Taking a vacation in a high crime city! No way.

By Sal Osio, JD

Mi Punto de Vista

From the Publisher’s Corner

June 25, 2009

 

Moral authority is the inherent quality of leadership. It is the credibility and respect that inspires the confidence and consent of society who tacitly embrace the ideals and resolutions of the leader. It is the conduct and example of a leader which is persuasive and becomes the beacon of hope, both spiritually and politically, creating a rallying point.

 Human Rights and Impunity

By Richard N. Baldwin T. /HispanicVista.com

June 25, 2009

From Mexico City

 

            Amnesty International (AI) has submitted, at the beginning of June, its yearly report of human rights progress in México. José Luis Soberanes, President of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) rapidly issued a rebuttal to AI stating that it adds nothing new and repeats reports and situations that are well known. In fact, Soberanes said that the AI report was a "refrito", a refry or rehash. And, in fact, Soberanes was correct. Not only was there nothing really new, but it is well known and on top of that it does not address the real problems in this whole matter.

           With dead bodies littering Mexico, casualties of the war among Mexican drug cartels and the government of Presidente Felipe Calderon, Mexico might be headed backwards to the politics of the past in the coming Mexican congressional elections.

Affirmative Action the Chicago Way

By Steven J. Ybarra, JD/HispanicVista.com

June 25, 2009

   Notas por La Casa Politica

 Apparently there were no qualified Mexican Americans out of the six hundred applicants for the job of Chancellor of the University of California, Davis (UCD).  So the Regents, in their wisdom, chose Linda Katehi, a white woman from Illinois.  She is eminently qualified to hold the job we were told when we asked why the Regents could not find a California Chicano/Latino to do the job.

By Manuel Hernandez-Carmona
 June 25, 2009

Latino Education

There has always been a lot of talk about educational reform. Without a doubt, America’s educational system is in dire need of reform. Today’s student population is much more diverse and integrated than it was thirty, forty and even fifty years ago. School districts largely represent the community’s unique blend of ethnicities. Educational reform must respond largely to the assessment needs of the community which it serves. In school districts where Latinos, African-Americans and other ethnic groups are the majority, education must provide a gateway, transition and a cultural bridge to foster critical thinking and problem solving skills.

By Steven J. Ybarra, JD/HispanicVista.com

June 25, 2009

   Notas por La Casa Politica

 I watched the movie Gettysburg again the other day.  It is one of my favorites because the producer was a Mexican American and it is about the real reasons why democracy exists.  In the movie, there is a scene where a New Hampshire officer is talking to two rebel soldiers.  He asks them why they are fighting.  They reply, “for our Rats.”  He says, “What?”  They reply, “for our Rats, our civil Rats.”  The northerner finally translates this into his language and understands what they are saying.  I love this scene because it so vividly describes what is going on in America today over the issue of gay marriage.

 By Jaime Cader

 Following is my critique of the book "Mexifornia: a state of becoming" by Victor Davis Hanson, a native of Selma in California's Central Valley and a professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno.  In his work, Davis Hanson expresses his fears that in the near future California will become something not quite the United States nor Mexico, but something in between -although with much noticeable characteristics of Mexico.  He disapproves of a balkanization in the United States.

In reading this book, I found that Davis Hanson states some things that are not true and that his superiority complex shows through.  There is even at least one contradiction in his book when he states on page 31 "I have met wealthy elites, academics, and journalists from Mexico City who privately laugh that they are exporting their Indians and Mestizos, their unwanted, into the United States. 

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

In spite the obvious—that the earth is awash with diversity—human beings tend to look in others for the characteristics they “see” in themselves, thinking, perhaps, that as human beings we all share the same characteristics. To be sure, while there are certain genetic commonalities among human beings, there are differences that increase the divide between human groups. For example, though Americans share many commonalities with the English, there are sufficient differences that enable people to tell us apart.  It’s this difficulty to decompartmentalize ourselves from our experiences and background that lead us to think that all people think like we do. In other words, that Spaniards think like Americans, that Iraqis think like Americans.

 By Roberto Lovato
New America Media
 
Inside the red brick walls of the Bronxdale housing projects, 24-year-old mother of two Geisha Sas says she still hears echoes of music from the 1950s, when her building's most famous former resident, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, lived there. "Older people still listen to Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri inside their apartments," said Sas, a salsa and hip-hop fan. Before morphing into the embodiment of urban decay that they became in the 60s and 70s, these public housing projects provided the young Sotomayor the new, lower-middle class housing that facilitated her early pursuit of justice. For Puerto Ricans of Sas's generation living here, the Bronxdale experience of justice is quite different.

