The title tells the story.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html

The Wall Street Journal, 1 March 2010.

Joe Gwinn

PS: If the URL doesn't work, be sure you got the whole thing.

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
The title tells the story.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html

The Wall Street Journal, 1 March 2010.

Joe Gwinn

PS: If the URL doesn't work, be sure you got the whole thing.

So, what's the supposed connection between Milton Friedman and strict
building codes? That sounds like the OPPOSITE of a Chicago School plan.
They'd say that private buildings are none of the government's business.

--
Ed Huntress

On Mar 3, 3:47*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

So, what's the supposed connection between Milton Friedman and strict
building codes? That sounds like the OPPOSITE of a Chicago School plan.
They'd say that private buildings are none of the government's business.

--
Ed Huntress

Easy. The Chicago boys raised the GDP of Chile. A more prosperous
country uses better material in the construction of buildings, and
builders have a harder time bribing the building inspectors.

Why do you say the Chicago School would say that private buildings are
none of the governments business?

"As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to
senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita
GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina
stagnated. Pinochet's democratic successors—all of them nominally left-
of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans
have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's
lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the
lowest number of people living below the poverty line.

Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That
makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates.
But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality
and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth
of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp
on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In
the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried
under schools also built according to code."

Dan

On Mar 3, 7:16*pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

Ed Huntress

I tried to listen to the interview of Milton Friedman, but the sound
was too low even at the max volume setting.

Dan

wrote in message
...
On Mar 3, 7:16 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

Ed Huntress

I tried to listen to the interview of Milton Friedman, but the sound
was too low even at the max volume setting.

Dan

Hmmm. It was loud and clear for me. Try the direct YouTube version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL25NSLhEA

