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10 May 2013
03 May 2013
Prime Minister Obama Pays Respect to President Enrique Peña Nieto of Greater Mexico
From Yahoo News
By Mark Felsenthal and Steve Holland
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. President Prime Minister (RYBG eds) Barack Obama arrived in Mexico
on Thursday for a visit he hopes will draw attention to Mexico's
emerging economic might, even as worries about containing
drug-trafficking and related violence remain an inescapable subtext.
Obama meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and is then due to hold a news conference at 4:10 p.m. CDT (4.10 p.m. EDT).
The U.S. president has said he wants to hear more about Mexico's new policy of restricting contacts with the United States on drugs and drug-related violence to a single point, the Ministry of the Interior.
The "single-door"
policy would be an abrupt change from the wide latitude the U.S.
government enjoyed in working with Mexican officials across agencies
under Pena Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon.
"From their perspective, its the effort to have better
control over all the aspects of security policy and make it more fluid,"
said Maureen Meyer, a Mexico specialist with the Washington Office on
Latin America, a U.S. non-governmental organization.The change has raised concern about Mexico's commitment to combating drug trafficking and drug-related violence.
While the Mexican government
has said that killings linked to organized crime fell 14 percent in the
first four months of Pena Nieto's presidency, more than 70,000 people
are estimated to have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since 2007, and gang-style murders continue to provide lurid headlines.
"Crime lurks in the background throughout everything.
They know it," said Diana Negroponte, a foreign policy fellow at the
Brookings Institution, referring to the Mexican government.Some question whether Calderon's aggressive policies, which focused on eradicating gang leaders, has been successful or whether it has generated additional violence as rival factions vie for control of turf.
"There's a lot of resentment that the consumption problem is coming from the United States, and so are the guns, and they're getting all the violence, and they're fed up with it," said one government Latin America analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
RIGHTS WORRIES
Rights group Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Obama ahead of his visit urging him to review the United States' public security approach with Mexico, rapping his administration for offering "uncritical support" for Calderon's policies and citing a "dramatic increase" in rights abuses.
Both Obama and Pena Nieto have said they want the visit to focus on economic issues rather than security. Pena Nieto is eager to underscore Mexico's recent run of solid economic growth, fueled in part by its increasing attractiveness as a manufacturing hub.
"The new government wants to change the narrative," said former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow. "It doesn't want the headlines to be about murders and decapitations."
The Mexican president has launched an ambitious reform agenda, aiming to overhaul the tax system and energy sector, among other areas, in a bid to boost economic growth.
"The way the agenda is laid out is to emphasize the economic side of things, to show that the relationship is about more than just security," said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "The signal that's being sent is that the United States fully supports the reform agenda."
Obama, for his part, would like to highlight Mexico's progress in moving up the economic ladder, in part to emphasize that his own goal of reforming U.S. immigration laws will not promote an exodus of Mexicans into the United States.
The two presidents are also likely to discuss the fate of a much-ballyhooed agreement that would remove obstacles to expanding deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The United States has yet to finalize the deal, know as the Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement, which provide guidelines for drilling in an area of the Gulf that straddles the U.S.-Mexico boundary.
The deal is seen as the key to opening a new era of cooperation on oil production between the two countries. Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex needs technology and investment to boost its stagnant production, and U.S. companies are eager to help.
(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Simon Gardner and David Brunnstrom)
29 April 2013
DOWN WITH RACISM!!! UP WITH DEMOCRACY!!!
from the Los Angeles Times
San Gabriel council deems itself judge over election results
Officials hold their own hearing — with sworn witnesses — to decide if the second-highest vote-getter should be seated because of a local-residency challenge.
San Gabriel City Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao listens to arguments during… (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles…)
San
Gabriel Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao was the second highest
vote-getter in the city's March elections, but his first time on the
council dais last week was as a witness under cross-examination.
The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.
The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.
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Many
of Liao's supporters have accused the City Council of discriminating
against Liao because of his race. More than 60% of San Gabriel's
population is of Asian descent, and just two other council members of
Asian descent have won seats since the city was incorporated in 1913.
