Tag Archives: Mexico

Disasters in Mexico

Posted on by
Reply

Mexico was hit by the worst natural disaster in its history this last Halloween when rains flooded 80% of Tabasco state. Villahermosa, the second most populous Mexican city after Merida in Southern Mexico went under water, when its poorly maintained levee system failed much like what happened in New Orleans. See video of aftermath, and video of flooded Villahermosa from air.

A few dollars ‘saved’, and billions lost, all through government corruption. But there is another disaster due to hit Mexico soon, and it is called ‘Plan Merida’. This is a deal negotiated in secret between the US controlled Mexican puppet government of Felipe Calderon, and the Bush White House. Their plan is to further militarize Mexican society in copy cat form with what is occurring in the US.

The further militarization of Mexico is to be done under the guise of fighting drugs and drug cartels. What we can expect in the years ahead, is a Mexico with more Swat Teams, more army control over civilian society, more crime and danger to the average Mexican citizen, more drug traffic, and less rights for all. This is a mirror of what the US public can expect under ‘Homeland Security’.

Mexicans and Anglos have a common struggle together. It is a struggle against an encroaching police state of international dimension. It may well be that the ongoing militarization of Mexico by the US, may dwarf any natural disasters such as occured with the flooding of Tabasco.

Turning those looking for work into felons

Posted on by
1

The US government is beginning to make the Mexican-US Border into a supplier for the prisons by turning undocumented workers into declared felons.

No doubt, this is going to help employment in the US for all the pro military-industrial types, who can now maybe better weather the incoming economic crash some, by watching over jailed Mexicans while getting paid? What a way to breed racist Minutemen thugs, too! Welcome to Prison Nation. No doubt the meatheads of America will be thrilled to death with this new governmental welfare program for them.

Mexico’s ‘New Orleans’ style flood disaster

Posted on by
2

Almost an entire Mexican state is underwater now. So where is the relief aid? Not helping out the people In the Murky Floodwaters of Tabasco it seems. The US militarization of Mexico is a disaster for that country, same as it has been for Colombia. Tabasco may well become Mexico’s ‘New Orleans’. Photos

Benazir Bhutto of Team America

Posted on by
1

Benazir Bhutto in true colorsWhy was Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan feted with bombs? Whether the bombers were Pakistani security forces or Talibani “terrorists” or western black-ops (each faction by coincidence also fingered for 9/11), they targeted Bhutto because she represents US interests for Pakistan.
 
Our media says she heralds Democracy, their corporate owners know the truth is Capitalism of the most sordid exploitive kind. The press corps traveled with Bhutto on her much hyped homecoming from self-exile. Did their emotion-drenched personal interest leave any doubt their girl’s a member of the American-Dream team?

Team America includes:
Hamid Karzai, President of AFGHANISTAN
Alvaro Uribe, President of COLOMBIA
Meles Zenawi, President of ETHIOPIA
Rene Preval, President of HAITI
Emile Lahoud, President of LEBANON
Felipe Calderon, President of MEXICO
Mahmoud Abbas, President of OCCUPIED PALESTINE
Mohammed Yousef, Puppet in waiting in SOMALIA
Yoweri Museveni, President of UGANDA

Remember these US agents?
General Jorge Rafael Videla, President of ARGENTINA
Colonel Hugo Banzer, President of BOLIVIA
General Humberto Branco, President of BRAZIL
Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of BRUNEI
General Augusto Pinochet, President of CHILE
Fulgencio Batista, President of CUBA
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, General of EL SALVADOR
Alfredo Cristiani, President of EL SALVADOR
Halie Selassie, Emperor of ETHIOPIA
General Sitiveni Rabuka, Commander, Armed Forces of FIJI
George Papadopoulos, Prime Minister of GREECE
General Efrain Rios Mont, President of GUATEMALA
Vinicio Cerezo, President of GUATEMALA
François & Jean Claude Duvalier, Presidents-for-Life of HAITI
Roberto Suazo Cordova, President of HONDURAS
General Suharto, President of INDONESIA
Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, Shah of IRAN, King of Kings
Saddam Hussein, President of IRAQ
General Samuel Doe, President of LIBERIA
Hussan II, King of MOROCCO
Anastasio Somoza, Sr. And Jr., Presidents of NICARAGUA
Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq, President of PAKISTAN
General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Defense forces, PANAMA
Alfredo Stroessner, President-for-Life of PARAGUAY
Ferdinand Marcos, President of the PHILIPPINES
Antonio De Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of PORTUGAL
Ian Smith, Prime Minister of RHODESIA
P. W. Botha, President of SOUTH AFRICA
Park Chung Hee, President of SOUTH KOREA
Ngo Dinh Diem, President of SOUTH VIET NAM
General Francisco Franco, President of SPAIN
Chiang Kai-Shek, President of TAIWAN
Turgut Ozal, Prime Minister of TURKEY
Mobutu Sese Seko, President of ZAIRE

Killing poorer immigrants the US way

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s how it works. The US pays the Mexican government to wall off Mexico’s southern borders to keep immigrants out. It helps militarize Mexico, too, and it can be called the ‘War on Drugs’.

