Obama’s Cuba approach ‘minimal’

         Barack Obama spoke of a new beginning in the Cuba’s relationship with the United States, which will automatically bring a level of closeness between the U.S. administration and Latin America, as reflected in the summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

        “I do believe that the signals sent so far provide at least an opportunity for frank dialogue on a range of issues, including critical issues of democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere,” Obama said at a press conference marking the end to the fifth Summit of the Americas.

         In the small nation located in the Southern Caribbean Sea, Obama managed with its unique charisma change the atmosphere that dominated his country’s relations with the hemisphere, but it is unclear if there will be further steps in the future in a bid that has taking half a century with the Communist stronghold of America.

        Aware of the scope of this press in the new political geography of Latin America, Obama sought to give a signal before arriving: lifted travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans and remittances to Cuba.

         Back in Port of Spain U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed with Obama when he said that the U.S. policy with Cuba failed.

         “The policy we’ve had in place for 50 years has not worked,” he told reporters at a press conference.

          Now, with a mission to regain influence in Latin America, Cuba just slip into the priorities of Obama’s foreign agenda that includes two wars and the exit of an economic crisis that impregnated the world.

         Obama also focused on what leaders of other countries at the summit admired about Cuba’s program of sending doctors throughout the hemisphere. Many depend on Cuba’s medical aid program.

         “It’s a reminder… that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction — if our only interaction is military — then we may not be developing the connections that can over time increase our influence and have a beneficial effect,” Obama said.

       Some where in favor of the U.S. efforts and others are waiting to see how effective the U.S.-Cuban dialogue will be.

       The Cuban government needs to reply with actions “grounded in respect for human rights,” along with loosing its restrictions on Cubans’ freedom to travel and express opinions, Obama said on a visit to Mexico.     

          So far, Raul Castro said “(we are) willing to discuss everything, human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything.”

          In Washington, both Democrats and Republicans said that they wanted to see actions take the place of dialogue.

         “I think we’re taking the right steps, and I think the ball is now clearly in Cuba’s court,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo said. “They need to respond and say what they’re willing to do.”

          “Release the prisoners an we’ll talk to you,” Republican Sen. of South Carolina Lindsey Graham  said.

           Also, Clinton said she would like to see Cuba “open up its society, release political prisoners, open up to outside opinions and media, have the kind of society that we all know that would improve the opportunities for the Cuban people and for their nation.”

          Perhaps, following the signs will lead the U.S. to the complete lifting of the embargo on the island. Obama will have to convince the people and especially Republicans.    

           Yet, I wonder how they expect Cuba to take additional steps if its leaders are excluded from the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad Tobago.

           Even though I want to believe Obama’s efforts, he is “ the president of an empire that has rules he cannot change” and the Organization of American States remains a tool of U.S. policy and objects to its suspension of Cuba’s in 1962, President Daniel Ortega said.

      

“Sin Nombre,” not just another immigrant story

A doleful compassion for the young protagonists of Sin Nombre, is the language Cary Judi Fukunaga speaks to show an inconceivable world.

Cary Judi Fukunaga tells the story of a Honduran teenager Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) and Mexican gang member of Mara Salvatrucha gang MS-13 Casper (Edgar Flores.) The story follows the lives of these adolescents whose harrowing journeys find each other in a freight train. Sayra has found her father and decided to travel with him and her uncle to the United States. 

Willy, known as Casper by his gang brothers, tries to hide his passionate relationship with Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) from the fraternity and put her life in danger.

But when Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) makes Willy and the 12 year old new recruit Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) assault people who were traveling in the same train as Sayra and her family, a new volatile journey begins.

Writer-director Fukunaga researched the issue of immigration and traveled to Central America and Mexico without money or passport for four years, he said.

 “Yes it was dangerous, because I crossed the Mexican border twice with a group of migrants, but the hardest part was to leave them behind, because I continued living a normal life, go back to my house to write in my living room, they continued the trip alone,” Fukunaga said. 

The movie is about the story of a Honduran teenager who travels to the United States through Mexico in freight train, with his dad and uncle. There he finds love for a Mexican gang member of Mara Salvatrucha.

 Mara Salvatrucha is currently an active transnational gang, with approximately 50,000 members worldwide according to FBI statistics. Fukunaga’s film follows the gang members living in Mexico. The story of some activitites of gangs and immigrants shows us a glimpse of unimaginable lives of many who try to seek asylum in the United States.

The plot idea of touching on two actual issues that condemn millions of individuals struggling for survival, is an ambitious one. It fails to emphasize how gangs and immigration originated in those places. 

