The Laughing Nomad

Well, today I put some wax on the tile on the veranda tiles hoping to make it easier to sweep up the dust (polvo) from the air and the road work they are doing near the apartment.  Cars and trucks have been detouring by the apartment and the dust flies up on my veranda.  Daily fight to keep it looking nice.  I had some cariso (1.5 inch banboo “sticks” ) put up on that ugly plastic “wall” that separates my veranda from the apartments on either side…at each end of the veranda. Really looks nice now and you can see it through the windows when you are in the living room. I put a rug out there and more plants.  Cozy.

My maid works 4 hours a week…and often cooks so I can learn to cook Oaxacan food…for about $15 a week.  The big thing is picking up the rugs and sweeping and mopping the dust off all these floors which I pick up on my feet and track onto the sheets. Quite a luxury.

I’ve been saving $ for travel.. Living among people who have little to spend kind of rubs off.  I get huffy when the taxi wants to charge 5 pesos more than he should. (about 25 cents.)

I have a friend, Paula, from Minneapolis, who has been here a year teaching English to 2nd graders in a private school.  She has this week to go and then she’s finished so we are planning on a couple overnight visits to mountain villages.  Will be nice to get out of the city.  These mountains are beautiful and besides I miss being in the mountains. But she’s going back on July 15 so will miss her when she’s gone.  Maybe it’s time to sign up for some language classes.:((

I got my visa…unlimited coming and goings…if I want to renew at the end of a year I have to go back to immigration 30 days before the end date…which will be sometime in May of 2010. I saved $200 again this time by doing it myself instead of using somebody.

People were practicing indigenous dancing in the park today along with music from a band to get ready for Gueleguetza in July.  So I got serenaded for free.

Looks like the Iran thing will peter out for the moment…but guess there is a split among the clerics. And looks like  Amadinejad will still be the one Obama will have to deal with.

FROM: JOHN ROSS

johnross@igc.org
Blindman’s Buff #242

MEXICO’S SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE SWINE FLU HYPE - TIPPING POINT FOR A NEW MEXICAN REVOLUTION?

MEXICO CITY (MAY 27TH) - Upon returning to Mexico City after 100 days in Gringolandia dealing with a personal health crisis, I was met at the door of the downtown hotel where I have bedded down for the past quarter century by a uniformed security guard in jackboots and blue surgical mask who insisted upon smearing my palm with a goopy hand sanitizer as a precaution against the much-hyped swine flu.

“I’m sorry,” the guardian lamented, “I know its all a ‘faramalla’ (farce, trick) but the boss gave us orders.” The hotel itself was empty, the guests having fled in the wake of the self-described “pandemic” and the draconian measures the government has taken to counteract it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, this is probably going to mortify my three boys, men now, (well, maybe not the one who is a doctor) but when I went to the gynecologist here in Oaxaca last week, I saw, for the first time ever, at the age of 64, my cervix!  Don’t know if all my previous doctors had seen it either, but it only seems fitting that I get to see it. Too see that tiny place inside my body that miraculously allowed three fully-formed human bodies to stubbornly push through to the light of day. Just before Mother’s Day.  In Oaxaca! Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers and mothers-to-be in the future.

The Center For Disease Control website is here.

Wednesday the World Health Organization declared a Phase 5 Pandemic Alert.  This is the fifth of six levels, with the six phases being defined as :

Interpandemic period

Phase 1 : No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. An influenza virus subtype that has caused human infection may be present in animals. If present in animals, the risk of human infection or disease is considered to be low.

Phase 2 : No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. However, a circulating animal influenza virus subtype poses a substantial risk of human disease.

Pandemic alert period

Phase 3 : Human infection(s) with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most rare instances of spread to a close contact.

Phase 4 : Small cluster(s) with limited human-to-human transmission but spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus is not well adapted to humans.

Phase 5 : Larger cluster(s) but human-to-human spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans, but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).

Pandemic period

Phase 6 : Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission in general population.

To put the Phase 5 status into context, the much talked about Bird Flu was never rated at higher than a Phase 3 alert.

This flu may well have its origins in intensive industrial pig-farming as described here.

CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories
April 30, 2009
By Michael Greger, M.D.
Crowded conditions on factory farms create breeding grounds for new viruses.

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

This analysis, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology, has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the “godfather of flu research,”[1] is reported as saying “The triple reassortant in pigs [first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor.”

