Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Politics

Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.

Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!

🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)

Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).

(Photo: AP)

China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].

(Photo: AP)

Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].

Life on Planet Trump 
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].

(Photo: CBS News)

Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.

Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].

(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The “Trump of the Tropics” 
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.

When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?

Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].

🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast

Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].

Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights? 
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].

🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)

 

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❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)

Souvenir-Lite Travel in the Global Age of Consumer Goods Smuggling, Counterfeit Copies and Knock-offs

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Popular Culture, Travel

❝When counterfeiting was artisanal,
It didn’t bother us much,
Now it’s become industrial,
And we’re frankly very worried❞.

~ Adrian de Flers, Comité Colbert
(An association of French couturiers and perfumers dedicated to “promoting the concept of luxury”)

⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖ ⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖

Go to any of the world’s tourist hotspots today, anywhere on the international tourist trail in fact, and check out, say, the historical centre of that city and it’s inevitable that you will run into a tsunami of vendors with stalls and shops chock full of knock-offs of designer goods…everywhere you go locals flogging pirated copies of fashion label textiles, shoes, bags, electronic goods, homewares, you name it. And of course there will always be a plethora of takers among the ranks of Western tourists, eager to take advantage of the “great deals”. For some the shopping bonanza may even supersede the profoundly more meaningful chance to engage with different cultures, histories and cuisines around the globe.

The therapeutic springs of the limestone Travertines
Many shopkeepers and retailers in tourist areas no longer bother trying to conceal the faux nature of their merchandise. At the beginning of this year while in Mexico City I was strolling through the Chinatown section of town and came upon a shady looking electronics kiosk pop-up that was selling digital devices labelled as “Clon Samsung”, openly heralding the cloned nature of the product! In Turkey at a small roadside market set up on the outskirts of the famous and unique natural wonder, the Pamukkale Travertines, a prominent banner proclaims in unmissable bold, large, capitalised letters: GENUINE FAKE ROLEX WATCHES FOR SALE!✱ In the less developed world knock-offs are a way of life and a way of commerce – part of what is sometimes blandly described in official television news circles as the “informal economy”, or in old-speak, the black market!

In 2011 the president of Mexico’s Confederation of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism stated that the yield from the sale of counterfeit consumer goods in the country each year is US$75 million, greater than the combined income earned by Mexico from oil, remittances and tourism! (and growing at an exponential rate since that date) [Cheryl Santos, ‘a look at the colors and styles of Mexico City’s bootleg fashion markets’ (7 May 2016), www.i-d.vice.com].

Resisting everything including temptation
It does seem, from the standpoint of your average “Joe or Jill” Western tourist, that the impulse to turn the overseas travel excursion into a shopping junket, the chance to replenish that flagging winter wardrobe with a raft of cut-price bargains, is increasingly the fashion de jour when O/S. Third World imitations of high quality Western merchandise are sold at a fraction of the price and increasingly look passably (or at least remotely) like the real thing. So, who doesn’t want to end up back at his or her home airport knee-deep in inexpensive knock-offs?

Who? Well, me for one! Frankly for one thing I’ve never seen the sense of collecting a whole bunch of extra garments and accessories on route that I’ll have to squeeze into my already bulging luggage and then lug around to every single hotel, coach and airport for the entire duration of the trip, it flies in the face of my simple and practical philosophy of “always travelling as light as possible”. Besides, with the “El Cheapo” stuff you’re not buying quality that’s going to last any decent amount of time!

So, I definitely don’t contribute to the slim profit-margins of the purveyors of fake consumer goods in Third World tourist traps… but souvenirs are another matter, but even there I chart a moderate course. From the first time I ventured overseas (thank you CC!), my ambitions went no further than picking up a few souvenirs or trinkets when I got the chance, something that I would in years hence associate positively with the exotic places I had visited. Occasionally I have bought a T-shirt or a cap perhaps (small items, easy to pack and carry) and of course, out of necessity a few little gifts for the people back home. For me, the odd souvenir is merely an auxiliary memento, something tangible to connect with the mass of photos I would invariably take in each place I visited.

Fridgelandia
Fridge magnet overload!
In the past I admit to having had a bit of a mania for collecting fridge magnets on my travels…yes the proverbial, ultra-kitschy humble fridge magnet! But eventually every available space on the magnetic part of our fridge got consumed, so rather than buying a bigger fridge (a real admission of fridge magnet OCD!), I simply switched to buying other small transportable items in the markets. Paintings, attachable plates and small, decorative wall satchels, easily filled the souvenir void (and eventually the lounge room walls too!)