--
Ed Huntress

February 24, 2010
The American Disease
Round Midnight
By JOE BAGEANT
Ajijic, Mexico.
Near midnight and I am making tortillas on an iron skillet over a gas flame.
Some three thousand miles to the north, my wife and dog nestle in sleep in
the wake of a 34-inch snowstorm, while the dogs of Ajijic are barking at the
witching hour and roosters crow all too early for the dawn. While my good
Mexican neighbors along Zaragoza Street sleep.
Yet here I am awake and patting out tortillas, haunted by the empire that I
have called home most of my life.
I like to think that, for the most part, I no longer live up there in the
U.S., but southward of its ticking social, political and economic bombs.
Because the US debt bomb has not yet gone off, Social Security still exists,
and the occasional royalty check or book advance still comes in, allowing me
to remain here. And so long as America's perverse commodities economy keeps
stumbling along and making lifelike noises, so long as the American people
accept permanent debt subjugation -- I can drink, think and burn tortillas.
Believe me, I take no smugness in this irony.
There is a terrible science fiction-like awe in the autonomous American
economic monolith, in the way that it provides for us, feeds on us and keeps
us as its both its lavish pets and slaves. The commodity economy long ago
enslaved Americans and other "developed" capitalist societies. But Americans
in particular. The most profound slavery must be that in which the slaves
can conceive of no other possible or better world than their bondage.
Inescapable, global, all permeating, the commodities economy rules so
thoroughly most cannot imagine any other possible kind of economy.
* * *
It comes down to owning stuff, and that the stuff we own also owns us (as
anyone paying rent in a storage locker can attest). Transmogrified by
industrial materialism, we have become what we own. More specifically, what
we are observed by the rest of our society as owning. In the commodified
society of industrial materialism, owning is being. So much so, that
politicians bandy the term "ownership society" about, not only without
causing the public to gag, but to cheers. Even liberals who claim to dislike
the term don't want to be in a "We don't own **** society."
Early modern capitalism was more or less understandable, if not always
pleasant. One can see why a preindustrial world that had owned less would
embrace owning a bit more. Who gave a damned if it came from Adam Smith's
"unseen hand," the hand that was taking care of the already rich, who in
turn managed the order of the world as seen through the lens of aristocratic
and bourgeoisie English commerce. "If we work our guts out Nellie, we can
buy a pork knuckle every Sunday. And a featherbed, if you get my drift. Woo
Hoo!"
Enter the reign of the bourgeoisie, self appointed and self-interested
middlemen to anything and everything. The sheer complexity of the industrial
revolution and associated finance was a dog that could fatten many fleas.
When the bourgeoisie did not get what it felt was a good cut of the action
from the monarchies, it raised hell, sometimes enough to cause revolutions.
If they won, as they did in America, they took credit for establishing
democracy. If they lost, they fobbed it off as a "people's revolution,"
leaving the working slobs, the actual producers of wealth, to face the
king's hangmen.
Even when "the people" occasionally win one of those "people's revolutions",
we never really win. Not in the end. For instance, here in Mexico, contrary
to what we've seen in Zapata movies, there has never been a successful
people's revolution in terms of lasting and real egalitarian reform. Just
armed struggle, and many promises of reform, always to be abandoned after
the revolution. They were subsequently wiped out by the politically potent
urban middle class, in league with traditional elites, such as the
haciendados and corporatists. The bourgeoisie never gives up its profitable
connections to the elites. Same as in America. The bourgeoisie lives at the
pleasure of the elites.
However, in the people's revolutions it was mainly "the people" who got
killed. So they get naming rights. The people own their revolution only in
death. Just as in the U.S., the elites here and the business classes get
everything else and rent it back to us as mortgages or whatever.
You can argue that people have always screwed other people for a buck, or a
drachma or a shekel. You will win with that argument every time. However,
the real issue is about how many people got screwed and how hard by how few.
Under 250 years of capitalism, the rising take from the ongoing screw job
has grown astronomical. Enough to buy every political tub-thumper in
Washington and a Supreme Court. Enough that if the elite cartels on Wall
Street rip 300 million Americans for trillions, leaving them squinting at
the fine print on their eviction notices, they cannot do jack about it.
Except pay the next ransom demand for their credit . On their credit cards.
Then sign their children into future debt slavery.
We are all Mexicans now
Thanks to the autonomous commodities economy, Mexico literally cannot keep
itself in tortillas. No longer food self-sufficient, Mexico, where corn was
first bred and developed into a staple, buys corn on the world market. The
price of tortillas in the tiendas along my street is up 40% and climbing at
ten times the rate of Mexico's minimum wage.
Mexico was food self-sufficient in 1982. Minimum daily wage then was the
equivalent of 8.2 kilos of eggs, or 23 liters of milk, or 33 kilos of
tortillas. Eighty-five percent of the people had access to government
medical care and the country was fifth worldwide in GNP growth. Now, thanks
to international financial pirates, Mexico cannot even keep itself in
tortillas.
This has happened repeatedly to Mexico, each time due to a different pirate
gang, the French, the English, the Germans. But most often, it is the
Americans and their institutions and policies, the IMF, GATT and NAFTA.
Mexico is continually robbed from within and without. Within lives the
tapeworm of government-business corruption feeding on money passing through
the nation's economic bowel. From without come the assaults of American and
global corporate financialism.
Loathe as Americans are to believe it, the Mexican people and the American
people are in the same situation of being mugged. However, they are robbed
at a different rate and from different positions in the global pecking
order. We rob the Mexicans and global capitalism robs us. Fortunately we can
still afford to buy our national food staple from Dominoes. Which makes us a
superior people.
Humping the Big Lie
Meanwhile, somebody has to hump The Big Lie, maintain the appearance to the
