Complexes

With the recent refugee wave from countries with a Muslim majority, we have been flooded by a wave of fear-fueled propaganda against them. Muslims treat their women badly. Muslims are violent. Muslims are this, Muslims are that. The Koran says this, the Koran says that. Europe is not what it used to be, it is getting full of Muslims. After living four years in Brussels and dealing with plenty of Moroccans and Turks, these clichés never matched my experience. I teach that science has flourished and been repressed in Muslim and Christian countries at different epochs, so the obstacle has been not so much the religion but how the institutions use a religion. Just like Jihadists use Islam to promote their agenda, you can interpret other texts for your own ends, and then you have Nazism and the KKK. Humanism and reason should be beyond religions. But the Koran says kill all the infidels. And the Bible says kill all the blasphemous. It is true that terrorists groups are using Islam to brai...

I do not think that the resignation of our president Enrique Peña Nieto would be positive in the short term. Instability probably would increase. But I want to share why so many people are asking for his resignation, also because the news are not even reaching the majority of the Mexican population. Peña had a controversial campaign, with thousands of reported electoral irregularities . After two years in office, the violence in the country continues , and many other promises are still to be materialized. But all this is normal Mexican politics. Previous presidents in similar situations have not met such a rejection from the national and international communities. The straw that broke the camel's back was the dissapearance and possible murder of 43 students in the village of Ayotzinapa , in the southern state of Guerrro (Acapulco is also in that state, and was last year the 3rd most violent city in the world). The students were intecepted by the local police, there were 6 ki...

I was just in Berlin for the first time, for the Award Ceremony of the Audi Urban Future Award 2014 (which we won ! But that will be the topic of another post ). The organizers had the great idea to make the ceremony coincide with the Falling Walls Conference and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Incidentally, just before I was in Ensenada for another conference , and on the way to Tijuana airport our hosts took us to the border wall by the sea. That is another city marked by a wall, which although permeable, it separates and divides people. So many touching stories you can hear, I've been reflecting these days how states decisions can affect so much the life of individuals. On the other hand, the fall of the wall is an example of how individuals can change states. The #wall is not an obstacle if you can fly. A photo posted by Carlos Gershenson (@cgershen) on Nov 11, 2014 at 2:08pm PST I met some Germans for the first time fifteen years ago, f...

The Mexican federal electoral tribunal rejected the demand for the nulification of the presidential election yesterday. The magistrates say that proofs are not sufficient. I do not know who are they trying to fool. Everybody knows about the irregularities and we received thousands of proofs at  Contamos . But also the millions who got material benefits from PRI know it first hand. Where did all the money come from, we don't know, but it is either deviated from public money for electoral purposes, or from organized crime. Which one is worse? Illegal in any case. There is a huge social discontent. Regrettably, it is only fitting for a soap opera president: to become "elected" with such a farse. On your TV sets from December 1st.

Enrique Peña Nieto obtained the majority of votes on July 1st. However, there is huge evidence of electoral crimes committed by his party (paying people for votes, conditioning public services for votes, use of public resources for campaigns, etc.) and an obvious excess of campaign spending limits. The Electoral Federal Court has to announce a result on the election by September 6th, with a large sector of the population demanding new elections, which would imply an interim president.

In recent days, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) the presidential candidate from the Mexican left parties gave a jump in the polls (at least those which are not obviously biased). This was mainly because of the self-organized movement "#YoSoy132", initiated by students and now followed by thousands of people in all the country, mainly rejecting the imposition of a candidate by the media (Enrique Peña Nieto, EPN from PRI) and by the circles of power (even expresident Vicente Fox from PAN called to vote for him, obviously causing outrage in his party. The thing is that if AMLO wins, most probably he'll end un in jail). Seeing the support for AMLO grow, the other two main parties (PRI and PAN) started a similar strategy to that of 2006, discrediting AMLO with a "dirty war". A few days ago each party released a TV spot where they forged in one case a conversation and in another an AMLO speech (video in Spanish here ). What can you expect from political parties...

The presidential elections in Mexico next July 1st are heating up the political landscape. It has always been a tradition that most media support some candidate, in this case Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) from PRI, who is ahead in their questionable polls. However, the information spreading on social networks is something they still cannot control. On Friday, May 11th, EPN went to the Universidad Iberoamericana, one of the most recognized private universities in the country, where the students demonstrated their rejection towards him. Of course, none of this was seen in most media, one newspaper even Photoshopping their frontpage picture : However, with half the students filming every moment with their smartphones, the real deal spread like wildfire on social networks and youtube . One of the claims to EPN was a police operation in the town of Atenco in the outskirts of Mexico City, while EPN was governor of the State of Mexico. State and federal police arrested dozens of people, r...

