MMmm Powdered Flounder

Big fun in SE Asia, pretty pics at 
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/ontheroadwithstevev

Welfare Queens

General Electric- one of the top ten most profitable companies in the world-got a net tax rebate of $4.7 BILLION dollars for the years of 2008-2010. Meanwhile, it spent $84 Million dollars lobbying the federal government

Full Story Here

And you may ask your self? Well, How did I get here?

Six weeks bumming around thailand and cambodia , it's nice I like it

Countdown to Adventure Continues

Moving sale was very successful but I still have all the hand tools & plants, I kept my bike ( the best one) but that will have to go away by Monday....From Granada Nicaragua to Nebraska USA To Thailand to Laos all before Xmas.......

GRINGO Moving Sale Aug 26,2011

Saturday August 26-27, 9 till 12

Sunday Aug 28 10 till 12 deep discount day

Casa Baltic corner of LaLibertad & the arroyo at Puente PapaQ

More info eMail nicanutbutter@gmail.com

Electronics Etc:

Samsung 22 inch color TV with original remote…sold

Dell 14’ flat panel monitor …$35

Linksys Router Wireless G 2.4GHz with extended antennae & custom heat sinks…$sold

Bulova Marine Star #98H01 Men’s two tone 300 meter, analog alarm watch, new in box..$90…. over $200 retail

Sony Mavica Digital Camera circa 1999 uses 4’ floppy disks, complete..C100

25 foot Coax tv cable with splitter…$C100

GE Slimline corded phone (good for magic Jack) new in box..sold

25 foot two outlet extension cord…C80

Sony blank Cds 12 left…C100

Siemens A71 Cell phone in box…C150

Movies, DVDs,CDs

HouseHold

Potted Plants...

Victorian wall hung clothes hooks……$40

LED modern gooseneck metal desk lamp…$15

Nice standard double 400 thread count cotton sheet set, light slate blue…C200

1950s aluminum style green 2 ft Xmas tree in the box

with 6 1950s era glass ornaments …C400

Hamilton Beach Steam Iron…C150

German chef knives...wood handle, chef, filet, slicer...C100 ea

Oyster Rice Cooker with scratched up pan….$C100

Plastic 4 top table with removable legs…C100

Three antique Bell canning jars w lids ...$12

AC-DC 10’ fan…$C100

Big TFal fry pan & wok, BBQ skewers, ice pick, grill

Tupperware, salad spinner, plastic dishes, strainers, gadgets, can openers etc:

Sporting Goods

Toby Trek 26' up graded with alloy rims, raised alloy goose neck, handle bars, brakes…$55

BikePump,USA Bike repair paperback, patch kit,two spare 26’ tubes & bicycle misc parts ..$10

North Face 2 man backpacker camping tent, nice complete C400

Eddie Bauer Day Pack, old Samsonite, hard sided suitcase, duffel pack, shoulder bags, cloth shopping bags, etc

XL Gringo tee shirts, button downs, towels etc

MISC

Jewelers professional 10X loupe…C300

Barlow pocket knife wood handled…C100

Victrinox …Swiss Army Knife midsized promo Exl…C150

Old USA metal lunch boxes beat up Wild Bill Hickok or Cartoon Zoo with Wally Gator..C200 ea

Wooden Billy Club old & serious works great for the barrio drunk at the door….C200

Eddie Bauer blue Day Pack…C150

TOOLS: Choice $C45 each

Soldering Iron, hot glue gun, Eastwing all metal hammer…Exacto Knife Set, …Hand Brace, big bag of misc drill bits

2 x 10’crescent wrenches, 6’ crescent, wire stripper,

¼ drive sockets & drivers, 8’ channel lock,10’ vice grips, tin snips, screwdrivers,

2x wire cutters, pliers, needle nose etc, small file set, wood chisel,

6 in one screwdriver, tape measures 50 & 6 feet, utility knives, box cutter,

mitre saw,

Books:

Failed States ….Noam Chomsky…sold

What We Say Goes…..Noam Chomsky …C100

Waiting for Fidel...Christopher Hunt sold…

No Logo…Naomi Klein…C100

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man…John Perkins…sold

People’s History of the USA…. H. Zinn…C200

Nothing Scared, hardback…Lewis Black…C60

Pigs at the Trough…A Huffington…C50

Moon Guide to Nicaragua 2^nd Edition…C100

Carnivores of Central America…C120

Savage Shore…Ed Marriott…sold

Skinny Legs and All…Kurt Vonnegut…sold

Jailbird…Kurt Vonnegut…sold

The Fruit Palace…Charles Nicholl…sold

Monkey Wrench Gang….E. Abbey….C60

50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Adventure from the Cuban perspective

Playa Giron: The Mercenary Defeat in Cuba

by PL — last modified Apr 13, 2011 01:25 PM

— filed under: BAY OF PIGS

The 50th anniversary of the Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) victory, is particularly important for the Cuban people: the 1961 defeat of an invasion of CIA-trained mercenary troops.

