Former writer and NYU teaching assistant (yes, Liz's alma mater) turned sexual predator Peter Braunstein was profiled on the Daily Intel today after a particularly bizzare interview with the press. PB was arrested on Halloween 2005 after dressing as a firemen and sexually assaulting a woman for nearly thirteen hours. His named resurfaced this week after a failed escape attempt, during which he somehow managed to assault a male doctor on the street

This morning, the daily news reported that he confessed to having had a 'criminal mind' since age 19. When asked about the additional years that were tacked on to his sentence because of the assault (which he'd serve in Ohio) , he stated that "There was an absurdist quality to this proceeding...because I'm never getting out of prison in New York."

He called himself a 'Hamlet type', and announced plans to orchestrate his own murder behind bars. Check out the following quote from the Intel, and decide whether or not the 'Raskolnikov type' is more apt description.

"When I had freedom I had to make decisions. Do I become a criminal? Do I continue to let my rage build until I become a homicidal maniac? Do I commit suicide? In jail, I have peace."
Translation: Prison is a lot like the ashram part of Eat Pray Love.

Hey Liz, looks like everyone has a special place they go to get their Zen on. Still feeling special???

No wonder Texas wants to violate international court orders, and execute foreigners. With a total population of 23,507,783 (2006 estimate), the number of state prisoners is 71,812. There are also about 9,000 in the various Federal detention centers in the state (and no figures on the numbers in contract concentration camps for aliens). Mexico, with a population of 120,000,000 has a total of 217,457 prisoners in the 442 institutions, which include six federal facilities.

In other words, about 3.4 percent of Texans are in the slammer, compared to 0.018 percent of Mexicans. The Texans have to move out the foreigners, even if it means violating several international agreements and risk further shredding of United States credibility around the world, just to make room and bring those numbers down somewhat.

Not that being in a Mexican prison is such great shakes. According to Health Secretary José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, seventy-five percent of Mexican convicts have AIDS. I got that figure from an article in Milenio (14-July... but lost the link somehow), and asked Scott Hensen, at "Grits for Breakfast" the well-respected Texas justice system website, if the Mexican figures sounded right to him.

He thought the AIDS claim may mean exposure to HIV virus. Given Córdova Villalobos' reluctance to take the common sense steps against HIV used by his predecessor (Julio Frenk Mora), convicts may not have access to condoms. Mexicans, and Mexican convicts, are more likely to have sexual relations with persons of the same gender than north of the border, and there is more likelihood these relations are consensual than they are in U.S. prisons (where rape is a huge problem... not that prison rapes don't also happen in Mexico) ... and sex in prison is not forbidden. Mexico, like other civilized countries, allows for conjugal visits, including same-sex partners.

Scott also mentioned tattoos as a vector for spreading HIV: unclean needles. My assumption has always been that Mexicans don't go in for tattoos nearly as much as people in the U.S. do, but I don't know much about tattoos, or convict culture (come to think of it, I know more Mexicans who have been in U.S. prisons, than have been in Mexican ones), so I can't speculate.

Mexico has traditionally had a relatively low HIV infection rate, so even if the Health Secretary is talking about HIV exposure, and not AIDS (the reporter may have gotten the story slightly wrong), it's worrisome. But, even if exaggerated, it makes sense that the poorest, and sickest of Mexicans are the ones who end up in prison (just as they do anywhere else). As to the very low incarceration rate, I haven't come up with any definitive theory to explain it.

A few thoughts, though. In the U.S., every anti-social act is made a crime, and people turn to the police to handle criminal matters. Mexicans, by and large, don't trust the police (and never have, at least not for the last 400 or so years), seeing them as protectors of the status quo and of wealth, and not of the people. And anti-social acts are dealt with informally.

"Bribes" to the traffic cop punish the offending driver; annoying drunks get the crap kicked out of them by their cousin (I once saw an 80-year old man whipping -- with his belt -- his drunken grandson for shaming the family... in Mexico City, no less!), or restitution is made for theft, or the offender is run out of the town -- or neighborhood.

There used to be (actually, there still is) an American who talked on the travel message boards about his apartment being robbed when he lived in Mexico City. He used to harp on Mexican dishonesty, and "cowardice" because his neighbors did nothing. I happened, accidentally, to hear rumors later about this American, from people who had worked with him and knew about this "robbery." I can't confirm it, but apparently, the landlord -- at the neighbors' request -- removed the anti-social element from their midst.

