¡Bi-estupida!
Ramos: It would be impossible to ask you to say a few words in Spanish, right?
Palin: Oh my good-well, I don’t want to embarrass myself, but … but gracias and I do thank you so much for this opportunity. I appreciate it.
She needn’t have worried about her monolingualism… she’d just finished up embarrassing herself for several minutes in her interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos on Aquí y Ahora. The interview will be rebroadcast on Al Punto this Sunday at 10 AM Eastern U.S. time.
Unfortunately, the video is only available in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, so I can’t present you Sarah’s interview in it’s full glory. The video is here (if someone wants to turn it into a “youtube” video, I can attach it) and the transcript (in English, naturally) here.
Homeland Stupidity… rebooted
“nonny mouse” (Crooks and Liars), notices that new rules allowing Homeland Stupidity Department snooping into private data are having some weird… and unintended… consequences:
From January 12, 2009, citizens from such infamous terrorist hotbeds as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Western Europe and several other nations around the world ordinarily covered under the Visa Waiver Program will be required to submit an application for authorization via the Internet before they will be allowed to enter the United States.
…
Even worse that passenger’s laptops, mobile phones or any other data storage device can be confiscated indefinitely by federal agents without any suspicion of wrongdoing, the information copied and shared with other agencies or even ‘private entities’ for language translation, data decryption or any other reason. Business travelers in particular, rather than dark skinned young men from unfriendly Middle Eastern countries, seem to be the main targets of confiscation.
Those passengers who have to make trips to the States are increasingly turning to blogs advising on how to encrypt their hard drives, and shipping them back and forth via FedEx but not declaring the contents as a hard drive because that ‘may arouse suspicions’. If asked, lie and say it’s some cheap-sounding trinket. Or even, if you must travel with your computer, consider carrying a pink laptop with Hannah Montana stickers on it to make it less interesting to airport officials.
It gets worse, and “nonny mouse” concludes …
… at some point those countries we’ve long considered to be our ‘friends’ will get sick and tired of their citizens being treated like criminals and terrorists instead, and kick out anyone holding an American passport. On the other hand, they may just take pity on me and offer me refugee status…
As a service to my regularly traveling readers, a special “Homeland Security” wallpaper is available here
Another reason to hate transitos
A gay couple, citizens of the United States residing in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo filed a denouncement against the police for being arrested, detained and forced to pay a two thousand peso fine for kissing in public, which the police claimed was “a moral crime”.
(18-October Milenio, Toluca edition)
I’m not surprised I couldn’t find mention in the Quintana Roo papers (at least I couldn’t find anything in the Cancun, Playa del Carmen or Chemutal papers). I found one article yesterday in the national edition of Universal, and another — verbatim from the Milenio story — in an Argentine gay publication. Nothing in Jornada as of yesterday. It’s probably the “ick factor” — not the gay thing: the transit police. You expect them to be jerks normally, not outright scumbags.
I hadn’t heard of this particular police scam in some time. Claiming foreign gay couples (especially in this incident, where there was possibly a noticeable age difference, one partner being in his his mid-30s and the other in his early 20s) violated some non-existent “public morals” law, and are detained until they’re willing to pay some non-existent “fine” for the “offense.” When I wrote my little guidebook for foreign teachers in Mexico City, I warned about this particular scam:
Mature men – especially gay foreigners –have been accused by the police of “consorting with prostitutes” or pedophilia when with a younger companion. Neither homosexuality nor prostitution is a crime. However, the younger male may be blackmailed or beaten in this particular “scam”. The best professional advice is to “resolve the matter on the spot” (i.e., bribe the cop). Pay up, but report the matter to your embassy and to the Human Rights Commissioner of the Distrito Federal.
But I was thinking specifically of Mexico City (and the only foreigner I knew who was victimized by this was a Hungarian visitor in his 60s) and hadn’t heard of this happening in resort communities before. Milenio reported that the younger of the two men was a “United States citizen though his mother’s nationality” — in other words, despite an “Anglo” name, he had probably grown up in Mexico, and had a Mexican father. The older guy was Puerto Rican. In other words, Transit cops (transitos) — who even in the best of times seem to seek out motorists to charge with legitimate minor infractions that can be resolved with a bribe — are trying to hassle not foreigners, but gays.
It’s unusual that the officers insisted on holding the couple, even though they were told — in the police station, apparently by other police officers — that there was no crime to hold the guys on. Not having cash on them, the two were held for several hours until one of them was able to come up with a credit card and obtain the “fine”. Although they made it clear they were United States citizens, and held separately from the other prisoners (sharing their cell, they reported, with a Guatemalan and a Slovak) Samantha Mason, the United States Consul was not informed. And she is… to the honor of the State Department … pissed off.
