Some Thoughts That May or May Not Concern Mexico City

On the whole, I find travel stories to be boring and self-indulgent (calm down, I’ve been witness to 100’s of exceptions). This being the case, I’ll try to make it quick.

The Flight:

If I fly a million times in my life, I doubt I will ever tire of looking out the little double-paned window during take-offs and landings. The matchbox-sized cars pulsating through the main arteries of the city, the personal pools dotting the suburbs, the grid-like organization, the verdant parks and the symmetric and well-manicured baseball fields, I love it all. Occasionally I see someone with a window seat reading a magazine. Invariably, he looks exceptionally cool and seasoned. I, on the other hand, have my face pressed, 6 year-old-like, firmly against the pane for 10 minutes straight, admiring the millions of hours of human blood, sweat, and blueprints that brought us the modern day metropolis. Impressive.

Flying in to Mexico City was no exception. Its size is mind-numbing, and there were plenty of cool streets, buildings, and smog to keep a spectating passenger occupied while landing. And the best part of its massive size, as the Museum of Mexico City points out in its permanent exhibit about the city, is that “it all fits in a basin.”

Ha! Humor in museums? I love Mexico already.

The Hostel:

I think a great idea for a reality show would involve filming the revolving cast of characters that occupy the cockroach infested rooms of international hostels. German loners, American middle-school teachers, New Zealand surfers, British students, Canadian skateboarders (all of whom were present at Hostel Amigo) under one roof, reading their enormous, eco-political books, swapping travel stories and getting wasted on alcohol and diarrhea while the cameras captured it all.

Obviously, turnover would be a problem. So by the end of the show you’d have a catalogue of some 5000 plus characters. But given Altman-like direction and an audience open to the idea of a different kind of character development, it just might work.

As for my hostel, I couldn’t complain. Seven dollars for a room, breakfast, dinner, free internet and a pool table. Also included, free of charge, was the late night music. The music, apparently DJ'd by Donald Rumsefeld, was played just loud enough to shake the floors and make sleep impossible, but not loud enough to physically hurt you.

The Diego Rivera Murals in Mexico City:

One of the more impressive murals in the Palacio Nacional depicts a jumbled mass of over 2000 people, many of them historical figures. That’s 2000 individual faces, painstakingly painted.

And thank God I found a guide. Sure, I could have seen the murals by myself. I even would have appreciated them. But having a guide explain the history behind the images was fantastic. I think there’s part of our brain, probably from being read to as children, that craves to have pictures explained and described. “The running goat is happy,” says my mother, pointing to the image. And sure enough, there is a goat. And he’s running. AND he’s happy! To a child, the descriptive power of language is almost like a magic trick.

I think that’s kind of how I felt looking at the murals in Mexico City. Our guide would explain the way in which the Aztecs collected taxes, and sure enough we’d look up and see the whole scene it being elaborately played out in a historic, pastel snapshot 10 feet tall.

Somebody’s Got a Case of the Mondays

In Mexico City, all parks, museums, and zoos are closed on Monday just ‘cause. Make sure you take advantage of this day to ride aimlessly on the metro or wander around markets.

The Bus to Guanajuato

I can say, without the slightest bit of hesitation, that the bus from Mexico City to Guanajuato was the nicest bus I have ever had the privilege to step foot on. Though my previous experiences are limited to school buses (three to a seat!) and greyhounds (vagrant-drug-sex in the back row!), I have a hard time even imagining a bus more comfortable than the one provided by ETN. I officially support ETN buses.

Stay tuned for news from beautiful Guanajuato.

I Love Lists: A Foreign Policy Roundup

I usually only check my hotmail account about once per month because I don't get personal emails there any more. I do, however, get newsletters form different organizations and institutions. Among these institutions are: Oxfam, the National Peace Corps Association, the campaign against SOA/WHINSEC, and Foreign Policy Magazine.

I'll usually skim through anything as fast as I can, sign whatever petitions appear to be worthy and then head back to gmail. I'd be able to do this in about 30 minutes per month if I didn't get sidetracked. But I always get sidetracked. Why? The lists in Foreign Policy Magazine.

I'm a big fan of lists. When I was a kid I used to absorb lists of things like the top ten largest cities or states, or the ten tallest mountains or deepest seas in the world. I think I liked how an entire seemingly unmanageable field of study or inquiry could be consolidated into one little pocket size list of notable "bests" or "biggests." In case your curious, the top ten largest cities in the U.S. according to WatchMojo.com are: NYC, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, and Detroit.

The most recent Foreign Policy list came out a few weeks ago, but I figured I'd post it because it seemed pretty interesting.

It's called the Globalization Index, and ranks the countries of the world by the extent to which they are globally integrated. The index incorporates indicators such as trade, foreign direct investment, participation in international organizations, travel, and Internet usage to determine rankings of countries around the world.

If you want to see the feature article full with cool graphs, formulas, and explanations, click here. Otherwise, here's the executive summary:

1. Singapore (#1 4 of the last 7 years. Not too bad for a city/country hybrid)
2. Hong Kong
3. The Netherlands
4. Switzerland
5. Ireland
6. Denmark
7. United States
8. Canada
9. Jordan (apparently donate a lot to peacekeeping missions)
10. Estonia (dubbed E-stonia for commitment to internet commerce)

If you search around a little bit you can find all sorts of other cool lists like:

1. "Five countries that are building up their military" (China, U.S., South Africa, Venezuela, India), or

2. "Five of the most eligible world leaders" (Can you guess the American on this list? I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Rondeleeza Brice), or

3. "The five healthiest countries." This list had cool little factoids about each country:

1. Japan (women longest living people on earth)
2. France (wine makes for less heart attacks)
3. Iceland (lowest child mortality rate on planet)
4. Sweden (14 % of govt. spending to health care)
5. Cuba (more doctors per capita than any other country)

Here's the page where all of this wacky lists are archived if you'd like to check out more.