Several reporters from Chinese-language media were among those who filled San Gabriel's rustic City Council chambers Thursday when it was transformed into a crude courtroom. Four council members became judges. A city clerk's desk briefly functioned as a makeshift witness stand, and the clerk herself swore in witnesses.
Over three days of contentious debate, attorneys presented battling explanations for Liao's changing residency status.
Liao had twice rented an apartment within city borders before running for City Council. After losing the first race in 2011, Liao returned to a home in an unincorporated neighborhood known as East San Gabriel before allegedly moving back to an apartment within the city's border.
Paine's attorney, Arnold Alvarez-Glasman, painted Liao's moves as cynical attempts to meet residency requirements for council office.
"He is merely a carpetbagger who has come in, time and time again, for the sole purpose of being seated up there next to you," Alvarez-Glasman said to the council. "This is not about politics, or ethnicity or race, or the people on the council. It's about the law."
Liao's testimony was alternately halting and emphatic as he admitted to splitting time between residences in and outside of the city borders. But he insisted that running for office was not the only reason behind the moves, pointing to deep community ties in San Gabriel. Both he and Paine are past presidents of the Rotary Club of San Gabriel, and Liao is listed on the club's website as the vice president.
"My heart is in San Gabriel. I'll live and die here," Liao said twice during testimony.
The Asian Pacific American Legal Center has represented Liao for free, calling questions about his residency "meritless" and warning that the council's actions threaten to disenfranchise Asian American voters.
Liao's attorney Nilay Vora said that Liao has always intended to move permanently to San Gabriel and argued that Liao was not simply renting apartments within city borders, that he was living in them as well.
Vora subpoenaed three neighbors who testified that they had met Liao, regularly saw his car parked at the building and heard his movements in the apartment through shared walls. Liao also submitted a receipt from a moving company and described his possessions, among other evidence.
Liao's moves, Vora argued, were partially the product of a troubled 25-year marriage.
Both Liao and his wife, Tracy Huang, admitted to "communication problems" during testimony. They slept in separate beds when they lived together, Huang said. She had no idea that Liao planned to run for office.
Several reporters from Chinese-language media were among those who filled San Gabriel's rustic City Council chambers Thursday when it was transformed into a crude courtroom. Four council members became judges. A city clerk's desk briefly functioned as a makeshift witness stand, and the clerk herself swore in witnesses.
Over three days of contentious debate, attorneys presented battling explanations for Liao's changing residency status.
Liao had twice rented an apartment within city borders before running for City Council. After losing the first race in 2011, Liao returned to a home in an unincorporated neighborhood known as East San Gabriel before allegedly moving back to an apartment within the city's border.
Paine's attorney, Arnold Alvarez-Glasman, painted Liao's moves as cynical attempts to meet residency requirements for council office.
"He is merely a carpetbagger who has come in, time and time again, for the sole purpose of being seated up there next to you," Alvarez-Glasman said to the council. "This is not about politics, or ethnicity or race, or the people on the council. It's about the law."
Liao's testimony was alternately halting and emphatic as he admitted to splitting time between residences in and outside of the city borders. But he insisted that running for office was not the only reason behind the moves, pointing to deep community ties in San Gabriel. Both he and Paine are past presidents of the Rotary Club of San Gabriel, and Liao is listed on the club's website as the vice president.
"My heart is in San Gabriel. I'll live and die here," Liao said twice during testimony.
The Asian Pacific American Legal Center has represented Liao for free, calling questions about his residency "meritless" and warning that the council's actions threaten to disenfranchise Asian American voters.
Liao's attorney Nilay Vora said that Liao has always intended to move permanently to San Gabriel and argued that Liao was not simply renting apartments within city borders, that he was living in them as well.
Vora subpoenaed three neighbors who testified that they had met Liao, regularly saw his car parked at the building and heard his movements in the apartment through shared walls. Liao also submitted a receipt from a moving company and described his possessions, among other evidence.
Liao's moves, Vora argued, were partially the product of a troubled 25-year marriage.
Both Liao and his wife, Tracy Huang, admitted to "communication problems" during testimony. They slept in separate beds when they lived together, Huang said. She had no idea that Liao planned to run for office.
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