.
Signing the Treaty of Paris
By its terms, “His Britannic Majesty” was bound to withdraw his armies without “carrying away any Negroes or other property of American inhabitants.”
The treaty was negotiated by John Adams, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin for the colonies, and David Hartley representing the King of England, George III.
January 14, 1918
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the selective service law, affirming all criminal charges arising from non-compliance with the draft during World War I. In Arver v. United States, the Court found that a draft does not violate the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude.
January 14, 1941
A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, and widely considered de facto chief spokesperson for the African-American working class, called for a march on Washington, demanding racial integration of the military and equal access to defense-industry jobs.

Detail from painting by Betsy G. Reyneau, Asa Philip Randolph
“On to Washington, ten thousand black Americans!” Randolph urged. He said in the fight to “stop discrimination in National Defense . . . While conferences have merit, they won’t get desired results by themselves.”
January 14, 1942
President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, which required aliens from World War II enemy countries – Italy, Germany and Japan – to register with the United States Department of Justice.
Registered persons received a “Certificate of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality.” This proclamation facilitated the beginning of large-scale internment of Japanese Americans the following month.
January 14, 1963
George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama. In his inaugural address he called for “segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!”
“The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others — and uniting in effort — has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small wonder that communism is winning the world.
We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station — as we will work with him — to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races — the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, of which I make full practice — for we are all the handiwork of God.”
The entire speech: 
January 14, 1966

A march in Atlanta was held to protest the ouster of Julian Bond, an African American, from the Georgia House of Representatives. Members of the General Assembly considered him unfit to serve after he endorsed a statement critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam issued by the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
January 14, 1994
An agreement was signed for Russia and the U.S. to assist newly independent Ukraine in ridding itself of nuclear weapons.Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s leader Leonid Kravchuk found his country with the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, including multiple-warhead long-range missiles and bombers, and 3000 tactical (battlefield or short-range) nuclear weapons.

former Ukranian missile silo

Leonid Kravchuk
Kravchuk and his government had decided to eliminate all nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory. Ukraine was the first country to go non-nuclear.
January 14, 1996
Sixteen protesters were arrested in a winter blockade of the rural Wisconsin site (in the Chequamegon National Forest) of the U.S. Navy’s ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) transmitter, which communicated (one-way) with deeply submerged U.S. submarines. Nearly 400 were arrested in 24 actions opposing ELF between 1991 and 1996.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january14

Peace & Justice History for 1/10

TGIF? ☮

January 10, 1776

Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense”. In it Paine questioned the fundamental legitimacy of the rule of kings, and advocated the doctrine of independence for Americans, and the rights of mankind.
The entire text: 
January 10, 1908 
A prominent young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, was jailed for the first time. He had refused to register as an Asian in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He was released three weeks later.

Gandhi, 1906
Gandhi and how his time in South Africa affected his life 
January 10, 1917
The National Women’s Party began regular picketing of the White House, advocating the right to vote for women.


The first suffrage picket line leaving Congressional Union headquarters to march to the White House gates.
January 10, 1920
The League of Nations formally came into being when its Covenant (part of the Treaty of Versailles), ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.
Though strongly supported by President Woodrow Wilson (who served as Chairman of the Committee that developed the Covenant), the U.S. never joined.
January 10, 1930
In December 1928, Mohandas Gandhi attended a session of the Indian National Congress Party in Calcutta where it called for complete Indian independence from Great Britain. This was to be achieved through peaceful means, specifically complete noncooperation with the governmental apparatus of colonial British rule, known as the Raj.
On this day, Gandhi drafted the declaration, which stated, in part:
“The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. . . . Therefore . . . India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj, or complete independence.”
January 10, 1940
Members of the Brethren, Mennonites and Friends religious groups sent a message to Presidend Franklin Roosevelt requesting alternative service in the event of war.