Complaints have been filed with the Quintana Roo Human Rights Commission (CDHQR). Hopefully, the next time these officers make the news, it will be as one of those “ex-policemen” found off in the woods somewhere, head detached from his body, after getting sideways with his new employers. Good luck in your future career, pendejos.
Brooklyn is a foreign country, right?
Sombrero tip to The Sanctuary for this report on the on-going assault on American civil liberties brought on by the hysteria over “illegal” immigrants.
Boy, I need to start a category just for Homeland Stupidity…
White lines of credit
The city fathers of Culiacan aren’t that much different than city fathers anywhere. When a new business pops up — whether its a WalMart or a prison or tourist hotels that will negatively impact the local mangrove swamp — defenders will always say “well, it’s job creation.” It’s just that in Culiacan, the industry has been narcotics smuggling. It isn’t the gangster slaughter that’s killing business so much, as the credit crunch caused by the “war on (some) drugs” that’s hurting here in Sinaloa.
Tracy Wilkerson’s amazing article for the Los Angeles Times is the first I’ve seen on the down-side of anti-narcotics efforts that doesn’t dwell on the violence unleased by the anti-narco wars, but on the effects that effort is having on every day life:
… Sales are down here and at scores of businesses across this western Mexico city. But this recession has nothing to do with stock-index dives on Wall Street, the weak peso or collapsing banks. This is a narco-recession.
When army troops rolled into Culiacan this year as part of a massive government campaign to fight drug traffickers, the big players went underground. From the looks of things, they took their free-flowing dollars with them.
“No one wants to be ostentatious right now,” said Raul Gustavo Piña Ibarra, manager of the Hummer and Cadillac dealership…
Losing a Cadillac or Hummer dealership isn’t a huge blow to the economy, but
… as much as 20% of Sinaloa’s gross domestic product is based on drug trafficking and the chain of production, transport and intelligence involved, according to Guillermo Ibarra, an economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.
Tomato sales were in the dumper this year, thanks to a phoney salmonella scare in the United States, tourism is off and what’s left? The narcotics industry doesn’t just create jobs for hitmen, but for drivers, growers, accountants… and — like any local industry — the employees create other jobs, buying homes, groceries, goods and funeral services — the engines of small town growth and prosperity. And, a “narco-recession” is no different than any other kind.
The usual arguements about the benefits of narcotics legalization come from user countries, not exporter ones. The benefits to our community are different — right now we have a stake in increased consumption, and its continued non-regulation as an industry creates financial problems (as it does in other industries), But, narcotics exporters are about the only leaders of an unregulated industry that are punished for their activieis by having their profits taken away. What I might modestly suggest is that if we want to end the narcotics industry, we have to lessen the economic impact. It’s a radical idea, but I could see the benefit of letting the narcos keep their “ill-got gains.” Oh, I know that some money is recovered from cheating bankers and investment scammers like Enron in the United States, but most of it is just written off.
I wonder how much support there would be for legitimizing the gangsters — and letting them keep their assets — IF those assets were plowed into the legitimate economy? A lot of those assets are already there, and why not just forget the source and concentrate on the future. Sort of like Hong Kong did when it went out of the opium business. Driving a load of marijuana isn’t any different than driving a load of tomatoes, or gravel to build a road. Accounting for “dirty money” isn’t any different from accounting for “clean” money. The driver and accountant for the Sinaloa Cartel — becoming the driver and accountant for Chapo Guzman S.L. de R.V.
Adios, superpeso
Ricardo Jiménez y Manuel Lombera in today’s El Universal (my translation):
The superpeso has been done in by the international financial crisis. Economic analysists and bankers in Mexico do not expect to see the return of the ten peso to the dollar rate, which was the average over the last year.
They estimate that the peso will lose value for the rest of the year, though in 2009, it will reach a peso-dollar parity of around 12:1.
Salvador Orozco, subdirector of financial markets at Santander estimates that the peso-dollar exchange rate will be in the range of 12 to 13 in the medium range, although he doesn’t discount a return to a rate of 11.50 to 12.00 pesos to the dollar by 2010.
For his part IXE economic analyst Luis Flores, predicts the national currency will trade at a level of 13.30 over the next four weeks.
Both agree that by the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010, economic pressure on the peso will abate, and the rate will be around 11.80.
Other specialists in currency trading expect demand for greenbacks to remain strong for the rest of the year. Several inter-reacting factors will cause that the dollar continues to the rise, such as the seasonal demand at the end of the year [dollar values always rise in Mexico at the end of the year, as remittances pour into the rural economy], as well as falling prices in international markets, and the increasing dollar-denominated debt load of Mexican companies.