The dire poverty which arise the need to migrate and the gang violence is the main root of both phenomena. In addition, the story of immigration overshadows the unfamiliar and exotic gang maneuvers. 

But one of the greatest tragedies is the story of immigration and the vulnerable migrants life who’s life depend on violent weather changes and human indifference.

We are reminded of the cruel journey of those in search of a better life, who have to go through poignant non-fictional scenes in their lives. 

The film’s title is composed in elegiac mode, expresses the suffering of thousands of “nameless” people who attempt to cross to the North and never make it. 

 

 

 

Sadly, a boring comedy

 

“Adventureland,” is a dramedy that takes James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) on a rough “growing up” ride.

It is 1987, and James Brennan, a conventional guy who just graduated from university can hardly contain the excitement of his next trip to Europe. But when his parents passed on the sad news to James of not being able to subsidize his trip to Europe he had no alternative but to accept a job on the local amusement park to finance his future studies in N.Y.

The summer passing thought of drinking German beer, knowing the world’s most famous museums and beautiful French girls turns itself into spending days running a shooting gallery and ring-toss games while looking at cuddly bears and spoiled kids with cotton candy. 

Still, James is very lucky. The summer that could have easily been the worst and disastrous of his life becomes exciting and unusual as he discovers love in the place least expected.

Greg Mottola writer-director “Superbad,” a movie about night adventures with lots of teenage boys waiting to find their first sexual intercourse. One might say that is like the teen version of “After hours,” the opus for Martin Scorsese. 

In Adventureland, his most recent work, Mottola takes his time to go to the core of the story, but this time with young adults. The scenario that gives the film a title seems contradictory. The characters are helpless individuals with conflicted career decisions and the choice of a partner. 

The plot and its focus on James has a resemblance to a role very similar, embodied in Michael Cera “Nick and Nora’s Infinit Playlist.” 

Can you guess who falls in love with whom in this film? Mottola surfs the story with an even cast, poking sharp lines of dialogue, a powerful soundtrack, which includes Yo La Tengo and a few potent hits of the 80s, and giving rise to their favorite fetish CDs and t-shirts for groups.

In the park, he meets Emily (Kristen Stewart,) a mysterious girl who gets involved in a dark affair with a married, guitar-player, park handyman Mike (Ryan Reynolds), who is rumored to have jammed with Lou Reed once.

 The film lacks content and slowly leaves you with an unsatisfied feeling. At least, “Superbad” showed ambition, its pace and jokey edge made it successful. But the only land that will be explored here is the meaning of “coming of age.”

Who profits from the incessant “War on Drugs”

Violence escalates as the ongoing war on drugs south of the border continues with Mexico.

More than 7,000 killings and beheadings have been reported in the last 14 months, according to a March 13 report by CBS.

Yet, despite all claims to the contrary, U.S. policies effectively subsidize drug gangs and are making the situation worse.

The U.S. State Department warns that “Mexican drug cartels are engaged in an increasingly violent conflict — both among themselves and with Mexican security services — for control of narcotics trafficking routes along the U.S.-Mexico border,” in a Feb. 20 travel alert.

But, according to U.S. and Mexican officials, some 60 percent of profits that fuel the cartels come from marijuana that is smuggled over the border. An increasing amount of cartel funding is produced in the U.S. by foreign gangs who operate in this country.

Since the mid ‘70s, Dutch adults have been permitted to posses and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses in the Netherlands.

According to a recent World Health Organization study in theNetherlands, the rate of marijuana use is less than half of that in the U.S. Also, the percentage of teens trying marijuana by age 15 in the Netherlands is one-third of the U.S. rate.

As the top revenue generator for Mexican cartels is marijuana, the drug war is largely U.S. driven.

According to Mexico’s law enforcement leaders’ testimony, 90 percent of traceable-seized weapons have come from the U.S. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms’ Special Agent William Newell reports the flow of more than 12,800 illegal guns to Mexico since 2004, in a Department of Justice report presented on March 17.

In 2007, of the 1,547 guns submitted for tracking, 1,112 originated in Texas, Arizona and California.

Some countries produce and traffic drugs, others open their doors and consume them internationally.

The drug war is raging in Mexican cities like Tijuana and Juarez, but is beginning to spill over into the U.S. along with corruption, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a March 24 press briefing.

“We’ve seen some increase in violence between — primarily between cartels, themselves — kidnappings, for example, in the Phoenix area and the Houston area,” she said.

Napolitano proposed a plan to increase spending and send troops to end the gang battles.
Some people say neither prohibition nor the spreading of more violence will work.

“Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization have not yielded the expected results,” Colombia’s former president and co-chair of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy César Gaviria said in a Feb. 18 statement.

“We are today farther than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs,” he said.

The tactics used to dismantle mafia gangs have generated greater criminal organizations which are more sophisticated, influential and virulent.

Criminal gangs are not an emerging class, but a ruling class that seems to be feeding itself from the 90 percent of firearms seized in Mexico that, according to the ATF, were largely bought in U.S.

President Obama has a trip to Mexico scheduled for April 16, and also intends to be at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I foresee that man will resign every day to more atrocious undertakings; if not soon there will be but warriors and bandits,” Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges said in his short story “The Garden of Forking Paths.”

This dissolution will likely happen if prohibition is imposed nationally and internationally.

The atrocious drug-war violence of the southern border with Mexico will only continue to escalate unless an ideological shift from repression to a public health approach is not implemented.

Such a shift must include decriminalization of marijuana subsidized by the U.S., if a decrease in cartel revenue and casualties is to occur.

Earth Hour highlights the threat of climate change

Houston  shone by its absence as worldwide blackouts took place in more than 74 countries and territories.

The lights were turned off intentionally as a symbolic recognition for energy conservation organized by the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour 2009 on Saturday night.

This event, which started in 2007 in Australia, was designed to raise awareness about global warming, a problem that doesn’t discriminate.

“It is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from,” Earth Hour said on its Web site,www.earthhour.org. “Vote Earth is a global call to action for every individual, every business and every community.”

Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Singapore and Rome are just a few cities that chose to shut off their lights for 60 minutes and send a powerful message to our governments to take stricter environmental measures.

“This will be a pivotal year in the future of our planet as we look to Congress, President Obama and global leaders to take immediate and decisive action on climate change,” Carter Roberts, chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, said in a statement.

In addition, several global landmarks such as Coca-Cola and Nasdaq agreed to turn off their signs in Times Square.

Unfortunately, we cannot applaud the University for its support in this global effort that needs special attention.

UH has shown enthusiasm in the past towards responsible environmental action. Most of the activity has taken place in the creation of specialized committees such as the Sustainability Task Force’s recycling efforts. Still, we need to keep looking for new ways to make our campus a more environmentally friendly and responsible place.

A possible change UH can consider is a shift from printed textbooks to cheaper e-books. Northwest Missouri State University has done.

Amid the financial crisis, urgent actions remain a necessity when dealing with the preservation of our planet. No matter how insignificant these initiatives may seem, UH needs to advocate and put into action more eco-friendly attitudes.

“Saving energy for an hour helps the UH community spend less on its electric bill so that we can use our funds for better purposes, such as student scholarships,”Environmental club officer and biology junior Mariana Guerrero said. “Now that we are in a recession, it is even more important for our university to do all it can to save on its energy bill.”

Earth Hour called attention to the problems of climate change by staying in the dark for a while. In doing so, this event promoted the importance of reducing the personal carbon footprint and turning off appliances when not in use, not just engaging the sleep function.

“Hopefully, Earth Hour will remind people to do these things everyday, not just during the 60 minutes spent celebrating Earth Hour,” Guerrero said.

Hate groups on the rise

          Immigration fears, the election of our nation’s first black president, economic recession and the increasing Latino population continue to fuel the growth of hate groups in the United States.

          This is the perfect combination to incite prejudice, and hate groups profit from that anger, Southern Poverty Law Center stated in its Year in Hate report.

           Although rights groups are trying to stop the spread of intolerance, statistics show the increased number of hate groups and memberships is counteracting the search for an antidote to end hate.

          According to the SPLC, 926 groups were present in 2008 and Texas has the second-highest count at 66. The Confederate Hammerskins and New Black Panther Party were among the seven Houston chapters.

         American citizens, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants are the constant target of blame for the economic crisis.

        “Tough economic times provide fertile ground for those who would foment hate against minorities by scapegoating them for our problems,” Mark Potok, editor of the quarterly Intelligence Report, said in an editorial posted on the SPLC Web site.

          In light of recent events, hate groups have been invigorated by fears of Latino immigration. This rise has coincided with a 40 percent growth in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2007, according to FBI statistics.

         The What would you do? ABC experiment is aimed to show the reactions of people if they were in a hypothetical situation to test the rising anti-immigrant sentiment.

          The Latino worker’s mission was to order a cup of coffee in broken English at a local diner in New Jersey. Bystanders felt compelled to react when hearing the clerk insult the laborers.

           Along with the clerk, some witnesses were frustrated and made xenophobic remarks, while others ignored the situation. One bystander thought it was wrong to discriminate against the laborers since we are a supposed nation of immigrants.