In Cuernavaca, when I lived there, a homeowner who was tapping illegally in the water-main (to the detriment of his neighbors) found his front yard dug up and his water cut off. The aggrieved neighbors did not call the police, they called a backhoe operator.

AND... I once had a student who worked as a factor, and told about having to figure out how to handle the paperwork for a customer who needed to use his receivables as collateral on his own kidnapping. He had shorted his workers' paychecks, and -- again, rather than go to the law -- they took an alternative dispute resolution method. They kidnapped the guy and held him until he worked out the payroll problem.

When I hear or see in the papers where somebody has been murdered -- and it's not obviously a narco-hit -- I wonder if someone isn't taking those alternative justice disputes to extremes. It happens.  But not with the approval of the State, and not in violation of international law.

The scandal goes back a while, but CISEN (the Mexican version of the CIA) Director Guillermo Valdés -- who was already in hot water for spying on Congressional delegates -- or rather sub-contracting the illegal data gathering to a bunch of of college kids) popped up in the British newspaper Financial Times:

In one of the frankest admissions yet from a leading authority of the scale of the problem confronting Mexico, Guillermo Valdés, head of Cisen, the government’s intelligence organisation, told the Financial Times and a small group of foreign media recently: “Drug traffickers have become the principal threat because they are trying to take over the power of the state.”

Mr Valdés said the gangs, which have grown wealthy from the multibillion-dollar drugs trade, had co-opted many members of local police forces, the judiciary and government entities in their efforts to create local structures to protect their business.

Those efforts, he said, could now also be targeting federal institutions such as Congress itself. “Congress is not exempt . . . we do not rule out the possibility that drug money is involved in the campaigns [of some legislators],” said Mr Valdés.

It's been assumed that CISEN's illegal snooping was looking for dirt on PEMEX privatization opponents, and -- since it looks like a deal is coming down to settle the PEMEX issue, Valdés just looks like an idiot. Ana-Maria Salazar has it right:

The President of the Senate, Santiago Creel demanded the CISEN present proof. However, the Secretary of Gobernación Juan Camilo Mouriño late Monday evening commented that there is no evidence of this infiltration and he underlined his respect for the legislative branch. (This does not bode well for Valdés. I agree with the Director of the CISEN that drug trafficking cartels have infiltrated political campaigns. Why would organized crime not attempt to do this!! However, to mention this to a foreign newspaper and not expect that the legislators would not demand evidence….well this is spraying gasoline to the fire..)

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if some legislators did take "campaign contributions" from narcotics exporters... it's no more illegal than campaign contributions are from any other private source...  Unlike the United States, such funding is called by it's correct name:  corruption of public officials.   At any rate, it's a matter for the Elections Commission, which has its own prosecutors.  Certainly not for CISEN.

But, as the Financial Times reported, Valdes'

...comments come as George W. Bush, US president, this month signed into law the Merida Initiative, an aid package that will provide $400m of anti-narcotics assistance to Mexico this year. The aid, an open recognition by the US government that things south of the border appear to be deteriorating rapidly, will provide Mexican authorities with helicopters, training and surveillance equipment, among other things. It is believed that Cisen will receive only about $20m of the assistance.

I'm not sure things "south of the border are deteriorating rapidly" (or even slowly)... but there is that $20M to be divved up, and the Financial Times is owned by Rupurt Murdoch, so you can't expect the story not to have a pro-Bush slant somewhere.

ALSO apparently seeking to tap into funds are the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Health.  Today, Josefina Vázquez Mota, the Education Secretary, issued a report on drugs and gangs in the schools. Shocking:  Seven percent of students have relatives that use narcotics of one kind or another, and a whopping 28% have seen drugs being sold.  Not using them, mind you.  Just think they've seen them being sold.  However, with the claim that 12.2 percent of students between the ages of 15 and 19 probably should be given some attention.  Most of the drug use by students is either marijuana or amphetamines.  And, I'd rather see the money spent on students than on spies, natch.

Health Secretary Angel Córdova Villalobos ALSO issued a report on drug use, this one on drug use by convicts. Córdova Villalobos is claiming 95% of convicts (federal and state) are drug users. The word in the headline was "Adictos" (Milenio, 13-July-2008, but somehow I lost the link) which makes it sound much more alarming. I'll have more to say on the report tomorrow -- not specifically on the allegations of drug use, but on convicts in general. I wanted to check out some other facts, and check with the experts first.

