Infotheque Network

Leaked video shows civilian killings in Iraq, signifies growing power of independent Web journalism. When a nonprofit group this week released video footage, leaked via a source in the Pentagon, showing a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack on a group of civilians in Baghdad, the clip unleashed a viral online sensation and ignited an intense debate about the conduct of U.S. forces in Iraq.
But the simple fact of the video's release also reflects the ongoing revolution in how news gets produced and published. The group, called WikiLeaks, released the Pentagon video on Monday. Less than 24 hours later, the clip had netted more than 1.3 million viewers on YouTube alone.
The transmission of information, in and out of regularly authorized channels, has become much more immediate — and far more viral — than at any point in history. Virtually anyone with a browser and a DSL connection can now bring news to light in dramatic and instantaneous fashion. All these trends converged with the WikiLeaks video.
Seven noncombatants were killed in the Baghdad attack — among them a driver (Saeed Chmagh) and photographer (Namir Noor-Eldeen) employed by the Reuters news service. Reuters, indeed, had been seeking to obtain internal Pentagon materials pertaining to the attack — including the footage that went online yesterday — for the past three years, using the Freedom of Information Act. The agency's efforts had so far proved fruitless.

And that's where WikiLeaks came in. The nonprofit website launched in 2006 as an online clearinghouse for whistleblowers seeking to publicize leaked government documents across the world. But prior to posting the video footage, the site had functioned as repository of information; with this latest scoop, which it says came from "a courageous source" within the U.S. military, it has morphed into an investigative news source in its own right. (The full 18-minute video can be viewed — albeit with the clear warning that the material is quite disturbing — at the special project URL that WikiLeaks established for it, under the incendiary name of collateralmurder.com.)
"The material was encrypted with a code, and we broke the code," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told wired.com. "In terms of journalism efficiency, I think we discovered a lot with a small amount of resources."



But this was much more than a question of cracking an encryption code from a renegade PC. WikiLeaks also reported the story the old-fashioned way — by sending two reporters to Baghdad to research the 2007 incident. The group says its correspondents verified the story by interviewing witnesses and family members of people killed and injured in the attack. These accounts helped to flesh out the gaps in the official account of the incident; as the materials at CollateralMurder.com explain, the "military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured." And now that silence is starting to abate: In response to the release of the WikiLeaks video, the Pentagon has circulated some documents relating to the incident, and MSNBC reported this morning that American soldiers mistook a camera held by one of the fallen journalists for a weapon.



Still, the release of the video has also drawn criticism — not so much for the broader WikiLeaks mission of promoting government transparency, but for the site's failure to supply a fuller context to help viewers better understand what they're seeing. A former helicopter pilot and photographer named A.J. Martinez, for example, has dissected the footage on his blog, and attacked the site's packaging of the footage as misleading — and making it seem like the Apache unit was acting out of cold-blooded malice rather than genuine confusion about a possible ground attack taking shape below. "There are many veterans with thousands of hours experience in both analyzing aerial video and understanding the oft-garbled radio transmissions between units," he writes, adding that it would not be unreasonable for the WikiLeaks staff to solicit such interpretive input for concerned vets. "Promoting truth with gross errors is just as shameful as unnecessary engagement" on the field of battle, Martinez concludes.
Yahoo! News contacted Reuters for comment, and a Reuters spokeswoman directed us to their story on the episode, in addition to providing us with the following statement:
"The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones. We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognise the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular," said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters news. "The video released today via WikiLeaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result."
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks appears to be far from done. The group is openly soliciting donations to defray the expenses involved in the upcoming release of another video that allegedly documents other civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military, this time in Afghanistan.

