Making the news rounds today is the American Chamber of Commerce’s (a Mexican business organization for U.S. owned or managed companies) study claiming close to 90 % of Mexicans buy pirated products.

I would have expected the figure to be closer to 100 percent.  Mexico at one time restricted foreign music and film distribution on the pretext of protecting the national culture, but with NAFTA, the pent up demand for foreign pop culture exploded.  With some weird results — like the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. being a staple at children’s parties and other age-inappropriate weirdness, like grannies into rap and teenagers happily singing along with old 1980s hair band staples.

At any rate, given that pop music distributors set the prices for their products at the U.S. rate, what are people to do except turn to the less expensive Mexican produced product.  At prices commensurate with Mexican incomes.  All hail the Tepito disk burners, and the twenty peso CDs.  Yup, I buy em too.

And, as to software… as a Deloitte Touche executive once pointed out to me, if Mexicans can’t get foreign software, they’re not going to buy the foreign computers… and with the software priced as if it were sold in the United States, the only way to sell computers is to accept that a lot of the software is off-site unregistered backups.

Can’t trust those güeros…

HOWEVER, when it comes to books… of course you should pay Mexican publisher’s prices.  And the bookshop, especially if you’re a tourist.  I’m a bit flattered that some Australian was interested enough in my Gods, Gauchupines and Gringos (and, yes I know the website is down this morning) to steal it.  But, really… the 395 peso cover price is a … um… steal.  Especially compared to what it’ll cost him if the MEXICAN shop owner has him arrested and deported as an undesirable alien.

Or, since it cuts into my royalties, staked to an anthill… whichever comes first.

Mexico is the United States’ closest Latin American neighbor and yet most U.S. citizens receive little reliable information about what is happening within the country. Instead, Mexico and Mexicans are often demonized in the U.S. press. The single biggest reason for this is the way that the entire binational relationship has been recast in terms of security over the past few years.

From a neighbor and a trade partner, Mexico has been portrayed as a threat to U.S. national security. Immigrants are no longer immigrants, but criminals, “removable aliens,” and even potential terrorists. Latinos, mostly Mexicans, are now the largest group of victims of hate crimes in the United States.

Although Mexico-bashing has been a favorite sport of the right for years, this terrible conversion of Mexico, from an ally to a “failed state” and narco-haven in the media and policy circles, began in earnest under the Bush administration and has only intensified since then. The Merida Initiative and the militarization of Mexico are the direct outgrowth of the national security framework imposed on bilateral relations.

So argues Laura Carlsen, as a twenty year veteran of Mexican political analysis, a writer and — most importantly — a Mexican mother. Carlsen notes, as many of us with less time as analysts have also noted, the the so called Plan Merida was neither a Mexican initiative, nor does it involve actually supporting Mexican anti-crime activities with direct funding.

… Plan Mexico—as it was first called—has its roots in the Security and Prosperity Partnership that grew out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the regional trade agreement was expanded into a security agreement, the Bush administration sought a means to extend its national security doctrine to its regional trade partners. This meant that both Canada and Mexico were to assume counter-terrorism activities (despite the absence of international terrorism threats in those nations)…

Although U.S. troops cannot operate by law in Mexican territory, the plan significantly increases the presence of U.S. agents and intelligence services, now estimated at 1,400, and of U.S. private security companies throughout Mexico.

The terms of the Merida Initiative sends the full $1.3 billion appropriated so far to U.S. defense, security, information technology and other private-sector firms, and the U.S. government. One hundred percent of the money stays in the United States since the plan prohibits cash payments to Mexico.

In other words, what it does is ensure an expanding market for defense and security contracts, in an undeclared war that has no exit strategy in sight.

