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Latinos...are more likely than other young people to drop out of school and live in poverty, according to a new Pew Hispanic Center study. The study, based on a survey of more than 1,200 Latinos ages 16 to 25, presents a portrait of the assimilation of a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, one that will have a significant effect on the nation's politics and economics in coming years. Young Latinos make up 18% of all young people in the nation and 42% in California. About one-third of young Latinos are immigrants, but two-thirds are born in the U.S....

First Lady continues her misunderstanding of California's vehicular lawsVigilant paparazzi have been keeping extra close tabs on California's First Lady Maria Shriver ever since she was caught breaking the state's hands-free law. Once again, it appears Shriver has been busted. Shriver allegedly parked her non-emergency vehicle in a red zone, TMZ reported Monday: Arnold's really gonna be seeing red after this because his scofflaw wife once again blatantly disobeyed the rules of the road ... and parked her non-emergency vehicle in a red zone!!!! We're told Maria Shriver left her Escalade in the verboten spot for almost an hour while...

One of President Barack Obama's most prominent Wall Street backers gives him high marks on just about everything except his approach to Wall Street.

Her name is Mary. She is only 19 years old but already she has many grey hairs. On Thursday mornings in my freshmen oral English class, she always sits alone in the back of the room. No one ever talks to her; she appears to have no friends. Whenever she speaks, the disdainful expressions that I detect on the faces of many of my other students betrays their true feelings about this different young lady...

Chinese leaders announced Sunday that they will adopt a rural growth policy intended to vastly increase the income of China's hundreds of millions of farmers by 2020, setting in motion what could be the nation's biggest economic reform in many years. The goal of the policy is to stimulate market-driven economic growth in the countryside and to narrow the enormous income gap between those living in rural areas and those residing in the cities, one of the largest such divides in the world. The announcement, made through reports in state news organizations on Sunday night, came at the end of...

DENVER -- Lawmakers in the state are trying to determine what kind of action will be taken against Republican Rep. Douglas Bruce after he was ordered to leave the podium of the Colorado House of Representatives for saying that Colorado doesn't need "5,000 more illiterate peasants." Bruce made the comment Monday during a debate on a bill that would allow the state to help immigrant workers get temporary visas from the federal government. Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, who was chairing the floor debate, ordered Bruce to leave the speaker's podium after saying, "How dare you?" Bruce denied later he was...

DENVER (AP) ― Rep. Douglas Bruce was ordered to leave the podium of the Colorado House of Representatives on Monday after calling Mexican workers "illiterate peasants." Bruce, a Republican with a history of provoking controversy with his statements and actions, made the comment during a debate on a bill designed to ease a farmworker shortage in Colorado. It drew an audible gasp from the House. "How dare you," said Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat who was serving as chairwoman during the debate. She told Bruce he was no longer recognized to speak. The bill under discussion would allow the state...

DENVER — Republican Rep. Douglas Bruce was ordered to leave the podium of the Colorado House of Representatives on Monday after calling Mexican workers "illiterate peasants." Bruce made the comment during a debate on a bill that would allow the state to help immigrant workers get temporary visas from the federal government. The Mexican Consulate in Denver did not immediately return a call seeking comment. The bill is designed to ease a shortage of farmworkers in Colorado. Bruce, of Colorado Springs, has had had other run-ins since arriving at the Capitol in January as a midterm appointee to fill a...

The Senate vote on immigration failed. The issue is dead. Or is it? No, it isn't – and Americans better not be complacent about it. The politicians will be back with another version, regardless of which party wins the next election. Locally, the same mentality prevails to circumvent law, logic and morals on the part of politicians, activist groups and churches and the media are cheerleaders. Example: Front page, Contra Costa Times in Northern California, July 11. Complete with intentionally emotional pictures, it described a 1.3-square mile area on one street in Concord with 91 apartment complexes housing some 38,000...

President Bush’s latest attempt to salvage the Immigration Bill has made it crystal clear that there is indeed a political class of those we elect, who blatantly ignore the wishes of the electorate. Despite the overwhelming outcry against the bill in its present form, the president and many members of Congress seem determined to pass a collection of glued-together agendas, which are far from being a comprehensive solution. The Senate responded to the outcry by voting to not end debate, which prompted Senator Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, to pull the bill from the floor for the time being. That...