The first case in the Mexican epidemic seems (I say “seems” because that it is the level of information we are receiving here in Mexico from the govt, the scientists and the WHO: ambiguous and vague) to have been a four-year-old boy in the town of Perote in the state of Veracruz in mid March (ie over a month before the “contingency” was made public). Nearby is one of the largest pig farms in North America, Granjas Carroll, jointly owned by Agroindustrias de Mexico and Smithfield, a US agribusiness, producing 800,000 pigs a year and so much pollution and filth that the local population have been in a state of permanent protest since it opened in 1994. Smithfield was fined $1,285,000 in 1985 for violation of the US Clean Water Act; $12.6m in 1996 and one of its managers and a technician sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for covering up its direct discharges into the Pagan River. The Calderon govt has been protecting Granjas Carroll, whose name has not been mentioned so far at press conferences, despite the fact that 400 out of the total population of 3,000 of another nearby town, La Gloria, suddenly came down with atypical flu or pneumonia on April 2 this year.(Source: “Astillero”, La Jornada, 29 April 2009, p.4)

However, the NY Times reports this morning the first death in Oaxaca here.

 My two couchsurfers at the moment, bicyclers riding from Vancouver BC to Argentina, went out roaming around yesterday and came upon some street theater making fun of the panic over the flu. Last night they went out with a friend wearing a flu mask with “mieda” (fear in Spanish) written in big black letters on it.

Videos and spoofs are showing up all over the web including Daily Mash and Comedy Central.

From Oaxaca Study Action Group Forum: “In the zocalo about  one in ten are wearing face masks. All the servers in the restauants and cafes are wearing them. Doctora Bertha Muñoz was not wearing a mask. She says that viruses are too tiny to be obstructed by a piece of paper. But when she needed to sneeze, she pulled up the neck of her T shirt over her face to the eyes. The government bulletins recommend sneezing into your bent elbow.

Bertha’s opinion on the flu outbreak was that the gov is holding back info. A thought: does the government have info, or any way to gather it?”

Apparently, the Mexican authorities knew of the existence of this swine flu as early as mid-February but did nothing about it for two entire months. Government officials have been forced to acknowledge as much. Outrage over the Mexican government’s ineptitude has swept the country. On April 29, the Frente Sindical Mexicano (FSM) held a press conference during which it lambasted the Mexican government for its handling of the entire healthcare crisis.

7% of Mexico’s GDP comes from tourism. Tourists are leaving by the hundreds which will devastate the livlihoods of workers who depend on the tourist industry.

My weekly newsletter from Casa de las Amigas, the Quaker guesthouse in Mexico City where I stayed in 2007, has this to say about the current flu going around:

You are invited to turn off the TV, especially those of you who remember Y2K and the Africanized killer bees, and look for news from some lower-gloss sources: The World Health Organization is the most official source for news, as is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  For news from here, check the main portal of the Government of Mexico City, La Jornada offers constant, critical updates en español from Mexico City.

At the same time that Obama was in Mexico City promising to help Mexico militarize against the drug cartels, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who ran against President Calderon in the last election as a member of the PRD) was in Oaxaca to protest the murder of a Oaxacan PRD woman activist.

Some Mexicans think that Obrador, who during the election was able to draw a million people to the Zocalo in Mexico City, would never be able to command that following now. Once, the popular mayor of Mexico City, it is said by some that he has managed to side-line himself somewhat by leaving the PRD and apparently switching positions on a number of political issues…therefore losing the ear of many in the middle class who once adored him. A Mexican musician (who is the partner of a friend of mine) who used to worship Obrador, now considers him a “clown.”

On the other hand, the party that Obrador ran for president on (PRD) has been coopted by the PRI and is now considered as corrupt as the PRI, suffering from in-fighting and is virtually dead.  So Obrador has dropped the PRD and seems to be running around supporting selected individuals for local elections in whatever party whether it be the PRD, the Workers Party or the Convergencia Party, and speaking out on issues of corruption and whatever is the crisis of the day. So it may be that, come the time for election of another President in four years (Mexico’s presidents may only serve one six-year term) Obrador could ride a tide of popular opinion on some issue.

Coming upon the 100th anniversary  of the 1910 revolution, in Oaxaca, Obrador said that “militarizing the country won’t resolve the problem of 27 years of no economic growth.” The big push is on to get the PRI out in the next election, which is in July of this year for congress. 2010 Oaxaca votes for new governor. Read the rest of this entry »

The government has issued an arrest warrant and revoked the passport of the indicted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra which they can do anytime they determine that someone has damaged the country.  With incitement to riot that left two people dead, an annual ASEAN conference in shambles and the loss of a couple billion of tourist dollars they had good reason.  But big deal.  He is already in exile to avoid a two-year prison sentence for corruption. He doesn’t give a damn about saving democracy….or his passport.  He just wants his couple billion back that the country froze and saw a public uprising as his only last best hope. IMHO, of course. He is not done yet.  Sad.

