Odd in a kind of freakish way

rock of predestined relationship. Qingdao Pre-destination. I recall this worm in my belly. It used to be that I felt predestined to be a writer and it often permeated a great deal of my everyday life more oft than not in my love affairs.

This is quite intrinsic to Americans, specially the WASP kind and by default those they embrace in their culture expansion such as the likes of Aztlán. We xicanos are no exception to the rule though this is somewhat meated out by catholism hence the schism that so neatly portrays us mostly through hyphens.

Though right not am not thinking about American culture in particular. Am thinking about one man and the crisis it must be ensuing in him by now because of failre of acomplishment.

This man is a leader of the USA and is obligued to embrace this religious belief of pre-destination embedded in gringo culture thanks to Calvinist thinking.

I wonder how does it feel to have to realize that one is not all that pre-destined to nothing.

Off course, one can always opt for repression, heck, pre-destination is a drug and once you taste it nothing stops you.

This goes too for Israel an their notion of a Greater Israel.

Pre-destination is no dish served on a silver platter. In the event that it is the waiter has to walk a path filled with good intentions and we all know were those paths lead to.

Lieutenant Ehren Watada

I haven’t seen much clamoring on the American blogsphere regards Lieutenant Ehren Watada. In fact technorati gives a graphic whereby we can see its reader cause and effect.

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Some of the big honchos on the net and which tend to attract large crowds to their jangle are also somewhat mysteriosly quiescent on the issue. The Kos gang, for example, did a diary on the subject at hand yet for all the hurly-burly other posts create this one got a stingy 7 comments and I do not dare read what was said.

This has baffled me somewhat because as a frecuent reader of so-called progressive blogs I find the issue of conscientious objector oddly absent in the noise of the dem crowd.

This is perhaps due to the nature of the blogs a I frecuent, like The Agonist, Dalily Kos, Juan Cole and other of their ilk which tend to cover US foreign relations from a military perspective.

Their narrative often speaks well of the Military Industrial Complex of the US despite the fact that they question the leadership therein.

Which is near outré since that is precisely what Lieutenant Ehren Watada is doing, questioning the very war blogs in the US blogsphere aptly denounce as wrong.

This offers a rare glimpse into American behaviour as Lieutenant Ehren Watada position highlights a taboo in, what seems by now, a large segment of American society: infringement of civil society in military affairs is out of the question.

Wiki on Watada

Agonista me?

Am rather amused at the fact that I can post stuff at the Agonist. It just tickles my belly to no end.

Off course, the fear that I might not do as expected haunts me like the Llorona does to every kid with mexican blood world over.

Do I expect to be censured? Of course, we are taliking gringo here. Wait, are you saying that Agonistas are incapable of understanding a Southwest/Norteño kid the likes of you when it comes to world afairs?

No, what am saying is that perhaps the editing dep has different ideas about what is stated in letters. It’s not precisely China but am sure many a linguistic Wall will arise now and then.

Are you going to be a prolific diary writer? By far, I think, and am grateful, that today was a beginning that I hope will bring a new morrow dawn with new vigour to do what I did today. Rather, I like to opine.

Ordinary people like you and me in Israel-Palestine

Is
ra
el

Nothing but Is-ra-el.

Poor israeli citizens. They must have some kind of post traumatic disorder in full swing by now. They never rest. I don’t care how tough they are am telling you, keep it. I’d rather live in México or Sweden any day of the world than in Israel. That God ain’t worth it.

Poor souls. Can’t sleep, can’t walk and can’t stop hating each other not because the ordinary citizen doesn’t want to but because all kinds of politicians and world leaders insist in making life miserable for all parties involved.

You think that Israelis have it easier because they have electricity? Believe me, they suffer too because they know they can’t walk or be anywhere in the world without feeling hatred breath down their necks. Am sure their conscience is riddled as well with guilt by what their government does in their name.

Am sure they are in some kind of psychosis by this stage. The psychological barrier for Palestinians is also on the edge except that they have a goal in mind while the Israelis don’t. Israel just tries to keep a hold on what it has and pretty much its ambition of a greater Israel is reigned in by so-called world leaders.

