By Gregory Tejeda <a href=www.upi.com>United Press International From the National Desk Published 5/20/2003 8:15 AM View printer-friendly version

It is amusing to see U.S. brands and products become popular in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Take Chili's, the suburban-American restaurant chain that strikes many Mexicans as being a fun-filled place to eat "foreign" food, in the same way people in the United States go to Chi-Chi's for a change of pace in their dining.

I even find it humorous that the biggest-selling soda pop brand south of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo is that most "American" of drinks -- Coca Cola.

In fact, it's more "American" in Mexico than it is in the United States, since Mexicans still drink it out of glass bottles and Coke officials haven't tampered with the formula in Mexico the way they have in the United States. Coca Cola in Mexico still has that same unique taste, unlike the United States, which has turned it into a third-rate clone of Pepsi.

But good taste ought to limit the use of foreign brands, and I believe that line was crossed last week when negotiations were completed on a joint venture that will ultimately bring Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Mexico.

Krispy Kreme?

What did Mexicans ever do so bad that they deserve to have those icky-sweet and overly sticky buns and rolls shoved down their throats?

If officials with the Winston-Salem, N.C., company get their way, there will be up to 20 Krispy Kreme stores across Mexico by 2009. Some time after that, there will be mounds of "Yanqui" doughnuts being peddled in places like Venezuela and Argentina, as the company is looking into expanding to South American countries as well.

It is nauseating to think of my ethnic brothers and sisters being confronted with Krispy Kreme and those tacky neon signs that urge people to rush into their stores like lemmings just because a new batch of doughnuts is freshly baked.

As one might figure, I don't care much for Krispy Kreme or its signature brand "Hot Original Glazed" doughnut, which is a southern U.S. concoction that only in recent years has managed to creep its way up to my sweet home, Chicago.

On those rare occasions when I have a roll, I want something of substance. Krispy Kreme pastries are so yeasty they almost feel like they're puffed up with air. One bite and there's nothing left.

The way they're also coated with honey or sugar or other sticky-sweet flavorings also leaves my hands so gummed up that three days later I'm still leaving sticky prints on everything I touch.

I don't understand their appeal, even though I know people who swear by them and insist the best junk-food delight on this planet is a Krispy Kreme doughnut when it comes straight out of the oven and is still piping hot.

The company has stores in 37 states and across Canada, and is developing them in Australia and Great Britain. Now, they're moving in on the rest of the Americas.

Krispy Kreme Inc. created a partnership with Grupo AXO, which will do the grunt work of picking markets and developing the Mexican stores. The U.S. company has a 30 percent equity interest in the joint venture.

Grupo AXO has experience in bringing U.S. brands to Mexico. Since 1994, the company has brought Tommy Hilfiger clothing and Warner Bros. Studio Stores to the land of Benito Juarez.

Alberto Fasja Cohen, a Grupo AXO president, believes there is a place in Mexican culture for the glazed doughnut, saying, "There is no doubt that Mexico will be an important and successful part of Krispy Kreme's continued expansion throughout the world."

I'm skeptical of that, especially since Mexico is the home of that ever-edible pastry known as the churro.

A churro is a crispy and sweet pastry shaped in the form of a long, thin tube -- maybe a foot long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The insides are filled with assorted jellies or (my favorite) chocolate, and then the concoction is fried.

I don't eat them regularly (my waist-line says I shouldn't eat them at all). But when I do, they provide a sugar jolt that lasts a few seconds. The first (and last) time I ever had a Krispy Kreme, the sugar rush was so intense I could almost feel my arteries clogging, and my mouth was coated with so much goop the overall sensation was disgusting.

So who's going to win the upcoming Mexican pastry war? I'm sure Krispy Kreme officials will spare no expense in trying to spread themselves into Mexico and many people will try one just to experience something "American."