Suggesting, as Ms. Carlsen does, that the Mexican drug war was mostly a way of propping up the dubious electoral legitimacy of the Calderón administration may be somewhat an over-simplification, but there is no denying that militarization has been a human rights and social disaster.  Although she still puts faith in the Obama Administration’s willingness to reorient its policies towards Mexico and Latin America (which I tend to doubt will happen) she makes a couple salient points U.S. citizens and policymakers need to heed:

Militarization is not the way to deal with Mexico’s political crisis and infusing government money into industries based on blood is not the way to deal with the U.S. economic crisis.

Mexico should be a U.S. priority. But providing exclusively security-focused equipment and training to Mexico is like pouring gas on a fire.

Citizens in both countries stand to lose by viewing the complex binational relationship through the reductionist lens of national security. Critical issues have fallen from the agenda or receive merely lip service. Among them: trans-border livelihoods in the world’s most integrated borderlands, immigration, regional environmental threats, trade, and a sustainable energy future.

We must return the U.S.-Mexico relationship to the simple equation that a healthy neighbor equals better trade, security, and cultural relations.

Her entire article (which should be required reading for anyone living in Mexico, anyone concerned with Mexican issues, or paying taxes in the United States) , “Perils of Plan Mexico: Going Beyond Security to Strengthen U.S.-Mexico Relations“, is at the Council for International Polciy Americas’ Program website.

Is Sgt Mark Ashton Australia’s newest folk hero?

(Discussion over at Asian Correspondent. Please, do me a favour and give it a go. It’s seriously no more difficult than commenting here.)

The sun will rise, Georgia is only a seven point underdog against Tech (huh?) and breakfast is served.

• I hope Reshad Jones gets his chance for redemption.
• It just gets better and better in South Bend, doesn’t it?
• Along those lines, the only catch to this tongue-in-cheek proposal is that you still wouldn’t have a functioning defense.
• And I can think of eighteen million reasons why Charlie Weis has no reason to feel bitter towards Notre Dame.
• GTP made Brian Cook’s “This Week In Schadenfreude”.  Again.  Sigh.
• Amen, brother.
• Tell me how much of this surprises you.  That’s life in the SEC.
• According to Houston Nutt, eight recruits stayed away from Ole Miss this weekend because of the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in Oxford.  Regardless of what you think of Nutt’s antics, that sucks.
• Mmm… beer.

Conservatives are supposed to be wary of Big Government, right? Then why are they not up in arms over this, from Britain’s now decidedly right-wing “Labour” government?

The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it’s perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).

So it’s bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

And that’s just for starters:

Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have the power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

It’s difficult finding an image to illustrate this sort of story.

You know how conservatives claim to be terrified by the US government providing a public health insurance option? That it makes them think of Stalin and Hitler? (Just like the Nazis murdered the people who opposed them, I will be forced to contribute a tiny fraction of my salary to providing extremely limited access to hospitals for poor people! It’s the 1930s all over again!)

So why on Earth doesn’t it bother them when private corporations and government get into bed together and give themselves police-state powers over ordinary citizens?

It’s like they don’t mind a big oppressive power ruling over them – provided that it’s dominated by unelected, wealthy, unanswerable private corporations.

I don’t get it.

And it’s astonishing that a massive power-grab by a supposedly democratic government and its campaign contributors can go so unreported.

(Via LGWS.)

ELSEWHERE: Victorians are going to get access to the new fire danger scale, online. This could indeed save lives.

Unless we brought in anti-piracy laws like the UK and someone in your street allegedly downloaded a song from the internet – then your family would be cut off entirely and could bloody well burn.

AND BACK IN THE UK: Look what use a police state can make of the humble traffic camera!

AND IN THE US: Police demonstrate, yet again, why giving them Tasers is a great idea: Cop Tasers and Arrests a 10-Year Old Girl For Throwing a Fit.

It’s one of those great gross-out tales, supposedly only coming from the Heart of Darkness, i.e., Latin America:

Reuters (19-November-2009):

LIMA, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Peruvian police said on Thursday they had broken up a gang that allegedly killed dozens of people and sold their fat to buyers who used it to make cosmetics.

