AT&T Presents ROMEO SANTOS

Formula Volume 1 US Tour

Toyota Center
Houston, Tx

March 15, 2012 | 8:00PM

Doors open at 6:30

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As the principal composer and vocalist of revolutionary New York bachata group Aventura, ROMEO SANTOS became the leading musical voice of young U.S. Hispanics-fronting the top-selling Latin album of 2009 & 2010 and filling arena concerts across the country – including a record-setting sold-out run at Madison Square Garden that sold more tickets than Lady Gaga and Madonna.

With the November 8 release of his highly anticipated solo debut album “Formula Vol. 1”, Romeo Santos fused a strong base of bachata with further elements of Urban, Pop and Latin music to create a representative new sound for our evolving bicultural and bilingual world.

Featuring collaborations with special guests such as LIL WAYNE, USHER, PITBULL, MARIO DOMM of CAMILLA, MALA RODRIGUEZ, TOMATITO, ANTHONY SANTOS & More, Formula Vol.1 has already produced two back-to-back #1 singles, and a #1 album debut with Latin Music’s strongest first week sales in over four years. Formula Vol. 1 has now held the #1 position on Billboard’s “Top Latin Albums” chart for five consecutive weeks and has already reached double-platinum sales in the U.S. Hispanic market.

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Eli Manning with at Super Bowl XLII rally Photo courtesy: Wikipedia

What would you think if I told you that quarterback Eli Manning will have more Super Bowl rings than his future QB Hall of Fame brother Peyton Manning?

Despite being in the NFL since 1998 and having a successful career that includes 11 Pro Bowls, five first-team All-Pro, four AP NFL MVP, fastest ever to reach 50,000 yards passing, and fastest to 4,000 completions Peyton Manning only has one NFL championship under his name.

Come Sunday afternoon, Eli Manning will have a chance to surpass his big brother Peyton in Super Bowl wins when he faces Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the proclaimed rematch of 2007.

The New England Patriots are favorites to win Super Bowl 46 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis by 2 ½ points, however, they find themselves as underdogs in the eyes of the fans to the surprising New York Giants.

Back in 2007 the Giants won three games on the road in the playoffs: defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24-14 in Wild Card week, Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in the Divisional round, and the Green Bay Packers 17-14 in the Conference Championship game 23–20 before upsetting the New England Patriots 17-14 in the Super Bowl.

The Giants surprised the entire world that day, handing the Patriots their only loss of the year, ending their hopes of a perfect season, and putting them short of the 1972 Dolphins (the only team to finish the season undefeated).

This year the Giants perfected the same blueprints used in 2007, going a perfect 3-0 in the playoffs, wiping out Atlanta 24-2, Green Bay 37-20, and San Francisco 20-17 respectably.

If the Patriots win, head coach Bill Belichick and starting quarter back Tom Brady will claim their fourth Super Bowl title and first since 2005, where they beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21.

The Patriots will make their seventh Super Bowl appearance and ranks third in most appearances, only behind the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys who are tied with eight apiece.

The New York Giants will become the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl with a 9-7 record in the regular season if they come away with the win.

One quarterback’s legacy will forever be changed. Whether Brady comes out a four-time Super Bowl champion or whether Manning comes out 2-0 against Brady in the Super Bowl, Sunday is set up to show us the best reality TV show of the year.

El ultimo gol de la noche fue de Oribe Peralta / Alex Olivares - Xpozure

En el minuto 88 el delantero mexicano Rafael Márquez Lugo, quien había ingresado en el segundo tiempo por el mediocampista Israel Castro, puso a México adelante en el marcador. Márquez Lugo se encontró con la pelota frente al arco después que el portero  venezolano Leonardo Morales bloqueó un disparo del delantero Marco Fabián.

“Estoy contento por anotar pero sobretodo por como jugo el equipo, fue sufrido el resultado pero muy merecido, fuimos mejor durante todo el trámite del partido,” apuntó Márquez Lugo.

Un minuto después, al minuto 89, el ariete mexicano Oribe Peralta capitalizó con un golazo el error del defensa venezolano Carlos Rivero, que despejo mal el esférico. Peralta remató la pelota desde fuera del área poniéndola en el ángulo superior izquierdo, ante lo que nada pudo hacer el portero venezolano Morales. Peralta fue sustituido un minuto después de su gol por el defensa Jorge Torres Nilo.