But in reality it’s a war on immigrants even more. Let them die! That’s official US immigration policy. The latest poor folk murdered by US immigration policy

Mexico’s most corrupt political figure cheats again

Posted on by
Reply

Poor Roberto Madrazo. He and his political party, the PRI of Mexico, together epitomize what corruption is all about. Corruption is like a bad habit with them that is endemic to how that party has always functioned and all that the PRI is about.

Roberto Madrazo is only the last gangster in a long line of PRI politicos who have enriched themselves, the gringos to the North, and a very few super rich Mexican industrialists at the expense of millions upon millions of common Mexican folk.

Madrazo thought he was owed the Mexican presidency through the deals he made within the top political class misleadership, but he in fact had become expendable for the other gangsters he had negotiated with. Just last year he wrote a book talking about this betrayal. He thought that Mexico itself had been betrayed by a cabal by this cabal not allowing him to get into Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. But he was the worst of the worst, and the stink of his campaign was just too much to make him desirable to the elites for becoming the front piece for the Mexican establishment.

Here is Madrazo’s latest escapade in the news. Mexico politician denies cheating It’s just too funny for words. In fact, it reminds us of some of the political clowns we have here in the USA.

Breaking note… a huge statue of Vicente Fox just put up hours earlier in Mexico was roped and then toppled down to the ground! We can do the same in the US if we try! If they put up a statue of Donald Rumsfield at Stanford University, it should be toppled, too!

Che, The Internationalist

Posted on by
2

Che Guevara lives on in the victory of his ideals over those of his adversaries. Che was an internationalist appalled by the poverty that the US Empire and its capitalism had delivered to the common people across the Americas and on other continents like Africa.

Today, he remains the living antithesis to our government’s constant desire to conquer other peoples and to rule over them in the consequent misery that comes to the fallen.

Che, like Martin Luther King, had a dream. Forty years later it is still honored by others in their respect for this true American hero. And in the country where he was murdered by the CIA’s henchmen, the people honor him more than ever. Bolivia The press makes it out as if it is a party, but Che’s dream lives on as US power in the Americas begins to erode.

The Berlin Wall of the Americas

Posted on by
Reply

Security fence barrier wall intended to keep people from crossing
Is this the Berlin Wall? Is it the Israel-Palestine Apartheid Barrier? Is it the Security Fence being erected along the southern US border? Are we looking at it from the outside or the inside? Does this wall block entry or exit?
 
Consider the news that activists ne-plus-ultra Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright were just denied entry/exit to Canada, where there’s not even a wall.

Security walls imprison people, no matter which side. Walls separate us from higher paying jobs on the other side, or lower cost drugs [on the other side]. Walls divide to conquer. Walls/fences frustrate us that our grass is insufficiently green. No one, especially US Americans, should be applauding walls. This one twice the height of the wall in Berlin. We are building our prison nation. Welcome to East Germany. I believe you have already met the Stasi.

The Case of Pedro Zapeta vs The US National Security State

Posted on by
Reply

Pedro Zapeta‘s case is a case of the US government robbing the very poor to give to the National Security State.

He was a Guatemalan trying to get back to his native country with savings from his extremely low paying US job as a dishwasher. Instead, the US government seized his piggy bank at the airport! Then they set his deportation up after lifting his wallet, so to speak. So how does the US government treat the well-to-do Guatemalans? Does it rob them, too, like they did this poor Guatemalan, Pedro Zapeta ?

I can answer that myself. In 1985 I flew back from Guatemala City to Houston, Texas. On board, their was a fellow US citizen who was scared to death because we were seated 2 rows right behind a wealthy Guatemalan who I started euphorically making fun of. I have a big mouth and was excited to be going home but my American companion was scared to death. It seems we were seated right behind Mario Sandoval Alarcon.

Who was he? Why was he being waited on by the air steward as if he was royalty? Why was he on a plane going to the US? Below is a little about the guy. The American woman next to me on this flight had to return to Guatemala so I shut up for her sake. Maybe that is what kept me from being thrown out an open door as we flew over Mexico that day. Who knows?