Four Peruvians were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, murder and trafficking in human fat.

The group stored the fat it collected in used soda and water bottles, which police showed reporters.

“We have people detained who have declared and stated how they murdered people with the aim being to extract their fat in rudimentary labs and sell it,” said Police Commander Angel Toldeo.

In addition to those taken into custody, police said they were searching for others who bought fat from the gang or might have worked with it.

Remains from some of the victims were found at a rural house in the region of Huanuco where the group worked, according police video.

Police said they were investigating 60 disappearances in the area that might be linked to the gang…

At first glance, it almost makes sense.  After all, it feeds into two basic cliches.  Either that those living in the jungle, or in Latin America, or the “third world” are savages who don’t have the same standards of decency WE do; or the decadent west are the ruthless exploiters and murders of the masses, all in the name of profit without honor.

Then… some doubts creep in.  Why would one need “labs” — crude or otherwise — to render fat.  You need a big pot, some water and a spoon.  Secondly, who’d pay $15,000 U.S. dollars a liter for the stuff, as the killers claimed?

Dr. Julio Castro,   the dean of Lima’s College of Medicine, is quoted as saying “Hundreds of liters of human fat are obtained every day at cosmetic clinics, and disposed of” .   OK, I know enough basic economics to understand that the rarer the product, the higher the price, and there’s plenty of alternative sources of human fat. Maybe skinny Peruvian fat has some special ingredients we don’t know about.  Is it marketing?  Or just bullshit?

I don’t know the source of this map, but it shows the world’s countries proportional to daily caloric intake per person.  Peru (and all South America) is underweight, and Mexico (supposedly the second fattest nation on earth) isn’t as chubby you think:

Philip Caputo has been writing about war and the corruption of war since his Vietnam memoir, A Rumor of War, first appeared in 1977.  As a Chicago Tribune reporter, that includes the generally bloodless — but highly corrupting — world of Chicago politics.

In the December 2009 The Atlantic Caputo turns his attention to the “War on Drugs” in Mexico.

I have a problem with the title — “The Fall of Mexico” — suggesting first that the Calderón-Bush-Obama Administrations “War” is central to the Republic (only to the present administration) or that the authoritarian streak in the present Mexican government is somehow a product of this war.

While Caputo, of course, is going to focus on the “drug warriors”, their victims and the “collateral damage” of this war, he — like most writers — only focuses on the Mexican side of the border region.  He never seems to venture further south than Nuevo Casas Grandes, a couple of hours south of Columbus, New Mexico.  At most, he’s talking about a frontier “war”.  This isn’t to say that the people living along the border are not part of the “real Mexico”, but that the social conditions along the frontier are not necessarily those of the majority of Mexicans, nor that everyone along the border is affected with despair and hopelessness (Mexicans have a sense of black humor which accounts for some of the grafitti Caputo quotes as meaningful).

Caputo’s premise that the “War” is has created repression and corruption (or has allowed it to flourish), seem to put the cart before the horse.  Although Calderón’s electoral victory is problematic, he did receive a little over a third of all votes in the 2006 Election, campaigning on an authoritarian “law and order” platform that presupposed state sanctioned violence.  The border region strongly supported PAN, so there is no denying that there wasn’t already support for a heavy-handed “solution” in search of a problem.

While “corruption” has risen (at least by the standards of Transparency International) under this administration, the increase in perceived corruption may be independent of the “drug war” excesses.

Neither of which is to say that Caputo’s article is off-target.  It isn’t.  Consider WHO the casualties are in this “war”:

Statements by U.S. and Mexican government officials, repeated by a news media that prefers simple story lines, have fostered the impression in the United States that the conflict in Mexico is between Calderón’s white hats and the crime syndicates’ black hats. The reality is far more complicated, as suggested by this statistic: out of those 14,000 dead, fewer than 100 have been soldiers. Presumably, army casualties would be far higher if the war were as straightforward as it’s often made out to be.