But if common sense prevails, the churro will knock the glazed doughnut out of the Mexican ballpark. That would be a victory for good taste benefiting all mankind, especially since insofar as the mass-produced U.S. doughnut is concerned, everybody knows Dunkin' Donuts is better.

-0- (Hispanidad is a weekly column about the culture of Hispanics and Latinos in the United States, written by Greg Tejeda, a third-generation Mexican-American. Suggestions for topics can be made to gtejeda@upi.com)

Insight On the NewsPosted May 19, 2003 By Kelly Patricia O Meara

The outsourcing of U.S. jobs via companies such as Outsource Partners International to Bombay, India, does little to revive the sputtering U.S. economy.

"Hey, it's good work if you can get it," says New Jersey state Sen. Shirley Turner about the outsourcing of the Garden State's welfare-processing contract. But neither New Jerseyans nor any other Americans are getting the work, so she has introduced legislation that she believes will keep those jobs at home.

Turner, a Democrat, filed her proposal after learning that the New Jersey Department of Human Services had contracted with an Arizona-based company to service paperwork for the state's welfare recipients at the "cost-saving" price of $326,000 a month. The Arizona company had established a call center in Green Bay, Wis., but once the New Jersey contract came through, the call center was relocated to Bombay, India.

"It seems like a race to the bottom," says Turner. "All these jobs are leaving the state and the country, and our unemployment rate continues to climb. We're in a recession and you have to wonder where it ends. The point of the contract was to save money - assuming that these people overseas can do it cheaper and more efficiently. But this is a ruse because we're supposed to help provide jobs to these [unemployed] people here."

The irate Turner continues, "Neither the people in India who have the jobs, nor the people who are unemployed here in the U.S., are giving anything back in the way of taxes or buying and consuming U.S. goods and services, which is what stimulates our economy. By outsourcing these jobs to other countries we're helping the poor remain poor in this country. We have a $5 billion deficit in New Jersey and outsourcing these jobs to foreign countries only adds to the burden that the state must pick up when our citizens need [welfare] services. When people lose their jobs, and their unemployment benefits run out, the state must step in and take up the burden to provide the services. That's not cost savings and it really just snowballs when jobs are taken offshore."

Turner's bill has made it through the New Jersey Senate but has run into stiff opposition in the General Assembly from lobbies representing companies taking advantage of the cheap offshore labor. And no wonder: Outsourcing to countries that exploit cheap labor appears to be the corporate wave of the future. Kishore Mirchandani, president of Outsource Partners International, a U.S.-based company specializing in outsourcing finance and accounting services, tells Insight, "There are a lot of companies in India handling the accounting and finance of major corporations. General Electric, American Express and Citibank all do business in India."

Mirchandani's company, although U.S.-based, handles the tax-return preparation for the business clients of the accounting firm Ernst & Young at Outsource Partners' facilities in India. "We get business from CPA [certified public accountant] firms in the U.S.," explains Mirchandani, "who then contract with us to get the processing of returns in India. We have about 700 people working for us between India and the United States. A lot of people have raised concerns about the privacy of information, but we have taken steps to ensure that all information is secure."

According to Mirchandani, "the cost savings are tremendous." He says, "The cost to process these returns is anywhere between $100 to $200, whereas in the U.S. the processing would cost $400 to $600. If they outsource it to us the CPA firm saves $300. We hire accountants at about 25 percent of what it costs here in the U.S. A lot of major corporations have already done the outsourcing on their own and our company is an alternative to the companies who don't want to handle the outsourcing directly. General Electric has 12,000 people in its office in India to do its processing of financial information, and these are mostly Indians working there."

To get a better idea of just how many corporations are exporting jobs to take advantage of cheap labor overseas, this magazine followed up on those Mirchandani leads. General Electric did not return Insight's calls. Ken Kerrigan, a spokesman for Ernst & Young, confirmed that his company outsources tax-return processing to India. "Ernst & Young," explained Kerrigan, has "an office in India and we send [tax] information through our networks so there is no physical paper that goes there. The people who work in our offices in India are locals but are trained by Americans who know tax law."