Now here is a bit about ‘Mario’ taken from some info published by Right Web about the US based World Anti-Communist League (WACL) headed up by Jesse Helms for so long ….
———-
Guatemala: In 1954, with the formation of the CIA-sponsored Army of Liberation (AOL) organized to overthrow reformist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, Guatemala became fixed in a pattern of anticommunist political violence which persists today. (11)

The Eisenhower administration tagged Arbenz as procommunist and sent E. Howard Hunt of the CIA (and, later, of Watergate fame) to organize the AOL. (45) In 1957, a radical right faction of the government set up by the U.S. to replace Arbenz assassinated his successor, President Castillo Armas, and formed a new party, the National Liberation Movement (MLN).

Mario Sandoval Alarcon was the driving force behind the government, and the MLN became the legitimizer of his paramilitary operations. (11)

Sandoval Alarcon, known as the “godfather,” launched his career in the AOL, and has been head of the WACL in Guatemala since 1972. (11) He was the coordinator of La Mano Blanco, which oversaw the operations of many of the death squads in Central America. La Mano Blanco was coordinated by CAL.

The death squads have terrorized Guatemala since their formation in the 1960s. When interviewed by the authors of Inside the League a political analyst said,”People ask if the death squads are controlled by the [Guatemalan] Army. They are the Army.”(11)

Sandoval Alarcon was head of the National Congress and vice president under Colonel Kjell Laugerud Schell from 1974 to 1978. While vice president, he established close ties with Taiwan through his leadership of WACL. He sent an estimated fifty to seventy Guatemalan army officers to the Academy in Taiwan for training. (11) In 1980, WACL requested that Sandoval Alarcon help D’Aubuisson establish death squads in El Salvador. (11,45)

In 1979, John Singlaub and Daniel Graham of the American Security Council and soon to be founders of the new U.S. WACL branch, the USCWF, visited Guatemala. The purpose of their junket was to begin to heal the relationship between the U.S. and Guatemala that had become strained under the Carter administration. They also informed the Guatemalan government that a Reagan victory would lead to a resumption of military ties between the countries.

Mario Sandoval Alarcon attended President Ronald Reagan’s inaugural ceremonies. (11) Alberto Piedra, WACL member, was appointed ambassador to Guatemala by President Reagan. (38,40)

While Sandoval failed in his bid to become president of Guatemala, he remained the power behind the throne. In 1985, he was still the head of WACL, claimed to have a private army of three thousand, and the ability to put thousands more paramilitary troops into action on short notice. (11)
——-
(End of article. Alarcon is now dead.)

Masked crusader of illiterary legend

Posted on by
Reply

America humiliates Mexico for the Zimmerman Telegram
All Pikes Peak Reads has chosen this year’s library recommendation: ZORRO! Did you know that was a work of literature? Dumas, you think? R.L.S.? This choice follows To Kill a Mockingbird, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland. All accessible to younger readers to be sure, and literary to boot. I have no argument with Isabel Allende’s Zorro [prequel], to entice the participation of Pikes Peak area adults, but what for the children? Charles Lamb? Harold Lamb? Did Zorro capture their prolific imagination? No, the kids get to read not the Legend of Zorro, but ABOUT the legend of Zorro. Great, so it’s not literature, at least it’s history. Is it?

Not even.

It turns out Zorro sprung from a post-WWI pulp serial The Curse of Capistrano written by screenwriter Johnston McCulley. The black mask and cape were added by Douglas Fairbanks in his 1920 portrayal, and the rest is [film] history. So Zorro is Tinseltown legend, and the historical setting inverts itself from there. The Hispanic colonial rule of California against which Zorro rebelled never existed in that too-rural territory. But it sure creates a convenient boogey man from which the United States can feel better liberating the early Californians. Zorro, in Spanish “The Fox” being the surrogate advance scout, extending justice over the objections of the despicable Spaniards until the cavalry can arrive. The adventure published on the heels of US belligerent fight-picking with Mexico. So much for history.

A Zorro legend lacks even for historical precursors. Robin Hood might be the closest example, except according to legend, Robin Hood was a man of the people, not a rich man robbing for the poor. Zorro’s Don Diego follows more the Alexander Dumas model of The Count of Monte Cristo, avenging having been usurped of his noble birthright. Since the Enlightenment and the suspicions it cast on the divinity of monarchist rule, official chroniclers have been tasked to remind the masses that a “fox” could never be more cunning than his betters unless he was of uncommon blood. Noble deeds can only be expected of noblemen, hence the term. This stereotype has always trumped the Puss in Boots or Horatio Alger stories coming from steerage. The Count begat Zorro begat Batman begat the Green Hornet begat the George Soros secret funding mystique. Now we even speculate that Robin Hood, had he existed, must have been a disenfranchised noble. Likewise Jack the Ripper. Common man can’t even get credit for crime.