The LA Times has an opinion piece this morning entitled “What Mexico Really Needs From Obama” written by John M. Ackerman who is a professor at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a columnist for Proceso magazine and La Jornada newspaper.

From my observations of Mexico AND the U.S. he is right on on all accounts. In other words Obama should focus on helping Mexico reform it’s institutions and rule of law instead of supplying weapons to fight the drug cartels. “Only 15% of the funds in the $1.4-billion Merida Initiative signed by President Bush last year,” says Ackerman, “is earmarked for “institution building and rule of law.” If Obama hopes to contribute to long-term solutions, he should dramatically increase this percentage in future aid packages.”

“The Obama administration seems to be unaware of these deeper institutional issues. During her recent trip to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t push Calderon on corruption control, human rights, freedom of the press, institutional reform or political reconciliation. She also went out of her way to cater to conservative constituencies. Her visit to Mexico’s principal basilica implied a nod to Calderon’s efforts to narrow the traditional separation between church and state. Her choice to travel to the city of Monterrey, home to the most powerful members of Mexico’s corporate oligarchy, also sent a clear signal about the priorities of the U.S. government.”

President Obama should not focus exclusively on short-term military goals during his visit to Mexico this week. The violence there, which has taken the lives of 10,000 Mexicans over the last two years, must be stopped. But the helicopters, weapons scanners and listening devices that have been the cornerstone of promised U.S. support will only go so far. The real solution lies in effective institution-building.

It does no good to capture drug kingpins if they don’t go to jail. During 2008, only one out of every 10 suspects arrested in Mexico for drug offenses was convicted, according to official statistics. In Chihuahua, one of the bloodiest states in the country, only 1,621 out of the 5,674 suspects arrested over the last 12 months have even had to stand trial, because of the weakness of the prosecutors’ cases.

RealTruth.org/Corruption_at_the_Top
Almost a decade ago, the U.N. special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Param Cumaraswamy, discovered fundamental problems of inequality and inefficiency with Mexico’s system of criminal justice. Today, the grim picture he painted has changed little. Mexico’s jails remain full of petty thieves while serious criminals with money and connections roam the streets.

Last year, Mexico passed a major constitutional reform that would introduce oral trials — to replace trials conducted only through written documents — and transform the role of government prosecutors. The goals are to reduce case backlogs by speeding up trials, to prevent corruption by increasing transparency and to improve criminal investigations by dropping the requirement that prosecutors issue a preliminary judgment on the culpability of suspects. With this latter change, prosecutors would be able to dedicate themselves exclusively to investigating cases and avoid conflicts of interests. But the authorities have dragged their feet on implementation. Congress has delayed passing all of the necessary follow-up legislation, and the commission created by the reform, with representatives from the executive, judiciary and legislative branches, has not convened.

Corruption at the top all the way to the bottom.  Nothing will change until the institutions and rule of law are reformed. The problem is they are all on the take and no one wants to give that up.

Update April 14, 2009
Shopping malls are open and the train station has resumed service. Protestors have been bused home.  Arrest warrants have been issued for Thaksin and 13 other pro-Thaksin United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) leaders for violating the state of emergency, which forbids gatherings of more than five people for political reasons.  It is worthy to note that that many of the “yellow shirts” that shut down 3 airports a few weeks ago have yet to be charged.  Unequal treatment under the law may be what is dividing the country to the extent that it has. Read the rest of this entry »

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder visit Mexico Thursday to meet with their counterparts.

The Christian Science Monitor has this story blaming gun shows and subsequent smuggling into Mexico for the proliferation of guns in Mexico…which are illegal and hard  to get for the ordinary citizen. I am sure illegal guns are coming across the border. But Narco News Bulletin has this disturbing story indicating:

“To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.

At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.

“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”

The Narco News report goes on to say:

“The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.

“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”

The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export.

The reports do not provide details on who the weapons or defense services were exported to specifically, but do provide an accounting of the destination countries. Although it is possible that some of the deals authorized under the DCS program were altered or even canceled after the export licenses were issued, the data compiled by State does provide a broad snapshot of the extensive volume of U.S. private-sector arms shipments to both Mexico and Latin America in general.

According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports.

That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $ 700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].”

Maybe that’s why the tear gas canisters used against the demonstrators in 2006-7 in Oaxaca had “Made in the USA.” on them. [sarcasm]

 My favorite paper media for years has was the Christian Science Monitor which sadly from here on out is only going to be a weekly. Since I started traveling I have been subscribing to the online edition which will continue. This article appears in their last daily edition.

