Introducing the Real Mexico

Mexico is more than revolutions, drug smugglers, and undocumented immigrants. The country's probable new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, founded the political party, Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), that expects to bring him to power in tomorrow's election on July 1, 2018. Victory over the earlier ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the National Action Party (PAN) would be much different from the bloody revolutios that once brought, for example, a Victoriano Huerta to his provisional presidency.

     Northern Mexico reaps prosperity from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Unskilled, cheap labor initially attracted US. factories south of the border, but these opportunities in Mexico helped create a new, educated cadre with up-to-date experience. Sister city mayors of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, think in terms of a single urban region. A privately financed bridge enables travelers to walk back and forth between San Diego and the Tijuana Airport.

     As a presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador tapped into the feelings of southern Mexicans watching norther Mexicans thrive. He promised to pave roads through the south's mountainous Oaxaca state and to add oil refineries in the southern states of Tabasco and Campeche. In an effort to eliminate food imports, he proposes price guarantees for crops grown by southern farmers. Rising oil prices also expect to help Mexico recover from export revenue losses when prices collapsed in 2014. Yet, to gain electoral support, Mr. Lopez Obrador made a variety of expensive proposals, including a pension for the elderly and disabled, scholarships, and water system improvements. In one instance, Mr. Lopez Obrador is known for an extreme measure.  Residents in Tabasco, at his suggestion, did not pay their electric bills for two decades, thereby costing the company money and causing power to be disconnected periodically.

     From China, the new president is likely to accept an offer of loans to build a railway north of Guatemala to connect the states of Quintana Roo and Chiapas and to builld another road/rail connection through Tehuantepec to the Oaxaca and Veracruz states west of Mexico's southern isthmus. By working with China, Mexico would demonstrate how different international relationships are from 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine told Europe the United States considered any attempt to extend its influence in the Western Hemisphere a threat to its "peace and safety."

     Mexico's new leadership will have only one term to deal with two traditional problems. Drug gangs and the associated increase in murders and violence provide President Trump with justification to build a border wall. Yet, the US demand for cocaine and other illegal substances perpetuates the drug trade. Related turf wars among dealers cause violence and murders in the US and foreign countries, and the arrests of drug dealing criminals fill US prisons. In 2018, Mexico is on track to break the record for murders it set in 2017. With 22 homicides per 100,000 people, Mexico has one of the world's highest rates. The Tijuana arts council building on the site of a concrete-encased structure reminds those on the roof viewing California and those escaping across the border that the art gallery below them is in a tunnel that once carried drugs into the United States.

     Besides inheriting a traditional drug transit destination, Mr. Lopez Obrador also would inherit Mexico's reputation for corruption. Implementation of a National Anticorruption System (NAS) has been on hold pending the results of the presidential election. NAS requires:

• An independent national anticorruption prosecutor devoted to investigating and trying criminal cases,
• An autonomous Federal Administrative Court specializing in serious cases of bribery, vanishing public funds, benefits from campaign contributions, and other acts of corruption by administrative officials,
• Adoption of local anticorruption systems in each Mexican state, and
• A national computerized data platform capable of supporting NAS's objectives.

Facing an increased crackdown on corruption, companies doing business in Mexico are wise to finance serious compliance programs, and Mr. Lopez Obrador would be wise to make good on his presidential campaign promises to eliminate corruption and to abide by Mexico's rule of law.


     

Self Help for Human Rights

On the "Jeopardy" TV quiz show June 25, 2018, three bright contestants did not recognize the last line of the US. Declaration of Independence. Today's emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math does nothing to foster the value and rights of a human being.

     The philosophers and religious thinkers of the United States who justified independence from England and forged a Constitution were schooled in the liberal arts, Greek and Roman statesmanship, and the rights confirmed on humans by natural law. What percentage of the world's seven billion plus population now considers self evident the truths that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?

     Williamsburg, a restored early American historic village in Virginia, published the following quiz that invites us to match U.S. revolutionaries with quotations they used to inspire followers. Their words provide an ongoing self help reminder for humans.

1._____I write so that King George III may read without his spectacles.

2._____If this be treason, make the most of it.

3._____I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than   
             your ancestors.

4._____The British are coming.

5._____ I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

6._____Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes.

7._____I have not yet begun to fight.

8._____In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom.

A. Nathan Hale, a spy for the colonists
B. Abigail Adams
C. John Hancock
D. Patrick Henry
E. William Prescott
F. Phillis Wheatley, a slave
G.John Paul Jones
H. Paul Revere

(You'll find answers in the earlier post, "The Perfect Test.")