And, I’d add, a good number of those military casualties have been the victims of “friendly fire”, plane and truck accidents and the like.  Perhaps, the “war” should not be seen as “asymetical warfare” — or even a police operation gone amuck — but, as Caputo quotes Gustavo de la Rosa, the former Chihuahua state ombudsman for Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, as saying, as a creeping military coup:

… the president, elected in 2006 by a margin as thin as an ATM card, called out the army not merely to fight the cartels and eliminate a threat to national sovereignty but to consolidate his power and confer legitimacy on his presidency. “Calderón wants to show the Congress that the military is with him,” de la Rosa said. “And the military promised to support Calderón in exchange for being allowed out of the barracks, because the army wants to govern. Chihuahua is an experiment. What is happening here is in essence a military coup, a regional coup.” To support this contention, he cited a change he has had to make in his own work. Under normal circumstances, he would file complaints of abuse with the state governor, but now, he said, “the governor is ineffective, so I have to go to General Felipe de Jesús Espitia, the comandante of the 5th Military District.”

The militarization of Mexico is noticeable.  Calderón is the first president to be regularly photographed in a military uniform since Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was a real Army General, and was the president during a declared war (the War against Nazifascism, as it’s styled here).  Ávila Camacho also demilitarized the government (being the last general to serve as President) and — while the military certainly has been used for political repression since the Second World War — the generally high regard for the military in Mexican society rests largely on its apolitical and non-aggressive missions: resource and environmental protection and disaster relief.

And, give Vicente Fox his due… he overtly toned down militarism, going so far as to try canceling the annual Revolution Day parade in Mexico City — succeeding in at least making the patriotic (and impressive) exercise less a display of firepower and military might, as a celebration of sports and health.  After all, we’re talking about a nation where the tanks and missiles and scarily-armed paratroopers are impressive, but the crowds cheer for the Army cooks, the navy nurses and the kids in the Servicio Militar Nacional carrying shovels and seedlings.  And where the national service requirement crosses most 18-year olds minds as meaning clerking in a government office, or going door to door as a census taker or planting trees… not carrying a gun.

That anti-militarist strain is coming to the surface.  It’s not so much weariness with the “war”, nor the occasional admissions that the Army is being used to repress not just some gangsters, but political and social dissent as well that is making people turn from the military solution.  It is one factor in the rejection of PAN and President Calderón at the polling booth, and a likely factor in a return to the “corrupt” but more mainstream PRI (or a compromise left candidate) in the 2012 Presidential election.

What will not rein in the military are renewed U.S. “demands” for “human rights accountability” in the funding for the Merida Initiative.  As I explained when the issue was first raised, the Mexican objection is that such strings would require Mexico to centralize its police — and major constitutional changes that would simply entrench the Federal government’s present attempts to reverse the trend toward wider democratic and citizen participation and leave it in the hands of “experts” in the Capital.

The U.S. financed “war” in Colombia has not improved human rights, nor spread democracy in that unhappy nation.  While Colombia’s situation is complicated by a sixty-year old civil war that has gotten mixed in with that nation’s best known illegal export, “human rights provisions” have a way of corrupting the central power to create the illusion of “progress”… and to create their own upside down logic — making dissent, on paper if not reality, equal to criminality, to meet the demands that repression is progress in creating human rights.

The idea that the Merida Initiative was for Mexico’s benefit is nonsense.  The money goes to business interests in the United States.  The tools for repression fo to the present administration in Mexico and the rest of us live with the results.

A man killed his wife while he was sleeping because he was having a bad dream in which he was actually strangling a burglar. But when taken to court, he was freed of any charges because the court decided that he suffered from a sleeping disorder, and did not actually mean to kill his wife whom he had been married to for 40 years. I’m not judging this person, but the amazing thing is that by law, if you claim that you killed or hurt somebody in your sleep, and get an expert to back your claim, unless the other party can prove that you didn’t do it in your sleep, you can get away with murder, and the law cannot touch you! Imagine how many people will take advantage of this loophole then….

