TEC Suggests measures to curb violence

Tecnológico de Monterrey gave today the statement and suggestion to improve safety in México.

The principal of Graduate School of Public Administration and Public Policy (EGAP), Bernardo Gonzalez Arechiga said:

"We want both citizens and members of the Army and Navy operate under a reliable legal framework for the good of all. We want the soldiers and sailors involved in security operations and combating organized crime. We want the soldiers and sailors training and working conditions and their families have a broader social protection"

With this we can know that they are wishing that the military works harder and to go back to their traditional functiones to get rid of the insecurity we are living. It is really important that the government focus on this making a state policy against crime explaining or defining how to confront the problems of insecurity, drugs trafficking, weapons, weapons, etc. Don't you think that this has been a problem since years ago? now that something happened and that some other people died, young people, people started to care more about this or to think of how to solve it. It seams that something bad needs to happen so people start thinking about it.... what a shame!! we should be caring always! even if insecurity or crime zone is not near us, we should!

Bernardo Gonzalez Arechiga also said:

"The state public safety systems must be better managed and therefore should be evaluated as well as efficiency transparency and accountability."

And i totally agree with this statement. We need safety systems and protocols to be managed in a better way. To be evaluated differently so every problem can be atacked in the right way so this problem is solved.

The suggestion of Tecnologico de Monterrey is to support judicial reform and police to command in the states and to create a national police force.

What is going on?

What is going on in the world? We turn on the television and we see all kinds of disasters through all the entire world. We see earthquakes here and there. Is there any possiblities that the world is coming to its end? As we all know there are many predictions that the world as we know it will end in the year 2012. Maybe this is quite impossible, but all the disasters we are facing point to a soon apocalipse. We have many kinds of problems going on right now; we have the great deal with pollution,scarcity, global warming,crisis, end of petroleum, earthquakes, tsunamis and floodings going on till I don't know when. I'm scared, I used to think "It not going to happen to me", or "It is not happening in my lifetime", but know I'm thinking it is most possible that I'm going to live to see it. Our time to do something passed a long time ago, maybe it is just too late, we should be mad, and worried about all this.

Violence in México: A problem for the US

As violence inscreased on Mexico, fear increased for the United States. A proof of this fear is that the Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, sent a letter to the White House asking for more federal resources at the border to stop human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons. In this letter, Brewer pointed out the roads and uninhabited places in Arizona that have become the main steps or roads for illegal immigration, drug and arms trafficking.

When Barack Obama read the letter, 250 National Guard troops were sent to the task of Force Joint Counter Narco-Terrorism. But the force, actually only has 150 soldiers and military pilots of the National Guard, so they are still waiting for the troops to come so they can star working on it.

Pernsoally i think Mexico should be doing something about it too, because the violence is coming from our country i think our national forces are not strict enough or the thing is that they are very corrupt. Felipe Calderón must start working harder on this, but not only him but everyone to make this country less corrupt and more peaceful! .. I know Hillary Clinton came to Mexico to talk about it, and this things must not be forgoten, we should start working on it!.

EU and Russia sign agreement on nuclear disarmament

When i read this new, i found it really interesting because the fact that Barack Obama is fighting for peace, or to make the world more peaceful is something we should be thanking a lot.

Today, April 8, the president of the US, Barack Obama and the president of Russia, Dimitri Medvedev, signed a new agreement a "historical" agreement: treaty START. This treaty has as purpose to reduce or to eliminate the nuclear weapons, which, as we know, can cause great damage in societies.

President Barack Obama thanked Dimitri Medvedev for his grood cooperation on the new commitment to nuclear disarmament. This treaty kind of obligates both parties (Russia & US) to reduce the amount of each of nuclear weapons within the next seven years from 2200 weapons to 1550.

Im not sure if this treaty will work as Barack Obama hopes, but the fact that there is someone that already did something about all this violence in the world, and the fact that people will start to worry more about this is something to be happy about. I hope other countries join this treaty so the world can become peaceful.

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/Internacional/08042010/440077.aspx

Sonora: The Alcohol Oasis .. ?

I was reading the news paper the other day, and I found this article called " Sonora el "oasis" del alcohol". I thougt this was a catchy title and decided to read all the article. It started saying that for every liter of milk that is consumed two of beer are too. This happens even with the theory that only people over 18 years can consume the alcoholic beverages.

In Sonora, alcohol is basicaly everywhere : in the little stores in every corner, in the supermarket, in the higways, near the offices, on our way to school, even in clandestine places!