I've been meaning to start posting about the upcoming presidential elections to be held in Mexico on July 1st. The current government of Felipe Caledrón (who began his presidency in 2006 amidst proofs of fraud ) has been characterized by a stagnation of the economy and a war declared against (most of) the drug cartels, leading to at least 60,000 people killed so far. Only in Ciudad Juárez, we had ten times the murder rate than in Baghdad during the recent U.S. occupation. Last year, a complaint was filed at the International Court in The Hague against Felipe Calderón and others , accusing them of crimes against humanity. The perspective is not positive for Calderón, since he cannot go abroad like other ex-presidents, and most probably his party (PAN) will lose the presidency, given the failures of the two previous presidents: Calderón and Vicente Fox (2000-2006). The candidates: Josefina Vázquez Mota  "JVM" (PAN), former minister of education and leader of her part...

2010 seems to be a promising year. Here in Mexico, we will celebrate 200 years of the beginning of the Independence (September 16th, 1810) and 100 years of the beginning of the Revolution (November 20th, 1910). By linear extrapolation, we all expect a great event to occur in 2010. But there are different opinions on what precisely will occur. The hope of the people: winning the World Cup. The fear of the people: collapse of the country. The most possible outcome: financial difficulties of historic proportions. The Guajiran dream: the refoundation of the Republic (it has been going down the drain for too long). My personal bet/conspiracy theory: druglords taking over the country followed by a foreign invasion rescue operation.

After several years living abroad (St. Petersburg, Sussex, Brussels, Granada, Boston), it takes a bit of time to get used to life back in Mexico City. Having some frame of comparison, I realized one way to describe the problem with developing countries such as Mexico: there is a high degree of incompetence . Now, it is difficult to measure incompetence (In TeraBushes?), but to understand better what I mean, let us say that an agent (person, business, organization) is more incompetent if there are more tasks that the agent should perform successfully and it does not. I mean, I am quite incompetent in bureaucratic monotonous tedious labours, but these are not my duty (which some people refer to as "professional handwaving", others as "academia"). All countries and all agents have a certain degree of incompetence: nobody is perfect, there will always be errors, especially with novel tasks. Also, all countries and agents have a large degree of functionality, things tha...

Why people should vote for Obama ? Well, better the other way around: the only reason I can think of for people not voting for him is racism. A few months ago, I went to a doctor. He had been a pilot in WWII, made his way up the hard way, complained about the American youth. When I told that I hoped that Obama would be the next U.S. president, he was amazed: "What have black people done for this country?!". I was puzzled and amazed. I won't attempt to answer his question here (Michael Jackson?). He continued: "we need someone like McCain, to protect us from the Russians." One could think that the age of the doctor would explain his anti-Russian sentiment, but actually it is quite generalized, after almost 20 years of the end of the cold war. On the one hand, Russians have better things to do than to "threaten" the USA. On the other hand, there are much more dangers for the U.S. citizens coming from within, starting with incompetent leaders and ending ...

Francis sent me a link to an article from the newspaper De Morgen (in Dutch), where they mention a simulation of the Wetstraat (a main avenue in Brussels) where my student Seung Bae Cools implemented self-organizing traffic light controllers I developed. The news are that the Flemish parlament wants to approve the implementation of self-organizing traffic lights in busy intersections in Flanders. They hope to approve budget for a pilot study this year. Those are good news! You can find more details about this work in my PhD thesis . It seems that the media coverage had its effect.

In this TED Talk , Al Gore argues for global action to face global crisis. The proposed solution: tax carbon. In theory, it sounds like a good option. However, how to bring it to reality? How many changes in economies would this produce? Certainly, companies would be tempted to use renewable energy sources, and these would become a great market. However, oil companies hold much of the power behind curtains. Could a social movement achieve this change? Could this be effectively implemented in most countries? What to do with countries who would not tax their carbon emissions? This huge change wouldn't be the end of the world, certainly, but such a drastic transformation seems almost impossible. Well, let's fight for this almost impossibility, otherwise we'll be sitting on our fat behinds waiting for catastrophes to force the transformation.

Yesterday, an energetic reform was presented by Felipe Calderón (aka FeCal ) to the Mexican senate. It attempts to modify several laws, although these changes violate the constitution. Using fallacies of prosperity for Mexico, the right wing government is attempting to privatize the extraction, transport, and refining of oil and gas. Many arguments and passions and interests can be put forward, but let us simply note the following fact: Oil is the first source of income for Mexico (followed by money sent by more than ten million immigrants in the U.S. to their families, and tourism in third place). The cost of a Mexican oil barrel is around $85 these days, but its production is less than ten. The difference is used to pay for public education, health services, social security, etc. (as deficient as they may be). I fail to see how transmitting this profit to private foreign companies (such as Repsol, Exxon, Texaco, who have already shown obscure and questionable ties to FeCal's tea...

