Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Movie I'm Pumped For
SIN NOMBRE
I just read the following synopsis and I think this film is going to be an intriguing, political conscious examination of the immigration issue.
Sin Nombre, world-premiering at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, is an epic dramatic thriller written and directed by Student Academy Award winner Cary Joji Fukunaga in his feature debut. The filmmaker’s firsthand experiences with Central American immigrants seeking the promise of the U.S. form the basis of the Spanish-language movie.
Sin Nombre tells the story of Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager living in Honduras, and hungering for a brighter future. A reunion with her long-estranged father gives Sayra her only real option – emigrating with her father and her uncle into Mexico and then the United States, where her father now has a new family.
Meanwhile, Casper, a.k.a. Willy (Edgar Flores), is a teenager living in Tapachula, Mexico, and facing an uncertain future. A member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang brotherhood, he has just brought to the Mara a new recruit, 12-year-old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer), who undergoes a rough initiation.
While Smiley quickly takes to gang life, Casper tries to protect his relationship with girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana García), keeping their love a secret from the Mara. But when Martha encounters Tapachula’s Mara leader Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), she is brutally taken from Casper forever.
Sayra and her relatives manage to cross over into Mexico. There, they join other immigrants waiting at the Tapachula train yards. When a States-bound freight train arrives one night, they successfully rush to board – riding atop it, rather than in the cars – as does Lil’ Mago, who has commandeered Casper and Smiley along to rob immigrants.
When day breaks, Lil’ Mago makes his move and Casper in turn makes a fateful decision. Casper must now navigate the psychological gauntlet of his violent existence and the physical one of the unforgiving Mara, but Sayra bravely allies herself with him as the train journeys through the Mexican countryside towards the hope of new lives.
I just read the following synopsis and I think this film is going to be an intriguing, political conscious examination of the immigration issue.
Sin Nombre, world-premiering at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, is an epic dramatic thriller written and directed by Student Academy Award winner Cary Joji Fukunaga in his feature debut. The filmmaker’s firsthand experiences with Central American immigrants seeking the promise of the U.S. form the basis of the Spanish-language movie.
Sin Nombre tells the story of Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager living in Honduras, and hungering for a brighter future. A reunion with her long-estranged father gives Sayra her only real option – emigrating with her father and her uncle into Mexico and then the United States, where her father now has a new family.
Meanwhile, Casper, a.k.a. Willy (Edgar Flores), is a teenager living in Tapachula, Mexico, and facing an uncertain future. A member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang brotherhood, he has just brought to the Mara a new recruit, 12-year-old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer), who undergoes a rough initiation.
While Smiley quickly takes to gang life, Casper tries to protect his relationship with girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana García), keeping their love a secret from the Mara. But when Martha encounters Tapachula’s Mara leader Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), she is brutally taken from Casper forever.
Sayra and her relatives manage to cross over into Mexico. There, they join other immigrants waiting at the Tapachula train yards. When a States-bound freight train arrives one night, they successfully rush to board – riding atop it, rather than in the cars – as does Lil’ Mago, who has commandeered Casper and Smiley along to rob immigrants.
When day breaks, Lil’ Mago makes his move and Casper in turn makes a fateful decision. Casper must now navigate the psychological gauntlet of his violent existence and the physical one of the unforgiving Mara, but Sayra bravely allies herself with him as the train journeys through the Mexican countryside towards the hope of new lives.
Editorial VII
The Death of Organic
Well, it was fun while it lasted. How wonderful it was to think that the influx of organic, all-natural, eco-friendly foodstuffs in our supermarkets came from independent farmers. That at least there was a gastronomic refuge from manufactured food, contaminated with God-knows-what.
But then…along came this totally depressing article, debunking the fairytale that organic food still has the integrity its name suggests.
Don’t take this as some sort of socialist rant, but the last thing I want corporate culture having their hands in is my food. I get it, mass manufacture drives down prices, enabling us to provide food to a gargantuan population with limited means. But affordability has a price. That fee comes in the form an array of additives, preservatives, dyes, poisons, and inedible chemicals, i.e. crap.