No peace in the middle east, how can people live like that? Is their God that much worth? The curious thing about the bible is that it actually asks of its flock that they pray for world leaders. Praying for these war mongering, war hungry leaders is like asking the wolf to wolf down the flock in a sitting.

1 Timothy 2:1-4
Hebrews 13:17 Obey your leaders

Pray all day cause it ain’t gonna happen.

de agentes secretos

RIP Agent 007s unlikely alter ego – Sir Peter Smithers

He was a secret agent, diploment and scholar, but few knew of Sir Peter Smithers’ most exotice role: the likely model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond – reports The Canberra Times. […] He kept in his bathroom a photograph of the Imperial Navy’s Yamato. (Ever the aesthete, he admired the graceful lines of this huge enemy warship sunk off Okinawa in 1945.) But his most important wartime work occured in and around Mexico.

Along the American seaboard and in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico during the first six months of 1942, German U-boats and mines sank 397 vessels, at the cost of some 5000 Allied lives — more than twice the death tool at Peral Harbor. Historian Gerhard Weinberg has called the episode ”The greatest single defeat suffered by American naval power”.

Lieutenant-Commander Smithers was sent herriedly to Mexico City as naval attaché in Mexico, the Central American Republics and Panama charged with charting U-boat refueling operations. His espionage led to expertise in photography — at first enemy shipping and later of flowers.

In Mexico he met and married after a three-week courtship Dojean Sayman, a divorced American heiress of part-Mexican ancestry who owned a gold typewriter. This machine made a cameo appearance in the Bond novel Goldfinger.

patriarchism strikes again

Reading this sent revulsions of all sorts down my spine.

The most famous record of slave life, Frederick Douglass’s ”Narrative,” rendered vividly the vile mix of lust and domination practiced by slave owners.

This is a bunch of poo in the loo in my eyes. The most famous is by far Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

It just turns out that the aforementioned article writer chose to elevate the one mentioned for the purpose of highlighting a sucession of possibilities for the benefit of present company.

Slavery is not something that ought to be awakened so easily for the purposes of gaining favor in some. Slavery is a gross crime from the past that is yet to be addressed or resolved.

Republicans and their cronies ought to feel embarrased for allowing this kind of crap to crop in an era like ours.

Hope the article writer gets chastised by a few or more.

A poem I wrote on the subject at hand not long ago.

Mexican elections 2006

Well, let’s git to the knilly willy of the ninny lilly. Elections in México, el suspenso is killing me.

I wrote in my spanish blog that Calderón was already a winner, ooops, it’s a cultural thing would say this guy who contradicted the IFE’s version of the early poll results arguing that the northern states of México (the least populated of all states in México by the by’s) have better digital infrastructure therefore giving the illusion that Calderón was winning when the South vote wasn’t even yet in. So yeah, norteño me, I single handedly admitted Calderón’s win because, alas! I read mostly norteño newspapers.

Some people are giving out the Bush blue-red state semiotic propaganda. Why is this is beyond me since México is a multiparty system and painting it yellow-blue does not reflect the realities on the ground at all. Then again, what do you expect from a newspaper whose traditional ties to the military are well known.

AMLO is putting up a fight and the Mexican blogsphere did its bit too. Oddly enough there has been going on a wad lots of hacking talk with reports that a site allied to the leftist candidate has been shut down as well.

Mirada Pública, Public Eye, tried to do a site that collected posts related to the election with the specific theme to denounce any irregularities the bloggers saw or encountered during the election day. Drip, drip … sirap moves faster. The fact of the matter is that this is praiseworthy despite my sarcastic sentence back there. It’s a humble start for a nascent internet community and a mexican blogsphere which tallies a membership of 5948 weblogs. According to me a poor reflection of the sphere’s real number as I suspect that site colludes with G men in México.

AMLO presented a video arguing evidence of fraud but that has backfired in his face.

Either way the biggest loser here is the IFE although you wouldn’t know it by either American opinion or hasty congrats on part of the EU as well as Bush Inc. Though Bush has backpedaled a wee bit. Ok, I can’t resist, this exchange of the matter offers an example of overlapping authority on both nations, believe me, it’s funny.