I have been worried by the Merida Iniative funding for a number of reasons... one of which has been the likelihood that real social reforms in the country will take a back seat to a military/police/prison paradigm as has happened in the United States when it comes to narcotics.  Violence has escalated since the Calderon Administration chose this method of dealing with what hasn't been particularly a Mexican problem.  My "inner Mexican" -- who believes everything is a "complot" -- worries that three separate claims appearing at once -- involving the legislature, the schools and the prisons -- is an attempt to create a Mexican "drug user problem" that really isn't all that serious, but justifies sending in the troops.  On the other hand, it may be a good thing, and a signal that the "Merida Initiative" funding is going to be spent on something more useful and effective in the long-term... like treatment, political reforms and safe schools.

Outside [one] house a car was set on fire with two gas tanks in its interior. Apparently, the gangsters were attempting to blow their way into the house, which had been previously closed by authorities.

Some of the neighbors took refuge in the safest places in their houses during the attack, to "avoid a tragedy during something that seemed out of this world."

The Federal Minister has already filed charges against the unknown assailants for property damage, but I expect these geniuses are going to end up rolled in a blanket and tossed out at the side of the highway somewhere. Heads optional -- incompetent gangsters are a danger to everyone.

The daughter of a Second World War RAF pilot who reprimanded a teenager who she accused of vandalising a war memorial has been convicted of assault

Julie Lake, 50, believed the 15-year-old was one of a number of youths who had damaged the remembrance garden in her village dedicated to those killed fighting for Britain.

But Mrs Lake was arrested after giving a boy, whom she believed to be the ringleader, a talking-to and a 'cuff round the ear'.

 

What is truly troubling is that this type of mentality is creeping into our culture. Good people who defend themselves or stand up to thugs are viewed as odd, or violent, instead of just and deserving of honor. In England, the disarming of the people has led  to the near extinction of a right to self-defense, and be wary my friends, many here, in America, want that same perverse definition of "justice" to be the rule here.

Yes, I know, a bunch of kids defacing a memorial might not be the worst thing, but, there was a time when it would have been the punks who were in trouble, not the good citizen. Our world is slowly turning on its head.

The Independent and the Evening Standard mention one point that many other outlets have omitted: the couple was NOT immediately arrested after being discovered. When the police officer first found them, he warned them and told them to leave the area. They were only arrested after the police officer returned and found them still there. (Even at that point, one wonders if this legal mess STILL could have been avoided if the lady in question had just put on her clothes right then instead of attacking the officer with one of her high heels.)

Dubai, from what I understand, is one of those places where you can get away with a lot behind closed doors, especially if you are not Muslim. It is definitely not the place for public sex and stupid, drunken behavior -- in broad daylight, no less. (Must've been one heck of a champagne brunch those two attended.)

Briton faces jail for sex on Dubai beach

Terri Judd and Nikolina Sajn (Independent News)

And for those curious about Vince, the man in this case, see here:

Revealed: The telecoms boss dubbed 'Vince Charming' at centre of Dubai 'sex on beach' case

(Evening Standard)

Crackdowns on underage drinking has been relatively popular.  When I was in High School (yes, electric lights had been invented by then, but not the internet) there was "nothing to do" and kids would go drinking (and the police would come by and arrest us) -- but it was outdoors (a park conveniently stradding the county line) and local police hadn't started "responding in force" to all violations.  Besides, the cops were related to half of us, and other than a stern lecture from your parents (or taking the car keys away) not much was going to happen.

While the U.S. is more tolerant of police intervention than it was back then, they are less likely to respond in force to minor incidents like underage drinking parties (I hope).  In Mexico,  where nobody really likes the police to begin with, they've always had to use overwhelming numbers -- which is what started the whole "New's Divine" mess.  The kids ran for the exits, which were blocked by the police, and people panicked.

And, in neighborhoods like Nuevo Atzacoalcos, the kids with "nothin' to do" have nowhere to go... not really. So -- maybe this is a solution. A step in the right direction, anyway (11-July-2008 Milenio, my translation):

The News Divine Discoteque will re-open its doors in the next few weeks. Twelve people,nine of them minors, lost their lives in what will reopen as a free facility for youths, sponsored by the Federal District government.

The District government hopes to recover from the damage inflicted on dozens of youths during the the 20 June failed Unipol operation.