          Violence and spending ridiculous amounts of money on the construction of an inefficient barrier are grave and visible consequences of anti-immigrant sentiment.

         “Does the First World nation wish to become a Third World country? Because that is our destiny if we do not build a sea wall against the waves of immigration rolling over our shores,” political analyst Patrick Buchanan said.

          Billions of dollars are being spent on the fence along the Southwest border. According to the Associated Press, residents of the town on Granjeno near Rio Grande said illegal immigrants “still pour through town by climbing over or walking around the nearly two-mile barricade designed to keep them out.”

          “About 60 percent of total U.S growth will come from the Latino population, according to the most recent Census Bureau projections,” mayor of San Antonio Henry Cisneros said. “This holds true even if the border fence that Congress and the Bush administration authorized proves impenetrable  — which is highly unlikely.”

         People have used excuses such as ethnicity, religion and language to justify their desires to divide and create groups throughout history. Today is no exception.

Gaza in need of humanitarian aid

Reuters estimated Jan. 17 that there have been 5,300 Palestinian casualties, including 1,300 deaths, in comparison to 500 Israeli casualties, including 13 deaths.

Students around the world and across the U.S. are standing in solidarity with Gaza to support the Palestinian victims of violence. 

“Their demands are reasonable and very, and I should emphasize, very humble,” pre-med junior Bissan Rafe Qasawari said. “What has been done to Gaza is a violation of human rights and basic integrity measures.” 

Recent sit-ins and occupations in New York, organized by student groups such as Take Back NYU! and Students for a Democratic Society, demand their universities give scholarships to Palestinian students.

The student protesters also request the institutions donate “excess supplies and materials” to help restore the education in Gaza. Included in the list of recipients are institutions such as the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the targets of Israeli air raids in December.

As a symbol of solidarity with the people of Gaza, events and protests were held in Europe last month. Students from 16 different universities across the U.K. occupied facilities, condemning “atrocities perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip” and asking their universities to end their investments in “companies complicit in human rights abuses,” according to the Associated Press. 

“The Palestinian people are viewed as stateless citizens. They have less rights in other countries, which makes it very hard to cope with life anywhere,” Qasawari said.

Similar actions against injustice took place in front of the M.D. Anderson Library. The UH Muslim Student Association and the Houston Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine gathered Monday to raise awareness of the massive numbers of civilian deaths. They plan to gather again from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today

“We are here to honor the people that were killed in Gaza,” chemistry graduate student Kellie Abou-awad said. “Any time something like this happens, people need to know what’s going on.”

We should all stand with those whose schools have been completely destroyed and whose friends and professors have been murdered. Why aren’t we demanding our University for scholarships and more aid to the Palestinians? 

The least we could do is raise awareness by protesting against U.S. companies that manufacture weapons and profit from it. This is not the kind of help people in Israel or Afghanistan need. The situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis that needs peaceful investing initiatives.

Our tuition, the money that all of us pay to fund our “public” universities, could partially be provided by the billions of dollars that the U.S. government gives to the Israeli violence in the Middle East.

In an effort to end an arms embargo on Israel, the human rights group Amnesty International demands the UN to stop this “aid” from abroad. Also, Amnesty researchers found proof of Israeli munitions, which were made by Americans.

 “To a large extent, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the U.S.A. and paid for with U.S. taxpayers’ money,” Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East director, said in a report.

In addition, the U.S. is to provide $30 billion in military aid to Israel under a 10-year agreement that runs until 2017, Amnesty said.

Perhaps this is a good time to ask ourselves if the University of Houston is, like many others, investing in corporations who could potentially profit from the war.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an ongoing war dominated by military atrocities. Hundreds of militants and civilians are being murdered and the numbers keep increasing. Surely we can and should do something to ease their suffering.

Afghan war is not ‘change we can believe in’

The United States intervention in the Middle East and South Asia will not end terrorism.

 Instead, it will destabilize countries, increase economic debt and civilian deaths.

 “A war against Afghanistan or other neighboring states poses great risks and may not achieve the ends that the United States has proclaimed, namely ending terrorist attacks against American, Israeli, European or other targets,” history department chair Robert Buzzanco said in a 2001 Houston Chronicle article.

“It may alienate allies, create new enemies and prompt a larger cycle of violence,” he said.

Afghanistan is now officially the new commander in chief’s war. President Obama will send 17,000 more soldiers to fight against the forces of the Taliban and aid the border with Pakistan.

Is this a continuation of the bellicose era of the Bushes?

These are not humanitarian troops Obama has ordered to send. Instead, he refers to them as aid to the people in Afghanistan, meant to defeat al-Qaida and keep us safe.

