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Friday, December 29, 2006

Mexican Talent Network!

Technology...Made in Mexico!

Santa Clara, CA November 3, 2006.

Two years ago a group of Mexicans working in the technology field gathered regularly to have informal discussions regarding Mexico’s role in the global high tech marketplace. These informal gatherings evolved into a formal organization and network with the goal of connecting US-based technology companies with their Mexico-based counterparts. The Mexican Talent Network (MTN), founded and based in Silicon Valley, aims to build global partnerships and place Mexico on the technological map.

With the help of the General Consulate of Mexico in San Jose and informal networks, MTN’s founders reached out to companies like Sun Microsystems, AMD, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Oracle to identify other Mexican nationals working in the technology sector. Many have been living and working in the Valley for over a decade, but they are enthusiastic to help establish Mexico as a technology powerhouse.

Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the US, but we have not targeted the many market opportunities that exist in the area,” said Angel Camacho, MTN founding President. “Our purpose is to promote Mexico as a technology hub, a destination for outsourcing, and as a market for highly educated and talented professionals.” MTN views Mexico as a natural partner with US technology ventures. According to BusinessWeek, there are currently 451,000 Mexican students enrolled in full-time science and engineering undergraduate programs compared to the 370,000 students enrolled in the United States.

Mexico’s proximity to the US makes bi-national business ventures easy. Mexico is within two time zones of the Valley, and there are three daily international flights from the San Jose International Airport to the various technology centers in Mexico.

MTN’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for improving the image of Mexico and Mexicans; promoting Technology Business; serving as a vehicle for wealth creation; promoting Science and Engineering; and providing opportunities to all of its members.

"The mission is what drives our membership," says Javier Quezada, Vice President of the organization, “our vision is to promote Mexico as a viable player in the global technology market. We see technology as one of the best ways to raise Mexico’s global visibility and as a way of improving the country's quality of life.” Quezada adds that MTN activities are planned with this mission and vision at the forefront. “We want to partner those companies out there who are wondering where the next technology boom is going to happen – it’s happening in Mexico.”

The Mexican Talent Network’s leadership team is comprised of Angel Camacho, President and Manager of Technical Marketing at Sun Microsystems; Javier Quezada, Vice President and CEO of OneHemisphere; Matt Perez, Secretary and VP of Technology at NearSoft; Gloria Romero, Treasurer and Special Projects Officer at The National Hispanic University; and Jose Gomez, Officer-At-Large and Manager of Client Solutions at Sun Microsystems.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Gun-toting priest sings for social causes
By ALFREDO CORCHADO
Read this article in El Universal

December 26, 2006

"Padre Pistolas" brings cheer to a Michoacán parish

CHUCÁNDIRO, Mich. - This jolly 240-pound man isn´t dressed in red, and he doesn´t rely on reindeer to pull a sled. Instead, he drives a pickup and packs a .38 pistol as he delivers toys.

And though he looks like a cowboy, he´s a man of the cloth.

Meet Alfredo Gallegos Lara, the parish priest of tiny Chucándiro, in the central state of Michoacán, 200 miles west of Mexico City. Dubbed "Padre Pistolas" (Father Guns), the towering, singing priest will deliver toys to the neediest children this holiday season and bring smiles in a region torn apart by heavy migration to the United States and a violent turf war between drug traffickers.

"All that´s left for the people of this region is faith," he said. "My job is to help them maintain, or restore their faith and hope."

Padre Pistolas admits he´s unconventional. He sells CDs and DVDs of himself singing popular ranchera songs and uses some of the proceeds to fund good deeds and public works projects, which have earned him the praise of many locals. Among them is Blanca Nelly Calderón, a 23-year-old elementary school teacher and waitress.

"He can be full of himself," Calderón said as Padre Pistolas dined on stew at her family´s restaurant. "But we judge for his actions, not for what he says, and he does more than any other priest, certainly more than the government."

The padre praised the stew with a profanity-laced compliment.

"Ay, Padre," Calderón said with a sigh.

In this traditional town, it´s his down-to-earth style, he said, that helps him connect with his parishioners year round, but especially during the Christmas season. He sees his job as ministering to those who sometimes end up on the wrong side of the border or the law.

TROUBLED TIMES

Michoacán, the home state of President Felipe Calderón, is one of Mexico´s poorest and most troubled states. It sends large numbers of immigrants to the United States. Some who stay find work in the drug trade. The area is known for producing marijuana and methamphetamine.

