From Xico

From Veracruz, commentary on Israel's bombing of Gaza

From the blog, Pulso Crítico en Veracruz, a post by Pedro Miguel entitled "Israel."  My translation as usual.

The problem is not that Israel is a Jewish state, but that it is a terrorist state.  Whether it had been founded and inhabited by [Otomíes, Pashtuns or Norwegians, its genocidal practices deserve something more than universal condemnation: they warrant the immediate and forceful intervention of the community of nations in order to defend the victims from Israel's barbarity and to bring the Israeli government before international tribunals of justice in order to try its members for war crimes.

There are two reasons why this hasn’t happened yet and why, possibly, it will never happen: the justifiable sense of blame that the western powers feel for not having stopped the extermination of the Jews which the Nazis undertook, and much more decisive and important, the role of Tel Aviv as strategic ally of Europe and the US in a region dominated by Islamic Arabs....  If it weren’t for these two factors, a long time ago Israel would have found itself the object of a powerful economic blockade, it would have been harassed in a systematic way and, possibly, it would have been devastated by bombing from the West as happened to Iraq and to some extent Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

And the Israeli regime is not only guilty of  crimes against humanity  as we've witnessed at the end of this year when planes from Tel Aviv rained down collective punishment against women, men, childen and the elderly of Gaza, but also of the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction: the atom bombs of Israel, produced under the nose of Washington and Brussels [seat of the European Union], a threat to the world,  much more real than the imagined Iraqi arms whose existence George Bush invented to justify his war for the benefit of business.  Additionally, Israel, founded by Ben Gurion and Weismann, linked with Haganá and Irgún, Zionist organizations famous for their bloody reprisals against the Arabs, and no less terrorists than the Islamic Hamas and Hesbollah, has applied a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the Palestinian portion of Jerusalem similar to what Milosevic put into practice in his  now-extinct regime in Bosnia; it has sacked and devastated the Palestinians’ natural resources; it has subjected the populations of the West Bank and Gaza to merciless exploitation, to misery and humiliation and has planted, in Israeli territory itself, a racist regime of discrimination and apartheid against Arab citizens.

With its power, the Israeli state doesn’t run any danger of being destroyed by its Arab and Muslim neighbors, even less by the attacks of tattered desperados who from time to time undertake terrorist attacks against the south of Isael.  Israel’s vast military resources – obtained in large measure thanks to the unconditional support of Washington – assure an irreversible and overwhelming advantage over the rest of the countries in the region.

The main enemies of the Israeli government are its own arrogance, its impunity, until now absolute, its demeaning of international law and its racist and provocative application of its own laws.  In this way, the Jewish state (the same would be true if it were Mixtec or Druse or Armenian) follows a path to irreparable moral bankruptcy.  The West ought to intervene, not to destroy Israel as it destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan, but to contain it, to reform it, to rescue it from itself, to stop it from continuing to worship barbarism and continuing to offer the world horrific gifts as it has done this bloody New Year in Gaza. 

But let's not confuse issues: the moment has arrived when the shofar sounds,  and many gentiles, with the same affection we've felt in all the years past, will say shaná tobá to our Jewish friends and acquaintances, whether they be Israeli or not.

Slaughtering the Innocents

No matter if both sides have reason to be angry at the other, Israel appears hell-bent on exterminating the Palestinians in Gaza.  Here is a video on Juan Cole's site.  The tunnels to Egypt as I understand it are for food and medicine.

I am spending too much time away from blogging about life here in our area, but I will return to that shortly.

Here is a link to a post by Judah Grudstein on the World Politics Review blog.  In it he discusses the fact that what's going on now in Gaza and Israel is a proxy for a larger "negotiation."  I mentioned in a previous post a similar point: these players and watchers don't see they are playing a superficial game of chess without the faintest awareness, it seems, that real people are suffering.  It reminds me of the old board game Diplomacy where we moved pieces across a cardboard map of the world.  I am currently reading The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaraya.  I always liked him on CNN and elsewhere.  He sees international issues from a nuanced perspective, as close to an objective one as is possible for humans, I think.  And from what is referred to as a macro point of view, he has great understanding.  But he, too, unfortunately, is playing a board game.  I think we do this because the world is so jampacked, it is frightening to see below the surfaces Tom Friedman and Zakaraya and others play on.