That armed invasion was approved by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who on March 17, 1960, ordered the recruitment of Cuban-born mercenaries to land in the western Cuban province of Matanzas.

Historical documents show that each of these soldiers for hire was offered 225 USD monthly plus 50 USD for his oldest child and 25 for other children. A total of 4.4 million USD was initially allocated for this purpose, and that figure later grew.

The CIA trained their newly-recruited mercenaries in camps in Guatemala, Nicaragua and the United States and on U.S. military bases in Puerto Rico and Panama.

Days after the U.S. elections, on Nov. 18, 1960, the CIA proposed the details of the plan to President-elect John F. Kennedy, and he approved the idea.

On Apr. 15, 1961, while the mercenary naval group was sailing to Cuba, escorted by U.S. Navy ships, eight B-26 bombers painted with Cuban Air Force emblems bombed two air bases and a civilian airport in Cuba.

At the memorial services for the victims of the air raids, the socialist character of the Revolution was proclaimed and a state of combat alarm was decreed nationwide. That date is celebrated every year as Militia Member Day.

Meanwhile, a media campaign was being created to back a future direct attack, demonizing Cuban revolutionary measures to benefit the people, such as the agrarian reform to give land to those who work it and the urban reform, doing away with landlords.

The United States concentrated the power of its propaganda on convincing the world through false information that the Cuban people had created an internal uprising, backing an exile government made up of traditional, corrupt politicians.

From : Escambray Cuban digital newspaper

My favorite holiday approaches

Buy Nothing Day is your special day to unshop, unspend and unwind. Relax and do nothing for the economy and for yourself - at least for a single day.

Can you really buy absolutely nothing for just one day? You might say “Sure!” but can you ACTUALLY go one whole day without transacting ANY business? Are you totally debt free so that you can go a whole day without accruing interest on your mortgage? Are you off the grid so that you can go a whole day without paying the power company? Do you have ANY utilities? Water, Sewer etc? Do you have a cell phone? Do you have stocks or other investments that transact business in your name every day without your input? Do you have other debts, such as credit cards that accrue interest? Can you really go one whole day without buying anything? Try it!

http://www.buynothingday.org/buynothing.html

https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

Enjoy Yourself...It's later than you think

Neighborhood Watch Nica Style

The police aren't much help with day to day petty crimes in the neighborhoods so people take it upon themselves to police their block. ...better barrios like mine have some one's unemployed uncle ride a bike around the neighborhood all night blowing a whistle every couple minutes.

I thought the USA was too poor to pay attention

Senate Passes Massive debt inducing $636 Billion Military Spending Bill

The Senate today voted 93-7 in favor of the $636 billion defense appropriations bill to provide funding to the US military over the fiscal year beginning this month.

The bill includes $128.2 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bars President Obama from transferring any of the suspects at Guantanamo Bay to the US for trials.

Two of the Senators voting against the bill, Sens. McCain and Feingold, objected to the $2.5 billion in continued funding for C-17 military aircraft. The Pentagon has said it doesn’t want the aircraft, and the Obama Administration has sought to cancel the funding for them.

Sen. Feingold was the only Democrat to vote against the bill. The six Republicans included Sens. McCain, Enzi, Coburn, Demint, Barrasso, and Graham.

So if I am doing my math right that's about a dollar each for each person on earth? Where are these dangerous extremist liberals I hear about...I think Repub or Dem they are all nothing more than corpracrats, highly paid & perfumed whores in the temple of govt...

The oligarchy is pissed & peasant blood will flow

September 28, 2009 Acoustic and Chemical Attacks on the Brazilian Embassy

The Sound and Fury of the Honduran Coup

By LAURA CARLSEN
Over the past few days, reports poured in from Honduras of the use of sound devices and chemical warfare in attacks on the Brazilian Embassy by the Honduran coup. The use of Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) has been confirmed by observers and journalists. Numerous photographers have also documented their use.


The UN Security Council today called upon the de facto government of Honduras to "cease harassing the Brazilian Embassy" and "condemned acts of intimidation."



These devices are described as a "non-lethal weapon" produced by the U.S.-based American Technology Corporation. They emit painful sound at 151 db. with a range of 300 meters on land, and are used in situations of war and to control demonstrations.