According to Kerrigan, just "2 percent of all U.S. tax returns done by Ernst & Young are processed in India. It's a tiny percentage that allows us to work faster and better. The labor is cheaper, but that's not an issue for anybody. For us it's more of a time factor."

Tim Connolly, a spokesman for the accounting firm KPMG, tells Insight that "we are not currently outsourcing returns to India. However, if we did proceed, we would ensure that it was a joint decision and that each client was consulted beforehand. Any firm involved in tax-preparation business is continuously seeking to provide the highest-quality service in the most efficient manner. As technological advances progress, we're considering all options to serving our clients."

Rob Black, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, sees the current tidal wave of American jobs floating boats to foreign shores much in the same way as state Sen. Turner. "Essentially what you've got," says Black, "is a race to the bottom for the cheapest wages." Black explains: "First we saw corporations in the Northeast move to the Southern states where there were no strong unions. Then, in the 1990s with the unfair trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA], we saw corporations move to Mexico. Now these companies have been in Mexico awhile and the workers' standards are rising a little so, sure enough, the jobs are being moved to Guatemala, China and India. So really, these corporations are just chasing the globe for the cheapest labor rates possible."

According to the Teamsters spokesman, "The people with big business that are on the side of unfair trade love to talk about the markets this allegedly will open for U.S. products, but the fact is workers in Bangladesh aren't buying our personal computers and video games. And any cost benefits that are gained by shipping jobs overseas clearly are going to the top executives, not the consumers. It's hard to accept salary reductions and layoffs when the executives of these corporations aren't feeling the same pain. Slash and burn may be the overnight cure for shareholders' woes, but if you invest in workers you will build a stable citizenry that will buy your products."

The U.S. Department of Labor released figures for the last week in April that revealed U.S. employers had cut jobs for the third straight month. Unemployment rose to 6 percent, meaning that 448,000 people filed new claims for unemployment benefits the last week of April, which was only slightly down from the previous week's 461,000 claims. This is not good, even without outsourcing American jobs to India and elsewhere.

But, Insight found, trying to get solid figures about the level of outsourcing is about as difficult as finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Corporations such as American Express, rather than identify the number of jobs that are being handled outside the United States either by Americans or foreigners, tells Insight that "we've built flexibility into our business model to better withstand external fluctuations in the marketplace. This includes outsourcing some work." Such as the IBM deal.

According to Susan Korchak, a spokeswoman for American Express, the "IBM deal" is a $4 billion, seven-year contract awarded to IBM to provide American Express with utilitylike access to its vast computing resources. Whether IBM is outsourcing any of those services to foreign countries is "unknown" to Korchak. However, IBM has acknowledged having such service centers in India, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada and China.

According to market-research firms Gartner Inc. and Forrester Research, as reported by Ed Frauenheim of CNET News, "More than 300 of the Fortune 500 firms do business with Indian information-technology-services companies." And it is predicted that "by 2004, more than 80 percent of U.S. companies will have considered using offshore IT services." Furthermore, Frauenheim reports that according to Forrester Research, "by 2015, some 3.3 million U.S. jobs and $136 billion in wages will transfer offshore to countries such as India, Russia, China and the Philippines."

These figures represent only outsourced information-technology services such as credit-card and bank financial transactions that are contracted by U.S. companies to be performed for miniscule wages by foreign citizens. The figures do not account for the $500 billion trade deficit the United States now is facing with its trading partners.

Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an investigative reporter for Insight magazine.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 16, 2003 By: VHeadline.com Reporters

Washington Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera says the first point of discussion at the annual reunion of the US State Governors Council was Venezuela's recently increased importance as a trading partner and supplier of crude oil to the United States as a result of instability in the Persian Gulf region.

"Venezuela is among the United States' top 20 trading partners in the world and the 3rd largest in Latin America ... our country is a secure and reliable market for US products and we will continue to strengthen efforts to the benefit of both our nations."

