A Bengal Tiger

 First, read the following lines from a New Yorker essay:

When, starting in 1919, Vladimir Lenin convened the first congresses of the Communist International, some Bolsheviks were disappointed by the characters who turned up—old-fashioned socialists, trade unionists, and anarchists, coming with false papers, in disguise, under aliases, and all apparently expecting hotel rooms. The Russian revolutionary Victor Serge observed, “It was obvious at first glance that here were no insurgent souls.” Lenin kept a blinking electric light on his desk to cut meetings short. But one of the arrivals made an impression. “Very tall, very handsome, very dark, with very wavy hair,” Serge recalled. It was Manabendra Nath Roy, an Indian who was a founder of the Mexican Communist Party.

Did you catch that?

One of the arrivals who impressed Lenin was an Indian.  And, this Indian was a founder of the Mexican Communist Party!

As one with leftist leanings in my younger phase, I had heard of a name M.N. Roy.  But, I had no idea how big he was in the history of Communism.

Who was this M.N. Roy?  "Born into a Brahmin family in West Bengal in 1887, he left India in his twenties on a series of missions to secure funds and weapons for an uprising against the British Raj."  

Roy was one of the many thinkers from there, which prompted Gopal Krishna Gokhale to put it succinctly more than a century ago: “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.” 

Such rich stories were why I was fascinated with Bengal and Calcutta, and when the opportunity presented itself, I left for Calcutta.  I am surprised that I didn't fall in love with a Bengali girl! 

But, to think is one thing.  For a thinker to end up in Mexico and Russia in the early years of the 20th century is completely another.  How did M.N. Roy manage to do that?

Roy’s parleys with contacts in Java, China, and Japan yielded almost nothing. In Tokyo, he resolved to press onward to the United States: “I decided to take the bull by the horn, pinned a golden cross to the lapel of my coat, put on a very sombre face, and called at the American consulate.” Disguised as “Father Martin” and having, he said, “reinforced my armour with a morocco-bound copy of the Holy Bible beautifully printed on rice-paper,” Roy arrived in San Francisco in 1916.

Damn, they should make a movie out of this guy's life!

Roy promptly fell in love, got married, and the couple's political activities invited trouble.  That is when he changed his name from Narendranath Bhattacharya and became Manabendra Nath Roy.

A name change doesn't fool anybody.  The couple fled to to Mexico.

There Roy witnessed a revolution, learned Spanish, and co-founded the Communist Party of Mexico—one of the first national Communist Parties outside Russia. One day, a Russian man from Chicago asked to meet Roy at a hotel: Mikhail Borodin, one of Lenin’s top lieutenants. Before long, he invited him to the Kremlin. It was the start of a journey that led not only to Moscow and Berlin but also to China, where Roy became a leading Soviet envoy during the Chinese Civil War.

Head-spinning!

So, with all these accomplishments, whatever became of Roy?  Why did we never read about him in our history textbook?

Roy got disillusioned with the international communist movement. 

Shortly after Roy returned to India, in 1930, in a deluded attempt to influence the independence movement, he was arrested and imprisoned by the British. Few people had any reason to remember him once he quit the Communists and became a radical humanist, living out his final years in a cottage in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Aha!

His radical humanism lost against the Gandhian humanism and Nehru's socialism.  Like most of us, M.N. Roy too was soon forgotten even when he was alive.

In 1946, Roy established the Indian Renaissance Institute at Dehradun in order to develop the Indian Renaissance Movement. 

Roy died of a heart attack on 25 January 1954.

What a life!

Source
Notice the “Very tall, very handsome, very dark, with very wavy hair”? And, oh, Lenin too ;)

Gracias, Mexico. You made us possible!

If there is one word that characterizes well what ticks in America, it would be hustle.  Like the hustle at the pool table.  The hustling phone calls that I get about my car warranty or social security.  I mean, this is a country that has hustlers in plenty in its history, and one even got himself elected to the highest office in the land!

That American ethic of hustling also made possible a "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.  What an innovative hustle to make money!  Take, for instance, the way the museum deals with dinosaurs.  Their sales pitch is that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.  In this hustle, they ask, "were you there?"

Think about it: were you there when God created the earth? No, but we have a book inspired by the Creator that tells us how He did it. If we start with God’s Word, dinosaurs living with humans—at least early on—makes sense.

Tickets per person range from $24.95 to $39.95, and "parking not included."  If you want to see how humans lived with dinos, you need to fork over extra for parking your vehicle!

In understanding the universe in which we don't literally read "a book inspired by the Creator" we go about in search of evidence and rational explanations.  In other words, science.

Thanks to science, we understand that humans and dinosaurs didn't live together.  Had I known this in my childhood, I could have avoided a few nightmares!

But, until today, I hadn't considered the possibility that the dinos had to go extinct in order to make homo sapiens possible.

Our presence here on earth was a result of "the mother of all accidents" when a 6-mile wide asteroid crashed into earth.  The essay argues this crash made all the difference: "It stands to reason, then, that without the asteroid impact the dinosaurs that had reigned for more than 100 million years would likely still be here, and therefore the primates would not be, and so neither would we."