Sometimes when on the lookout for a token souvenir or two on a trip, I did enjoy the ‘theatre’ of pitting my negotiating skills (such as they are!) against a seasoned vendor with “home ground” advantage in the markets…trying to haggle them down a few shekels did produce a momentary thrill in me. The money saved was absolutely inconsequential in the context of the relative luxury of the First World from which I come – I was simply engaging in the tourism game (when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians, etc). I’m can happily say that over the years of travelling I grew out of this self-indulgent urge to barter, that fleeting and insignificant élan I used to get has well and truly worn off.

Henpecked!
On the trail of the fabulous “pecking hens” of…Cairo, Bogotá, Cancun, Zanzibar, Kolkata, etc.
Thirty years ago a friend brought me back a gift from Columbia or Venezuela (I forget which)…I really appreciated the object’s simplicity and understated charm. It was a plain wooden toy, a little haphazardly made, in the form of a bunch♠ of pecking hens attached by string to a sort of ping-pong bat. They were made simply by (no doubt peasant) hand, unadorned, without any pretensions to being anything like factory-finished and polished to perfection. Basic but guaranteed to capture the attention of a restless two-year-old for hours. I was so taken with the pecking hens I have in turn bought them myself as gifts for friends on subsequent tours where I have seen them (Egypt, Mexico, etc)◙.

Chico Senõr Potter
Finding ‘Choló’ Potter but where is ‘Falsò’ Tintin?
Finding myself in Lima one time and jaded from having done all the main historic hotspots like the creepy monastery catacombs and Huaca Pucliana, I made for Miraflores (tourism central) and checked out the various souvenir markets. One that caught my attention was called the Indian Market (strange that it was called that, I thought the term ‘Indian’ wasn’t considered PC here any more!). The market’s stalls were packed with arts and crafts items and other merchandise like knitted “V for Vendetta” masks and knock-off T-shirts which appropriated and ‘Peruvianised’ symbols of Western popular culture (eg, ‘Cholo’ Potter working his juvenile wizardry in the Andes and that “All-Peruvian” dysfunctional family, the ‘Cholisimpsons’!).

Where is Tintin’s Inca prisoners T-shirt?
Seeing these made me think of the Tintin character…on earlier overseas trips I had discovered Tintin T-shirts which related to a number of Herge’s cartoon books about the sandy-haired boy reporter’s adventures all over the world (in China I found Tintin in Tibet and Les Adventure de Tintin, and in Turkey, Tintin in Istanbul. I knew one of the stories in the famous series was set in Peru (Tintin and the Prisoners of the Sun), so I asked some of the vendors if they had the Tintin T-shirt for Peru…this mainly met with uncomprehending expressions of bewilderment…one guy however was curious enough to quiz me about this ‘mysterious’ Tintin person. After I explained how world-famous the fictional character was and showed the stall-holder what he looked like, the guy confidently predicted that if I come back in six months time he would have the Peru Tintin T-shirt in stock. I didn’t for a moment doubt that he probably would, considering we were in Peru! And I thought, I bet he wouldn’t be concerned by the trifling matter of copyright, it would be the least of things encumbering him in making it happen!

0nly a fiver! Not worth the effort to copy!
Brother, can you knock me up a $100 note?
Lima is one of my favourite cities for counterfeiters. The first time I went into the city centre I was puzzled why there was so many backyard style, old-fashioned printing presses, especially concentrated it seemed in one particular street that runs off Plaza San Martin. It all made more sense when I found out some time later (when back home) that Lima was “the centre of the universe” when it comes to the meticulous painstaking, serious art of counterfeiting – particularly adept at churning out fake US$100 bills, known locally as a “Peruvian note”. Peru tourist tip stating the “bleeding obvious”: check your change very, very carefully!

⍋⍋⍋⍋⍋⍋

PostScript: Dodgy Juliaca – from brand piracy to smuggling
The epidemic proportions of counterfeiting is bad enough, then there’s out-and-out robbery! Standing in the woefully small and threadbare Aeropuerto Juliaca one day (southern Peru), I observed how many Peruvians, catching the domestic flight to Lima (and points further north), were checking in TV sets and computer hardware as luggage. On board one guy in the seat across the aisle from me had a new 33″ LED flat-screen (in its box) which he had brought with him as carry-on luggage…somehow he managed to jemmy it into the overhead compartment! He, like so many other Limeños, had made the 1,680 km round trip to Juliaca and back to buy consumer goods at a price you wouldn’t dream about getting them for in Lima.

The reason why Juliaca lures (long-distance) shoppers in droves is that the dusty, smoggy southern city is the hub of a prosperous smuggling trade…every year over a billion dollars worth of illicit goods including cocaine and other substances, gold, cigarettes, petrol, clothing, home and electronic appliances reaches Juliava predominantly via Lake Titicaca border with neighbouring Bolivia.