Salvador Orozco mentioned that as a consequence of pressure on the peso, he expects inflation to rise, forcing the peso to eventually level off at the 12 to one dollar exchange rate.
For exporters, the depreciation in value is not necessrily good news. Fernando Ruiz Huarte, technical director of the Foreign Commerce Council (Consejo Mexicano de Comercio Exterior), commented that a higher exchange rate will mean a higher cost for consumer goods. The advantages of a cheaper peso are only short-term for the export market.
Those Godless lefties…
He [Jesus] accompanied me in difficult times, in crucial moments. So Jesus Christ is no doubt a historical figure—he was someone who rebelled, an anti-imperialist guy. He confronted the Roman Empire…. Because who might think that Jesus was a capitalist? No. Judas was the capitalist, for taking the coins! Christ was a revolutionary. He confronted the religious hierarchies. He confronted the economic power of the time. He preferred death in the defense of his humanistic ideals, who fostered change…. He is our Jesus Christ.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa is a Catholic Socialist and has called for a “new Catholicism” in the 21st century which would challenge globalized capitalism. The President has said that his real education came from working as a lay Salesian missionary in the mid-1980s in the largely indigenous province of Cotopaxi. During his speeches, Correa invokes the words of Leonidas Proaño, probably Ecuador’s most famous liberation theologian.
Bolivia’s Evo Morales… tapped Rafael Puente Calvo, an ex-Jesuit and a staunch liberation theologian, to be his Deputy Minister of the Interior.
Born in 1951, [Paraguayan President Fernando] Lugo became a priest in 1977, and served as a missionary in Ecuador for five years.
In 1992 he was appointed head of the Divine Word order in Paraguay, was ordained a bishop in 1994, and then served for 10 years as the bishop of the poor region of San Pedro.
There, his support for landless peasants earned him the reputation of being “the bishop for the poor”.
He came to national prominence in March 2006 when he helped lead a big opposition rally in the capital, Asuncion.He resigned from the priesthood in December that year, as the Paraguayan constitution prohibits ministers of any faith from standing as a political candidate.
But the Vatican initially refused to accept his resignation, arguing that serving as a priest was a lifetime commitment and instead suspended him from his duties.
However, in July, Pope Benedict XVI granted Mr Lugo an unprecedented waiver to remove his clerical status.
A messiah manifests his powers by performing miracles (Jesus) and in heroic achievements in the face of adversity (López Obrador). The pursuit of social justice—his most outstanding quality—arms him with moral force. The savior has two dimensions: he is both a national and political liberator and the spiritual and religious shepherd of his flock; he is at once a king and a redeemer, a political and spiritual hero. He enhances his credibility by thwarting his enemies’ efforts to expel him from the political scene.
(George Grayson, attacking Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in “Mexican Messiah”)
[Guatemalan President Alvaro] Colom has a background in the textile business and does not belong to any of the 23 Mayan ethnic groups who make up more than 40% of the population.
But he has been ordained a Mayan priest, and drew much of his electoral support from the rural areas where poverty amongst indigenous groups is deep-rooted.
PEMEX plan to Senate: ready to rumble
The seven-point PEMEX and energy reform bill will be presented to the Senate today. The energy committee failed to reach an agreement on three of the seven points, which relate to revisions to Constitutional Article 27, the PEMEX Organic Act (the company charter) and a new law on renewable energy… nothing major, right?
What will be debated in the full Senate today are agreements that will allow PEMEX to contract services with foreign companies, with the provision that these are cash for services agreements for processing or transporting petrochemicals. However, at the insistence of the Progressive Front, PEMEX will be forbidden to write exclusive contracts for services. Foreign entities will not under any circumstances have ownership of the petroleum, and the contracts will be subject to Mexican law except those covered by international arbitration agreements.
Foreign capital will not be permitted in certain strategic operations — specifically in operating refineries and storage facilities.
The Comisión Nacional de Hidrocarburos will have oversite and control of pipelines and wells, in addition to natural gas distribution. The commission can, like PEMEX, contract distribution and transportation services, again for cash and under Mexican legal authority.
Probably the most controversial point is that allowing PEMEX to issue “citizen bonds” which can, apparently, be sold to individuals, but not to investment houses. This only has PRI and PAN approval, and may be up for further revisions… or may be scrapped. Honestly, I don’t really understand it. I can’t figure out whether these “citizen bonds” will be like Savings Bonds you used to get from distant relatives when you were four years old and payed for some beer money r textbooks when you went to college, or whether this means Carlos Slim is going to kick in a few billion pesos.
