Dia de los muertos

Cruces en El Muro
Activistas de El Paso colocaron el Sabado cruces en la malla que divide la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos para honrar la memoria de los migrantes que han muerto en su intento por ingresar al pais.

Agreement in Honduras II?

Never underestimate the capabilities of the slightest American muscle-flexing. 
Joseph Shansky.  Upside Down World.

After deliberately failing to use its massive economic and diplomatic influence in the tiny Central American country, the US has reportedly given the international community reason to breathe a sigh of relief in what Hillary Clinton is calling an “historic agreement”. According to the US, the Honduran governmental power struggle has been resolved, and an agreement for President Manuel Zelaya to be reinstated has been reached. 

All thanks to a breezy State Department intervention that could have come four months, twenty-six lives, hundreds of disappearances, and thousands of random detentions earlier for Honduran citizens. Instead they let it play out like an internal civil disagreement while watching from above until the time was politically opportune to step in. 

In other words, the two children who were bickering in what Henry Kissinger famously dubbed “our backyard” have been rightfully scolded, and forced by Uncle Sam to make nice. 

But the details of what is now being called the Guaymuras Accords are messy. They involve a series of conditions and fine print designed to continue the regime’s now-familiar tactic of delaying real progress through semantics and by creating more legal headaches. At the same time, any pressure on the US to fight for a constructive return of Zelaya’s presidential powers is now gone. 
See entire post at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2191/1/

Agreement in Honduras?

By ESTEBAN FELIX (AP) –

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Lawmakers will wait until Tuesday to consider a U.S.-brokered agreement that could return deposed President Manuel Zelaya to power, despite diplomats' pleas to not delay an end to the country's 4-month-old political crisis.

Monday is a holiday in Honduras, and many legislators are busy campaigning for Nov. 29 elections that will also elect a successor to Zelaya.

Nonetheless, Zelaya said Saturday that he hopes he will be back in office by Thursday, the deadline for the two sides to establish a power-sharing government.

"By Thursday, the government of national unity should be installed," he said in a meeting broadcast by Radio Globo. "By that day, point No. 5 has to be resolved," he added, referring to the clause of the agreement that covers his return to office.

Multicultural Education Conference

Social justice educator Brian D. Schultz is the keynote speaker for the 16^th annual Multicultural Education Conference, 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 14, in Sacramento State’s University Union.

Titled, “Social Justice Through Civic Engagement and Action,” the free conference is sponsored by Sacramento State’s Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department (BMED) and co-sponsored by the Serna Center and Project Citizen. The conference provides an opportunity for university faculty and local educators to promote multicultural education in K-12 public schools in the Sacramento region

Schultz is the author of Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom. A panel discussion by candidates for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction will follow Shultz’ talk.  Blog host Duane Campbell will present a workshop on the Economic Crisis and Cuts in School Budgets.  

Several lefts in Latin America

The problems with neoliberalism encouraged the turn to

the left among voters in Latin American countries, and

the record of populist and pragmatist leftwingers alike

has been impressive. Poverty and inequality have fallen

in nearly all left-led countries, according to a recent

UN report, with Venezuela narrowing the gap most, by

increasing the wealth of the poorest by 36 per cent.

Chile and Brazil's GDP has grown by 5 per cent annually

over the last couple of years, Argentina's by 7 per

cent; even desperately poor Bolivia has seen more than

4 per cent growth under Morales. Critics attribute

Venezuela's pace-setting 8 per cent yearly increase to

high oil prices, which makes one wonder why petroleum-

exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Mexico

grew at only 3 per cent. The answer is that Chávez's

massive spending on public works, education,

healthcare, housing, co-operatives and small businesses

has worked as a scattershot stimulus package. Much of

this expenditure may be wasteful, chaotic or corrupt,

but the country's unemployment rate has fallen from

nearly 20 per cent in 2004 to 9 per cent, the fastest

drop in Latin America. As Keynes himself pointed out,

the waste involved in public works projects is

infinitely less of a vice than the waste of intractable

unemployment. `Two pyramids', he said, are `twice as

good as one'.