Let us say right up front that it's terrific that John Edwards lives in a country where he can lose an election and still land a $480,000 part-time job as a consultant to an investment firm that keeps its hedge funds in the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter for its clients. This truly is the land of opportunity. We're also encouraged to hear that, according to the former Senator's spokesman, "John Edwards is running for President to give every American the opportunities that he's had." While there may not be enough half-a-million-dollar-a-year part-time consulting gigs to go around just...

Taliban or tractor? British try to win over peasants By Patrick Bishop in Mandisar (Filed: 16/09/2006) In the arid villages of southern Afghanistan, British soldiers are asking peasants to make a big life choice — a tractor or the Taliban? British forces for 34 Sqn RAF Regiment meet locals in Mandisar near Kandahar If they inform on insurgent activity in their areas, they will be rewarded with a shiny new machine to plough their dusty fields. If they fail to co-operate they will be deprived of the thin stream of assistance trickling into the countryside via the campaign to turn...

ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 6, 2005, Radio Free Asia (RFA) received a frantic call for help from a resident of Dongzhou village, near the port city of Shanwei, in the prosperous southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The caller told RFA that hundreds of paramilitary police had moved into the area and were firing at thousands of villagers. The villagers had been protesting what they claimed was inadequate compensation for land that local officials had expropriated, and upon which a power plant was being constructed. As the caller screamed into his cell phone, "They are using real bullets on us!"...

China's 800m peasants to escape yoke of farm tax By Richard Spencer (Filed: 21/12/2005) A 2,000-year-old grievance will be lifted next year when China scraps taxes for hundreds of millions of peasants, the government's traditional source of revenue. Reforms introduced as proof of China's commitment to those left behind by the economic boom are so far ahead of schedule that farm taxes, which date back to before the first emperor, will be abolished early, the finance minister, Jin Renqing, said. Local governments would be compensated for the loss of income from central funds. Taxes have been one of the peasantry's...

It was 1985, and the government of New Zealand had made a momentous decision -- to abolish farm subsidies in a country where farming had been king ever since Britain colonized the islands in 1840. Twenty years later, as the World Trade Organization heads toward an apparent stalemate at its summit in Hong Kong over plans to reduce agriculture subsidies, the message from New Zealand's farmers to their counterparts in the United States and the European Union is: There's life -- in fact a better life -- after subsidies. The evidence is there, its farmers say: Since the government's momentous...

SHANGHAI - Everywhere in developed, urban China - Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou - the message was the same. The next "counterrevolutionary rebellion" - as the Communist Party defined the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - if it happens, will be a peasant revolution. Foreign diplomats and Chinese scholars in Beijing or young, urban, 'Net-connected professionals in Guangzhou have told Asia Times Online in unmistakable terms: nobody from the party's "fourth generation" leadership wants to go back to the Maoist model of economic autarky and foreign-policy isolation. A constant pattern emerges: if a villager, for instance, accuses a local party...

I have been arranging my extensive CD collection which lead me to play some of those long forgotten CD. This afternoon it was Mendelssohn "Reformation" Symphony. This might not be the best symphony of this rather underrated composer. The 5th popularity has suffered from being a "heftier" work, more intellectual, less crafted and vital than the "Italian". As if trying to encompass the reformation movement in music were possible. Still, the last movement opening is one of the most stirring moments of the repertoire, and a powerful musical image of the liberation of the spirit, no matter what religious connotation...

Countries the world over jockey hard to attract foreign investment. They care about it enough to make it a national priority, to send spies against their competitors, to build infrastructure, and to change laws to make their investment climate attractive. Most know of the economy-developing potential of foreign capital. The United States itself was developed this way, largely on British capital which built its great railroads, mining ventures, universities and corporations. China is now the giant of this game opf attractring foreign investment, aptly offering favorable business conditions and great opportunities to businesses the world over. But it's not just...