El encuentro tuvo dos etapas totalmente distintas. El primer tiempo fue dominado mayormente por México aunque Venezuela sorprendía en instantes con contragolpes que no llevaban mayor peligro. La jugada de peligro más clara del primer tiempo fue a los 25 minutos tras un cabezazo del mediocampista mexicano Jesús Zavala que pego en el travesaño.

En el segundo tiempo Venezuela salió a buscar el partido. La “Vino Tinto” aprovechó la falta de marca de la defensa Mexicana en los balones parados y al minuto 51, en un tiro de esquina, Edgar Greco abrió el marcador con un cabezazo venciendo al portero mexicano Jesús Corona.

”Fue un descuido individual, el equipo se defendió bastante bien. Fue esa la única jugada donde nos hicieron daño,” dijo el entrenador de la Selección Mexicana José Manuel de la Torre.

México sintió el golpe y fue a buscar el empate inmediatamente. El experimentado defensa mexicano Carlos Salcido empató el partido con un fuerte derechazo desde fuera del área que rebotó en el zaguero venezolano Greco al minuto 68. Salcido fue premiado como el mejor jugador del partido.

“Importante comenzar con el pie derecho, el equipo viene haciendo las cosas bien y siempre es bueno mantenerse así,” señaló Salcido.

Cabe resaltar que ambas selecciones no jugaron con sus máximas estrellas, sino que probaron a nuevos jugadores dando oportunidad y minutos de experiencia a los jóvenes.

“Hemos hecho una demostración deportiva correcta. Perdimos un partido en el 97 y ahora lo perdemos en el 87, pero con un grupo muy joven que sigue acumulando partidos, y la clave de esto es que estamos buscando jugadores que puedan estar para los momentos donde no estén los que están ahora en el equipo, entonces es mucho lo que nos llevamos,” declaró el entrenador de Venezuela Cesar Farías.

Este partido marcó el regreso de cuatro jugadores mexicanos: Israel Jiménez, Marcos Fabián, Néstor Calderón y Javier Cortes; quienes habían sido suspendidos por seis meses tras el escándalo en Ecuador previo a la Copa América. Jesús Corona regresó como capitán a la selección tras cumplir con su castigo por agredir a otro jugador durante el pasado torneo mexicano.

“Son jugadores que lo vienen haciendo bien en sus clubs y que también quieren estar en cualquier partido o en cualquier convocatoria a selección nacional, todos están levantando la mano para estar en la selección,” aclaró de la Torre.

El próximo partido de la selección mexicana será el 29 de febrero ante Colombia en el Estadio Sun Life de Miami. México se esta preparando para abrir las eliminatorias ante Guyana el 8 de Junio.

Por su parte, la selección de Venezuela enfrentará al actual campeón del mundo, España, el 29 de febrero en Málaga. Venezuela se prepara para las eliminatorias sudamericanas donde están terceros en la tabla de posiciones detrás de Uruguay, su próximo rival.

In recent years Barbie has drawn widespread resistance from clerics and conservative quarters in Iran, which consider it a symbol of the corrupt, immoral Western culture.

Several months ago a conservative website criticized the Iranian authorities for not taking the necessary measures to stop the use of Barbie’s image on such children’s items as schoolbags, stationery, clothes, and watches. The website claimed that the doll is “taking over the souls of the youngsters” and that the authorities need to collaborate with local manufacturers to encourage the use of Iranian and Islamic characters instead of Barbie.

Modestly dressed Iranian dolls, Dara and Sara, have not sold as well as Barbie in the country's toy stores.

The design and distribution of the dolls, a modestly-dressed brother and sister pair, was aimed to promote traditional Islamic and Iranian values and better cope with the market penetration of American dolls. It soon became clear, however, that the Iranian dolls could not capture the hearts of Iran’s children, and Barbie continued dominating the country’s toy market.

As part of the growing criticism of Barbie’s harmful influence on the consumption culture of young Iranians, the Gerdab website argued this week that the purchase of Barbie dolls triggers a psychological change in children and increases the influence of values that go against the values of Iranian-Islamic culture. The website reported that toy stores no longer sell just Barbie dolls and have also started offering harmful Chinese-made make-up for children due to the influence of the make-up wearing American dolls.

Obama at the NALEO conference in 2008. He has skipped the last three annual NALEO conferences.

“We applaud the President for expressing his strong commitment to building a 21st century immigration system and providing young people with the chance to earn their citizenship in his address to the American public tonight. While these words ring true to our community and the mission of our organization, we know they must be followed by concrete and swift action. We call on the President and Congress to work together in the coming year to pass bipartisan legislation that will provide millions of Americans with the opportunity to become full members of this great nation.