To be clear, the oligarchs know their people won’t buy rule by divine right, but we do respect Darwin’s survival of the fittest. And certainly fitness and advantage are hereditary. Only those fit shall rule.

I extend this deference of heritage to my real life heros, but is it warranted? Che Guevara was from the privileged class and is lauded by the counter-culture as the most heroic revolutionary figure of our time. But ultimately, and conveniently, a tragic failure. On the other hand, the truly effective populist reformers of modern times have all been of ordinary birth. Counting backward, Morales, Chavez, Mandela, King, Lumumba, Castro, Gandhi, Mao, Lenin, Marx.

Would Zorro stand up as an Easop’s fable or does he subvert man’s self-wisdom? Gotham cannot fend off its criminal elements without super-just Richie-Rich Bruce Wayne, thankfully completely benign in his vigilante despotism and not the least bit a corrupted-absolutely Nero or perverted Gilles de Rais, donning a Blue[-blood] Beard to mask his nightly reconfiguration of injustice.

Pikes Peak Reads is part of Laura Bush’s unholy surge, the library extension of the Every Child Left Behind travesty devastating our education system. Even if the choice of reading about a fictional legend was made locally, it doesn’t surprise me. The third grade of our well-regarded elementary last year followed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with a lesser known Washington Irving legend: Batman! The former coincided with a Discovery Channel premiere of Sleepy Hallow and the latter turned up at the megaplex, it was: Holy tie-in with the H.E.W. Batman! A new beginning!

I’ll eat Zorro’s hat if Isabel Allende’s precursor, Zorro, a new beginning, isn’t coming to the screen this year, or isn’t precursing a sequel, which would make it what, a cursor[y] Hollywood incarnation? Next year the Pikes Peak pick, left for the children to decide, will be the legend of another masked, caped crusader, a legendary Italian everyman, and ever too mortal, Mario of the Brothers franchise.

Immigrants are our friends, not our enemies

Posted on by
Reply

Immigrant workers are our allies, not our enemies is a talk given by Garrett Brown of the Maquiladora Health and Safety Network that packs a lot of facts in it. One fact he mentions is that more than 1/2 of Mexicans are living on $3 or less a day income.

Do you really want to have the government tracking these immigrants down like they were mere dogs, and not human beings like you and your family are?

Also of note, is that 1 hour south of Douglas, Arizona, an American owned mine is out once again trying to destroy the miner’s union located there in a small Mexican town. The town where the mine is located is called Cananea, Sonora.

Below is some info about this, and once can also check out the film called Cananea, too, for some historical reference and background to this union struggle.
…………………………………
From: Garrett Brown (received today)

Dear Colleagues:
I am writing to see if anyone is, or knows of any, Spanish-speaking
occupational physician, occupational nurse or industrial hygienist who
would be available for a 4-day trip to Cananea, Mexico (just south of
the Arizona border) over the Columbus Day weekend (Oct. 5-8, 2007).

We are trying to put together a volunteer team, all expenses paid but
no fees, to conduct limited medical screenings and IH-related
interviews of some of the 1,300 copper miners who have been on strike
for 7 weeks against the giant Grupo Mexico conglomerate at the
historic Cananea mine where the 1910 Mexican Revolution began.

The key demands of the strike are over workplace health and safety,
and the decision of Grupo Mexico to close the miners company-paid
health clinic. Grupo Mexico has vowed to break the union in Cananea —
which would be a historic defeat — as well as impose its demands on
the workers. The strike is being strongly supported by the United
Steel Workers (USW) union in the United States in a heartening display
of international solidarity.

The goal of the US team, which will partner with Mexican health
workers in Cananea, will be document as thoroughly as possible in a
short time the health problems experienced by both retired and active
miners; and to collect information on the working conditions in the
Cananea facility. The medical team will conduct the medical
evaluations and the IH team will conduct interviews with the workers.

A report will be issued following the visit to provide information to
the public in both Mexico and the United States about the working
conditions that provoked the strike and the needs of the miners.

Further details of the timing (not completely confirmed at this
writing) will be available in the next several days.