I finally know how to add contributors! And here to start us off in high minded style is Lianne from the current affairs blog, We Left Marks, that will actually get those cogs of yours whirring.

There are a number of canonical (usually Russian-originated) tomes that everyone apparently should read once. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is one of those books that plenty of important and successful people I know have read and extol the virtues of; simple but effective persuasion-by-association got me to pick it up.

Essentially the book is a protracted study of the psychological effect creeping and consumptive guilt has upon the protagonist, Raskolnikov. After reasoning his way through a brutal crime – by trialling the idea of the Übermensch (superman) figure escaping moral law – the eponymous punishment is by and large self-inflicted.

The fabric of a coherent sanity soon starts to fray, as he becomes racked with self-damnation. Although reader reassurance arises from the growing conscience of the protagonist, and his empathy towards his companion Sofia, it is increasingly unnerving he, in effect, loses the plot.

Don’t come to this book expecting (as if you would!) a racy thriller with twists and turns at every corner. Instead, it is a prolonged introspective, and near solipsistic, examination of one man’s philosophical-moral anguish; how he seeks to overcome this, and attempt to redeem himself makes up the body and weight of the novel, and it can be a bit of a laborious process getting through the book. It’s worth the effort though, if only for the satisfaction of being able to drop it in conversation as one of those aforementioned esteemed folk do.

I have been thinking about the reasons why Team Obama member Eric Holder insists on bringing the terrorists stateside to prosecute. Some are suggesting that it is a profit motivated event for Holder and his lawyer cronies. That would not surprise me as politics has become all about the grab for money. It certainly not for the terrorists personal safety, because they are already located in a safer place for them to be incarcerated, than being tossed among some of the various already overcrowded stateside prisons. It is certainly not because it is safer for the public with the terrorists awaiting trials near rural and metropolitan communities. It is certainly not because they can receive any justice stateside that they cannot receive where they are already located. It is certainly not a cost factor, as I heard estimates that cash-strapped New York will be saddled with millions of dollars in expenses -that they cannot afford- to prosecute the terrorists placed in their system. So what does that leave for the rest of Team Obama’s reasoning? Wag the dog? Team Obama’s Marxist agenda has been meeting with considerable public resistance, so much so, that the Obama personal  ratings have plummeted and he has even discussed the possibility of not running for a second term. What better way for Obama to stir up his electorate than putting the terrorists on trial here inside mainland USA? It is a good gamble for Team Obama. The trials will be a high profile media circus and if they mange to successfully prosecute the terrorists, it will certainly boost his public image. And if they get off through some legal technicality – Team Obama will still win some support as they will spin the loss to Blame GW Bush. That would incite the core of Team Obama’s base – the Bush Deranged. And should a terror event arise from out of the wag the dog operation; Team Obama would still find a way to Blame Bush. It is what they have done from day one since they took office. It is how they fuel their followers. And places surrounding the prisons containing the jihadists, like the Quad Cities, will face terrorist danger all for Team Obama’s quest for glory and poll ratings.

NGD, a Canadian gold-mining company is “cooperating with Mexican government authorities and pursuing all legal appeals after the company was notified yesterday that it must suspend mining operations”, at Mineria San Xavier (called Cerro Cerro San Pedro  in company press releases) in San Luis Potosí –

Otto at Inca Kola News – who posted about the closure this morning — wrote in his subscription-only Latin American commodities investor newsletter “IKN Weekly” had suggested there were problems with the Canadian firm’s investments last weekend:

It is up to the individual investor to decide whether NGD suits his or her portfolio, but in this case I’ll venture to say that I would not be a shareholder in New Gold for the forseeable future. That’s just me. Enough said.