rest of the world that American cowboy capitalism is stable. Also keep
Americans sold on The Big Lie's flip side, the number two tune: "We are the
richest and most blessed people on earth because of capitalism (but
currently "going through a rough patch" ). Proof is offered: "Step right up
and see for yourselves! Just look at the spectacular services and goods that
bury us in wonderment! Now go buy a PT Cruiser."
Decades ago, the spectacle of commodity capitalism, the sheer variety of
possible stuff to own, ways to be, possible appearances of being, came to
constitute a commodity in itself -- enchantment as a product, product as
enchantment. Materialistic enchantment as commodity was so powerful in scale
and scope, and so thorough in mind saturation that it came to colonize our
consciousness in what Guy Debord aptly deemed "the society of the
spectacle."
No ordinary person could ever have withstood such a colonization of human
consciousness as the American people have seen. Consciousness being simply
awareness, there was no surviving the onslaught. The tsunami of false
possibilities and pseudo choices constituted entire constellations in the
psyche, of goods, and images of goods large and small: hair dryers, iPods,
anti-bacterial wipes, cable television, ammunition, plastic siding, gourmet
foods, this HP notebook computer in my lap, the Prius and the Porsche, even
words such as Google, Microsoft, China Mobile, Vodafone, Marlboro… They all
have psychological and social meaning in our commoditized consciousness,
that battlefield where each commodity vies for preeminence with every other
commodity in the shifting exposition of stuff we are permitted to labor to
pay for.
It can now be honestly stated that mere goods and services express the
citizenry and the American culture in its entirety. Citizenship in a
consumer society is consumership. Consumer culture consumes all rival
cultures, replacing them with "pop culture," which is simply deeming the
marketplace as culture. Hip Hop is a good example. So is the modern cinema,
and all of the music and book publishing industry. Corporate industry and
its products are not culture, despite all the new definitions of culture
bourgeois academia and the marketplace come up with on behalf of the
corporations that fund both of them.
Your iPod shall set you free!
Freedom and personal identity exists as freedom to choose identity from
among the commodities, and particularly the entertainments, offered. The Mac
person as opposed to the Windows person. The Mariah Carey or Rihanna Fenty
fan as opposed to the Eric Clapton fan. Each is convinced he or she is
different because of their chosen commodity. Yet at the root of this, they
all purchased a computer or a CD from a faceless corporation grounded in the
toxic wastelands and sweatshops of Asia and elsewhere. Those who, in a fit
of defiance, choose Indy music choose a product originating in and listened
to through digital equipment produced in the bowels of monolithic corporate
commodities generators.
We may gaze at the hologram and dream of living larger, or conversely,
living the uncorrupted "simple life" on that little organic farm in Vermont.
In the end though, the lucky ones among us, all those people out there in
anonymous Terra Condominia, out there in the sprawling suburban nether land,
must be content with a flat screen television. Watching those commercials
for the Super Bowl commercials, delivered to us breathlessly as "news," The
News is the liturgy of the commodity economy -- whose scope and omniscience
no man can grasp, but only consume as manna. We are feasters at the table of
goods and services, most of which are not only unnecessary, distractive and
mind killing, but earth destroying in both their manufacture and their use.
This matters not a bit in an illusionary world of appearances. The commodity
economy in its bounty, also offers us a chance to "buy green." To text a
link to the Earth First! website.
It ain’t fascism, it’s practicality
If our national and individual minds have been colonized, occupied, then we
necessarily live in an occupied nation. We have arrived at the destination
where the trajectory of material consumer capitalism was always headed,
toward an occupied (and preoccupied) totalitarian society. Rational,
practical, productive and autonomous.
Cliché as the word is, you would have to call it overshoot. In judging the
arc and trajectory of that technical rationality Western society so prides
itself upon, we reduced the Enlightenment, the original launching pad of
ration, to the merely practical, material and economic. The practical is
scripture now. Without it material production and profit, the only concerns
of capitalism, do not exist. All power rests in the practical.
What is most practical is hierarchy and specialization. Technical
Specialization -- within engineering specialization -- within scientific
specialization. All contained within the economic specializations of the
state sanctioned economy and ideology governing the conditions of our daily
existence. By definition, this is totalitarian.
Totalitarianism calls ideology philosophy. It salutes itself in every medium
and every product, material, legal, political. And we salute it in return
through meaningless work and consumption.
In all likelihood, you the reader are younger than I. Possibly less cynical
and surely less tired. You may believe yet that violent overthrow of such a
monstrous system is still possible.
A year or so ago, I still believed that. Events in the world and at home
have since convinced me otherwise. Maybe the system could have even been
changed from within forty years ago. If it could have been and was not, then
that most certainly is the greatest failure of my generation. The Sixties
were a critical point at which important choices were offered us as a
people. A the time, a minority realized revolution was still possible and
warranted. Violent revolution, if necessary. But as a generation, we were no
better at acting in unselfish concert than yours. As Chris Hedges recently
pointed out, violence today only assures the survival of the most violent,
criminals of one sort or another, petty or international. Beyond that, the
state now has the technological capability to inflict the most violence in
every case, and therefore win. Realistic thinkers say aloud that what is so
far advanced can no longer be stopped or turned around by revolution,
violent or otherwise. Most other thinkers on the subject secretly suspect
the same.
Mr. Popularity and the marmot
The rest of the country is oblivious, lost in the anxious clamor for an
economic "recovery." The voice of the state defines recovery for them as a
