Chinese Chincanery and whatall this week…

Well, hello Dalai…

The People’s Republic of China mounted a photo exhibit here last week on exploitation in Tibet. New openness, letting, as Chairman Mao once said, “a thousand flowers bloom, a thousand thoughts contend”? Not on your life! These are old, old photos showing how crappy things were in Tibet before their “liberation”.

Nobody went. While Mexicans are no slouches when it comes to lousy wages, hours and working conditions, they still have pesky things like a minimum wage and unions that really cut into the cheap exports and (Wal)market. Nobody north of the border is going to worry too much about it, so the Mexicans are appealing to a higher authority. The Dalai Lama is making a State Visit later this week. If nothing else, the Chinese are really, really pissed off… which is probably the whole point.

Speaking of governments that like to shoot unarmed student protesters… yesterday was the 36th anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre. Despite the commie rhetoric (The PRD, and Cuauhtémoc Cardenas are the good guys, not the villains – they’re just not commie enough for the author), http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/tlatelolco/tlatelolco1e.html is readable overview of what happened.

The kids are all right…

Even people who knew about this event somehow forget how young some of these protesters were… it was high school kids protesting police repression (the coppers started busting heads when a pickup soccer game between two prepas got a little rough) that led to general protests by college students, workers, housewives, campesinos and civil servants… you know – what Time and Newsweek and CBS and the New York Times all called “Communist Inspired” types. Read “educated people”… a whole generation of them. Even those 14-year old “commies” are getting a little long in the tooth. The poor has always distrusted the cops… ever middle-class person my age or older fears them. It’s a good thing people are self-reliant… or neighborhood-reliant… here. The last thing you want to do is call a bunch of yahoos who had trouble getting through 6th grade to handle a problem. The cops are starting to get a little better – they have to be 7th grade graduates now, and the younger ones can actually run a few blocks if they have to. There were 3500 of them lined up down Insurgentes this afternoon waiting for the protesters.

Maybe Mexican kids have more respect for their elders… or tradition. They’re still the bulk of the 2 October protesters. I watched the cops patting down a few punkers. Two years ago, when a few of the “usual suspects” (Kentucky Fried Chicken and the foreign owned banks) had their windows smashed, the powers that be blamed the “darkeos” for the trouble. The “darkies” are the weird kids who like morose music, read Edgar Alan Poe and wear lots and lots of black. They’re just smart, weird teenagers – and lucky for them they live in a big enough city to find other smart, weird teenagers (besides not having guns, you’re more likely to find a Mexican who likes George W. Bush than a potential high school shooter in a city where even morose loners have a huge peer group). Like I said, our police are not known for their smarts. This year’s flavor of “potential trouble maker” are the punks. Excelsior said a few were arrested for carrying explosives (i.e., firecrackers), but then, the punks stand out even more than the darkeos – they both wear a lot of black, but the darkeos have long hair and the punks have spiked hairdos. I guess next year, it’ll be the skaterboarders the coppers go after.

President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz died and went to Hell before he could be prosecuted for Tlatelolco, but Luis Echiverria is still among the living. Echiverria was the Sec. de Gobernacion (sort of Homeland Security chief) in 1968… with a second job as a C.I.A. agent (like our friends Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussain and Osama bin Ladin). Maybe they’ll get him into a courtroom before he goes to his reward.

Another Mex-File mystery, semi-solved…

Thanks to Jeff A. Taylor at Reason Magazine’s Hit and Run website for this one. (http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2004/09/26-week/index.shtml) . The Las Vegas Journal Review, covering a store about Judge Marrero’s ruling that the Patriot Act was unconstitutional gives me a clue to solving one Mex-File…

The Journal-Review (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Sep-30-Thu-2004/news/24881864.html) reports

… late last year Vegas casinos, hotels, and airlines were subject to a massive FBI data mining exercise the true extent of which remains unknown. Some 350,000 people had their personal info sucked up without their consent or even knowledge. Indeed, the PATRIOT Act forbade companies from even disclosing the federal request for info to anyone.

Last January, our City Comptroller was videotaped in Las Vegas playing blackjack with MY TAX MONEY. Ok, the guy’s a scumbag (present whereabouts unknown – Interpol is guessing Brazil or Cuba. I’m betting he’s at the bottom of Lake Powell with his feet sitting in cement). We have a lot of scumbags in city government. But, just when it started to become obvious that our Socialist Jefe de Gobernacion was the overwhelming favorite for President in 2006, all sorts of Socialist corruption (a refreshing change from the usual PRI and Foxista corruption) started to pop up. Our Jefe (who drives a Tsuru and lives with his three sons in a middle-class apartment) always said there was a right-wing (read “gringo”) plot to discredit him. How did Vegas casino security tapes (supposedly not available to anyone without a court order) end up on a morning talk show, in the possession of a right-wing congressman. Do you really believe the F.B.I. was looking for terrorists at the blackjack table?

And… yes, I do have a life…

Things were getting a little too normal. I’m STILL waiting for one client to pay a very large bill (They’ve promised to pay this week, but then, they’ve promised to pay in 15 days, 5 months ago too. And we’re not talking about some fly-by-night company, or a mom-and-pop operation here. I won’t mention any names, but the only way I’d do business with that unnamed international pharmaceutical company listed as ABT on the New York Stock Exchange is if they pay up-front). So, my “emergency” U.S. bank account is running very, very low. Not exactly an emergency, true… but then, after buying household appliances and paying little incidentals like rent, the phone bill, and silly things like that, I’ve developed this weird habit of eating every day.
And, I have another mouth to feed. I know, I know… I said I really wanted to live alone. But, what are you going to do… an orphan with questionable parentage, though a real charmer and knows it… and a Latin American blonde. What else can you call the pup but Eva Perra? I’m guessing she’s about 10 months old… probably a Christmas puppy some asshole abandoned when they went on vacation. Small – 6 Kilos and, best guess, some sort of collie and terrier and maybe Cocker Spaniel in the family tree. I notice the serious political bloggers always post a picture of their cat on Fridays. But, I’m not serious, and I don’t have a cat… and I don’t have a regular posting schedule. Still, I’ll post a pooch picture when I find my camera.
Here’s the big difference between Mexico City and Houston. I’m absolutely comfortable walking Eva at 1 AM through a park and around the hood here. I don’t think I’d have walked Hippie (or Stella, or Bubba) outside my semi-suburban neighborhood at that hour. Even the guys hanging in doorways smoking mota and dinking coronas say “Buenos dias”.

And that’s all the news from Lake Tezcoco-be-gone, where all the men are good looking, the women are strong, and the children are suspects.