Friday nite… time for another video
This is dedicated to the whole damn human…
Working on finalizing my book (I wrote the last chapter Tuesday mrning, then turned around and spent the rest of the week going back to editing the whole thing). Between that and driving back and forth to el Paso six times (220 miles each way), I’ve been sitting on my ass all week… it’s Friday and time to ¡muevelo!
The “Hitler comparison” should be shouted from the rooftops, as should the Goebbels comparison, the Himmler comparison, the Mengele, Stalin, Torquemada, Beelzebub comparisons and all the rest. If it struts like a Nazi, talks like Nazi, tortures like a Nazi and wages aggressive and illegal war like a Nazi… it’s not a duck.
They forgot the Benito Mussolini comparison (“War is the health of the state”) and the Fritz von Thyssen comparison.
What the hell is this — RENT-A-StormTroopers for the border?
There are signs that Blackwater USA, the private
security firm that came under intense scrutiny after
its employees killed 17 civilians in Iraq in September,
is positioning itself for direct involvement in U.S.
border security. The company is poised to construct a
major new training facility in California, just eight
miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. While contracts for
U.S. war efforts overseas may no longer be a growth
industry for the company, Blackwater executives have
lobbied the U.S. government since at least 2005 to help
train and even deploy manpower for patrolling America’s
borders.
And, in defense of Mussolini and Thyssen, at least they were supporting their own national economies. Not us…
Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense contractor working on the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, was subcontracted by Boeing to provide security systems for the spy towers at the Arizona/Mexico border. Those nine spy towers located on Tohono O’odham tribal land and around the towns of Arivaca and Sasabe, still aren’t functioning.
… Further, the buses waiting to deport migrants at the US/Mexico border are not owned by a US company either. Wackenhut Transportation, whose drivers deport migrants, is owned by G4S global security, traded on the stock exchanges in England and Denmark.
With all the jargon in Washington about “securing the nation’s borders” against foreigners, you would think those corporations carrying out border security and deportation would be US companies.
I do not believe we should reward illegal behavior
(Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell)
Of course, this begs the question of whether minors can engage in “illegal behavior”. First of all, I can’t think of any moral or legal code in the world that would hold a minor culpable for the actions of their parent or guardian (or, in most cases, for any act committed before the age of reason), and secondly, how letting a kid finish his or her education is “rewarding” someone else’s violation of US Code Title 8, Section 1325 is even a serious offense.
ARE THERE NO WORKHOUSES?
Hiding out
I’ve taken two day to finish writing Gods, Gachupines and Gringos, am not answering the phone, or checking emails (other than from my editor)… back Tomorrow or Friday.
The word of the day is “homologation”
Homologo is a fairly common word in Spanish, just meaning “a person with an equivalent position.” News articles quoting a Texas County Judge, for example, would say she is the “homologo” of a Presidente Municpal.
Less used in English is homologation. I think I’m one of the few people who had to use the word in my daily vocabulary. I was the technical writer on a project to develop cross-company telephone credit cards, and I actually had to give talks to engineers on the homologation issues involved.
All it meant was that if the phone card was going to be issued by British Telecom, but used in French telephones to make calls to Hong Kong, it had to meet the security and credit reporting standards (and telephone record-keeping rules) of all three jurisdictions. A bit complicated, but not a biggie.
Homologation exists in every industry. Mexican meatpackers, selling to the European Union, follow EU health codes in their plants. U.S. televisions are manufactured to meet Swedish or Canadian standards on radiation emissions. Simple — you take the highest engineering standard of wherever your product or service is being distributed and use it as your standard.
It’s a no-brainer and non-controvestional … except when the batshit crazy right-wingers talk about Mexico.
They (the batshit crazy right-wingers, BSCRW for short) are convinced that Mexican trucks crossing into the U.S. are part of some master plot to make us all eat tortillas — or put gravy on our french fries, since the Canadians are part of the secret plan, apparently.
In their quest to stop Mexican truckers from engaging in normal cabotage (Another word you learn having written technical papers. A simple example that we’ve seen for years involves bus travel. Mexican buses can pick up passengers in the U.S. for a Mexican destination, but can’t sell them a ticket between two destinations within the U.S. Likewise Greyhound can’t run local buses in Mexico), the BSCRWs have come up with every rationale they can to “stop Mexican trucks” (as a sign says in front of the motel down the street from me).