 There’s a big difference between what we say and what they hear.

from the March 28, 2009 edition

“In the course of my travels – from the Middle East to Central Asia to Southeast Asia – it has been my great privilege to meet and become friends with many devout Muslims. These friendships are defined by frank respect as we listen to each other; understand and agree on the what, why, and how of our disagreements, political and theological; and, most of all, deepen our points of commonality as a result.

I have learned much from my Muslim friends, foremost this: Political disagreements come and go, but genuine respect for each other, rooted in our respective faith traditions, does not. If there is no respect, there is no relationship, merely a transactional encounter that serves no one in the long term.

As President Obama considers his first speech in a Muslim majority country (he visits Turkey April 6-7), and as the US national security establishment reviews its foreign policy and public diplomacy, I want to share the advice given to me from dear Muslim friends worldwide regarding words and concepts that are not useful in building relationships with them. Obviously, we are not going to throw out all of these terms, nor should we. But we do need to be very careful about how we use them, and in what context.

1. “The Clash of Civilizations.” Invariably, this kind of discussion ends up with us as the good guy and them as the bad guy. There is no clash of civilizations, only a clash between those who are for civilization, and those who are against it. Civilization has many characteristics but two are foundational: 1) It has no place for those who encourage, invite, and/or commit the murder of innocent civilians; and 2) It is defined by institutions that protect and promote both the minority and the transparent rule of law.

2. “Secular.” The Muslim ear tends to hear “godless” with the pronunciation of this word. And a godless society is simply inconceivable to the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. Pluralism – which encourages those with (and those without) a God-based worldview to have a welcomed and equal place in the public square – is a much better word.

3. “Assimilation.” This word suggests that the minority Muslim groups in North America and Europe need to look like the majority, Christian culture. Integration, on the other hand, suggests that all views, majority and minority, deserve equal respect as long as each is willing to be civil with one another amid the public square of a shared society.

4. “Reformation.” Muslims know quite well, and have an opinion about, the battle taking place within Islam and what it means to be an orthodox and devout Muslim. They don’t need to be insulted by suggesting they follow the Christian example of Martin Luther. Instead, ask how Muslims understand ijtihad, or reinterpretation, within their faith traditions and cultural communities.

5. “Jihadi.” The jihad is an internal struggle first, a process of improving one’s spiritual self-discipline and getting closer to God. The lesser jihad is external, validating “just war” when necessary. By calling the groups we are fighting “jihadis,” we confirm their own – and the worldwide Muslim public’s – perception that they are religious. They are not. They are terrorists, hirabists, who consistently violate the most fundamental teachings of the Holy Koran and mainstream Islamic scholars and imams.

6. “Moderate.” This ubiquitous term is meant politically but can be received theologically. If someone called me a “moderate Christian,” I would be deeply offended. I believe in an Absolute who also commands me to love my neighbor. Similarly, it is not an oxymoron to be a mainstream Muslim who believes in an Absolute. A robust and civil pluralism must make room for the devout of all faiths, and none.

7. “Interfaith.” This term conjures up images of watered-down, lowest common denominator statements that avoid the tough issues and are consequently irrelevant. “Multifaith” suggests that we name our deep and irreconcilable theological differences in order to work across them for practical effect – according to the very best of our faith traditions, much of which are values we share.

8. “Freedom.” Unfortunately, “freedom,” as expressed in American foreign policy, does not always seek to engage how the local community and culture understands it. Absent such an understanding, freedom can imply an unbound licentiousness. The balance between the freedom to something (liberty) and the freedom from something (security) is best understood in a conversation with the local context and, in particular, with the Muslims who live there. “Freedom” is best framed in the context of how they understand such things as peace, justice, honor, mercy, and compassion.

9. “Religious Freedom.” Sadly, this term too often conveys the perception that American foreign policy is only worried about the freedom of Protestant evangelicals to proselytize and convert, disrupting the local culture and indigenous Christians. Although not true, I have found it better to define religious freedom as the promotion of respect and reconciliation with the other at the intersection of culture and the rule of law – sensitive to the former and consistent with the latter.

10. “Tolerance.” Tolerance is not enough. Allowing for someone’s existence, or behavior, doesn’t build the necessary relationships of trust – across faiths and cultures – needed to tackle the complex and global challenges that our civilization faces. We need to be honest with and respect one another enough to name our differences and commonalities, according to the inherent dignity we each have as fellow creations of God called to walk together in peace and justice, mercy and compassion.

The above words and phrases will differ and change over the years, according to the cultural and ethnic context, and the (mis)perceptions that Muslims and non-Muslims have of one another. While that is to be expected, what counts most is the idea that we are earnestly trying to listen to and understand each other better; demonstrating respect as a result.”

• Chris Seiple is the president of the Institute for Global Engagement, a “think tank with legs” that promotes sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide.