(for FM & SC)  (–it is five minutes to midnight)

…From this day forward,  to the final day of my administration,  I pledge my life and my actions… to accomplish… and to forge a new course of nationhood through the patterns of human events…

3)  To secure the future of PeMex as an inalienable national asset…,  to be managed to the greatest benefit of all citizens, … to eliminate its corruption by…,  … to raise production by…

7)  To immediately suspend… the agricultural provisions of the NAFTA protocols,  … and to renegotiate the provisions…

11) To withdraw from all but formal diplomatic relations… with the United… and seek a new relationship… on equal terms…

… y ni… ni… pero, qué puede ser que creemos, juntos¡

Inaugural Address: “A New Covenant for National Renewal:  the 11 Points Speech,”  (”Alternative Course,”) 4th July,  —-,  (planned,  draft;  undelivered)

In the previous hours, a regular commercial transport truck originating within the United States of Mexico was inspected and cleared towards its final destination far inside the United States of America.

If the underlying political-economic agreement proves stable, certified commercial transport originating at any point within our two nations will now be free to traverse our common territories. In the coming weeks, many of you will see the emblems of Mexican companies for the first time, on trucks traveling the roadways of our forty-nine northern states. As will shortly occur, in converse, for the citizens of our thirty-one southern states.

In the Federal District of Mexico City on Friday, several economists and planners paused to look at the diplomas of Maynard Keynes and Redvers Opie, and consider the meaning of this landmark event upon the long paths we have undertaken toward open trade and free societies, and, against cynicism and pessimism borne of experience, to hope and dream again in the face of this natality.

My thanks to the many Ephs who played various roles in, and fought for this achievement. It has given both pride and immediate hope to the peoples of the thirty-one southern states, but its ultimate meaning may well be found in its impact on the identity and future of all the Americas, its role in buttressing the security and survival of our democracies, and its impact on our common sense of what we may accomplish, together.

This subject has come up a few times recently (see comments by Laura ‘92 and Jonathan Landsman ‘05) so I thought I’d point out the College’s press release on the subject, and the upcoming ceremony:

The Paresky Center mailroom will be formally named the Jessica H. Park Mailroom, on Thursday, May 10, at 4 p.m. at a dedication open to the public.

“The college is thrilled to honor Jessy Park for her many years of dedicated service to Williams students and for her wonderful accomplishments as an artist,” Williams President Morton Owen Schapiro said.

(more…)

About here, Diana asks a perhaps simple question which I was somewhat taken aback by. I think I gave a somewhat curmudgeonly and conceited response.
For here, today, the below may be an appropriate narrative response to her question, though I must also apologize, in advance, for its conceits, formal and otherwise.

04:00:00 AM CST exactly, Colonia San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City, D.F. I awake from deep sleep to the simultaneous sound of three different alarm tones. Each is highly annoying.

This was planned by me, yet not quite what I planned.

There is a disadvantage to the “Network Time Protocol,” which allows any device connected to the Internet to synchronize its clock mechanism with the version of time maintained by our world’s atomic clocks. Its disadvantage is its exact precision, which allows me to state the exact moment I woke.

I had not considered this disadvantage when, four hours previously, I had set three pieces of electronic gear to sound their alarms at four, and programmed them to require me to go through a cognitive task– a password entry, a small graphical game, a mathematical calculation– to disable the alarms.

I thought this routine would get me awake, but it didn’t quite.

I also thought that one alarm would sound, and that I would have time to disable it, then to shut off the alarms on the other devices before they went off. And that this series of tasks would require my brain to be half-functioning by the end.

But I wasn’t entirely present when I set this up.

Now all three are going off at the same time, and I hope I haven’t woken Nessie up.

By the time I disable them all, my head is hurting, I am conscious, but I am not awake. And I think Nessie is still asleep.

(more…)

Al Gore has just given his concession speech in Centennial Park, and I listened, intent not on his words, dry as they were, but on the crowd which gathered to support him, to their mood and reactions, to their hopes, vain and dashed. Gore had not carried Tennessee.
I returned to the Seton Lodge beside Baptist Hospital, amid patches of rain and forgotten hopes. My mother had open heart surgery that morning, another surprise, and this would be the first election day I did not spend at Williams, nor vote in Williamstown.
As I exited the elevator to the balcony, a woman crept toward me, awkwardly. Her hands felt her way, as she crawled, slowly, hand by hand against the painted brick of the building’s exterior. My eyes turned to her face, and found her eyes in turn blank, staring empty into the night, without focus or direction. I thought she was blind.
She wore a simple handmade dress, a patchwork of material, and the man who followed her, a farmer’s blue overalls and scratchy beard. I looked at her face again, and found cracked skin behind her searching eyes, her cheeks sunken, and weak, as wrinkled as her forehead.

(more…)

DRAFT 2

Vanessa recently pointed me to David Rieff’s interesting article in Sunday’s NYT magazine, The Populist at the Border. While well-written and intriguing, the article’s historical thesis, and interpretations of Obrador, seems to me to rest on a series of assertions that are, at least, at best, imprecise.

Among them:

López Obrador is… arguably the most significant of all the new Latin American populists. If he succeeds… his victory would cap one of the most important global developments of the past five years: the… ascension to power of the left in Latin America. Already it is clear that a serious challenge has arisen to the norms of the modern globalized economy [emphasis mine]… [W]hether Mexican voters realize it or not, their decision on July 2 will serve as a… referendum on how far this revolt is going to go. Will it turn out, in retrospect, to have been just a few rogue Latin American countries challenging the global system? Or is this a rebellion that will stretch all the way to the Rio Grande?