 

Cut Off the Head and the Colombian Snake Dies?

 In fact, eliminating the head of a drug cartel can spawn a host of little drug organizations, Jack Devine wrote in his book, Good Hunting. What happened after Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Qaddafi were eliminated? What have those who watched the TV version of the successful hunt and death of Pablo Escobar, Colombia's notorious drug lord, witnessed after Colombia's June 17 election? The 2,000-member National Liberation Army (ELN), though smaller than FARC's once 18,000 guerrillas, is demonstrating the challenge separate dedicated cells can present.

During 50 years that resulted in 220,000 deaths, the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of  (FARC) used drugs to finance efforts to overthrow the Colombian government. Coca cultivation for the cocaine trade continues to grow, reaching a new high in 2018 with a 17% increase over 2017. Security forces have failed to stop the violence occurring in former FARC areas where cocaine production continues on the Colombian border.

 President Juan Manuel Santos, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for the 2016 peace accord he negotiated with FARC, could not run for another term. Two potential presidential successors emerged from the May 27 primary this year:
     Ivan Duque, the conservative Democratic Central party candidate mentored by Alvaro Uribe, a     major critic of the Santos peace accord and Colombia's former conservative, authoritarian president, who is now accused of accepting a bribe (a charge he denies) from right wing paramilitary groups,
                                                                 ans
     Gustavo Petro, a pro-peace former guerrilla member and former mayor of Bogota who also           opposed President Santos.

Duque won with 45% of the vote and will take office as President on August 7. Petro may not be the only loser. When FARC controlled as much as 40% of the country, a diverse variety of species was untouched in this wide tropical area. Under Santos, scientists working on the "Colombia BIO" project began a comprehensive systematic survey in the former FARC territory with the idea of transforming biological assets into economic benefits, such as the eco-tourism Chile and Argentina plan to attract with their national park systems featuring biodiversity.  How important the new regime considers funding for "Colombia BIO" is unknown.

What is known is fragmented FARC and ELN guerrilla groups, as well as paramilitary forces, continue to fight for control of the coca fields still being cultivated to supply the demand for cocaine in the US and elsewhere. Infrastructure needed to switch to legal crops and approved funding for former FARC members to set up co-ops have not materialized 

ELN members live without uniforms in towns and villages as civilians who infiltrate political parties, local governments, progressive social movements, and universities. A 5-man central command, headed by Jaime Galvis, that uses encrypted computers to direct attacks has never engaged in serious peace talks.

Despite the problem of even getting ELN to a negotiating table, Duque's supporters continue to consider peace treaty terms with FARC too lenient. His congressional leader, Ernesto Macias, rejects the peace accord's provision that imposes no prison time on disarmed FARC leaders who agree to confess their crimes to a special tribunal based on the model South Africa used after apartheid. Ten non-voting members of FARC; including Sandra Ramirez, the lover of FARC's founder, Manuel Marulanda, now hold seats in Congress. Duque, who studied at Georgetown and worked for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., won election on a vague  plan to foster entrepreneurship, talent, and knowledge that had more appeal to voters than Petro's idea about replacing oil, the country's major export, with a green economy based on agribusiness. Duque needs the cooperation of Macias to pass legislation to reform Colombia's pension system by raising the retirement age, to improve court efficiency, and to reduce corporate taxes.

     In September, 2018, a referendum on seven measures designed to stem corruption was defeated, when only a third of the voters needed to pass it went to the polls. The death of Jorge Enrique Pizano in his home, apparently from cyanide poisoning in November, 2018, finds Colombia involved in one of the Odebrecht bribery cases spilling over from Brazil. Partners, the Odebrecht construction firm and the Grupo Aval financial group owned by Colombia's Luis Carlos Sarmiento, won a $1.6 billion contract to build Ruta del Sol, a road connecting Bogota with the Caribbean beaches. A Grupo Aval auditor, the deceased Mr. Pizano , had discovered $30 million of the $1.6 billion contract was paid for what were listed as consultancies that could have been a cover for what were, at least in part, political bribes. Grupo Aval and Nestor Humberto Martinez, Grupo Aval's attorney, denied prior knowledge about $11 million in bribes Odebrecht admitted to the U.S. Department of Justice it paid to obtain the Ruta del Sol contract. Yet in early 2018, Mr. Pizano had given the Noticias Uno TV program recordings of his secret conversations with Mr. Martinez about the consultancy payments. Mr. Martinez, who is now Colombia's Attorney General, has recused himself from all cases, including Mr. Pizano's death, relating to the Ruta del Sol contract. Public pressure urges his resignation. 