But we must.  Here where we live in Mexico, we can easily visit very poor, very rural areas.  In some of them, there are schools which receive their lessons via television satellite; in most, every man I think has a baseball cap, and buses wend their way up roads mere cars blanche at. So yes, globalization has penetrated.  But the existence of jobs in the state of Coahuila has little to do with lives far up in the mountains besides providing it with souvenirs and hints which are the hooks which can end up breaking apart families instead of healing them.

The globalized world has the tools and materials actually to "lift every boat" at least a little bit.  What we need is wisdom.

Hamas isn't nice, either, but they don't do what the Israelis do

Another link by an Israeli writing in The Guardian.

I would like to say I don't regard Hamas as a nice little group of Red Cross volunteers.  They are quite ruthless.  But they are successful the way the Mexican Mafia is successful, and with considerably more reason.  In Mexico, one sees that there are ways in which the hold of the narcos can be loosened over time. And the Mexican nation is where the narcos operate: Mexico has a vested interest in bringing peace and stability to the people and the areas that are infested.  Gaza is, yes, more or less surrounded by Israel, but it is not part of the Israeli nation. Israel has no interest in bringing peace and stability to Palestinians or the territories they inhabit.  Hamas is the organization that offers help (even if, sometimes, for recovery from damage Hamas itself has brought about.)  Why should anyone betray Hamas for Israel?

So what should the US do?  Simply withold military and technical aid from Israel.  Stop military cooperation with Israel. Stop selling arms to Israel.  The US provides more military aid to Israel than to anyone else, and without it, the Israelis might have to rethink their strategy.

The Israeli Assault on Gaza, Cont'd, with links to multiple sources

Here are some more links for coverage of the situation in Gaza.

UNRWA is the United Nations relief agency which provides most of the assistance to Gaza.

On Juan Cole's blog you can find summaries of  current Arab press reports and proposed Arab actions as well as additional links.

Here is the link to the BBC's current coverage, and to Al Jazeera's.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a pro-Israel writer.  He is a pretty reasonable guy, and I think when you read just a bit of him, you get a sense of how some moderate Israelis and pro-Israeli Americans feel.  It's worth paying attention. 

And here is today's New York Times's main article.  The New York Times is by long-standing tradition pro-Israeli, but not shrilly so.

The hard facts are that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are no "nicer" than Israelis, but they are the ones who have been reduced to a very poor existence by Israel's overreactions.  The list of barriers Israel has thrown up to anything resembling normal life ranges from the wall which hampers their very movement to their own land and their jobs to access to food, water and medicine.  Their homes and streets and stores in many cases have been reduced to rubble by bombs and gigantic tanks which plow through their neighborhoods. The powers that be in the US and Israel puff up and say the Palestinians, via Hamas, "start" the aggression and "provoke" Israeli's reactions. One can imagine that if somehow the Palestinians managed to try peaceful demonstrations en masse or passive resistance it might have some effect, but first of all, it's not a natural response under the circumstances and second of all, there's no guarantee it would work.  And the demand that somehow the Palestinians "act nicely" sounds really thuggish to me.

The list of events during which Israel and its allies might have acted differently is long.  One of the most obvious is that after having demanded democratic elections in Palestinian territory, the US might have recognized the result: that Hamas won fair and square.  They didn't.  So of course Hamas feels justified in acting the ay it is since when it tried the other way, it didn't get anywhere.

Hamas might have itself continued to act aggressively even if its election had been recognized, but then Israel's actions would be seen in a different light.

Israel is stuck.  The US is stuck, I suspect, by its ties to Israeli lobbyists who don't represent all Israeli, all Jewish thinking by any means: only the more right-wing.  Kind of like in the US where the Right screams and shouts and demands violent response. 