Source - Credits: Yahoo News

Interesting reading, in particular when considering the blown out of proportion "lifestyle" area around Loscabos. We all see how the recession did affect that area and the people living and working there. (Yeah, the editor does know: we just see things NOT the right way and without having a vision..... sure...!!) Luxury hotels with $1,000-a-night room rates and extravagant resorts may face a tougher recovery than the rest of the industry. "The most over-the-top excesses will probably be a long time -- if ever-- coming back," Marriott President Arne Sorenson told the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit. He drew a distinction between these hotels and the typical Ritz-Carlton luxury hotels the company operates. Marriott's other brands include its namesake properties and Courtyards. Sorenson added that some projects in the Caribbean, which tend to be smaller and partly rely on residences, "may never come back" because they rely on the kind of lavish spending that has gone out of vogue with travelers. "They require really that conspicuous consumption to support their entire business model," Sorenson told reporters in a telephone interview. Of all hotels, luxury properties were the hardest hit last year. While rates sank nearly 9 percent for the U.S. hotel industry, luxury hotels saw their rates tumble more than 16 percent, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Many hotels across the spectrum have buckled under their debt loads in this downturn, as lower room rates constrain cash flow used to service these payments. The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel indicated last year that it would no longer be able to meet debt service, Fitch Ratings said last month.
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co, a division of Marriott, will close its Lake Las Vegas property this year. Some distressed properties have bristled against standards set by companies like Marriott. Sorenson said the company is working with some hotels to manage their payments, and has extended the deadline for hotels to put flat-screen television sets in rooms.
"We've also got some one-off owners who just don't have two nickels to rub together," Sorenson said. "If it goes too long or if it is too severe, that is a place where the response is really to pull the flag." Chief Financial Officer Carl Berquist and Sorenson said typically 5,000 rooms leave the Marriott system each year, but this year a few thousand more rooms could be shown the door.
These properties would largely fall in the limited-service category in tertiary markets. In the event that a hotel goes into foreclosure, Marriott has "non-disturbance agreements" on many hotels, which prevents that hotel from leaving its brand, Berquist said.
Widespread distress in the hotel industry, lower rates and tough economic conditions do not mean all luxury hotels will go belly-up, Sorenson said. Some of these hotels will be able to restructure their debt with their lenders. "There's a whole bunch of hotels that are in established destinations, dealing with meaningfully lower rates," Sorenson said. "Over the next number of years (these hotels) are going to see their owners work with their lenders."
Interesting reading for one living at Baja Sur with all of it's Baja luxury.... Read that and the next post and then go back to our post last year about the 'W" of double-dip and build yourself a opinion....

Travelocity’s most recent poll shows a dramatic increase in travel intentions, indicating traveler confidence is on the rise. Travelocity's second Traveler Confidence Report reveals that nearly half of respondents plan to increase their travel in 2010 as compared to 2009. The Traveler Confidence Report gauges travelers’ plans and attitudes now as compared to six months prior and one year prior. Significantly more respondents (49 percent) plan to increase their travel in the year ahead, compared to 21 percent six months ago and just 10 percent in 2009. Another 44 percent plan to travel "about the same" as compared to last year. The number of travelers planning to decrease travel is down significantly to 7 percent, compared with 34 percent one year ago and 24 percent six months ago.
When asked how lower prices would impact travel plans, 33 percent said they would stay in a higher star-rated hotel; 30 percent said they would take a trip they had not expected to take; and 18 percent said they would extend their stay. The majority of respondents (56 percent) did not have a predetermined travel budget for 2010. Of those with a predetermined travel budget, 34 percent plan to increase that budget. An overwhelming 76 percent of respondents are at least somewhat likely to book a vacation package as a way to save money.
The findings are based on the intentions of more than 2,000 North Americans surveyed by Travelocity and even more let's hope that some of them "good" percent's think of Baja and all the great opportunities here....

As an increasingly violent and costly drugs war clogs up prisons with small-time users, some Latin American countries are abandoning hardline U.S. policies on consumption to intensify the fight against major traffickers. Convinced that the four-decade-old, U.S.-led war on drugs has failed, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and other countries are relaxing penalties for possession and personal use of small amounts of narcotics.
Former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a report last year saying U.S. coca crop eradication efforts in Latin America have merely pushed cultivation areas from one region to the other. "The dominant strategy has been the so-called 'war on drugs.'... This strategy has clearly failed. It must therefore be changed," former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said during a recent conference in Washington.
Most of the world's cocaine still comes out of the Andean countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, even after billions of dollars spent eradicating crops.
In Mexico, the drug war has killed more than 16,000 people since late 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to combat ruthless cartels that behead and dismember rivals, and bribe or intimidate police and judges.
Drug violence has also soared in Central America, where street gangs have taken over the trade and in some cases infiltrated political parties. Mexico is the world's biggest producer of marijuana and Paraguay, in the heart of South America, has taken the No. 2 position as demand grows in neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