Colombia has seen an influx of as many as 1.5 million immigrants fleeing dire political and economic conditions in neighboring Venezuela. Work permits, health benefits, and study opportunities have been provided for at least 442,000 as a return favor for the hospitality Venezuela offered those fleeing FARC's reign of terror. To cover Colombia's growing need for revenue, Duque considered expanding the value-added-tax to include staples, including some foods, that are now excluded, but Duque is likely to find his approval rating drop the way Santos' did to 14%, when he raised taxes. In fact, Duque's approval rating in November already is half the 54% it was a month after he took office.


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The Perfect Test

Ask students to write five questions on a unit. Then, have them exchange papers and answer each other's questions. When did they discover?

There are many aspects to writing test questions.

• What is a test trying to determine?
• How accurately does a test measure what it wants to determine?
• How will the test taker interpret the questions?
• How easy is it to take the test?
• How easy is it to grade the test?
• How easy is it to cheat on the test?

Have you ever thought about making a career out of developing tests?

Essay tests on literature are more difficult to take than math tests, but they are a better measure of  understanding the subject than selecting multiple choice options, for example. True or false, yes or no, and matching columns are easy tests to take and grade, but there are many cases where they are not an accurate measure of what you might be trying to determine, and they can make cheating easy, too. Flash the student next to you three fingers, and they can give you a sign for true or yes on question three.

     Besides pencil and paper tests, there are many other types of assessments. Before elections, telephone survey questions are popular. Thermometers take temperatures, barometers measure pressure, and stopwatches time speed. Sensors in fields tell when and where crops need water. Lie detectors catch criminals as do other crime solving forensics. 

     I was reading a scientific research paper a student intern helped write, when I started thinking about test-making careers. Listed in the paper were the kits, such as a "Fine Science Tools Sample Corer," Item No. 18035-02 from Foster City, CA, USA, that companies develop to help scientists anywhere in the world make standardized measurements. The previous post, "Lyme Aid," and the earlier post, "Teens Find Drought and Zika Remedies," talk about the need to develop more medical tests.

     Floyd Landis knows all about the testing kits that already exist. He is the former cycling teammate of Lance Armstrong, who gave Landis his first testosterone patches and introduced him to boosting energizing, oxygen-carrying red blood cells through the process of doping. With these physiological enhancements, Landis set a spectacular time cycling through Stage 17 on the French mountains to win the Tour de France the year after Armstrong retired. His victory was short lived. When he failed the drug test that showed synthetic testosterone in his urine, he was stripped of his title, lost his home and wife, and repaid donors almost a half million dollars.

     Landis suspects testing has not caught up with the latest ways cyclists compromise the sport. Some, supposedly clean racers still set the time he made while using unauthorized measures on Stage 17. Investigations in the UK, for example, continue to find abuses of the Therapeutic Use Exemption system that permits athletes to take banned drugs for medical conditions.

     Of course, athletes and students aren't the only ones who try to game the testing system. Teachers who knew their evaluations depended on the grades their student achieved on standardized tests were caught erasing wrong answers and substituting correct ones on their students' tests. After Volkswagen violated the US Clean Air Law by using a computer code to cheat on emissions tests, the company paid a $25 billion penalty.

     Well aware that doping, match-fixing, and other abuses have plagued former Olympic Games, France has launched "Compliance 2024," a group formed to establish new laws, practices, and norms to promote transparency and accountability to govern the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Such a group emphasizes opportunities for international careers in the test-making business. The perfect test is yet to be developed.

(Answers to test in later post, "Help for Human Rights:" 1.C, 2.D, 3.B, 4.H, 5.A, 6.E His troops were short on amo, 7.G, 8.F) 

     

Lyme Aid

Summertime and the living is not easy where Lyme disease is on the rise. Black-legged ticks that carry the disease are now in 30 countries and half of all U.S. counties, mainly from the Northeast to the Midwest. Some blame the increase on warming from climate change.

     You might see a bull's-eye rash swelling around the bacteria left by a tick bite, but symptoms listed at LymeDisease.org vary and complicate diagnosis. Patients may have severe migraines, muscle spasms, and even seem to have ALS. Blood tests are worthless. The bacteria head for body tissues where they can spread to muscles, nerves, the brain, and heart before the needed early treatment with antibiotics is begun. New antibody tests are being developed.

     Since ticks pick up Lyme disease by feeding on white-footed mice, there are efforts to combat the disease by developing ways to kill ticks in the yards and nesting materials mice inhabit and to prevent mice from carrying the disease. Gene editing might be able to make mice less tasty to ticks or to immunize mice from tick-carrying bacteria.