“During his address, the President also emphasized the importance of job creation and policies that will help the nation fulfill ‘the basic American promise that if you work hard, you can do well enough to raise a family, own a home, and put a little away for retirement’. Like all Americans, Latinos want the opportunity to pursue the American dream. In recent years, our community has been one of those hit hardest by the economic crisis, experiencing job loss and foreclosure rates higher than most Americans. With Latinos now numbering more than 50 million or 1 out of every 6 Americans today, our community’s economic progress will play a critical role in determining the future of this country. We urge the President and Congress to implement policies that will foster economic opportunity for Latinos and all Americans.

“In addition, we were encouraged by the President’s call for a return to American values built around ‘fairness for all’. As the nation’s second largest population group, this theme is fundamental to many of the pressing issues facing our community today, including the Latino electorate’s ability to participate in the political process and elect the representatives of their choice this year. We ask the nation’s leadership to carefully monitor all efforts to weaken the electoral voice of Latino and minority voters, including implementation of unfair voting requirements and illegal redistricting plans across the country. We also call on the President and the Department of Justice to vigorously enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA) so that all U.S. citizens, regardless of race or linguistic ability, can fully and fairly participate in the American electoral process.

“In the coming year, we urge the President and Congress to honor the American people by working together to ensure that our country’s journey ‘moves forward’ and that ‘our future is hopeful’. Our nation’s more than 6,000 Latino elected officials are ready to do their part, working with the President, Administration and Congress to promote policies that will foster the economic and political progress of the Latino community and all Americans.”

NALEO is the leadership organization of the nation’s more than 6,000 Latino elected and appointed officials.

ULI students push for immigration reform at all levels of government.

The University Leadership Initiative will be hosting a citizenship drive. The event will allow eligible residents to work with immigration lawyers to fill out the N-400 application for citizenship; ULI will also provide passport photos required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and lawyers to review the application.

ULI was able to host the drive free of charge because of help from local donors, Univision, United We Dream and State Representative Eddie Rodriguez.

According to the 2007 Pew Hispanic Center, in 2005 only 52% of all eligible permanent residents actually became citizens. The percentage was even smaller (35%) for residents who were born in Mexico a key pool of potential voters in Texas.

The students believe naturalization of these individuals would dramatically change the political landscape of Texas.

“Becoming a citizen is the realization of the American Dream. Citizenship means finally becoming full participatory members of society. The power of citizenship becomes evident in the opportunity to vote and make our voices be heard, for the betterment of our communities, our society our families, and ourselves,” says Daniel Olvera, President of University Leadership Initiative.

Voting privileges are not the only benefit of becoming a citizen, one also gains diplomatic protection abroad, the right to cross the U.S border at will, the right to sponsor family members interested in citizenship, the right to run for office and many other federal benefits.

ULI conducts outreach at local, state, and national levels to address the dilemma faced by young people who were brought to the United States years ago as undocumented immigrant children and may be eligible for the DREAM Act if passed.

For more information visit ULI’s Facebook or their website.

"V for victory, Vatos," exhorts Tony Diaz organizer of the book smuggling operations.

The Tucson school district’s recent decision to confiscate and ban books from the now defunct Mexican-American Studies program has caused a backlash from Latino writers and activists.

Tony Diaz, novelist and founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, is organizing a caravan to take banned books back into Tucson March 12 – 17.

“Me and my fellow Libro-Traficantes will be smuggling contraband books back into Arizona this Spring Break… Arizona we’re throwing the book at you,” said Diaz on his recent Wet Books YouTube statement dedicated to the effort.

The caravan will include banned authors, as well as activists concerned about student’s First Amendment rights. It was announced that Sandra Cisneros, Dagoberto Gilb and Luis Alberto Urrea, whom all have books on the banned list, will participate at various points along the route.

Diaz plans to make stops in cities throughout Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The culminating event will be held in Tucson.

The “smuggling” operation is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the suspension of the Mexican-American Studies program and the removal of banned books.
2. Promote banned authors and their contributions to American literature, non-fiction and poetry.
3. Celebrate diversity.

A spokesperson for the school district denied the books have been banned.

“No books have been banned. The only books that have been taken from the classroom are the seven books that were part of the curriculum of the Mexican-American Studies classes, and those have been moved to storage.” says Cara Rene, TUSD Director of Communications.

After Tucson lost its recent legal battle over HB2281, which was specifically drafted to remove its Mexican American Studies program, officials confiscated the seven books that were part of the program’s curriculum.