The mine closure follows complaints from citizen groups and Greenpeace that the company was not just damaging the environment and illegally working in protected forest areas, but — according to an article in the 13 June 2009 La Jornada, NGD was involved in several corrupt schemes to illegally acquire land from “falsos ejidatarios” in the 1990s.  In what was billed as a liberalization, collective farms (ejidos) were broken up into private ownership plots under the Salinas administration — the result being not that the owners of the small farms (which were only productive when cooperatively farmed) were often pressured or cheated into selling off valuable properties to outside investors. In NGD’s case — at least according to the complaints — this went one step further, sending in “ringers” to make claims on the land.

AND… in what’s an under-reported story even in Mexico … leaders of dissenting farmers and environmental activists, were assassinated.  Since 1999 Pro San Luis Ecológico has been seeking to annul the company’s mining permits, thwarted (or so ) by the Fox Administration and various PAN officials in the state who assisted NGD in shopping for “friendly jurisdictions” to hear the legal claims.

IN June 2004, the Ninth Tribunal (equivalent in a U.S. system to the Federal District Court) ruled in favor of citizens and against NGD, on the grounds that the company’s land claims were flawed.

A separate October 2005 ruling — this time from the Federal Tribunal for Fiscal and Administrative Affairs (TJAFA, for its initials in Spanish) — based on complaints from SEMANAT, the Secretariat of the Environment — ordered the government to cancel NGD’s environmental impact statement.

According to Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara, a researcher for the Colegio de San Luis who wrote the Jornada article, the mining company — actively colluding with the state and federal PAN administrations — went court shopping for a friendlier jurisdiction to fend off the inevitable. This latest ruling — from PROFEPA (Mexico’s Environmental Protection Agency) carries out the court order, annulling a re-issued Environmental Impact Statement. However, the company is telling investors that:

“This is a continuation of a decade of challenges from a group of individuals largely from outside the area who are opposed to the mining operations at Cerro San Pedro. We are taking all possible steps to respond to challenges to our legal ability to operate the mine, and believe that we will resume full operations” says New Gold CEO Robert Gallagher.

In other words, they’re still court shopping.  Otto is the go-to guy for investments, and I’ll not comment on the feasibility of throwing more money at the problem.  The larger issue seems to be that a very outside the area group (the Canadian company) is complaining about “challenges from a group of individuals largely from outside the area…” — which means basically scientists, environmentalists and water quality experts called in by the local farmers and residents opposed to the mine — having been thwarted by Mexican courts for so long,  with the active collusion of the political leadership, is looking to change the rules of both the democratic and judicial process.

I won’t make a comment on it here — but worth noting — is that “Tranparency International” has new rankings for its always interesting “corruption index”.  Mexico has become a lot more “corrupt” under the present administration, despite its claims to be the clean team.

In what seems like a full-court press by the Dispatch/Argus, QCOnline has posted rah-rah articles from Illinois Politicians, a Brandy Donaldson rah-rah article and even a D/A editorial-parroting of our local politician’s cheerleading ovations about the idea of locating Muslim terrorists at the Thompson Prison located in our district. According to the D/A editorial (which was basically Pat Quinn talking points) it is a huge opportunity to add great paying job/s to the area, while actually having prisoners sited in an expensive prison the State does not use – despite considerable overcrowding in other Illinois prisons.

Well there is no doubt the costly to build and upkeep Thompson prison without tenants was poor planning and implementation by our State government. The Dispatch/Argus readership displayed an unfavorable attitude towards moving the terrorists into a facility so close to the Quad City area in the QCOnline poll they posted. As I stated in my previous post – I personally think the risks far outweigh any possible gains. Still local and State level politicians, now joined by the Dispatch/Argus, continue to ignore the public’s discontent over the decision to pursue jihadist tenants for the prison. Is it a great opportunity to add high-end jobs in the region- probably, though the debate is still ongoing as to the real financial gains! The real question, which the editorial avoided – does the risk outweigh the gains? I suppose it all depends upon how you weigh the risks and gains. Why take the unnecessary risk,  is the real question!