return to former levels of the unsustainable superheated capitalism, and
increased indebtedness of the populace. “Oh when of when will the bankers
‘loosen the credit markets so we can again buy things?’ As if their debt
slavery were a great gift! The banksters simply do not issue more credit to
people they know are dead broke--because they broke 'em, They will continue
to make more money by letting the people wail, and taking the people’s money
directly from the state as bailouts. Stretched out over the coming years, we
will see moiré if them. It should give us chills.
President Obama at some point asked himself if bailouts for those who caused
the collapse will truly result in an end to the "current crisis" (a term
calculated to make our slow inevitable collapse look temporary). How does
getting the masses to accept more debt add up to anything but worse crisis
later? Obama is a smart fellow, smarter than George Bush, which is what got
him elected, right? (Of course after Bush a marmot could have run on the
"smarter than Bush" ticket and looked good). So he must have asked that. And
like any highly educated (indoctrinated) American politician who has
interiorized the capitalist system--you do not become a presidential
candidate without interiorizing capitalism lock stock and barrel—his first
reflex was: “The system must be saved at all costs!” Members of Congress,
whose butts arrived in the Washington through the same processes as Obama’s,
agreed. That cost us all plenty.
Obama is himself a commodity, the most telegenic political commodity since
Kennedy. One that suits American style capitalism best this particular
historical political moment. He is a useful illusion, the same as George W.
Bush was a useful illusion. What is the difference between George Bush
managing the country through media performances and Obama doing the same?
Both are telegenic, which is everything today, but in different ways. One
was stupid but radiated virility and manly appearance; the other is
attractive for his intelligence and so smart he's stupid. Both lives are
absorbed in "appearing to be" in the Great American Hologram of appearances.
We are a nation following the appearance of national leadership.
* * *
It is cold comfort that we are not alone in this ultimate folly. Globally,
it is estimated that the economic crisis has seen at least $50 trillion in
financial assets--approximately equal to the value of the entire global
GDP--wiped out. Given the bull**** "science" that is economics, and that
economists serve the purposes of the money masters of their particular age,
and that money is always in motion, it is very doubtful that anyone really
knows the global GDP. But the illusion that someone does is necessary in
preserving and controlling perceptions of the present system. Otherwise the
concept of money itself would have to be reexamined and changed to fit the
world reality. Better to proclaim a “crisis” and scare the **** out of the
peasantry, than give them an opportunity to question the new feudalism of
credit cards, mortgages, car loans, educational loans and general debt
slavery. The word crisis scares people, flogs them into anxious submission,
lest some ****ing socialist come along and ask, Why don’t you take charge of
your own lives and destiny? Do you really need these people?
The “crisis” was set in motion by institutions leading each other
non-existent money none of them can pay back. Consequently, the masses are
once again expected to produce enough material value in the world to make
the funny money real, and shore up the system one more time. To “raise the
money” to do this will require generations of future productivity shoveled
into the furnace of corporate capitalism’s banking machinery. There was
nothing left to steal, so extorting the future was the only option left.
Assuming the skimmers and the scammers manage to extract enough public
monies to pump up corporations one more time, there will be another and
bigger disaster not far down the road. We don’t need the Oracle of Delphi to
predict this. Capitalism is unstable as hell, like an unbalanced dreidel
that keeps tilting ever more wildly off center until it falls over or
eventually hits the wall. We can now see the wall from he Massive
ecological collapse and species extinction. "Economic downturn," even
“crisis,” does not quite describe that approaching wall. All of America
hopes we will miss that wall at least one more time.
Americans are hope fiends. We always see hope somewhere down every road,
chiefly because honestly looking at the present situation would destroy just
about everything we hold as reality. Personally, as I often state and catch
readership hell for, I do not like hope. When Obama ran it up the flagpole
for us to salute, and so many saluted, my blood chilled. Made me feel that
we were all in deeper **** than I had supposed (Nevertheless, I reluctantly
voted for Obama. At the time it seemed It was either Obama, or continuing
war, debt, and diminishing civil liberties. Ha!) Hope is magic thinking,
believing that somehow, some larger unknown force is in motion to set things
right.
The world is what it is, and its injustices are set right by peoples and
nations morally intact enough to challenge its malevolent forces.
Hope is political pabulum for an infantilized nation.
A shot at economic justice (gets you shot at)
On those rare occasions when I do see nations take concrete steps toward
liberation, the heart is cheered at having at least some reason for reality
based optimism. After more than a century of taking in up the shorts from
autonomous capitalism, Latin America is moving toward alternatives to the
free trade cowboy capitalism that has so long raped them.
One step is ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América).
ALBA is aimed solely at meeting human need instead of profit. Bartering and
mutual economic and material aid outside of so-called free trade agreements.
Out of the reach of global banking. For example, Venezuela gives Cuba over
100,000 barrels of oil daily at production cost. In exchange Cuba has sent
20,000 state-employed doctors and medical staffers. And if Venezuelans'
medical problems require higher medical specialism, they may travel to Cuba
for specialized care free of charge. No profits allowed. Take it or leave
it.
The takers are lining up. Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Saint Vincent , the
Grenadines , Dominica, Honduras, Antigua and Barbuda, Nicaragua and Bolivia.
ALBA nations are in the process of introducing a new regional currency, the
SUCRE. (Sistema Único de Compensación Regional, or Single Regional Payment
Compensation System) to replace the U.S. dollar. Now a common virtual
currency, it is scheduled to become a hard currency.

Countries such as Argentina are experimenting with an economy based on
worker self-management and balanced job complexes. Venezuela is developing
community owned and directed banks. A common goal is to develop an economy
not dependant, as is capitalism, on limitless exponential growth, but on
consuming fewer resources, operating without debt, and using less or none of
the global banking system's money. When the IMF and the world’s banksters
dubbed these nations “developing countries” (a fine example of Newspeak,
that both renamed miserable poverty, and suggested that the international
bankers’ robbery was benefitting those countries), this is not the kind of
development they had in mind. This is pure wide-open socialism based on the
universal socialist and democratic socialist vision. The stuff of capitalist
nightmares.
The traditional answer to such challengers to autonomous capitalism has been
simple. Kill 'em. And we do our best. The U.S. has always had its
provocative agents and hit squads working in those counties. Castro has
survived or foiled some 638 assassination attempts, one every few weeks of
his long presidency. Attempts on Chavez are so common the Venezuelan press
no longer bothers to report them. After all, besides being old hat, they
don't seem to be working anyway. Which means we will be forced to bomb the
**** out of Venezuela and Cuba at some point. But they will have to get in
line behind Iran.
By the way, a Latin American country does not have to be socialistic to get
hammered by capitalist interests. Even Mexico, governed by corrupt
capitalist and business overlords of the first order, men who have
consistently sold their country out to foreign capitalist interests both
before and since its revolution, is a target for covert action and
sabotage -- from Israel of all places. In October 2001, a month after 9/11,
two Israelis, MOSSAD agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and another Israeli who
slipped into the country covertly, were arrested inside the halls of the
Mexican congress, while posing as two rather lumpy looking photographers.
The lumps turned out to be nine hand grenades, a dozen sticks of dynamite,
detonators and detonator wiring and two Glock 9mm automatics. Immediately
following the arrest, Ariel Sharon sent a top envoy, who sprang them,
following strong pressure from Israeli government. They were whisked off,
leaving Mexicans to wonder, What in the hell was THAT all about?” One
neighbor here in Mexico says wryly, "That must have cost the Israelis
millions in bribes."