The odds of an asteroid hitting earth are very low.  The odds of that size of an asteroid hitting earth are very, very low.  And then the location where it crashed.

The rocks around the Yucatan target site are rich in hydrocarbons and sulfur, which resulted in the production of enormous quantities of soot and sunlight-deflecting aerosols. Geologists figure that as little as 1 to 13 percent of the Earth’s surface contains rocks that could have yielded a comparable stew of destructive materials.

This small target means that with the Earth rotating at about 1,000 miles per hour, had the asteroid arrived just 30 minutes sooner, it would have landed in the Atlantic Ocean; 30 minutes later, in the Pacific Ocean. Just 30 minutes either way and the dinosaurs would probably be here.

And I wouldn't be here blogging!  Dumb luck has been the story of our lives!

So, have a special dinosaur-themed celebration on Cinco de Mayo!

"As the United States swelled, Mexico shrank."

In today's news:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may not immediately proceed with its plan to end a program protecting about 700,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation.

I had to read a couple of commentators to make sure that I had correctly understood that tRump could have ended the program had he gone about it systematically.

 "The muddled state of play likely prevents the administration from enacting any plans to begin deportations immediately, but there is little doubt that should Trump be reelected, the second-term president almost certainly would seek to end the program."

Thankfully, the haters went about with haste and created a legal nightmare for themselves and the relief of the rest of us.

The hater-in-chief is not happy about this:

"These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives," Trump tweeted. "We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!"
"Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" he added.

It is always about him.  This attitude is no surprise though; after all, throughout his public life he has made it crystal clear that it always only about himself.

An overwhelming 80%  of the Dreamers were born in Mexico--a country with which the US has had troubled relations practically right from the very beginning.  In These Truths, Jill Lepore wrote about the tangled US/Mexico history and the imperial ambitions of the early presidents.  Texas, which is the largest state by area in the contiguous US, was particularly attractive to the enslavers who wanted to expand their cotton-growing land.  "As the United States swelled, Mexico shrank," Lepore wrote.

The following is a re-post from January 2019.
******************************************

The European settlers continued to displace people.  That's what alien settlers always do.  That is happening even now in contemporary times, like how the indigenous Miskitos are under assault in Nicaragua.

In the young USA, the leaders decided that they ought to displace Mexicans too.

Mexico was as large as the US in land area, and had a larger population:

"As early as 1825, John Quincy Adams had instructed the American minister to Mexico to try to negotiate a new boundary," writes Jill Lepore.  Yep, the new country was not even 50 years old.  trump's attacks on Mexico are merely the latest in this long history.

Why were the European settlers so interested?  The Mexican territories of "Coahuila and Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico, and west of the state of Louisiana, proved particularly attractive to American settlers in search of new lands for planting cotton."

Perhaps you have an immediate question: Working on the cotton fields meant slave labor; so, if somehow acquired by the US, would Texas allow slavery?

The anti-slavery north protested.  Mexico considered Texas its province, though a rebellious one.  The US wanted to annex it, and more.  The US laid a trap for Mexico in order to begin a war.  It was only a matter of time before Mexico fell into that trap.  Almost exactly to this date--on January 25th--back in 1845, "the House passed a resolution in favor of annexation."  And about slavery in Texas?  The resolution included a compromise: "The eastern portion of Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, but not the western portion."

From the 3/5ths compromise, the US has been at such dealmaking in favor of slavery; yet, we have a president in office who loudly wondered why they had never struck a deal in the past in order to avoid the Civil War!  What an ignoramus that 63 million elected only because he appealed to their racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and more!

President James Polk had grand dreams to extend the American empire; "Texas was only the beginning," Lepore writes.  He hoped to get Mexico into an armed confrontation, and it happened.  He asked Congress to declare war.

What would happen if the US won the war and gained territory?  Would Mexicans there now become Americans?  Quite a few leaders were against it.  "Ours is the government of the white man."  Would the new territory then be slave states as well?

As the war with Mexico came to and end in the second half of 1847, Polk "considered trying to acquire all of Mexico" from 26 degrees N all the way to the Pacific.  But, it was finally settled at 36 degrees north.  With a formal end to the war in February 1848, "the top half of Mexico became the bottom third of the United States."

Jill Lepore writes: "As the United States swelled, Mexico shrank."

Natives? Check. Blacks? Check. Mexicans? Also check!

The European settlers continued to displace people.  That's what alien settlers always do.  That is happening even now in contemporary times, like how the indigenous Miskitos are under assault in Nicaragua.

In the young USA, the leaders decided that they ought to displace Mexicans too.

Mexico was as large as the US in land area, and had a larger population:

"As early as 1825, John Quincy Adams had instructed the American minister to Mexico to try to negotiate a new boundary," writes Jill Lepore.  Yep, the new country was not even 50 years old.  trump's attacks on Mexico are merely the latest in this long history.

Why were the European settlers so interested?  The Mexican territories of "Coahuila and Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico, and west of the state of Louisiana, proved particularly attractive to American settlers in search of new lands for planting cotton."