While acoustics weapons have been used over the past several days, on Friday the Armed Forces sprayed the Embassy with poisonous gases and by some accounts pumped them into the building through the drainage system. The Honduran News Network reports that First Lady Xiomara Castro de Zelaya climbed a ladder to ascertain the source of the attacks and was sprayed with chemicals. She and others in the Embassy are reportedly experiencing bleeding as a result of the effects of the chemicals.


Father Andres Tamayo described the situation to Radio Progreso, "Over a thousand soldiers in front (of the Embassy) left and returned with a cistern and helicopters spraying gases. There are also neighbors that lent their houses to spray these things and house the military. They have placed pipes to spread the gases. We feel a tightness in our stomachs and throat, vomiting, dizziness and some people are urinating blood. There are more than a thousand people around here and at this moment all we can do is drink a little milk."


A press conference was called to reveal the results of the analysis of the gas, done by public health specialist Dr. Mauricio Castellanos.

* Concentrations above normal of amonia, which is used as a base of pepper gas
* Concentration between 100 and 200 particles per thousand
* Hydrocyanic acid, which produces a rapid reaction on inhaling when it enters in contact with the iron in the blood, and produces vertigo, nausea, stomach pain, headaches and breathing difficulties

The report concluded, "This mixture is technologically purely military, prohibited under international treaties. Exposure for a prolonged period is lethal to any living organism."


Juan Almendares, a Honduran medical doctor and human rights leader, states:


"The occupants of the Brazilian Embassy that accompany President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, his wife and family, communities and protesters are the object of the launching of chemical arms from helicopters and airplanes or troops, and the use of sophisticated sound and electromagnetic equipment that have produced severe diarrhea, vomiting, nasal hemorrhages and gastrointestinal problems in both the Embassy and surrounding areas.
"According to the clinical reports, this could be due to the usage of toxic substances including: pesticides, chemical components of gases, radioactive substances like radioactive cesium and toxic mushrooms.



"It is urgent that an international medical team from the United Nations and the World Health Organization be sent. We are facing an irregular war against the people of Honduras. The Armed Forces do not allow the International Red Cross entry into the Brazilian Embassy, violating all international health treaties and conventions and human rights."


Numerous reports, including Honduran News Network sources, also mentioned radioactive cesium. If the use of radioactive cesium is confirmed, the consequences are very serious. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry finds that the effects of high levels include the symptoms listed above and even coma and death.


This is the notorious "day-after" effect of nuclear bombs. The agency adds that "it is reasonable to expect that individuals exposed to high levels of radiation from a source of radioactive cesium will develop the same types of cancer observed in survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan."



Embassies are protected under the Vienna Convention and any violation of this is an international issue. With the notable exceptions of Colombia and the United States, all nations of the region expressed concern about the Honduran situation at the 64th UN General Assembly meeting.


As the society breaks down into a coup-provoked crisis, the Women's Collective CODEMUH writes in to that workers in offshore assembly plants have been forced to work overtime to make up for time lost due to the coup's curfews, in clear violation of labor law.


The Collective notes, "According to Article 23 of the Labor Code, "Workers can participate in profits or benefits of the boss, but never assume the risks and losses," meaning that business cannot charge workers for the losses caused by the national political crisis, which the businessmen and women are key actors in causing. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot force workers to pay for the losses that you provoked with the coup d'etat. "We call on transnational brands like Nike, GAP, Adidas, Hanes, HBI and Walmart, among others, as well as university students in the U.S. and consumers in general, who wear the products produced in the sweatshops of Honduras, to demand the offshore industry pay its workers for the days they did not show up for work due to the curfew of the de facto government, without requiring that they make up these days. And that the workers refuse to accept these extra days."


President Zelaya has called on “the resistance to maintain the fight that together, the people and the president, will achieve the constitutional reforms and fall of the usurpers."


With the no-holds-barred repression unleashed by the coup regime and the increasing militancy and organization of the resistance--still adhering to principles of non-violence, to their credit--the political ground has once again shifted in Honduras. The terms of the San Jose Accords, hammered out by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and consistently rejected by the coup regime, have become clearly obsolete. The demand for a constitutional assembly has grown in breadth and volume throughout the country. The urgent tasks before the international community are to recognize that the crisis requires structural reforms and not patch-ups, to halt the human rights violations immediately, and to take all diplomatic steps toward the reinstatement of the constitutional government.


Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).