Rethinking the problem
Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies in Latin America, are taking the lead in a new approach to individual drug consumers. Brazil has partially decriminalized drug use and in Mexico, carrying small amounts of any drug is no longer a criminal offense.
In Argentina, President Cristina Fernandez is expected to soon send a drug reform bill to Congress that proposes sending users to treatment instead of jail, following on a Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to prosecute drug consumers.
"The U.S. is retreating from imposing a model," said John Walsh, head of drug policy for the Washington Office on Latin America think tank. "The White House... is going to be taking a more measured approach to talking about drug policy." Even some areas of the United States, the top global drug consumer, are rethinking their approach, with more than a dozen states now allowing marijuana use for medical purposes.

Editors opinion
One has to realize the current US drug policies are costing lives and money and they are not working. Marijuana should be legalized and taxed like alcohol and cigarettes. That will get rid of a significant portion of the problem. For hard drugs, it is time to mount a publicity campaign denouncing users, rich or poor, as murderers. It’s they’re demand that makes the drug business profitable and causes world wide misery.
Put the harsh realities of drug violence on prime time TV. Denounce Hollywood and the pop music industry every time they release "entertainment" that in any way excuses or glamorizes drug use and trafficking. At the same time keep educating our young people and keep busting the bigger players with tough mandatory sentencing including the death penalty. It is appropriate for the murderers that they are.

Original content CNN: CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is Vice's broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers. Viewer discretion advised.
If CNN makes such a statement it sure is worth look or to, after all they would not recommend REAL doo-doo to their website visitors.




And sure enough - them guys at VBS.TV "rock"! And sure enough also take the hint "Viewer discretion advised" if you are easy offended by images that are usual blurred at other info sources on the net or on TV as well if language below the artificial created social excepted level offends you. May reminds you that it is used daily from MTV to the grunts in Afghanistan!!



Find more about "VBS on CNN", see VBS.TV comments about that here or just visit their homepage

More than 300 people have been arrested in a series of drug raids targeting a Mexican drug cartel operating in the US, American officials have said. The two-day operation, which involved thousands of police officers in 19 US states, is the latest aimed at the cartel known as La Familia. It was part of Project Coronado, which has led to almost 1,200 arrests over four years, officials said. The US attorney general said the cartel had been dealt a "significant blow". La Familia, which is based in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, has been accused of carrying out bloody attacks on Mexican security forces. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 troops to fight drug gangs since he took office in December 2006. However, more than 11,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in that time.
Announcing the arrest of 303 suspected cartel members on Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder described the gang as demonstrating "an incredible level of sophistication and ruthlessness". The Mexican authorities "face a problem of almost unimaginable dimensions", he added. In the course of the two-day crackdown, US police and FBI agents seized $3.4m (£2.05m) in cash, 144 weapons and more than 100 vehicles, as well as stashes of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. "These are drugs that were headed for our streets, and weapons that often were headed to the streets of Mexico," Mr Holder said.
Read the whole report here...

Workers have staged protests in several Mexican cities against a government decision to dissolve a state-run energy distribution firm. The powerful Electrical Workers' Union declared a state of emergency after federal police seized the offices of Luz y Fuerza del Centro on Sunday. The government accuses the firm of wasting billions of dollars on inflated salaries and pensions for employees.
Unions have called for larger demonstrations for later in the week. The Mexican government says that spending at the company, which has about 40,000 employees and 25 million customers, was increasingly outpacing sales. The firm faced an "unsustainable financial situation", President Felipe Calderon said.