Perhaps you have an immediate question: Working on the cotton fields meant slave labor; so, if somehow acquired by the US, would Texas allow slavery?

The anti-slavery north protested.  Mexico considered Texas its province, though a rebellious one.  The US wanted to annex it, and more.  The US laid a trap for Mexico in order to begin a war.  It was only a matter of time before Mexico fell into that trap.  Almost exactly to this date--on January 25th--back in 1845, "the House passed a resolution in favor of annexation."  And about slavery in Texas?  The resolution included a compromise: "The eastern portion of Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, but not the western portion."

From the 3/5ths compromise, the US has been at such dealmaking in favor of slavery; yet, we have a president in office who loudly wondered why they had never struck a deal in the past in order to avoid the Civil War!  What an ignoramus that 63 million elected only because he appealed to their racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and more!

President James Polk had grand dreams to extend the American empire; "Texas was only the beginning," Lepore writes.  He hoped to get Mexico into an armed confrontation, and it happened.  He asked Congress to declare war.

What would happen if the US won the war and gained territory?  Would Mexicans there now become Americans?  Quite a few leaders were against it.  "Ours is the government of the white man."  Would the new territory then be slave states as well?

As the war with Mexico came to and end in the second half of 1847, Polk "considered trying to acquire all of Mexico" from 26 degrees N all the way to the Pacific.  But, it was finally settled at 36 degrees north.  With a formal end to the war in February 1848, "the top half of Mexico became the bottom third of the United States."

Jill Lepore writes: "As the United States swelled, Mexico shrank."

Don't ask. Don't tell. Vote trump!

White supremacists don't like it when football players bring to our attention the injustices in society through their protests during the national anthem.  Just shut up and play ball, is what they say.

As long as the white supremacists are entertained, well-fed, and taken care of, who cares about the brown-skinned, right?

The horrible murder of a white young woman, Mollie Tibbets, by an undocumented brown-skinned immigrant provides another opportunity for racists--to parrot the line that launched trump's campaign--Mexicans are rapists, murderers, and more.

To which, the father of the deceased woman responded with humanity that restores hope:

Rob Tibbetts has not publicly commented on the issue. But in his eulogy, he highlighted how the local Hispanic community had embraced him as he searched for his daughter in recent weeks.
While in Iowa for nearly six weeks, Hotel Grinnell put him up for free. During that time, he said he ate at a number of Mexican restaurants, where employees were sensitive and kind. They knew when he needed space or when he needed to joke, he said.
"The Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans," he said, including an emphasis on family. "As far as I'm concerned, they're Iowans with better food."
The crowd applauded loudly.

Iowa has plenty of Hispanics, and without them--including the undocumented--their local economy will crash.

In Sioux County, four of every five immigrants are not U.S. citizens, Census data show. That includes people who are authorized to be here as well as undocumented immigrants.
...
"If all of Sioux County's immigrant labor left tomorrow, we'd have a huge problem. … We don't have the people to replace them," said Pruismann, a former Iowa Cattlemen's Association president who feeds up to 5,000 cattle.

So, what do the ag employers do, even as they vote for trump?

The fact is that Iowa's economy depends on its 84,000 immigrant workers — including those here without legal documentation, business and immigration experts say.
It's why some employers don't always take extra steps to check workers' documents, afraid they might discover inconsistencies, said Madeline Cano, who leads Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s immigrant rights project.
"They need the work to get done," Cano said, "so they'd rather not know. Don't ask, don't tell."

Meanwhile, there is also another don't-ask-don't-tell aspect of the family-friendly trump voter when it comes to undocumented immigrants--abuse of the children of those who attempted to cross the border without proper documents.

Making America Great Again, my ass!

The American Dream ... not the Saudi Dream!

I think it was in the fifth or sixth grade when a classmate--Rabindranath, according to my memory--gave me a Saudi Arabia stamp.  For free. 

Unlike the usual protocols where stamps were exchanged, here I was getting one for free. What was the deal?

It turned out that Rabindranath was leaving school and leaving town. His father was going to work in Saudi Arabia.

Since then, I have known plenty of people who left for the "Gulf," as the usage was back then.  It meant that they could be working in any of the kingdoms/emirates near the Persian Gulf.  Some of them took their families also along.  The children attended schools there, and then came to India for college or went to other countries for higher education.  When the parents' contract ended, they returned to India or tried to immigrate elsewhere.

People went on work visas, and the end of work was also the end of their visa status.

The US, on the other hand, was highly restrictive.  Back then, a rare few went to the US on work visas.  Almost always, those who went to the US to work settled down there, raised their kids as Americans, and visited India with their American passports.  This was a small number of people compared to the crowds from the Gulf.

Over the years, we have gotten so much used to the idea of American work visas translating into American citizenship that I think we have started making the mistake of equating American work visas to American citizenship. 

And, thus, we have a new battlefront emerging about another group of Dreamers--these are the children of people who are in the US on work visas.

