Afew weeks ago, my seven-year-old grandson Bruno caught bronchitis, a fairly common sickness in wintertime. A wonderful pediatrician prescribed him antibiotics and other necessary medications, but the boy didn’t get well. We went back to the doctor’s office, and, in view of the worsening situation, the pediatrician ordered lab exams. She suspected influenza.
In fact, the ELISA test confirmed the presence of a serious viral infection. The doctor ordered a hospital stay for the boy, and, specifying the exact dosage and treatment period, prescribed a course of Oseltamivir, sold in Mexico as Tamiflu (without an accent on the u, although the word is generally pronounced Tamiflú). The doctor’s orders seemed right to me. But the boy’s mother was a little nervous, because – she told me – she had read some news stories about Tamiflu’s supposed uselessness. She cited an interesting piece of information: she claimed to know that the medication was was just a racket run by Donald Rumsfeld, head of the Pentagon in the administration of the genocide known as George W. Bush.
Trying to calm the little boy’s mother, I passed her concerns onto the doctor. She told us in polite but conclusive terms that, “It’s not just the best medication we have, sir, but the only one. Your grandson’s life depends on good hospital care and the antiviral drug.”
Needless to say, Bruno recovered after four days in the hospital, and we, as a family, could breathe easy. I asked myself: from whence this anti-Tamiflu defamation campaign, if it’s efficacy in treating the flu is more than well-documented in thousands of hospitals in the world?
I don’t know the dark origins of these spurious arguments, and I won’t bother to guess. But I think that demonizing a medication crucial to the treatment of a disease as serious as the flu, so serious that it can be, and sometimes is, fatal, is not only unethical, but criminal. In the epoch of the greatest scientific advance in the history of mankind, the defamers of science still exist, and make themselves noticed.
Which, in itself, is unsurprising. The smallpox vaccine was also the victim of a defamation campaign. Only it’s proven efficiency could calm the storm of absurdities leveled against one of the finest creations of human ingenuity.
Attacks on the poliomyelitis vaccine, still persistent today, present a similar case. As is well known, the Polish genius and naturalized U.S. citizen Albert Sabin discovered a second vaccine for the scourge. Another genius, New Yorker Jonás Salk, had created the first vaccine a few years before.
Charges against the Sabin vaccine depended – and still depend – on a certain fact: Sabin is formulated from an attenuated, or live virus, unlike Salk, which is produced from a dead virus.
Science’s ever-watchful adversaries have taken the fact that Sabin is fabricated from live viruses as a justification to blame the vaccine for the infamous resurgence of the disease, when in reality these outbreaks, mostly occurring in subsaharan Africa, resulted from a lack of sufficient vaccinations.
Regarding the death of actor Pedro Armendáriz Jr., an article published on Dec. 27 recalled that Pedro’s father, the magnificent actor Pedro Armendáriz, acted in the movie, “The Conqueror,” in 1956, filmed in Utah. At the moment, Washington was doing nuclear tests in Nevada. And, curiously, 91 out of 220 people participating in the production of the film developed cancer.
Out of this figure, 46 died of cancer. The most famous of these were actors John Wayne (stomach and lung cancer), Susan Hayward (brain cancer), Agnes Moorehead (lung cancer), and John Hoyt (lung cancer). The director of the film, Dick Powell (lymphoma) and stuntman Chuck Roberson also died of cancer. In 1963, when Pedro Armendáriz learned that he had cancer, and was hospitalized at the University of California, in Los Angeles, he shot himself in the chest, seven years after his stay in Utah.
The relationship between nuclear radiation and cancer is not new. It was perfectly well known after the yankee atrocities against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s worth mentioning that the famous Marie Curie died because of being exposed to radiation during her scientific research on radioactivity, which earned her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, and Chemistry in 1911, for discovering polonium and radium.
The case of Pedro Armendáriz and his colleagues after participating in the film is far from being a painful coincidence. Their stay in a region affected by the radiation from U.S. Army atomic research in Nevada is a plausible scientific explanation for their cancer.
It does not seem a coincidence that five Latin American progressive presidents, opponents of the U.S. government, Argentine President Cristina Fernández, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have developed cancer simultaneously. Any expert in probability and statistics would tell us that this simultaneity is highly unlikely and borders on the impossible.
Then, why has Hugo Chávez been fiercely criticized after he pointed out this suspicious coincidence? Is it because he wondered whether the U.S. Army can selectively cause cancer? The question of the Venezuelan president is not impertinent at all.
A golden rule in journalism (and in historiography, sociology and politics) establishes that “facts are sacred, but their interpretation is free.” “Facts are sacred” means that information should not be manipulated, distorted or twisted, but interpretation of them is free: Anyone can interpret facts as they want. This is what Hugo Chávez has done.
Beyond his words and image, the question is valid: Can an institution or country selectively induce cancer? Does somebody have a better explanation for the cancer suffered simultaneously by five Latin American presidents, besides coincidence?
In war lingo, the most famous word is the German term “blitzkrieg”: Lightning war. “Krieg,” war, “blitz,” lightning. With this military strategy, Adolf Hitler managed to dominate half of Europe in a few months: France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Each army was defeated in a few weeks.
The creator of this modern and devastating military strategy was Prussian General Heinz Guderian. The core of the strategy consisted of using an all-motorized force consisting of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power. The blitzkrieg represented the end of the long battles on the field. The motorized equipment quickly broke through enemy lines, which allowed the invader to immediately proceed without regard to its flank. The infantry, in trucks, played the role of occupation troops. Obviously, the lightning war resulted in lightning-fast victory.
With this new and peculiar military strategy, which was completely successful between 1938 and 1940, Nazi officials decided to fulfill their dream of destroying the “great enemy of the East”: The Soviet Union. This dream began on June 22, 1941, under the code name Operation Barbarossa.
Operation Barbarossa was designed to successfully invade the Soviet Union in about three months. Nazis were sure that by the end of September or early October, 1941, more than two months away from the fearsome Russian winter, “Russia will be on its knees.” At present, we can still find some old facsimiles inviting people to celebrate the defeat of the Red Army at a hotel in Moscow.
However, in September, 1941, three months after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and two months before the beginning of winter, the blitzkrieg was repelled before it arrived in Moscow. For the first time in history, the lightning war did not result in a lightning victory. The victorious expectations might explain why Nazi soldiers trying to invade the Soviet Union did not carry winter clothing.
After the failure of the lightning war, Hitler’s pipe dream of a lightning-fast victory vanished. After the failure of the powerful Nazi military strategy, it was just a matter of time before the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, was completely defeated.
In Moscow, Nazi Germany lost over 1.7 million soldiers and the best of its motorized force. And it was never able to recover from this. However, it was able to besiege Leningrad and Stalingrad, but it did not use the lightning war for this. The siege of the most important Soviet cities turned into a long war, the opposite to the lightning war.
This is why I can affirm, despite the historical fallacy that the Wehrmacht was defeated by “General Winter,” that the armies under the command of Joseph Stalin and Georgi Zhúkov were the ones who defeated the then invincible Nazi troops. It was in Moscow, in September, 1941, where the Nazi defeat began. The Battle of Moscow was the beginning of the end of the Nazis.
Recently, the social security system of Venezuela was more or less similar to that of any other in Latin America, Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. In all these nations, workers registered with their respective systems, and once the time to retire has come, enjoy a pension that allows them to spend the remainder of their days in a decent, comfortable manner. In Mexico, for instance, it does not matter if the employee worked for the private or public sectors.
Except for a few countries, the age of retirement was usually somewhere around 55 for women and 60 for men. However, right now, some European nations and reactionary governments are struggling to extend the retirement age with the excuse that humans now live longer. Regardless if this is fair or not, the important thing is that retirees are now going to live comfortable lives only if they are registered with a social security system.
What would happen, then, to those who never registered, that is, campesinos, taxi drivers, plumbers, fishermen, construction workers, self-employed people and thousands of thousands of women that were never employed and had dedicated their lives to their homes? Well, it’s simple, really.
They can’t receive a retirement pension. Millions upon millions of people all over the world have to depend on their children (if there were any or if they are willing to support their parents) or eke out a living by renting a property or from savings or any other kind of income other than a pension. I believe it is now appropriate to say that our social security systems are flat-out unfair, especially when they are exclusive.
Nevertheless, things are actually looking good for the people of Venezuela. Starting Jan. 1 of 2012, Venezuelan law will provide a pension to all women older than 55 and to all men older than 60, regardless of whether they are or were registered with social security or even if they failed to pay their dues. President Hugo Chávez said it was time to break old (unfair) habits.
Indeed all women above 55 and all men above 60 without any type of pension will now have access to one until the end of their days. The amount the elderly in Venezuela will receive is equivalent to minimum wage: 1548 bolivars, which is nearly $US300 or about 5,000 pesos. True, 5,000 pesos is not that much, but it will allow the elderly to at least have a steady income.
Now, if we are talking about a couple, the two pensions will add up to 10,000 pesos a month. In my opinion, it is one of the best pension systems today, as provides the Venezuelan people with justice; the product of a just revolution and a just government.
There are those who say that it is too early pass judgement about the sudden irruption of a group of Iranians into the United Kingdom embassy in Iran’s capital city, Tehran. To be honest, I believe the whole thing was a provocation by the west against the regime of the ayatollahs. Indeed, a provocation of local mercenaries at the service of the United Kingdom, Israel, Turkey and the United States.
The aim of this incident would be, of course, to provide yankee imperialism and its European subordinates a perfect excuse to carry on with their colonization efforts of the old Persia. I am sure the people of Iran have a lot of reasons to hate Albion, the U.S., Israel, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and other colonialist nations, but even a group of thugs would understand that attacking UK proxy territory would result in terrible, war-like consequences.
That is exactly why I think the attack was perpetrated by a group of irresponsible, insensitive citizens. If we consider the country’s history, especially the recent conflict between Iran and the west, we might come to the conclusion that the hypothesis of provocation does not seem preposterous. I truly believe the west paid local “moles” to repeat the situation in Palestine, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and in the probable future, Syria.
Military aggression against Syria has yet to become a reality because Russia and China are making use of their veto in the United Nations Security Council. The two nations are disregarding the demands of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to isolate the Syrian government and launch an operation similar to that of the one in Libya.
These lies and slander, disinformation and inflammatory propaganda by the NATO against Iran have been completely unsuccessful, but that does not mean that Washington and its European lackeys do not have this sudden urge to topple the ayatollah government. On the contrary, with every passing day, their eagerness to overthrow the President of the Persian nation grows stronger and stronger.
The incident at the UK embassy in Tehran is the last link of a long chain of slander and provocative acts by the west, especially by Washington. It was expected, though, that everyone would blame the Iranian government regarding the attack against the aforementioned embassy.
The yankee Secretary of State, Hillary R. Clinton, and British Foreign Secretary William Jefferson Hague are adding fuel to the fire, backed by the governments of Germany, France, Norway, Sweden and Holland. They are blaming Iran for, not only attacking the embassy, but the entire international community, as well, which could be interpreted by some as a provocation to start a war. I’m sorry to say, but I have seen this same old movie far too many times.
Unless there are eleventh-hour changes, the 2012 presidential candidates of Mexico’s main political parties are already defined: Enrique Peña Nieto for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Ernesto Cordero Arroyo for the National Action Party (PAN) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).
And now, the possible candidates for the mayorship of Mexico City are starting to appear. This position is, without a doubt, the second most important in the nation. The aspiring candidates are also representing Mexico’s main political parties: PRI, PAN and PRD.
I will begin talking about the PAN since, as far as I know, two PANistas have already expressed their wish to become the PAN candidate for the mayorship of Mexico City. These people are the former President of the Miguel Hidalgo Borough, Gabriela Cuevas, and the current President of the Miguel Hidalgo Borough, Demetrio Sodi. From an objective point of view, the PAN has few worthy members. The situation worsens when we learn that people in Mexico City, except for the Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juárez boroughs, are not PAN supporters at all.
The PRI doesn’t have aspiring candidates yet. But we know that Beatriz Paredes Rangel is one of the leading possible candidates for the party, as she is the only one capable of taking the control of the city away from the PRD, which has ruled in the capital since 1987. That year, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas became the first Mexico City Mayor to belong to a party other than the PRI. No other aspiring PRI candidates have turned up, and the truth is that it’s difficult to contradict those who think that Paredes Rangel is the PRI’s best option to beat the PRD in the capital.
In the PRD there are some members considered to be top possibilities of becoming the PRD candidate. They are Mario Delgado, who is said to be Marcelo Ebrard’s favorite; Miguel Ángel Mancera, Mexico City’s Attorney General; Martí Batres and Alejandra Barrales.
PRDistas do not believe that Delgado is strong enough. He is talented and experienced, but he lacks charisma and popularity. A similar situation exists with Mancera: He’s talented, prepared and willing to become the candidate. However, he’s the head of a security agency that has not shown any results, which makes him a weak candidate. Personally, I think that Batres has everything to become a successful candidate. He’s one of the PRD’s best. But he is known for being a radical and uncontrollable young man. Besides, he has now fallen out with Ebrard.
All these reasons make me believe that Alejandra Barrales is the PRD’s best option, due to her youth, charisma and political experience. She hasn’t had any confrontations with other PRD groups, and it is about time that Mexico City is ruled by a woman. It is highly possible that the race for the mayorship of Mexico City will feature women: Cuevas, Paredes and Barrales.
Born in 1960, the contraceptive pill represented a social revolution close to the invention of vaccines, anesthesia, germicides and antibiotics. The pill allowed humanity to escape from the inevitable destiny of involuntary birth. The work of these three scientists might as well be considered one of the greatest creations of humanity.
Indeed, scientific research simply doesn’t stop. Five decades later, during the late 90’s, the emergency pill popped up. Once again, scientists took a huge step forward in contraceptive research.
The emergency pill is a postcoital method of contraception, unlike the usual precoital method. It is the famous Marker-Miramontes-Pincus pill. It is the pill recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and by health authorities in Mexico, especially in cases of rape or faulty precoital contraceptive methods.
After six decades of universal use, no one is against the precoital pill. Au contraire, it is recognized as one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in history. However, the emergency pill does not enjoy the same praise. After almost a decade of its invention, we still hear voices demanding to stop producing or using it.
Then again, opposing the use of the emergency pill is as useless as opposing other methods of contraception. History tells us that emergency contraception will probably follow the steps of the pill invented in 1960. The emergency pill is already a patrimony of humanity, the same way vaccines, anesthesia, antibiotics and germicides are. I am not kidding when I say that chemistry would not have evolved if it wasn’t for these very important breakthroughs. Let’s think about vaccines, antibiotics or analgesics. It’s true, chemistry has advanced so much that it is hard to believe.
What about insulin, which is used to control diabetes, or the substances used to analyze blood and urine? What about anesthesia, which has allowed performing surgeries? These things are nothing but pure chemistry.
Chemistry of course is not only limited to medicine. No, it engulfs a broad range of other fields, including the industrial sector. We can mention fertilizers or pesticides, which have allowed producers to meet the demands of society and more.
However, this killer couple, chemistry and medicine, is very intimately related to society. In 1998, just 13 years ago, chemistry invented the miracle of curing impotency. Impotency was, over the millennia, an ailment that affected millions of men, and vicariously, women as well. Chemistry once again has produced a miracle and created substances to solve that problem.
According to a story released by the Washington Post, a story that has been probably read by absolutely everyone, the government of President Felipe Calderón is “allowing domestic marijuana and opium poppy production to climb to record levels, making Mexico the second-leading heroin producer in the world, after Afghanistan.”
It is not news that the Washington Post is more or less the United States government’s official spokesperson, so I can definitely say that the entire story might as well have come from the White House itself.
I can conclude, then, that the people who accuse President Calderón of allowing the increase in production of these drugs are the yankee government, and not the Washington Post, regardless of how important the paper is.
To make such claims, the White House (and not the paper) bases its reasoning on the following: since the arrival of President Calderón to Los Pinos, the Mexican government has changed its strategies against the drug cartels. Before 2006, that strategy was the destruction of marijuana and opium plants, but things changed and it is now the “narco market” that is being attacked. According to Obama, this strategy has facilitated an increase in production of opium poppies and marijuana.
The Washington Post claims that they got their information from the U.S. government and the United Nations, although they don’t go into much detail about these so-called sources.
This article is not exactly thorough, and one must wonder if that information is true or just make-believe on the part of the gringos, intended to sully the good names of whatever government or institution gets in their way.
These claims are, of course, false and it is clear that Calderón has no friends in the White House. I’d say he has powerful enemies that will use public slander without thinking about the consequences.
What isn’t clear in this ill-timed article is that we can’t really tell if they are accusing Calderón of being naive by changing the strategy to combat cartels, or if they are claiming he’s a wicked, evil man with a hidden agenda.
In any case, this low blow by the White House should get the President thinking. It is clear that they are urging him, indirectly, to go back to the old ways and stop deploying military forces. I don’t know what Washington is plotting, but it is clear that they are not fond of Calderón’s military strategy.
In the end, we can only conclude that things are worse today than in 2006. Regardless of the White House’s claims, we know and see that violence in Mexico is getting worse and worse, and that production, marketing and use of drugs is rising to uncontrollable levels.
For the twentieth year in a row, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) has denounced the economic, commercial and financial blockade that the government of the United States has imposed on Cuba. And for the twentieth year in a row, the General Assembly has adamantly called for the immediate suspension of this wicked act of war against the little Caribbean island.
But Washington, unmoved by this overwhelming moral judgement, continues cynically with the fierce act of economic war, which obviously has genocidal overtones: Killing an entire people from hunger, thirst and disease because it refuses to be colonized by the most important imperial power ever. http://america.cubaminrex.cu/InformeBloqueo2011/index.html
The combination of worldwide condemnation of Washington’s acts and the yankee persistence in continuing its criminal behavior has generated one result: The United States is perceived as a swine by the world. Its ideals have become worthless. The acts of this state, disapproved and condemned by most humans, starkly show its despotic, autocratic, terrorist, genocidal and antihuman essence.
The same happens when we talk about the five Cuban anti-terrorists, who are Washington’s prisoners. Nobody on this planet believes the yankee tale about the five Cubans spying on the U.S. As with the blockade, everybody knows that the U.S. is lying, and that these five men are innocent of the accusations against them.
The best of the human race is condemning the unfair and relentless torture of these five men. Professors, doctors, artists, writers, film makers, poets, scientists, several Nobel laureates and millions of honest people around the world are aware of the falseness of the accusations against the Cubans.
However, like the blockade, Washington continues with this illegal, immoral, terrorist, inhuman and unfair behavior. And again, we see this despotic and autocratic State that imposes itself through violence, against the will and ideals of most of the Earth’s population.
Today, it is clear that those who believed that a dark-skinned man, probably a descendant of slaves, would have the will to fight for justice, were completely wrong. Obama has shown himself to be another member of the United States’ tyranny disguised as democracy.
He doesn’t care much about reasons, arguments and evidence. As the head of an autocratic state, Obama is also despotic and autocratic. Just as if he were a new Hitler, Obama turns a blind eye on the ordeal of five innocent men. As a new Führer, he allows the blockade to continue, which is aimed at annihilating Cuba.
Put in the pillory of universal public discredit, Washington responds with disdain, cynicism and hypocrisy. But Cuba and another 185 nations asking for an end to the blockade are teaching Washington some dignity, democracy, honesty, ethics and humanity. Some of the most important international representatives of art, culture and science are doing the same. All they want is the end of the unfair imprisonment of the five heroic Cuban anti-terrorists.
After the murder of Moammar Gaddafi, one feels compelled to recognize that the first United States-sponsored neo-colonization program in Africa was a success. It is definitely a sinister plan to re-colonize countries that had managed to free themselves from the oppressive force of Europe and its everlasting wisdom; a Europe that opposed the U.S. and now hobnobs with it every chance it gets. Today was Libya’s turn, but soon Algeria, Syria or any other government with the slightest hint of independence will follow suit.
Terrible news about the imperialistic plans to dismember the country and share the loot have already reached Syria. If things continue the way they are, a portion of Syria will eventually be controlled by Turkey, a powerful country that curiously enough is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union.
As of now, this horrible plan is only on paper. That is because Russia and China have steered away the desires of Washington and the warmongering instincts of Europe. Russia and China have issued a veto against repressive actions against Syria, which means that the EU and the U.S will not be able to carry out their military invasion of the Middle East.
However, this flawed ideological, political, social, cultural and economic strategy of imperialism against the government of Bashir Assad will not stop any time soon.
In Syria, a place where different religions have lived throughout the ages, the threat of imperialism looms over the heads of its people. Actually, this imperialism has been somewhat successful and has seeded fear and religious zeal within the population in order to topple Assad.
Then again, history is here to tell the rest of the story. Afghanistan and Iraq are very good examples and lessons of countries in pain that were invaded and ultimately repressed. Just like Palestine, they are in a permanent state of foreign occupation. These are lands where political stability is unattainable and peace seems long gone.
In the end, Gaddafi became a hero to his people. A man who sacrificed himself in order to save the fatherland against the will of neo-colonialism and its armed forces. He did not jump ship and stayed strong to defend what he thought was right.
Imperialist-sponsored forces invaded Libya to implement the ideals of colonial exploitation. And like every colony, what we already know will become evident. Imperialism doesn’t help the people, but takes things from them. Imperialism fosters poverty and is an exceptionally efficient source of suffering and pain, especially in invaded countries. These terrible facts will become the breeding ground of a new independence war, where new anti-colonialists, new patriots, new Gaddafis will be born.
Kill the germs and you will be finished with disease,” said Louis Pasteur to a group of physicians. Believe it or not, not until the 1880s were scientists able to determine where the vast majority of diseases originated. It was Pasteur who developed the germ theory that had previously confounded scientists for hundreds of years. Today, the French scientist is considered the father of modern medicine.
But curiously, Louis Pasteur was not a physician but a chemist. From the time he said “Kill the germs and you will be finished with disease,” the mission of chemists has been to cure diseases. Without the aid of chemistry, the marvelous advances in medical treatment would not have been possible.