The books were boxed up and carried away to an off campus storage facility. The confiscation triggered a rapid backlash from the public, when there were reports of books being taken away in front of students.

“What a wonderful world I live in. Tony Diaz and gang of Libro-traficantes are starting to heat up the interstate highways with contraband books,” said Gerardo Parra Jr., director at Counterpart Films, on a recent Facebook posting of the event.
 

Visit librotraficante.com for more information.

During the very first week of the new year of 2012 came news of the loss of Robert Carter and Gordon Hirabayashi, two giants in this country’s civil rights movement and two beacons of light for the Latino community. They died only one day apart.

Gordon Hirabayashi is one of three fearless Japanese American leaders who used the courts to resist the nation’s misguided and racist round up and detention of citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. In separate prosecutions, Hirabayashi, along with Fred Koretmatsu and Minoru Yasui, stood up to a federal executive apparatus that used the threat of national security to deliberately engage in the purposeful detention of persons because of their race with no individualized determination of disloyalty. In short time, persons of Japanese descent, citizens or residents, were corralled, forced to sell or abandon their belongings, and transported to detention centers.

Hirabayahsi, an American born citizen, was studying in Washington State. He refused to register with the federal authorities, refused to obey the curfews imposed upon the Japanese, and was eventually jailed and convicted. In effect, he engaged in that quintessential American act: he dissented. Decades later, his conviction was overruled and the country paid him and other Japanese Americans reparations for the country’s acts during war time.

Latinos also know firsthand the direct effects of being corralled in the name of national interests. During the Great Depression of 1929, half a million people of Mexican descent, from Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Denver, nearly half of them citizens of the U.S., were detained and deported to Mexico as a way to increase jobs for other Americans.

In 1954 another one million persons of Mexican heritage were detained as part of a quasi-military offensive called Operation Wetback aimed at ridding the country of undocumented immigrants. Regardless of citizenship, these Texas residents were then bused, flown and shipped deep into Mexico to make their return even more difficult. Only a lack of funding for this INS initiative stopped the forced deportation of even more Mexicans.

Today’s profiling of Latino immigrants by untrained local police forces in many states echoes these round ups of yesteryear. “My citizenship didn’t protect me one bit. Our Constitution was reduced to a scrap of paper,” Hirabayashi noted. And yet, in Hirabayashi Latinos have a model to follow; a principled person who refused to accept this abuse, and used the law to right a historical wrong.

Robert Carter is a giant in the world of civil rights, one of the masterminds of the strategy that led to the desegregation of our nation’s public schools and the dismantling of separate-but-equal doctrine. At that time, Robert Carter was part of the team of attorneys at the NAACP and one of the advocates for presenting social scientific evidence to the courts to document the psychic harm of racism and Jim Crow on the nation’s black children.

In that vein, Mr. Carter also played a significant role in the arguments presented in the seminal Mendez v. Westminster case by coauthoring an amicus curiae brief to support the Mexican plaintiffs in California. The decision in Mendez resulted in the first court opinion to recognize that segregation of schoolchildren – in that case, Mexican and Latino children — creates an irreparable sense of inferiority among minority children. And these very same arguments were presented successfully in Brown v. Board of Education, years later.

Robert Carter also had a direct connection to the LatinoJustice PRLDEF (then known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund) when he became a federal district court judge in New York City. Judge Carter presided over Guardians Association v. Civil Service Commission where our attorneys successfully proved that the City’s civil service examinations for police officers discriminated against Black and Latino police candidates. Judge Carter’s decision in our favor was eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 and paved the way for the increased diversity of the city’s police force.

Judge Carter also presided over the trial of housing discrimination claims by Puerto Rican and Latino residents seeking entry into the exclusive Grand Street cooperative apartments in the Lower East Side in the 1980s, in Huertas v. East River Housing Corp. Judge Carter ruled in favor of the Latino community’s claims that they were systematically prevented from applying to these units, opening up the opportunity to integrate these 4,500 moderate income cooperative apartments.

During the trial, the defendants sought to impress the court with the argument that cooperative apartments were unique housing units that were unbeknown to the Puerto Ricans in the Lower East Side, hence their low representation in the applicant pool. The judge would have none of that once he heard the testimony that cooperative apartments were part of the housing mix in Puerto Rico for decades.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF Special Counsel, Richard Bellman, noted that “Bob Carter represented the best of the civil rights bar. He was a dedicated and innovative advocate who never wavered from insisting on true equality for all. Indicative of his passion was his consistent position on the evils of de facto segregation, even when the courts stood idly by and allowed it”. Robert Carter had an incredible reputation as a no-nonsense civil rights attorney and advocate and as a person who constantly pushed the envelope to expose American racism.