Finally, there is a restructuring of the paraestatal’s management. An 15 member Executive Board will oversee the new Administrative Council. Six members of the board will be Presidential appointees, five appointed by the union and the rest representing technical and petroleum professionals nominated by the President and subject to Congressional approval. Finally, 20 percent of PEMEX profits will be set aside for investment and development.
(My sources: Jornada, The News, El Financiero)
It’s the unresolved constitutional rewording that may lead to demonstrations and passive resistance movements later this week, and — surprisingly — it is the Progressive Front (PRD and allies) that object to the union’s involvement in management. The other unresolved issues — relating to electrical generation and alternative energy resources — could also lead to massive protests. If you remember, it was revelations that Juan Camilo Mouriño had family ties to Spanish investments in these areas that led the Progressive Front to oppose his appointment as Secretaria de Gobernacion, and Spanish investments in wind power has been one of several grievances in Oaxaca. In Baja California, gas co-generation plants to provide electrical power to southern California are also likely to be affected.
PEMEX is one of the largest oil companies in the world, much larger than Exxon-Mobile. This issue has been under the radar in the United States, which depends much more on Mexican oil than it does on Venezuelan supplies. All these reforms point to more Mexican use of Mexican oil reserves, and — even if new wells are drilled — the rules are going to change. There hasn’t been much attention paid to PEMEX from the U.S. press, and I expect if there is any mention, it will be more in the “holy shit, when did that happen?” vein.
The chickens come home to roost
… U.S. drug czar John P. Walters, in Mexico City to reassure officials that aid to fight drug gangs is in the pipeline, said traffickers resort to “fear and horror” in their campaign to take over government institutions but will ultimately fail.“It’s not just about drugs,” Walters told a news conference. “It’s about kidnapping and murder. It’s about extortion . . . and suborning government officials.”
Although Mexican society suffers the brunt of the violence, Walters said, drug gangs and their hit men cross the border with relative ease to settle scores and carry out slayings in the U.S.
“These groups do not respect the border,” said Walters, who is head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy…
It’s about time.
Nice to see that the “Drug Czar” recognizes that drugs are not the issue…though he seems to think “kidnapping and murder… extortion… and suborning government officials” are a uniquely Mexican problem in the “proxy war” on some drugs.
While Walters is still fighting marijuana — which pretty much grows anywhere, and is abundantly available in the United States — what the “war on drugs” involves is money, guns, cocaine and methampetamines.
The money and guns don’t come from Mexico, but from the United States. Coca doesn’t grow in Mexico, but comes in from U.S. allies Colombia and Peru (with Bolivia a distant third). If the money and guns that support the trade don’t come into Mexico, the cocaine dealers will find an alternative route. Methamphetamines ARE produced in Mexico, but depend on pseudoephenidrine suppliers… a chemical that is imported into Mexico from U.S. “most favored trading partner” (and largest lender) the People’s Republic of China, or India. Certainly Mexico could do a better job of stopping pseudoephindrine imports, but why should it? The U.S. concept of “free trade” seems to extend to giving preference to cheap Chinese goods over NAFTA partner Mexico in other goods, and Mexico has no real incentive to stop an import that at least gives the country a “value-added product” that the U.S. is willing to buy.
People seem shocked that “subording government officials” takes place in the United States. It’s been going on for some time, and nothing new. Commenting in the McAllen Monitor on the arrest of Starr County (Texas) Sheriff Reymundo “Rey” Guerra, accused of accepting thousands of dollars in cash and gifts in exchange for aiding Gulf Cartel operations,
Alonzo Alvarez, a retired Roma High School teacher who has known the sheriff for decades, described drug trafficking as simply a way of life in Starr County.
Without surmising as to Guerra’s guilt or innocence, Alvarez testified that many of his friends, relatives and neighbors growing up in impoverished Roma turned to drug smuggling as a way to make a living for their families.
“It’s part of our heritage on the river,” Alvarez said. “It’s tradition for us.”
And, I’d say it’s just not on the river… but anywhere in America where people can earn a few bucks.
Now comes the weekend tear-jerker story of six-year old Cole Puffinburger. Puffinburger, a cute little white kid, is the grandson of Clemens Tinnemeyer, who
… had stolen from a Mexican drug cartel through drug trafficking, primarily in methamphetamine, according to sources and police.
Sources said the amount of money stolen was between $8 million and $20 million and that he had been hiding.