Simple unpretentious craftsmanship from the developing world

⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯
✱ at least these bootleggers get credit for candidly exhibiting a sense of humour, a self-effacing one moreover
♠ a peep, a brood?
◙ a second Columbian second gift from my friend was similarly imbued with charmingly simple inventiveness – a Velcro cloth- clown with a weighted head allowing it to tumble head over apex down a sofa whilst clinging to the material

Four Hours in ESTA-land: Enervating and Unavoidable Encounters with Homeland Security at LAX

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Travel

Getting to the land of corn tortillas and agave plants via American Airlines meant 12-13 hours in the air plus a tortuous three to four hour stopover at LAX. The dragged-out 16 hour total journey, such as it was, meant that it was of little solace to me that we reached our ultimate destination, Benito Juárez International Airport, around 3 o’clock (only four hours later than we had left Sydney on the same day – courtesy of flying ‘backwards’ across the International Dateline!) The process of connecting to a flight to Mexico via the US had already proved a taxing exercise with an unexpected and costly twist even before I had left Kingsford Smith.

My frustrations began with several fruitless attempts to secure a boarding pass through AA’s Sydney electronic ticketing system. An airline official intervened at this point advising me that I needed to obtain something called an ESTA* before I could proceed with my trip. This was news to me as my travel agent hadn’t mentioned this requirement to me during the preparations for my Central American tour. Arggh, bad start! The official directed me to a nearby Flight Centre office where I obtained the ESTA (at a moderate cost of $US14 – $A18.95) only to discover the sting imposed by Flight Centre who ripped me off to the tune of an additional $45 just to photocopy the single sheet document!

Being well and truly monetarily stitched up by Flight Centre was only the first travesty or inconvenience I had to endure in order to progress through US territorial jurisdiction successfully (but no means unscathed). By the time I had hit the tarmac at Tom Bradley International Terminal in LA my mind was confused as a result of a US Customs and Borders inflight video…the guy in the video was offering me, it seemed, two choices of entry to the US. In my jumbled head I had been still trying to come to grips with the significance of ESTA, and now he was rabbiting on about something called APC…and what was this Global Entry whatsamajazz thingy he mentioned as well?).

In the arrivals terminal, feelings of bewilderment as a consequence of an overload of Customs bureaucratic jargon was exacerbated by chaotic scenes of passengers streaming this way and that way from one end of the terminal to the other…airport officials were shuffling arriving passengers through never-ending lines like rudderless cattle through shutes✥. Why was it, I pondered frustratingly, that all these people were emptying off planes at the same time?). After several false starts and blind alleys (wrong queue, wrong forms … miss-a-turn, go back to the end of the other queue, do not pass Go! etc) I eventually worked out what queue I should be in and what documents I needed or didn’t need to fill out.

Even after I had got past the electronic interrogator with its game of 20 questions, the whole boarding process continued on and on with no apparent end in sight – positively labyrinthine I concluded! Collecting and reassigning my luggage was followed by mandatory de-belting and de-shoeing at the insistence of Customs Nazis barking orders and commands with Third Reich-like zeal (OK, yes American customs officers have no monopoly on bluntness or lack of manners…but they are certainly world-class in that department if my two horror stretches through the LAX maze is anything to go by!).

Finally free of electronic conveyor belts and scanners for a second time, I took some brief respite from the airport obstacle course by momentarily stepping outside the terminal long enough to get a sighter of the LA smog together with an accompanying olfactory dose of LA air before darting off to the departure gate for my connecting flight to Mexico.

Mercifully the second leg on AA2546 – from LA to Mexico City – was a much shorter and thus more tolerable experience, one fortified by an opportunity to sample the local Mexican cervezas…the aircraft however only carried Corona (which I was already familiar with being widely available in Australia) but I was to discover more and varied brands upon arrival in Mexico.

Yeah, sure!

FootNote: On the ESTA form Customs and Border Protection heralds its new program called Automated Passport Control with a boast that it “expedites the entry process for eligible Visa Waiver Program international travelers”… umm, if that was fast-tracking, then I wouldn’t want to see it in operation on a slow day when someone had thrown a gigantic spanner into the works!
_____________________________________________________
* “Electronic System for Travel Authorization” – a visa waiver necessary to travel to/through the USA in this age of world-wide terrorism vigilance
✥ I can’t help but wonder what that cinematic cynical observer of modernity Jacques Tati would have made of the LAX spectacle of countless waves of humanity in the automatonic thrall of a Dalek-like army of little machines