The Hollywood leftist elite asks us to support Corp CEOs

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Insurance Companies are no friend to me
Never have been, The latest screw was the greatest screw, while I was down here in Nicaragua someone broke into my house in Tacoma. Being a long time pro pack rat collector you just now I had tons of great stuff, gemstone and fossil collections, cash, herb, gold,pocket knives etc etc....Just the kind of stuff tweakers like....
So I been paying premiums monthly to Farmers Ins for maybe 15 years, and what do I get? A special agent and enough mistreatment & lies to eventually involve lawyers and the Wa State Insurance Commissioner's Office. So after 3 months and a mountain of BS those greedy weasels graciously paid me just a little less than half of what my things were conservatively worth.In the mean time a fierce wind storm damaged the house and it started again anyway. I don't think it's an unusual story. I'll bet most Americans have a similar tale to tell. But getting screwed by the corporatocracy is an everyday event. Every time they deny a claim they move one step closer to a ponzi scheme. Ideally in their world the would never be any money paid out, just sucked in. Just like Maddoff....lets leave these folks out of our heath care system.

I was a dedicated RJR man for 27 years. Swiping lip stick stained butts from the xtal ashtray on my moms bridge table as a kid to boosting Lucky Strikes out of the piggly wiggly as a young punk in training. I loved to smoke and the stronger the better I wasn't happy until my middle finger was yellowed and sticky w tar.
Around the middle of my 42nd year after my second uninsured heart attack I decided that I had to put the smokes down and using DEATH and Financial Ruin as inspiration I haven't had a cigarette in 14 years...Best move I may have every made. I am ashamed that I was ever dumb enough to fall victim to the biggest scam in USA history..Led to slaughter like sheep...It's not about smoking good old fashioned peace pipe tobacco, it's about smoking modern American Cigarettes full of mysterious addictive additives...

What's Inside: For a Refreshing Hint of Tear Gas, Light Up a Cigarette

Some perpective would be nice

I hear lots of USAnos shouting we're "number one". A popular phrase in use from town hall meeting to the hockey rink...Statistically speaking some one has to be number one so I googled. We're not the most educated that's Canada.
For the first time in the 11 years that the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal have been publishing the Index of Economic Freedom, the U.S. has dropped out of the top 10 freest economies in the world.
We aren't even the fattest country on earth anymore....If we are going to shout about being number one maybe we should try harder...Let's be Number One at Something....37th in Health Care

Escape from America

If like me you dream of escaping and starting over some where, somewhere warm sunny and more human than the USA of today...It's a lot easier than you might think and way more fun. If it doesn't work limp back to the states a couple of years from now 20 pounds lighter and tan as George Hamilton... Joe Bageant is a far better writer than I am and he writes often of his experience living in a small fishing village in Belize...

By Joe Bageant

Hopkins Village, Belize

I lie in bed just breathing in and breathing out and feeling so free that I've laughed out loud a couple of times tonight, something I have never done in my life. At least not while simply looking at the ceiling. Tomorrow I will not worry about losing my ass in the declining real estate market. I will not commute three nerve grinding hours a day, or nervously engorge myself in front of my laptop for hours on end. Nor will I or wake up with the crimes of the empire running like adding machine tape in my head, annotated with all the ways I contributed to those crimes by participating in the American lifestyle. After more than two years of effort, I'm outta the gilded gulag, by damned, and tell myself that I have at last quit being part of the problem -- or at least as much as much as anyone can without living stark naked in a Himalayan cave and toasting insects over a dung fire.

The effect of moving was immediate. As one expat told me years ago what would happen, whole days go by when I do not think of America at all, much less rage against it, something I would previously considered impossible. But when you do, you do so more calmly and lose no sleep over the criminals presently running the enterprise up there.

In places like Hopkins Village you can still send your kid to the store to bring back cigarettes. Now the politically correct set up there in the States may be blowing soy milk out their noses at the thought, but it represents a degree of freedom from government control. And besides, it is not American's business how the black Garinago people of Belize run their lives. In Belize it is not against the law to drink and drive and there are no speed limits. Here in Hopkins you can build your house without a permit or inspections, sell real estate without a license, drink liquor openly while you happily burn trash in your front yard. You can peddle homemade darasa -- grated spiced banana wrapped and cooked in banana leaf wrappers -- or barbeque pork to the neighbors from your front porch with no interference from health inspectors.

full article and other great essay at Joe' site

Wow, Rush Limbaugh just had a stroke

and Glen Beck is foaming at he mouth after seeing the pics of a Michael Moore Hugo Chavez meeting at the Venice Film Festival, Where Moore's new film got a huge standing O from those Euro lefties
more pics from Moore's Twitter

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class

Larry Flynt

Publisher of Hustler magazine and free speech advocate

Common Sense 2009

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

"A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."