In our state there are 2 394 861 persons, and the Secretaria de Hacienda del Estado has 6 639 valid permissions to sell alcohol in it. In any of the 72 municipalities of the state they could tell you they can not prepare you a plate because they do not have all of the ingredients, but never will they tell you that they have no beer.

For each 361 persons there is a business where you can buy any kind of alcoholic beverage that you like, go ahead and do the math ;) . Yes, our state is one of the principal alcohol consumers of the country , especially in beer.

Beer is so available ANYWHERE! Specially in rural zones, like the little towns all around our city, you might not find a school, a hospital, but oh wait! there are like three expendios!!

The Encuesta Nacional de Adicciones 2002 informed the state that 87% of the people of Sonora consumes alcohol in a variable frequency, when 32% does it in excess.

The consequences of living in this "oasis" of alcohol, does not limit on damaging the health of the people but also affect the public security, the peace in the homes and the person´s jobs. It is a factor that generates poverty since the Encuesta Nacional de Ingreso y Gasto en Hogares from INEGI revealed that 2.8% the family budget is used to buy alcohol.

I think that the people who drink are not only harming themselves but all the people around them, specially their families. Some people say that that is not true but it is! They harm the family in a direct or indirect way, being that the drunk person gets home so drunk that s/he could hurt one of the members of his/her family in many fatal ways; if s/he loses his/her job because of the alcohol, their family will be affected because they will have no money, there are A LOT of examples like this.

Going back to the milk example, did you know that 220 000 liters of milk are consumed, while 452 055 liters of beer are consumed daily? Or that 2 090 000 pesos are consumed on milk, while 7 232 880 pesos are spent on beer daily? Or that 762 850 000 pesos are spent on milk, while 2 640 001 200 on bear every year? Yep : I was surprised too ..

Internet addiction killed a baby girl

Yesterday an interesting new was published. This sad new was about a corean baby girl that died of innutrition because her parents were internet addicts. Her parents were desemployed adults of 41 and 25 years old who played a virtual game named “Prius Online” for about 6 to 8 hours a day and didn’t give the enough attention and food to their daughter. This internet addiction took them to have a dead daughter and took them directly to jail.

With this article we can see what an addiction can do, the consequences of addictions, why should we avoid them and in the case of having an addiction the answer to “what should I do?” is: ASK FOR HELP!... to get attention and be able to get out of this addiction you have to first accept you have a problem and then ask for help so you can get through it without hurting so much yourself or other people.

We must be carful with the people you hang around because they may be bad people and it’s not good for you to hang around with people that can take you to an addiction or to do bad things.

Here is the link of the new

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/Internacional/06032010/433973.aspx

Economy "Growing"?

Last tuesday our president, Felipe Calderon, was at the inauguration of a golf course at Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit; while giving his speech, he said that our economy will grow 4-5%. In 2009, our country´s economy decreased for 6% because of the world´s economic crisis. He stated that the country is increasing quickly with the international market. He said that a proof of this was that 100 000 new jobs were recovered according to IMSS. Another proof was that our country´s "grade" of risk, was near Chile´s, the least of Latin America, meaning that our economy is one of the bests of Latin America?

Now, I was wondering: is this true? I would not believe it 100%, how will our economy grow if he just approved another raise on the gasoline´s price? Sure, HIS economy will grow! But what about us? We will have to spend MORE money on gasoline. I really don´t know what to think about this, I just think it is somewhat unfair, yes, if the price rises it means there is more supply right? But he thinks everybody can afford gasoline like if it was I don´t know, water? Besides, international organisms said that Mexico´s economy will grow only 1% this year. Shocking isn´t it? When I read this article, I went on and read the comments, 1 out of every 15 comments approximately was "positive" all the other people commented saying that he should quit lying. I know most of us say that we don´t care about economy, but it affects us directly simply with the fact that our parents can´t give us money or we think it is very few compared to what they gave us some years ago. I think that we will not progress if prices keep rising at this rate.. we need to work something out because this crisis is affecting us severly :..

Alcohol: a problem in our society.

Last night I was driving home, a car, driven by a drunk guy did not stop and almost crash me. Luckily, I stopped and I was able to get out of the problem. But, Why am I talking about this?... I think alcohol nowadays is a big problem in our society. People start drinking when they are like 11 years old and young people fall easier to an addiction, so, when they grow up, they become alcoholics. Specially here in México and in the north part of the country is where alcohol is consumed more and this is because of the hot weather.