Think of antibiotics, anesthesia, analgesics and the creation of important chemicals. But what has truly been a great achievement is the development of insulin to treat and control diabetes.
But, the uses of chemistry are not simply limited to the fields of diagnosis, treatment and the alleviation of disease. The range is huge. Chemistry is present in all branches of material production. This is especially true regarding the Green Revolution. The application of fertilizers and pesticides has allowed for the exponential production of grains and other foods. Thanks largely to chemistry and Norman Borlaug (the creator of the Green Revolution), the lack of food is no longer a cause of famine.
But man does not live on bread alone and each one has a heart beating inside of him. In 1998, just thirteen years ago, chemistry produced a miracle by solving male impotence that is not associated with chronic degenerative diseases such as diabetes or conditions such as hypertension.
The first drug to cure impotence was Viagra. Today, barely more than a decade after Viagra hit the shelves, it seems like a drug of the past. New drugs made from new chemical compounds can solve the problem of impotence in young, middled-aged, and older men.
Impotence that is not linked with degenerative disease, technically known as erectile dysfunction, plagued millions of men. Chemistry has produced a miracle, and this acute problem has ceased to exist. Oh, if Louis Pasteur were here to witness what he started, which has opened the door to immortality.
About 51 years ago, three famous chemists created the oral contraceptive pill. One of them was Russel E. Marker, a United States citizen that discovered the properties of a Mexican plant called barbasco, also known as the Mexican yam, that inhibits the production of ovules.
The other chemist is Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas, who managed to synthesize, that is, artificially produce a substance called norethisterone, which comes from the Mexican yam, and is the basis of the contraceptive pill. The third chemist is Gregory Pincus, also a U.S. citizen, that produced the pill in its final form.
Born in 1960, the contraceptive pill represented a social revolution close to the invention of vaccines, anesthesia, germicides and antibiotics. The pill allowed humanity to escape from the inevitable destiny of involuntary birth. The work of these three scientists might as well be considered one of the greatest creations of humanity. Indeed, scientific research simply doesn’t stop. Five decades later, during the late 90’s, the emergency pill popped up. Once again, scientists took a huge step forward in contraceptive research.
The emergency pill is a postcoital method of contraception, unlike the usual precoital method. It is the famous Marker-Miramontes-Pincus pill. It is the pill recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and by health authorities in Mexico, especially in cases of rape or faulty precoital contraceptive methods.
After six decades of universal use, no one is against the precoital pill. Au contraire, it is recognized as one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in history. However, the emergency pill does not enjoy the same praise. After almost a decade of its invention, we still hear voices demanding to stop producing or using it.
Then again, opposing the use of the emergency pill is as useless as opposing other methods of contraception. History tells us that emergency contraception will probably follow the steps of the pill invented in 1960. The emergency pill is already a patrimony of humanity, the same way vaccines, anesthesia, antibiotics and germicides are.
Some unintelligent governments might promote laws to forbid the use of this new contraception technology, and that includes several states in Mexico, and even entire countries. Nevertheless, they won’t stop people from getting their hands on the pill.
We should remember that the first test tube baby was born on July 25, 1978, in Great Britain. Louise Brown is her name, and she’s 33 years old. Let us also remember that in spite of opposition and conservative ideals, ever since, four million test tube babies have been born in the world. Once again, we are forced to remember that the creator of this method of birth, a wise man called Robert Edwards, recently received the Nobel Prize in medicine. Opposing scientific advancement serves no one. It is unstoppable and irreversible. Then again, conservatives have yet to understand that truth.
In a movie rental shop, I found two highly-recommended films from the United States. One of them, entitled “Limitless,” tells a story of a young, but messy and sloppy, talented writer whose own decadence prevents him from becoming successful.
By chance, he finds a drug that dramatically improves his intellectual abilities. After using the drug, the young man finds success and fortune as a writer and then much more.
The other film, called “Little New York,” narrates the story of a young couple with limited financial resources who wants to have a baby. The father learns of the existence of a new genetic engineering technique that allows the creation of highly-intelligent children. This new technique comes at a high price – something like $US 50,000. He, being a septic-tank cleaner, is unable to purchase it and decides to rob a mafia boss to get the money. With the stolen money he pays for the treatment, and his child becomes nothing less than a genius, although his father never gets to meet him.
Will science find the means to produce more intelligent people? I think that it is not out of the question and that it is not far away. Science has achieved feats that formerly seemed unattainable and even impossible but which now are integrated into everyday life.
A little more than 200 years ago, at the end of the 18th Century, the English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine without knowing how the virus worked. The scientists Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin’s invented the polio vaccine in the same way, and the list goes on and on.
Why can’t science create a drug that enhances the intellectual capacities of human beings? In fact, this was already done to some extent with Norman E. Borlaug’s “Green Revolution,” which increased agriculture production around the world and is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. No one can deny the close relationship between diet and the development of intelligence. It is simply a matter of genetics and giving one’s DNA the nutrients it needs to do what it is designed to do.
Soon we will realize the foreshadowing these two movies made. Meanwhile, society can resort to old methods to increase a person’s intelligence through nutrition, reading, and education. The universal allocation of nutrition and education would make it possible to achieve the dream of a society formed by only smart people.
In the past few days the United States dollar went up to nearly 14 pesos. It rose to this level after a series of ups and downs on the stock market. It will most likely go up a little further, but then again, it could go down as well. In the meantime, if you take the time to study currency behavior in the past few years, you’ll come to the conclusion that it will go up. This is indeed the usual behavior for any for any kind of currency in an economic context of inflation.
Before the faulty administration of Salinas de Gortari decided to devaluate the peso and create a new currency of sorts (that still lingers today), the U.S. dollar cost about three pesos. Let’s say that in a period of nearly 20 years the dollar’s price has multiplied by four, or in other words, it devaluated by 400 percent, about 20 percent per year.
Another currency, the euro, cost more than 14 pesos five years ago, and today, it costs more or less 19 pesos, that is, a devaluation of the peso by 35 percent in past five years or 7 percent per year.
The situation repeats itself with currencies or coins from other countries. Actually, a few months ago I wrote on this pages that inflation is a constant of capitalist economies and that the prices of currencies are established by globalization: if they go up in Mexico, they do so elsewhere as well.
There are few who would say that the history of currency prices is proof that they always go up and then down. True, indeed true, but these fluctuations are founded on a tendency, of a historic nature, to go up. In 1971, the smallest and most popular car in Mexico cost 21,000 pesos. The latest version of that same car, which came into being about ten years ago, costs 75,000 pesos. And a car from another company that shares its features, more or less, in 2011 costs nearly 100,000 pesos.
As I said, when we talk about prices, tendency is almighty, and it always goes up. That is why you should not be surprised about the current cost of U.S. dollars. Seven months ago, in February of this year, treasury officials and the Central Bank of Mexico (Banxico) bragged about the economic success that cheap U.S. dollars meant to the country, that is, a dollar that cost less than twelve pesos.
At the time, I said to myself: It is common for prices to go up. Seven months later my thoughts became reality. Now, bear in mind that I’m not a seer nor an expert in economy, it was just a matter of pure empirical observation. In a context of inflation (as usual) prices go up, and the dollar is the best example.
Friedrich Engels wrote a great deal of philosophy and scientific papers, most of which are genius. Perhaps, the most famous of these papers are “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” “The Anti-Dühring,” “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man,” and “Engels’ Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx.” The latter is a brief, but masterful summary on Marx’s and Engels’s own historical materialism theories.
In that memorable and immortal speech he paid homage to his friend and fellow thinker, who had died three days prior in London. There, Engels utters a phrase that sums up the magnitude of Marx’s loss to science and the international revolutionary movement brewing at the time: the dialectical materialism. Engels said the following: “On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think”.
I feel the sudden urge to remember these words because I strongly believe they express the feeling I’m trying to convey: this void that was left by Jorge Turner’s untimely passing. A void shared by those who knew and admired him for many decades. Indeed, one of the greatest thinkers ceased to think.
I met Turner during the late 80’s when he was the Panamanian ambassador to Mexico. We witnessed United States troops invading his beloved Panama, where in just one night they murdered more 4,000 people with grenades, bombs and napalm in the El Chorrillo neighborhood. They killed entire families: mothers, fathers, grandparents and children.
However, not everything was disgrace. When he turned 60, his lifetime partner, María Guerra, took it upon herself to organize a party for him. Myself and my lifetime partner María Esther were more than happy to attend.
At the event, some people uttered words of gratitude and admiration to the learned Latin-American scholar, the restless revolutionary, the anti-imperialistic patriot, the generous friend. Turner did nothing but smile.
When it was my turn to make a toast, I managed to string a few ideas together. Today, I recall those rhymes that formed an epigram of sorts; those words that summed up what his friends and fellow scholars thought of him:
A Jorge Turner le digo,
y así las gracias le doy,
que en el duro tiempo de hoy
mucho ayuda ser su amigo
para seguir siendo fiel
a esa hermosa utopía
que prendió en nuestra alma un día
y que abandera hoy Fidel.
Turner, Professor at the Political Science School at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), journalist, lecturer and social enthusiast was living model of humanism, wisdom, chivalry and generosity. I was honored to be his friend.
In memory of a fellow anti-imperialist: Jorge Turner
Monday September, 12 was the 13th anniversary of the unfair and cruel incarceration of five men falsely accused of being criminals. I feel strongly compelled to deal with this issue, and although I’ve talked about this on several occasions, I still feel that mixture of sadness, anger, and hope. I feel sad because I witnessed the suffering of the mothers, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters of these five Cuban citizens – incarcerated in the United States, wrongfully charged of crimes they didn’t commit – who were unjustly taken away from their loved ones and deprived of their youth. These are parents without children, partnerless wives, fatherless children; indeed a torture that has been gruesomely extended for 13 years.
I feel anger because I know first-hand and on paper the wicked deeds of evil judges and bailiffs.
I feel hope because I believe there are people of honor in the government of the United States that will take matters into their hands. This is why I feel so keen to talk about this injustice and draw as much attention as possible. Perhaps serendipity will grace me and put these words in the eyes of a U.S. citizen that abhors injustice and has enough political pull to mend this situation.
Today, 13 years after the tragedy, after all the legal tools have been used and depleted, there is only one way to go. The UN recommended a presidential pardon. Will Obama be capable of such a humbling gesture?
I’m not kidding myself and I know that Obama is the king of the “Empire.” I know he’s subject to pressure from powerful people in the shadows that force him to turn a blind eye to this colossal injustice. Then again, I also know that other very powerful imperial strongmen were capable of clemency and mercy. Napoleon Bonaparte paid heed to the cause of William Jenner, the discoverer of the vaccine against smallpox, and granted freedom to a few English citizens that were previously imprisoned by the French Emperor.
Obama is capable enough of understanding that 13 years in prison for those who have committed no crime can be an unbearable torment that must come to an end. Obama has the key to free these five innocents. After 13 years of suffering, and in spite of it all, I still haven’t lost hope. I trust that once and for all, Obama will reach out to them and truly put the values of justice into practice.
There’s an old adage that says: The devil makes work for idle hands. This is a truth as ancient as the earth itself. However, over the millennia, idle behavior, meaning free time or leisure, was a something for rich people only; for the gentry, slave-owners, feudal lords, and wealthy merchants. It was a thing of nobility (I’d call it monstrosity, though) of the ruling classes.
Today, perhaps even for the past 100 to 150 years, leisure is no longer an exclusive behavior of people with wealth. Free time is something millions and millions of people enjoy all over the world. Vacations and tourism are proof of the leisurely ways of modern society.
Aníbal Ponce, one of the greatest Marxists of Argentina, said that among the ancient Greeks, work was a despicable activity, and those who had to work for a living were despicable. Only slave-owners and landowners could live in eternal leisure. However, the Platos, Aristoteles and Aristophanes of the time were able to discern between leisure as an opportunity to be lazy and idle and leisure as an opportunity to think, study and acquire culture. This nature of this leisure was called ‘diagogos,’ which means something along the lines of dignified leisure, or distinguished leisure.
We could say that that kind of behavior still lingers in society. We have those who do absolutely nothing or use their free time to engage in all types of addictive behaviors, which denotes leisure as an opposite to virtue, and we have those who use their time to improve their spirits. That is why singer José Luis Perales asked his young daughter about her suitor: What does he do in his free time? Perhaps sports or study. Alas, one can only hope the suitor does not use his time to consume drugs or alcohol, or frequent gambling venues and casinos.
Perales assumes the attitude of any responsible head of family. He knows gambling and casinos are businesses that, like every other business, are aimed at earning money. In casinos, the revenue can only be obtained through the client’s pockets, that is, from gamblers. These places are statistically designed in such a way that clients always lose and the house always wins.
It is a type of exploitation. It is a means of appropriating for oneself something that does not belong to oneself, especially from those naive enough to think that a “lucky strike” will win them the jackpot. I’m talking about those who wish to overcome poverty by means of a fluke. This wicked exploitation of the gullible, of the weak of spirit, of the fainthearted should be enough to ban casinos. Then again, they exist for many other reasons. The regulars are people with no aim in life. The devil does make work for idle hands. So I ask: Is it really surprising to see that casinos are usually a hotbed of smugglers, drug lords, conmen, pimps and pedophiles?
Claiming that Muamar Gaddafi’s totalitarian regime was toppled by rebels and revolutionaries would make you a filthy liar. Gaddafi was overturned by the power of countries affiliated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning, an alliance of warmongers from rich countries in Europe and North America, obviously controlled by the United States. Everyone knows that. Most media, still at the service of the empire, have documented it several times. Everyone knows the fall of Gadaffi was the product of an endless chain of bombings against cities and the population in general.
This tyrant, as the broadcasters say, has fallen. However, he didn’t fall at the hands of the people of Libya. Does anyone actually think that he would have left without the air-raids and massacres of the people of this country? There were constant military operations and missions. These bombings seeded fear in the people. These bombings by warplanes or unmanned drones rained death upon the people and killed the innocent.
Rebels? Revolutionaries? Democrats? Hogwash, I say. These former liegemen of Gaddafi-turned mercenaries of Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel and Berlusconi have forged a Holy Alliance of sorts that is bent on murdering, destroying, and mutilating thousands and thousands of Libyans in the name of so-called democracy and ethics. The reality is there. We face yet another chapter of politics in the hands of military powers. This is another face of neo-colonialism. We witness another war to deprive a country of its wealth and natural resources. We witness the construction of a strategic bastion in countries that have done away with totalitarian regimes. Panama came first. Iraq followed suit, and then came Pakistan. I’m sure the bombings will reach Syria in the near future. When this happens, they will bamboozle us by telling it was the rebels who toppled Assad, the tyrant.
These are the new times we’re living. These are the new economic conditions of our planet. The U.S. and Europe cannot conceive of prosperity without recurring to old habits and exploiting their colonies. This neo-exploitation is the result of a revived arms race.
In this new epoch, there is no room to intercede on behalf of nations that want sovereignty. Politics, dialog and negotiation serve no purpose. The Yankee despot and his European lackeys place and remove puppet states as they please, just to guarantee themselves servance and to colonize helpless countries with their unstoppable military force.
Five centuries ago, Spain waged a religious war in the guise of evangelization. The New World was finally conquered. Today, a democracy-clad crusade peddles war and misery. Alas, the wave of chaos that invaded Libya will overtake Syria soon.
One of the most tragic and clear signs of poverty, social injustice and neglect is maternal mortality. Maternal mortality can be defined as the death of a mother due to pregnancy, childbirth or puerperium (the period between childbirth and the return of the uterus to its normal size.)
The maternal mortality rate (MMR) in Mexico remains high, especially in rural and indigenous communities which are isolated and distant from healthcare centers.
Fortunately, we are seeing a steady decline. In 1990, 21 years ago, the maternal mortality rate was 90.4 per 100,000 births. In that year, the average number of annual births was two million and so the rate of 0.00094 percent translates into about 1,800 deaths.
A decade later, in 2000, the rate had fallen to 72.6 per 100,000 births or 1,450 annual deaths. In 2010, it had fallen again to 50 per 100,000 births, under 1,000 maternal deaths.
In the last 20 years Mexico has experienced a significant drop in its MMR, and the trend continues. According to the federal Health Secretariat, from January to June of 2010, 445 women died due to pregnancy or one of the other causes of maternal mortality. During that same period in 2011, only 415 women died from the same causes. And according to the Health Secretariat, Mexico could cut its current MMR in half by 2015.
According to experts in the field, four steps need to be taken to achieve that goal. The first is to increase the amount of family planning programs and reduce the amount of unwanted or unexpected pregnancies, especially for very young women or for women close to menopause.
The second step is to ensure that women give birth in professional and appropriate surroundings. Thirdly, it is necessary to ensure access to hospital care for all women in obstetric emergencies. And lastly, all women must have access to safe abortions.
The figures over the last 21 years suggest that this goal can be achieved. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, no woman will be a victim of maternal mortality.
An old friend was kind enough to e-mail me a text by Denise Dresser, a recognized scholar who now works for the media. The text is all over the net, which makes me think that a few readers find it encouraging or positive, yet I feel compelled to respond to it.
In the text, Ms. Dresser regrets that many people still believe (her included) that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will return to the Los Pinos presidential residence. She doesn’t seem to have an explanation as to why the population would vote for the red party, in spite of this political party’s history and the performance of its members.
Indeed, she thinks the PRI will take the presidential seat because, in her own words, the National Action Party (PAN), which I think is her favorite contender, does not have the tools to entice the people to vote for them. In the end, I can’t seem to make anything of her long article.
Is she trying to force us to accept the inevitable, which would be terrible for her, by the way? Or is she trying to force us not to vote? Is she telling us to vote for the PAN in 2012? In that case, she’d be setting a partisan agenda and trying to convince us to vote for a group of idiots, embezzlers, money absconders, thieves, biased members, money-launderers, drug lords, assassins, and baby-killers.
Let us never forget the 49 children that died at the ABC Daycare Center in Hermosillo, Sonora. I think she is also trying to convince us to vote for a party in which people are from the upper echelons of society. I’m talking about terrible people that traffic in human beings and engage in all sorts of illegal activities.
Would it be necessary to remind my readers of the bloodbaths orchestrated by the horrible people of the National Migration Institute (INM), when it was headed by the Cecilia Romero, one of the PAN’s underlings? Is she trying to force us to vote for a group of corrupt criminals with no shame? Will she vote for them? Probably.
Indeed, she is saying that the PRI should not go back to Los Pinos, but I ask you: Would she imply another method to stop the PRI’s return by doing the unthinkable during electoral times?
Is she psychologically preparing us to embrace an electoral boycott as an honorable means to stop the PRI in its tracks? Does she have a plan already? Let’s talk about an electoral fraud, like the one that gave Felipe Calderón the presidency. Sure, a patriotic, humanistic and well-intentioned electoral fraud.
Is Ms. Dresser preparing a wicked deed to boycott the 2012 election? Has she talked to the PAN’s big honchos, who are her friends? Is she planning a coup d’état? Is she lurking in the shadows waiting for time to pass to implement unconstitutional actions against the electoral process?
Perhaps she is. Everyone knows that once in office, the right-wing, in Mexico or elsewhere, will not leave after an election. Oh, and for the record, I’m slightly reminded of the election of 2006.
On May 19, 2011, I wrote an article denouncing the terrible misdeeds of Alejandro Orozco Rubio, the General Director of the National Institute for the Elderly (INAPAM). I remember writing that according to several official complaints and legal documents (bills, invoices, receipts and whatnot), Mr. Alejandro Orozco refused to pay Reparación y Servicios de Cómputo S.A. de C.V. (an Information Technology [IT] company) more than five million pesos for the rental of IT equipment and maintenance services.
The company has already turned to authorities to take care of the problem. The official complaint is now in the hands of a justice. However, the thing has gotten worse and worse for the company because not only does the INAPAM and its Director refuse to pay, but the man has denied returning the IT equipment to its rightful owner, which further damages the company economically. Of course, no INAPAM functionary or VIP had the nerve to rebut my claims, especially Mr. Orozco. Everything I wrote was nothing but the truth. It is always very gratifying to show my readers that the proof is, indeed, in the pudding.
I am looking at, as I write this article, a stenographic copy of the minutes that address a meeting among INAPAM honchos, who recognize what I wrote. I’m glad to share with you a few scoops of this private confession of sorts, that I now make public. It deals with the wicked ways of the people within the agency: Arturo Serrano Meneses, head of the Internal Control Department (OIC) said: “Something that deeply troubles the OIC is the fact that the INAPAM is still making use of this equipment, in spite of the fact that there is no lease contract that allows us to use it. The contract remained in effect until December 31 of 2010. However, we still use the equipment and we have no legal basis to prove that we can still use it.”
The previous statement is proof that the INAPAM is using equipment illegally. I believe the legal term for that is larceny.
I would very much appreciate if the Secretary of Civil Service, the head of the Attorney General’s Office, and the President himself asked for a copy of the meeting’s minutes. That way, they could read about the illegal actions of a team of public servants and the head of the INAPAM, Alejandro Orozco, who has acted with impunity and is probably in cahoots with politicians, among them Felipe Calderón, and religious leaders. But we already knew that, right?
The information we know about the health of Venezuela’s president and his suffering some type of cancer has caused concern and sorrow among millions and millions of his followers and sympathizers in the country and around the world. The news is, without question, a heavy blow to the advancements and achievements of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution carried out by the Chavez administration.
The people’s fear resides in seeing their president dead, which would definitely be detrimental to progress and development in Venezuela. The demise of a man of Chavez’s stature would severely damage the social, political, economic and cultural changes brought about by him. In this hypothetical and undesirable situation, a struggle between factions in Venezuela would soon follow. We already know that a situation like that would be an excellent opportunity for the right-wing power in the United States to do away with the president’s accomplishments.
We don’t really know the severity of his disease or how far the cancer has advanced. When it comes to an illness like cancer, it can take a person from this world pretty quickly. Once again, if this were the terrible case, Chavez would have little time to plan and orchestrate a constitutional succession spearheaded by a revolutionary like himself.