While my favorite so far remains the suggestion that Mexican truckers are going to run over kittens (or shoot them), the BSCRWs actually got some mileage out of their claim that Mexican trucks don’t meet U.S. safety standards (they do — most U.S. trucks are manufactured in Mexico, and they’re the same trucks on Mexican roads). For that matter, different States within the United States have different safety standards.
As we do in the United States, where there’s a need, there’s a business opportunity. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance originally set up to write common standards for several western states, came up with the homologation statandards for those states, and now has come up with standards that meet all three NAFTA country’s rules. No big deal.
The BSCRWs, in an “exclusive scoop” for the BSCRW’s house organ, Wingnut Daily, smells poutine (or is it salsa?). It seems that — for a fee — local mechanics who follow the standards can use the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance inspection sticker, and from Manitoba to Michoacan, state inspectors will know those “foreign” trucks meet their local standards. AHA… LOCAL MECHANICS DO THE INSPECTION. IT MUST BE A PLOT.
Uh… my car is inspected by BAM Automotive on Holland Street in beautiful downtown Alpine Texas, not the State of Texas. I thought BSCRWs were in favor of private enterprise taking on state functions. So, what the heck are they whining about?
Well, the Chinese do have experience with Great Walls
Damn… I’m surprised that everybody’s overlooked this little detail about the proposed (er, imposed) Great Wall of Texas…
As American jobs continue to be outsourced and American industries continues to lay off workers and shut down factories, you would think that the albatross being built on the U.S. Mexico boarder would provide some American industry jobs. Think again because that’s not the way this administration works.
In the continual slap down of American workers and American industry the Department of Homeland Security has purchased steel from China to build the border fence. You would think all the recalls from China would be reason enough not to purchase from China. What’s far more insulting is that DHS waived the “buy America” rule.
A few congressional representatives from steel-producing regions and crazy Duncan Hunter have complained, but really — if we had to use foreign steel, there are some excellent steel mills a lot closer to us than China.
Creative License
SOMEBODY’S not quite telling the truth here:
There’s a whole sub-genre of Mexican literature, the fictive biography. Carlos Casteñada (ok, he was Peruvian, but his subject was Mexican) inspired a whole generation of gringos to come looking for Don Juan (or at least hallucinate about him; Diego Rivera entertained himself (and the rest of us) making up his life story for his official biographer, Bertram Wolfe; Princess Salm-Salm milked her brief Mexican experience for all it was worth in her untrustworthy (but eminently readable) biography of Prince Felix; Martin Guzmán’s “Eagle and the Serpent” is sometimes listed as a biolgraphy of Pancho Villa, and sometimes as a novel about Pancho. It’s both. Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Fuentes have both written fictional biographies, which may or may not be true.
I don’t know that it’s a “Latin thing” — after all Emily Dickinson (about as un-Latin as you can get) once wrote “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Burro Hall — who like Miss Dickinson — is from Massachucetts (which must mean something, I’m sure), is delighted with the latest contribution to Mexican fictography, Vicente Fox’s Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President (Viking, 2007. Listed at 27.95, but already marked down to $16.65 at Amazon).
Delighted, but not completely sold on it:
Ex-presidente Vicente “Fat Tony” Fox, the American-educated former executive for the American Coca-Cola Company, has written his life’s story (co-authored with his American political consultant Rob Allyn) about how, when he was president, he kept it real by wearing cowboy boots. He’s currently on a book tour in America. Why not Mexico? Because the book is written in American, not Mexican. After six years of Fox’s rule, the adult literacy numbers apparently aren’t high enough to justify publishing a book here.
Very odd to have the book that claims George W. Bush speaks “grade school Spanish” co-authored by a guy who sells the idea that George W. can speak coherently in English or Spanish:
“One of the first phone calls George W. Bush made after the inauguration was to Mexican president Vicente Fox. The men chatted amiably in Spanish. Perhaps President Bush ought to keep Rob Allyn’s phone number nearby, too—Allyn helped put Fox in power.
Burro has great fun in looking at Don Chente’s own reality-challenged claims, but he’s a politician and, we’d expect his autobiography to be at least half-bullshit, and 100 percent self-serving. Rob Alyn is only the co-author, but given Fox’s well-known aversion to reading, one suspects Alyn contributed something more than fifty percent of the total project.
Alyn is a professional sleaze-bag political media consultant. As Sourcewatch notes about his affairs in the U.S.:
Allyn was a key player in the George W. Bush campaign to discredit his rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination Senator John McCain. Millionaire Bush supporter Sam Wyly funded Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCain in key states during the 2000 primary campaign. Rob Allyn was paid $46,000 to help create the ads.