"Although commercial relationships are important, as everyone knows, the real financial connection between our two nations is energy and we both must work together to assure a stable relationship in the years and decades to come."

Speaking in St. Thomas, Alvarez Herrera quoted present and future figures for the United States' domestic energy requirements as being  47 million barrels of crude per day, rising to 65 million by 2025 ... of which 20.1% comes from Venezuela.

"Venezuela is committed to remaining a loyal supplier of Energy to the United States," Ambassador Alvarez Herrera said emphasizing that Venezuela will increase supply from 1.7 million barrels per day to 4.2 million by 2025 ... increasing not just the commercial relationship between both countries but the strategic importance of secure supplies.

Additionally, Venezuela is already committed to providing reliable supplies of natural gas to the United States and to the rest of the world ... "over the next 20 years, domestic consumption of natural gas in the United States will increase and Venezuela is there for you!" Alvarez Herrera told State Governors.  "Citgo filles one of every five gasoline tanks in the United States where it has 13,000 service stations and thousands of employees, US men and women, as well as refineries in Louisiana, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia."

As for the political situation back home and attempts by the opposition to remove President Hugo Chavez Frias from power by unconstitutional means, Alvarez Herrera reminded his audience of State Governors that it lasted only 48 hours since Venezuelans themselves took to the streets demanding a return to democracy; and the opposition stoppage last December-January which virtually paralyzed the nation's petroleum industry had not only influenced Venezuela's national economy but had had knock-on effects on the economy of the United States as well.

"Nevertheless, from a February figure of just 100,000 barrels per day, Venezuela's oil supply had already risen to 3.2 million barrels as Venezuela returns to its traditionally stabilizing force in international oil markets."

Article Last Updated: Friday, May 16, 2003 - 9:02:24 AM PST Red Bluff Daily News By CHERYL BRINKLEY-DN Staff Writer Fri May 16 09:05:05 2003 -- Many small towns have a Rotary club, but Red Bluff has two.

Sunrise Rotary meets at 7 a.m. every Friday at the Red Rock Cafe, while Red Bluff Rotary meets at noon on Tuesdays at the Elks Lodge.

As one of the oldest international service organizations, Rotary was started in 1905 in Chicago by a man named Paul Harris.

He began Rotary for "humanitarian service and peace in the world" by business and professional persons. The Rotary motto is: "He profits most who serves most."

Cathy Patterson of Northwest Training Institute is the president, by default, of Sunrise Rotary and will continue in the position for the following year.

Don Jones of Morgan Stanley is the president of Red Bluff Rotary.

Red Bluff Rotary was established May 13, 1924. It currently has 94 members. Red Bluff Rotary helped establish the morning club, which at this time has 17 members.

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"When you are a Rotarian, you belong to all clubs worldwide," Patterson said. "The organization really pushes for 100 percent attendance and all members to be involved."

As many organizations that began in the early 1900s, Rotary has only allowed women to be members since 1989.

As an international service organization, Rotary members are involved in good causes - worldwide and local.

Local youth benefit with scholarships to assist with furthering their education. This year, the Sunrise Rotary will hand out five $500 scholarships, while Red Bluff Rotary will present 14 graduating teens with $1,000 scholarships. Funding for the scholarships comes from fund-raisers such as the February crab feed, and this year for the first time, a soup and salad event that is coming up.

"We are working with a potter who is making bowls that can be taken home as souvenirs," Patterson said. "A family of four can get a complete set."

Red Bluff Rotary holds internal fund-raisers as well as the Halloween party at the community center, and the beer booths at the Red Bluff Round-Up Rodeo.

"What most people don't know is that Red Bluff Rotary is the owner of the Cone and Kimball Plaza," Jones said. "We got tired of looking at that fence and got together with the Historic Red Bluff Association to see what we could do. We collect and distribute the money collected in conjunction with HRBA. They have been a huge help in putting things together for reconstruction."