However, things don’t look too grim yet. We all know that all kinds of cancers are curable or at least treatable. Perhaps, the only cancers that are not treatable or curable are those located in the stomach, liver or pancreas, because they are very hard to locate and present no symptoms. They can cause metastasis without being noticed.
Other cancers can be treated through radiology, or chemical or surgical procedures that give patients a very good prognosis. As far as anyone knows, and due to the skimpy information we’ve been given, – which sounds logical because we’re talking about a president and a man that has been attacked by American imperialism and Venezuela’s right-wing powers – I believe that Chavez is not suffering from either stomach, liver or pancreatic cancer. That means that he will live long enough to carry on with his revolution. Nevertheless, an extended period of life doesn’t mean that he will achieve much in his present condition.
The productive sector in Venezuela has yet to become part of the social, national, state and collective legacy of his government. Capitalistic and private companies still own the production sectors in the country and plot on a daily basis to topple Chavez and do away with his revolution.
Recent history has taught us that the appropriation of industries does not constitute a type of socialism, but without this particular factor, socialism seems very distant and unattainable.
Appropriation of the productive sector guarantees resources for the creation of economic development methods. It would provide the masses with education, health, income and a decent life. With Chavez or not, and wishing that he outlives this ordeal, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela faces and will face hardships from the inside and from the outside. The future of the revolution is indeed uncertain.
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, 95, died on July 8 of this year in Mexico City. He was an authority on Marxism in the Spanish language. Born in Spain, and sympathetic to the Second Spanish Republic, he experienced first-hand the mishaps and difficulties of life in exile. Luckily, he was warmly welcomed in Mexico where he spent seven decades sharing his wisdom with our country.
Sánchez Vázquez was one of the thousand of people who believed in the Spanish Republic and who cultivated his knowledge nonstop in the arts, science, law, administration and teaching. And although most universities in Mexico have been imbued with the ideals of the Spanish Republic, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) saw the most prolific intervention by Spanish republicans.
After completing some studies in the Complutense University of Madrid, where he majored in art, he became a consummate artist in Mexico after dedicating his life to the study of aesthetics.
A poet, essay writer, professor, pundit and philosopher, Sánchez Vázquez left us a legacy of philosophy and aesthetics in written form: “The Aesthetic Ideas of Marxism,” “The Philosophy of Praxis,” “Aesthetics, Ethics and Marxism,” “From Scientific Socialism to Utopian Socialism,” “Invitation to Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics” and so many other books about philosophy, poetry, autobiographies, as well as plenty of essays.
Holding a PHD in Philosopy from UNAM, modest, amicable and not prone to self-promotion, Sánchez’s vast work made him worthy of an honorary degree from Mexican universities in Puebla, Nuevo León, Guadalajara and Cádiz, Spain. He was awarded several degrees, medals and honors at universities throughout Spain, Mexico and Latin America.
He was one of the most important figures of contemporary philosophy. In 1990, he was invited by essay writer and poet Octavio Paz to be part of a conference of intellectuals that received a lot of media attention. The aim of the conference was to analyze the disappearance of the Soviet Union and socialism in Eastern Europe. The name of the conference was: The 20th Century. The Experience of Freedom,” and the then-usurper of the presidential seat in Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, could not miss the opportunity to sate his ungodly appetite for attention by “blessing” the event.
The meeting saw the presence of highly recognized right-wing intellectuals, including Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa. They all celebrated and feasted upon the fall of the socialist empire.
However, when Sánchez Vázquez took the floor, he talked about the graces of Marxism, which evidently annoyed and bothered the other attendees. In his own wise, wonderful words, he said that as long as the horror of capitalism insists on existing, there will always be people that will support socialism. Indeed, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez uttered the following immortal words, spiting Octavio Paz: “Capitalism is a horrible reality that cannot be beautified even if you hire poets to do so.”
Afew hours ago I read the following: “According to a study released by the United Nations, the number of natural disasters has experienced a fivefold increase every year since the 1970’s.” This is definitely terrifying, but, is it true? After that, I read the following: “A glacier in Greenland has lost 300 trillion tons of ice in the past decade.”
The two facts, of course, are probably the cause of climate change provoked by human activity, meaning, by human economic activity. This accounts for agriculture and industry in general. However, the people who released this information failed to quote their sources or add more reliable facts.
Sure, in 1970 there were only five hurricanes. For all I know, there were 25 in 2010. And if in 1970 there were ten droughts, forty years later there were 50? And if there were 80 horrible floods in 1970, there were 400 in 2010?
Can you actually fathom the sheer amount of water that 300 trillion tons of lost ice between 2000 and 2011 in an iceberg represents? Is this true or did this information come from a tabloid? Does this amount of water mean having more catastrophic floods? And at any rate, does catastrophic mean greater intensity and greater damages?
Anyway, I don’t feel like the floods of the past few years and those of the past decades vary in intensity or severity.
Is this climate change matter a thing of scientific study, or is it just inflammatory propaganda? I say this because the group of UN experts that was created to study climate change, a.k.a. global warming, noted that a solution to this problem would be to make use of atomic energy. More nuclear plants around the world mean fatter wallets for all the people involved in the industry. It could also mean another Chernobyl or Fukushima.
There are also economic ulterior motives when pundits and experts say that global warming is not a real problem. Oh, and by the way, these experts work for big corporative conglomerates in the oiling business.
To be honest, I don’t buy the global warming deal. I think everything is just a load of poppycock, hearsay, and nonsensical moonshine to keep us permanently frightened. And let’s say it ends up being true and the planet is really going through an increase in temperature. Well, as I’ve said before, it’s not like we can’t deal with the problem, right? Modern science and technology, wonderful feats of human talent, possess an immense gamut of solutions. For the time being, we should conclude that there is no scientific consensus regarding so-called global warming. So I say, let us all be nonbelievers for now.
In the past few days, the Mexican press has mentioned several times an article published in The New York Times. The article is a study by Princeton University, in which the author writes that the interest of Mexicans in going to the United States looking for work is decreasing. According to the New York journal, the results of the study have been endorsed by the last census conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center. The census states that in 2010, less than 100,000 illegal Mexicans entered the US, which is substantially lower than the almost 525,000 that entered the country on a yearly basis from 2000 to 2004.
The study, entitled Mexican Migration Project, notes that the causes of this new demographic behavior by the Mexican population has two origins. First of all, the United States’ prolonged economic recession has deterred Mexicans from entering our neighbor to the north because the job offering in the US has decreased. Second, the increasing difficulties in crossing the border and the renewed strength of anti-immigration laws, as well as the criminal implications of traveling to the US, which mostly began during the presidential administration of Felipe Calderón, have convinced immigrants not to leave Mexico. We can also mention the xenophobia and anti-Mexican sentiments of Americans towards our fellow countrymen.
However, this is not new information. We already knew all that, but what we didn’t know is that Mexicans do not feel very enticed to cross the northern border. For instance, birth rates have a say as well. Fifty years ago (and possibly before), Mexican women would have at least eight children as a rule. At the beginning of this century, the number fell to two children. Without question, a large brood would convince anyone that moving would be a better option. The Princeton study points out that social progress in Mexico in the past six decades has influenced the decreasing number of illegal Mexicans in the United States.
We Mexicans often claim that things are worse than ever and turn to catastrophic hearsay instead of listening to the facts. We find it hard to recognize that there’s progress in the nation, but sometimes we are forced to do so because there are hard facts that support that.
For instance, life expectancy in Mexico is 77.2 years, while child mortality rates have fallen drastically. There are no “poverty diseases” in Mexico anymore, and most people have access to food, plus our society is consuming more and more in general. I should include education, as education rates in Mexico have increased, as well.
Although I’m an old, beaten dog, I must admit that whenever I come across a study about Mexico by foreign institutions or organizations, I tend to be skeptical and critical, especially if they come from the US. But sometimes you have to give in and recognize the results, and to be honest, this is one of those times.
It isn’t easy for the average citizen to fully understand the concept of climate change. Climate change, experts say, is constantly and steadily increasing the average temperature of the planet. To address climate change, the United Nations (UN) established a body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 1988, after the group’s first meeting, it concluded that if the world continues its rate of greenhouse gas emissions it would increase the world temperature 0.3°C per decade over the next century – a higher increase than in the last 10,000 years. Three-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade implies that the average world temperature would rise 3°C per century.
Stopping the rise of global temperature is not hopeless. According to the UN, the world should reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five percent over the next few years. And to do this, there are two different options.
The first one would be to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in production – i.e. produce as much as we do now – or more – but with less emissions. The second would be to reduce consumption.
The first route is scientifically and technologically possible, while the second would not be so easy from an economic standpoint as dozens of countries around the world are committed to increasing production. China – for example – already has several years of pronounced growth under its belt and will likely continue to grow.
If we turn our gaze towards Cuba, we see that the biggest problem of the island is slow economic and population growth, but no one is deprived of food, health, clothing, education, security and peace.
But, it is clear that within the framework of a capitalist economy it is impossible to reduce consumption. So that leaves us with only one route: produce more while emitting less greenhouse gas. Saving energy is key to producing more efficiently; There have already been significant advances in replacing fossil fuels.
There is, however, one thing that the IPCC cannot agree on: whether or not nuclear energy is a viable route to stopping climate change.
Nuclear energy would be a worse remedy than the disease.
It is no secret that, in spite of its very poetic name, the The Christian Democrat Organization of America (ODCA) is an organization that is comprised of right-wing parties of the American continent. The ODCA is currently presided over by a very famous National Action Party member: Senator Jorge Ocejo.
Please correct me if I’m wrong or lying, but because the ODCA doesn’t really have offices for its president, Ocejo misuses his office in the Mexican Chamber of Senators to further his presidential needs for the organization, which constitutes fraudulent behavior.
This treasonous conduct is nothing compared to many other deeds by this man. It turns out that the former businessman is a straw-man for the activities of the ODCA, which as I said before is comprised of political parties, including the CIA-funded Cuban Democratic Directory (DDC). This means that the OCDA’s presidency endorses an organization that is not a political party, but rather a CIA-created façade; a secondhand group for dirty work. In more pedestrian terms, the DDC carries out illegal activities in the United States and Latin America, specifically in Mexico City, the ODCA’s official host country.
There’s more: Orlando Gutiérrez, the DDC’s strongman, and Calixto Navarro, yet another VIP of the CIA’s subsidiary, have created a very close bond with two prominent PAN lawmakers: Adriana González and Rodrigo Iván Cortés. The two legislators’ mission in Congress is to drive a wedge between and strain the bilateral Cuban/Mexican relationship. They actually promote initiatives against Cuba, and all of this, of course, is overseen by the CIA, which is in reality the US government.
The proof is in the pudding. On May 6 and 7 of 2011, the ODCA hosted a congress in Panama. One of the several points discussed during the event was the analysis of actions against Cuba. Orlando Gutiérrez, the DDC’s chief, and Senator Ocejo were in attendance.
During the congress, there was an in camera meeting of the DDC’s and ODCA’s “suits,” in which a functionary of the American embassy in Panama participated. During the meeting, the two organizations resolved that it is extremely important to prioritize the publication of propaganda against Cuba and even enticing violence in the island nation. They want to encourage turmoil and discontent within the population to coax the Cuban authorities to take action and then launch yet another wave of hate against the country.
Having Costa Rican, Mexican and Panamanian authorities hosting a hate-mongering event and organizing illegal activities against Cuba under the auspices of the US government is proof of the White House’s persistence in sticking its nose into the inner workings of third world countries and in toppling the Cuban government. They use local organizations and right-wing groups, like the ODCA and its immoral, abusing, trickster of a current leader, Jorge Ocejo, to further their ill-conceived ideals.
According to figures released by the 2010 Population Census, only half of Mexican women get married with the involvement of some sort of religion. The rest do so through civil procedure, while a few others tend to go for common law partnerships.
Out of these three types of “wedlocks,” a great deal of the population ends up splitting up. If the marriage is legal, the separation does not usually go through legal channels. Let’s just say that a lot of couples decide to end the relationship and stop seeing each other. In other words, when people stop living together, the legal marriage ends.
In common law partnerships, the situation is more or less the same. A lot of couples simply separate.
Learning the official number of legal divorces in the country is an easy matter. You just have to go the Civil Registry and that’ll suffice. However, learning the official number of separations in common law partnerships is not that easy. It’s a daunting task, for there are no official figures.
In order to know more about these numbers, economists and demographics experts must make use of available polling or survey resources to find an answer. And through these tools, we’ve learned that the number of divorces is larger than the number of common-law-partnership break-ups.
Let’s look at the numbers registered by the Civil Registry in the past three decades, that is, from 1980 to 2008. In 1980, the divorce rate was 4.4 percent for every 100 marriages. A decade later, in 1990, that number went up to 7.4 percent. Five years later, the number rose even more, to 11.8 percent for every 100 marriages. In 2008, the figure hiked to almost 14 percent: 13.9.
Although I don’t have the numbers for 2009 and 2010, I can tell you that the numbers went up once again; maybe one or two percent. That would mean that divorce rates in Mexico are close to 16 to 18 percent this year. Let us put it in a more graphic way: in 20th-century Mexico, one out of every five legal marriages ends up in legal divorce.
In the case of de facto divorces, that is people separating but never going through the bother of making the divorce official, things are quite interesting. According to several polls, 86 percent of separations happen in this fashion: Couples split, and that’s it, no paperwork. Only 14 percent of divorces go through the whole legal process.
This means that the great majority of marriages end in a de facto divorce. This also means that the number of divorces in Mexico is extremely large.
An explanation of this phenomenon is in the fact that de facto divorces can happen so easily. This is why, especially with the youths of the country, marriage is starting to wane and being overtaken by common law partnerships, which in turn, makes it easier for couples to just split up.
If things go on like this, the future will see less legal matrimonies, more common law partnerships and a larger number of de facto and official divorces. As for religious unions, the numbers are even flimsier. This practice is doomed to disappear for good.
This is the social, demographic, legal, cultural, familial and individual reality of Mexico. And whether we like it or not, we’ll have to get used to it.
Over the past six decades life expectancy has increased in Mexican society in general. The same has happened with the indigenous population. However, this is not unique to Mexico; all over the world, people just live longer. In the second half of the 21st Century, the average life expectancy in Mexico is 77 years, while in the indigenous population, it’s 69.
We’re talking about a huge difference: 8 years. It is a high number. One would expect a higher increase in these numbers, and they probably will go on, higher, and higher.
The same thing happened to child mortality rates. These have decreased over the decades. In 1990, 21 years ago, out of every 1000 births, 39 children would die. But by the beginning of the millennia, the number went down to 22. In 2011, the number is even smaller: 14 children die out of every 1000 births. This means that child mortality rates in indigenous populations has decreased dramatically.
However, these numbers are related to the decrease in births. Every year, we see less children in the streets. Low numbers in birth, mean less people on earth. In the following years, we’ll see less children, indigenous or otherwise, around us.
Indigenous migration accounts for yet another decreasing factor in its dwindling population. The number of indigenous people that decide to move to places like Mexico City or to the United States is going up. Again, people moving and less children mean less people, especially regarding the indigenous population.
It seems inevitable to think that, little by little, but on a non-stop path, indigenous society will become stagnant. It will not be a sudden, unexpected change, especially if indigenous women tend to have, on average, two children. The average number states that one indigenous woman will have 3.7 children, while one non-indigenous woman will have 1.7. Time will tell. These numbers will go down.
The most important factor here is migration. During the 90’s and the early stages of the 21st Century, we saw a steady increase in the number of indigenous people migrating. The numbers are still rising, and they will continue to go up for a long time.
It’s ironic, but the yearn for integration of indigenous people into Mexican-mestizo society is not the result of non-segregation policies implemented by the government, but rather that of a migration phenomenon.
The first approach to understanding the problem of Mexico’s indigenous population is quantitive. Indigenous Mexicans, while having formed the largest body of people on this land for centuries, number around 13 million today. Compared with 16th century statistics, the Mexican indigenous population is down 11 percent.
But to view just the numbers is a little bit misleading. A century ago, at the onset of the Mexican Revolution, indigenous peoples made up half of the Mexican population – something like 7 million. Therefore, over the last century the indigenous population has doubled. But, in the same period, the total population of Mexico has increased sevenfold. The undeniable increase of the indigenous population is very small and reenforces the idea that their numbers are declining.
Today, the indigenous population tends not to migrate much. In the mid-20th century, indigenous peoples migrated from rural areas to cities, and, in the 1990s, to the United States.
Migration has a significant impact on their way of life: they say goodbye to their economic, social and demographic surroundings. And, while indigenous migration first occurred to cities, the populations of these cities eventually produced a larger and more heterogeneous society. Some authors and specialists say that between 35 and 50 percent of all indigenous people already live in cities.
Two factors will play a huge part in the future of the indigenous peoples: demographics and language.
Being away from their home land and subjected to western lifestyles spells out the end of their culture. And, while being submersed in a community which speaks a different language, parents will gradually cease to transmit their native language to their offspring. If we calculate the indigenous population in terms of languages, then the number 13 million indigenous Mexicans drops to about 8 million.
Away from farming and their native lands, the indigenous of Mexico represent a growing workforce in industry, and above all else, in the service sector. Overall, this constant and growing alienation from their communities, and even their country, seems to be the deciding factor in the slow but inexorable decline of Mexico’s indigenous population.
Back at the time of the 2006 presidential campaign, National Action Party presidential candidate at the time, Felipe Calderón, had a very close relationship with Alejandro Lucas Orozco Rubio and Rosa María de la Garza, a very religious married couple.
These two people are the ones that “manage” a civil association called “Casa sobre la Roca” (House on a Cliff). It is an organization that, in spite of claiming not to have ties with any religion, reeks of Protestant evangelicalism.
Mr. Calderón and his underhanded, sly deals with the Evangelic Church drove him into appointing Alejandro Orozco as director of the National Institute for the Elderly (Inapam) and named Rosa María de la Garza federal deputy for the PAN. These are people with no political experience whatsoever and whose only exploits are sucking money out of people’s pockets through their so-called religion.
In the the case of Alejandro Orozco, his zeal for shifty business has led him into taking advantage of his position in the Inapam. According to several formal complaints and some legal documents that I see as I write this (invoices, receipts, and other legal stuff), Mr. Alejandro Orozco refuses to pay an Information Technology company the amount of five million pesos for the rental of some computing equipment. Mr. Orozco refuses to relinquish the equipment he leased, which has economically affected the leasing company.
Beyond the legal implications of this mess and the damage the company has suffered, one must regret the fact that the Inapam has been discredited. This is the price we pay whenever an important political figure decides to put some random Joe in an important position.
And I ask myself, is the head of the Civil Service Secretariat (SFP), Salvador Vega Casillas, aware of Mr. Alejandro’s ungodly deeds? Does Heriberto Félix Guerra, head of the Social Development Secretariat (Sedesol), know anything about this mess?
These acts of corruption not only discredit the Inapam, but the President as well. They are also detrimental to the SFP and the Sedesol, in such a way that the two secretariats will always be remembered as dishonored institutions.
Whatever happens, one thing is for sure; the Inapam is a wonderful treasure trove prone to be used as a means to abscond with as much money as possible.
According to studies, poverty is most common among those who grow up in homes without running water, sewage services or a septic tank. There are also high levels of poverty amongst those grow up in a household without a stable income. Similarly, people and families without access to education, electricity, health care, and social security commonly suffer from poverty.
According to the same studies, the lack or insufficiency of one or more of those elements indicates poverty. Therefore, poverty is not dependent so much on the work of the family, but instead, the government. This is because indoor plumbing, access to sewage services and electricity are all results of large public investment. And, although they can be bought privately, it is clear that health care and education are not available to poor families. So, putting talk and demagoguery aside, the key to fighting poverty is greater public investment.
In Mexico City, the vast majority of people have all the things mentioned above but health care and education. But Mexico City is far from being an exception.
Many decades ago, Mexico stopped being a rural country. During the last 60 years, “intermediate cities” have grown throughout the country and hold roughly 1 million residents. But many, perhaps hundreds, never reach the 1-million mark and are classified as medium-sized cities.
In the suburbs of these medium-sized cities up to a million people find or construct homes which dominate and stain the landscape. The largest cities or mega-cities, like Mexico City, are surrounded by such suburbs whose populations can easily reach several million.
The growth of cities and the decline of rural areas is accompanied by the rise of the middle class.
The urban middle class, with sometimes very different income levels but homogenous patterns of consumption such as water, electricity, sewage, food, health care, social security, education, clothing and entertainment, practices what economists call consumerism.
The middle class clearly understands its position on the social scale: to be or to feel middle class is satisfactory. It’s possible that 70 to 80 million Mexicans could be considered middle class, and, curiously, that is the same number as Mexico’s urban population.
After the incident at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, the mighty industry that builds atomic reactors for the production of electric energy lost all its credibility. The world suddenly came to the realization that using nuclear energy was dangerous.
Although this horrible incident made it hard for the nuclear energy industry to spread, its efforts to disseminate its reach were not entirely stopped. Little by little, we saw that the sector grew stronger and stronger. True, it wouldn’t be easy for the people involved in such an industry to give up their investment and their opportunity to make astronomical fortunes from one of the best ways to make money in the world.
Manufacturers, functionaries and third parties involved surmised that Chernobyl’s tragedy would eventually be forgotten. To them, the whole thing was just a matter of business.
However, after several unfortunate nuclear events in Japan, including the last one, manufacturers, functionaries and third parties involved had to resort to deceit. They claim that nuclear facilities all over the world are safe and impenetrable.
I have unfortunately seen that professionals, experts, researchers and pundits, most of them from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), are joining the ranks of the nuclear-industry deceit. Mario Molina, a famous Nobel-Prize-laureate chemist, could not miss the opportunity to teach us plain, simple mortals about unattainable, cosmic knowledge on nuclear information.
These people claim that Chernobyl cannot happen again. The say that because no one has died in the Fukushima incident and due to the new technologies to dispose of nuclear waste, and because of the very low levels of radioactive contamination emitted by the plant, and other unexplainable affairs, nothing is going to happen.