Nicknamed “H-4 Dreamers,” the children were brought to America from India with their parents on H-4, or dependent, visas. Until they turn 21, their status is the same as that of their parents, so if their parents become citizens, they do as well.
Many parents take this approach, coming into the country for a short period on an H-1B visa as a skilled worker and then applying to stay on an immigrant visa.
That’s usually not a problem, unless the family is from India, where there’s a 70-year wait for immigrant visa status because of a large number of qualified applicants.

They are pissed off that their parents came to the US on legal work visas, but are stuck in the Green Card lane forever, while the children of the parents who are here without legal papers are the ones who are getting all the attention.  The H4 Dreamers are not treated as "natives" when they apply for undergraduate education--because they are not permanent residents. And, even worse, when they turn 21, they cannot even continue as dependents on their parents' visas.

So, guess who organized a protest in DC about this?  The Republican Hindu Coalition.  Yes, "Hindu"--not "Indian."

“Trump loves Hindus,” “Trump loves India,” “Trump bringing Ram Rajya,” “Indians love Trump,” said the slogans

This is fucking nuts!  trump and "Ram Rajya"?  Do these people know anything about Ram, and about trump?

The march on Saturday, while endorsing Mr. Trump’s approach to immigration, was to highlight the issues concerning the legal residents who are already in the country. “While the current discussion is primarily focussing on those who illegally entered the country, we are working with the lawmakers to get some attention on this group that reached this country legally but face uncertainty now,” said Mr. Bansal.

The hindutva/modi/trump alliance is unholy as hell!

But then, this is yet another reason why I love this country--even non-citizens can protest here, unlike in the "Gulf."

Source

Woe is me! Damn those Chinese!

I have sent an edited version of this to the editor
*******

Throughout the campaign, donald t. rump beat up on three countries as the most significant reason for why the white working class were left behind even as the American economy grew: China, Mexico, and India. Since his election and then the inauguration, trump has further amplified that message from the presidential bully pulpit.

Given how long we have been listening to the rhetoric that blames China, Mexico, and India, here is a quick question. Can you name the presidents of China and Mexico, and the prime minister of India?

If a scientific polling were done, my guess is that only a very small percentage of the American electorate will be able to correctly name even two of those three leaders. In contrast, quite a few Americans will be able to name the leader of our northern neighbor, Canada.

When I worry that most Americans, especially those who love beating up on China, Mexico, and India, would not know the names of the leaders of those countries, my concern is not about my fellow Americans being unfamiliar with factoids. It is not a game of trivial pursuits. I have three important reasons.

First, if we are going to make an enemy out of somebody or a country, then we better get to know that enemy really well. Sun Tzu, the philosopher and military general from China, articulated it well more than 1,500 years ago:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

If we are going to make those countries the “bad hombres,” then we better know who they are. Merely eating Chinese, Mexican, and Indian foods do not make us experts about those countries with long and rich histories. And, by the way, the typical Chinese, Mexican, and Indian foods that we eat at restaurants are not the typical foods that are consumed in the households in those countries. For instance, how many of you are familiar with the “idli/sambar” combination that is everyday food in the part of India where I was born and raised

Second, here is the economic reality about the US and those three countries. Even after adjusting for the cost of living, and on a per capita basis, Mexicans and Chinese earn only about 40 percent of what the average American earns. The Indian economy lags even further behind—the per capita income in India is barely more than 10 percent of the average American income. Even the Greeks and the Kazakhs live more affluent lives than do the average Chinese, Mexican, or Indian.

Those average incomes do not convey the remarkable differences between life here in the US versus life in those three countries. Consider the following two factoids, for instance. In India, 240 million have no access to electricity. And about 60 percent of the 1.2 billion people there defecate in the open because of a lack of toilets at home. Yet, we think such a country is “our competition” stealing “our” jobs?

Knowing the names of those leaders is, therefore, a mere starting point to understanding those countries. Before I proceed, here are the names of the leaders. The president of China is Xi Jinping. And, note that Xi is the surname and not the given name—in many cultures around the world, the given name is not the name that appears first. Thus, it is President Xi. Enrique Peña Nieto is Mexico’s president. And, narendra modi is India’s prime minister.

Finally, and most importantly, we operate under a terribly screwed up view of the world if we believe that only our economy and our jobs matter and, therefore, the rest are our enemies. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Shylock, if we prick them do they not bleed? Aren’t “they” humans too, who would like to have electricity and indoor plumbing? Is there any law that only Americans are entitled to a life of affluence?

Further, the story of economic progress over the past two centuries has been one of betterment all over the world. While some countries lag behind others, global competition and trade has contributed to improvement in the human condition across the planet. It is incorrect, and unwise, to think that “their” betterment will mean nothing but “our” loss. It is our government policies, and not China or Mexico or India, which is to be blamed for the economic stagnation of the American middle class.

If, instead, we continue to beat up on China, Mexico, and India, and others too, then I panic about another line from Shylock’s soliloquy: “if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Automate or die

My class freaked out when we got to discussing the economic geography of the future that will be highly automated.  Well, these are the latest class to get all worried; I have been doing it to students for a few years now.  Because, it has been an open secret that automation has been replacing humans at various jobs here in the US. However much trump wants to tell his people that China, Mexico, and India are to be blamed for their job losses, automation is the real story.