Gordon Hirabayashi was similarly unimpressed with his peers who sought to take a safe, accommodating stance in the face of blatant government sponsored racism.

They both stand as models for the growing Latino community today. And they both have contributed greatly to the platform that allows LatinoJustice PRLDEF and other Latino civil rights advocates to protect the rights of Latinos throughout the country.

By: Juan Cartagena

Juan Cartagena is President & General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. He can be reached at jcartagena@latinojustice.org.

Google is one many tech companies that are involved in the SOPA blackout.

No it’s not Spanish for soup.

The Stop Online Piracy Act proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.

The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

Protecting proptery

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. They cite examples such as Google’s $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies. MarkMonitor a brand protection firm, says websites that steal intellectual property cost legitimate businesses $130 billion annually.

Traditional media companies that have had trouble navigating the industry’s transition to the net are the biggest backers of the bills, as they have seen their movie and music content pirated at an exponential rate.

To much control

Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions. Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by English Wikipedia and major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter. Many companies are concerned that the bill would keep web traffic from flowing into offending website. This would be dire for companies that rely on a steady stream of internet visitors to make the bulk of their revenue.

Google has blacked out its logo on its homepage to protest SOPA and PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA). Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has begun redirecting traffic from its main Mozilla.org and Mozilla.com English websites for 12 hours to a black page with a call-to-action message to make visitors aware of the problems posed by PIPA/SOPA. Wikipedia has blacked out its service for the day.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. began taking shots at Google on twitter for its public opposition to the bills. He said Google was a “piracy leader”, but his comments didn’t stop there. He then aimed his sights on bloggers stating that they were “terrorizing” the politicans who were on board with the SOPA and PIPA acts.

You can still access Wikipedia by following these steps from PCWorld.

El olvido de la niñez

Golosinas. Diversión. Caricaturas mañaneras. Tres cosas indispensables para la vida de un crío. Quién iba a decir que ese infante que aparecía en esas fotos llenas de color y vida se convertiría en ese joven que lo tachan de rebelde y ambicioso. “Mira que bonito chaval, ¿qué le paso?” son las palabras inmediatas de las personas que ven las fotos de cuando solo tenías 6 años de edad.

El “¿qué le paso?” es una pregunta común de una persona que acaba de ver fotos de cuando cumpliste tus 6 primaveras.
Pero adentrémonos al mundo del pensamiento infantil. ¿Qué pensábamos? Yo jamás llegué a saber sobre los conflictos mundiales o corrupción política. La preocupación de un niño es el que se termine su bolsa de caramelos o que su caricatura llegue a su final.

Inocencia, es otra de las cosas que conforman a un chiquillo, cuando en lo único que piensas es en la diversión. Cuando contaba con solo 6 años de edad jamás me preocupe por lo que sucediera en el mundo. ¿Qué esperanzas de preocuparse por los diversos conflictos que el ser humano ha creado durante su existencia?

¿Cuándo empezamos a dejar de vivir en ese mundo lleno de color y vida? Esa es la pregunta que me hago día y noche. ¿Cuando cambió de dirección mi preocupación? Mi preocupación cambió. Las preocupaciones de un niño son el que esa bolsa de dulces de colores llegue al punto del vacío, que tu caricatura favorita termine o que tu mama te regañe por haber roto su florero mas preciado.
Hoy nuestras preocupaciones son distintas. No tener dinero, deudas, pagar tus estudios, mujeres en hombres y hombres en mujeres, problemas familiares y amistades, empleo o desempleo, y muchas otras más.

¿Por qué deja uno de ser un pequeño infante? La respuesta mas simple y sin originalidad sería por que uno madura. Pero, ¿cuál es el punto de madurez?

Para dejárselas en corto, la madurez no tiene edad, ya que en esta vida los jóvenes recordamos e intentamos revivir con melancolía lo que disfrutábamos hacer de chicos.

Cuánto deseaba ser adulto cuando era niño. Hoy en día puedo decir que esos deseos estaban llenos de inmadurez y estupidez. Ya que por ser infante no sabia lo que decía. Hoy siendo un joven puedo decir que quisiera estar disfrutando de una bolsa de golosinas, disfrutando de mis caricaturas favoritas…sin remordimiento alguno.