All these opinionators, so prone to provide conjecture on any subject, especially researchers from the UNAM, with their fancy academic gowns and mortarboards, claim to know each and every truth in the universe. However, they tell us the same thing we already know: the nuclear sector is a business. They flaunt their PHD’s in front of us, but end up being vulgar publicists for the industry.
Yes, helping the nuclear sector is good for them because they get their cut out of the deal. If you sell the product, you’ll get your share of the feast. And that share includes not only money, but honors, publications, trips and all manner of favors. Selling your soul to the nuclear industry is way more profitable than selling it to others. The automobile, technology, cosmetics, and lingerie industries will never be as lucrative as joining the nuclear lobby.
There is not much we can do, but the worst part is that our hard-earned tax money pays for the farfetched sponsorship of these laureate opinionators
Both Mexican and international sources tell us of something that has been happening over the past 50 years regarding food production: there is more food. If we analyze the past decade, we see the same: there is more food in the world. If we analyze the past five years, it yields the same result: we eat more. True, we can also say that human population has increased over the same periods of time, but food production has increased even more.
In the 1950’s, the growth in the number of people on the planet has been exponential: It is now triple that. However, food production has multiplied by 12, which means that there is four times as much food and only 3 times as many individuals on the planet.
So great is the amount of food that is produced in a daily basis, that farmers and producers in general can use their time to do something else. Among those activities we see the production of biofuel, also known as agrofuel. A few weeks ago, the press released information about the first flight of a Mexican plane that runs solely on biofuel. It’s still the talk of the town. Regardless, biofuel, which is a cheap, durable, clean and sustainable source of energy, has been in the picture for several decades.
The raw materials from which this type of fuel is obtained have typically been maize and sugarcane, but there are other materials that can be used as well, including the ever-growing forest biomass.
A department of Europa Press tells us about the long process the Old World has endured in recuperating its forest biomass, especially Spain. “Spanish forests have doubled over the past 100 years,” said the Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Enrique Rojas. “On the occasion of the International Year of Forests, 2011, the FAO reported that the amount of forest in Spain has increased by 1.7 million hectares in the past ten years,” he said.
The specialist also said that several policies that the Spanish government and the European Union have implemented have helped in renewing these forests. He noted that the world might make use of a new type raw material to produce biofuel: the immense forest biomass.
It’s important to point out that this has nothing to do with the primitive use of wood as fuel. No, this has to do with a complex process that gives excellent results because biofuel does not produce any kind of damaging or polluting gases. Maize and sugarcane opened a new path for this scientific and technological revolution, so it seems logical to think that the world’s forest biomass is next.
As the saying goes: “Every cloud has a silver lining.” This aphorism suits the case of the acquittal of the abominable terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, by a court in El Paso, Texas. The acquittal of the infamous criminal has a positive side because it proves that the judicial system of the United States is ruled by corruption and orders from the State. Judges are manipulated, blackmailed and threatened by those in charge. Judges have to chose whether to give in or face the consequences.
The migration charges, the evidence and testimonies against Posada Carriles were so obvious that it was impossible to find him innocent. But, once again, we saw that justice in the United States can be bought, sold, rented, bent, outwitted and subjugated. What is notorious is that this time the purchasing, twisting and manipulation of the law was evident to everyone.
Another clear example of this situation is the illegal and unfair incarceration of the five Cubans, who 12 years ago infiltrated terrorist organizations in Florida in order to gather information and prevent attacks against Cuba.
The trial and acquittal of Posada Carriles was a farce. The trial, incarceration and conviction of the five anti-terrorist Cubans was no different. The U.S. law and court system is at the service of political and economic powers.
Laws, courts, police officers and prisons are tools that serve to subordinate and destroy political and ideological enemies. They also are mechanisms that produce despicable and unlawful politics that damages people, institutions and society. In these particular cases, the aberrant U.S. politics damage the relatives of Posada Carriles’ victims, the Cuban population and the efforts toward a peaceful relationship between Cuba and the United States. But this type of politics also damages, first and foremost, U.S. citizens.
The people are the first victims of a corrupted, elitist and racist judicial system. The plain acts of injustice in favor of a self-confessed terrorist and against Cuban anti-terrorists are the most recent proof of how corrupt the U.S. judicial system is.
This degraded system is fed every day by thousands of people who are incarcerated or executed without having committed any offenses. It is known that most of them are from the black, latino, native and asian communities. This twisted system is also known for releasing people who are powerful, influential, rich and, as is the case of Posada Carriles, accomplices to crimes committed by the elite.
That elite was once represented by a Texan and now by a Hawaiian. They bring out the big guns to defend and protect their own. Today, Obama can say about Posada Carriles what John Foster Dulles once said about Anastasio Somoza: “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.”
According to an international press report, the world is experiencing an increase in food prices but, interestingly enough, the phenomenon is primarily happening with cereals.
There are three arguments that attempt to explain how cereal prices can rise in the midst of an abundant food supply and continual growth.
1. China is consuming more cereals and is driving up prices. This is a fallacy. China is self-sufficient and supplies its own cereals.
2. More corn is being consumed to make biofuels than previously. Two years ago Mexicana Airlines made its first flight with biofuels. The use of biofuels is not new and prompts the question: What do biofuels have to do with the sudden increase in cereal prices?
Corn and sugar are used to make biofuels because of the enormous abundance of these products and their low prices. Two years ago, Cuba decided to scrap its sugar industry because the price of sugar was, as Fidel put it, “junk.”
Most biofuel is made with corn or sugar because there are bountiful reserves of those products. If the demand for corn rose significantly, biofuel producers would look elsewhere. Ruling out China’s high demand and biofuels, we come to the last explanation.
3. Speculation. By financially hiding and hoarding cereals, investors are waiting for prices to jump to put cereals back on the market. Even though the product is there, we can’t get to it.
The Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Veracruz produces only 3.6 percent of the total electricity that Mexico consumes. But that small production entails an infinite risk to the safety, health, life and the descendants of millions of people if a failure occurs due to an accident, a human error, a natural phenomenon, or the neglect of individuals involved in the operation of the plant.
The explosion and fire at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan is the most recent nuclear tragedy in the world. But it has not been the only atomic accident in Japan. The industrial country has suffered, before Fukushima, from four nuclear accidents of different proportions: Tsuruga in 1981, Tokaimura in 1997 and 1999, and Mihana in 2004.
If we go over the list of nuclear accidents in the world, it would illustrate the inherent risks of nuclear power plants: Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, Erwin in Tennessee also in 1979, Tricastin in the south of France in 2008 and now Fukushima.
Canada, the United Kingdom, Western Germany, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, Brazil, Eastern Germany and Spain have also suffered from nuclear accidents
The same claims of the supposed security of nuclear power plants have been heard in the countries that have experienced these disasters. Those claims are now heard in Mexico regarding Laguna Verde.
President Hugo Chávez agreed on the immediate cancellation of the nuclear power program in Venezuela. Chávez’s wise decision represents a powerful blow to the mighty interests of international companies, particularly U.S. companies, which prosper with the huge subsidies from national governments.
At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy in Mexico was 27 years. By the mid-20th Century it jumped to 50, and today it sits around 75. Over the last hundred years Mexico has managed to triple its average life span.
Increased life expectancy is not just a Mexican phenomenon but a worldwide one. There have undoubtedly been major scientific advances in hygiene and medicine. All of this is well known, but what is less well known is that agriculture production has increased along with it.
Through the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), human society is embarking on a new era in agriculture production. Both Mexican and international statistics clearly show that there has been a sustained increase in food production over the last fifty years. It is equally true that the human population has increased but not at the same rate as food production. From 1950 until now, the human population has tripled, but food production has multiplied by 12.
How can we speak of a “food crisis” then? This expression, to be kind, is a huge exaggeration. But what is true is that the price of food has increased, the most recent example being tortilla prices.
It’s easy to understand, if production drops, prices rise. Consequently, if supply increases, prices should drop. But as we have seen, things aren’t turning out that way: Both food production and food prices have risen, especially in the case of cereals.
There can only be one explanation: speculation – not food scarcity.
The U.S. State Department has stated several times that the world needs to send military forces to Libya in order to topple Muamar Gadafi’s government. “Time is of the essence, we must act swiftly,” pronounced the government agency. French President Sarkozy and the English Prime Minister Cameron agree with the United States. Sarkozy even received an “opposition ambassador” from Libya, and Cameron noted that Libya must do away with the dictator.
Now I ask you: How many of you find it a bit suspect that three countries with a long history of bloodthirsty colonialism insist on overthrowing Gadafi? Since when do these all-too-known overlords support revolutionary movements? The only thing that has characterized the three nations is the active stance they’ve taken in several wars against revolutionary movements. Their urgency to intervene reveals their fear of seeing imperialism fall. Gadafi is not willing to give away Libya’s oil wealth, which the three vultures, in the guise of lambs, seek so eagerly.
However, the moderate left should also be worried. That colonialist left, that boasts the ideals of Trotsky, has agreed with the imperialists. This left has several times censured Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega, because they oppose military intervention in Libya.
The moderate left demands that the four Latin-American leaders join the imperialistic libel campaign against Gadafi. The moderate left demands that they break off any kind of contact or relationship with Libya in order to join the common cause, the aim of which is to colonize Libya once again. Fortunately, they will ignore these demands, which is good.
In the past few days, the media has informed us that three of the most important actors in the so-called Cuban dissent were actually agents working for the government. These three people had managed to infiltrate the ranks of groups opposing the government, so they knew first-hand everything related to the political and financial operations of the United States Interest Section in Havana, Cuba, including secret information from the US government and other anti-Cuban organizations headquartered in Florida.
The intelligence job done by the three inside men was documented in the Democratic Cuban Directory (DDC), a CIA-funded organization, the aim of which is to start media campaigns against Cuba, and manipulate opposition groups in the island nation.
This is proof of the bonds between the government of the United States and these apparent Cuban dissidents. The problem has escalated, creating a destabilizing campaign against the Cuban government.
The work done by the three agents, Emilio, Vladimir and Raúl has proven that this “dissent” of sorts is in thrall to greater powers. It is a business for organizations in Miami and serves the interests of the US government in the Cuban capital city.
Their work shows that opposition in Cuba has fallen flat on its face. The US government has spent thousand and thousands of dollars in creating opposing forces on the island. It’s all squandering and embezzling of money, paid by US citizens, that could’ve been used to serve better purposes.
It’s appalling to see that Cuban and US authorities have made a living of fooling people. They built themselves an opposition that exists, but in reality, it doesn’t.
Regarding Muammar Gaddafi, the moderate left is repeating the same arguments and reasons that it used with Saddam Hussein, which led to the military invasion of Iraq by U.S. troops and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An armed intervention that, according to the most conservative estimates, has killed at least one million people, and millions have been injured or mutilated, while others are widows, orphans and defenseless. Ten years later, Iraq has never seen the democracy that was supposed to arrive with the missiles and tanks of the United States and its allies.
The fact that the Mexican right wing and the world right and extreme right are acting regarding Libya the same way they did with Iraq, under the hypocritical excuse of “toppling dictator Hussein,” is absolutely understandable. But the fact that the moderate left, Mexican and global, has now decided to smooth the way for the invasion of Lybia is simply incomprehensible and monstrous.
It’s even more monstrous and incomprehensible after the results of the invasion of Iraq. Can it be that this moderate left thought that the goal of the U.S. in Mesopotamia was to establish a western-style democracy? As readers or experts of Karl Marx’s ideology, did they not understand that, under the rhetoric of democracy and human rights, there was an economic factor, which in this case was to obtain Iraq’s immense oil wealth through the use of force?
Against Hussein, the moderate left used all the arsenal of media disinformation, whose core was the big lie of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. And if the moderate left believed this obvious lie back then, it knows today that everything was false after the confession of the lie’s author.
Isn’t the moderate left capable of learning from its own mistake, made a decade ago? Lost in its democratic fantasies, can’t it see that we are facing, once more, a mise-en-scène that will end in the invasion of Libya and the grabbing of its oil wealth by the U.S. and the NATO?
Just as it did in the case of Iraq, the moderate left repeats, perhaps to calm down its conscience, that it is in favor of toppling the “outrageous Libyan leader” and in favor of a democratic regime. However, it opposes, rhetorically of course, any kind of foreign military intervention.
The demonization of the leader is the first step to military invasion. Nonetheless, it is shocking that the moderate left is an accomplice of the crude warlike maneuvers of imperialism.
Despite the revolutionary phraseology in Tunisia and Egypt, what is true is that Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak have been toppled. They were ancient and loyal North African sepoys of the United States. They both fell without resistance. Their yankee master ordered them out and they, resignedly, obeyed the imperial command.
But beyond the fall of the ancient sepoys, a change of regime in Tunisia and Egypt has not been seen yet. These states are retaining their entire systems. In Egypt, the power is now in the hands of the military, who were the main support of the now-shunned Mubarak for decades.
The quick acceptance of the Washington command made U.S. military intervention unnecessary. It was just about what happened with Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. They understood the message, and their meekness facilitated the preservation of oligarchic power and control by Washington.
In Panama, things were a little bit different. General Noriega did not obey the imperial command and, after the failed attempts of the United States to topple him or kill him, an armed U.S. military invasion was necessary, which began by bombing the popular neighborhood of El Chorrillo. It killed nearly 4,000 Panamanians in one night.
We already watched in Iran the movie we are watching now in Tunisia and Egypt: a very-well orchestrated campaign against the regime, financed with U.S. dollars. But the yankee effort did not pay off. This is why Washington continues preparing to bomb Iran and, if conditions are right, to invade it with military forces.
The yankee strategy is very well known. It promotes, supports and funds dissident and opposing groups and creates, if possible, an apparent democratic and revolutionary movement that benefits the United States. If the leader and its government fall, it’s a change that makes it all remain the same. But if the leader resists, and is supported by sufficient social forces, Washington begins preparing to bomb cities –remember Belgrade – or to invade them. And, if it’s possible, under the blessing and protection of the UN, to make it seem completely legal.
In Libya, up to the present, the movie has had an uncertain ending. If Gaddafi caves in, we will see the same plot as in Egypt and Tunisia. But if he manages to resist the yankee offensive, Washington will not have an excuse for a military intervention. But if local forces cause a civil war, Washington will have the perfect excuse for the longed-for invasion to end Gaddafi’s regime.
In any scenario, the situation is very clear. If Washington blesses the so-called democratic revolutions in the north of Africa, it means that they are neither democratic nor revolutions. We are, more likely, seeing coups, financed and guided by the U.S.
Will it be necessary to recall that, while the United States swore loyalty and provided weapons and money to Hosni Mubarak, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) organized, supported, financed and guided opposing groups to topple him?
The meddling of the United States in the alleged revolutions in northern Africa is evident. What we don’t know is, if the subversive meddling, which has only been propagandist and financial, will turn into an invasion of Libya.
It is one of the thousands and thousands of secret US government documents that Wikileaks released to the press. The document deals with issues that concern only Mexico. It is a diplomatic cable issued by the US Embassy in Mexico City, dated March 28, 2008. It reads: The allegations against Lucía Morett and several Mexican students killed on March 1, 2008 by the Colombian Armed Forces in Sucumbios, Ecuador have no legal basis. They had no relation to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), nor have they received military training.
To sum up, the cable states that the yankee Embassy in Mexico knew that the murdered youngsters and Lucía Morett were not part of the guerrilla force, but only supported the FARC’s causes.
The US cable recognizes it in the following lines:
“Mexicans have a relatively benign conception of the FARC. An unidentified public servant from the Foreign Affairs Secretariat told diplomatic personnel from the US that the guerillas are a legitimate, leftist power in South America and that there is a historical basis for its existence.”
The sentence: “Mexicans have a relatively benign conception of the FARC,” might be construed as entirely truthful. Not only do Mexicans agree and even admire the feats of the FARC, but they also share their ideals to be independent from the Colombian, imperialistic, oligarchic regime.
It is also true, as recognized by the American embassy, that Mexico considers that the FARC was born out of a legitimate, leftist force and that there is indeed a historical basis for its existence. For years, Mexico thought of the FARC as a warring force that intended to liberate Colombia from the powers that be and which had several cells in Mexico.
That’s is not the end of it, the US Embassy also recognized that the FARC’s bonds with drug lords were untrue.
The libelous declarations by the US, including the FARC’s bonds to drug lords, or even stating that the guerilla war is some sort of terrorism, are part of a complex secret agenda by the US to discredit the FARC and make sure they do not get support anywhere.
Indeed, many Mexicans have bought their lies, but there are thousands of us that, without question, do consider the FARC as a benign force to be admired. If you don’t believe me, I’ll let the evidence speak for itself”.
The good news regarding the decrease in dollar prices seems a bit suspicious. In this Mexico of ours, where inflation has set foot never to leave, and where every single product costs more and more, the dollar has decided to be cheaper. A bit peculiar, isn’t it? Well, I say it is more than peculiar, because one would expect that inflation dictates that dollars should be quite pricey.
Financial authorities in the country have told us that the decrease in dollar costs is due to the heavy influx of remittances from illegal workers in the United States, plus oil and mineral exports. Nevertheless, not long ago, these same ‘authorities’ warned us of a huge fall in these same exports and remittances. And all of a sudden, they tell us that everything is going peachy keen, dandy and spiffy. What’s going on, I say?
True, oil prices have peaked, way beyond a hundred bucks a keg. Curiously enough, though, the dollar goes down and down. And that’s not the end of it.
Prices are increasing. We can say that about almost every product. Think of any. Has it gone down or up in the past few years? If it all goes up, why would the dollar go down? Is this some kind of exception to the rules of economy?
Some people would say, of course, that the history of economy has proven that things go up and down. True, very true. However, these changes always follow a trend of sorts. Things usually tend to go up.
Again, we can say that the regular tendency of prices is to go up, and most likely, the dollar will follow suit. And I mean soon, it’s just a matter of weeks or a few months. Mark my words, it will most definitely go up. Financial consultants tell their clients to sell their dollars, but they should be telling them otherwise: “Please, buy dollars now when they are cheap, because they’ll surely go up.” I can tell you friends, that’s a good deal.
International markets and consultants are up to something. They are forcing the dollar down, and sooner or later, through shifty gambits, they’ll hoist it up, which will translate into profits of gargantuan magnitude for them to keep.
John Maynard Keynes comes to mind. He was the greatest bourgeois economist in the world and made a fortune in book-selling and teaching. More precisely, he made that fortune through guessing; guessing how the market and the economy would work. He got rich, while others were left with zilch. That’s one of the realities of economy. Some win and some lose. The art of guessing, although tricky, can be hugely profitable.
You can read it in every single headline in the country: the Federal electoral Institute (IFE) has a new corruption scandal. “The IFE’s comptroller’s office is investigating certain irregularities regarding investment and the rents of several facilities” (Reforma, Feb. 3, 2011, front page). The entire thing entails millions of pesos. Why? Well, the IFE, since Leonardo Valdés Zurita became president of the government agency, has become the protagonist of tabloids all over the country.
Such is the shame Valdés Zurita has brought upon the IFE, that polititians are looking for a replacement. However, it is not that easy. In order to elect a new president of the agency, the three main political forces, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) must reach a consensus.
It’s very complicated. The three parties would have to look for a person they trust. A well-known, respected, impartial person of high political and human standards that would exert power in the sadly ravaged, discredited IFE.
There is a rumor going around that says that many politicians have been pursuing the rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), José Narro Robles, for the job. This hearsay states that the rector has not entirely rejected the proposal, which would be a huge step towards furthering his already successful political career.
If the rumor is true, the IFE might still get a chance to redeem itself. Unfortunately, there is too little time, conditions aren’t favorable, to create a new electoral agency. If Narro Robles decides to decline the offer, it would be necessary to look for someone else of similar reputation in the good books of the three ruling parties. The situation is not very hopeful, though.
Whatever happens, time is of the essence. With Valdés Zurita running the IFE, the 2012 elections will go horribly wrong. That is why he needs to leave. His only credentials are his experience as a university teacher in Guanajuato, and being the son-in-law of Mr. Heberto Castillo. And to tell you the truth, these “credentials” are not enough to justify the overwhelming work that being the IFE’s president demands.
I think that it would be wise to convince José Narro to join the IFE’s ranks. This would allow the UNAM’s rector to finally say yes or no, and we want it soon. We are running out of time.
As many people know, the trial of Luis Posada Carriles is taking place in the city of El Paso Texas. He was accused of lying while under oath. After receiving a suspicious pardon from former Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso, Posada entered U.S. territory by sea in the El Santrina yacht, making a stop in Isla Mujeres. Posada says he crossed the U.S. border by land.
Posada lied to U.S. migration officials and entered the country illegally.
The charges against Posada are minor compared to his horrific terrorist background. Despite being one of the most infamous terrorists in the history of Latin America, there are many people in the United States who defend him and who are seeking his release. These people are obviously defending one of their own, a former CIA agent, a terrorist who was useful to them for decades.
There is a video on Youtube that features U.S congressman David Riviera openly supporting Posada. Therefore, it is undeniable that even the Capitol is trying to help a known and confessed terrorist who boasts about his dreadful actions.
Unfortunately and to the disgrace of the United States, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is planning to to take part in the trial against Posada as a witness for the defense.
This, however, is not surprising. This sinister Florida representative has supported terrorists in the past, including Orlando Bosch, who are protected by impunity offered and obtained by people like David Rivera and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Other congressmen that openly protect terrorists are the Lincoln brothers and Mario Díaz Balart.
It is clear that those four Congressmen do not act as mere citizens. Because they are public and legal representatives, their actions and statements bear the mark of the institution they belong to. They know they can have an impact because they are part of the U.S. Congress.
The public support of Congressmen for terrorism is irrefutable evidence that the U.S. government supports terrorist activities. But the participation of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Posadas’ trial will be critical evidence of the United States official support of terrorism.
Some political sources, of a dubious nature, say that the former rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Doctor Juan Ramón de la Fuente, will most likely become the National Action Party (PAN) and Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) coalition’s presidential candidate for the 2012 elections. This alliance, as said by its supporters, will have two main objectives: first, to prevent the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whether with Peña Nieto or any other candidate, from taking office and second, and probably more important, to stop López Obrador in his tracks from ever becoming the presidential candidate for the PRD, and with it, to leave him without any chances of seizing power as president, forever.