And that story has barely begun.  You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Imagine if trump and his people were to even glance at the headlines that USA Today recently had:

Bill Gates: If a robot takes a human job, it should be taxed

Read that again.  It is Bill Gates.  Yes, that Bill Gates.  He is making an argument that robots taking jobs from humans should be taxed.

Not a human in China, Mexico, or India, but a robot right here in America!

Ah, but all these are nothing but fake news anyway, right Mr. President?

There is a reason that Bill Gates wants to talk about taxing robots.  Robots are not the real problem.

Well, automation is for real, and the robots--physical and software agents--are an unstoppable force.  But, we humans are the ones designing and using the robots, right?  Who benefits from the use of automation?

Answering that question, which is what Gates does, means that trump and the Republicans have to seriously engage with a topic that they would rather not: Redistribution.  Or, if you prefer the milder phrase that I have been blogging about for years: The Social Contract.

The NY Times gets to that in its editorial:

While breakthroughs could come at any time, the problem with automation isn’t robots; it’s politicians, who have failed for decades to support policies that let workers share the wealth from technology-led growth.

You think that the fabled white working class will not support this, if the logic is explained to them?  They will immediately embrace it.  They will demand a new social contract.  But, of course that is exactly what trump and his party do not want to do.  After all, the white nationalist party hates the very idea that some brown-skins might also benefit from this redistribution!

The editorial gives a quick lesson in economic history, and then concludes with:

Economic history shows that automation not only substitutes for human labor, it complements it. The disappearance of some jobs and industries gives rise to others. Nontechnology industries, from restaurants to personal fitness, benefit from the consumer demand that results from rising incomes in a growing economy. But only robust public policy can ensure that the benefits of growth are broadly shared.
If reforms are not enacted — as is likely with President Trump and congressional Republicans in charge — Americans should blame policy makers, not robots.

My guess is that such reforms will not even be discussed.  And trump and the GOP will continue to blame China, Mexico, and India, and the white voters will continue to vote for the white supremacists who promise to beat up on the non-whites.

Chinese food, Mexican food, Indian food. Boycott them all!

In contemporary America, it seems like every Republican, following their standard-bearer's lead, beats up on China, Mexico, and India--that these three countries are responsible for the stagnation/collapse of middle-class jobs and wages.

Forget the economic (il)logic for now.  Here's something to consider: How many of the rabid supporters of this POTUS will be able to name the heads of the governments of China, Mexico, and India?

Think about it.  What does it mean when people don't have a freaking idea about those leaders even as they beat up on those countries day after day?  Shouldn't they be familiar with their names as much as they know the name Putin?

Especially the Chinese president.  It might come as a surprise to most Americans that China is the world's largest economy.  Add to that its military might.  The names of Chinese leaders ought to be familiar even to high school students, right?  Like how everybody knew about the Cold War leaders on the Soviet side?

So, if you are a Chinese, what would you think?  My guess is that they will be pissed off at the Rodney Dangerfield treatment that they get from America and its people.  Do we really want to ignore and intentionally isolate them?

Mao was clearly petrified of closer ties with America, telling the Soviet ambassador in January 1955 that a lack of relations with the United States “gives us the chance to more freely educate our people in the anti-American spirit.”
Starting a trade war with China or gearing up for a military conflict in the South China Sea will do very much the same.

Mexico is our neighbor.  Why don't people know the name of Mexico's president, but they know the name of Canada's prime minister?

What the hell must a non-white do in order to get some level of a recognition?

Forget the maniacal supporters this president--these things do not matter to the fake news they read and watch.  I would love to ask students graduating from colleges and universities across the country in the spring whether they can name these three people.

My guess is that it will be a tiny minority who can score the trifecta.  Of those who name one or two, they perhaps will have a personal connection to those countries, or might have majored in disciplines where they studied something about those countries and the governments.

I try my best to tell students that if they really want to understand the world through a study abroad, then they should spend at least three to six months living and studying in China.  Preferably in a place like Xian--a huge city, with a phenomenal history, and far away from the typical haunts of Beijing and Shanghai.  (Well, I have had this plan to travel to Xian for a long time, ever since reading about it in high school in the context of the Silk Road.  And, especially after meeting a few years ago, thanks to the friend, a Chinese environmental lawyer from Xian.  Some day!)

But then I, too, suffer from the Rodney Dangerfield problem of no respect.  Nobody cares about what I have to say.

Even the "invisible hand" does not want to pick beans!

Over the summer, when visiting with a student at a fruit farm, I got to taste cherries that were heavenly.  Trees with pears that were a few weeks away from ripening and harvesting made even me, who does not care much for pears, drool.

The student explained how harvesting pears is not an easy job.  Now, do not think that he is puny like I am.  Nope. He is one hell of a well-built fellow.  But, apparently harvesting pears tires him out more than any other farm work.  Of course, his work at the farm is not to pick fruits.  The harvesting is done by a crew of migrant farm labor.  And, yes, the migrant labor is mostly Mexican.