Born with the disease?
It would be nice if we could neatly lay all the blame on the nasty monolith
of autonomous capitalism as an outside malignant force of its own. A
systemic pathogen that somehow infected a decent and unsuspecting America.
Looks like I just did, in fact.
Nevertheless, America and its national character were founded on the purest
greed. From the beginning the people who came here wanted more of the
material world. Sure, there were some religious dissenters (of which too
much has been made for propaganda purposes). But the English and Dutch stock
companies that established the first colonies came looking for profits. And
the common people who came here were looking for "a better life," which to
them was, above all else, becoming as wealthy as possible. America was its
own self-selecting process.
Read Tocqueville's description of earlier Americans' relentless buying and
selling fever. Everything and everyone was always up for sale from the
start. Read about the greed and stinginess of the "refugees from religious
persecution," such as slave owning Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists.
Read about how the founding fathers ripped off the Revolutionary War
veterans for the IOU script they so patiently held for many years in payment
for fighting, buying it up for pennies on the dollar, then passing
legislation to pay up on the script. Or how not only the business class, but
also the supposedly bucolic and wise heartland American farmers cheered as
the government troops shot down hungry striking miners, burned out their
families, lest they disturb the order of the Republic of commerce.
There were the exploited working masses then, just as there are now. And
there was always the petty bourgeoisie, more than happy to do the dirty work
of the most elite owning class, in hopes of currying its favor. Always happy
to sanction the "wet jobs" on the Italian, Polish, Chinese and Irish
immigrant laborer. You could then, and you can now, depend on the true
middle class, that 15% or so, capitalism’s commissars, to crush the working
class. They will do anything to remain in a more privileged zone of
consumption, the boundaries of which are maintained by agreement of state
authorities. From their petty perches, they have deemed themselves “the
middle class.” In reality they are the mitigating class, the petty anointed
whose job it is to obscure class awareness in America.
Shut up and let the green stuff talk!
An awareness of class makes clear who is ****ing whom. That's why American
capitalism's official line is that we area "classless society." Denying the
existence of class, deeming all Americans (excepting a few too-obvious-to-be
denied cases, such as inner city blacks and the poorest of immigrants),
"middle class" was one of American capitalism's great strokes of genius. It
blurred the line between workers and capitalism's middle class
commissariat -- the petty business, mid-management, teaching and owning
class managing the rest of us for the elites.
And just in case that line was not blurred enough, the bourgeoisie,
particularly the academic institutions, successfully wrote the labor and the
working masses out of American political history as taught in the public
schools. We workers now have no continuous organic chain of memory and
experience from which to draw.
The owning/business class has always been institutionalized as the state and
the custodians of the entire American social and political process. History
as we learn it in school is the owning class' version. Despite what we were
taught, America's Constitution is mainly a property rights document, and
those with the most property are naturally ascendant at all times in this
country. Generation after generation of this ascent was bound to lead to
what we see now. The ultimate triumph of property and money. A Supreme Court
that, without the slightest hesitation, declares that money is speech and as
such, will do most of the talking from here on out. The autonomous economy
now has a tongue.
We can well imagine its future admonishments, its smug edicts, proclamations
of terror afoot, more need for surveillance camera eyes, oil pipelines for
its circulatory system… The autonomous economy not only has the bullhorn of
the national media. It has a voice capable of drowning out what little of
the people's voice remained, replacing our small national dialogue with
soulless monologue. The bourgeoisie will listen closely though, for
opportunity, a buck to be made in Kevlar, or perhaps the next new
antidepressant for a demoralized, passive and discouraged republic.
In all honesty, I am sick of thinking about it, tired of burning up
unrecoverable hours at the end of my 63-year old candle writing about it. So
are many of my colleagues in cybernetic left-space.
Distance and solitude seem the only refuge. Which is why I am "aging
Mexican," and almost monastically absorbed in the small daily rituals of
sustenance these days. I do not kid myself that it is permanent or a real
solution to the unbearable ugliness of the American condition.
But at the moment, four AM, a cricket chirps in the orange tree by my
window, and my tortillas are perfectly lovely.
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from
America's Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He
is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance
from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along
with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be
found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com.