The official version does not really begin or end. It is more like some sort of mumbo-jumbo, and even worse, a ruse to flummox everyone. It is some kind of smoke screen of master flimflammery, that’ll make way, without interference from the public, for the right-wing powers to occupy the presidential seat once again. Whatever it is people are planning, the aforementioned version will be welcomed by many as undeniable, irrefutable truth, and perhaps, it would be reasonable to take some time and analyze it.
First of all, it is very hard to think of De la Fuente as a candidate for a right-wing party, and even less so, for the dominant group of the PAN, which, as we all know, deserves to be called a fascist, pro-Franco, pro-Pinochet gang.
One would also have to say that De la Fuente wants nothing to do with the already has-been leaders of the PRD. Not only that, he is most definitely a person the PAN does not want to be around. De la Fuente would be morally and ideologically unfit to actually follow the maxims of the right-wing party.
And finally, would he be willing to be the lackey of López Obrador? I can’t really picture him tolerating such a demeaning ordeal. For him, this would be the worst way to go down in the annals of history.
Those who are spreading information about this alliance are naive, and they don’t really know either the rector or the PAN. There is definitely no common ground here. The party will end up proposing a candidate from its ranks: some individual of the ilk of Molinar Horcasitas, Germán Martínez and César Nava. Or who knows, probably another illiterate like Vicente Fox.
Potatoes are a product from the Americas that arrived in Europe after the discovery and enslaving of the New World. It is, indeed, an extraordinary food that has been the basis of western cuisine for the last five centuries. In Spain, France, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the potato is the queen of vegetables. Either fried, boiled, or roasted, it is a delight in which everyone is entitled to engage, whether poor or rich. In Mexico, potatoes complement our every-day dishes.
We can say the same about sausages. A historical food to central-European peoples, of high nutritional value and affordable prices. They are now called, just like potatoes (or chips, for that matter), junk food. The same thing happened to burgers, a combination of patties and buns that undoubtedly constitute a food of high nutritional value.
Chips, sausages and burgers are the holy trinity that stand on the top of any so-called junk-food list. This threesome is followed by bagged snacks and candy. These and many other products are guilty of overweight and obesity-related problems in Mexico and in most of the western world.
Yet no one, not even a child, gains weight by eating a hamburger, a hot dog, or some chips. The same can be said about snacks: ice cream, candy and cake. The overweight and obesity problem is linked to the excessive consumption of the aforementioned or even of food in general.
Curiously enough, both conditions appeared in Mexico along with the great gamut of food that has characterized the last five decades, from the green revolution, till now.
This makes us muse upon the fact that the obese problem is not a matter of food quality, but rather quantity. Nobody will get fat from eating three tacos. Things change radically if instead of eating just three, people wolf down eight or ten. It’s not the same thing to consume 2,500 calories as eating 5,000.
There is no fat person that’s innocent. They are not born that way, they become fat within time. And getting fat, especially for kids, begins with huge meals.
The bottom-line is that the amount we eat, not the quality, makes us overweigh or obese. In the end, reducing portions is the only way to solve this health problem.
Aspasia of Miletus, the partner of Pericles, gave her contemporary advice to those who wanted an abortion. But more than advice, they were fantasies and magical recipes. The concoctions or potions that the educated woman offered did not interrupt pregnancy unless the pregnant woman died of poisoning or intoxication caused by the potion.
To have an abortion and survive was simply impossible for thousands of years because humankind did not have the scientific knowledge that it has today and, since the 70s, humankind has practiced abortions successfully. Further scientific developments have made abortions unnecessary. Why interrupt a pregnancy if it can be avoided in a comfortable, simple, painless, discreet and efficient way?
Unstoppable scientific advances, not moral or religious dilemmas or legal prohibitions, have been the decisive factor in the evident drop in the numbers of abortions in Mexico and the rest of the world. The same science that made abortion possible has now made them unnecessary. It is true that many women or couples still have abortions. And it is equally true that churches and some governments have not given up the task of trying to prevent it through anathemas, prohibitions or punishments. This is clearly an useless insistence.
Recently, several local Mexican governments have made the mistake of giving the product of a pregnancy (at any time during gestation) the protection of the State at a constitutional level. Years of experience have not helped those medieval governments to understand how useless this type of prohibition is.
No one should be pregnant if they do not want to or can avoid it. If certain medieval laws seek to prevent abortion, the way to do it is to prevent unwanted or accidental pregnancies. Science has the solution. Oh, but science has many powerful enemies: religious ghosts, intolerance, lack of culture and ignorance. These enemies, together or alone, have not been able to stop the giant of our time, namely, scientific knowledge.
Scientific knowledge is the opposite of ignorance, intolerance, lack of culture, and religious fanatism.
There are no laws or religious dogmas that can stop the advances of science. The Middle Ages tried to do it for a thousand years but failed. And, except for a few worshippers, laypeople and religious followers, no one wishes to go back to that time.
Over the course of several days we’ve learned interesting information about Wikileaks, the internet portal specialized in leaking top secret cables and documents, and its founder, Julian Assange.
I would love to share with you some information I learned from Chilean journalist Ernesto Carmona, from Mapocho Press, and Canadian investigator Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research: “Wikileaks and The Economist share a long, fruitful friendship.
Assange was the recipient of the The Economist’s New Media Award in 2008. The newspaper has a very close relationship with the upper spheres of the financial world in the UK. It supported the war in Iraq, and among its most important shareholders we can find the Rothschild family. Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild was the director of the paper from 1972 to 1989 and his wife, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is on to the current board of the company.”
Michel Chossudovsky reveals to us another interesting connection between Wikileaks and its founder: Hailing from London, Mark Stephens, Mr. Assange’s lawyer, a member of Finers Stephens Innocent Law Firm, is also the legal councilor for the Rothschild-Waddeson Trust. This fact, says Chossudovsky, does not prove anything, but it fits in the context and social and corporate environment of Wikileaks. The New York Times, the Foreign Affairs Council, the Economist, Time Magazine, Forbes, Finers Stephens Innocent, it all adds up.
Assange has good relations with other media, especially in the upper-spheres of the financial, economic and war-mongering areas of the western world. He has managed to earn the favor of the New York Times in the US, of El País in Spain, The Guardian in the UK, Le Monde in France, and Der Spiegel in Germany.
These were the newspapers that Assange chose to leak the so-called top secret cables. However, it is actually quite curious to muse upon the reasons Assange chose these papers to leak the cables because everyone knows they are usually sensationalist; true champions of misinformation and inflammatory propaganda.
However, Mexican websites have informed us that Wikileaks has voluntarily offered to receive leaks from governments that are deemed as irresponsible, especially those with totalitarian regimes. Nevertheles, Wikileaks has focused more on foreign affairs of the United States, specifically those related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wikileaks describes itself as an organization that was created by Chinese dissidents and others from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Regardless, doesn’t it seem a bit duplicitous that Wikileaks is primarily comprised of Chinese dissidents or of people hailing from the US’s puppet state, Taiwan?
Many things in Wikileaks seem a bit dubious and sneaky and they make us doubt whether Mr. Assange’s intentions were as pure as he thinks.
Leonardo Valdés Zurita says that the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) is under the attack from factual and formal powers. Powers affected by the prohibition to buy radio and television time, powers who make use of freedom of speech to further their political and economic interests.
Yes, Leonardo says that public complaints of political and economic corruption in the IFE do not have anything to do with the very well-known putrefaction of the institution, but rather with a vendetta several media mongers have against him because they have lost due to this ban. It’s quite evident that Leonardo got lost in translation.
Turns out, that prohibition he’s talking about was created long after the 2006 presidential election, a time that also saw the administration of a personage we should be mortified about: Luis Carlos Ugalde. It was precisely during these times we witnessed the decay of the IFE.
The institution organized and justified that blatant electoral fraud that was known nationally and internationally. The fraud that warped the will of the Mexican population and reinstated a dictatorship that some Mexicans naively believed to be over in July, 2000. Was it a revenge exacted by the media who publicly denounced the IFE’s direct responsibility in this shameful yet historical electoral fraud in favor of the right?
Was it a revenge exacted against Mr. Leonardo when he wasn’t yet in the IFE? Now, back to the present. What about those big bucks Valdés Zurita and his goons (about one million pesos a month) earn? Aren’t they a lie of the media, a devious attempt to get back at Mr. Leonardo? How about those awesome high-end SUV’s Valdés and his posse of councilors drive?
Aren’t they a filthy lie? How about the bacchanalia of pharaonic proportions Mr. Leonardo is so keen to engage in every now and then? Isn’t that an invention of the media? His underhanded business arrangements? A lie, too? However, in spite of the unbridled larceny Valdés Zurita has brought upon the IFE, theft is not the most dire offense. The real slur here is political corruption.
That corruption that has warped the will of the population. This political corruption also exists due to submission to the President. That vassalage, which has been documented, serves as a guarantee for faux electoral results announced by higher powers, those liars, so foreign from the will of the citizens. But, Is there really autonomy in the IFE? Bah! I’d say political corruption.
It is understandable for Mr. Leonardo to feel uncomfortable when the media sort out his dirty laundry. But the filthy laundry is not the media’s fault, but that of Mr. Leonardo.
In the past few months we have heard and read that Enrique Peña Nieto, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor of the State of Mexico, is the best positioned pre-candidate to the presidency of the Republic. In other words, he has an advantage over the rest of the pre-candidates, among them Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Beatriz Paredes Rangel. However, the position of pre-candidates is not something official or sanctioned by any government authority.
The position of a pre-candidate does not exist legally. Consequently, it does not have legal validity. To say that someone is a pre-candidate to the presidency of the Republic is, from a judicial point of view, informal, frivolous and unsubstantial.
Nobody can prove that Peña Nieto is the pre-candidate or one of the pre-candidates for the PRI, despite the fact that millions of people believe so. However, according to the national media, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), in yet another proof of its errors (let’s not think for a moment of its submission to the executive power, the party and the rightmost wing), has asked one of the people who is publicly considered to be a presidential candidate, to appear before it. It could be that that “candidate” has committed an offense.
In that hypothetical scenario, the authority that should summon and sanction him is the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), not electoral authorities, because that citizen does not have an electoral position. We are witnessing a judicial outrage because the perverse actions of the IFE have no legal authority and these actions are not part of Mexican law.
Of course, the IFE does not care; it is not there to abide by the law, but to twist, violate and ignore it. It is understandable that Leonardo Valdés Zurita, the leader of the IFE, has gone crazy due to the radical change of his economic situation. He went from earning roughly 17,000 pesos per month as a college professor, to earning more than one million pesos monthly to ill-manage and to degrade the IFE, without taking into consideration the extra thousands or millions of pesos earned by acts of corruption that are never investigated by the PGR.
What about the other councilors? Are the 2012 presidential elections in hands of these madmen? Is a small group of people gone astray going to decide, if they are not already deciding it, the fate of Mexico?
Let us do some history here. In the last century’s early eighties, there was a political party in Mexico called the Socialist Labor Party (PST). It was not really a political party, but just a moniker for a faction of opportunists that lived off (and not so badly, by the way) state money: Some sort of government subsidy to pretend that there was a “socialist” opposition in the country.
This was an façade opposition that provoked that famous and Machiavellian quote the biggest Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ideologist, Jesús Reyes Heroles, who said: “Resistance can prove useful.” Better said, an apparent resistance proves to be very useful.
The PST, of course, was not the only pretend-name for the “left wing opposition” party. There were others. They were all referred to as public-sector parties, which proved to be a wonderful sobriquet. They were also called in vernacular spanish: “partidos paleros” (vote-catching parties) or “Domesticated Opposition.”
When Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas headed the electoral revolt of 1987-1988, the PST, in an act of opportunism, changed its name to “Partido del Frente Cardenista de Reconstrucción Nacional” (Cardenista Front of National Reconstruction Party), the PFCRN. The leader of both pretend-parties, the now-ostracized, Rafael Aguilar Talamantes, is an example of political venality. Well, here is the important stuff.
Aguilar Talamantes had two chieftains: the already very discredited Graco Ramírez, and the current director of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Jesus Ortega. Now that we know Ortega’s background, we should not be surprised that the PRD has turned into a public-sector party, into a domesticated opposition, into an institution that hobnobs with today’s regime: the ultra-right wing National Action Party.
Therefore, we can talk about a true alliance between the PRD and the PAN. Now, to be hobnobbing with a “buddy” doesn’t mean forming a true alliance. Our “buddy’s” role is to simulate, to act, to deceive. The “buddy” must comply and serve the impresario, the person paying the bills. In this so-called alliance, like everything in life, the person paying calls the shots, and the PRD is subordinated to the right wing forces of the government.
Ortega and his minions, the famous “Chuchos”, may give a thousand explanations and justifications for their so-called alliance between a party deemed to be more-or-less leftist, and the opposition party, yet Jesus Ortega’s background and biography speak more than just a thousand words. We can say that the man has clearly surpassed his teacher Aguilar Talamantes.
In early July 2010, Francisco Chávez Abarca, a Salvadoran terrorist, was arrested at a Venezuelan airport as he tried to enter the country with fake papers. He was a lieutenant of Luis Posada Carriles who, as everyone knows, is a terrorist that moves around freely in the United States. When arrested, Chávez confessed he was in Venezuela, under Posada’s request, to make terrorist attacks before and during Venezuela’s legislative elections in September.
A few days later, Chávez was extradited to Cuba to appear in court due to a previous terrorist attack with explosives in a tourist area on the island, which caused the death of an Italian tourist. Chávez has already confessed his direct participation in the attacks, and confirmed that he acted under the orders of Posada. It is widely known that Posada works for the U.S. CIA, and has financing from the National Cuban-American Foundation (FNCA) to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Latin America, mainly against Cuba.
It is clear that the FNCA maintains its criminal terrorism policy against Cuba, which refutes the alleged conciliation between Cuba and the FNCA and extremist organizations in Miami which, as proved by Chávez’ arrest, are still organizing and financing terrorist activities. His arrest also reveals that the U.S. government continues being tolerant to these terrorist organizations, and has become an accessory to terrorist attacks in Cuba, Panama and Venezuela by protecting and sheltering Posada.
These facts are no secret, and reveal Cuba’s need to know the FNCA’s and other criminal organizations’ plans beforehand. This was the goal that five anti-terrorist Cubans were trying to achieve in the United States, who were unfairly incarcerated more than ten years ago, accused of homicide and espionage by the U.S. government.
A demonstration of Obama’s veracity and sincerity would be the immediate release of those five Cubans unfairly incarcerated, and the immediate arrest and trial of Posada Carriles. Obama has the invaluable opportunity of aiding justice to prevail in two cases: releasing the five Cubans and prosecuting a confessed and cynical criminal. Moreover, he has the also invaluable opportunity of demonstrating that his promises of a positive change in the relationship between the United States and Latin America, specially Cuba, were sincere and not expressions of demagogy.
It is widely known that a few weeks ago, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) accused President Felipe Calderón of having violated constitutional regulations that forbid him to make government propaganda, obviously in favor of the National Action Party (PAN), during electoral campaigns.
The IFE accusation was nothing but the institutional reaffirmation of a fact known by everyone, as the government propaganda presented by Calderón during electoral campaigns has been seen and heard by millions of Mexicans on several occasions.
Of course, the IFE affront affected Calderón. And his first reprisal action began at the Interior Secretariat, which accused the IFE of exceeding its authority and functions when it tried to silence the president.
Accusation after accusation, the contestants seemed to be even. But they were not, because any citizen could see the enormous difference between the president’s public violation of the Constitution and an alleged “excess” by the IFE.
The Interior Secretary, Francisco Blake, decided to set the IFE straight and show who is really in control of Mexico. He organized a classic receiving line for Calderón at Los Pinos presidential residence. And there went the IFE general councillors, kneeling, asking for forgiveness and promising that they would never publicly point out Calderón’s infractions of the law.
The news of the event was widely spread by the media. It was necessary to do so. People must know that the IFE’s autonomy is not reason enough to point out the president’s faults.
After the news of the submission was widely spread, it is understandable that Enrique Peña Nieto, Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Marcelo Ebrard and Beatriz Paredes Rangel, all of them presidential pre-candidates, are deeply concerned that the IFE might lack impartiality in the next elections and, specially, the presidential elections of 2012.
That the alleged impartiality of the IFE does not exist at all was already known, since the times of José Woldenberg and Luis Carlos Ugalde. But we have never seen such nerve, such hate for legal frameworks, such lack of political urbanity, such a clear demonstration of submission.
Whoever the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) presidential candidate is (Peña, Beltrones or Paredes, and López Obrador or Ebrard, respectively), they must be all furious at the IFE, specially at Leonardo Valdés Zurita, the president of the already-discredited IFE.
Facing this scenario, there are only two possibilities left: the immediate dismissal of Valdés from the IFE or a resigned wait for the results of presidential elections, which will come from Los Pinos, not from the electoral institution.
Although the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) centennial celebration generated understandable glee, it would be wrong not to acknowledge or question the presence of two former rectors at the festivities, those who once pushed for the collection of tuition and other fees, in other words: a de facto privatization of the century-old institution. But alas, they were there: Jorge Carpizo and Francisco Barnés de Castro, looking quite smug. If not outright enemies of the National University in particular, they could easily be qualified as opponents to public education in general.
Both are notorious individuals from the conservative right. They installed themselves on campus like the PRI’s Trojan Horses and attempted to undermine one of Mexico’s greatest accomplishments: public education. With this in mind, let’s remember their sordid history: it was Carpizo and Barnés’ actions which provoked the student insurrection against privatization measures, inciting two strikes that helped students defeat efforts from the right to privatize the university.
Fortunately for the University and the Mexican people, this sinister pair of rectors were followed by Juan Ramón de la Fuente and José Narro Robles, who both in speech and in action always acted on the defensive to protect free education within the university.
And yesterday, one of the power centers of Mexico – our national Congress – honored the UNAM with a formal offering from senators and deputies to augment federal funding for the substantive work of this noble, prestigious and essential institution.
The actions of Juan Ramón de la Fuente and of José Narro Robles, along with Congress’s formal commitment constitute an important defeat for conservatism and the extreme right – and the cynical opportunists waiting for the political rewards that never arrived, like Carpizo and Barnés.
This important defeat doesn’t just involve political and economic forces outside of the University that oppose its existence, as well as free public education. It is a defeat also, and perhaps more importantly, for some darker powers inside the university struggling to convert it into a private research center. Carpizo and Barnés represented in their respective tenures, and perhaps still do, this sinister undercurrent.
And so, as we honor democracy and the popular democratic spirit of the university, it’s necessary to remember the anonymous hero that, using strikes as its method of combat, halted privatizers Caprizo and Barnés. This anonymous hero was, of course, the campus’s young people, who deftly organized to keep the UNAM free. Foully slandered in those days, today this heroic and courageous band is feeling satisfied that their victory prevails. The ones who we really should be honoring: first, the CEU (University Student Council) and later the CGH (Strike General Council) gave the Mexican people the opportunity to celebrate 100 years of this free and democratic University.
Since they really achieved this historical victory, it’s lamentable that neither of these two student organizations weren’t represented in the Congress’s celebration. Instead, the current rector Narro was accompanied by two sworn enemies –Capizo and Barnés– of free education.
On Sept. 11, during a political gathering in La Habana that was aiming to increase international support for the five Cubans unjustly held in U.S. prisons, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, read a document of his own authorship that offered new ethical, judicial and media elements, which prove, once again, the dreadful injustice against five honorable and patriotic men.
Alarcón said that in 2005, members of the United States Court of Appeals unanimously decided to cancel the entire procedure and start a new trial because it was proven that the first trial had violated the U.S. Constitution, as it took place in Miami. He added that Washington shamelessly put pressure on the Court of Appeals to overturn the decision of the judges.
Since then, Alarcón continued, the legal battle has gone on but in very difficult circumstances that diminish more and more the possibilities of a legal solution. In his document, the revolutionary leader asked “Why is this case so seemingly difficult?” He answered: “Because those who were supposed to disseminate information about this case have chosen to hide it”. The details of this case are data that should have been the main stories in the media. But they were not. And they still are not, even after 12 years. The most important media have not covered the longest ongoing trial in U.S. History; nor the exonerative testimonies by generals, admirals or White House advisors in favor of those five Cubans; nor the confession of wrongdoers dressed in war uniforms; nor the Attorney General’s seven-month long arduous and shameless defense of terrorism; nor the Attorney General’s request to convict the defendants to four life-sentences plus 77 years in jail; nor its insistence on taking measures to prevent further attempts to disrupt terrorist groups; nor the attitude of the judge who agreed to all the peculiar requests of the government. None of that was on the news.
History is repeating itself. Alarcón said that almost one century ago, two Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti, were arbitrarily convicted and executed in the U.S. Their innocence was acknowledged not too long ago, when it was already too late. However, back then, an U.S. Judge tried to save them by focusing on the phrase “Please, read the transcripts,” meaning that anyone who had read the trial’s transcripts would have realized Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.
It is the same thing right now. Whoever wants to know the truth only has to visit the official site of the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida and look for the case of “United Stated versus Gerardo Hernández et al” to realize that Gerardo and his countrymen are innocent and that this is a monstrous action by the U.S. government.
Facing an absolute and undeniable failure, the expertocracy behind the drug war has devised a new and cool idea, or so they say, to fight organized crime. The strategy hits narcos where, they say, it will hurt the most: their checkbooks.
This latest plan of attack from our leaders –ever aware of eroding public support– has a positive aspect: it acknowledges that the PAN government’s dogmatic backing of this police, judicial and military fight really means nothing, since they’re obviously proposing a major change. Physical repression, with its piles of corpses and rivers of blood, is giving way to a new way to battle: one that is clean, non-violent and –going back to what the experts say –extremely effective.