Q All right, then what do you think — or what does the administration say about a foreign politician denouncing domestic legislation in the United States, and particularly Calderon’s denunciation of stronger border security and an extended fence?

MR. SNOW: Last time I checked, Calderon did not have any official authority over the activities of the United States government.

Q Can I follow up on that?

MR. SNOW: Yes, very quickly. Sure.

Q The call the President made to Calderon to congratulate him, that means that the U.S. government already recognized him as the President-elect of Mexico? Can you explain what —

MR. SNOW: Well, I believe the electoral commission had, in fact, declared him President. And according to the laws of Mexico, at this point, he is President. Should there be a recount, should there be another adjustment, should there be a change, then the President will acknowledge that, as well — Mexico, obviously having the ability to decide who, as a result of transparent elections, is the President of the country.*

The last word hasn’t been said yet, Calderón isn’t officially declared a winner. Give Tom Paine a read for more on this.

One thing that bloggers on the progressive sphere are admiring is the paper trail of the Mexican election and reminiscenses of Florida have been flourishing just about everywhere envying the paper trail and hating more and more Diebold. This is intense irony for me because as a Xicano I have what now can be deemed as old fashioned American values. I often pained as a young mexican man to see the democratic system in my country of birth which word by word ultimately was referred to as a dictadura light. We admired the democratic system of the US as an example to follow. And now our gringo vecinos are admiring us? Jesus! What has the world come to? Will pigs now walk on the moon?

Since this is the first time we mexicans abroad get to vote it is noteworthy to note that most of us voted to the right, ajem! present company excluded of course. Of 32, 632 who signed up to vote 33,111 did so from 71 countries world wide. 19,016 voted for Calderón and 11,090 for AMLO including therein my humble and historic participation in the process.

The opposition has decried Felipe Calderón and his party, the PRIAN (PRI+PAN=PRIAN), as hypocrite because Calderón adamantly defended the mexican vote moral validity when he was a congressman for the LV Legislatura (1991-1994). Off course, those principles are now trashed because he and his current cronies are accusing, an intolerant attitude on their part if one may say so, as renegades those who are using the justice system to question the results of the elections. A very dumb ploy and name calling from President Vicente Fox since it reminds people of things like chusma, a lower class of people that well-off mexicans have been avoiding like the pest and which are unworthy covenance with gente decente, that is, nice, rich civilized people.

Well, am sure there are people out there giving other versions of what is going on in the election and I recommend Machete as a good read if this kind of stuff lies in your neck of the woods.

short tale of long trip

I was away. I went to Germany, enjoyed Bavaria; passed by Austria, saw Innsbruck by the roadway and spent quite a few days in northen Italy, specifically in the in and around the Brenner Pass. I came quite close to Milano but never got there. Though I did get to see some of Bergamo and Verona.

All this was acomplished because my father-in-law drives a trailer truck delivering goods all over Europe. I was invited to travel with him for a week that lasted nearly 9 days. This gave me an opportunity to get the living heck out of my tiny village here in the Swedish Highlands which after two years were beginning to wear me out a tad.

You can get to see some pics here and a small narrative of the trip in video format albeit in Spanish plus you get the extra added no preservatives version of my face dare you face the truth behind Yonder Lies It.

mumble mumble grumble …

I said what I had to say on Israel long time ago. Israel is a bully, period. And the more I read about others thinking along the lines as I do, the more I think that am not too off in my own thinking regards Israel.

[…] the Israeli army, once the finest in the world, has been, as all armies are, coarsenened by the occupation. The Israeli state bemoans suicide bombers, then kills Palestinian opposition leaders with rockets – rockets they know will cause collateral damage (a phrase that means ”will kill innocents”). They have complete access to the country and could easily assassinate people cleanly, without collateral casualties – they choose not to. They could arrest those same people, again easily. They chose not to.

Personally, I think that Israel has been hijacked by ideologists who have lost track of reality.

We here at the offices root for Israel as much as we root for Palestine. Israeli and Palestinians are subjects to extremists on both sides.

Problem is that the ones who can stop it don’t.

Other reading: Press furore over Gaza offensive