When I read the NY Times articles, I am struck by how oddly impersonal they seem: almost as if they are reporting on the playing of board games where all that matters is the actions of a few leaders who are seen to play fair or not play fair.  I suspect to side with Israel you have to depersonalize your reactions. Meanwhile, Palestinians are being brutalized, aggression against Israel has risen and the whole Arab world is protesting, as well they might.  In photos, you might notice that the Palestinian rockets seem to result in very little damage to buildings or people, compared to the damage Israelis are causing.  I am sure, though, to the Israelis under attack the comparison is meaningless.  If I were under attack, I suspect proportionality wouldn't matter to me, either.

El Santoral de Hoy -- Calendar of Saints' Days for December 29 and 30

Originally I had meant to look up a saint or two so this wouldn't just be a calendar, but efforts to do that led me to leave El Santoral completely.  So here is a calendar for today and tomorrow -- this is the Mexican calendar which I have noticed is different from others.  It is from El Universal, the Mexican daily paper.  You'lll notice I don't know the English equivalents of some of the names.  Sometimes there is more than one saint with the same name; I don't know which is which without a bit of research wwhich I haven't done today.

Today we celebrate Saints David, Leonore, Albert, Enrique, William, Marcelo, Thomas, Felix and Domingo.

Tomorrow will be the saint's days for Rudolph, Raúl, Judith, Eugenia and Margaret.

We lack two days until the year is finished.

Obama, Please Speak Out about Israel's Attack on Gaza

The news of Israel's bombing attack on Gaza is absolutely terrible.  Here is a dispassionate article from Al Jazeera in English.  AL Jazeera has some of the best news coverage in English there is.  Here is commentary from Bernard Avishai, an Israeli journalist and author, and here, and here.  And here's the most recent coverage from the New York Times.  And here's the BBC's coverage.  The New York Times presents some photos here.

Palestinians in Gaza are virtual prisoners, their movements tightly controlled.  Movements of medical personnel are controlled.  Israel controls and limits Gaza's access to water.  Gaza is dependent on increasingly limited humanitarian food distribution from the UN and others.

My mother used to say you become what you hate.  Many of the Israelis alive today did not suffer under Nazi Germany which was the worst suffering one can imagine, but they did not.  Yet they act out against the Palestinians I think their revenge against the Nazis, and have, in effect become the persecuters, the torturers.

Yet Obama refuses to speak out, to speak personally, to speak from his heart.  I am deeply, deeply disappointed.  To say "There is only one president..." is to throw up a smoke screen.  His self-interest seems blinding in light of this new explosion of tragedy. 

Rick Warren, Meet Peter Singer

I write my blog and do my indexes and spend too much time surfing the net sitting at our dining table.  Jim sits in the shadows of "la oficina," which was intended by the builder of the house to be the master bedroom.  It's too gloomy for me as it looks out on the driveway, and back yard, not a bad view but nothing like the view from the dining-living room.  The photo above is not exactly the one I see which is right now a bit busy with a clutter of plants, dog beds drying on the balcony rail, and brilliant sunlight bouncing off big leaves.  The view in the photo above is just outside the front door. As you can see, it's a beautiful day, low seventies (which you can't see), bright sun, blue sky, puffs of clouds (which you can't see either.)  It is the kind of day that makes it hard to get furious about much of anything though there are clearly events on the planet deserving of our fury.

Not deserving of fury, I think, is Obama's selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation or whatever it is at the Inauguration.  I've been amazed at the reactions of some people I'm close to.  For one thing, I think they've forgotten or never knew Billy Graham. Warren is a lot easier to take than Graham, an evangelical Christian if ever there was one, who was practically the US version of the Archbishop of Canterbury for years on end and no lover of gays. 

I wrote about this recently, mentioning Juan Cole's blog post here. Another blog I like a great deal, The Edge of the American West, recently posted a YouTube video of Rachel Maddow shredding both Rick Warren and Obama's selection of him, with a second act of Maddow interviewing Katha Pollitt. It is followed by some lively comments including mine.

I've gotten mad at people on the right for demanding extreme moderation in how leftish advocates address issues.  I got mad at my former mother-in-law many years ago for saying that Paul Ehrlich of Zero Population Growth fame would get further if he spoke more politely (or maybe she was berating Ralph Nader.  Or maybe both. I don't remember.)  And so here, perhaps uncharacteristically, I find myself saying, maybe we lefties could all quiet down about Rick Warren.  This didn't soothe any troubled souls I know. 