Bottomless barrel
The union has called for a mass protest in Mexico City on Thursday. Its general secretary, Martin Esparza, said it could attract as many as 100,000 people. However, the main employers' organization, Coparmex, has welcomed the government's decision to take charge. Its president,

Ricardo Gonzalez, described the company as "a bottomless barrel". Mexico is trying to cut public spending to offset falling oil revenues. The Federal Electricity Commission, a state-run utility that provides electricity across the rest of the country, is to provide services to Luz y Fuerza's customers. The firm's costs between 2003 and 2008 were 433bn pesos (£20.6bn; $32.5bn) while its sales were 236bn pesos, the government said. Mr Calderon said the utility company could not continue to be funded without increasing electricity rates or taxes. "That would be unfair particularly when our country is going through tough economic times," he said.

One of the most heated issues in current public debate has been the jail system, mainly because far from being a place of rehabilitation it has been a place of overcrowding, violence and steep public spending both in California and Baja California. With more than 150,000 inmates, the California jail system is maxed out, and the governor is pushing the idea of freeing 40,000 non-violent inmates not only to reduce overcrowding, but also to save the state 1.2 billion dollars a year.
Many of those ex-convicts would soon be deported to Baja California because of their immigration status. Many of them belong to violent jail gangs, are addicted to drugs and, despite their immigration status, have never been to Mexico in their adult lives.

The prospect of such deportations has worried residents and authorities alike, because the mass deportation of inmates comes at a critical time where the Baja Penitentiary system is 35 percent overcrowded, arrests are up and a major legal system overhaul is scheduled for the beginning of 2010.
“This decision of liberating inmates in California will definitely have an impact in the public safety conditions along the border, where we already have a very complex scenario,” said Baja California Attorney General, Rommel Moreno Manjarrez.
His California counterpart, Jerry Brown, acknowledged that the deportation of ex-convicts could impact security in both sides of the border, and agreed to work with Rommel to create a plan to mitigate the impact. The plan includes working together in a system to share information about deportations and inmates, including a fingerprint database for future reference. Read more here...

The storm has been tearing off roofs, knocking down power poles and bringing welcome rainfall to the drought-stricken state Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the center of the storm made landfall between Puerto San Andresito and San Jaunico during the past few hours. Winds have fallen from Tuesday's roaring 150 mph (240 kph) Category 4 blasts.
The Hurricane Center says the storm is expected to weaken more as it runs up the Baja peninsula, which is home to about 3.5 million people. That includes more than 150,000 U.S. citizens.
The picturesque beach resorts of Los Cabos were mostly spared overnight, when the roaring hurricane toppled signs, choked streets with mud and knocked out power, but did little serious damage. No injuries were reported. Winds fell from Tuesday's roaring 150 mph (240 kph) Category 4 blasts to 90 mph (145 kph), making Jimena a Category 1 storm. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it was expected to weaken further as it runs up the Baja peninsula, which is home to about 3.5 million people, including more than 150,000 U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. State Department. As of late morning, Jimena's center was just southwest of Puerto San Andresito, according to the center.
Winds damaged some homes in the small farming city of Ciudad Constitucion, Baja California Sur Gov. Narciso Agundez told the Cabo Mil radio station.
In Los Cabos, Ariel Rivero, 49, a fishing boat captain who grew up in Long Beach, California, and moved here 30 years ago, surveyed the marina where his boat, the Great Escape, was undamaged.
"We really lucked out," Rivero said. "If it had hit Cabo head on, this place would have been a disaster," he said of the hundreds of tightly packed boats, some worth millions, and the surrounding resort hotels now basking in the calm.
"All those windows would have blown out, (boat) cleats breaking, antennas breaking ... it would have been a disaster," Rivero said.
"Everyone is kind of breathing a sigh of relief," said Shari Bondy, who rents homes and runs a campground with her family in the remote coastal fishing village of Bahia Asuncion, halfway up the peninsula from Los Cabos.
With the weakening storm expected to arrive there Thursday night, she said "everything is still all boarded up, roofs are tied down, everything is ready, but right now we have blue skies."
In the town of Mulege, midway up Baja's east coast, tour operator Salvador Castro Drew said locals are keeping a close watch on a flood-prone river. "We have some rain and some wind right now," he said, "but what we're worried about is when the rain comes down from the mountains."
Baja California Sur state Interior Secretary Luis Armando Diaz said he was still worried about the storm's strike along the coast further north, but he said Jimena could alleviate the state's drought. "If it continues like this, and there is not a major impact, it will help more than it will hurt," he said.
Forecasters predicted the hurricane would drop 5 to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rain onto arid Baja deserts, and dry stream beds already were gushing torrents.
But Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said Jimena would not bring much-needed rain to quench Southern California's wildfires, and will instead head back over the Pacific Ocean.