Chief of Government Marcelo Ebrard, announced the decision after a Youth Institute (Instituto de la Juventud) survey of teenagers in Nuevo Atzacoalcos, where the disco was located, of what type of youth center they wanted at the site. The survey indicated 24 percent of females, and 21 percent of males wanted a Cultural Center, while 33 percent of females and 38 percent of males nighttime entertainment  activities.

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the facility will be open from 14:00 to 21:00, offering youths from 12 to 17 music, snacks, soft drinks and flavored waters – but no alcohol. Services are free of charge. Security will be provided by a parent's committee.

New's Divine is the first building to be part of a new project. Four young architects are designing a prototype for the facility, which, while maintaining the original structural integrity, includes besides the disco, multiple-use rooms for recreational activities, sports and cultural workshops, are included.

To avoid over-concentration at any one site, twenty more similar facilities are planned.

Instituto de la Juventud Director Javier Hidalgo, confirmed to MILENIO that the Capital government will be organizing “safe nights” in different parts of the capital where alcohol is not sold, overseen by a parent's security committee.

To construct these “Youth Recreation Centers” the capital government hopes to use seveal abandoned movie theaters, as well as two nightclubs closed by the local government. One of these clubs, near Metro Insurgentes is for the lesbian-gay community.

“Underage kids are prohibited from having fun, simply because no private business will sponsor alchohol-free dances. Providing recreation is the important thing, which is something the capital government can do,” Hidalgo said.

As an ex-kid (yeah, it's been a long time, but I vaguely remember the experience), one suggestion. The parents' security teams should work the clubs across town from their kids. I'd hate to be the girl who kissed the boy whose mother would tell my mother. And, for lesbian-gay kids either need really cool moms, or some other arrangement is going to be necessary.

"She is seeking righteousness, she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness everywhere and she expects it. ...And if you were to torture her, she wouldn't do wrong. She doesn't see that it's impossible for people to be righteous and is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is good!"

In a book otherwise filled with weak and morally lacking characters, here is the bright shining star: one who not only believes in the possibility of goodness, but is angry when it isn't there. I'm not sure that I've ever encountered a more apropos description of my own wife than this.

For more than two years, Sydney Davis's house has been under siege from youths throwing stones.

After two hours of bombardment in the latest attack and no sign of the police, the 65-year-old retired builder decided enough was enough.

As a particularly large missile landed in his kitchen, he grabbed a plank of wood from the garden and ran towards the gang to scare them away.

The police arrived just in time — to arrest Mr Davis for possession of an offensive weapon.

He now faces up to six months in prison.

Still not convinced? Try reading this then get back to me!  

A British businesswoman is facing six years in a Dubai jail after she was allegedly caught having sex on a beach.

Michelle Palmer, 30, a publishing firm manager, says that she is “panicking” after being arrested by a police officer who saw her with a man on Jumeirah Beach in the tiny oil-rich state.

It has been reported that she was charged with having sex outside marriage, indecent behaviour in public, being drunk in public and assaulting a police officer.

Is that sentence unreasonable? Absolutely! But, if you are going to live in a foreign country, you have to know the law.

The victim of a brutal rape in Somerville was able to convince her dim-witted alleged attacker to give her his phone number, which police then used to identify the thug, law enforcement sources told the Herald yesterday.

Somerville police Chief Anthony Holloway said the assault victim gave officers “crucial” information leading to the arrest of Michael K. Mahoney, who was charged yesterday with beating and raping the woman. But Holloway offered no further details.

No one has paid any significant price for the lawless behavior of this administration. Scooter Libby and Alberto Gonzales received the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Other than Dick Cheney and the president himself, no one is more responsible for what has happened over the past seven and a half years than Karl Rove.

The Associated Press reports:

Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of a House subcommittee, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate — perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress.

The White House has cited executive privilege as a reason he and others who serve or served in the administration should not testify, arguing that internal administration communications are confidential and that Congress cannot compel officials to testify. Rove says he is bound to follow the White House's guidance, although he has offered to answer questions specifically on the Siegelman case — but only with no transcript taken and not under oath. [...]

A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Would anyone want to bet on the outcome of this? Didn't think so.

.

