The guacamole famine, the Super Bowl, and other American dramas

Al Jazeera English

As part of a crackdown on corruption and crime, Mexico's new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has revamped the national fuel distribution system to deter petrol theft - a move that has resulted in temporary shortages across various Mexican states.

The United States media have turned up to highlight the real takeaway: the shortages may affect the transport of Mexican avocados and the availability of guacamole for the annual massively hyped, televised sporting event known as the Super Bowl to be held this year on February 3. 

A recent Reuters headline blared: "Holy guacamole! Mexican fuel shortage threatens Super Bowl snack." Other outlets followed suit. CNN warned that "Super Bowl guac may be off the table if gas shortage sidelines Mexican avocados," Maxim magazine foretold a "major guacamole crisis", and the Eater website took the (foot)ball and ran with it: "Cue the guacpocalypse." 

In short, while the avocado dip may be in short supply, the cheesiness definitely isn't. And speaking of cheesy, concerned Super Bowl viewers are reminded that at least there's always queso - that staple dish of Texas that often involves "cheese" that is not actually cheese. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Gaza's superbug epidemic: Bacteria without borders

Middle East Eye

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently ran a report titled “Unseen enemy: Doctors in Gaza battling superbug epidemic”.

Given the regular atrocities to which the Gaza Strip is subjected by a very visible enemy - the state of Israel - the last thing that’s needed is an unseen one, to boot.

In the past five years alone, Israel’s activities vis-a-vis the Palestinian territory have included a 50-day assault in 2014 that killed some 2,251 Palestinians - most of them civilians, and more than 550 of them children - along with repeated attacks on peaceful Palestinian protesters in the context of the Great March of Return, which saw more than 60 Palestinians killed on a single day last May.

According to a December report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 25,000 people in Gaza were injured by Israeli forces in 2018.

And as it turns out, Gaza’s visible enemy is primarily to thank for the emergence of the invisible one: the superbug - defined in the Oxford dictionary as a “strain of bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotic drugs”.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism notes that Gaza is a “particularly fertile breeding ground for superbugs because its health system has been crippled by years of blockade and antibiotics are in short supply… Shortages of water, power and fuel for generators mean doctors often cannot meet even basic hygiene standards.”

Citing medical professionals, the report goes on to specify that “staff sometimes can’t even wash their hands… and there are shortages of gloves, gowns and chlorine tablets for sanitising the hospitals”. Indeed, the Israeli blockade, imposed in 2007, has brought Gaza’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, details some of the numerous impediments to healthcare in the besieged coastal enclave, such as Israeli restrictions that “apply to replacing broken equipment, importing advanced medical equipment and drugs, [and] travel by physicians for professional training outside Gaza”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

A Tough Time to Be a Spy, NPR Reports

FAIR

Imagine, for a moment, that a prominent media outlet in Iran decided to produce a story about the trials of being an Iranian spy in this technological day and age—in which the all-pervasiveness of surveillance mechanisms and social media complicates slightly the process of entering other countries under false identities.

It’s safe to assume that the United States would find this less than entertaining, and that a fair amount of ruckus would ensue, with concerned politicians and other fearmongers bleating about terror attacks and the sanctity of US borders. 

Of course, no Iranian media outlet has actually done this. NPR’s Morning Edition (1/3/19), on the other hand, has just run an upbeat segment on how violating other people’s borders is now a tad more challenging for American spies than it was in past decades: “CIA Chief Pushes For More Spies Abroad; Surveillance Makes That Harder,” reported by Greg Myre.

The “push,” in fact, came in September, when CIA Director Gina Haspel—herself a former longtime undercover officer abroad—announced her desire for a “larger foreign footprint” for the CIA. Four months later, it’s the hook for NPR’s human interest story on frustrating impediments to spying.

Myre brings in various characters to populate his narrative, all of them current or ex-CIA employees. First is Jonna Mendez, former CIA “chief of disguise,” whom Myre tells us will give us “a few key tips” for Americans trying to appear European:

[Europeans] wear their wedding rings on different fingers. They eat differently than we do. They don’t shuttle that fork back and forth…. They stand up straight.

Exciting stuff.

Then there’s retired CIA officer John Sipher, who “says it could be tough today to enter the same country twice with different sets of documents.” Things were much easier back in the 1980s, we’re told, when airports didn’t scan faces and fingerprints, and everyone wasn’t online.

Next up with some remarks on social media are Sheronda, the CIA’s chief of recruiting, and Mary, an undercover officer. Incidentally, Sheronda’s soundbite—“People here do use social media. And yes, specific guidelines are provided”—is the same one that appeared in Myre’s March 2018 NPR report “CIA Recruiting: The Rare Topic the Spy Agency Likes to Talk About” (3/26/18), which might as well have been titled “Hey Kids! Here’s How to Join the CIA.”

Myre’s latest pro bono public relations effort on behalf of the agency meanwhile ends on some thoughts about how all the technology in the world can’t replace “the human touch” when it comes to intelligence gathering. “It’s a job of human beings,” says Mendez.

Which brings us to the following question: Why is NPR trying so hard to humanize an organization that is downright anti-human? After all, it’s not like the CIA’s machinations abroad are restricted to wedding ring protocol, fork-shuttling and improved posture—and a few details from its sordid history might have helped to contextualize Haspel’s current CIA proliferation scheme. READ MORE AT FAIR.

How capitalism is killing us

Al Jazeera English

Hitchhiking through Venezuela some years ago, a friend and I availed ourselves of the novel opportunity to receive free medical care at health clinics established by late President Hugo Chavez, a much-vilified enemy of the international capitalist order.

I had never experienced the danger of free healthcare in my own homeland - that glorious vanguard of capitalism known as the United States - which was too busy waging wars and otherwise facilitating obscene corporate profit accumulation to be bothered with basic human rights. At one Venezuelan clinic, a female doctor from Cuba appropriately remarked that, like the US military, Cuban medics also operated in global conflict zones - but to save lives.

A December 2017 statement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights notes that, while the US manages to spend "more [money] on national defence than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined", US infant mortality rates were, as of 2013, "the highest in the developed world".

The Special Rapporteur provides a barrage of other details from his own visit to the US, during which he was able to observe the country's "bid to become the most unequal society in the world" - with some 40 million people living in poverty - as well as assess "soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction". 

Capitalism, it seems, is a deadly business indeed. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.