Mexico's tourism sector has weathered fierce hurricanes and raging drug gang battles, but the H1N1 outbreak could spur the biggest collapse in international visits in decades. Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo says it could take until December for the flow of foreign tourists to recover, wiping out the key summer season when millions of Americans and Europeans traditionally escape to Mexican beaches. "The summer for foreign tourism is obviously lost," said Miguel Torruco, head of the National Tourism Confederation, or CNT, which represents small- and medium-sized companies.

Mexico is considered the epicenter of a flu outbreak that has spread to dozens of countries. Initial cases were linked to visits to Mexico, one of the world's top 10 destinations. The drop in tourism will be sorely felt as a drop in U.S. demand for Mexican manufactured goods has pushed Mexico into its most severe recession since a 1995 financial crisis. Tourism is one of Mexico's top sources of foreign currency, accounting for about 8 percent of the economy. The sector employs about 2 million people across the country. As the government moved to shut down much of public life in late April and early May, foreign tourists rushed to leave and international flights into Mexico arrived almost empty.

But tourism woes look set to last long enough to dent an economy already seen shrinking around 5 percent this year. Elizondo has estimated revenue from foreign tourists could drop by nearly a third this year, costing the industry some $4 billion -- the biggest drop on record, according to government data going back to 1980. The government has offered more than $2 billion in tax breaks and financing to businesses hit by the flu crisis. But the CNET's Amerigo said that without more drastic support measures, some 300,000 jobs could be lost this year.

"Tourist destinations are safe in Mexico," Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said recently. "People can come back with peace of mind because we are monitoring this very intensely." The CNT's Torruco says Mexico has to put money behind that message. "We have to start preparing a campaign to reposition the tourism sector and the image of Mexico abroad that will require unprecedented resources," he said.

Analysis by Michael O'Boyle and Jason Lange - Thomson Reuters

According to a analysis published today at Reuters will luxury goods providers (high end market) have a dim outlook for the near future and need to brace themselves for at least two more years of pain, with big-ticket items suffering most. Luxury goods executives told the Reuters Global Luxury Summit this week they were doing their best to preserve cash and cut costs and cutting advertising. It will probably take longer than first thought to reverse negative trends as consumers feel uncomfortable spending high amounts of money while thousands are losing their jobs and the economic future remains uncertain! "I think the crisis is very deep," said Lamborghini Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann, adding the sports car maker had cut production by 30 percent this year. "A lot of companies are going out of business," he said. Global luxury goods sales are set to drop by at least 10 percent this year and remain sluggish in 2010, industry experts and analysts predict. Consultants Bain & Co do not see a full recovery before 2012.

The longer term prospects of the luxury industry remain attractive as the number of affluent buyers is set to rise further and several regions such as central Asia, Siberia, Latin America and India have not yet been fully tapped. But this is unlikely to be enough to make up for the pain in established markets, especially as the slowdown is forcing luxury groups to hold back investments in the newer frontiers. "Emerging markets growth is likely to contribute the bulk of future luxury goods market growth but it is not likely to offset the impact of lower macro-economic growth in the next 5-10 years and bring us back to luxury goods market growth of the past 5-10 years," Bernstein Research said in a note.

The global economic crisis could change the entire landscape of the luxury goods industry. Bill McComb says “the world has changed and it’s not going back to business as usual.” Watch the video below and listen to what McComb described as the “new normal” .