His pimping consulting for Fox’s 2000 campaign (suspected of being paid for the the U.S. Republican Party) was more controversial. Narco News has been on Alyn’s back for years. As they point out, Alyn set up a front group called “Democracy Watch” and engaged in all kinds of illegal activities in Mexico before and after Fox’s 2000 campaign, in his attempt to sell the candidate from a former fascist party as a “democratic alternative” to the PRI.
Don’t get me wrong… I like Mexican fiction, and I’m just twisted enough to enjoy Mexican politics. But, I want to wait until either Vicente Fox reads “his” book and gives a cogent report on it, or it’s marked down by Amazon to a buck.
Western Union fees — buy a cow or have a cow?
UPDATE: Within about ten minutes of posting, TWO commentators sent alternatives to Western Union. There are probably some more that I haven’t heard about yet, and which may work better for people sending/receiving remittances.
Does anyone have a good alternative for people who receive “irregular” remittances — say, senders who are helping out in an emergency, or when Tia Chuleta finds a good buy on a one-owner cow? It seems to me (though my much smarter readers may know better) that WU is about the only alternative in those situation.
I’ve got to hand it to Western Union. Their original business (telegrams) having become obsolete, they nicely transitioned to the new economy, and – as the number one cash transfer service – have a fairly decent reputation.
Their prices are high, but they have built a reputation for reliability and honesty that justifies them in the minds of most customers. And – through projects like their “3 for 1” project (WU kicks in three dollars for every one dollar raised by Zacatecans working abroad for small-scale rural development projects) even comes across as that rarity, a socially responsible corporation.
Remittances are not new. Italy, Poland and Ireland all depended on them in the 19th and 20th centuries (Ireland into the 1960s), just as the Philippines, along with top recipient India, Russia, China and Mexico do today. The Money Order was invented by the British Postal Service to handle Irish remittances in the mid-19th century, and they have their place, but in the U.S., with its insistence on privately owned banking/cash system – and the country’s worries about informal cash transfers abroad – Western Union is the only choice.
While some U.S. banks have arrangements with some Mexican banks to handle transfers, banks really aren’t set up for these kinds of transfers. If you’re transferring a few hundred thousand dollars to your drug dealer its not much of a problem, but if you’re sending a few hundred dollars to your Tia Chuleta to buy a cow, it’s a problem. Tia Chuleta may not have access to THE bank with ties to the U.S. bank; Tia Chuleta may not have a bank account at all; and the banks don’t want to deal with Tia Chuleta in the first place. And, it’s the same amount of work for the banks to transfer the few hundred thou as it is to transfer the few hundred, so they really don’t want Tia Chuleta’s business in the first place.
Whatever system is used, the overhead on Tia Chuleta’s cow fund is going to be higher than it should be. I don’t have a good solution, but thought the article in today’s Chicago Tribune nicely covered the problem:
.
By Oscar Avila and Antonio Olivo | Tribune staff reporters
NOCHISTLAN, Mexico – The resentment some Mexicans feel toward the money service that has become their lifeline is apparent in a flier making the rounds on both sides of the border. “Western Union, your fees are a rip-off,” it says, showing the image of a masked bandit.
The familiar black-and-gold sign of Western Union is a fixture in Mexican towns like Nochistlan and immigrant enclaves in the U.S., a symbol of the popular yet polarizing mechanism through which workers send remittances to their families south of the border, a flow that totaled $23billion last year.
Now, the complex relationship between Western Union and its Mexican clients has taken another turn as a bloc of Mexican community leaders urges countrymen to boycott the company. Another faction, meanwhile, has teamed with Western Union to launch innovative job-creating ventures in needy towns, including Nochistlan, arguing that the company should be cultivated as an ally.
On one hand, residents in places like Nochistlan are grateful to wire-transfer companies such as Western Union for offering a financial lifeline to isolated places typically underserved by banks. But family members in the U.S. often grouse that the companies charge too much. For a same-day $100 transfer to Mexico, for example, Western Union charges nearly 15 percent.
The growing debate over the role of Western Union has split key organizers of the huge immigration marches held in Chicago over the past two years.
Liberal Mexican activists, including some labor leaders wary of corporate influence, joined the national boycott of Western Union last month. Those critics say the company has a social responsibility to help poor communities where it makes so much money and that its philanthropy lags behind the efforts of other corporations.