The state is also the scene of a bloody turf war that has claimed about 500 lives, a large share of the estimated 2,200 drug-related killings nationwide this year. Calderón sent more than 6,000 troops and federal police to the state this month to regain control.

Caught in the middle are children, some of them orphans, who would face a bleak Christmas and 6th of January - Three Kings Day - without Padre Pistolas.

"They´re innocent children who need to believe in el Niño Dios (the Christ Child) and the good of mankind," he said.

His parishioners include lonely women who walk to his chapel and complain of absent husbands and broken families; widows and mothers who lost their husbands or sons and daughters to drug violence; and fathers who return home from places like Dallas and feel like strangers in their own land.

These days, you can also find Padre Pistolas singing alongside emigrants visiting home. When the music dies, he might lecture them for being "cheap and irresponsible" for not sending enough money to help their families or fix up the community - including a contribution for the church bell, which is undergoing its first makeover in 111 years.

But his biggest peeve is infidelity. He castigates those who cheat on their wives with "those big, domineering American women up north" only to hurt their families in Mexico.

"He keeps us straight, accountable for our actions," said Celedonio López Ambriz, 29, who was visiting from Portland, Oregon.

The padre´s blunt style and gun-toting ways have brought him criticism from the Catholic Church hierarchy. His superiors have urged him to focus more on sermons than on being a showboat, said one church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Padre Pistolas downplays the criticism, saying that a little profanity hardly compares to the highly publicized cases of pedophile priests who have scandalized the church in recent years. On a recent Sunday, his use of profanity during the sermon made some parishioners cringe and others smile or chuckle.

"Sometimes he can get under your skin," said Efraín Tapia, 51, a rancher, "and you always have to be prepared to put your hands over the children´s ears."

"Yes, I know sometimes I get on my soap box and let out a few too many cuss words," he said. "But the church has more pressing moral issues to deal with. Also, my parishioners want someone they can relate to, not someone who will just stand up in front of them and preach."

Sometimes after Mass he puts on his cowboy hat, tight jeans and crocodile boots and hangs out with parishioners. He´ll pick up his guitar and belt out a few tunes. He´ll take a swig or two of tequila. And he´s never far from his shiny black revolver.

About a half-dozen of his close friends have been shot, he explained. His church has been broken into, and three of his trucks have been stolen. He carries the gun for protection, especially when he goes into remote villages to give last rites to drug traffickers or hear a widow´s confession.

"I´ve never used my gun, and I never plan to, but confronted with a bad situation, we have the right to defend ourselves," he said. "These are very dangerous villages."

It´s his willingness to minister to all those who need help that has earned him respect.

The pistol-packing priest is raising money to renovate a crumbling church and to improve schools. He hopes to build a road linking the isolated community to a highway, funded partly by donations from immigrants in the United States. He serves as a link between immigrant communities in the United States and their struggling homes in Mexico.

Last summer Padre Pistolas said Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church near Love Field in Dallas - and sold CDs afterward, said Father Salvador Guzmán, a priest there. Several parishioners knew the padre from Mexico, Father Guzmán said.

"Many of the people of the parish felt very comfortable with him. There was a clear connection," Father Guzmán said.

"He was well-received. He speaks to the immigrant hope, their pain, and their longing for home.

"Some of the people seemed to get offended by his use of language," Father Guzmán added, "but for the most part he was able to connect with the parishioners."

The padre also visited Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Dallas, where he sang for parishioners. During a week´s visit in Dallas, he sold about 500 of his CDs, he said, raising money for the road project and his annual Christmas toy drive.

"I feel an obligation to them for supporting the projects back home and to their families, especially the children, who smile at the sight of a toy," he said. "If I stop being Padre Pistolas and focus on routine chores, nothing gets done. And this community needs more projects than baptisms."

Monday, December 04, 2006

Gandhi's legacy - the Nonviolence

GANDHI INFORMATION CENTER - INTRODUCTION:

Established in 1990 the GANDHI INFORMATION CENTER has been freely available for Education and Culture. It has more than a hundred members at home and abroad, amongst them well-known scientists, artists and authors as e.g. the Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Count Serge Tolstoy (1911-1995) and Professor Joseph Needham (1901-1995).