This is nonsense.

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.

Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.

Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.

Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Read Rockefeller's words again. He actually admits to working against the "best interests of the United States."

Need more? Here's what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order." They're gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, notes that esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith laid the 1929 crash at the feet of banking giant Goldman Sachs. Taibbi goes on to say that Goldman Sachs has been behind every other economic downturn as well, including the most recent one. As if that wasn't enough, Goldman Sachs even had a hand in pushing gas prices up to $4 a gallon.

The problem with bankers is longstanding. Here's what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about them:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered."

We all know that the first American Revolution officially began in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. Less well known is that the single strongest motivating factor for revolution was the colonists' attempt to free themselves from the Bank of England. But how many of you know about the second revolution, referred to by historians as Shays' Rebellion? It took place in 1786-87, and once again the banks were the cause. This time they were putting the screws to America's farmers.

Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts. Like many other farmers of the day, he was being driven into bankruptcy by the banks' predatory lending practices. (Sound familiar?) Rallying other farmers to his side, Shays led his rebels in an attack on the courts and the local armory. The rebellion itself failed, but a message had been sent: The bankers (and the politicians who supported them) ultimately backed off. As Thomas Jefferson famously quipped in regard to the insurrection: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Perhaps it's time to consider that option once again.

I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

Is Florida the craziest state?

I have been thinking about buying a bottom market duplex in Florida soon. Fla has massive foreclosures, balmy tropical weather and I can already speak Spanish but the impression I get primarily from US Cable News is that all the crazy people live in Florida. The ex pat Cuban Oligarchy and paid off Latins bump uninsured fenders with Hillbillies from the deep south and crunkin brothers boomin' cruisin lo rides in the WalMart parking lot. Home to GatorLand Creation museum Burt Reynold's Museum Coral Castle The Holy Land Theme Park and and the grand daddy of American Corporate culture run amok Disneyworld attracting a constant river of crazies just coming for a look..It goes back to the 50s when even Circus freaks picked Florida as a place to wait out the grim reaper.....Now I know extreme heat and extreme religion tend to excite folks but I am more concerned with the dangers in Fl USA than I am w everyday life here in the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Here's a handy man special, two houses big lot...ten grand, that's cheaper than here in Nicaragua
http://tiny.cc/slumlord

68 percent of Mexican adults are overweight and 29 percent are obese

The American Way BABY

With fattier diets and changing lifestyles,

Mexico is packing on the pounds.

By Ioan Grillo - GlobalPost http://www.globalpost.com

MEXICO CITY — Dressed in the hand-woven red cloths of her native village and chatting away in her ancient Nahuatl tongue, Pilar Blanco and her family sit down to dinner in what looks like an age-old meal time ceremony.

But when Hernandez serves up the food, there is one major difference from tradition: instead of tortillas and beans, the family eats instant noodle soups, potato chips and fizzy soda.

“I’m out working all day cleaning people’s houses and I have no time to cook. So the instant soups are a big help,” Hernandez explains, sitting with her husband and three children in a cinder block home on the outskirts of this sprawling capital.

Such radical changes in diet have swept through Mexico in the last decade leading to an explosion of obesity. As families guzzle evermore processed food, hamburgers and french fries, they have piled on the pounds to make Mexico one of fattest nations on the planet.

Studies by the Health Department show that a startling 68 percent of Mexican adults are overweight and 29 percent are obese — just behind the United States, where 74 percent are overweight and 39 percent obese.

Only the tiny Pacific island nations of Samoa and Tonga have heavier populations.

There is particular concern about the rising weight of Mexican children.

The Mexico City government announced this month that an alarming 35 percent of school pupils are over the recommended bodyweight.

To try to fight back, the government has kick-started an anti-obesity campaign of sporting events and healthy-eating propaganda aimed at the young.

“We need you children to understand the importance of taking care of your health and the problem of obesity that is worrying to our country,” Mexico City Health Minister Armando Ahued told 1,000 children panting away in a running race. “You are the future of the capital, and we need you to avoid getting diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.”

The campaign is also encouraging young people to lose pounds by joining 11,000 dancers in the largest-ever routine of Michael Jackson’s song "Thriller," scheduled for Aug. 29 in Mexico City’s central plaza.

The changing dietary habits have come as Mexico has switched from a largely protectionist to an extremely globalized economy.

Since it enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, imports of processed food and drinks have soared.

The nation now consumes more Coca Cola products per capita than anywhere else in the world: a total of 635 eight-ounce bottles per person each year. The amount represents a threefold increase compared to 1988.