*Footnote:
*Israelis arrested with guns and explosives inside the Mexican Congress

By Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - October 15, 2001- (ACN) In a mind-blowing
development, La Voz de Aztlan has learned that Mexican Army General Rafael
Marcial Macedo de la Concha who heads the Procuraduría General de la
República (Mexican Department of Justice) has released the retired Israeli
Defense Forces colonel and presumed MOSSAD agent Salvador Guersson Smecke
and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi after both had penetrated the
security of the Mexican Congress and where in possession of guns, hand
grenades and explosives.
This morning La Voz de Aztlan had a personal telephone interview with the
Mexican Congressional Press Secretary, Lic. Adriana Lopez, and verified the
arrest of the two Israelis after they had entered through the highly secured
front entrance of the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro. She stated to La
Voz de Aztlan that the two terrorists had taken advantage of a situation
that occurred around 1700 hours of Wednesday October 10 when a large
contingent of Sugar Industry Unionists were entering through the metal
detectors. The two Israelis followed about 50 of the unionists to the office
of the President of the Mexican Congress Beatriz Paredes. The two Israelis
were first pretending to be press photographers but called the attention of
the sugar unionists because of their nervous and out of the ordinary
behavior. About ten of the unionists confronted them and observed that they
were carrying guns and and what looked to them to be explosives. They held
the two Israelis until Official Congressional Security personnel took them
into custody. The head of Congressional Security Salvador Alarcón verified
that the Israelis had in their possession nine hand grenades, sticks of
dynamite, detonators, wiring and two 9mm "Glock" automatics.
Mexican Congressional Press Secretary Lic. Adriana Lopez informed La Voz de
Aztlan in the telephone interview that Congressional Security then turned
the terrorists Salvador Guersson Smecke, age 34, and Saur Ben Zvi, age 27,
to the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexican Department of Justice)
which is headed by Mexican Army General Rafael Marcial Macedo de la Concha.
Initial reports by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) were that
both Israelis worked for a private security agency and that they both had
gun permits. It turned out that there is no connection of either suspect to
any private security agency. The PGR has released the retired Israeli I.D.F.
colonel with the official explanation that he had a legal permit to carry a
gun. They also released the illegal Israeli immigrant on about $4000 bail
and the case turned over to the Mexican immigration authorities. Mexican
Congressional Press Secretary Lic. Adriana Lopez was surprised to hear from
La Voz de Aztlan of the release of the two Israelis.
La Voz de Aztlan has also learned that the Israeli Embassy used heavy handed
measures to have the two Israelis released. Very high level emergency
meetings took place between Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Jorge
Gutman, General Macedo de la Concha and a top Ariel Sharon envoy who flew to
Mexico City specially for that purpose. Elías Luf of the Israeli Embassy
worked night and day and their official spokeswoman Hila Engelhart went into
high gear after may hours of complete silence. What went on during those
high levels meetings no ones knows, but many in Mexico are in disbelief at
their release. Guns and any kind of explosive is highly illegal for Mexican
citizens and the fact that these two Israelis had them inside the Mexican
Congress makes their release highly suspect. What is really going on? Jorge
Gutman, the Mexican Foreign Secretary, has very strong Zionist connections
and himself is of Jewish descent. Mexican Army General Macedo de la Concha
has strong connections to the U.S. Military Industrial-Complex and through
this to the Israeli Defense Forces. Have any of these connections influenced
the decision to release the two Zionist terrorists?
The initial arrests of the two Israelis inside the Palacio Legislativo de
San Lázaro made top news on Mexico City television and radio on the evening
of October 10. TV Azteca had extensive coverage on the first night and on
the following day. La Cronica de Hoy Newspaper and El Universal Newspaper
both covered the incident the following two days but now it seems that there
is a lack of reports. The PGR has a Press Bulletin on their official website
but they have made no updates. No U.S. media has made any mention, that we
know, except one by USAJewish.com. Pravda of Moscow has a note of the
initial La Voz de Aztlan article at:
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/13/17982.html