What will be the impact of this general drift be on Baja California?? Baja Infotheque Network just likes to remind at the many so called "high-end" developments all along the Baja peninsula, many of them on hold or progressing very slow since no investors are willing to spend money right now and the developers them self don't have the means to finish the projects out of their own pockets. Is that all so bad?? We don't think so - it's gonna be more like a natural cleansing, the good ones - preparing themselves since the bubble-burst last fall for what is now is emerging as in the report stated by analysts. Analysts that have no interest on certain areas on the globe or certain market to be "bad" or "good" but plain and simple work on their analysis by facts given

The U.S. economy appears destined for several years of weak growth and high unemployment that leave it vulnerable to a recession relapse after the massive dose of government stimulus wears off. While tepid growth looks likely to resume late this year and build modestly into 2010, the credit bust has left households and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow and spend as freely as they did before the crisis.

Jeffrey Rosenberg, head of global credit strategy at Banc of America Securities Merrill Lynch in New York. thinks the U.S. economy may trudge along at a sluggish growth rate somewhere in the range of 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent while banks recover from the credit crisis, which could take another three years. "If that's what you're able to generate, that economy is not generating the job growth required to bring the unemployment rate down," Rosenberg said. This is a much darker outlook than the one put forward by President Barack Obama's administration in its latest budget projections, which show economic growth bouncing back to 3.2 percent next year and hitting 4.6 percent by 2012.

The gloomier scenario assumes that banks take years to recover from losses that some economists think could reach $4 trillion; consumers curb borrowing and spending as they repair the $11.2 trillion hole blown through their savings last year; and the explosion in government debt drives up interest rates. If the forecast proves accurate, it would leave the economy susceptible to a shock, such as a big jump in oil prices, and could force the United States to issue even more debt than investors expect. That would likely increase borrowing costs, both for the government and the private sector.

read the whole report at Reuters

U.S. home prices fell 18.7 percent on year in March - Prices of U.S. single-family homes in March fell 18.7 percent from a year earlier, while prices in the first quarter dropped at a record pace, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released on Tuesday. On a month-over-month basis, the index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.2 percent in March from February, S&P said in a statement. Price drops on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis were worse than expectations based on a Reuters survey of economists.

The composite index of 10 metropolitan areas declined 2.1 percent in March from February for a 18.6 percent year-over-year drop. Declines in residential real estate continued at a steady pace into March.

For many potential interested people to invest in Mexico another reason to reconsider. And many do so!! In conjunction with the economic report and the blow the Mexican economy will have to stand down the road - Swin Flu and other media boosted negative news and what their impact will be are not even considered in mid-term at the economic outlook. In addition is the prediction by many recommended international economists at the most "murky" and a long time away. maybe some of the so called "Baja Economic Specialists" should orientate their predictions little bit at "real" marketing- and economic advisers.

Mexico's economy shrank 8.2 percent in the first quarter, even before the swine flu stalled commerce, and appears headed for its biggest contraction since the Tequila Crisis stalled growth in 1995. The decline was led by a 13.8 percent plunge in manufacturing activity, followed by a 7.7 percent drop in construction compared to the same quarter of 2008, the national statistics agency announced Wednesday. Economists at Grupo Financiero Banamex, one of Mexico's biggest banks, had predicted a 7.7 percent contraction overall.

Finance Minister Agustin Carstens declared Mexico in recession on May 7, predicting its economy would shrink by 4.1 percent this year.The Central Bank forecasts a 4.8 percent contraction, while Banamex expects negative growth of 5.2 percent. Mexico has been pummeled as U.S. economic woes drive down exports, foreign investment, tourism and money sent home by migrants, four main pillars of Mexico's $1 trillion economy.

The global economic crisis has also choked credit for Mexican companies and consumers, all but ending a half-decade explosion in lending. And the crisis weakened currencies across emerging markets, sending Mexico's peso tumbling by as much as a third against the U.S. dollar and costing local companies steep losses on derivatives bets on the peso.

Read more on this report here...

Given that the latest information from Mexico indicates the risk of contracting the virus has decreased and that nearly all of the cases reported in Canada and the United States have been mild, as of May 18, 2009, the Public Health Agency of Canada no longer recommends Canadians postpone elective or non-essential travel to Mexico.