Two weeks ago we had our 100^th execution since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976. Tonight, we will likely have our 101^st, as Kent Jermaine Jackson is scheduled to be executed on July 10th. Mr. Jackson is not severely mentally challenged or schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill, unlike other death row inmates I've written about. There was no obvious error from his defense attorney; no gross miscarriage of justice. No, in this case the system worked more or less as it should. But if we are death penalty opponents, if we believe that the state's taking of a human life is always wrong, then it is important to stand against these cases as well, perhaps even more important than the cases that highlight the problems with the way the death penalty functions, rather than the wrongness of the death penalty itself.

The United States stands in the illustrious company of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan in countries that still execute people. Our justice system should be just that, a justice system, not a vengeance system, and the death penalty focuses far more on the latter. It is an emotion-based punishment, at least in practice. All too often victim-impact statements are used to weigh the importance of the life that was taken in the decision between execution and life in prison, meaning that all lives are not considered equal before the law. Conversely, a blanket decision that anytime someone is involved in a murder they’ll be put to death assumes that anyone who has taken a human life, in any circumstances, is beyond redemption. This, obviously, is not a decision that we as a society are comfortable making, and it shouldn’t be. It is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to the literally life and death decision of executing a person. In addition, the taking of another life is unnecessary in order to protect others when life in prison is a viable option, as it is in most states. This as the ultimate punishment is hardly giving a convicted criminal a luxurious life. Life in prison is not a gift.

While Jackson’s case is not one to pluck at the heartstrings of the average citizen, it is one that highlights the arbitrariness of the application of the death penalty in the United States. Jackson and his former roommate, Joseph M. Dorsett, were both convicted of murder. Yet Dorsett was sentenced to 135 years in prison, while Jackson was sentenced to death. What made Jackson’s part in the crime so much worse? That is the question. Shockingly, in another example of problems in our “justice” system, Jackson was not notified that he would be facing the death penalty. The State of Virginia does not require that defendants be told they are eligible for execution. I hope that one day we will end this arbitrary, cruel and unnecessary practice. If you feel the same, please call, e-mail, or fax Gov. Tim Kaine and ask him to commute Kent Jermaine Jackson’s sentence to life in prison. Contact information is below.

Gov. Tim Kaine
Phone: (804) 786-2211
Fax: (804) 371-6351

E-mail.

]]> http://penumbrae.wordpress.com/?p=156 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:28:20 +0000 gbem1 http://penumbrae.wordpress.com/?p=156

"'Art advances,' Kretzschmar wrote, 'and does so by means of the personality, which is the product and tool of its times and in which objective and subjective motives are joined beyond differentiation, each assuming the form of the other. Art's vital need for revolutionary progress and achievement of the new depends on the vehicle of the strongest subjective sense for what is hackneyed, for what has nothing more to say, for those standard, normal means that have now become "impossible"; and so art helps itself to apparently unvital elements: personal weariness and intellectual boredom, the s that comes with perceiving "how it's done," the cursed proclivity to see things in light of their own parody, the "sense of the comic"--which I am saying is: Art, in its will to live and progress, puts on the mask of these dull-hearted personal traits in order to manifest, objectivize, and fulfill itself in them. Is that too much metaphysics for you? But really it is only just enough, and just the truth--the truth you ultimately know yourself.'"

-- from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus

On one of my recent bus rides to work, my eyes kept clamping shut under the gazing pages of Mann's novel. I tried, and I tried, and I tried some more, but the gates kept wanting to shut. There was a symbolic force, like magnetism or gravity, or some parallel and quite relative psychological trauma, perhaps my depression, that was hinting to me, through constant struggle, that the book was not for me yet. The plot was very easy to follow--about a third of the way through it, I had watched Adri move from laughing school boy to a modest gentleman only slightly interested in music, and forward or backward to the musical genius he was ultimately destined to become, and fleshed out through the later parts of the novel. But it's clear that this book is very dissimilar to Mann's Magic Mountain, where plot and direct symbolism are at the forefront for philosophical delivery (though conversations do indeed find there way crammed into the chilling corners); in Doctor Faustus, the narrative is told from Adri's best friend, who keeps a close eye on the real protagonist of the story, and achieves subtle yet ultimately dazzling characterization through insight after insight after insight. The key is in the abstract; it is a language that is based on the science of music and the peculiarities of structure, form, and the combination of a rigid aesthetic hardscape and the organic nature of social interaction. And yet I could not find myself interested enough. Passages like the one quoted above are thrilling to read and analyze in an isolate environment such as an online post, but when meshed together inside a person's head, a person who could just as well be real (it is so detailed!), and meshed with the story--a story that is rather a life in its entirety (combining the dull with the spectacular in ultimate the most ultimate second-hand account of realism)--well, that produces some difficulties for good ol' Greg Bem who has enough on his mind through his own life to keep him distracted, such as the awareness of those clamping, slamming eyelids. The damn thing is--the hardest part is that all of the energy that one has the ability to notice ends up going into having a fist fight or arm wrestle (or I guess eyelid wrestle) and it's too disheartening to care about contexts and place names and liberal theology (Lutheran) and the profound majestic lifestyles of the humanists (such a word will be forgotten, left to be buried in a coffin of dust, I am sure).