[Obrador's] economic team is led by Rogelio Ramírez de la O, a Cambridge-educated economist who is well respected in international business circles… Carlos Slim… who is Mexico’s richest man … has let it be known… that he finds nothing alarming about [Obrador's] candidacy.

if López Obrador really [is] someone who can change Mexico through a combination of his own force of will and the support of the masses, technocrats like Ramírez de la O will be unable to rein him in if he is elected.

The first quotation is from the second page; the second from the fifth; the third from the sixth and final page.

I have been trying to find a way to tell a complex version of the story here; let me try the opposite, to tell a simple version, and ignore that my errors in doing so will be greater than Rieff’s.

I would switch the order of narrative.

In 1977, British economist Redvers Opie, one of the convenors of the Bretton Woods conference, founded eCanal S.A. in Mexico. eCanal is currently led by Rogelio Ramirez de la O, Redvers’ student, and the first Mexican to attend Cambridge.

I take extreme exception to the description of Rogelio as a “technocrat,” which is as tired a stock metaphor as “the masses” and the threat of “leftist revolution” it implies. (Given the reference to Castaneda here, Castaneda’s recent opinion piece in the NYT, and Vincinte Fox’s recent visit to the US– rather obviously an attempt to influence not only US policy but the course of the Mexican election– I might aslo question whether the NYT is under inappropriate foreign influence. And if anything, Obrador’s “right wing” opponents are the heirs of the corruption of the Soviet Union, and their recent forays into the US, the legacy of the ComIntern).

Stated in brief, eCanal’s Mission has been to guide Mexico into the economic hegemony developed at Bretton Woods, and the rational and open allocation of resources, and the significance of the Obrador campaign should be judged from the perspective of the Bretton Woods.

I hope I will not breach confidence to claim that the Obrador campaign is not a result of the spectre of leftism spreading over Latin America, but of the dreams of integrating Mexico with the economic hegemony created at Bretton Woods, and that de la O’s role in Obrador’s candicacy has been much more central than suggested above, or by Reiff’s (otherwise often insightful) political history of Obrador.

(more…)

[Ian ended his speech:]

Now, I don’t know how you’re going to receive this, and again my words are my own and not Nokia’s, but if you will give me two more minutes, I’m going to say what I’ve been thinking.

In this country we have the word “illegal” and we apply it to immigration. We have been speaking of people who come to the United States as illegals and of building borders between the United States and these “illegals,” and of turning them away entirely.

I do not understand this.

(more…)

This entry is a stub. It may be deleted. It is also an experiment in using ephBlog in new ways.

Via private email:
Jeremy, Noah, Aidan,

and it CC is not able to give any money to “external political organizations.”

First, I wonder if this is a constitutional change since MassPIRG was a central organization on campus.

Next, my very specific problem with MassPIRG was that when I canvassed for them as a freshman, they conveniently chose to omit that the legislation I was canvassing would eliminate the use of radioisotopes in much of medical research in Cambridge.

My next problem, some time later, was their quasi-cultish “regional meeting” at Williams, supposedly to gather input for projects. There is no such think in MassPIRG; it is not a democratic organization; all policy is determined by the Party in Boston, and forced downward. And the Party is always right.

(more…)

Our current email/forum message:

Dear Citizen,

In July of this new year, Mexico will conduct an historic Presidential election– historic not in the least, because for the first time, nearly 12 million Mexicans living in the United States will be eligible to vote via absentee ballot.

This is a moment when the concerted actions of a dedicated few can change the course of history.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 87% of these Mexican-Americans will vote if they have the chance, and that nearly half have the documents to register via mail for absentee ballots.

These applications must be mailed by January 15th.

But most of the Mexican Americans I have talked to do not know this.

How do you reach these voters?

How do you deliver this message– in 9 days– to the Mexican population in North America?

This is a moment where the concerted efforts of a few can change history. One way or another, the coming election will determine Mexico’s future relationship to the US– and thus the future of the United States and our world.

And this a time when amazing power of email and electronic communications can be re-proven.

Simply forward or re-post this message where appropriate. Or join us our other efforts, via the email below.

We need your help. American needs your help. Mexico needs your help.

Now is the time to change history. Now is the opportunity.

Nine days.

Kenneth Thomas, FrequencyTen Technologies
on behalf of the Instituto Federal Electoral (www.ife.org.mx)

THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW TO HELP:

– Forward this email. Repost it to other Craiglist’s sites or forums. Send it to appropriate websites, media, talk radio, spanish language radio, or other.
– Translate (or help us translate) this message into language and media appropriate to Spanish sites, and get it to those sites.
– Join us in making sure the Public Service Announcement below is brought to the attention of the 693 Spanish-language radio stations in the United States, and to telivision and print media. (Email votemexico@gmail.com for info).
– Print and distribute the form linked below to Mexican Americans who do not have easy web access. Help simplify the process of completing and this form.
– For the geeks among you, create and implement new and innovative strategies to get this message to the Mexican American population.
– Let us know about your efforts. This is about we, the IFE and others can better connect Mexican Americans to Mexican politics.

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