Civilian Public Service workers Clark and Kriebel in the Duke University’s hospital sterilizer room.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 proclaimed that all persons who “by reason of religious training and belief were conscientiously opposed to all forms of military service, should, if conscripted for service, be assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction.”
More on those who refused to serve in the “good war” 

January 10, 1946
The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened at Westminster Central Hall in London, England, and included 51 nations. On January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.
January 10, 1966
Vernon Dahmer, a businessman and farmer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, offered to pay the poll tax for those who couldn’t afford the fee that was then required before a citizen could vote (and which was made unconstitutional in federal elections by the 24th Amendment).
Vernon Dahmer (foreground)

former home of Vernon Dahmer
Dahmer was known for saying, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” 
The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home and store were firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns. The man responsible for the arson attack, Ku Klux Klan Wizard Sam Bowers, was not tried and convicted until 32 years later.
The poll tax and other means of disenfranchising African Americans 
January 10, 1971
The Peoples’ Peace Treaty between the citizens of the U.S. and Vietnam was endorsed by 130 organizations.
Several million North Americans later signed it.


Peoples’ Peace Treaty organizers
The treaty had been signed in December by leaders from the South Vietnam National Student Union, South Vietnam Liberation Student Union, North Vietnam Student Union, and the (U.S.) National Student Association in Saigon, Hanoi and Paris. It was adopted this day by the New University Conference and Chicago Movement meeting.
Text of the treaty 
The People Make the Peace book
Article from New York Review of Books by the National Student Association with the text of the Treaty
January 10, 1994
Guatemalan government officials and leftist guerilla movement leaders agreed to negotiate to end 36 years of violent conflict.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january10

Peace & Justice History for 1/8

The 2003 entry is one of my very favorite things!

January 8, 1912
=
The African National Congress was founded in South Africa. The ANC (now multi-racial) was the first black political organization in South Africa. It was formed to combat the racially separatist system known in the Afrikaans language as apartheid. The ANC is now the majority party in the South African government.
African National Congress history 
==================================
January 8, 1961
The people of France voted to grant Algeria its independence in a referendum. This followed more than 130 years of French colonial control of the north African country. The result was a clear majority for self-determination, with 75% voting in favor.
Read more 
===================================
January 8, 1973
U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho resumed secret peace negotiations near Paris.
After the South Vietnamese had blunted the massive North Vietnamese invasion launched in the spring of 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese had finally made some progress on reaching a negotiated end to the war. However, a recalcitrant South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu had inserted several demands into the negotiations that caused the North Vietnamese negotiators to walk out of the talks a month earlier.

Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger
==================================
January 8, 2003

Three activists, including Kate Berrigan (daughter of Phil) and Liz McAlister, rappelled down a 32-story skyscraper near the Los Angeles Auto Show and unfurled a banner reading “Ford: Holding America Hostage To Oil.” They had chosen Ford due to its having the lowest average fuel economy of any auto manufacturer, and that it was not living up to the reputation it put forth as being an environmental car company.
Frida Berrigan tells the story 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january8

Some The Majority Report clips

Only 2 days into 2025 & already multiple terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Backers Of Impeached South Korean President Wave “Stop The Steal” Signs And Beg Trump For His Support

Backers Of Impeached South Korean President Wave “Stop The Steal” Signs And Beg Trump For His Support

Seems the tRump / right wing cult playbook for domination and elimination of democracy is going worldwide.  This is of course pushed by the mega wealthy in their quest to return the world to where they were mini kings and the people were just desperate peasants taking any job at any risk.  Remember that Musk wanted people to work 80 hours a week with no pay.  He would find it shocking if someone wanted him to work for free with no income.  But he thinks it is fine to demand others do it.  Look at how Bezos of Amazon wrote about workers.  He wrote that upper management should push the workers as hard as possible until they were worn and broken, then fire the worker and hire new ones.   He called workers lazy and useless unless driven ever harder with no mercy.   Also according to the comments South Korea has a large fundamentalist Christian population who also want to force their religion into government the same way US Christian Nationalist do.    Hugs

============================================================

January 4, 2025 Politics, Trump cultists

 

Reuters reports:

Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol are adopting “Stop the Steal” slogans popularized by President-elect Donald Trump supporters and said they hoped the incoming president would help their embattled leader.

