From Xico

Food Safety Again -- this time big farms vs. small

In my previous posts I talked about personal responsibility in making foods as safe as possible.  I haven't addressed the problems of scale because I was primarily focusing on Mexico vs. the US.  But in fact agribusiness and factory farming are big in Mexico as well as in the US.  In fact some of the Mexican businesses have US fingerprints.  AND food safety issues multiply with the size of the food production and distribution organizations.  So here is an editorial from a small farm site for you to peruse.  And keep in mind the functions of local and small vs. huge and distant and remember that organic isn't a magic solution.

Petroleum Reserves, Offshore Drilling, Mexico and the US

As Nancy Pelosi tries to save the planet by blocking offshore drilling in the US, other folks have their eyes on Pemex, Mexicos nationalized oil company.  I wrote two posts, and will do more, to explain why that this company is and remains nationalized is so important to Mexico (I only got up to 1910).  Regardless, this analysis of Pemex's current severe problems in McClatchy is quite good. 

Pemex is the number three provider of petroleum to the United States. US oil companies have been drooling with desire for Pemex for a long time, maybe since as long ago as Standard Oil lost it to Mexico in 1938.  Today, Felipe Calderón, Mexico's president, is trying to arrive at reforms that would give to such companies some contracts to build and operate refineries. 

The problem is that once again, the wrong solutions to real problems are getting the most consideration.

Like the drug situation.  The US wants to intrude into Mexico itself and militarize even more extensively Mexico's antidrug efforts, benefitting US contractors at the same time. But US antidrug policies elsewhere  are failed policies (think Afghanistan, Colombia) and the reasons are pretty clear.  Now the PAN government is considering letting US companies come in and get their claws into Mexico's oil industry -- AGAIN!  Oil companies are not likely to fail as drug efforts have, quite the contrary.  But if you know anything about US oil companies, you know they are NOT interested in any more than their own bottom lines.  They will just be more in a long line of foreign companies that have made Mexico's bottom line look better while leeching (with the close cooperation and benefit of Mexico's richest in many cases) resources from the country.  This isn't quite fair, perhaps, but it's close.

Pemex does need to be reformed.  It just that Exxon and Shell are the wrong tools.

Save the Planet -- No to John McCain 6

This is not politics as usual.  And I never used to be into conspiracy theories.  I used to be accused of being too trusting, in fact.  No more. I think there is, if not a corporate conspiracy, then a bunch of corporations who not surprisingly don't want to see themselves exposed by a Democratic administration, don't want to see themselves restricted to ethical behavior.  I would point to some of CNN's coverage of the election, in particular a story last night in which the reporter and his researcher (or whatever) surveyed a small Tennessee town and reported that virtually all the people in the town at best doubted that Obama was a Christian and pointed grimly to his name, "not a good Anglo-Saxon name" repeatedly.  The reporter gleefully said that this mistrust would have shown up in any small town they'd picked to survey when asked by Wolf Blitzer if that town was special.  The reporter's grinning triumphantly was bizarre, to say the least.  And of course, even if it wasn't endorsing the idea that Obama wasn't Christian it sure was repeating it over and over and over.

Next.  John McCain has no soul.  His hammering at Democratic refusal to drill for oil offshore is the worst sort of playing to ignorance you can imagine.  Here is a link to a column today by Paul Krugman which details his crime.