If you — or anyone you know — are potentially available for this
emergency, short-term but very important project, please contact
Garrett Brown at gdbrown@igc.org

In solidarity,
Garrett Brown
Coordinator, Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network

Ira Rennert and Elie Wiesel, an Ugly American pair

Posted on by
1

Ira Rennert is the owner of Doe Run Corporation which is contaminator of one of the world’s most poisoned communities, La Oroya, Peru. His company is American and he is an American. La Oroya was listed once again as one of the 10 most toxic areas of the world.
Largest private residence 29 bedrooms on 100,000 sq ft Long Island

Rennert is a big buddy of Elie Wiesel, largest owner of the Holocaust business. Weisel specializes in pushing Israeli Zionist propaganda off on gullible Right Wing Americans, selling it to promote the Pentagon’s constant wars. He, too, is an ugly American like Rennert.

Here is more about this ugly American corporation, Doe Run. What could be more cruel than rich Americans giving innocent kids lead poisoning?

More about Ira Rennert, the Zionist. Maybe Rennert’s main religion is making money? How American that would be! Who cares about the kids?

When I used to live in El Paso, Texas, I used to wonder about what type of rich Americans would locate a lead smelter directly on the Border where the wind would blow the lead contamination onto major barrios just across the line in Juarez, Mexico? They were people like Ira Rennert who don’t care a damn about the people they make sick and/ or murder.

That Asarco plant in El Paso still is there but less used. Instead, the murder committed by rich Americans is now usually farther away from view from most of us living in the US. But these rich still strut amongst us playing like they are saints instead of the thugs, child abusers, and assassins they really are.

Neo-liberal translations of Arabic

Posted on by
Reply

Borat is a Jewish comedian in Muslim black faceDoes the Arabic at left mean anything to you? It could spell Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Balad al-Rafidin for all you know. Would that translate to “al-Qaeda in Iraq” if there was no such thing? AQI is a CIA coined term. Much as if the police searched your home, planted a stash, and labeled it “pot of your home.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is actually the dumbed down shorthand of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia for Americans who wouldn’t know what Mesopotamia would have had to do with September 11. The lands of Mesopotamia would really suggest a Greater Iraq, inclusive of regions of Syria, Turkey and Iran. In which case, Jihadists advocating for the ancient territorial legacy of Iraq would not likely be fighting in Iraq at all. AND ACTUALLY, fi Balad al-Rafidin translates to “the country of the Two Rivers.”

Whether QJBR is a CIA invention, like the Jordanian who-never-was al-Zarqawi, will be for historians to decipher. Probably it’s a little of both. Regardless, AQI ends with “in Iraq” –only in America, land of few maps and sub-average education. We can’t even be told that Mexico is actually called Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, lest US Americans get confused.

What liberties can our think tanks and intelligence manipulators take with Kufic script! The phrase above could just as well mean “I will wipe World Jewry off the face of the Earth!” as “Springtime for Hitler and Germany.” Or it could have meant “erase the illegitimate borders imposed on trans-Arabia by the Western powers bent on imposing an Israeli colony, by ruse of religion, in mock restitution for the Holocaust, the pogroms and the Spanish Inquisition, to give them a beachhead for Middle East oil.”

If I were to have a guess at the Arabic characters above, it would be “Sin Salida.”

Will Pakistan chaos stop planned US war on Iran?

Posted on by
Reply

The key to whether the US will attack Iran or not has more to do with how it goes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and not so much how the occupation of Iraq is going.

In Pakistan the US allies in power face a serious crisis after years of tying the country to American imperial interests. In short, the population is getting increasingly fed up with the US-fed whores that rule their country. The country is enmeshed in poverty, instability, and conflict inflamed by the US occupation of Afghanistan.

The US is feverishly trying to bring back, for an American enforced ‘alliance’, Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto was one of the previous US mandated ‘leaders’ in that country, whose reputation for corruption is legendary there.

Interestingly enough, the US government has used some of the same so-called ‘public relations’ firms it used to put Vicente Fox in power in Mexico to maintain and keep Bhutto in action as a player in Pakistan. Now, evidently the Bush Administration thinks that 2 US backed whores at the top in Pakistan somehow will legitimize that country’s misleadership to its own population, freeing up the US to assault Iran without worrying about unrest further destabilizing Pakistan. This will be a doubtful outcome of these US government manipulations though. Look for greatly increased strife instead.