Next month, the film "Fraude: México 2006" by Luis Mandoki will be released in more than 200 Mexican cinemas. You can see the trailer in YouTube (in Spanish...). This documentary gathers evidence filmed by hundreds of people about the fraud of the 2006 presidential elections. The Mexican supreme court already accepted that there had been severe irregularities, but in spite of that, we're stuck with a duck president (Felipe Calderón, aka FeCal), puppet of the people who managed to put him in power. Most recently, AeroMexico was sold to a business group who supported FeCal. I hope that this film will inform better people. There is no doubt about the fraud, there is more than enough evidence for it. But many Mexicans don't know about it (TV companies invested a lot in FeCal), and most don't even care... It is worth noting that Warner Bros, the original distributor of the film, tried to censor it, namely a part that compromises Televisa directives. When the director ...

In ecology, one can see that if a species is too "efficient", it will exhaust its resources, and become extinct. This has led to the " prudent predator " concept: A predator needs to save some prey to subsist another day. Herbivores need to do the same with pastures, and parasites and viruses with their hosts. This is why deadly virus strains do not propagate much: if they kill their hosts, they cannot use them to spread. We can extend this idea to social systems. For example, if employers exploit their workers too much, these will not be motivated to work well, and the company will go out of business. Certainly, there are exceptions: monopolies, where no matter how bad a service or product is, the consumer has no alternative. Another case is when there is a large workforce supply, i.e. high unemployment rates. If there are plenty of workers, employers will be tempted to exploit them, replacing the "weak" ones with those able to withstand their demands. ...

James E. Lovelock and Chris G. Rapley recently submitted a letter to Nature , suggesting the use of pipes to mix ocean waters to help them bloom pumping carbon dioxide underwater. Sounds much better than some others ... but still, we should be cautious. I asked Inman Harvey his opinion about it, and here's his reply: On the one hand, my instinct is to be deeply sceptical and worried about *any* largescale attempt to modify a complex nonlinear feedback system barely understood, with not only known unknowns but unknown unknowns. I am somewhat sympathetic with a comment piece by Hari on http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article3024703.ece On the other hand, compared with some other bizarre geo-engineering proposals, this is reassuringly lowtech, cheap, could be introduced and monitored in just one area initially -- and would be simple and quick to turn off if necessary. Rapid and scaleable and monitorable and turn-offable seems to offer more opportunities fo...

U.S.-led organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been "recommending" developing countries on how to improve their economies. However, the only countries that develop are the "developed" ones... very few developing countries have improved their economies. Moreover, those who have improved, especially in Latin America, have been precisely those who refused to follow the dictates from the U.S. Why? Because people at the IMF and WB thought for decades the following: "if this model of economic development worked for us, we should just export it to other countries, and their economies will grow as ours". What happened? Countries are very different. Moreover, the situation in Latin America (and the world) today is very different from the one the U.S. had when it had a similar economic level. We cannot assume that the same model will work again, just as it hasn't worked for decades. The cultures are different. Histories a...

On December 1st, Vicente Fox stepped down from Mexico's presidency, while Felipe Calderón started his six year period. Since Calderón "won" the elections using electoral fraud plus other dirty manouvers, the civil unrest surrounding all of his events is noticeable. Usually, the exchange of presidential powers is made before the Congress. Everybody says speeches, promise everything will be better, and so on. However, there had been a strong militarization around the Congress building in Mexico City fearing civil demonstrations, especially after Vicente Fox was unable to give his last presidential report (to my mind for the first time in our history), and when he had to move the celebrations of the Independence day and "cancel" those of the Revolution, knowing how many people would reming him of his mother if he shows himself in public. (Not to worry, the government of the City took care of both celebrations). So, how things went: Exactly at midnight of Dec...

Yesterday, November 20th, 96th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, Andrés Manuel López Obrador took protest as the legitimate president of Mexico. Since the circles of power have corrupted the national institutions and the media, culminating with the presidential elections fraud last July 2nd, more than a million Mexicans, of which several were representing many others, gathered last September at a National Democratic Convention, and elected López Obrador as the legitimate president (well, he had won already, but since the electoral institutions and tribunals were corrupted, they gave the victory to the puppet Felipe Calderón, who will attempt to take possesion of a spurious presidency on December 1st). The new legitimate government will be defending the rights of the majority of Mexicans, living in poverty and "forgotten" by the people in power (they have not forgotten, they are just being unmercifully exploited). For example, the President proposes to the Congress the bu...