A few months after that summer, the country elected to the White House a demagogue who has vowed to build a "big beautiful wall"; to deport eleven million undocumented immigrants; and to even block remittances to Mexico.

As Newton made us understand, every action has its reactions.  Like this:

[California's farming industry is] calling on congressional representatives to educate the incoming president on the workforce it takes to feed the country, and they’re assuring workers they’ll protect them.

Good luck with educating the demagogue!

Trump’s remarks were felt sharply in California, which produces nearly half the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts valued at $47 billion annually. Experts say his words resonate nationwide.
Texas, Florida and Georgia are examples of states with large migrant communities dominating home construction, health care, food service industries, said David Zonderman, a labor historian at North Carolina State University.
“California might be ground zero,” he said of immigrant families living in the shadows. “But it’s not a unique California issue.” 

And why is this important?

Roughly 325,000 workers in California do the back-breaking jobs that farmers say nobody else will do, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League farming association, estimates 85 percent of California farmworkers live in the United States illegally.
Farmers for years have scrambled under a shrinking labor pool.
Mexico’s improving economy has slowed the flow of migrant workers.

Meanwhile, the demagogue's promise that Mexico will pay for that big beautiful wall is having another kind of a reaction.

A campaign memo released in April 2016 says the Trump administration will force Mexico to stump up by threatening to block money transfers from undocumented Mexicans living in the United States. This would be “an easy decision for Mexico” according to the memo. Indeed, Mexico received nearly $25bn in remittances in 2015 according to its central bank, equivalent to 2.3% of the country’s GDP. Over 98% of these remittance payments came from the United States.

So, if you are one of those remitters and you don't want to take any chances with a demagogue, then what would do?  You will send as much as you can right away. Yes?

 In November remittances to Mexico totalled nearly $2.4bn, a 25% jump over the previous year. Total remittances for 2016 are expected to reach $27bn, $2bn more than in 2015. And America’s southern neighbours may be pre-empting the Mr Trump administration in other ways. 

Oh well; if we cannot eat fruits and nuts and vegetables anymore, then we can always feast on beef and pork. Oh, wait, that too has immigrant labor--from Somalia.  Didn't the demagogue claim that all Somalis are terrorists?

Girlfriends are expensive!

Roberto and Luis seemed to be helping each other out by taking photos.  Wondering whether they were hesitant to ask somebody else to click for them, I offered to take a photo of the two of them, with the volcano in the background.

"No. It's ok. We like photos alone" Roberto said while Luis chuckled.

After a few seconds, Roberto expanded on it. "We don't want people to mistake us. We don't want a photo of us on Facebook. Friends will make fun."

I couldn't help laughing at the way he phrased it.  They too laughed.

Women are way more confident than we men are.  As friends, they hold hands, pose cheek-to-cheek, dance together. All as friends.  No way is that immediately interpreted as being gay.  With us guys, in this part of the world, we are so careful about it.  Insecure. Paranoid.  When I travel in India, I am always amazed at boys and young men holding hands, with arms over each other's shoulders, ... I am sure I, too, walked around that way back then.  Practices are so cultural and contextual!

"Given that you are medical residents, and good looking young men, how come you are not traveling with women?" I asked them.

To quite an extent, talking like this with men at any age is easy.  No guy in his right mind will ever mistake such a question.  I would think that guys, straight and gay, at any age, would love to talk about the female of our species.  The females were mysterious to me when I was becoming aware of them many decades ago, and they continue to be a mystery even now.  My guess is that even women don't understand women.  Perhaps the purpose of life is a simple one--to understand women!

Roberto and Luis laughed at my question.  Then Roberto said "girlfriends are expensive.  They want gifts. Then they want marriage. And kids.  And then it will be a divorce. More money.  I want to travel first."

Lots of young men and young women--and middle-aged balding men too--traveling alone these days.  It has become possible to travel any which way we want anymore.  Life has changed a lot, for the better.  I stood for a while looking at the crater and taking photos when I heard the guide, Alberto, calling my name.  It was time to move on.

During the hike down from Poás

The following morning, I went to have breakfast at the hotel.  I missed the tasty and home-made breakfast at Andreas' and Connie's.  If Charlie Chaplin could eat a shoe when hungry, I certainly can devour old bread and drink horrible coffee.  Ok, that was an exaggeration!

Three women were having breakfast.  Two were more than a decade older than me, and the third was at least a decade younger than me.

"Did you have a good vacation?" I asked them.  It was clear from their bags that they were checking out.

They were indeed moving on to the next place on their schedule.

"Where are you from?" I asked them.  They were all from Hamburg, Germany.  And, of course, the question bounced back.

"From the United States. I moved from India a long time ago."

"Where in India?" asked the younger one.

"From the southern part. The city is called Chennai."

Out in the wild ...

"I love India" she said.  "My boyfriend is half-Indian.  He has family in ..."  She couldn't recall the name of the place.  "It is a place with Communist government."

It had to be Kerala or West Bengal.  And given the wanderers that Keralites are, the odds were not in favor of Bengal.

"Is it Kerala?" I asked and she was excited.  "Yes, that is the one."