I should really be studying for finals right now.

Sagely advice from 1994. A wise man once said. . .

Want to save 90 dollars fast? Become a gas smuggler.

Foreign Policy magazine has a pretty cool feature comparing different gas prices around the world. The low is Turkmenistan, where it costs $1.06 to fill up a Honda Civic. The high is Turkey, where you'd be paying $93.98 to fill up that same Civic. In the U.S. it costs around $31.42 .

There's also an interesting map that highlights the biggest differential between gas prices in neighboring countries. If, for example, someone from Turkey were to drive into their neighbor Iran to gets gas, they would be saving $89.49 each time they filled up the tank. (Iran $4.49 vs. Turkey $93.98).

The U.S., by the way, consumes more oil than the next highest 20 countries combined. Wow. The next five are Japan, China, Canada, Russia, Germany.

Jerry Wolfman Named President of World Bank

The World Bank announced yesterday the hiring of Gerry Wolfman as the next President of the world’s largest international loan institution. Wolfman, a former investment banker and part time lycanthropic shapeshifter, will succeed disgraced sitting President Paul Wolfwitz, who in turn replaced two term president Paul Wolfensohn.

A spokesman for the institution, Doug Shroeder, explained the recent hiring. “We here at World Bank have a long and rich history of handing the reins of our operations over to people with wolf-related names. The wolf, one of the most respected and feared carnivores to be found in nature, carries associations the World Bank like to think of as positive. The word wolf implies that the bank is strong and aggressive, even predatory, in its fight against poverty.”

Shroeder then elaborated on why the threatening name is so vital to the success of the bank’s operations. “You see, it’s like the rest of the world, the impoverished parts, are sheep. Sheep are very docile and helpless animals. They are peaceful, but they lack the ambition or drive that help you succeed economically. The wolf can be that kind of strong presence that the sheep need to reach their full free market potential. Our job here at the World Bank is to put the wolf in with the sheep as a model for growth.”

To win the nomination, Wolfman had to beat out a talented and experienced pool of applicants that included such international banking luminaries as Donald Rumsfeld, Wolf Blitzer, and Michael J. Fox, all of whom were also finalists for the post.

First Book Review

Killing Hope—William Blum

Here is my first book review, or maybe book recap. I figure a review will probably be able to go into a lot more detail than I do, but I’d still like to write something to help me process the material. If it inspires someone else to give it a read (or not give it a read), all the better. Here’s what a couple of people had to say about Killing Hope, by William Blum:

"Far and away the best book on the topic."
Noam Chomsky

"I enjoyed it immensely."
Gore Vidal

(Note—Gore Vidal is the utterer of one of my all time favorite quotes. . . “I never miss an opportunity to have sex or appear on television.”
“I enjoyed it immensely” seems pretty lame by comparison).

I finished this book a couple of days ago and found it, as I knew I would, appalling and depressing. The book, whose subtitle is “U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,” consists of 392 pages of summaries of 55 such interventions. Mr. Blum acts as a kind of Ghost of Christmas Past, taking us by the hand as we visit all of the invasions, bombings, assassination attempts, and torture that are tax dollars have helped to fund.

The basic thesis of the book was this: Following WWII, the power brokers of the American government, presidents, CIA chiefs, DOD Secretaries, etc. were so infatuated with the idea of defeating the “international communist conspiracy,” that they undermined any government that even carried the whiff of progressive change. Possible infractions included: neutrality in foreign affairs, agrarian reform, income redistribution, and nationalization of industries. Even moderate regimes with outstanding human rights records and proven commitments to democracy were undermined and systematically subverted if any sign of independence or economic and political self-determination were manifested. The end result was that our tax money usually supported a right wing alternative that, no matter how undemocratic or brutal, deferred to the economic judgment of the United States and was therefore acceptable. This policy led to some of the most brutally repressive dictators and regimes the world has ever seen, all supported by the U.S.

My previous experience with this kind of material had come mostly from reading The Nation or the works of Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. Occasionally, these kind of things hit mainstream media for discussion. When Afghanistan and Iraq were targeted for liberation, it was noted every once in a great while that the U.S. had actively supported the Afghani Moujahedeen (“holy warriors”) throughout the 80’s in their battle against the Soviets. Or that the U.S. had given the same kind of support to Iraq itself (and by extension Saddam Hussein) in its war with Iran from 1980-1988, giving Michael Moore great images like the one above (of Rumsfeld and Hussein) to use for his movies:

So every once in a while you hear about things like this, but this was the first time I’ve ever read anything so comprehensive on the subject. I read it as an overview and introduction, but it should probably be used as more of a reference. The book is extremely dense with meticulous citations for each chapter. There are so many CIA plots, coup attempts, heinous warlords, and arms deals that looking back at a random chapter I say to myself “Wait, what kind of sordid things happened in Angola again? Or, “When was the coup attempt in the Seychelles?”

Here is a list of the chapters if you’re interested.

As a funny side note to this book, I heard an apocryphal story that Mr. Blum, a former CIA station chief, fought an extensive legal battle with the CIA for the rights to publish the book. He was able to publish the book but the proceeds would go to the CIA. At this point Mr. Blum requested that people check it out at their local library.

One more reason to support your local library. . .