But this claim of effectiveness has people a bit confused. How exactly are we supposed to know these new rules will work if they’ve never been applied before? Perhaps, we can look at the experience of other countries, like say the United States, which is the top consumer of drugs on the planet? Seriously, has constant financial vigilance there produced a proven fall in production, drug-trafficking, and consumption in our northern neighbor? Someone probably has, of course, believed in some kind of evidence of a reduction...except that no one has seen it.
More likely, no drop has occurred: despite physical pursuits and financial offensives in the United States, production, distribution, and drug consumption is growing.
Thus, it’s time to inquire: why will this supposedly ‘fresh idea’ work here when it has failed in other countries? Because it is decreed –and therefore, it must be brilliant? Because the experts have been deemed the best and the brightest, and therefore are never wrong?
These policymakers must feel slighted, knowing that –if they have any sense of economic theory– their initiatives and programs are futile: if demand for a product exists, the production and distribution for said product is inevitable. And unfortunately, that’s that.
It’s understandable that against evidence of growing drug consumption in Mexico, society would be afraid and consequently grope around for possible solutions to this grave issue, especially when former attempts to curb drug use –persecution and repression– haven’t made much of a dent. But experts and citizens, we’re now becoming victims of a new illusion: that this latest trendy plan will work.
Seeing a kingpin captured might feel, momentarily, satisfying. But we can’t pretend it has a genuine and permanent effect on consumption. Likewise, money is similarly resilient. Like water, it will continue to flow despite the levees, dikes and dams we create to block it.
There is nothing strange in the Catholic Church categorically opposing the social expressions and legal standards of the obvious, constant and increasing secularization of Mexican society. It is necessary to say that opposition is an expected and natural reaction from conservative organizations, including Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox or Protestant religions, toward change.
But religious hierarchies’ beliefs are at odds with societies’ behavior. Society’s ideology can be religious, sometimes very religious, but exhibits a secularized behavior, which is evident around the world, and it’s distant from the dogmas of metaphysical beliefs.
This is the case with divorce. The Catholic Church does not accept it or allow it. But annulment of marriage is a current phenomenon and happens in every society, specially western societies. What can the Church do against divorce among Catholic Mexicans?
And the same thing happens with extramarital sexual intercourse. Aren’t millions of Mexicans practicing it? What can the Church do to keep single, married, young and old Mexicans from having sex?
It is also the case with abortion. Ever since science made it possible, safe, simple and cheap, thus available for everyone, Mexicans have decided to make it their own inalienable right. It is true that abortion rates have decreased, not due to moral and legal prohibitions, but to the generalized use and increasing creation of modern chemical contraceptives, which have an efficiency rate of nearly 100 percent.
The invention-discovery of modern chemical contraceptives represented a social revolution equivalent to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Jenner, Pasteur and Fleming: they changed forever the behavior of human society. These scientific breakthroughs contributed to creating new societies.
Chemical contraception also changed, forever and for good, the sexual and social behavior of individuals. It is considered the most efficient, simple and economic way of avoiding conception, and it was just a matter of time for society made it its own, regardless of the Church or other creeds’ positions or opinions.
Divorce, extramarital sex, abortion (criminalized or not), contraception and free, public and legalized gay marriage are evident secular expressions of modern societies. Religious dogmas and rules have lost the value they had over hundreds of years. Or, in the words of Gabriel García Márquez, “since electricity was invented, ghosts disappeared.”
The inevitable return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the presidency was certain around July and August 2009. These conclusions were the outcome of several factors, but mainly the awful management of Calderón’s government.
There have been bad results in the country’s economy, worse ones in the administration and catastrophic results in terms of insecurity and crime. There is a horrible toll of almost 30,000 deaths and drug cartels have overwhelming political and economic power.
Twelve or thirteen months later, there is no certainty that the PRI will return to the presidency. What happened in the past few months that created such a radical change in the nation’s perception of its future? The answer is not in the improvement of Calderón’s government because things are getting worse each day.
The answer is in politics. Once the National Action Party (PAN) became aware of its unfavorable situation, it decided to form electoral alliances with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), which have proven to be a solid obstacle for the PRI. Those alliances and everything else that happens from now on will be a rehearsal for 2012 presidential elections.
In Mexico, however, votes have never counted and 2012 will not be an exception. The goal of the PAN-PRD alliances is to create a body that will ensure another PAN victory at Los Pinos. With the help of old and new players, the PAN and PRD will administer the same medicine of 2000 and 2006 to the PRI. The new player will be the PAN-PRD alliance. Some of the old players will be the immensely powerful presidencial institution and the highly-discredited Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).
National and foreign historical facts, old and new, show that once the rightmost wing seizes power, it never lets it go peacefully and democratically. Those same facts also show that only a political and electoral scheme will make believable and justifiable the continuing victory of the right wing.
The PAN has begun its task and the IFE is not making things difficult. It does not even need a front man like José Woldenberg or Luis Carlos Ugalde, as Leonardo Valdés Zurita has made the path a lot easier. It is only a matter of letting IFE’s president, advisors and officials continue making multimillion-peso negotiations.
This plan of the right wing explains why no institution has addressed the corruption complaints against the IFE. Valdés has been given a rope to hang himself when right the time comes. With pockets full and with the imminent intervention of the Attorney’s General Office, who will refuse the requests of power? As general Obregón once said “nobody resists a 50,000-peso cannon shot.”
On June 6 2010, the “El Nuevo Herald” (The New Herald) newspaper, a symbol of the Cuban counter-revolution in Miami, published a text, under the name of the reporter Juan O. Tamayo, which states that “two federal congressmen gave $15 million to finance programs in favor of democracy in Cuba.”
“It is expected – the text says – that the U.S. State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will distribute, within the next few months, funds among Cuban civil society groups to purchase computers and medicines, and support families of incarcerated dissidents.”
The U.S. Congress allocated $20 million in “Aid for Democracy in Cuba” funds during the fiscal year ending in Sept., but the resources were not released. The process of allocation stopped when “on Dec. 3rd, Cuban authorities arrested Alan P. Gross, a USAID subcontractor from Potomac, Maryland, who was in charge of providing satellite phone services to individuals and groups” which, as is well known, is an act in favor of overthrowing the Cuban government.
So, the terrorist counter-revolution spokesperson in Miami informs us that the U.S. government finances, with public funds, activities that seek to overthrow the island’s government. This U.S. financing provided material and economic resources to a sadly famous group of 75 self-called dissidents. The cash flow for this USAID agents only stopped when they were arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated.
And even if most of them are already free and living in Spain, none of them will ever enjoy that substantial salary again. Once outside the island, they are no longer useful to the aggressive and unsettling purposes of the USAID.
But the fact that these released Washington agents do not longer receive the USAID money doesn’t imply that the cash flow for this agency of espionage and intervention is cancelled or concluded. The salary, which is earned by dirty tricks against their home country, will go to other candidates.
Some USAID agents have fallen out of favor, but this agency will recruit new ones. And, as an eternal ritornello, they will conspire against their country, will receive their U.S. economic reward and, in the end, will be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated. Once they are behind bars or abroad, the economic allocations will find other ambitious hands that are not ashamed of receiving money for betrail, then they will end up as their predecessors, in jail.
Of course, USAID would like to see the Cuban government overthrown. But facing the absolute impossibility of the task, it insists on the manufacturing of incarcerated agents. They are an excuse for lying media campaigns against Cuba. They also help U.S. and Europe to justify the economic block and low war against the island.
U.S. troops are to begin withdrawing from Iraq on August 31. However, 50,000 will remain until the end of 2011, who will stay to train and support Iraqi security forces and support U.S. diplomats.
These statements are two sides of the same coin — the undeniable defeat of the invasion and the intent of military occupation in Iraq. The U.S. was unable to impose a colonial government capable of asserting control over the occupied territory. And now the military has to leave, because the U.S. cannot do what it wants totally and indefinitely. The invasion and occupation have no future.
The invasion is certainly allowing Washington and its oil companies access to massive petroleum reserves in Iraq. But they already had that with Saddam Hussein. Ten years of war and destruction have produced nothing. Except, of course, the never-ending prosperity of the U.S. military industry and the Pentagon’s political preeminence.
The lesson is clear. A military invasion can topple, as in Serbia or Panama, an inconvenient person. Likewise, it can prosper weapons manufacturers and vendors. It can also guarantee and increase military influence in a supposed civil democracy. But it cannot rectify a two-centuries old colonial situation. The defeat, as in Vietnam, is obvious, although not officially acknowledged.
As a tearful Madeleine Albright said: What’s the point in having and using the most powerful military force in the world if, at the end of the day, it does no good? If it was useless in Vietnam, Somalia or Iraq, then what’s the point of having a military presence in Iran? The same is true for Israel. What has the latter won, with Tel Aviv and its armed forces against the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Hamas? Just eternal chaos for the Israeli people themselves. Purely economic, financial or trade measures would have worked better: buy up land rather than occupy it.
An attack against Iran is, as Fidel Castro says, possible and maybe even imminent. But what’s the point? In Iraq, a hostile but more or less secular regime was toppled, to be replaced it with another that was just as hostile, but also fundamentalist. The U.S. defeated Saddam, but it hasn’t been able to, nor will it be able, to dominate the Iraqi people. Iraq isn’t just a U.S. error, but one of the U.N. as well, which approved the invasion upon accepting the absurd story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The U.N. is now deafly and blindly searching for a way to justify an attack against Iran on the absurd premises that its nuclear weapons are a risk to the rest of the world.
Some powerful armed forces which were truly “good for something” drove the Napoleonic and Hitler regimes to their own destruction.
A nuclear attack against Iran probably wouldn’t cause the dominant plutocratic U.S. regime to destroy itself, but nobody can guarantee the same regarding the theocratic Israeli regime. Washington and Tel Aviv ought to think carefully about this not impossible final result.
The mass gathering at the Zócalo on July 25 confirmed what everybody knew but was unwilling to acknowledge: the powerful social and political influence of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s movement. All the efforts of the National Action Party (PAN) over the past three years to control the media and erase or diminish the political influence of the “Tabasqueño” and his resistance movement were to no avail.
But López Obrador knows perfectly well that being the leader of a popular social movement and winning a presidential election are not enough to secure his place in Los Pinos. That’s what happened in 2006. Consequently, it’s logical that AMLO is well aware that it is useless to win the elections if his movement is unable to prevent another electoral fraud. The electoral system is corrupt.
The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Federal Electoral Court (TEPJF) are in the pocket of the PAN and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The main task of both institutions is to close in on any other party that threatens to end the autocratic system. The electoral system is controlled by the right wing and the rightmost wing. How, then, is it possible that a leftist party can win the elections? Since their creation, the IFE and the TEPJF have been institutional tools aiming to perpetuate the status quo. Usually, both institutions don’t need to use electoral fraud. Money, the State and the oligarchy tend to impose a person that will guarantee nothing will ever change.
Sometimes, however, the traditional methods are thwarted by citizen uprisings, as it happened in 1988 with Cárdenas and in 2006 with López Obrador. In that case, it is necessary to twist the electoral will and to declare as winner he who will guarantee a continuity of autocracy.
López Obrador and his followers know all of this. They also know something else is needed to get to Los Pinos, but what exactly is that “something else” that was missing in 1988 and 2006? It has to be something pacifist and constitutional.
Something like the social mobilization of Evo Morales in Bolivia or the one that put an end to the neoliberal and chaotic government of Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina. At the moment, nobody can guarantee that there will be a similar social movement capable of such success in Mexico. But it is undeniable that the increasing deterioration of the oligarchic system has brought chaos to Mexico.
After being freed from prison and recently having arrived to Madrid, Cuban Julio César Gálvez told the press: “We had signed (he and other ex-convicts) in front of a Spanish Embassy official in La Habana some promises, two minutes before boarding the plane, in which the Spanish government would offer information and social guidance and legal counseling, as well as...economic aid for food and housing.”
With such resources, anyone can emigrate. It doesn’t matter from which country, developed or developing, or to which country, industrialized or Third World. Wherever one goes, the most important thing is to have income to pay for food, clothing, housing, healthcare and medicine, even if minimal. But for this to happen, one needs to work, and not just pretend to work.
And this man, Julio César Gálvez, and his companions, did not work in Cuba. They only simulated working, which consisted of telling others that they were freelance journalists. And where, then, did they receive their income to pay for food, utility bills, clothing, shoes, a few drinks, cigarettes, candy and money for a the occasional relaxation?
Why of course, that money came from the Office of the United States’ Interests in La Habana! They pretended to be journalists opposed to the regime, and that Office paid them a salary – in dollars, no less. They didn’t work in an office, a factory, a workshop, a market, a gas station or drive a bus; these men lived off and enjoyed the pleasures that hard cash offers.
That’s why these types of people are poorly viewed in Cuba – and also in Spain. And there are already angry Spaniards protesting because these people who are not working and who do not want to work are getting paid. It’s OK if they were actually persecuted and were not impostors.
The ex-convicts lived better in Cuba. They earned dollars without working, just pretending to be part of a non-existing internal opposition. Everything was going well until they were accused of being alibis to the successive and endless agressions of the U.S. government. In jail, there’s no salary, and inmates are even put to work.
But prison was temporary. Now in Spain (or in Miami, where they would like to finally end up), they will be able to earn money again without working. They’ll even have free housing, just as long as they give the occasional interview in which they talk about the tough but dignified daily lives of Cubans. They left their lives behind in order to be at the service of the historic enemy of their country. And if for Enrique IV, Paris was well worth a mass, it appears that for Gálvez, Madrid is well worth being a traitor, mercenary, fraud, impostor and parasite.
There are many reasons to assume that with the decision to release the 52 United States prisoners, the Cuban revolution is scoring another victory in the dangerous chess game against the imperial power. Here are some of those reasons.
First, the release was the result of a respectful request made by Cuban Catholics, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, to be exact. He and his bishops did not demand what they politically and legally could not demand. It is clear that a demand wouldn’t have had the positive result obtained by a humble request for mercy to the mercenaries in the service of Cuba’s historical enemy.
Second, the release was also possible thanks to the respectful and self-restrained participation of the Spanish government, which offered to welcome the former prisoners as immigrants, not political refugees. This distinction is of the utmost political importance because Spain made it clear that it does not consider those 52 people as prisoners or politically persecuted. That way, the Cuban criteria prevailed: common prisoners are granted mercy and are allowed to travel abroad as long as another country is willing to welcome them.
Third, those 52 traitors will not be able to damage Cubans any further. By living abroad they have stopped being useful to the White House. In Spain, they won’t be able to get paid as counterrevolutionary agents. They will actually have to work and it is not easy to go from a parasite to a worker. Fourth, an element that encourages the criteria of the revolutionary triumph is the explicit and public desire of the mercenaries to live in the US, specifically in Miami.
They think that in Florida they will be able to live without working, aided by the terrorist and anti-Cuban mafia. But that won’t be easy either. Miami’s mafia pays for jobs done. And with their exit from Cuba, the 52 former prisoners cannot fulfill their job: to destabilize Cuba from within, not from Madrid, Miami, Prague or London.
Fifth, there was an evident agreement between the government of President Raúl Castro and the Moncloa Palace. Even though we don’t know what Rodríguez Zapatero and Ortega agreed to, there is no doubt that Raúl’s gesture will be answered with similar gestures that will benefit the Cubans and their revolution.
With the decision of the government of President Castro, Miami, Washington and the rightmost European and Spanish wings have run out of material for their campaigns full of calumnies, pressure and blackmailing. Therefore, the most recent proof of Cuba’s subversive hostility toward the US has maximized its benefits and has minimized the costs. Just as it has done for the past 50 years.
Now the nation can sleep calmly, because according to the indescribable president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Leonardo Valdés Zurita, after having reviewed the electoral process of 2009, no evidence suggesting illicit financing has been proven.
With this, Valdés Zurita has erased, with the stroke of a pen, all public suspicion, as well as certainty, and public evidence and clues leading to illegal funds in political campaigns (with a large amount coming from drug cartels). Thanks to this epicurean character, who took over the IFE’s presidency in the nick of time, we now know that political campaigns are not illegally funded. And we now know that magnates, state and federal officials, drug dealers, and/or other members of organized crime aren’t shoveling money into political campaigns.
Is it true that Zurita didn’t find any evidence whatsoever of illegal funding in the 2009 election campaigns? Not even a tiny bit? Would it be then, that all of those rumors about funds provided by drug cartels are nothing but “a great myth,” as Pedro Aspe Armella stated? If there aren’t any illegal funds, then that means, of course, that there aren’t any criminals to chase. It’s perfectly clear then that the electoral system is completely honorable, trustworthy, and free of corruption, in charge of assuring honesty and transparency in the nation’s elections. Despite its public reputation as a completely decadent and corrupt institution! One shouldn’t be puzzled though. Because the IFE is a rotten institution, created to guarantee a permanent dictatorship, to change very little, so that in the end nothing changes. It wasn’t the IFE that announced the supposed victory of Vicente Fox, it was the IFE’s real boss who did: the nation’s president.
And it was the IFE, under the direction of Carlos Ugalde, that was in charge of legalizing the fraud that was committed in the 2006 presidential elections.
Fortunately, the words of somebody like Zurita aren’t worth much. And not only because of his bad reputation, but also because the IFE nowadays is only seen by the public as a prostitute, which little by little, began earning the nation’s distrust, and afterwards, the repugnance of all society. But one should ask oneself the real reason why Zurita and his accomplices, despite what the public may think, fervently deny the idea of any dirty money involved in political campaigns.
Why deny the evidence? Why try to convince everyone about something we all know isn’t true? What lies behind the IFE president’s throne? Doesn’t it all seem to be complicity with political parties and candidates touched by illegal money?
In 1854, there was a cholera outbreak in London that killed more than 500 people in 10 days. The cause of the flagellum was unknown, as it commonly happened with all epidemics of that time. Then, a doctor and eminent scientist came into the picture: doctor John Snow.
He thought about marking with a cross the homes of those who had died from cholera. He realized that all the houses belonged to one neighborhood and discovered that the potable water of that neighborhood came from a section of the Thames River. The doctor suggested changing the site of water extraction. It was done and the epidemic was over.
The mortal cause of the outbreak was that the water of that section of the river had been contaminated by feces due to a crack in the sewage. Due to historical and scientific development obstacles, doctor Snow was unable to know that cholera is caused by a microorganism: the bacteria Vibrio chlorae. He was also unaware that the bacteria could be eliminated by simply boiling the water.
Today we know that cholera can be prevented through a vaccination and that infected people can be cured with antibiotics.
One century later, in 1950, barely 70 years ago, the total food production in the world was not enough to feed the 2 billion inhabitants of the globe back then. There was a permanent food deficit and, consequently, millions of individuals were destined to live with hunger and malnutrition.
In those times, an extraordinary man of science, an agricultural and phytopathology scholar named Norman E. Borlaug appeared.
Borlaug, who was born in the United States in 1914 and died in 2009, developed new and better wheat, corn and rice seeds, which yielded more product per hectare than traditional seeds and were much more resistant, and sometimes immune, to plagues and weather variations.
Borlaug also developed new agricultural techniques, such as the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. With the combination of new seeds and innovative agricultural techniques, Borlaug significantly increased the world production of those three cereals. This new and superior productivity was called the green revolution. And, according to reliable sources, it prevented the death of one million humans during its first years.
From 1950 to 2009, the world population multiplied by three while the green revolution increased the world’s food production 12 times. Today, in comparison to six decades ago, world hunger remains not because of lack of food but because of dreadful and unjust food distribution.
Six decades ago, in 1950, life expectancy in Mexico was forty-seven years. In 2010, this significant socio-demographic datum has increased to seventy-five years. Sixty years ago, the main causes of mortality were generally infectious diseases, including the flu, pneumonia, infant diseases like diarrea, malaria, whooping cough, bronchitis, typhoid, measles, dysentery and pregnancy, delivery or puerperium complications. In other words, people were dying from what we call “poverty diseases.”
Today, in 2010, the main causes of mortality are generally pathologies linked to wealth, or more exactly, pathologies peculiar to rich nations: diabetes, heart diseases, cerebro-vascular diseases, high blood pressure, cirrhosis, liver or lung cancer, and malign trachea tumor. As the reader can notice, none of the 1950 causes of mortality are listed among today’s ones.
It is obvious that the huge improvement in Mexicans’ life conditions is the product of a deliberate and efficient public health policy. Three institutions deserve credit for this noticeable social improvement: the Health Secretariat, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and the Institute of Social Security Services for Public Officials and Personnel (ISSSTE).
And the efforts of these three institutions in improving public health and in extending life expectancy for Mexicans continue. After eradicating poverty diseases, they are now working at reducing child’s mortality with so-called “wealth pathologies.” Because of my professional experience, I know about the work conducted by the ISSSTE quite well. I have been witness to the services provided by the Institute to affiliated beneficiaries.
It goes more or less like this: the beneficiary, who usually is in their sixties, must present themselves to the Institute every six months in order to sign a life certificate. Or to say it differently, they must prove every six months that they are still alive, because in the case of death, their pension will be suspended.
During the meeting, the beneficiary is asked five questions and is subject to a simple medical check-up in order to detect any pre-pathological condition, particularly wealth pathologies, including diabetes or arterial hypertension. If necessary, senior beneficiaries will receive preventive treatment. Early detection of these types of suffering enables the meeting of two important objectives.
The first and most important one is to extend good health and life conditions for retired people. The second one, key to the Institute’s finances, is to prevent as much as possible, the high costs of medical treatment for advanced wealth diseases. It does not cost the same to treat high blood pressure than embolism. And someone with high blood pressure suffers much less than someone who already has had a cerebro-vascular accident.
In recent years, two phenomena have emerged on the journalism scene, foreshadowing the future of the media business worldwide: online journalism and free newspapers. Indisputable data have already proven the growth of journalism on the web.
Accordingly, the influence of online journalism has increased amongst readers as it has become increasingly rooted in their daily lives. There are also subtle signs that can prove the massive development of online news media: the significant, sustained fall in traditional newspaper circulation, which was worsened, to a great extent at least, by the preceding drop in advertising space sales.