Here below is PR Week’s analysis of the Benazir Bhutto- US government ‘PR firms’ relationship. They have the cart pulling the horse though. The US government eagerly allows these US backed thugs to do PR work in the US and international press in tandem with the US government’s’ Pentagon PR firms own work.
…………………..
Source: PR Week, March 16, 2007

“Overseas political groups are increasingly seeking to raise their legitimacy and sell their agendas in their home countries through communications outreach to US politicians, media, think tanks, and other influential audiences,” writes PR Week. The party of former Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” leader Yulia Tymoshenko is working with TD International, Glover Park Group and Dezenhall Resources. Armenian defense minister Serge Sarkisian, “who plans to run for president,” has hired Burson-Marsteller and its BKSH & Associates unit, on a $65,000 per month contract. B-M is also working for Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Opposition Party. For their international clients, the firms arrange meetings “with government officials, members of Congress, the media, and others … to emphasize the individual’s or his or her party’s desire to promote greater political freedom and human rights,” often along with a focus on “energy security.” Former CBS News correspondent turned PR executive David Henderson said, “Media is international, and this approach tends to add to [foreign groups’] perceived credibility and influence in their own countries.”

Also see antiwar. com published article Musharraf’s allies question deal with Bhutto

No hope

Posted on by
Reply

Jason Godeke illustrates George Saunders
This painting is called Me and Dad with captives. No explanation proffered. It’s by New Mexico artist Jason Godeke as part of a series about inhumanity.

The scene recreated here haunts me every time I look upon it, and reminds me of the George Saunders novella Bounty. From his collection CivilWarLand in bad decline written in 1996, Bounty describes a timeless America where slavery divides Normals and Flaweds. The story offers the reader a point of view with which he can identify, as any average imperfect person, facing a world were all laws, comforts and sympathies are against him. Escape leads only to the next captor’s depravity, (Normals being just as vulnerable to human frailty as the random genetically Flawed). For the unfortunates, damned by birth, there is no landscape or impending social reform to offer hope of reprieve.

Godeke’s farm scene suggests an identical terror. Two people, indistinguishable from any other, are bound and at the mercy of two others. One looks despondent, the other is reacting to a mistreatment. The two tormentors act with fresh enthusiasm for the power they wield over their captives, recording, as the painting’s title suggests, this snapshot for posterity. Not “our captives,” not “the captives,” but simply that opportunity’s “captives.” The field extends further than the victims’ voices can carry, there is no sanctuary on the horizon and time stands still.

Like an ant on a banana orchid

Posted on by
2

While their older brother, sisters and cousins were “peeling” across the Caribbean Sea on a banana boat, Devon and Ryan were overjoyed to learn that they would get to visit the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve near Tulum to learn about the different ecosystems of the Yucatan peninsula. They bounded with unbridled joy from our adorable beach cabana to wait in the heat and humidity for the tour van.devonready.jpgOur open-air boat motored quickly through canals used by the ancient Mayans as well as various lagoons, our guide stopping periodically to point out birds or plants that might be of interest to us. One particularly engaging stop was for the banana orchid.

The banana orchid is an epiphyte, a plant that lives on another plant without damaging its host as a parasite would. The banana orchid’s pseudo-bulbs (the banana-y looking things) play host to nests of stinging ants. The ants feed on the nectar of the orchid and protect the plant from other insects and pollinate it in return. An endless parade of ants marched up and down the stem of the orchid, ignoring us as we all smelled the slight scent of banana surrounding the blooms.banana-orchid.jpg
Amazingly, a nearly identical species of banana orchid is endemic to the Cayman Islands. Still an epiphyte, but living on different trees and aided in pollination by the tree itself. Nary an ant in sight.

To me this is an astounding example of adaptation and the bounty of the natural world. I guess every living thing strives to survive, no matter the circumstance, and hopes for a little cooperation from its fellow beings. There is no right way. No singular path. We can hammer out a workable existence using the resources that surround us.

Stealing daddy’s spotlight…and mommy’s pills

Posted on by
2

Ready to be happy?
This morning, catching up on the goings-on after a week in blazing hot and muggy Mexico, I read on CNN.com that Al Gore III was arrested recently on charges of possessing — in addition to marijuana — Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and Adderall. Oh my! The article pointed out that prescription drug use is becoming more prevalent among the young than even good ol’ pot.

Prescription drug abuse is particularly common among upper middle class students, according to Lisa Jack, a clinical psychologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “It just goes to show that where you’re from doesn’t matter,” Jack said. (I hope she isn’t speaking geographically).

The article goes on to admonish parents to lock our medicine chests so that vulnerable offspring will be adequately protected from evil.

Okay, done. But it seems to me that a better question would be, “Why are upper middle class bathrooms filled with an array of pretty-colored mood-altering pills in the first place?”