"It is a pretty place.  Have you been there?"

"I would like to.  But, it seems like my boyfriend's family want him to marry an Indian woman, and I cannot pass of as an Indian" she laughed.

No way, indeed, for that slim, tall, blonde to pass of as an Indian.

"Wrap a sari around you, cover your hair, and get married" I joked.

"My eyes will give it away." She had a quick comeback.

I suppose it is to avoid complications like this that Roberto has decided against a girlfriend.

During the hike down from Poás

It seems like the German has found what she was looking for, but her journey hasn't ended.  Roberto is looking for other things in life.  We are all travelers in life looking for whatever we are searching for, and our paths intersect.  We share stories. We laugh. And we move on to the next intersection.  Sometimes with people from the previous intersection and other times by ourselves.

I remembered the intersection at Orosi Lodge.  When I returned to the room, I sent them an email:

Good morning, Andreas and Connie.
I miss your breakfast and coffee. Miss it bad. I have to wait to reach home to make myself something comparable :(
Thank you so much for your wonderful hospitality, and an absolutely friendly and welcoming nature. Tell your son I loved his sense of humor :)

Yes, Virginia, there are Muslims in Mexico, too!

I stayed away from blogging anything yesterday because of a nagging suspicion that I might end up ranting about Earth Day.  As much as I am worried about the natural environment in my own way, I am convinced that we misplace our emphasis when we worry more about the plastic bags that are tossed about while ignoring ... see, this is the kind of rant I wanted to avoid!

I am far more interested in the "Muslim" angle of the Boston bombers.  The brothers Tsarnaev.  From my observation deck, it seems more a case of disgruntled losers taking to violence, which is, unfortunately, an all too familiar American happening.  Yet, it is the "Muslim" connection that fascinates many.  Unsuspecting Americans who do not know where Chechnya is can easily be misled into thinking that it is one of "those" Middle Eastern countries.  As I noted here a couple of days ago, "The Islamophobes who now will consider any Muslim with ultra-suspicion might be shocked to know that the brothers are Caucasians. "

Here in the US, we do not seem to be investing any time and effort to understand Islam and Muslims.  Sometime soon after I re-started this blog, I noted about the global Muslim population.  The web and blogging are simply fantastic when it comes to getting updates, discussing policies, ..... Many academics have also taken up blogging big time.  I suspect that in many cases, blogging provides a lot more interactive discussions than a journal article can.  Juan Cole is one of those academics who has blogged a lot--on the Middle East in particular.  Here, he responds to the news item that a quarter of the world's population is Muslim:

I don't think most people in the West realize the implications of the likelihood that one-third of humankind may soon be Muslim. We don't have a real sense of scale in the US. We don't realize that Brazil alone is nearly as big as the US in area, or that the US could be fitted into East Africa. We don't realize how huge Iran is, or what it implies when we call India a subcontinent.

One of the implications is that the US is a little unlikely to thrive as a superpower in the 21st century if its more venal and bloodthirsty politicians go on barking about "Islamo-fascism" (they never said Christo-Fascism even though Gen. Franco in Spain was a good candidate for the label) and denigrating Islam and Muslims and seeking to militarily occupy their countries and siphon off their resources. That kind of behavior may have worked in the 19th century before Muslims were mobilized, but it does not work now.

The Muslim world is the labor pool of the next century, and is also the custodian of much of the world's fuel. New American crusades of the sort favored on the right of the Republican Party may finally induce imperial overstretch and deeply harm the US. Some 5 percent of the population cannot dominate by force 25 percent of the globe and what may eventually be 33% of the globe.

Even from that pragmatic demographic perspective, we need to spend a lot more time understanding Islam.  I am always shocked that it is possible for students at many colleges and universities to graduate from an undergraduate program without learning anything about Islam and Muslims.  Twelve years since 9/11, and how can that be possible, right?  Absolutely bizarre!

It is not as if Muslims live only in certain geographic areas either for us to ignore understanding them.  When I was in the Avis shuttle bus to LAX, a family got in.  Four kids hopped in followed by their hijab-wearing mother and then the father with a scratchy beard on his chin.  The couple looked like they were in their early to mid-thirties.  The bus driver, a Hispanic woman, went to help the couple with their bags and hesitantly spoke in English to them.

She was surprised, and so was I, when the hijab-wearing woman replied in Spanish.  I paid attention to whatever words I could recognize, and I understood the driver telling them that she was from Guadalajara.  The man joined in the conversation and told her that they were from very near Guadalajara.  Then a whole lot of jabbering--the driver even forgot that she had a job to do!

The driver looked at the kids and asked them for their names.  And then asked what their mother's name was.  One kid with glasses said "Fatimah."  A name that Muslims revere.

I am yet to recover from the shock of a Spanish-speaking Muslim family, and hijab-wearing mother in that, from Mexico!

So, the nerd in me, I went to the Pew Survey that I had linked in that old post.  An estimated 110,000 in Mexico are Muslims.  A tiny, tiny, minority, yes.  But, who would have thought that; certainly not I!