And although there is no reason to expect, neither soon or later, the disappearance of newspapers, it is obvious that the gap between online and traditional newspapers is widening more and more, ultimately benefiting electronic journalism. Free newspapers may become the press?s last resort solution. Little by little, without any rush or rest, free newspapers are expanding their readership, influence and circulation. Interestingly enough, this new type of journalism seems to attract more advertisers; the same advertisers who decided to reduce or simply remove their ads from traditional newspapers.
Reflecting the good old days of traditional journalism, advertisement in free newspapers overshadows information and opinion. In fact, as is often said, free newspapers use information and opinion to fill in the free spaces left out by adverting.
The price of the two new forms of journalism is the guarantee of their upcoming planetary domination. Free is the key. However, one should properly distinguish between online journalism and free newspapers in view of censorship. Both types of journalism thrive on private and public publicity; and there is plenty of empirical evidence to consider it a fact that advertisers do not advertise in ideologically and politically oriented newspapers that question the system or the establishment.
This dependency is putting free newspapers and press freedom at risk, undermining the chances to develop democratic, critical and, why not, revolutionary journalism. For this reason, free newspapers are very distinct from digital journalism: on the web, free and freedom of speech are admirably combined. It is still possible, however, that the free journalism model manages to expand itself without depending too much on the advertising industry.
Universities, unions, NGOs, cooperatives and other institutions have been able to pay for the production of free newspapers with their own resources. Regardless, one thing is clear enough: we have entered a new era of journalism in which digital, free and uncensored journalism will be increasingly dominant, although free newspapers will always be at risk of censoring their content in order to please concerned advertisers.
Like any non-renewable resource, black gold will be gone some day. But that extinction is only an abstract possibility. Today, petroleum sources are calculated to last about a century. This depends on many factors: consumption, prices, technology, the invention of oil substitutes (whether completely or partially), the discovery of new wells and greater capacity for exploration and exploitation, etc.
There’s no doubt that the most important factor in prolonged oil supply is the unstoppable scientific and technological advances characteristic of our time. It’s likely that oil will be around for the next 300 to 400 years. What’s more: as an effect of the increasing awareness of the use of fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change, it’s probable that humanity stops using oil long before its supplies are exhausted.
But for those who prefer practical evidence to theories, one example of oil’s long-term availability is seen in the imperialist countries’ oil companies’ ferocious fights, through colonial wars and coups in some cases, to appropriate oil wells in the Middle East and in other developing countries.
Does anyone believe that the U.S. government would be spending billions and billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and preparations for military aggressions against Iran and Venezuela if it weren’t absolutely convinced that their huge trusts would earn big profits over many decades to pay for the expenses of appropriating other countries’ oil?
On the other hand, there is enough evidence about science’s historical capacity to replace oil as a source of energy. More than 50 years ago, the great economist Paul Baran informed us in his celebrated The Political Economy of Growth that businesses such as General Electric were spending more to stop scientific and technological alternatives to petroleum than developing them.
Clearly, if today petroleum is the most ample and most heavily used energy source, this is due to the perverse scientific effort to prolong their consumption, instead of using more efficient, cleaner and cheaper replacements.
Despite such obstacles, it has been widely known for the past 30 years that ethanol- or cane sugar-based fuels are a viable alternative. In Brazil, for example, ethanol is added to gasoline. The petroleum superpotential produces 14 billion liters of ethanol each year, allowing it to reduce its crude importation by 40 percent.
With all of this in mind, does anyone have any questions about the possibility of sharply reducing oil use and consequently prolonging its duration for generations to come?
In just a few years, medical science has made several remarkable achievements. It has turned once chronic, terminal diseases and into treatable conditions that, with medication, allow people to live longer lives.
Such is the case with heart attacks. These have been reduced largely thanks to the treatment of their two causes: hypertension and high cholesterol. We are witnessing advances that increase lifespan and reduce the number of heart attacks.
It’s not all rosy, however. There are some unfavorable signs in our physical and mental health that do not equate to longer lives. New causes of death among relatively young people are appearing.
Demographers attribute these to certain lifestyles. One is the fearful pairing of alcoholism and car accidents. Suicides are another growing cause of death. One must also add murders to this list. Without a doubt, however, tobacco addiction is ranked as the first cause of modern mortality.
We are witnessing an addiction that is becoming increasingly common in younger ages, for which medical science has yet to discover the necessary therapy. Tobacco addiction isn’t an illness but is the cause of several grave ailments: bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema, lung, throat and bladder cancer, cardiovascular disease and strokes. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was the most recent pathology to be added to the list.
This is now one of the most common diseases of the lungs, and is characterized by difficulty in breathing. Without treatment, it can lead to suffocating. The easiest way to avoid COPD is by not smoking.
But tobacco use is such a powerful addiction that even the bluntest demonstrations of its damages and risks are useless in getting some people to stop this mortal habit.
It hasn’t always been like this. If smoking has been around for hundreds of years, it hasn’t always been a plague like it is today. The historical authenticity of tobacco use allows us to be optimistic about possible reduction and even its eradication.
What didn’t always exist doesn’t have to exist forever. It’s something, as the phrase goes, of breaking stones. Of insisting on fighting the habit.
Nobody is born an addict to tobacco. Nobody is impermeable to education. And nobody has to die from breathing smoke.
According to experts’ opinion, there are thousands of people in Mexico infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The number of people infected totals approximately 50,000.
There are six or seven men infected for every woman. It is known that among men, the most common way to catch the virus is by having sexual relations. It is also known that other ways to become infected is by using contaminated needles, by receiving a transfusion of infected blood, or when a woman with HIV gives birth and breast-feeds her child. Lastly, and most importantly, the ways to prevent this disease are known, which include avoiding the circumstances previously mentioned, particularly having sex without the protection of condoms.
Considering people’s awareness of the simple ways to stop the spread of the virus, it is greatly surprising that there are new cases of HIV-AIDS infection. It can even be said that there should not be a single new case of this disease.
For a person with minimum education and information about the disease and who avoids putting him/herself in risky situations, contracting AIDS is virtually impossible.
It cannot be denied that for some years information about the ways to protect oneself from AIDS has been widely spread and is well-known. Why, then, discarding lack of information, is it that every day there are new cases of this disease in Mexico? Indolence? Irresponsibility? The common belief that “it will not happen to me.”
Regardless of the reason, it is evident that the AIDS epidemic will not be controlled or eradicated until a vaccine is created, which is the only solution to the inexplicable ongoing practice of risky actions. Without being an unfounded optimistic, it is likely that in a short time, medical and biological sciences will create the long-awaited vaccine against AIDS. Consequently, this pathology may follow the steps of other eradicated diseases, such as smallpox or poliomyelitis.
In the meantime, Mexican society faces a huge task. For instance, continuing informative campaigns about ways to prevent infections. By carrying out this task, families, schools, the media, civil organizations, unions, national companies and the government are acting responsibly.
Also, the infected people should not be neglected and they must be provided with the appropriate attention, without arguing that there is lack of financial and medical resources. The task consists of different stages: information, prevention, research and attention to those infected. That is the overwhelming size of the unavoidable task.
Any Spanish-language dictionary will define secularism as the doctrine that advocates or promotes the independence of the individual, society and the State from any religion and, consequently, organization, group, or church, that acts on behalf of those religions or represents them. In other words, secularism is not, as often thought, the separation between church and state, but precisely the “independence of the individual, society and the State from any religious or ecclesiastical influence.”
A secular state and society cannot and should not allow churches to have the means to maintain or increase their influence on society. It is inexplicable why the State allows religious entities to own schools or produce media, or for religious leaders to publicly publish texts. There’s no shortage of outdated ideologies that say democracy is at odds with these exclusions. But the truth is quite the opposite.
Democracy, political and legal regimes born in the heat of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, embody the secular state. In other words, Western democracy is the other name of the secular state.
Thus, in a consistent, non-hypocritical or soon-to-be secular state, religious leaders should not vote or be voted for, because voting is a means to maintain the influence of religion on individuals, society and the state itself. The struggle for secularism or secularization is the struggle for democracy, justice and equality. And any attempt which undermines Mexican secularism is in fact an undemocratic act.
The powerful influence of religions and churches is expressed in the disqualification and the fight against scientific education and the promotion of the ideological theory of creationism. And all of these features in U.S. society are objective, clear and concrete to Mexican religious leaders.
Secularism is clearly the defense against such excesses and aberrations. It is not only the separation of church and state, but also the strength and independence of individuals, society and the State regarding the influence of churches and denominations.
Even President Felipe Calderón and Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont have been saying that police, legal and military strategies to fight narco-trafficking don’t work. Certainly, they haven’t said that it is a complete and absolute failure. Rather, it’s a question of style. Faced with tricky acknowledgements, it’s always better to use euphemisms, circumlocution and images.
It’s understood that they don’t want to be clear and sincere. It isn’t easy to publicly recognize that the program is a failure that has made the country, above all in the north and west, a true mess. Their stubbornness is understandable. They know that their strategy is headed nowhere. But they don’t know what to do.
Their tendency for slow learning keeps them from seeing any solutions. They don’t understand that the core of the problem isn’t in the production and sale of drugs, but rather in the consumption. As long as there is the demand, production and sales are inevitable.
The strategy would have to be to take legal action against consumers. And this is impossible for two reasons. One, the Constitution doesn’t prohibit drug use and, therefore, guarantees every citizen the right to consume drugs if they desire. And two, if the government were to amend the Constitution, it would have to imprison millions of people, including minors. If combatting the production and sale of drugs leads nowhere, and if legally combatting consumption is impossible, the matter becomes an intricate labyrinth.
Many European countries have already found a way out of the labyrinth. They have acknowledged that it’s impossible to stop drug use by punishment; in fact, consumption is growing every day.
Decriminalizing the production and sale of drugs would be the direct path out of the labyrinth. But those countries have found an indirect exit, somewhat hypocritical, but effective. The path has been made thanks to governments’ turning a blind eye: fighting drugs on paper and only with saliva.
Fighting narcos with rivers of blood and mountains of bodies, as Mexico has been doing for three years, doesn’t work. This type of strategy hasn’t worked for 5,000 years. In Spain, for example, marijuana and other drugs are offered to passersby in broad daylight and with great casualness. In Mexico, this act is fearful and done in the dark, as if no one knew what everyone knows.
One could say that the alternative for Calderón and Gómez is to persist in this error or try the successful European model. A question of understanding and rejection of stubbornness. Blood or saliva?
From the early nineties in the 20th century it was known or suspected that the Labor Party (PT) was a creation of the perverse intelligence of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The certainties or the suspicions were result of the obvious influence in that organization of Raúl, brother of the usurper.
In the face of public criticism of the character of the parastatal party, political activists and leaders said that, in fact, there was a parastatal movement within the PT, but there was also a democratic, nationalist and even revolutionary faction. It may have been like this at the beginning.
However, after some time, and after the Salinas brothers were disgraced, the PT started gradually abandoning its parastatal nature to turn into an opportunist organization.
With this opportunist character, the PT has participated in social movements and electoral processes using populist, anti-imperialist, and anti-neoliberal rhetoric, but it is always suspected of weird and unexplainable affiliations.
What has been said about the PT can also be said about the Convergence party, but without the leftist flags that adorned the PT. This party leads a life of permanent oscillation between open parastatalism and shameless opportunism. Almost the same can be said about the Green Party (PVEM): parastatalism and opportunism with an environmentalist banner but marked by the most vulgar mercantilism. In the end, more than a party, it is a letterhead rentable to the best bidder.
The New Alliance Party (PANAL) cannot be qualified, like the other parties, as opportunist or a merchant. It merely is, in a strict sense, a parastatal party: a government agency that serves government ends, regardless of what they are, during electoral processes. To this foursome of parastatal, opportunist or mercantile parties, a fifth element has been added: the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). The PRD has abandoned its original principles and has turned into a rightist parastatal party.
This is a bitter pill to swallow for Mexican progressive political forces. The social leftist force has been left without a party to represent it. The feared divorce between the social movement “lopezobradorista” and its historical party, the PRD, is a sad reality.
With the conversion of the PRD into a rightist organization, the elections have stopped having a meaning for millions of citizens. Voting for the PRD is the same as voting for the PRI or the PAN. There is no leftist electoral option anymore. We will see what the leftist social movement will do if there is no electoral option. The future, always uncertain, today is even more uncertain.
As result of the dreadful negotiations by the PAN, particularly in the past three years, it has become common to assume the imminent return of the PRI to “Los Pinos.” It is even considered certain that Enrique Peña Nieto will become president in Dec. 2012.
But history, as Lenin said, is full of surprises. The rightmost party is preparing a surprise for the PRI. The strategy is underway in Oaxaca and Puebla.
The plan consists in creating an alliance against the PRI between, almost, all political parties: PAN, PRD, PANAL, Convergence, Green, and, if possible, PT. The key in this anti-PRI alliance is the PRD. As we are currently witnessing in Oaxaca and Puebla, the matter is pretty simple because the PRD is lead by the opportunist and corrupted faction headed by Jesús Ortega.
There are some naïves who would say that the alliance between those parties still has to pass the ballot test, meaning, to win against the PRI in the elections in July 2012. But this is precisely naiveté.
In Mexico, votes have never counted. The votes of “Los Pinos,” the IFE, the Electoral Court, and oligarchies, would undoubtedly support the anti-PRI alliance. The PRI, of course, would claim fraud. But the other five (or six) parties would argue that the election was clean.
Oaxaca and Puebla will be, within the next few days, scenarios of a rehearsal for 2012. If everything goes according to the plan of the PAN, and the anti-PRI alliances impose themselves on the PRI, the belief in the goodness and efficiency of these types of alliances, to stop the PRI from returning to the maximum power, will be established.
Is it necessary to recall the classic saying that the doors of “Los Pinos” are opened from the inside? That is what Calderón is doing, with the invaluable help of the usual braggarts and their new acquisition: a warped, commercialized and parastatal PRD.
According to Reyes Heroles, first comes the program, then the man. The program, the alliance, is ready. The man could be any man, but he would have to be blue. A blue head would ensure the dominance of the PAN in this alliance.
It is hard to believe that this master stroke and excellent strategy came from the PAN, which lacks lucid minds. Never mind that, though. What matters is that the alliance of the PAN, as master, and Ortega, as vassal, guarantees the annihilation of López Obrador and the PRI, which believes it will return to “Los Pinos.”
On October 16 2009, the election of the Advisory Council of the National Broadcasting Chamber took place. There were two candidates. One was Rafael Borbón Ramos and the other, Gustavo Rentería. In the fight, Rafael won, and therefore, he became the new president of the Advisory Council.
But the result did not satisfy many broadcasters in the country, because in the election there were, to put it delicately, many irregularities. A blunt statement would talk about a cynical and insolent electoral fraud, but, fortunately, not unpunished. Because in the face of many documented evidences of electoral fraud, the aggravated broadcasters decided to report the incident to the proper authorities, namely, the Economy Secretariat.
And the Secretariat ordered a repeat of the process, something that has never happened since the foundation of the Council, in 1941, almost 70 years ago. Legally, nothing can stop Rafael Barbón Ramos to run again as candidate to the presidency of the Advisory Council. But it is not the same politically. How can he run again in a new election while having engraved on his forehead, the stigma of defrauder of his own colleagues?
Beyond the people, however, what is momentous in this matter is that the fraud victims decided to not be quiet in face of the barbaric abuse. And they have set a democratic precedent in a business organization that is used to “doing its dirty laundry at home,” a strange conduct for people and businesses whose job is, precisely, public broadcasting and the transmission of ideas.
I would not be saying anything new if I stated that electoral fraud is common for Mexicans. And it would not be new to state that the culture of fraud finds support in conformism, commodity and lack of willingness to meddle with the affairs of deceit and manipulation of victims. But in the concrete case of broadcasting organizations, everything has now been different in regards to the victims and the authorities, whom have not validated an evident and well-documented fraud.
There will be, however, political and economic forces within the Chamber that would prefer a fight, imposition and even a new electoral fraud. But the task seems impossible. The new election will be under the public spotlight and that of the authorities. Insisting on dominating by force the seemingly weaker opponents might be suicidal. Particularly if these, as they have already proved, are not willing to be dominated.
The etymology of cataclysm (noun which means catastrophe, disaster, ruin) is kataklysmos, meaning inundation. And for millennia, the catastrophe par excellence was flooding. Floods caused many more deaths and damages than any other natural disaster: earthquakes, washouts or fires, for example.
That is why any type of disaster, whether or not it is a flood, can be called a cataclysm: a great misfortune in the life of a person, group or community.
And, literally, a cataclysm is what occurred in Valle de Chalco, Mexico State, and in El Arenal neighborhood in the capital’s Venustiano Carranca Borough. True catastrophes that have left thousands of families without property or loved ones.
But the cataclysm in both cases has a horrendous peculiarity: wastewater flooded due to the forces of nature — intense and atypical rain — combined with human negligence. What happened in Chalco and El Arenal, and in other metro areas, shouldn’t have happened. It was perfectly avoidable. A similar event occurred just a few months ago in Valle Dorado, Mexico State. If this type of disaster has multiple precedents in this state in recent years and decades, it’s undeniable that in this administration it has become an everyday fact of life.
In the National Water Commission (Conagua), Calderón selected as its head a man without a head: José Luis Luege Tamargo, a friend of Calderón who has given plenty of public proof of his incompetence, frivolity, ignorance and lack of talent. Not just during his current position, but in his history as a public official.
The magnitude of this disaster and the damage to thousands of families, would merit them, in another type of government, an exhaustive investigation from all of those involved and an exemplary punishment for those responsible. But there’s no doubt that in such an investigation, the director of Conagua would have a privileged place.
And if Luege were a man of honor and self respect, he would have already resigned from his undeserved position. Not just to avoid hindering investigations, but also out of professional and personal shame.
Calderón, of course, would have to think of the evident inexperience of his friend and collaborator. And upon relieving him (I’m not saying to sanction him, because I don’t think Calderón would dare), naming a professionally qualified person to the charge, even if it’s not a friend or fellow panista. Because, as he knows, as does even the most novice civil engineer, water and excrement are not to be meddled with.
The favorite to succeed President Lázaro Cárdenas was Gen. Francisco J. Múgica. But Cárdenas’ successor was Manuel Ávila Camacho. Javier Rojo Gómez was considered a shoe-in, but Miguel Alemán followed Ávila. Alemán was expected to be replaced by his cousin, Fernando Casas Alemán, but the successor ended up being Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. Then, Gilberto Flores Muñoz was considered to be the inevitable successor, but instead Adolfo López Mateos became the next president.
Presidential Secretary Donato Miranda Fonseca was thought to replace López Mateos, but the next Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and president was López Mateos’ Interior Secretary, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, an old anti-communist from the Ávila Camacho “cacique” camp. Emilio Martínez was widely believed to replace Díaz Ordaz, but Luis Echeverría Álvarez took the following “sexenio.”
After Echeverría, Mario Moya Palencia was the favorite, but it was José López Portillo’s turn to occupy Los Pinos. “Jolopo,” as he was nicknamed, was expected to be replaced by Jorge de la Vega Domínguez, but the next tricolor candidate was Miguel de la Madrid. After de la Madrid, Alfredo del Mazo was the favorite, but Carlos Salinas won the candidacy and presidency.
To replace Salinas, Manuel Camacho was a serious contender, but Luis Colosio became the candidate, and after his assassination, Ernesto Zedillo was to become the next, and last, PRI president. Zedillo’s favored successor, Francisco Labastida, lost to Vicente Fox, the first opposition president in more than 70 years. And Santiago Creel was expected to carry on the National Action Party’s (PAN) ruling, but Felipe Calderón was chosen as the candidate.
This perhaps tedious relation of historical events can lead us to an obvious conclusion: the favorite or leading man never became president. This historical constant continued with the case of Andrés Manuel López Obrador: he was the favored successor during nearly all of Fox’s term, and even though millions of Mexicans still think he was robbed of the election, the end result was the strength of a constant.
As 2012 nears, the absolute favorite candidate is Mexico State Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto. But if history is any sign, the PRI candidate could end up being Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, Beatriz Paredes Rangel or anybody else. Will the priistas consider, knowing, as it is known, that the favorite candidate for succession never becomes the president?
In a highly-expected move from an ultra-right government, the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is appealing same-gender marriage and adoption in the Federal District before the Supreme Court (SCJN). It isn’t easy to determine which federal institution is the most corrupt and the least credible. Nor is it easy to know which of these is the most reactionary and the most submissive to the executive branch.
The similarity in conditions of corruption and obedience to Los Pinos and conservatism allows one to conclude that the Court could uphold the PGR’s reasoning and thereby discard the Mexico City law.
But it’s also possible, despite its putrid character, that the Court will side with those who are in favor of same-gender marriages and adoption. The Court’s most discredited members perfectly understand that overturning reforms made by the Federal District’s Legislative Assembly (ALDF) would imply a conflict between powers: between the federation and the capital. And the Supreme Court, the central organism of the Mexican status quo, will think twice before conspiring against this same status quo with a debate that would have no end and nothing good would come from it. Beyond the Court’s determination, however, is a clear fact.
One thing would be to legally declare the invalidity these types of marriages and another, very different move would be to stop same-gender people from getting married. If the Court upholds the DF’s reforms, it would bring about the divorce of law and reality. And reality, as Lenin would say, is very stubborn.
In other words, same-gender unions will continue existing. Even if they are declared illegal, marriage and adoptions will continue. Let’s say that a malicious call from the high court would provoke and bring about informality, darkness, silence and a lack of control over social, demographic, cultural and health phenomena of the utmost importance.
If the Court favors the PGR’s appeal, it would be a triumph with no substance. It would be a formal, but not a real, victory. In reality, a new, historic defeat against the right and conservatism. What truly worries religious groups and conservatives is the public expression and acceptance of homosexuality. They prefer that homosexuals to stay in the closet, and are socially and publicly condemned. And for that to happen today is impossible.
A 21st century secularized Mexican society does not share the same medieval criteria as religious groups and conservatives. Abortion, divorce, the rejection of religious and civil marriage, occasional sexual partners, sexual promiscuity, successive or simultaneous sexual partners, homosexual and bisexual relationships are all general and even universal features of modern Mexican society. They are, regardless of laws in favor or laws against.