Nightmare of a Dream Student

TUCSON, Ariz. -- I’ll refer to her as Leticia X.

She is undocumented, but has been in this country since the age of
three and is a top student at her high school. Yet, unless the law
changes soon, she will be unable to continue with her studies. She
tells my students at the University of Arizona that it is wrong that
she will not be able to attend college next year: “I consider myself a
U.S. citizen. It’s the only country I’ve ever known.”

Her symbolic mother is Leticia A -- a student who set the legal
precedent in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe in Texas, permitting undocumented
students to be able to attend public K-12 schools, without having to
pay exorbitant out-of-state tuition.

Today, Leticia X struggles to change this policy to include K-16
students. If out-of-state fees are exorbitant for out of state K-12
students, the rates are stratospheric for out-of-state college
students, generally costing tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Leticia X is part of a nationwide movement – nearly a decade old – to
pass legislation that would permit students such as her, to be able to
attend college at in-state rates. It’s called the DREAM Act. A
majority of members of Congress support it, but since 2001, they’ve
never been able to garner the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to
bring it to a full vote (cloture). It even has a controversial
provision that was injected into it that would permit students to also
qualify for U.S. residency by first going into the military for two
years. A terrible compromise, but even that has not worked.

Mexico's Union Bust Reveals Flaws in NAFTA

Mexico's Union Bust Reveals Flaws in NAFTA
Laura Carlsen
Foreign Policy In Focus
October 22, 2009

Fernando Lopez woke up on a Sunday morning out of a job.
For the electrical worker, the feeling was terrifying.

"From one day to the next, they left us with no job -
nothing," Lopez said, as he marched alongside some
200,000 fellow workers and their supporters in downtown
Mexico City on October 15.

On the night of Saturday, October 10, thousands of
soldiers and federal police moved into position in the
darkness. After cutting fences and forcing out the
workers, they occupied over 50 installations of the
state-owned utility company, Central Light and Power
(Luz y Fuerza), awaiting the administrative blow that
would follow. At midnight, President Felipe Calderon
issued an executive decree to liquidate the company and
its union, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union
(Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas - SME), one of the
strongest and most vocal independent unions in the
nation.

Mexican Electrical Workers Union fights for its Life

Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for Its Life

by Dan La Botz
MRZine
October 19, 2009
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz191009.html

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of
approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers
in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for
its life.  The union's struggle has rallied allies in
the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and
solidarity from throughout the country and around the
world, but, if it is to survive, the union and its
supporters have to take stronger actions than they have
so far, and time is not on their side.

On the night of October 10, President Calderón ordered
federal police to seize the power plants, while he
simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light and
Power Company, fired the entire workforce, and thus did
away with the legal existence of the union.  The
Mexican president's attack on the Electrical Workers
Union might be compared to Ronald Regan's firing of
more than 11,500 members of the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981 or to Margaret
Thatcher's smashing of the National Union of
Minerworkers (NUM) in 1984 in which over 11,000 miners
were arrested and the union defeated.

Changing the Balance of Force

Calderón's move to destroy this union represents an
important turning point in modern Mexican labor
history, a decisive step to break the back of the
unions once and for all.  Following up on his three-
year war on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union
(SNTMM), Calderón has now decided to take on the
leading union in Mexico City.  But, even more
important, it is, as one Mexican political leader
noted, it is an act intended "to change the balance of
forces," so that they favor the government.

   After its electoral defeat and out of fear of
   social protest which the [economic] crisis is
   provoking, the government wants to give a
   demonstration of its power which everybody will
   understand: the left, the social movements, the PRI
   [Institutional Revolutionary Party], the unions,
   the Congress, the businessmen and the media.  The
   logic is the same that was used in the [Salinas
   government's] attack on La Quina [head of the
   Mexican Petroleum Workers Union] in 1989: if you
   can do it the strongest, then you can do it to the
   weakest.  If the most combative union can be
   defeated, then so can any other force.1

Read the entire piece:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz191009.html

Mexican Labor strikes back

Over 300,000 Mexican workers and their supporters march in Mexico City  to repudiate the attack  by President Calderon on the Electrical Workers Union.

para ver video, presione ---> "aqui"