Well, Wall-E, Pixar's latest digital animated feature, was where this post was originally supposed to be headed, but though it seems we are off track here with Modern German literature, I find the connections been between Mann's Kretzschmar character's aesthetic attitude and the messages / subtexts in the folds of that good ol' droid movie to be stimulating affectionate. The sense of the comic is very present and viewable in the world of the trash-bot Wall-E, where humor and the gusto of irony is married to the layered worldliness of beauty. Even for the child, the movie becomes a sequence of questions that ultimately revolve around an understanding of the natural versus the man-made (the unfixable, or rather, the idealogy--what goes up, stays up before coming back down--even if it's several thousand years later when a certain group of flabby humanoids get back to their home planet) pseudo-world. One young girl in the movie theater kept asking her parents what Eve was doing to bring back Wall-E to life. I doubt the parents thought of the parallels between organic regeneration and inorganic recyclical processes during the movie, but they did not have to, and that's where Wall-E is most successful. Beauty is not just some spectacle that flies around (though it includes that--the absurdly awesome visual power of the "dance" scene is probably one of the most memorable to me)--beauty includes the roots of understanding and adopting ideas. The designers at Pixar make it easy for everyone to "solve the riddle" of Wall-E as aesthetic pedagogy through their time-travelling credit-roll, where they use everything from old-school sprite animations (that's right, remember GIF files?!) to hieroglyphic-esque (or maybe cave painting-like is a better term) pictures to show the re-evolution of humanity on earth (this Second Coming of sorts being a pairing of man and machine, a harmonious undertaking used to clean up the trash heaps that protagonist Wall-E may have spent the rest of eternity building higher, had existence limited his circuit breakers to such small capacities).

The child that asked the question about Wall-E's restart will probably go on to use computers every day for social and professional means, in her adult life or even sooner. What startles me most is the level of spiritual provocation that occurs, spawning Socratic methods and critiques of society left and right, for all ages, and how similar it is to several other films geared toward children--particularly The Lion King. Both movies deal adequately and memorably with responsibility, morality, and relationships--the 101's that children have to learn, and that adults probably forgot. In the review for Wall-E in the New York Times, A. O. Scott mentions the level of social and environmental awareness in the developed world of today, and how Wall-E takes it to the next level. I want to agree but go further. Wall-E is a trichotomous robot that a) helps us all learn that we have to combine the macro-problems and the minor-problems to solve both; b) demonstrate that our world today can be reflectively viewed so that we may see it and understand the direction we may ultimately be headed in; and c) display it with a level of accessibility via eye-candy, sound-candy, culture-candy, romance, humor, and depression so as to make a mentally memorable film.

With this movie, I think we can safely say that new ground has been broken. The genre has obviously been mastered (and arguably has been mastered since Toy Story, though this truly caps the market), and Pixar really has gone above and beyond so many expectations. I often watch a bad horror / romance / sci-fi movie and find it valuable for the entertainment value. Most film today is absurd in the eyes of a pseudo-intellectual and has little else to offer than being representative of the piss-poor industry that exists and will continue to exist until who-knows-when. I rarely ever say that a movie can succeed on so many levels. Even recent favorites, like There Will Be Blood, only achieve some of the above extensions to the entire audience. Wall-E, I feel, will be applicable like Crime and Punishment or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are applicable: light to disclose penumbrae, purpose to give way to give hope for the unknown.

On the other side of the light, I've been comforted by the expansive (i.e. imaginative) auditory qualities found in the following albums, which have been spinning on my digital record player throughout the past twenty-four hours:

The Dø - A Mouthful 2008

The Cool Kids - Bake Sale EP 2008

Tom Waits - Orphans 2006

Tom Waits - Alice 2002

Snowgoons - German Lugers 2007

Plantlife - Return of Jack Splash 2008

... for nonintrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners and canine units for Mexico and Central America to stop drugs, arms, cash and criminals. It also includes secure communications systems, helicopters and surveillance aircraft, and it includes training and community action programs for anti-gang measures.

I've been having a hell of a time finding out exactly WHO (or are corporations a "WHAT") will be receiving these funds.  As Laura Carlsen noted last October (when the initiative was first being discussed):

...the new deal will offer up lucrative contracts to U.S. military and intelligence equipment firms, long-term maintenance and training contracts, and related services. In a recent Washington Post article, Misha Glenny cites a GAO report on Plan Colombia that finds that 70% of the money allotted never leaves the United States.

The billion-dollar drug deal may be a bonanza for Boeing, but the pay-off to the U.S. taxpayers who have to foot the bill is much less obvious.

Despite Walters' claims, a tremendous amount of evidence exists to show the consistent failure of the supply-side model of drug war that relies primarily on military and police enforcement measures. When that model goes international, it becomes even more problematic, feeding conflict as it starves social investment.

Certainly the police and military in Mexico want, and need, more training -- and maybe equipment.  The crackdown on narcotics dealers is welcome by many, who are tired of the violence.  The violence has escalated SINCE the crackdown, and -- similar to the Bush administration's response to increased violence in Iraq -- the claim is that the "surge is working."  Maybe.

Even if that is true (and given the sorry state of the rural economy, I can't see drug sales themselves as corrupting.  If a narco buys a new SUV, and the salesman buys his daughter a computer so she can get ahead in her studies and go to medical school, is her future career based on corruption?  What if she specializes in addiction treatment therapies?

That's a little silly, I know.  But, if these funds are going to be corrosive, I think it's going to come in two areas.  First, with more resources and intellegence gathering capability, there is a danger that "anti-drug" activities will be used to deal with unpopular, or politically inconvenient, factions.  BurroHall mentioned a military raid on the Zapatistas under the guise of searching for marijuana, reported in more detail by Luis Hernández Navarro of Jornada:

Since the January 1994 insurrection, various administrations have wanted to associate the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN in its Spanish initials) with drug trafficking. They’ve never been able to demonstrate such a link, but they try time and time again.

This past June 4 the tired old story played out again. Only this time the threat is greater than in the past. On that date over 200 agents from the federal Army, the Attorney General’s office, and state and municipal police, with their faces painted, entered the Zapatista territory of La Garrucha with the pretext of looking for marijuana plants. Hundreds of residents from the Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejando communities fended them off with machetes, clubs, and slingshots.

Zapatista communities prohibit the cultivation, trafficking, and consumption of drugs. It’s not even permitted to drink or sell alcohol there. This isn’t a new fact. The rebel commanders have made this law public since the beginning of the armed uprising. The measure remains in effect under the civil authorities who have been put in charge of the autonomous municipalities and the good government councils.

(Translation from Narco News:  while I am dubious about some of Narco New's reporting, because they don't seem to fact check their "co-publishers", I will use their material if it is from a reputable outside source [which you can assume was fact-checked] or that I've double checked against other published data)

I don't want to go into a long riff here, but I'd point out that the Merida Initiative funding was part of a military spending and "anti-terrorism" appropriation.  Mexican "anti-terrorism" activities were in the news last week.  The now deceased ttp://www <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->Fredi Fierro Peredo was arrested and tortured at the age of 85 after disturbances in Guerrero a few years back.  Fierro's posthumous testimony is part of an investigation into military conducted disappearances and torture that followed the Acteal Massacre.  Without much trouble that incident could be called "anti-terrorist" activities today.  I'll try to get my source translated and posted later this week.

Last week, Mexicans were shocked when police training videos -- that included torture -- surfaced in Leon.  What was puzzling at the time was that the trainers were English-speakers.  A little investigation by Mexican journalists has uncovered the identity of those trainers:  "Jerry WIlson" and  karateca, instructor de torturadores <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->Gerardo Arrechea, both connected with a Florida company, Risks Incorporated.  El Universal reports that Arrechea has an unlicensed karate school in Mexico, and is apparently working illegally.  NarcoNews ties him to a Cuban-American organization with a propensity for violent acts in Cuba and elsewhere.