I am not sure why the D/A is on the bandwagon to sell out our safety. But for members of the State of Illinois Government, it is all about the Benjamins.  I believe former Judge John Donald O’Shea hit a homerun in his article/evaluation of the situation. The State of Illinois is so cash strapped from years of reckless State Government waste and corruption that they are willing risk the safety of the citizens of this district and State to gather in the considerable cash the Obama administration will offer to the State that houses these dangerous criminals.

You say how can they be dangerous? After all they will be locked up under strict supervision by prison and military personnel. So what? That has never stopped any other dangerous criminals from operating their dirty activities from behind bars. Sympathetic lawyers can act as go between among locked-up criminals and outside criminal cohorts. Guards can make mistakes. Some guards could even be sympathetic to their causes. All it takes is one jihadist like the recent terrorist, whom murdered many military personnel in Fort Hood Texas, to create a similar event of terror at the local level. Plus once on mainland soil some hate on America organization,  like the ACLU, will be doing their best to make it possible for these jihadists to lessen any restrictions that prison/military/government  offcials attempt create. It is what they do. Those types of nutroot organizations motto is  -screw the average citizen and let the criminals can wreak havoc on society. It makes no sense to move these terrorists to mainland USA and create risk. There is no justice here that cannot be served in the more appropriate GITMO prison, where they are already located. But our greedy Governor Pat Quinn along with Senator Dick Durbin and many other government  that are supposed to be serving the citizens of the State of Illinois have got dollar signs in their eyes. The politicians are willing to throw out a welcome mat to terrorists and risk the safety of the citizens of this State and District for thirty pieces of silver from the Obama Administration.

The Woodrow Wilson Institute for International Scholars Mexico site picked up an article from El Universal that has captured what I think is one of Mexico’s greatest challenges… facing north when it should be looking south:

Mexico was once boasted as a leader in Latin America, but is now an observer of the development of other nations. Academics and specialists confirm that the country has found itself stuck in several areas stymieing its competitiveness.

The majority agree: the country wasted its potential, never looked south to reassert itself as a leader, and squandered the advantage of oil resources and neglected science.

(Original article in El Universal 16-November 2009)

I’ve talked before about the disadvantages of Mexico’s too-close ties to the United States economy, which has worked to discourage trade with the rest of Latin America and other parts of the world.  At the same time, despite my continual carping on the lack of attention the United States pays to Latin America, Mexico does receive attention… just not the kind that allows for creative and independent policy-making.

Narrow concerns with “stability”, coupled with the unfortunate co-incidence of the timing of the last presidential campaign during the United State’s own bout with extremist political and economic attitudes probably did have more to do with with the questionable outcome of that election than it should.  Not that a López Obradór administration would have necessarily have been more successful than the Calderón administration, but AMLO was more interested in pan-Latin initiatives, and his program was more focused on the basics — like educational and agricultural reform — than the incumbent is.

Secondly, Mexico’s willingness to fight the United State’s “war on drugs” — or rather, the Calderón administration’s willingness to use the “mano duro” against “instability” (which includes not just the narcotics exporters, but political and social dissent as well).  Basic judicial reforms, as well as social programs which would have ameliorated the need for so much dissent (as well as the need to make a living working in the narcotics industry) have been put on the back burner.

Third, while the PAN people are not incompetent per se, they are ideologically bound to the wrong issues.  This wouldn’t have been a problem had the U.S. economic house of cards stood up a few more years, but it didn’t.  While the United States could make some mild reforms thanks to an election at the right time, Mexico is stuck with the same mindset when it comes to economic responses as the Bush Administration in the U.S.  I thought it a good sign when Augustín Carstens was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, although — today — an orthodox World Bank type is exactly wrong.