Welcome to the world of the upper middle class housewife. We take Adderall (basically speed) to get through the morning rush and the long list of daily chores. Valium (a tranquilizer) around 3 p.m. to take off the remaining Adderall edge and get through the afternoon kid activities with a smile. Xanax before stressed-out husband walks through the door assessing performance and demanding moral support and a lovely dinner.

After the kids are safely tucked in, Vicodin (an opioid) gives the same buzz as the 2 or 3 glasses of wine that we used to be able to handle easily, but which now lead to belly fat which, face it, is not only unsightly but downright unhealthy.

What the young ones apparently haven’t discovered yet is that Ambien at bedtime puts one into a nice dreamless coma that lasts until the alarm bell goes off and the cycle begins again.

I bet that you wish you could be-e-e half as lucky as me-e-e.

Posted by Marie Walden on July 08, 2007 at 01:44 PM

Resurrection Day!

Posted on by
Reply

From Oaxaca comes Resurrection! Hundreds of thousands once again march in a city smaller than Colorado Springs where previous protesters and their leaders had been brutally assaulted, tortured, and kidnapped away into far away prisons. Big business polls suggest that 2/3 of Mexicans are behind the illegitimate government of Felipe Calderon. Oaxaca disagrees. What an inspiration!

Be the second to see this film on youtube about the march. I was the first. You might want to start about 1/3 way through though as the first 1/3 didn’t show much. Ni Perdon, Ni Olvido

Los Temerarios- Mexico versus Peru

Posted on by
Reply

When I first met my wife, she was curious to know which Mexican group I liked the most. The surprise answer (to her) was ‘Los Temerarios’. Since then, we have travelled together from Matamoros de Tamaulipas to Matamoros de Coahuila, or the city without law, as my wife once heard it called by a bus driver. And like those 2 cities of the same name, as it turns out there are also 2 groups called ‘Los Temerarios, one from Zacatecas, Mexico and the other from Huarochiri, Peru.

You decide which group is best! Select videos with music by both groups follows. You got to get really drunk in cantinas to appreciate the music of Los Temerarios de Mexico though. Best cantina music ever made IMO! Unfortunately, the 2 videos selected hardly do justice to their music. You got to be in the working side of town on a Friday or Saturday night to get the sound down just right.

Temerarios de Peru and more of their music at Go Ear

Temerarios de Mexico- Tu Ultima Cancion and Te Hice Mal.

American companies busy at work killing the kids daily

Posted on by
Reply

Protests at the G8 economic conference in Europe and Bush and Rice preaching the joys of capitalism to Putin as the Pentagon encircles Russia with new weapons. These are the headlines in the news this week and last.

Most all of us now understand how the US’s military-industrial complex kills children daily around the globe, since one has to be in obtuse and total denial to not know about this. But what about our other industrial giants? Aren’t they helping others out, and most especially helping out the world’s children to live better lives?

George Monbiot has an excellent commentary about this issue titled (at least on their site), G8: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say. A` large part of his article discusses some big American companies involvement in helping kill Philippine children for their stockholders benefit. And how the US government itself steps in to ensure that this be the case.

This is not a situation limited to the Philippines and/ or breastfeeding. American corporations carry out economic policies that kill all around the globe. They are constantly working to sell coca cola, corn syrup, and other expensive food trash to children whose parents have little money. In Mexico and Central America, vending of fruit and licuados is rapidly in decline, while corn tortilla prices skyrocket. Meanwhile, the countryside is turned to desert by American pushed ag policies. Children perish in these conditions, and they are the conditions that US corporations push worldwide.

Yes, American companies are busy at work daily killing kids to make a better profit for themselves. Add that to the policies they push that degrade the world’s ecology, and the kids are in danger everywhere. There has got to be a better way than allowing the ‘free market’ to just run amok.

Mexico slides into political chaos

Posted on by
2

There is little news in the US press about it, but Mexico is beginning to sink into chaos. After stealing the Mexican federal presidential election in mid 2006 with US support, Felipe Calderon (FeCal), now acting president, began a struggle to obtain some public legitimacy by initiating a war with Mexico’s drug lords. He is now losing that war.

Of even more potential interest to the Mexican public as well as to the international public, is a split forming in the Mexican political establishment, exemplified by a new book by long time PRI leader, Roberto Madrazo entitled ‘La Traicion’ (The Betrayal). Madrazo book claims that Mexico was betrayed, as well as himself, by a secret pact made between previous Mexican presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox. He dates that secret pact as having begun in 1994.