I think what people need to talk to Rick Warren and evangelical Christians about (and listen to them as well) is the relationship between church and civil law.  What we don't have to do is use clever but misleading argument in ad hominem attacks, like the irresponsible (to say the least) members of the right wing do (more now than ever since they seem to have little positive to contribute).  This is what Rachel Maddow did, and this is what a lot of lefties who wrote comments on The Edge of the American West and elsewhere have done.

At this point I would like to direct you to a memorial to Harriet McBryde Johnson written by Peter Singer  in this  coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine.  If there are two voices much more diametrically opposed than these two, I can't think of them, because Harriet McBryde Johnson, disabled by a progressive degenerative muscle disease and a disabled person activist, would have died as a baby if Peter Singer, a philosopher who advocates (or at least used to, before he met Harriet) the removal of life support from, the killing of, severly disabled babies, had had his way.  Peter Singer, in his own way, is capable of being as entrenched in his views as is Rick Warren.  Yet these two, Harriet and Peter, talked and listened to each other.  I was going to offer quotes from the article, but I wish instead you would all take the time to click on the link and read all of it and be moved. And see how people who listen to each other can come to see things differently.

So here we have angry lefties, especially among the gay community, on the one side and Warren on the other.  Why shouldn't we all be furious that he is giving the invocation?  Well, maybe after we hear it, I'll think we should, too.  But we haven't heard it yet.  So assuming he's not going to say something way too sectarian  as Franklin Graham did at George W. Bush's 2001 Inauguration, we can hope that he will be building a bridge from evangelicals to the new president, and maybe bridges between all of us feuding groups. Maybe Obama, by choosing him, will be building the same bridges.  Maybe as we walk on these bridges,  we can learn that we can as they say agree to disagree.  

Older people in this country did not grow up at all comfortable with the idea of homosexuality.  I was lucky in that I had parents who mingled easily and non-judgmentally with all kinds of folks in that casserole that is New York City.  But most people of my generation didn't.  Many moderate and liberal folks, and not only old ones, are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage.  They don't understand that gays see it as a civil right, they don't see that the wish for commitment transcends sexual orientation.  Rather they see gay marriage as something of an assault on their places of worship.  Why assault? Because there is this loud demand to  do something in those very places where they learned that homosexuality was sinful.

The "other" prayer-giver at the Inauguration doesn't support gay marriage either.  Here's what he said on MSNBC.  He supports civil unions and full civil rights, but he has trouble with the idea of marriage.  Lowery, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, is a civil rights activist par excellence. 

What Lowery accepts and Warren doesn't get is the idea of the separation of Church and State. That is, that laws should not be made to inhibit anyone's civil rights. And, one suspects Lowery also understands that this separation protects religion as well.  He would not, I bet, favor a law which intruded on his church and told him whom he must marry.

The failure of the Rick Warrens of the world is the failure to understand Constitutional history.  In fact, evangelicals who are home schooled often learn a very peculiar version of American history, one which is not based on the texts we have built our laws on.

Many on the left, too, are unaware of our nation's history. The country has always fought over issues of religion vs. the state.  Some early state constitutions, notably that of Massachusetts, designated an official church. It is as we have passed through our history, in a zig-zag, sometimes one-step-forward, two-steps back kind of way that we have become more and more inclusive as a civil society. 

Too few of us understand that history and precedent give us the means to talk to each other rather than throw stones.

Mission: Broadband Internet Access in my Colonia

As I have written before, I cannot imagine why a man like Carlos Slim, the man who is sometimes the richest one in the world, the head of Mexico's telephone and DSL service cannot do more to insure that people outside the big cities of Mexico have access to the internet.  Then I got an idea: I'll look into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, headed, with his wife, by one of the rivals for richest man title.  Here is what the Foundation says on its web site about the importance of access to the internet:

Access to the Internet can change people’s lives.