     In summer, it's far more fun to catch and release fireflies than to be caught by ticks...mosquitoes and wasps.

Picture This

Maybe Kim Jong Un's first glimpse of a promising future based on something other than purging all his military and political competitors, starving dissidents in re-education camps, and destroying Seattle with a nuclear missile was the video President Trump showed him when they met in Singapore.

      Unlike President Obama, who grew up inspired by the vision of multicultural ethnic and religious groups living side-by-side in Indonesia and Hawaii, Trump's New Jersey-New York line of sight was much different. How would things be different if his eye had been schooled to see something other than sites for beach-front condominiums, golf courses, and ice skating rinks?

     Bob Baffert, who grew up around horses in Arizona, looked at Triple Crown Winner, "Justify," and said he loved watching him run with his long strides. Abby Lee Miller's Broadway bound eye spots young girls with both dancing and expressive talents.

     In Vogue (June, 2018), Alexis Okeowo wrote how she grew up in the late 1990s watching Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Surya Bonaly on TV. Her conclusion: strong, beautiful, successful black athletes also could have style. Young women watching Serena Williams these days might have drawn the same conclusion, when they saw her attending the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

     Bethenny Frankel saw suffering from a hurricane in Puerto Rico and an earthquake in Guatemala and hired private planes to bring relief. Sometimes pictures of suffering are too painful to watch, especially if we don't have a place for an abandoned puppy or extra funds for a charity. In the Tony-winning musical, "A Band's Visit," Jewish settlers and a few Palestinian band members spend a chance meeting wistfully thinking about what could be. In contrast, Amnesty International's founders launched a creative campaign to write letters protesting human rights abuses. Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa founded the Solidarity labor union movement to overthrow Communism in Poland.

     On "The Golden Girls" TV series, master storyteller, Sophia, used to begin her tales by saying, "Picture this." Right away, she engaged more senses. A science teacher showed students a video of a firecracker to attract immediate attention. But the video also inspired students to question why the sparks were different colors and much more, all the questions she was going to ask. 

       

Let There Be Peace

As the Singapore meeting of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump approaches, the words of Sy Miller's and Jill Jackson-Miller's song bear repeating:

Let there be peace on earth

and let it begin with me

Let there be peace on earth

the peace that was meant to be

With God as our Father

Brothers (sisters) all are we

Let me walk with my brother (sister)

in perfect harmony

Let peace begin with me

Let this be the moment now

With every step I take

Let this be my solemn vow

To take each moment and live each moment 

in peace eternally

Let there be peace on earth

and let it begin with me

Successful Revolutions Require Organization

Massive rallies and marches fail to result in change, unless they are supported by organizations. It takes political parties to win elections, military forces to stage a coup, pressure from organized religions, and labor unions to change corporations and institutions of learning.

     Individuals with ideas for reform can write books, but organizations need to put these ideas into operational form. When would-be reformers approach Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, for her endorsement, she asks if they can muster a group of at least one thousand. Crowdfunding on social media suggests one way to gain support for causes.

     Where are groups already assembled? On college campuses, war and South Africa's apartheid protesters gained traction. Members of Jewish temples, Muslim mosques, African-American and other Christian churches share common causes.

     In Prague, dissidents hung out at the Art Deco cafe, Kavarna Slavia, to plot the Velvet Revolution that ended communism in Czechoslovakia. The Cafe Gallery and Bassiani night clubs in Tbilisi, Georgia, now attract young people ready to break out of post-Soviet police and interior ministry restraints and to embrace liberalized Western culture. The clubs serve as a gathering space, not only for locals, but also for tourists, rappers, and DJs with European followings. Young Russians received social media news of a club protest that led demonstrators to the steps of Georgia's parliament.

China's Domestic Economic Belt

Less well known on the world stage than China's land and sea "One Belt, One Road" and "Maritime Silk Road" is China's Domestic Economic Belt along the Yangtze River from densely-populated and heavily-polluted Shanghai, west to the lake region around Wuhan (where COVID-19 originated), and still farther southwest to Chongqing, population over 30 million, larger than Shanghai and Beijing (home to OneSpace, China's solid-fueled commercial spacecraft industry, specializing in launching small satellites) and Chengdu, where police just raided an underground church about to commemorate the June, 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square. (This is an opportunity for students to trace the Yangtze River on a map of China.)

