Blog post

February 1, 2006 [LINK]

More incidents on Mexico border

Police discovered a half-mile long tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego last week, seizing over two tons of marijuana. Also, a Mexican official was arrested near Alamogordo, New Mexico helping to smuggle people into the United States.See CNN.com. From their point of view, entering "New Mexico" is not really a crime. What if one of the states of Mexican was called "New America"? Wouldn't we feel like we had some right to be there?

This issue is obviously escalating toward a genuine crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations. Belatedly trying to avoid further insults toward their northern neighbor, the Mexican government halted the program of handing out maps to folks planning to sneak across the border. Mexican police arrested four Iraqis trying to cross into the United States. CNN.com Was this just a coincidence? It makes you wonder how much of the news on both sides of the border is being staged for public consumption.

Fujimori is questioned in Chile

Chilean judge Orlando Alvarez in questioned Alberto Fujimori, who has been incarcerated since returning from exile in Japan last November, as a possible step toward extraditing the former President back to Peru. See BBC.com. I was amused by the end of this story:

The former president is a divisive figure in Peruvian society.

To some he is a saviour of a country on the verge of economic collapse and racked by political violence.

Others see him as a corrupt authoritarian strongman who rode roughshod over Peru's democratic institutions.

What about the possibility that he was both things?! Does anyone think about that? I'm inclined to think the judge will take his time in sifting through all of the documents, so that the question of whether Fujimori would be allowed to run for president this year would be moot.