And, of course, shit happens.  Mexico isn’t “exotic” — or exciting enough to rate the pres that Brazil does right now.  And, our stability may be working against us.  People like Felipe Calderón are kind of dull… even AMLO, or Beatriz Parades just don’t have the star appeal of other Latin American politicos like Bolivia’s Evo Morales or Ecuador’s Rafael Correa,  And, outside the “drug war” and quasi-crises like the flu epidemic, there hasn’t been any “change to believe in” that really captures one’s attention since the Oaxaca protests.

While it looks, on the surface, that nothing is going on… there are signs that something will give.  The cynical dismemberment of Luz y Fuero del Centro (and the union) hasn’t quite sunk in yet, nor has the Calderón administration’s coddling of the corrupt union boss, Esther Elba Gordilla… nor the seeming lack of ideas from the administration on how to respond to the economic situation.  There will be national elections in 2012… and although it appears for now that the likely winner is a Carlos Salinas protege, nothing is ever for certain in Mexico.  As Porfirio Dias said, just before everything changed, “Nothing changes in Mexico… until it changes.”

Lots of Georgia-flavored tidbits for you to sample today:

• These have got to be Auburn kids, right?  I’d hate to think the typical Georgia undergrad is that slow on the uptake, even when impaired.
• It doesn’t look like Bobby Petrino is winning many friends in the SEC officiating department.
• Here’s your first big media sighting of a Georgia-beats-Georgia Tech prediction.
• It can be dangerous listening to Buck Belue in rush hour traffic.  Yesterday, he mentioned the “rumor” that this clown could be in the mix if Richt decides to replace Martinez.
• On the other hand, Loran thinks it’s all sweetness and light for Georgia, based on three quarters against Auburn.
• David Ching is more cautious in praising one specific area of improvement.  You knew Searels would get it right sooner or later, didn’t you?
• The speculation has already begun on where Junior’s dismissed players will land.   I think Richardson to Florida is a pipe dream (although it would be Corch Meyers’ greatest gift to bloggers evah), but if Houston Nutt would take a flyer on Jamar Hornsby…
• Speaking of Corch, “After the Tennessee game, I quit going on the Internet,” he said. “I haven’t pushed the ‘on’ button on my computer.” Yeah, sometimes it’s good to take a break from those porn sites.
• I guess that means that Meyer isn’t aware that the Notre Dame job may be coming open soon.
• And as bizarre logic goes, this is teh awesome:  “I like booing the home team, simply because it’s all fans have to hold the team accountable… You are why Sanford stadium has always been an easy environment for visiting teams to play in. Georgia fans have never shown much passion in Sanford stadium and I guess they never will…” Got that?  If we’d boo our team more frequently, it would make for a bigger home field advantage.   Oy.

*Lists: The 2000’s lists are beginning to come out. According to NPR, these are the 50 Most Important Recordings of the Decade. I didn’t appear on any of them. Though I have recorded a track-for-track remake of “For Emma, Forever Ago.” For personal reasons. In the shower.

*Holidays: Spread the holiday spirit! Santas as H1N1 catalyst. [spin city]

*Life: Will intelligent alien creatures look like us? Dollars to donuts, I am balder than any alien discovered in my lifetime. And I am a man of my word, so please collect if I’m wrong. [marginal revolution]

*Photos: Look at these Re-inhabited Circle Ks. Most of my knowledge of the Circle K franchise comes to me from Bill and Ted’s various cinematic adventures. In a way, that’s a cry for help. [eat me daily]

*Quizzes: I hate quizzes, but I got 10 out of 12 on this one. Is This Music Web Site Real? On a related note, MySpace might now be trying to buy Imeem. (I used to know more about this shit.)

*Literature: Read Moby Dick online. I once read “Crime and Punishment” on Bartebly over a series of unbearably boring work days. I didn’t feel bad about it, either. (Get it? One of the themes of C&P is undeniable guilt? Hello? Ugh.) [ebert]

*Ideas: Gladwell v. Pinker

*Obits: Wow, Ken Ober (former host of MTV’s “Remote Control”) has died at 52.

*Today’s links: F. Though I almost made it to a D- by not mentioning the Word of the Year.