Obviously, meth suppliers screwed over by their buyers can’t go to court, and have to resort to alternative dispute resolution methods to recover the debt. While it’s a good thing that young Cole was released unharmed (granddad ponied up, apparently, and is being held as a “material witness” in the case), had this only involved Mexican immigrants, or even Mexican-Americans, it probably wouldn’t have been more than a local news story, or it would have been spun as “those damn Mescans turning on their own” type story.
One reason I felt uncomfortable when I moved back to the United States was that the country was supposedly fighting two wars (in Iraq and Afganistan) but there was no war-time sense of urgency or emergency. People were happy to fly their flags, and put “I support the troops” stickers on their cars (or huge SUVs), and lip service was paid to “the brave sacrifice” of soldiers and sailors… but I had no sense of anyone being asked to personally fight a war, or accept deprivation, or even iconvenience.
Here in Mexico, we have to read and see the corpses of every victim in this war (and the bloody corpses are national news… unlike in the U.S. where neither those killed in the foreign wars, nor those who die horribly from narcotics related violence or of just narcotics use ever disturb anyone’s tender sensiblities). We see the police and army in the streets. We see the guns. We see the money. We know the details of the kidnappings.
How will the U.S. react when it’s their middle class (and upper class) that starts getting their heads chopped off, when its their reporters being killed, when their children are kidnapped? Denial, or are they going to get serious?
Mexico is “winning” (at a huge cost to itself) a war not of its making. The foreign invaders are being driven into their own territory. Gonna suck for the U.S., but that’s war.
New PEMEX bill to be introduced tomorrow…
The Senate Energy Committee is said to be close to a final draft bill for consideration. David Agren has been following this for The (Mexico City) News — hope he gets some vacation time after the vote.
The Senate Energy Committee on Sunday rejected the idea of creating additional Pemex subsidiaries for activities such as refining, transportation and storage as it put the finishing touches on a comprehensive energy reform package.
…
“[Pemex] . will not offer service contracts nor will we expose [entire] areas of work exclusively to private companies,” said PRD Sen. Graco Ramírez.
The Sunday bargaining left lawmakers close to reaching an agreement on a provision that would reform the regulatory regime of Article 27 of the Constitution – which reserves petroleum-related activities, including exploration and exploitation, to the state …
…
Five of … seven key points on energy reform previously being discussed were given first reading last week, including a measure that would create a National Hydrocarbons Commission to oversee Pemex and its subsidiaries. Other points aim to foment the use of alternative energy sources, establish rules in the public sector for sustainable energy use, and require the Energy Secretariat to present a nationwide energy strategy.
What role, if any, the U.S. financial crisis (or rather, regulatory failure) played in destroying even PAN support for “privatization” I can’t say. I’ll be interested to see what the final draft says about the PEMEX union, and if any of my original predictions hold up. I’d expected much of PEMEX’s social services activities to be folded into other Federal programs, more emphasis on national self-sufficiency in gasoline (which is included), and a new management structure. So far, I’m 2 for 3.
Kenyan immigrants … doing the job Mexicans can’t?
The area around Toluca has attracted jocks for centuries. The first Mexican budget crisis was caused when missionary monks found that carrying heavy statues around in processions at high altitudes — and eating a healthier diet rich in chiles and beans as opposed to the gruel that was standard fare in European monasteries bulked them up — and they had to beg the King of Spain for new “athletic-fit” robes).
Kenyans — natives of a similar high-altitude region — have long dominated long-distance running, but:
Mexico has become a lucrative base for long-distance runners because of its proximity to profitable contests here, in the United States and in South America. Kenyans can earn cash awards of between $1,000 and $10,000, and Mexico taxes race purses at only 14 percent, compared with the U.S. rate of 33 percent.
While the number of Kenyan runners living in Mexico is not a huge number (about 130, according to Alexis Okeowo in the San Francisco Chronicle), they are having an impact:
So far this year, Kenyan runners have won 85 percent of long-distance races, causing at least 60 percent of Mexican runners to complain to race authorities, according to the Mexican Athletic Federation.
There have been some “incidents” and resentment about foreign dominance (some Mexican races will not give cash awards to foreign competitors), the Kenyans are staying.
Most runners left families in Kenya that rely on the remittances they send home each month. Kenya is still reeling from mass violence after its 2007 presidential election that killed nearly 2,000 people and left 500,000 homeless.
As a result, most runners say they will continue to recruit their fellow Kenyans to move to Mexico.
I’ve noticed this, and talked about it before, but it’s worth repeating. Mexico also attracts immigrants and — while not nearly as wealthy as the United States or Canada — is an attractive destination for immigrants looking to change their luck, and send money home, from “America”.
mexfiles.net 