As Yoon supporters gathered outside his residence in the pre-dawn hours of Friday in an effort to prevent his arrest, some carried signs in English saying “Stop the Steal,’ a slogan Trump supporters used to question the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which he lost.

Yoon avoided arrest on Friday after presidential guards and troops blocked efforts to carry out a warrant in a criminal insurrection investigation into his short-lived martial law on Dec. 3.

The Guardian reports:

While pro-Yoon groups criticize their opponents as being subservient to North Korea, they openly venerate the United States. Over recent years, these groups, which remain a fringe element of South Korean society, have increasingly adopted rhetoric from the American right, particularly around claims of election fraud.

The allegations have been amplified through a network of far-right YouTube channels, where conservative commentators livestream the rallies and promote a wide range of conspiracy theories.

These online echo chambers, which Yoon himself has been accused of relying on for information, have become key platforms for spreading unfounded claims and maintaining supporter morale.

The Trump disease is truly global. Watch the video report below in which supporters attempt a feeble rendition of the US national anthem.

Peace & Justice History for 1/3

January 3, 1961
A nuclear reactor exploded at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killing three military technicians, and released radioactivity which, in the words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission, was “largely confined” to the reactor building. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands and heads had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste.
=====================================================
January 3, 1967

Carl Wilson
Carl Wilson of the the Beach Boys was indicted for draft evasion.
Claiming conscientious objector status, he eventually won his battle against the charges.
=====================================================
January 3, 1971
On her first day as a member of Congress, Bella Abzug (D-New York) introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops from Southeast Asia.

Bella Abzug
Born in the Bronx in 1920, one month after the passage of the U.S. Constitution’s 19th amendment granting women the right to vote, she was the first Jewish woman elected to Congress. After attending Columbia University Law School, she practiced civil rights and labor law for twenty-three years. Throughout her career, she was known as one of the most vocal proponents of civil rights for women, as well as for gays and lesbians.
Background on the indomitable Bella 
=======================================================
January 3, 1993
The United States of America and the Russian Federation agreed to cut the number of their nuclear warheads to between 3,000 and 3,500 (nearly half).U.S. President George H.W. Bush, just before leaving office, and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty – Start II – in Moscow. Start II marked the biggest reduction in nuclear arms ever agreed, eliminating land-based multiple warhead missiles, and putting limits on submarine-based missiles.

Read more 
=======================================================
January 3, 2003

Brazil’s new leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, suspended purchase of 12 new fighter planes, saying money could be better used to relieve hunger. 
More about Luiz Inacio  

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january3

Some Joe My God headlines of republican right wing feces

GOP “Games Out” Certifying Election Without Speaker
Russia Rejects Trump’s Proposal To End Ukraine War
Florida Bill Would Ban “Illegals” From Filing Lawsuits
GOP Rep. Chip Roy: Johnson Doesn’t Have The Votes
Bloomberg: World’s Richest Got “Vastly Richer” In 2024

The eight tech titans alone gained more than $600 billion this year, 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase among the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

https://twitter.com/EddyElfenbein/status/1874094513666642216
Loomer: MAGA Is “Scared Of Crossing Monarch Musk”
CBS: Tesla Among Companies With Most Visa Workers
https://twitter.com/Mteuzi/status/1873053242739098019
Bannon To Musk: “We’re Going To Rip Your Face Off”
FBI Seizes Huge Cache Of Pipe Bombs From VA Man
https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1873882544867074159
WSJ: UnitedHealth CEO Boasts Of Record Year
Cultists Claim DC Mayor Paid For Anti-Trump Posters
CDC Warns COVID Rates Have Tripled In Recent Weeks
Breitbart: Trump Will “Make Greenland Great Again”

Greenland’s natural resources are worth many trillions; future drillers and diggers won’t care that it’s cold and distant. As Alaska proves, where there’s value, there’ll be value-extractors

plus, perhaps, a casino or two. Yes, the right kind of development could MGGA—Make Greenland Great Again.