As it is however, consumers of all-natural and organic products are fools. Most of the "reliable" organic brands we hold dear have succumbed to the corporate leviathan that is now going to employ its vast marketing apparatus to cash in on the trendiness of the organic movement. Here is shortlist of sanctified products that are have been engulfed, and the amoeba that did it: Burt's Bees (Clorox), Ben and Jerry's (Unilever), Tom's of Maine (Colgate-Palmolive), Stonyfield (Danone, French conglomerate that had to recall yogurt for unsafe dioxin content), Odwallia (Coca-Cola), Naked (Pepsi Cola), R.W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic (Smuckers), and the list goes on.
Read the article above and get the full picture. Then, check out these videos below to learn more about discerning the food you eat.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. How wonderful it was to think that the influx of organic, all-natural, eco-friendly foodstuffs in our supermarkets came from independent farmers. That at least there was a gastronomic refuge from manufactured food, contaminated with God-knows-what.
But then…along came this totally depressing article, debunking the fairytale that organic food still has the integrity its name suggests.
Don’t take this as some sort of socialist rant, but the last thing I want corporate culture having their hands in is my food. I get it, mass manufacture drives down prices, enabling us to provide food to a gargantuan population with limited means. But affordability has a price. That fee comes in the form an array of additives, preservatives, dyes, poisons, and inedible chemicals, i.e. crap.
As it is however, consumers of all-natural and organic products are fools. Most of the "reliable" organic brands we hold dear have succumbed to the corporate leviathan that is now going to employ its vast marketing apparatus to cash in on the trendiness of the organic movement. Here is shortlist of sanctified products that are have been engulfed, and the amoeba that did it: Burt's Bees (Clorox), Ben and Jerry's (Unilever), Tom's of Maine (Colgate-Palmolive), Stonyfield (Danone, French conglomerate that had to recall yogurt for unsafe dioxin content), Odwallia (Coca-Cola), Naked (Pepsi Cola), R.W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic (Smuckers), and the list goes on.
Read the article above and get the full picture. Then, check out these videos below to learn more about discerning the food you eat.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Editorial VI
The Price of Justice
The ICC issued its much anticipated arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir last Wednesday, charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the death of 300,000 civilians in Darfur. The Sudanese government’s response was predictable: casting blame on the Western establishment for trying to destabilize Sudan.
The International Criminal Court, according to Sudan’s UN Ambassador, was merely a stooge for the neo-imperialist troika of America, Britain, and France. The familiar echoes of US hegemonic domination, British nostalgia for empire, and French desires for the influence of yore, did little to disguise the fact that the warrant was entirely just. The evidence accrued by the Court’s Chief Prosecutor clearly demonstrates that Bashir recruited Janjaweed militias to terrorize and pillage the Darfuri population.
Unfortunately, the price of justice as it turns out is high indeed. The subsequent expulsion of 13 NGO’s from Darfur in retaliation for the ruling, has gutted the main providers of aid and assistance to Darfur. UN Ambassador Susan Rice has referred to this as “genocide by other means.”
An excerpt from Nicholas Kristof’s excellent piece on Sunday summed it up well:
More than one million people depend directly on the expelled aid groups for health care, food and water. I’ve been in these camps, so let me offer an educated guess about what will unfold if this expulsion stands.
The biggest immediate threat isn’t starvation, because that takes time. Rather, the first crises will be disease and water shortages, particularly in West Darfur.
The camps will quickly run out of clean water, because generator-operated pumps bring the water to the surface from wells and boreholes. Fuel supplies to operate the pumps may last a couple of weeks, and then the water disappears.
Health clinics have already closed, and diarrhea is spreading in Zam Zam camp and meningitis in Kalma camp. These are huge camps — Kalma has perhaps 90,000 people — and diseases can spread rapidly. Children will be the first to die.
It is important to note that the people of Darfur support the ICC, according to Kristof at least. I wonder however, just how long their support will last if the situation grows as dire as his article suggests.
Sadly, this won’t be the first time helpless people suffer for the cause of international justice. I refer to the misery incurred by the people of Iraq for over a decade while the world exacted legal retribution on Saddam Hussein.