Editorial El Informador (Guadalajara, Jalisco) 

 For 60 years, the migration of Mexicans to the United States has been, simultaneously, a blessing and heartache for those who remain here.   Many of our fellow citizens, legally or without documents – almost all of them men and women with a clear conviction of improving themselves – have walked North since the Second World War to find their livelihood and, quite often, the future for their family.

Their determination has brought about great benefits for them as well as for their relatives in Mexico. The profit of these millions of Mexicans has been such that presently only petroleum and tourism generate more dollars for the country than those which they send here.

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

You know by now that in Washington, DC an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed security guard Stephen T. Johns before being brought down himself. He's 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.

You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.

By substituting 'civil union' for 'marriage' in state law, both sides could live happily ever after

By Douglas W. Kmiec

It is not often in life, or law practice for that matter, that you can say to two opposing parties: You both win. Yet the recent decision of the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 as a valid state constitutional amendment could point the way to a solution that both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage would embrace -- if we can stop all the shouting.

The shouting in this instance comes in the form of a lawsuit asking the federal courts to find Proposition 8 a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The duty to represent the state -- and hence to defend Proposition 8 itself -- falls to California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who opposed the measure. Conflict of interest? No, says Brown, hierarchy of laws. His oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution trumps his responsibility to California.

Border Patrol Policy Allows Officials To Search And Retain Information Without Suspicion

NEW YORK –  June 10, 2009 - United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy permits officials to search the laptops and other electronic devices of travelers without suspicion of wrongdoing, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed the FOIA request with CBP, a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to learn how CBP's suspicionless search policy, first made public in July 2008, is impacting the constitutional rights of international travelers.

"Based on current CBP policy, we have reason to believe innumerable international travelers – including U.S. citizens – have their most personal information searched by government officials and retained by the government indefinitely," said Larry Schwartztol, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "The disclosure of these records is necessary to better understand the extent to which U.S. border and customs officials may be violating the Constitution."

 TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras –  The U.S. Embassy here today hosted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) first naturalization ceremony ever held in Latin America. 

 “I can think of no greater privilege than to be the first to welcome as the newest citizens of the United States two American soldiers, who currently serve our nation in Honduras, and who have each already completed two tours of duty in Iraq,” said Michael Aytes, USCIS’ acting deputy director. 

 Army Staff Sgt. Damien Milne, a native of the Marshall Islands, submitted his application for U.S. citizenship less than a month ago. On June 8, USCIS Honduras Field Office Director Emigdio Martinez traveled to Soto Cano Air Base and administered the naturalization test to Milne, which he aced.  The new U.S. citizen now calls Killeen, Texas home. 

By Josh Meyer
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington -- June 17, 2009 -- The United States lacks a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of weapons smuggled across its southern border, a failure that has fueled the rise of powerful criminal cartels and violence in Mexico, a government watchdog agency report has found.

The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office, the first federal assessment of the issue, offered blistering conclusions that will probably influence the debate over the role of U.S.-made weaponry as violence threatens to spill across the Mexico border.

According to a draft copy of the report, which will be released today, the growing number of weapons being smuggled into Mexico comprise more than 90% of the seized firearms that can be traced by authorities there.

By James Flanigan

New York Times

MEXICO’S economy has suffered a series of blows in recent months — drug violence, swine flu and the worldwide economic downturn. Yet some companies on each side of the border with the United States are prospering because they serve the expanding Mexican-American market in the United States.

A new economy is emerging that builds on the economic relationship between the countries. Exports and imports between Mexico and the United States have grown rapidly in the last decade, to close to $400 billion annually. And now trade is taking on new complexity, with operations in Southern California sometimes serving as Mexico’s link to the global economy.

 By Richard S. Dunham
San Francisco Chronicle

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has focused national attention on her Latino heritage and the history-making nature of her selection.
 
But the bright spotlight on Sotomayor has obscured a highly significant shift in the ways of Washington: President Obama has selected far more Hispanics for his administration than any previous president in American history.
 
Latinos comprise 11 percent of the new president's first 300 nominees for senior administration positions requiring Senate confirmation, according to the White House.

Patrick Osio, Jr. has written,  The Mexican Perspective: Establishing Personal & Business Relations by Understanding Their Culture & Protocol,   a short but intensive E-book on the Mexican perspective on numerous issues between our two countries. The E-book is also an in depth primer on Mexican culture and protocol for better understanding that allows establishing personal and business relationships, and how to avoid the most common faux pas that can ruin relationships and business deals. Literally this book has been of immense help to thousands, you too can gain from Mr. Osio's lifetime experience.  ONLY $9.95

For information on purchasing, write to HVCstore@aol.com

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