Attention to ecology along this Yangtze River route is a priority in China. It entails:

•  Closing polluting chemical plants
•  Restoration of lakes and wetlands 
• Sewage treatment 
• Regulating the fishing industry
• Developing clean air technology (See earlier post,"How to Meet the Clean Air Challenge.")
• Integrating non-polluting energy sources into the existing power grid'
• Building new eco-friendly communities (See earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels.")

A new project in China's far western reaches demonstrates Beijing's focus on developing non-polluting energy sources. Where the Yangtze is known as the Jinsha Jiang River, the new Lawa hydroelectric dam will generate two billion watts of power, the same energy supplied by the U.S. Hoover Dam, on the border between Sichuan and the Tibetan Plateau.

     Development along the Yangtze also indicates China's interest in technological progress.  Economic assistance is going to the Donghu New Technology Development Zone east of Wuhan. The zone houses the FiberHome Technology Group, an optic fiber communications center, and the Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Producing memory chips for China's semiconductor industry has become a personal priority of President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. Commerce Department's April, 2018 7-year ban on sales of chips to ZTE, the high-tech firm in China's integrated circuit and Smartphone industry, exposed dependence on exports from Qualcomm in California. Once again the consequences of cheating played a part. False statements and missing export records showed ZTE violated a 2017 settlement by illegally using U.S. chips in telecommunications equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea. Although ZTE had settled the 2017 case by paying a $1.2 billion penalty and promising disciplinary actions against 39 employees involved in illegal conduct, ZTE took no personnel measures. To restore Qualcomm's sales to ZTE, the company agreed to install a new management team and to let the U.S. staff a compliance unit that would report to the U.S. Commerce Department for the next ten years. At first the US Congress still rejected the plan, until President Trump and Chinese President Xi reached a separate agreement. 

Violations of the original ZTE technology agreement and other cases of Chinese infringement on intellectual property rights concern the U.S. about China's interest in stealing chip research, development, and manufacturing know-how, not only how work in these areas is progressing at the zone in Donghu. With nearly 350,000 Chinese students in the United States, universities are warned to lock their labs, and legal interns from China are being kept away from sensitive antitrust cases. (See the post concerning Foxconn's intended facility in Wisconsin in the later post, "Unmask Inscrutable Chinese Intentions.") 

China Stakes New Claim to Arctic

When warming from climate change uncovered portions of the ice sheet on Greenland, Chinese tourists arrived as did Chinese mining companies interested in the country's newly accessible deposits of rare earth minerals, said to be the world's tenth largest known deposit. In September, 2019, London's Rainbow mining company announced it was ready to expand rare earth production in Burundi to twenty times its current output in order to compete with China, already the world's major extractor of  the hazardous-to-mine rare earth elements. Rare earth elements have a wide variety of uses in hybrid cars, catalytic converters, wind turbines, aircraft engines, cell phones, film making, oil refining, x-rays, powerful magnets for MRI machines, control rods in nuclear reactors, and for TV and computer screens.

To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)

Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")

Back to the Fashion Future

Want to wear the latest fashion? Head to Pyongyang or Tbilisi.

 Back in 1970, when composer Lenny Bernstein hosted an Upper East Side New York City gathering of guests invited from high society and the leather-clad Black Panther U.S. revolutionaries, recently deceased author, Tom Wolfe, termed the unconventional party mix, RADICAL CHIC. "Radical Chic" could resurface with a new application to the back-to-the-future fashionistas strutting streets in Pyongyang and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

The couple who skated for North Korea in the Winter Olympics wore outfits indistinguishable from those worn by contestants from other countries. At home in Pyongyang, women who enjoy the perks of close association with Kim Jong Un's government also find tailors with pre-communist roots who are willing to stitch up unique designs, sometimes from customer sketches, unlike the dark, loose fitting clothes available for the masses. Rather than local fabrics, the fashion savvy even look for clothes made from Chinese and, occasionally, Western textiles.

Over in Tbilisi, the latest fashion is a downscale look. Georgians discovered Demna Gvasalia, a local designer who made good when he escaped and set up a fashion house, Vetements, in Zurich, Switzerland. Other local designers followed his lead, but stayed at home. Just as North Korea's communist style clothing is boring, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the local "fashion" industry in Georgia, the dominant look also was dull and drab. The current trend may not be drab, but it is basic, jeans, T-shirts, tote bags, and the like, at couture prices.

What makes Georgia's everyday items worth the price is their rare origin from a place only jet setters have the funds and time to visit. For the same reason, North Korea's new headlines might motivate the fashion oneupsmanship that attracts wealthy tourists who have been everywhere else in the world.