Read more at the Public Health Agency of Canada website

We had no idea about grasshopper.com, but I now we know! Turns out it is an advanced telephone service for entrepreneurs. Evidently, they are re branding gotvmail.com to grasshopper.com and this is one of their marketing tools. See the video below for more information on changing the world.

Well, still looks the same to me however, still a good video clip to watch!

The United States risks a Japan-style lost decade of growth if it does not take aggressive action to stimulate its economy and clean up its banking system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Monday. "We're doing half-measures that help the economy limp along without fully recovering, and we're having measures that help the banks survive without really thriving," Krugman said. "We're doing what the Japanese did in the nineties," he told a small group of reporters during a visit to Beijing. He said it was not clear that China would suffer sub-par growth as a consequence of the fallout of the present crisis. "I'm mostly worried that the U.S. and the euro zone will have Japanese-type lost decades," he said. Krugman said he expected little or no employment growth this year or next in the United States, where the jobless rate in April hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent. "A second stimulus is becoming clearly urgent. They need a very, very strong stimulus," said Krugman, a Princeton University professor and a New York Times columnist.

He said stress tests carried out on 19 leading U.S. banks had bought time for the administration of Barack Obama, but they had not answered the key question of whether the banks have enough capital to fulfill their key role in the economy.

"It's clear the administration won't take radical action to strengthen the banks any time soon," he said. To have done so would have meant temporarily nationalizing Citigroup and, perhaps, Bank of America, he said. Krugman gave credit to China for vigorously implementing its own economic stimulus plan but said he had detected no commitment by Beijing to switch to a domestic demand-driven growth model that would reduce its excess savings. "It's very hard to see how the world has a full recovery if China continues to run current account surpluses of 10 percent of GDP," he said. If China's big external surpluses persist alongside high U.S. unemployment and low European growth, political friction will ensue. "Something will have to give, and it won't be pretty."
Krugman said China should not be in a rush to make the yuan, or renminbi (RMB), fully convertible or to liberalize its capital account; countries at a similar stage of development that have scrapped capital controls have run into trouble, he noted. "I'm not sure we're talking about a full-floating RMB," Krugman said. "But an appreciation of the RMB, though it's not what China wants to hear right now, is going to be necessary."

Bookreview
In the Shadow of the Giant - The Americanization of Modern Mexico by Joseph Contreras

Voices about In the Shadow of the Giant:

"...provocative and highly informative."—The Washington Post
"Joseph Contreras, who on two different occasions has covered the Mexico beat for Newsweek, offers a welcome, entertaining, and deeply insightful perspective of the dramatic impact of Americanization on our southern neighbor accessible to any reader, drawing on a wealth of personal experiences and numerous interviews, uniquely flavored
by his own Mexican-American origins."—Roderic Ai Camp, Author of Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Consolidation

The influx of Mexican immigrants to the United States throughout the years has impacted our culture, labor force, and economy. Often these individuals are blamed for the perceived ills they bring to this country. Yet few people ever consider the profound influence that the United States has on Mexico.

In this first book to view modern Mexico in the era of NAFTA and globalization, In the Shadow of the Giant offers insight into the land on our southern border. What we find is a nation that looks more like the United States than even Mexicans themselves could have imagined a decade ago:

• Rates of obesity are second only to the United States among the world’s industrialized countries


• Recreational drug use is soaring among young Mexicans


• Citigroup owns the largest bank in Mexico


• Wal-Mart is the country’s biggest private employer

Revealing a vastly different physical and cultural landscape from his days as a young journalist living in Mexico in the mid-1980s, Joseph Contreras tracks the relentless and ongoing Americanization of his ancestral home. Although these changes may seem a natural part of globalization, the country had long prided itself on the social, political, economic and even spiritual differences that distinguished it from the United States. In addition to embracing our virtues and vices, Contreras argues that our southern neighbor has become a de facto economic colony of the United States.

At a time when immigration looms as a leading hot-button issue in American politics, the time is ripe for examining our influences, for better or worse, on our neighbor to the south.

About the Author: JOSEPH CONTRERAS, a native of Los Angeles, spent twenty eight years at Newsweek magazine. He most recently was the publication’s Latin American regional editor.