Autocracy

Mexico’s president, the increasingly authoritarian and erratic leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, visited Veracruz this past Friday to commemorate the 1914 American occupation of that city. In his remarks was a startling declaration: the Mexican state and military, under his leadership, will defend Mexico’s criminal cartels from the Americans.  “There is talk in the United States,” said AMLO, “of intervening and confronting organized crime, drug traffickers, treating them as terrorists and that for this reason they will come to 'help' us, to 'support' us to confront organized crime... we do not accept any intervention... if they did, it will not be only the sailors and soldiers who will defend Mexico, all Mexicans will defend Mexico.

The E100 bus is not somewhere you will find an Emirati. Departing about every thirty minutes from 4 a.m. onward and taking passengers from Abu Dhabi to Dubai for just 25 AED ($7.80), this is not a place for the rich. It is the domain of the weary peoples, the migrant workers who make this minuscule monarchy work. At 5:13 a.m. in late December, this crowd was ready to go. Bags packed for whatever indignity might come next. They were ready long before most Emiratis are awake because, for them, the United Arab Emirates is an opportunity.