Thanks for sharing… dickhead
The MexFiles gets mail:
| Date: | Fri Oct 19 19:11:52 2007 |
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If you haven’t figured it out yet I dislike Illegal immigrant Mexicans very much – why? Because they are changing my country’s culture. They figure if they come here and drop a kid here then they can stay, think again Americans are up in arms against Illegal Immigrants and are forcing the politicians to change their ways. When the next president takes office NAFTA will be repealed and the Illegal employers will be jailed and all Illegal Mexicans will be thrown over the fence. I personally have started a petition to allow all legal citizens to carry firearms and enforce the Immigration laws anywhere in the United States. 80% of Legal American Citizens support enforcement of immigration laws and deportation of all Illegal Immigrants. We are also starting a petition to strip all children born to illegals of citizenship. We are tired of the disrespect of our laws, customs, Language, and just unacceptable behavior of Illegal Latinos within the United States and we are changing the Laws to force the Illegal’s to return to their country’s – This is My Country not the Mexicans and we are Pissed off and going to change things so watch out…
Mr Reno Native American Citizen…
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Native American, huh? Like Geronimo, Handsome Lake, Dr. Carlos Montezuma? My Alsasian ancestors arrived in the United States in 1812, and have been voters and citizens since then (though they didn’t use English regularly until about 1900). Native Americans couldn’t vote until 1924, so quit whining.
UPDATE (21 October): Donald Reno sent me another e-mail, wanting to “recall” this e-mail. Hell no. What’s there to “recall” — as I recall, he sent me this piece of crap. I have every right to publish it, and every right to say he’s a fuckin’ moron (isn’t free speech a wonderful thing?).
The comment from “DinTN” showed up as probable “spam” (nearly everything I receive with more than two links is), and — in some ways it is spam — but I’ve decided to publish it anyway. The purpose of the Mex Files is to bring Mexican (and, by extension, Mexican immigrant) issues to a wider public. And, that includes what’s said — and written — by know-nothing idiots.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if these weenies get their panties in a twist when other, saner people point out that they’re worthless pieces of shit (or they face legal consequences for calling for terrorist acts) or it’s brought to their attention that they don’t have a fucking clue what they’re writing about… too damn bad.
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
How to say “Concentration Camp” in Bureaucratese
I’ve written these kinds of documents for businesses (though half-starving as a free-lancer, sometime reporter, sometime English teacher, sometime truck driver and full-time MexFiler seems much, much saner!), and I’m used to the bland language you use to sell the less palatable parts of a development.
Maybe Adolf Eichman could have written the 46-page ENDGAME Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003 – 2012: Detention and Removal Strategy for a Secure Homeland, but have to admit this is beyond my skill:
Illegal aliens, unaccompanied juveniles, asylum seekers, refugees, and countless other apprehended aliens cannot all be immediately removed from the country, nor can they all be released into the American community. For that reason, DRO resources and expertise are required to transport these aliens from point to point, to manage them in custody while their cases are being processed and, finally, to remove them from the country when ordered to do so. The effects of other programs’ enforcement efforts are diminished and their operations are constrained if DRO cannot execute its mission efficiently and effectively. Therefore, DRO must immerse itself within the immigration enforcement element of DHS and establish a significant and collaborative presence with its service and enforcement partners and stakeholders….
DRO and the private sector rely on each other for the services each demands and has to offer. While the private sector relies on DRO to provide national and international transportation, or to house and feed detainees, DRO relies on those same services to execute its mission when they are not available through normal government channels.
… While the alien will not necessarily perceive any “benefit” from DRO services, he will be provided with safe and secure confinement in detention facilities, as well as transportation from ports and points along the border to other detention facilities or his country of origin. These services will be provided in a professional manner; the alien will be detained in safe, secure and humane environments; he will be transported safely; and his movement will be fully coordinated with his family, legal representative, and country of origin, whenever appropriate. For these reasons, the alien is as important a stakeholder as any of the others mentioned.
The Unapologetic Mexican reprints a few comments by these “stakeholders”.
Another satisfied customer of the Corrections Corporation of America (Raymondville Detention Center) ?
Resistence is futile…
Mexicans conquer the world…
Editing function desmadre
I don’t know what the problem is, but I can’t seem to edit my posts right now… besides my sometimes very weird syntax (which I don’t always catch until later), I can’t get formatting to work or upload photos.
I can’t spend all night on something like an unaligned paragraph, so if things are more than usually screwed up, for once, I’m not responsible.
mexfiles.net 