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the international community was determined to punish Saddam Hussein’s regime by forcing withdrawal, payment of reparations, and disclosing/destroying weapons of mass destruction. The UN Security Council authorized a wide-ranging and near total sanctions regime to this effect.
Considered the most comprehensive sanctions in human history, the embargo on Iraq had disastrous humanitarian consequences. Conservative estimates placed the death toll at 170,000, with higher estimates tending towards 1.7 million. Madeleine Albright’s infamous interview on 60 Minutes when she declared, “we think the price was worth it,” epitomized the callous disregard for human suffering due to sanctions. We must consider if the price will be worth it this time, should Sudan bring further suffering on Darfur as a result of this ruling.
The comparison between Iraqi sanctions and the ICC ruling confronts a moral quandary inherent in the pursuit of justice, as we understand it. In both cases, sound moral arguments could be made (less so in the former) for the international community’s policy towards homicidal regimes. But it must be asked, are we committing incidental manslaughter in the process?
The ICC issued its much anticipated arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir last Wednesday, charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the death of 300,000 civilians in Darfur. The Sudanese government’s response was predictable: casting blame on the Western establishment for trying to destabilize Sudan.
The International Criminal Court, according to Sudan’s UN Ambassador, was merely a stooge for the neo-imperialist troika of America, Britain, and France. The familiar echoes of US hegemonic domination, British nostalgia for empire, and French desires for the influence of yore, did little to disguise the fact that the warrant was entirely just. The evidence accrued by the Court’s Chief Prosecutor clearly demonstrates that Bashir recruited Janjaweed militias to terrorize and pillage the Darfuri population.
Unfortunately, the price of justice as it turns out is high indeed. The subsequent expulsion of 13 NGO’s from Darfur in retaliation for the ruling, has gutted the main providers of aid and assistance to Darfur. UN Ambassador Susan Rice has referred to this as “genocide by other means.”
An excerpt from Nicholas Kristof’s excellent piece on Sunday summed it up well:
More than one million people depend directly on the expelled aid groups for health care, food and water. I’ve been in these camps, so let me offer an educated guess about what will unfold if this expulsion stands.
The biggest immediate threat isn’t starvation, because that takes time. Rather, the first crises will be disease and water shortages, particularly in West Darfur.
The camps will quickly run out of clean water, because generator-operated pumps bring the water to the surface from wells and boreholes. Fuel supplies to operate the pumps may last a couple of weeks, and then the water disappears.
Health clinics have already closed, and diarrhea is spreading in Zam Zam camp and meningitis in Kalma camp. These are huge camps — Kalma has perhaps 90,000 people — and diseases can spread rapidly. Children will be the first to die.
It is important to note that the people of Darfur support the ICC, according to Kristof at least. I wonder however, just how long their support will last if the situation grows as dire as his article suggests.
Sadly, this won’t be the first time helpless people suffer for the cause of international justice. I refer to the misery incurred by the people of Iraq for over a decade while the world exacted legal retribution on Saddam Hussein.
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the international community was determined to punish Saddam Hussein’s regime by forcing withdrawal, payment of reparations, and disclosing/destroying weapons of mass destruction. The UN Security Council authorized a wide-ranging and near total sanctions regime to this effect.
Considered the most comprehensive sanctions in human history, the embargo on Iraq had disastrous humanitarian consequences. Conservative estimates placed the death toll at 170,000, with higher estimates tending towards 1.7 million. Madeleine Albright’s infamous interview on 60 Minutes when she declared, “we think the price was worth it,” epitomized the callous disregard for human suffering due to sanctions. We must consider if the price will be worth it this time, should Sudan bring further suffering on Darfur as a result of this ruling.
The comparison between Iraqi sanctions and the ICC ruling confronts a moral quandary inherent in the pursuit of justice, as we understand it. In both cases, sound moral arguments could be made (less so in the former) for the international community’s policy towards homicidal regimes. But it must be asked, are we committing incidental manslaughter in the process?