If Mexico has about 110,000 Muslims, then any guesses on the Muslim population in Russia, of which Chechnya is a part?  Think of a big number.  Way bigger than 110,000.  Way bigger than the Muslim population here in the US.

Ready for that answer on Muslim population in Russia?  Hold on to your seat:

The country with the largest Muslim population in  Europe is Russia, with more than 16 million Muslims, meaning that more than four-in-ten European  Muslims live in Russia

Yet, we choose not to make any effort at understanding Islam and Muslims because ....?

Fatehpur Sikri (India) 2012

Philosophy professors will do it ... topless?

South of the border, geographically and not anatomically speaking, there is one heck of a war going on--the drug war.  One candidate for the Mexican Congress, a 34-year old philosophy professor, decided to shake the voters into action in a rather innovative manner (ht):

[Natalia] Juarez decided to appear topless on a billboard surrounded by half-a-dozen supporters of her party, the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution). The billboard shows the seven women, including Juarez, naked from the waist up and covering sensitive areas with their right hands while they raise their left fists.

The candidate says it's her way of giving voters in Mexico a wake-up call.

"Society is lethargic. We don't seem to be aware of our role. We need to get energized. We need to tell people, 'Hey, wake up because if you don't, sharks are going to eat you up. Wake up, you citizen and politician," Juarez said.

A caption above the women on the billboard reads: "I dare you to build a new project for a nation with no prejudices."

Of course, women baring themselves to protest is not new.  It seems to happen quite regularly in Ukraine.  In the past, such attempts may have worked--when intentional nudity or even semi-nudity in the public would have been extremely rare.  But, the shock value is immensely low, I would think, in these contemporary times of "whatever."

In Nigeria, women threaten to do that as a shaming strategy ... 

US falls behind Mexico. And that is the good news!

The Economist, which was the source for this graph, also notes:

Asian OECD countries Japan and South Korea are the leanest. Governments will count the eventual cost: health-care spending on an obese person is 25% more than for someone of average weight. And the problem is not confined to the rich world. In rapidly developing countries such as China, Brazil and India obesity rates, though still low, are growing fast as the dietary habits of the ever-increasing middle classes change.

A statue for the world's first swine flu patient?

The BBC:

La Gloria in Veracruz is home to Edgar Hernandez - as a four year old boy, he became the world’s first swine flu patient.
He survived and became an overnight sensation, putting his family and his village firmly in the global spotlight.
The attention helped bring progress to La Gloria. Once dusty roads are now being paved, and a statute was erected in Edgar’s honour.

The father of the "Green Revolution" died

MSNBC:

Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution" who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in combating world hunger and saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday in Texas, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman said. He was 95.

From his Nobel Lecture, which was in 1970:

For the underprivileged billions in the forgotten world, hunger has been a constant companion, and starvation has all too often lurked in the nearby shadows. To millions of these unfortunates, who have long lived in despair, the green revolution seems like a miracle that has generated new hope for the future. ....

... Some critics have said that the green revolution has created more problems than it has solved. This I cannot accept, for I believe it is far better for mankind to be struggling with new problems caused by abundance rather than with the old problem of famine. Certainly, loyalty to the status quo in food production - when being pressured by population growth - cannot break the chains that have bound the peasant to poverty and hunger. One must ask: Is it just to criticize the green revolution, with its recognized accomplishments, for failure to correct all the social-economic ills of the world that have accumulated from the days of Adam and Eve up to the present? Change we must, or we will perish as a species, just as did the dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.

The green revolution is a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into Utopia. None are more keenly aware of its limitations than those who started it and fought for its success. But there has been solid accomplishment, as I have already shown by concrete examples. I have also tried to indicate the various opportunities for capitalizing more fully on the new materials that were produced and the new methods that were devised. And, above all, I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that further progress depends on intelligent, integrated, and persistent effort by government leaders, statesmen, tradesmen, scientists, educators, and communication agencies, including the press, radio, and television.

Thank you, Dr. Borlaug.

Will we be able to feed 9.5 billion people?

The Aspen Ideas Festival is over. You nor I went to that one means that apparently we did not have ideas that anybody wanted to listen to, or we did not have the money to listen to those with ideas! Oh well ....

James Fallows was one of those that the attendees wanted to listen to, and has blogged about a session he moderated; it was on "Feeding the World's Billions." Fallows writes:

Sample alarming fact: if the world population eventually tops out at 9.5 billion, 50% more than now, total food production will probably have to grow by 200%, as people eat higher up the food chain and demand more and more meat. The challenge, as several panelists put it, was to produce three times as much food on no more than the current amount of agricultural land. (About why it won't just work to cut down all remaining forests to grow food, see here.)

Sample specific solution-possibilities, or at least interesting facts: Average yields in U.S. farms are roughly three times as high as the overall average for Mexico, India, and Brazil. If those countries got to even two-thirds of the US level, it would make a huge difference in closing the "grain gap." Also: a huge share of the world's food output is wasted -- in the developing world because it rots and spoils before it can get to market, and in the US to a significant degree because of restaurant waste. Thus easy opportunities for gain.

I am sure the neo-Malthusians will be all over this one in no time at all ....