http://www.aztlan.net/blowup.htm

El Diario de Mexico was one of many newspapers in Mexico that carried the
story but after two days it just died. The two Israeli terrorists are seen
being escorted out of the Congress by police.

On Thu, 4 Mar 2010 00:12:15 -0600, "William Wixon"
wrote:



February 24, 2010
The American Disease
Round Midnight
By JOE BAGEANT
Ajijic, Mexico.
Near midnight and I am making tortillas on an iron skillet over a gas flame.
Some three thousand miles to the north, my wife and dog nestle in sleep in
the wake of a 34-inch snowstorm, while the dogs of Ajijic are barking at the
witching hour and roosters crow all too early for the dawn. While my good
Mexican neighbors along Zaragoza Street sleep.
Yet here I am awake and patting out tortillas, haunted by the empire that I
have called home most of my life.
I like to think that, for the most part, I no longer live up there in the
U.S., but southward of its ticking social, political and economic bombs.

(snip a ton)

This fellow is stuck at sophomore tic sophomore tic sophomore...

On Mar 3, 10:46*pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
wrote in message

Hmmm. It was loud and clear for me. Try the direct YouTube version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL25NSLhEA

--
Ed Huntress

I found the problem at my end. I pretty much never listen to anything
on my computer.

So you are saying that the Chile economy has not done better than
other South American countries?


Dan

wrote in message
...
On Mar 3, 10:46 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
wrote in message

Hmmm. It was loud and clear for me. Try the direct YouTube version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL25NSLhEA

--
Ed Huntress

I found the problem at my end. I pretty much never listen to anything
on my computer.

So you are saying that the Chile economy has not done better than
other South American countries?


Dan

Nope. I didn't say anything even remotely like that, Dan. Read the post
again.

--
Ed Huntress

On Mar 4, 1:38*pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


So you are saying that the Chile economy has not done better than
other South American countries?

Dan

Nope. I didn't say anything even remotely like that, Dan. Read the post
again.

--
Ed Huntress

So you are saying that the Chile economy is an economy that more free
than other South American countries and that the Chile economy has
done better than other South American countries.

Dan

wrote in message
...
On Mar 4, 1:38 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


So you are saying that the Chile economy has not done better than
other South American countries?

Dan

Nope. I didn't say anything even remotely like that, Dan. Read the post
again.

--
Ed Huntress

So you are saying that the Chile economy is an economy that more free
than other South American countries and that the Chile economy has
done better than other South American countries.

Dan

Read the post. You must have skipped over a lot -- not that you have to, but
I already answered those questions.

--
Ed Huntress