The Gandhi Information Center became well-known all over the world on account of the distribution of the Manifesto against Conscription and the Military System. This Manifesto revives attention to two manifestoes signed by Gandhi, Einstein, Buber, Freud and Tolstoy's assistants Birukoff and Bulgakov against military training of youth. In the meantime this Manifesto has been translated into 25 languages and has been signed by more than 200 outstanding personalities from over thirty different countries.

Since 1990 the Gandhi Information Center for Research and Education on Nonviolence, has organised educational activities with publications about the Life and Achievement of Mahatma Gandhi. The Gandhi Information Center has made contacts all over the world and contributes to an international network.

The nonviolent, active resistance as developed and lived by Gandhi is to serve as focus and support. Connected with this the active members wish to document the origins of Nonviolence in multifold traditions (e.g. the nonviolent doctrine of Tolstoy in Russia, the Civil Disobedience of Henry David Thoreau, the Civil Rights Movement of Martin Luther King in the USA, the Social Ethics of John Ruskin in England, the Arc communities of Lanza del Vasto in France as well as the reasons of conscience of religious conscientious objectors in Austria and Germany).

Satyagraha was the title under which the Gandhi Information Center has recently published information for its members. The first two issues were dedicated to the commemoration of Gandhi's 125th birthday and our correspondences to the followers of Leo Tolstoy in Russia.

Support the Gandhi Information Center, P.O.Box (Postfach) 210109, 10501 Berlin

Our e-mail-address is: mkgandhi@snafu.de

Our internet website is: http://home.snafu.de/mkgandhi





MANIFESTO AGAINST CONSCRIPTION AND THE MILITARY SYSTEM



In the name of humanity,

for the sake of all civilians threatened by war crimes,

especially women and children, and

for the benefit of Mother Nature suffering from war preparations and warfare,

We, the undersigned, plead for the universal abolition of conscription as one major and decisive step towards complete disarmament.

We remember the message of 20th century-humanists:

"It is our belief that conscript armies, with their large corps of professional officers, are a grave menace to peace. Conscription involves the degradation of human personality, and the destruction of liberty. Barrack life, military drill, blind obedience to commands, however unjust and foolish they may be, and deliberate training for slaughter undermine respect for the individual, for democracy and human life.

It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will, or without conviction as to the justice of their action. The State which thinks itself entitled to force its citizens to go to war will never pay proper regard to the value and happiness of their lives in peace. Moreover, by conscription the militarist spirit of aggressiveness is implanted in the whole male population at the most impressionable age. By training for war men come to consider war as unavoidable and even desirable." (1)

"Conscription subjects individual personalities to militarism. It is a form of servitude. That nations routinely tolerate it, is just one more proof of its debilitating influence.

Military training is schooling of body and spirit in the art of killing. Military training is education for war. It is the perpetuation of war spirit. It hinders the development of the desire for peace." (2)

We encourage all people to emancipate themselves from the military system and, therefore, apply methods of non-violent resistance on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, as they were:

Conscientious Objection (by conscripts and professional soldiers, in war and peace time), Civil Disobedience, War Tax Resistance, Non-Cooperation with military research, military production and arms trade.

In our age of electronic warfare and media manipulation, we cannot deny our responsibility to act in time, according to our consciences. It is high time to demilitarize our minds and our societies, to speak out against war and all preparations for it.

Now is the time to act, now is the time to create and to live in a way that saves the lives of others.



(1) Anti-Conscription Manifesto 1926, signed among others by Henri Barbusse, Annie Besant, Martin Buber, Edward Carpenter, Miguel de Unamuno, Georges Duhamel, Albert Einstein, August Forel, M.K. Gandhi, Kurt Hiller, Toyohiko Kagawa, George Lansbury, Paul Loebe, Arthur Ponsonby, Emanuel Radl, Leonhard Ragaz, Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore, Fritz von Unruh, H.G. Wells

(2) Against Conscription and the Military Training of Youth 1930, signed among others by Jane Addams, Paul Birukov und Valentin Bulgakov (collaborators of Leo Tolstoy), John Dewey, Albert Einstein, August Forel, Sigmund Freud, Arvid Jaernefelt, Toyohiko Kagawa, Selma Lagerloef, Judah Leon Magnes, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Quidde, Emanuel Radl, Leonhard Ragaz, Henriette Roland Holst, Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell, Upton Sinclair, Rabindranath Tagore, H.G. Wells, Stefan Zweig