In about 3 to 4 weeks, it will start the “cuaresma” time, and at this time, people from about 14 to 22 go to Kino and have “fun” drinking, as they call it. Hopefully this year things will be less dangerous because yesterday a new was published and it was about police trying to be stricter on this, and there will be more protection.

Personally, I think drinking alcohol is not necessary to have fun or as some people say “It is not necessary to have fun but it helps you to have a better time”. I think teenagers must be responsible and accept that they are not allowed to drink and that it is better if they do it that way because doing that save a lot of people from death.

¡THINK BEFORE DRINKING!

A World With No Scarcity? ..

This question was brought up at class by our teacher. I think that in a world with no scarcity technology would be used in a more proper way, we would not have any limitations on wealth and we would not need money! Yes, it does sound pretty cool and fun right? SURE! Who would not enjoy having no limitations on the wealth that today is centered on few people? Or that we do not need money because we lack of nothing? But also, I think that we would take LESS care of our world than what we do now that we DO have scarcity!

Though, I think that it is completely possible to get to have this wonderful world having a resource-based economy as Mr. Jaques Fresco refers to it! I did a little research on this topic and I found out that there is a project called: The Venus Project. This project wants to fight all the modern problems of our society, being crime, replacement of humans by technology, violence, the decline of Earth´s ecosystems, over-population, etc, etc .. by doing an active reseach, developement and application of the workable solutions at their research center located at Venus, Florida. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives and the consistend application of the best that science and technology can give and offer to the social system directly. Also, it offers a plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium. For this project they used the ceteris paribus, which we saw in class! Check it out: http://www.thevenusproject.com/. I found it very interesting and it has a really good ideal of the world :)!

Immigration ..

Yesterday, I heard my parents saying that the situation of Cananea was going from bad to worst. Since my family is from there and we visit it constantly, we have seen and felt how the mine's strike has affected the town. As Frida said in her post, Cananea is being called a "ghost town". That is because all businesses are being closed and people are moving out of there. Eventually, I asked myself: why is that happening? Well, people are starting to move into the United States looking for job opportunities because the mine was the most powerful source of jobs of this place and now that it is closed, it is affecting all of the other small businesses. I think that that is an awful consequence of the miner's act of going on a strike to defend a man who stole them millions of pesos. For that, now everyone in the town is suffering the consequences and have to immigrate to the US to find a job and support their families. Yeah, they might not get a lot of money and be very rich by going there, but at least it is something. Still, it is really dangerous for them to immigrate, since most of them go there illegaly. If they get caught, well of course, they are returned to Mexico if they cooperate with the border patrol. But what happens when the immigrant decides to run? They shoot him. I think that is sooo inhumane! Yes, the immigrant did wrong on trying to escape from the border patrol, but why dont these guys run after him?, I mean, I do not blame him for trying to survive and help his family. All of this brought me to think that we should think on making more job opportunities for mexicans IN MEXICO. We have a lot of resources, we just need to find out how to use them efficiently.

Racism

First of all, what is racism? Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of their race or like the color of their skin, some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination have been used as very powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns.

Racismn is also a very sensible subject for some people. Some people say that talking about supporting racial discrimination and prejudice is just words and that free speech should allow suck views to be aired without restriction. Others think that words can lead to very serious problems, like World War II .

I saw this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aaTAUAEyho&feature=player_embedded , it says that race is a powerful idea and enduring concept and that it is invented by society. Also, it has adopted inequality and discrimination for the past centuries, as well as influencing how we relate with one another.

Racism has been present in our society for A LOT of years. I remember studying for history last semester, about the way african-american people were treated, they could not go out at night, or have properties, people even said that they did not have a soul, oh well, a lot of other terrible things. Why was that? Just for the color of their skin? So what if their skin is darker? I mean, they are also humans! They have our same necesities, they feel and act just the same! Why treat them different? I think that it is simply ridiculous that they are being treated differently.

Facebook: Its Impact on Us and our Society

Today, my mother was complaining that I spent a lot of time on Facebook, that it was becoming like an addiction to check it several times every day...

As we all know, Facebook is a social networking website where you can add friends, message them, chat, join groups, play, etc.. It started out as a social network for Harvard students, then it started growing until everyone was able to join. After doing a little research I found that today, Facebook has more than 350 million users worldwide, more than 100 million acces to it daily, more than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on it daily, more than 1 billion pieces of information are shared weekly. Facebook is being part of our daily lives, like an addiction, I mean even our parents and teachers have a Facebook account, we can even check it on our celphones now! .. If Facebook was a country, it would be the sixth most populated in the world. It is just a medium of communication , but yet, it is so much more than that; with the simple click of the mouse, we can see what gender a facebooker is, to what religion they believe in, where do they live, what they like and dislike, what school they attend, who are their family , their sentimental situation, oh well! a lot of things more!