Venezuela's Marxist dictator, Hugo Chavez, has begun confiscating farms and ranches, a violent act worthy of Zimbabwe’s ethinc cleansing, marauding socialist tyrant Robert Mugabe. Like Mugabe, his made his first target a wealthy British aristocrat. But unlike Mugabe, who openly reveled in barbarism, Chavez is using stagecraft calculated to create a melodrama that will excite his supporters, while putting the rest of the world to sleep. And he's doing it to conceal reality Staged with troops, cameras, peasants waving machetes, circling helicopters, Chavez's cow drama aligns “the people” against the 32,000-hectare cattle ranch of Lord Sam Vestey, a British-accented villain...

The Government of Cojedes state took over as proimised the British owned cattle ranch Hato El Charcote. The Goveror stil claims they are respecing private property, but "it is not absolute" whatever that means. You can read more about it here, here and here. The people at the bottom are not part of the intervention, they are the invaders of the ranch, who are protesting because the Government apparently is not going to give them the intervened land, but it will be handed over to 28 cooperatives of farmers.

The Governor of the State of Cojedes announced yesterday that on Saturday they will begin the “intervention” of the Hato El Charcote farm, owned by British company Vestey, under the decree issued by that Governor in mid-December. The concept of “intervention” does not exist in Venezuelan jurisprudence, so that it is unclear exactly what it means. According to the Governor: “The intervention will be performed with all of the machinery of the State to establish the first beachhead of the “Free land and Men Mission…With the aid of all of the Armed Forces and police forces and the authorities of...

Leftist “militants” ushered in the new year in Colombia in true form: Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) murdered 17 peasants, including 6 women and 4 children, who were gathered to celebrate New Year’s Eve. When I say “true form,” I mean FARC was practicing the art that the extreme left has mastered, perhaps invented: terrorism. On this New Year’s Eve, the FARC was proving it believes the “end justifies the means,” as it is the grotesque, disfigured child of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and, yes, even Hitler -- remember, he was a National Socialist (Nazi). FARC is...

In its heyday, the CIA was famous for mucking around in the affairs of banana republics, manipulating this, toppling that, and in best cases, achieving the political aims (usually leaders, actually) that the President of the U.S. sought. Iran, Philippines and Guatemala in the 1940s and 1950s were prime examples. But more often than not, these operations went wrong, horribly wrong - Bay of Pigs, Congo, Indonesia, Nicaragua come to mind, leaving the U.S. in a worse position than it started. The CIA may even have been involved in the botched coup d’etat attempt against modern banana republic Supremo Hugo...

LAWRENCE -- In the long battle to keep city residents from illegally registering their cars in New Hampshire, police here relied on a potent ally this week, the guy next door. One night this week, police officers slapped 57 drivers with $500 fines for living in Lawrence but owning cars with New Hampshire license plates. Some of the cars were towed away, requiring their owners to pay even more to retrieve them from a gravel lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. In a city where car insurance rates are notoriously high, it was the most dramatic strike yet against drivers...

home/africa/southern africa President Robert Mugabe's militias in northern Zimbabwe stepped up their attempts to drive a white farmer off his land yesterday, opening fire on the family for the second day in a row, neighbours said. A horse was also trapped alive in its stable on a farm in the Karoi district 200 km north of Harare and appeared to have been burnt alive deliberately, they said. The animal suffered 90 degree burns and had to be destroyed. Earlier in the afternoon, farmer Ian Cochrane (43), and his wife, Jo, fled when they were confronted by a mob of about...

Gunmen ambush, kill 26 in remote area in Mexico 06/02/2002 By DAVID SEDEÑO / The Dallas Morning News MEXICO CITY - Twenty-six people were killed during an ambush in a mountainous drug-trafficking area of Oaxaca after the truck they were riding in was attacked by gunmen, police said Saturday. The ambush occurred Friday evening near the village of Santiago Textitlán, about 50 miles southwest of Oaxaca City. There were conflicting reports about whether the ambush was part of a land dispute or a personal vendetta. State officials, including police, prosecutors and magistrates from Oaxaca City, were at the scene...