The essence of that pact was to seemingly end the over a half century dictatorship of one party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI, and to begin a planned-on ‘alternancia’, where political power would alternate between the PRI and PAN kind of like it does in the US between the Democratic and Republican parties. Except the pact was actually broken when Felipe Calderon followed Vicente Fox into presidential office, since both are from the same political party. Madrazo knows about this secret plot well, since he was a full participant to it when it was initiated. But he thought that it would guarantee him the presidency in 2006. Instead, he came in third, hence the ‘betrayal’.

But what political forces actually launched this secret plot? Roberto Madrazo dates this well and it is easy to follow the money. He dates the plot as beginning in 1994 and it was in precisely the time that the Clinton Administration and Mexican PRI government were negotiating an economic ‘bailout’ to stop the Mexican economic crash of that time. In 1995, the cash began to flow to the tune of over $55 billion dollars from the US into Mexico. What was purchased by the US government?

The US was sick of having ties to a corrupt Mexican dictatorship that had no world legitimacy. The European Union was formed as an economic bloc, but the US only had Mexico and Canada to work with, and Mexico had a most unsavory reputation. What was purchased by the bailout was an agreement to open up the Mexican system to another pro-big business political party, the Partido Acion Nacional or PAN. That way, the US would not be seen as dealing with a dictatorship.

The PRI establishment wanted some guarantees as to their future though, and Roberto Madrazo wanted the 2006 presidency to come back to himself. Well it simply didn’t, as change began to spin out of control of the PRI bigwigs in charge up to that time of all that was Mexico.

So where will the political chaos brake at? A lot will depend on what happens in the war of Mafias now engulfing Mexico. Presidente FeCal (Felipe Calderon) thought he had the best armed and best situated mafia. Perhaps not? Like Colombia, Mexico might now best be considered an evolving Narco-Death Squad state. Lots of dealing and wheeling gone bad. And FeCal as well as Roberto Madrazo may well fall to the wayside.

Peaceful vacation in New Mexico, Anybody?

Posted on by
Reply

Half a million can buy some PEACE for you in Albuquerque next week. You get Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama, and some Gandhi, too…. all for just $65/person, price of hotel room and organic vegetarian nourishment not included. I feel like flying there in a hot air balloon! New Mexico Peace Conference

US Homeland Security exports Orwell to Mexico

Posted on by
1

It was just a matter of time. The US State Department has awarded a contract to a US spyware company to set up intercepts of telephone calls, emails, and other information system communications in Mexico.

In Mexico, the government is calling this part of the ‘War on Drugs’. Here, with our more updated propaganda system in place, it is being called a contract to help stop TERRORISM! Who could ever be against such nice goals? Don’t you feel protected? I bet you do!

This is the same company and same system given by the US Government to their friends in Colombia, the Colombian oligarch government and their allied death squads. With the ‘War on Terror’ in fool gear, the US Government and its private contractors will be exporting Orwell everywhere! Be sure to check out the contracted company, VERINT, and its brochures.

The New Colossus

Posted on by
2

I met an otherwise conservative old gentleman yesterday with a refreshing answer to the immigration question. Said he: “I’d welcome them!”

“This nation was built on immigration, we’re all immigrants -except the Native Americans- and I believe there’s room for plenty more. There’s obviously work so let them come.”

That’s the kind of empathy I think is necessary before we can address the real problem of immigration: what is driving refugees to cross our borders?

If Iowans suddenly started flooding into Kansas, only the most self-centered xenophobe would conclude it was for Kansas’ superior character. The rest would wonder, what is happening in Iowa to drive all those people from their homes? What industry is destroying the farms and businesses leaving Iowans no choice but to move off? More than likely it would be the same culprits that are at work in Mexico.

Big Agra and the usual multinationals, aided by the traditional ruling elite, have been raping Mexico and Central America for years, forcing the populations to move north, not for greener pastures, but any pasture at all. Mexicans are not coming to America because they want to be Americans. They do not embrace American culture, even our language. They are a displaced people. Let’s welcome them into our system and together we can address what powers are at work which have stolen their homelands. The forces are multinational, but the tools are American. They are the World Bank and friends. Our government.

It wasn’t always thus. I chanced to look up Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty where there are more words than form the fabled phrase we know by heart. To me they reflect a grand ideal that today serves only to inflate the American sense of self-importance. Time to go back to school lest The New Colossus (Mother of Exiles) become like the old.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What does ‘Otpor’ have to do with Colorado Springs?

Posted on by
Reply

You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, ‘organizing non-violence’ oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade.

And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor.

These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to ‘Canvas’ and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It’s symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a ‘non-violence’ working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries.

The US government in the ’70s and ”80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time.

Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.