We Mexicans have a lot of experience with earthquakes. We know, by experience, that a 7.0-plus magnitude quake doesn't destroy well-built buildings. Mexico City's Torre Latinoamericana has resisted both the 1957 and 1985 disasters without the slightest hint of damage.
We know that modern civil engineering has the technical and scientific knowledge to build buildings and structures that resist earthquakes such as the one Haiti experienced last week. And we know that such constructions are designed to resist earthquakes with greater magnitudes than the one that has destroyed Port-au-Prince. This knowledge, therefore, obliges one to search for an explanation as to why Haiti's situation is so immense. After the 1985 tragedy, we knew that public and private buildings that fell, for example, were built with thick wire instead of metal rods, and that many of those were built without complying with construction regulations.
It's important to remember that the majority of large buildings that fell or were damaged were public: the Tlatelolco housing complex, a National College of Technical and Professional Education school, the Health Secretariat's Juárez Hospital. And if its true that the strongest-hit zone was the downtown area, there were, and are, very tall buildings that weren't affected. The lack of building compliances during that time was the reason for such an immense tragedy. And this non-compliance has no explanation other than corruption and complacency between construction companies and public officials.
Shoddy construction is on par with selling 900 grams of something when the customer pays for a kilogram. Both classic cases of fraud and deceit. In Port-au-Prince's case, all fingers point to corruption. Aggravated and inherent corruption in the neo-colony. One mustn't forget that Haiti is a neo-colony of the United States. A Yankee neo-colony occupied by the military, even though these forces hide their original imperial image under the mask of the United Nations flag. It's well-known that colonies and neo-colonies are fertile ground for lucrative business. Buy them cheap and sell them more expensive. Sell people things they don't need but sell them indispensable items, like food and medicine, at the price of gold. Who can challenge these practices? A government installed by its colonial master? A proconsul that represents the metropolis and not the subjugated country? And having already taken advantage of the fraudulent construction business (even the UN building), perhaps the most profitable business to rebuild the city is what's next.
On Thursday, Jan. 7, the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in Mexico distributed to media and foreign and national journalists a press release of great interest to the public, the importance of which deserves widespread knowledge.
The embassy says that the United States government recently strengthened security measures at airports, which includes stricter controls on travelers from 14 countries. Cuba is one of them, and Washington accuses it of “supporting terrorism.”
Cuba, however, called its inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism absolutely unjustified and arbitrary. Washington has no proof of Cuba's supposed involvement in terrorist activities, nor that it funds, supports or has ties to terrorism. The Cuban government has never promoted, organized, financed or executed terrorist activities against the U.S. or any other country, and it has never allowed terrorism to be planned from its territory.
On the contrary, as is well known, Cuba has been the victim of organized terrorist actions, financed and carried out by the CIA, as well as organizations of Cuban origin residing in the U.S. These include criminals such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who have not been properly tried, despite having confessed to being the masterminds of terrorist acts against Cubans, among them, the 1976 bombing of the Cuban Aviation Company airliner that killed all 73 people aboard. Paradoxically, for the past 11 years, five Cubans have been unfairly imprisoned in the U.S., the Cuban Embassy says. Their only crime was to infiltrate Cuban-origin terrorism organizations that operate in total impunity in Florida, in order to obtain information that would prevent further attacks on Cuba.
The embassy reminds us that along with the U.S.' pretense to fight terrorism, it maintains imperial wars, in which thousands of civilians have been killed (women and children among them), which in turn creates more terrorist and insecurity in the world and even among U.S. citizens. Both the Cuban people and government refuse to acknowledge any moral authority in the U.S. government's move to include the island nation in the terrorism category. The only reason the current U.S. administration has in keeping Cuba on this infamous list is to justify its persistence in the failed, aggressive policy toward Cuba, and likewise, its failed obsession with demonizing and isolating it from the international community, the embassy says.
With these types of actions, President Barack Obama's rhetoric and promises for change continue to be further from reality, the embassy concludes. And how much truth, I ask, is there in this statement?
Crime has always existed. But each period of time has had its own particular forms of crime, along with mechanisms to defend society: laws, police forces, judges, prisons, gallows. But throughout the ages and across the world, the most efficient factor to avoid crime from taking place has been prevention.
The story of Medieval merchants is classic and well known. In order to avoid being robbed during their journeys, they stored their money in an early version of banks, carrying with them the certified receipts of deposit. This was a predecessor to checking, credit cards and electronic transfers, which prevent us from being robbed outright of our possessions.
The rules to avoid being a crime victim are, in reality, very basic. But they require a certain amount of learning, willingness and discipline to put them into practice and continue to follow them.
One must take these rules into account when it comes to people, cars, public transit and passersby. More people should learn not to place valuable or valuable-looking objects in view. Places that are dangerous, unknown, scarcely lit or without security should be avoided. And it´s always better to walk in a group or, at least, in pairs.
At home, there are useful mechanisms that discourage crime, such as locks, door and window grating, alarm systems, neighborhood watch organizations and police and security forces.
With cars, it´s always recommended to use parking lots and not park in public areas. Nearly all vehicle thefts occur on the streets.
History and judicial-police theories teach us only too well that the majority of crimes committed have to do with property and material possessions.
This is the case with simple theft, pickpocketing, armed robbery, vehicle theft, burglary and fraud. And for all of these types of crime, there are ways to avoid them from happening.
The criminal, however, always relies on the involuntary aid of the victim. With fraud, for example, that aid tends to b involuntary complacency. While the fraudster uses deceit, he depends on the ignorance, ambition and greed of his victims.
Just as one learns to use locks, he must also learn to control profoundly human impulses that make a person believe that the impossible is possible, such as buying a car at half its value, or getting an extremely low interest rate on a loan as offered by certain financial institutions. As the popular Mexican phrase goes, nobody trades pesos for centavos.
For the past 35 years, Article 4 of the Constitution has established that men and women are equal before the law. But legal or formal equality doesn´t always imply realistic equality.
Even so, there are many areas in society where equality between men and women is an absolute reality. This is the case, for example, with education, from kindergarten to university.
Health is another similarity. Men and women receive identical medical and hospital attention. This is also true in politics: men and women have and exercise the same rights.
If it´s true that women don´t occupy directorial positions in the same proportion as men, this phenomenon can´t be attributed to deliberate politics. Rather, it´s the result of a patriarcal culture that is being chipped away at every day, but has yet to crumble all together.
Having arrived at these levels of equality, or if you prefer, at these low levels of inequality, has implied a decades-long effort in education.
One could say that the route to equality began when all girls had access to school.
But there´s no doubt that the possibilities of equality between men and women grew exponentially at the exact moment of the technologic-scientific revolution, putting the greatest tool for personal and familiar liberation in their hands: modern contraceptive methods.
Today the woman is, for the first time in history, decider of her own destiny. She is no longer chained to inevitable maternity.
Previously, unwanted pregnancy closed the doors to university, paid employment, a career and social mobility. Today, women have voluntary pregnancy in their hands.
On this long and rough path, in which education and contraception have played important roles, it´s necessary to take another step forward.
The search for complete gender equality passes, necessarily, through the control of voluntary motherhood. And this control can only be achieved when no law impedes a woman from deciding about her own motherhood. That right to decide is already a reality in many countries, as well as in Mexico City.
But it hasn´t been a free concession from governments and institutions. It has been the fruits of fighting, decisive, brave, consequential and tireless fighting, from feminist movements and perceptive, revolutionary masculine minds.
One could say, then, that the levels of equality achieved for women are mostly the product of the best women´s and men´s efforts.
It´s up to the next generation of women who know, are able and want to fight for their rights, along with the best men.
During the past few decades, Mexico’s private universities have grown slowly but steadily. Studies show that private institutions account for one third of total enrollment.
Whit this information, one must ask oneself what the reasons are behind this notorious growth of these for-pay universities. And the question becomes even more pertinent taking into account the human tendency to abide by the fundamental economic principal that teaches us to obtain maximum results with the least mount of money of effort.
According to this philosophic principal, the sensible thing would be for more people to choose free education versus its costly counterpart. Beyond philosophy, in everyday practice, the resistance of human beings to choose a free degree instead of a burdensome one is evident.
A good start to understand this phenomenon is to consider that many factors come into play. If the economic factor always takes prominence, then there are powerful non-economic motives; most notably, quality.
Is it true that private universities provide better education? Not necessarily. Nearly all private institutions fall into the “pseudo-university” category, in which students shell out a certain amount of pesos to buy their degrees.
Quality private universities aside, the knowledge that most private schools are of poor quality leads us to ask ourselves why public schools’ competitors are growing.
One of these factors is due to the documented decline in the offering of public universities.
Everyone knows of the staggeringly competitive and low admittance rate at government-funded public universities, namely at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the National Polytechnic Institute and the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).
If these rationales are valid, and subject to analyzing the presence of other possible factor of growing enrollment at public universities, it’s useful to think that maybe the main reason for this expansion is a corresponding fall in public universities’ academic offerings.
Mexico City, also called the Federal District, has always been the leader of the economic, cultural, social and political development of the Republic. The largest and most important educational institutions of the nation are found In the Federal District. It is the home of the federal authority and the most influential and public-reaching media.
Consistent with that leadership, in 1974, Mexico City was the scene of a crucial and decisive change in the social, cultural and political life of the Republic: the constitutional establishment of full legal equality of men and women.
And now, before the conclusion of the first decade of the new century, Mexico City is at the forefront again by becoming the country´s leader in social progress, enabling the voluntary, legal and free termination of pregnancy before twelve gestation weeks. It is also the first to define the provisions of divorce without grounds and only by the will of one spouse.
It is easy to observe, that the crux of these advances is the recognition by the State of the will of the citizen to decide the course of his or her own life.
In the case of female citizens, the freedom to decide their own motherhood and in the case of men and women, the freedom to continue or discontinue a relationship.
So it is a little surprising that there are people and institutions that wish to involve state participation in the establishment of couples of same sex.
It is surprising, because no one, at least in Mexico City, is opposed to two people of the same sex sharing their life, living together and supporting each other.
Living in this way means the exercise of free citizenship at the fullest, the fullest freedom of adult men and women to decide how to live their lives without interference from the State and religious organizations.
Why, one wonders, should the State have to sanction what two citizens have freely chosen of their own intimate and free-will?
The modern, secular notion of freedom implies the diminishing of state intervention in the personal lives of citizens. Does not the Constitution say, for example, that the home and mail are inviolable?
And does not our Constitution say that no one may be bothered in his personal life, unless the law was violated?
The Letter of Queretaro states categorically that everyone can live as they please, with or without partner or spouse. And neither the Constitution nor any law in the Republic establishes the ban on married life of two adults of the same sex.
Why demand state intervention and legal sanction of something that does not violate any law and is the exclusive preservation of the most intimate personal freedom?
My dear friend Gustavo Rentería, knowing my interest in the theme, recently forwarded me an e-mail that he and other well-known journalists received.
The crux of the message, which was sent anonymously, was this: "Has polio been eradicated? It's a belief that floats around. If I didn't personally investigate on the Internet, I would not have realized that in reality, polio is very far from being eradicated".
Up to this point, the author of the message has some validity. Because, really, poliomyelitis, or polio, has not been completely eradicated from the planet, but it is very close to eradication.
In Mexico, for example, the last case was in Tomatlán, Jalisco, in 1990. And according to international health protocol, when five years pass after the last case reported in a country or region, the illness is declared eradicated. So in 1995, the Panamerican Health Organization declared Mexico free of polio.
Polio persists only in some countries in Subsaharan Africa, which is the most exploited, poor and underdeveloped region in the world.
However, if there is some reason in the paragraph I cite above, the second paragraph is absurd, misinformed, and categorically slanderous: "Far from eradicating poliomyelitis in the world, it has been recognized that the polio vaccination itself brings the risk of extending the disease, which has been confirmed many times. The number of cases of acute paralysis in infants has skyrocketed in countries where the entire population receives the vaccine."
Where did the anonymous slanderer get the information that "paralysis in infants has skyrocketed" where populations are vaccinated? Where did the letter-writer get this information, and with what evidence? And what health authority in the world has "recognized that the polio vaccination itself" constitutes an increased risk of extending the disease?
The Internet is certainly a wonderful source of information, education, and culture. But like all means of communication, the Internet serves both to inform and misinform.
The Internet directs and misdirects, it sheds light and it obscures facts. Clearly the anonymous letter-writer uses the Internet to misinform, misdirect, and obscure this matter, the delicate issue of contagious diseases.
Since the end of the 18th century, when William Jenner created the vaccine for smallpox, vaccination has prevented and almost eradicated 12 serious diseases. That is a scientific truth. And science is absolutely incompatible with charlatanry, which is present on the Internet.
There are many well known photographs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. president from 1933 to 1945. Perhaps the most universally known are the ones that were taken in February 1945 with his British counterpart Winston Churchill and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, during the Yalta Conference held on the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, in the south of the former USSR.
In all those photos Roosevelt is sitting. He appears seated in the presidential office, in a car, in press conferences and radio booths.
In some photos, of course, he is standing. But those are images of him as a child or young man, always under 39 years old. There is a picture of Roosevelt standing in the company of his mother, Sara, but he is leaning against a small fence.
He never appeared standing in public because he was paralyzed. In 1921, at 39 years old, he contracted polio, a dreaded disease that left him immobile from the waist down.
Never letting himself be seen by the public in a wheelchair or using the heavy leg harnesses that most victims of polio used was a strategy to become a candidate for the US presidency.
Having been a victim of the severe effects this disease causes, Roosevelt was one of the first people to initiate research on polio, which was conducted between 1955 and 1957. This research led to the creation of the vaccine by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin.
Thanks to this vaccine, polio has almost been abolished. The last case in Mexico was in Tomatlán, Jalisco, in 1990. According to international health protocols, after five years have passed from the last case in a country or region, the disease is declared eradicated. So, in 1995 the Pan American Health Organization (OPS) declared Mexico polio-free.
In 2008 there were only 1,651 cases of polio worldwide. Absolute eradication is within reach, but depends solely on the continuity of vaccinations. There have been some Subsaharan countries in Africa that have let their guard down and polio has sprung up again.
This has happened because, taking advantage of ignorance present in these societies, a powerful current of criminal quackery has accused the vaccination of being responsible for new cases of the disease.
A similar thing happened with smallpox. But in this case, vaccinations were not suspended and now smallpox doesn’t exist.
Just when Mexicans were expecting the government to create economic measures that would help the country get out of the economic crisis, the government does exactly the opposite. It enacts economic policies that will aggravate, deepen, and prolong the crisis. Tax increases will do exactly that. Even people who don't really understand economics know that an increase in taxes equals a decrease in the size of their own pocketbook, and less purchasing power. A decrease in personal income for millions of people would not only imply the impoverishment of those people; it also means a fall in national consumer spending, and therefore a fall in sales.
A fall in sales means a fall in production. And a fall in production leads to more unemployment. More unemployment means, again, lower consumer spending. And lower consumption leads to lower production, and so goes the deepening of the crisis.
Increasing the IVA from 15 to 16 percent will not increase the amount of tax collected, as government officials naively believe. What we can expect instead is a huge increase in the informal economy.
Producers and consumers have their own economic logic, a logic very different from the technocrats who think they know how to increase the government's resources. Consumers' logic will propel a great majority of people to avoid paying the IVA.
The informal economy is already people's daily bread and butter, and to avoid the IVA, every day the number of informal transactions will grow.
But among many mistakes in the economic package, perhaps the biggest is the 3 percent tax on cash deposits. This absurd tax is an invitation to escape official financial institutions and engage in clandestine banking. It would increase the risks associated with trade and production. The only thing left to do is ask what happened to the economic and social sensibility of certain officials and legislators.
The word utopia means a place that doesn't exist. It comes from the Greek word ou, which means no, and topos, meaning place. It's an imaginary perfect society where there are no rich and no poor, where justice and fraternity rule. Utopia, by definition, is an impossible proposition.
Thomas More wrote a book called "Utopia in 1516 that describes an imaginary state. And Tommaso Campanella published "The City of the Sun" a century later, another description of an ideal, perfect society. In the 19th century, Charles Fourier imagined a system of phalanxes, places of camaraderie and voluntary work, which could provide well-being and happiness to their members. Novelists and film directors have also presented visions of the opposite of utopia, societies of the future where chaos, destruction, calamity, and the extinction of humankind are the themes that reign. These types of fictions are called dystopias.
Remember the 1973 film Soylent Green, which painted an apocalyptic scenario as a result of nonstop population growth? Now, almost forty years later, we know that population increase has stopped being a problem. Just as utopian fictions seek to activate people's hopes, dystopian scenarios aim to terrorize society with apocalyptic visions.
Ebola, SARS, the avian flu, AIDS, pollution, cloning, artificial human reproduction, vaccines and medicines, and the new swine flu have been the topics of dystopian fictions.
But the current state of those topics proves the impossibility of the apocalyptic futures. The best example is AIDS, which has evolved from being a terminal illness when it was discovered in the 1980s, to a chronic illness treatable with retroviral medicines that prolong the life of the patient. We also now know it is preventable, because the methods of transmission are known. Dystopian visions are certainly attractive thematic devices for works of fiction, but in the end, are just works of fantasy.
Anyone who has followed the case of the Cuban Five prisoners in the United States knows that international pressure on Washington to stop this monstrous injustice is immense, constant, and growing. But until now, the White House has tried to distance itself from the issue, arguing that since it is a judicial matter, the executive branch should not intervene. However, it's clear in the eyes of the international community that this is not a judicial matter, but rather strictly political.
This conviction of international observers has translated into heavy pressure on the Obama administration, which in turn, is acting like it's trying to get rid of a rock in its shoe. But it's not only that. Obama, the Democrat, has echoed the sentiments of Jimmy Carter, another Democrat, in saying he wants to normalize relations with Cuba. But he knows that normalization can't occur while the Cuban Five are still in jail. This is the unwavering position of Fidel, Raúl, and the entire Cuban population.
Cuba, of course, is also interested in normalizing relations with the U.S. As a gesture toward that goal, Raúl has offered the liberation and expatriation of the 50-some U.S. agents imprisoned on the island. "A gesture for a gesture," said Raúl when offering the freedom of the American agents, in exchange for the release of the five Cubans from American prisons.
Is such an exchange possible? Yes, says lawyer Jose Pertierra. There is an historical precedent Pertierra explained to me. In March 1954, four Puerto Rican independence fighters opened fire in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC, wounding five legislators. They received sentences of between 50 and 75 years, and served for 25 years, until President Carter released them in 1979, citing executive clemency. It was Fidel Castro who petitioned for the Puerto Ricans' freedom, and shortly thereafter, Fidel liberated a group of U.S. agents who were imprisoned in Cuba. Such an exchange could be repeated now with the Cuban Five. Their release in exchange for the liberty of the 50 U.S. agents imprisoned in Cuba.
With the exchange, Obama would free himself from international pressure, and both countries could begin to normalize their relations.
Over the past sixty years in Mexico, diabetes has become the leading cause of death. Millions of people of all ages suffer from it and what is even worse: every year the number of sick grows unstoppably.
Diabetes, clearly, is not a problem exclusive to Mexicans. The scourge is spreading to all nooks of the planet. Perhaps the only people safe from this disease are starving.
Medical science, of course, offers relief for severe cases, but prevention and control of this disease requires kicking a bad habit we have developed over the past 60 years: overeating.
Only six decades ago, mid-twentieth century, the overeating that exists today was unimaginable. So was the universal suffering of diabetes.
In 1950, the world population was 2 billion. Now it is 6 billion. In that time the population has tripled, but in the same period, food production around the world has multiplied by twelve. So today, in the early twenty-first century, there is four times as much food per person than sixty years ago.
It is perfectly reasonable to establish a statistical correlation between the universal food abundance that characterizes the world today and the increase of diabetes worldwide.
Perhaps that is why prevention and treatment of diabetes is so hard. How do you ask generations that only knew of shortages, misery and famine to eat less now that they can eat whatever they want. Why submit to a diet of 2,500 calories a day, when it's possible (and enjoyable) to eat 5,000? Ah, the pleasure of eating!
It’s well known that one of the largest supporters of the coup against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, was a Cuban [ex-patriate] multi-millionaire named Rafael Hernández Nodarse; more commonly know by his alias “Ralph H. Nodarse.” He is the owner of San Pedro Sula’s most popular TV station, Channel 6, which has played a decisive role in the justification of the coup and in the campaign to support Micheleti and the other insurrectionists.
Perhaps slightly less well known is that, before the coup, Ralph Nodarse was an active participant in assassination attempts against president Zelaya. And it may not be common knowledge, outside of Honduras, that his name came to light in a bombing attempt against former Honduran president Carlos Roberto Reina.
Outside of Honduras people probably don’t know about the meetings Nodarse held in his San Pedro Sula house with members of the Miami mafia to plan action against President Zelaya and his chancellor, Patricia Rodas, for their pro- Cuba posture in the meetings in Trinidad and Tobago in April; two months before Micheleti’s coup in June.
Nodarse’s links to the Miami mafia are nothing new, its just old friendly ties and political acquaintances. After Luis Posada Carriles (a CIA trained anti-Cuban terrorist) was released from a Panamanian prison in1994, pardoned in the middle of the night by president Mireya Moscoso hours before the end of his term, Nodarse took him in. Four years before in 1990, Posada was shot while leading a Death Squad in Guatemala and went right to San Pedro Sula.
Nodarse has a very long trajectory in Miami mafia circles that do not act only against Cuba, but also against Central America, most recently Honduras. None is safe from the long murderous arm of the counterrevolutionary Cubans of Miami. The fragile democratic institutions of Central America will serve as easy targets for Posada and Nodarse. One can assume that President of the United States Barak Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton know about these public travesties, but still allow Nodarse and his family onto U.S. soil.
This doesn’t prove that Obama or Clinton are patrons or accomplices in the coup or to these terrorist circles, but it does show their hypocrisy and double standards concerning their public condemnation of terrorism. A few US visas to known international terrorists say more than a million words.