Editorial V
Virological Time Bomb
Nations typically deal with the African AIDS epidemic like such: throw money at it, get some good publicity for your dedicated philanthropy, and ignore the fundamental causes. While foreign aid may not be solving the problem, surely it helps. Doesn’t it?
It seems the unmonitored and irresponsible application of antiretroviral treatments is creating new drug-resistant strains of HIV (Financial Times). This development is especially alarming at a time when the economic crisis will surely curtail the development of new treatments to combat HIV, particularly new strains.
At the risk of being an alarmist, understand that this is more than just a humanitarian concern. Should this negligence continue, there exists the realistic possibility of a resistant strain making its way over here. We already learned with the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, when the disease spread to 37 countries from Guangdong province in China, just how easily viruses could travel in globalized world.
Whether or not this problem will be addressed in a significant way remains to be seen. Countries doling out aid do not want to hear that their efforts are counter-productive. Just to reiterate, no one advocates cutting aid off. After all, “it's better to be alive with drug-resistant virus than dead with drug-sensitive virus.” As one doctor counters however, “resistance is an entirely predictable end-point. If it starts to spin out of control, it's going to be difficult to get a handle on."
This is a problem of state-capacity. Effective monitoring is a laborious undertaking, certainly more arduous than the unregulated allotment of treatment, some of it in bastardized forms. Recommended solutions for this growing problem include:
a) “tougher international scrutiny of plants that produce HIV medicines and an assurance for countries buying them that quality is consistent.”
b) “innovative medical (programs) to boost drug adherence in poor countries.”
c) “a shift in the treatments used…a switch directly to make current second-line therapies into the first-line option.”
One other point, about a separate matter: In Veracruz, Mexico, where HIV/AIDS mortality rates are the highest of anywhere in the country, sex education is advocated as a combative tool by many of the local outreach programs. Unfortunately, ideological opponents of sex-ed have made sure this weapon against AIDS remains shelved in the arsenal. If ever there was a time to be practical about these matters, it is now.
Below is a fascinating presentation on the formation of resistant HIV strains.
Nations typically deal with the African AIDS epidemic like such: throw money at it, get some good publicity for your dedicated philanthropy, and ignore the fundamental causes. While foreign aid may not be solving the problem, surely it helps. Doesn’t it?
It seems the unmonitored and irresponsible application of antiretroviral treatments is creating new drug-resistant strains of HIV (Financial Times). This development is especially alarming at a time when the economic crisis will surely curtail the development of new treatments to combat HIV, particularly new strains.
At the risk of being an alarmist, understand that this is more than just a humanitarian concern. Should this negligence continue, there exists the realistic possibility of a resistant strain making its way over here. We already learned with the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, when the disease spread to 37 countries from Guangdong province in China, just how easily viruses could travel in globalized world.
Whether or not this problem will be addressed in a significant way remains to be seen. Countries doling out aid do not want to hear that their efforts are counter-productive. Just to reiterate, no one advocates cutting aid off. After all, “it's better to be alive with drug-resistant virus than dead with drug-sensitive virus.” As one doctor counters however, “resistance is an entirely predictable end-point. If it starts to spin out of control, it's going to be difficult to get a handle on."
This is a problem of state-capacity. Effective monitoring is a laborious undertaking, certainly more arduous than the unregulated allotment of treatment, some of it in bastardized forms. Recommended solutions for this growing problem include:
a) “tougher international scrutiny of plants that produce HIV medicines and an assurance for countries buying them that quality is consistent.”
b) “innovative medical (programs) to boost drug adherence in poor countries.”
c) “a shift in the treatments used…a switch directly to make current second-line therapies into the first-line option.”
One other point, about a separate matter: In Veracruz, Mexico, where HIV/AIDS mortality rates are the highest of anywhere in the country, sex education is advocated as a combative tool by many of the local outreach programs. Unfortunately, ideological opponents of sex-ed have made sure this weapon against AIDS remains shelved in the arsenal. If ever there was a time to be practical about these matters, it is now.
Below is a fascinating presentation on the formation of resistant HIV strains.
Monday, March 9, 2009
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