This is where United States taxpayer dollars are going. If the funds are just ending up in the hands of narcotics dealers, it's because the beneficiaries of government largesse (say Bell Helicopter workers) will have the money to spend... on narcotics, among other things.

Which leads to the second problem.  The iniative looks only at the "supply side" and does nothing about demand.  Other than leading Mexico into a police state, it only as an afterthought looks at the cash coming into Mexico.  While some of those heliocopter workers might buy more Mexican tomatoes, or auto parts, or gasoline made from Mexican oil, guns and "training" by U.S. based companies is not going to put cash into the pockets of Mexican workers, or rural residents.  It's going to damage the tourism industry, and make the country more, not less, dangerous.   A couple of neighbor kids were arrested yesterday for... something.  The cops showed up, put their hands on the kids and told them to sit in the back of their pickup truck.  The kids were talking -- politely -- to the coppers as they drove off.  Compare that to an arrest in the United States -- the kids would be wrestled to the ground, handcuffed (and being Mexico, cuffed up the side of the head a few times).  I worry what's going to happen when the police are trained to treat all arrests as potentially deadly, and have the firepower to back it up.  Or with even more weapons available that make confrontations all the more likely.  I expect cops will be drawing their guns a lot more... and more "innocent bystanders" (or at least people not directly related to the crime, like the guy shot in his car in Cuilican last week when the police and gangsters had a car chase/shootout and the poor guy bought it at an intersection).

And, as long as there is a willing buyer, narcotics dealers will keep selling.  Only now they'll have more guns available on the black market.

The Supreme Court's repeal of the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., may be a boon for a segment of the firearms industry whose last major windfall might have been in the heyday of the Dirty Harry movies: those who make and sell revolvers.

The court ruled that a blanket ban on handguns is unconstitutional, but D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and other Washington officials want to keep in place a prohibition on semiautomatic handguns — those in which a bullet clip is inserted into the gun's grip.

Such a ban would continue to outlaw 9-mm and other popular pistols that are legal in most other places around the United States. And it would make the classic six-shooter the only legal handgun in the District.

Just for the sake of posterity, here are the words of Justice Scalia, the DC mayor ought to read them!

It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon. There are many reasons that a citizen may prefer a handgun for home defense: It is easier to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emergency; It cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upperbody strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police. Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.

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O Robert Ressler, πρώην πράκτορας του F.B.I., ισχυρίζεται ότι η πιο ηλίθια ερώτηση που μπορεί να κάνει κάποιος είναι η εξής: “Πώς είναι ένας κατά συρροή δολοφόνος;”. Είναι σαν να ρωτάς πώς είναι ένας δημοσιογράφος, ή ένας αστυνομικός ή ένας παπάς. Το top ten σχηματίστηκε με δολοφόνους που μπορεί να μην προκάλεσαν τόσο θόρυβο όσο οι Ted Bundy, Charles Mason ή John Wayne Gacy, αλλά θα μείνουν στην ιστορία για την αγριότητα των φόνων και τα πολυάριθμα θύματά τους.

Στο "Έγκλημα και Τιμωρία", ένα παλιότερο άρθρο μου για τους 10 πιο άγριους κατά συρροή δολοφόνους, που πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στο ΜΕΝ 24.

When drug trafficking is considered synonymous with terrorism, it opens the door to suspension of civil liberties, pulls the country into the Bush counterterrorism strategy, and obscures the real nature and roots of the problem. Negroponte’s remarks also reflect the removal of the security locus from the national to the regional realm, where the United States calls the shots. In this context, fears of violation of national sovereignty are not exaggerated.

While accusing the opposition of being insensitive to drug-related violence, proponents of Plan Mexico paved the way for an aid package that will likely increase violence and bring it closer to home as the drug war extends to opposition targets like it did under Plan Colombia. It will also fail, just as other applications of the drug war model have failed.

I would like to be wrong on this, but the signs are already there—human rights violations have increased precipitously since President Calderon launched the militarization of Mexican society in response to the violence of the drug cartels. The Merida Initiative applauds this strategy and explicitly aims to reinforce and broaden security measures. It adds U.S. espionage equipment and firepower while providing no significant funding or role for civil society measures or protection of civil liberties. Violence fought with violence has led to nearly double the drug-related deaths this year alone and multiple attacks on grassroots leaders, unarmed civilians, Zapatista communities and women by security forces.