Northern or southern hemisphere, big city or distant village—the Internet provides opportunities for people to improve their lives. When people go online, they can get health facts, use government services, manage finances, look for jobs, do research for school and work, and keep in touch. In the United States, where Internet access has been more widely available, going online also enables people to participate more fully in the social and economic fabric of their communities and make meaningful contributions to society.

I looked further on the web page and found, miracle of miracles, that there is in fact a program in my very own state of Veracruz of the Bill and Melinda Foundation which embeds computer learning and training in a school project.  It is called the Vasconcelos program:

It is directed towards more rural areas than the one we live in.  We live near towns that do have broadband.  But colonias like ours are ripe for computer training and internet accessibility, too.

Today is Christmas.  Discovering this Vasconcelos program is like a Christmas present because it gives me a concrete place to get started.

More, I HOPE, soon.

In the meantime, check out the site for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  It is a paragon of clarity and accessibility.  If only we could trust more very rich people to be as wise as the Gates are.

Not such good economic news in Mexico

From J. Enrique Olivera Arce's blog Pulso Crítico en Veracruz.  My translation.

A chill for whom?
December 20, 2008

México, S.A,.: To finish the year, the medal of honor goes to the theme, "the chill." Throughout the week which just ended, Mexicans received horrifying news: the number of layoffs is increasing, and in 2009 it will be worse; with inflation rising, the pathetic average salary will "increase" 2.32 (twenty cents) a day; in November the official rate of unemplaoyment rose to the highest point in the last nine years, circling dangerously close to the mark reported in the crisis of 1995-1996; and the economic forecast for Mexiso in the next twelve months, in the best of scenarios, will show a growth rate of  less than 0.1 percent

From El Universal, cited in Sr. Olivera's post:

The economic future darkens

El Universal 20/12/08.- The economic situation in the country continues to deteriorate little by little.  Yesterday, the Confederación de Cámaras Industriales (Concamin) [I think the major umbrella group of industry and business in Mexico] said that industrial recession had begun  in Mexico, since for the first time in many years this October activity in the four components of industrial production: mining, manufacturing, generation of electricity, and construction had contracted, and with this happening, the transition into what would be a very difficult recession had begun.  Wednesday, INEGI [National Institute of Statistics and Geography] said that industrial production had fallen 2.7% in October.

Allicia Bárcena, executive secreatry for the Economic Commissin for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) said that Mexico would register the lowest growth in Latin America in 2009 and predicted that the GNP would rise only 0.5%.  Barceno explained, in a videoconference that this low level of economic activity would have repercussions in greater unemployment, an increase in poverty and an increase in the informal labor sector.  The estimate for urban unemployment in Mexico is that it will grow from 4.9% in 2008 to 5.7% in 2009.

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Unemployment the highest in 8 years

México (El Universal 20/12/08).- The unemployment rate in Mexico during November was around 4.47%.....the highest level since April of 2000 according to information from INEGI.

The result exceeded the expectations of economic analysts who forecast a rate of 4% and expected a rebound in employment because of an increase in business because of the Christmas holidays.  In this environment, yesterday the Bank of Mexico revised downward its forecast for economic growth for 2009 and put it in a the range of 0.11%, which represents the generation of only 81 thousand new jobs.

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Insufficient increase in minimum salary

México (Diario de Yucatán).- Deputies of the three major political parties (PAN, PRI and PRD) agreed that the increase in the minimum salary ought to be greater than 6% since the increase of 4.6% was already insufficient.  The National Commission of Minimum Salaries (Conasami) agreed the day before yesterday in the increase to 4.6%.

And from La Jornada, 20 de diciembre de 2008

The joke of minimum salaries
by Arturo Alcalde Justiniani
The anemic increase in minimum salaries makes evident a political economy operating against the interests of workers in a crucial moment of crisis.  Clearly and simply it amounts to plundering since the 4.6% average increase (4.2% in Zone A which includes the greatest part of the population) is simply put, lower than the rate of inflation, even using the data of the Bank of Mexico which we well know is designed to present a reality different from that which the population daily confirms for itself when going to the market to buy food for the family.  The bad news is that today they will be able to get less than before.....

If you read Spanish, you can read the rest of the La Jornada article here.