 “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said in a written statement.

The United States isn’t in Afghanistan to solve the problem of the spread of extremism, the Taliban or to make peace. None of these will be solved with violent approaches, Obama said Tuesday.

During his presidential campaign, Obama made firm his opposition to the war on Iraq and criticized former President Bush’s “surge” of sending more U.S. troops into combat.

“We cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that the situation is going to improve,” Obama said on an NBC News interview with Tim Russert in October 2006.

Now, he is beginning to follow the steps of the former president by ordering additional troops to fight the ongoing war on terror.

The contradictory statements made by Obama pose the question of what the U.S. wants to do in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is there to strategically satisfy interests.

Then, what are the goals of a U.S. mission in Afghanistan? Maybe this is a move to get closer to Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, and possibly put oil pipelines in the Caspian Sea region.

In addition, the U.S. Army is offering citizenship to immigrants with temporary U.S. visas who have foreign language skills and want to enroll, the New York Times reported on Feb. 14, the first time this has been done since the Vietnam War.

 “We must recognize that this war will be fought disproportionately by working-class whites, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and other minorities,” Buzzanco said — yet another familiar tactic used by former President Bush after Sept. 11.

Despite the U.S. forces demand to end civilian conflicts, according to a U.N. report, the U.S., Afghan and NATO forces were responsible for 39 percent of Afghan civilian deaths. Also, militants were to blame for 55 percent of the 2,118 civilian deaths.

The number of civilian casualties inflicted by foreign troops such as the U.S. Army is a sensitive issue. Moving troops from one place to another will not make the region more safe or peaceful.

 As Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

A picture of controversy, a matter of opinion

          

          

         The Daily Cougar editors’ decision to publish a photograph of a man shot to death at the University of Houston on the front page on Monday, February 9, made angry readers question  editor’s judgment to run the photograph. 

         But to analyze this we need to understand that photos have a different resonance in which the factor of shock is implicated. 

        The impact a photo can provoke on people is surprising, which at the same time amplifies meaning. 

        Readers quickly let the newspaper know that they did not appreciate the intense reminder of the previous day’s event.

         Showing a body is in taste bad and insensitive to the victim’s family , some said.

         There are cases where photos have been published on newspapers and created a debate on whether they are controversial or not.    

          In 2004, CBS showed photos of iraqi prisoners tortured in the prison of Abou Gharaib.The publication of this images caused various soldiers to go to jail, which manifested the conflict between military publicity and the respect of human dignity. 

         Interestingly enough, this pictures show tragic scenes, which show reality no matter how monstrous it is. 

          But is it necessary to see homicide photos to know what it’s going on in our environment? 

          Are this images raising awareness or creating the contrary effect as we stay shocked by the horror they transmit?

          On the contrary, many photographers get awarded for taking dramatic photos. Such is the case of a UH journalism graduate Adrees Latif, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the photograph of a wounded japanese filming a demonstration at Myanmar. 

          Despite the fact that students found the photo to be offensive, the newspaper left some of our readers an indelibly correct reaffirmation that security on campus needs to be taken seriously.

        “I think that it served a point, this was a serious incident and it brings reality to those who think safety is not an issue on our campus,” French senior Daniela Gomez said.

          

Security on campus a pressing issue

You’re securing your bicycle before entering a building, walking down the dorms to say hello to a friend, or simply walking from one class to another without thinking — you have maybe two or three minutes to make a choice.

How do you go about deciding which place is safer to walk to or closer to an emergency box when you are running late to class and all you want is a parking spot?

 These activities are normal among students studying, living or just visiting the University, but recent thefts, assaults, and trespassing on campus should make students question their habits.

 There is no way to prevent every crime, as UH Police Department officials recognize. Campus police have considered safety measures such as installing more security cameras and increasing the number of blue light emergency phones, but shouldn’t these services be expanded?

 There are still places where there is not much lightning, and some students don’t know about the security escorts and that they are available at any time of day or night. Recent incidents of robberies have students, especially women, uncertain about how safe they really are on this campus.

While students should keep their guard up at all times, campus police and University administrators need to prove to students and staff that the campus is safe.

 The antagonists of these incidents are mostly people who have nothing to do with the school. There is no mystery here — people come and go as they please from the library or bookstore, and nobody seems to notice.

Campus officials will occasionally send security alerts and encourage faculty, staff and students to be alert, use the emergency call boxes, and call a security escort. But are these measures enough? Student safety should be a pressing concern, and campus officials are welcome to start more patrols at night instead of just telling students how to be cautious of their surroundings.