Recently, it has even been used on buisness and political purposes. For instance, Facebook teamed up with ABC to let facebook users take part in the debate of the 5th of January in 2008, they could give their opinions about the topics, vote, and message questions.

Workers, students and simply everyone spend hours in facebook doing absolutely nothing, going from home to profile and back. In some countries, like China, Iran, Vietnam and Syria, have banned facebook to prevent that this waste of time". A lot of people are really dependent on facebook, they are using it 24/7 .

Also, now there is no privacy. The other day I was talking with a friend, I asked her if she knew about the snowing at Cananea. She told me that she did not hear about it, but knew until she saw the photos that were uploaded in facebook. Everyone knows what you are doing, and knows simply everything about it!

.. the funny thing is , that my mother uses facebook as much as I do :)

Rising Prices?

While doing the ethics homework, I found an article saying that starting today the gasoline's price will be rising 8 cents. The magna will be costing 7.94 pesos per liter, the premium 9.70 pesos per liter and the deisel 8.32 pesos per liter. The article at the newspaper, El Universal, states that it is being raised because the government want the prices to be the same as the prevailing prices at the United States, who is Mexico's main trading partner.

I think this will affect our country's economy in a GREAT way. Why? Simple, because oil and gasoline are on what our country relies. How do we get a product to the other side of the country? A truck takes it there. What does the truck need to get to the other side of our country? Deisel. The distributors need to recover the money that is being spent on deisel, so what do they do? Raise the product's prices. That I guess affects mostly the middle and low classes. Since for them, saving a few cents would be a great help to use it on other things.

Global Issues

First of all, what is a global issue? It is a broad description that is commonly used to explain all the things that our soceity gives a great importance since it affects all of us locally and also they are being shared with all the cultures and societies within our global community.

The principal issues that the list of group 3 had were:

• scarcity of oil and water


• polution


• poverty (hunger)


• cime


• discrimination


• overpopulation (less jobs and distribution)


• drugs


• endangered species


• corruption


• immigration


• totalitarism


• economic crisis


• lack of education


• nuclear weapons

As I was going through this list again, I noticed that all of them were linked together. For example, because their is a lot of poverty, caused by the ecnonmic crisis, people do not have the recources to pay for a school causing the lack of education. Yes, there are public schools nowadays, but some of the families are so poor that the children have to work at a very young age to help their parents pay for food and the things needed at their home and that does not give them the time and opportunity to go study. Also, the lack of money and education cause people to take extreme decisions leading to crime and drugs.

Also, for the fact the the population is growing in a really high rate, over population comes up. This causes that there are a lot more people without a job and the distribution is getting a very poor quality. This causes people to want to move out of the country looking for better job opportunities, causing immigration. But, is immigration the best solution? For some people it might be, for others it won´t. Most of the mexicans who leave to the United States, immigrate illegaly. Think about it. Thousands of mexicans have been killed across the border. Some people, decide just to not immigrate and find a way to get money here. We see those people everyday and everywhere. Whether we are at the supermarket, on every street light, the parking lots of big stores, at the gas station, etc,etc. That brings us back to the poverty topic.

Where is this taking us? Think about it :.

Is there a GLOBAL culture?

As we all know the levels of culture are from very specific to general, family-community-historical-global; but during the class about this topic, John Read made a very interesting question, "Is there a global culture?"

While studying for the exam, I asked myself that same question. After researching a little about the topic, I came to my own conclusions. On one side, I think that there is a global culture, but on the other I think that there might not be one.

I think that it does exist because, well, we are all humans and we all have certain characteristics that make us a "culture", we care for the same things, worry for the same things, have the same necesities, but while I was thinking about this, I remembered that a culture is not only caring, worrying and needing the same things; it is formed by a lot more elements, like: the symbols, language, values, etc.. and all the other things we discussed at the class. As I remembered this, I thought well, there might not be a global culture. Why? Because well, we do not share all this things globally. There are A LOT more things that make up a culture and globally we do not share it. We all have a different way of seeing things (cultural relativism). For us something might be good, while for another country it might be really bad. We might agree in things but we are COMPLETELY different in a lot of senses.