CO Rep Celebrates Death Of “Despot” Jimmy Carter
Dr. Stabby: Trump Brought An End To Political Violence
Fox News Guest Rages About Musk And Ramaswamy: These People Don’t Believe In National Borders [VIDEO]

Peace & Justice History for 1/1

January 1, 1831

William Lloyd Garrison first published The Liberator (four hundred copies printed in the middle of the night using borrowed type), which became the leading abolitionist paper in the United States. He labeled slave-holding a crime and called for immediate abolition.
From the first issue: “I will be harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. “Assenting to the ‘self-evident truth’ maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, ‘that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.”
Selections from The Liberator 
January 1, 1847
Michigan became the first state – the first government in the English-speaking world – to abolish capital punishment (for all crimes except treason). This was done by a vote of the legislature, and was not a part of the state’s constitution until 1964.
How it happened (it’s a .pdf)
January 1, 1959
32-year-old lawyer Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista who had fled the island the day before. Batista, a former army sergeant, had seized power in a coup, canceling an election, in 1952.
 
Fidel Castro
More on pre-Castro Cuba
The news at the time
Perspective of a U.S. intelligence agent
January 1, 1983
44 women scaled a 12-foot fence at dawn, breaking into a cruise missile base at Greenham Common in Great Britain, and danced on a missile silo.
The lyrics to their “Silo Song”  
January 1, 1987
Ten anti-nuclear activists were arrested for trespassing at the Nevada Test Site, the culmination of a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate. The camp established momentum for what became a movement ultimately involving over 10,000 arrests in numerous Test Site protests over the following years in the campaign to achieve a freeze of all nuclear weapons testing.

Nevada test site landscape
The Nevada site includes more than 14,000 sq. km. (nearly 6000 sq. miles, larger than the state of Connecticut) of uninhabited land where atmospheric, and later underground, nuclear testing had been conducted since the 1950s.
About the the Nevada Test Site 
January 1, 1989

Kees Koning
Kees Koning, a former army chaplain and priest, and Co van Melle, a medical doctor working with homeless people and illegal refugees, entered the Woensdrecht airbase (for a second time), and began the “conversion” of NF-5B fighter airplanes by beating them with sledgehammers into ploughshares. The Dutch planned to sell the NF-5B to Turkey, for use against the Kurdish nationalists as part of a NATO aid program which involved shipping 60 fighter planes to Turkey. Koning and van Melle were charged with trespass, sabotage and $350,000 damage; they were convicted, and both sentenced to a few months in jail.
Read more about the plowshares movement
January 1, 1991
Early in the morning Moana Cole, a Catholic Worker from New Zealand, Ciaron O’Reilly, a Catholic Worker from Australia, and Susan Frankel and Bill Streit, members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community in Washington, D.C., calling themselves the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and U.S.) Peace Force Plowshares, entered the Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York.

Moana Cole
After cutting through several fences, Frankel and Streit entered a deadly force area, and hammered and poured blood on a KC-135 (a refueling plane for B-52s), and then hammered and poured blood on the engine of a nearby cruise missile-armed B-52 bomber. They presented their action statement to base security who encircled them moments later. 
About Moana Cole 
January 1, 1994
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. A treaty among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, it called for all three countries to follow similar policies for environmental, safety and investment regulation, apart from laws passed by their respective legislatures.
January 1, 1994
On the day NAFTA (see above) took effect, more than 2,000 native Mayans in Mexico’s Chiapas state marched into the state capital, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and five neighboring towns, and seized control. Calling themselves Zapatistas, or the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a “declaration of war” was issued.
Chiapas is among the poorest parts of Mexico. The indigenous peoples of Mexico long suffered as second-class citizens due to the dominance of the Roman Catholic church and the traditional Mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry) political leadership of the country. The EZLN was certain that NAFTA would permanently lock in the top-down economic situation in Mexico. The Zapatistas’ slogan was !Ya basta! (“Enough is enough”).
Employees at the Mexican stock exchange were evacuated by riot police. 25,000 Mexican soldiers arrived in Chiapas equipped with automatic weapons, tanks, helicopters and airplanes. 145 deaths were reported, mostly civilians. Massive arrests and subsequent torture of prisoners by the government took place.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january1