A major project for Rotary International is the eradication of polio worldwide in conjunction with the World Health Organization.

"Polio has been eradicated in approximately 98 percent of the world," Jones said. "Reaching the more remote areas of the world is very expensive. Red Bluff has already raised more than $9,000 specifically for this purpose."

The organization now has a three-year program to finish the eradication of polio.

Sunrise Rotary is involved with a literacy program each year.

"Last year, we made sure every third-grader had a personal dictionary," Patterson said.

Proceeds from this year's Roving Jail during Round-Up Week went to the wheelchair foundation "to make sure that all those who had a need could receive a wheelchair."

They sponsor a youth service club at Red Bluff Union High School called Interact, and they sponsor foreign exchange students. During an international project last year, Sunrise Rotary drilled a well in Venezuela for a community that had no water.

They are also involved with a group called Roto-plast. Members of Rotary who are plastic surgeons go into Third World countries and perform plastic surgery, especially facial disfigurements.

Two leadership-type camps are held for youth. They are called Camp Venture and Camp Royale.

Red Bluff Rotary works with the Tehama County Special Olympics with funding and manpower.

"We served almost 500 athletes and their helpers with lunch this year," Jones said.

The club also provides manpower for the Community Career Day and help judge at the annual 4-H Field Day, as well as sponsoring one of Red Bluff's Boy Scout troops.

Another source of funding for scholarships for the club is the annual Chili Cook-off where they sell tasting kits for the People's Choice chili contest. The advertising signs at the Pauline Davis Pavilion at the Tehama District Fairground, in conjunction with the Tehama County Fair Board, are sold by Rotary and they collect the money.

"Ninety percent of the proceeds go into a Pauline Davis Pavilion improvement fund," Jones said.

Red Bluff Rotary members sponsor foreign exchange students from UC Davis for four days each year. The students stay with Rotarian families and are shown rural living.

"We take them on trips to Mt. Lassen, for rides on the river in the Sheriff's boats, a tour a Bell Carter Olives and Pactiv, as well as showing them the different types of agriculture we have in Tehama County," Jones said.

Barbecues are held and there is a lot of community involvement, Jones added.

"We keep them busy, but it works out very well."

<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>MercoPress

The presidents of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle and Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde coincided in the need of a stronger regional integration, starting with a reinvigorated Mercosur that could open the way for trade discussions with United States following the 4+1 model.

Duhalde&Batlle

Argentina and Uruguay, together with Brazil and Paraguay are the four full members of Mercosur and rather skeptical about the United States sponsored Free Trade of the Americans Association, FTAA, given the diversity of countries it includes and the president George Bush administration new agenda of foreign priorities, particularly after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq conflict.

Although Mr. Duhalde will be stepping down next May 25, he indicated that he was sure his successor had similar ideas regarding the necessity of reinforcing Mercosur and then proceed to gradually include the rest of South America taking advantage of the Andean Countries association that includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Mr. Batlle said that the 4+1 negotiations is a crucial instrument to “break” with the dependency small countries such as Uruguay have with a long term project such as FTAA.

“If we are to consolidate our democracies, if we are to ensure justice and fairness in our communities we need to know clearly where our trade possibilities with the outer world stand”, stressed Mr. Batlle.

The Uruguayan president also informed Mr. Duhalde of his talks last week end in Brasilia where he met with Brazilian president Lula da Silva.

“President Lula was most enthusiastic with the 4+1 negotiations, and he agreed with me in requesting from the United States trade proposals to be considered at Mercosur level. Mr. Lula said he would attempt a meeting with President Bush either in Washington or Brazil to talk about the issue”, revealed the Uruguayan president.

“4+1 means banging a very important door so we can clearly know if they are willing, or not, to consider all trade issues, not only those that interest the most powerful but all those essential to us; to us the great world suppliers of food, reliable, at better costs and produced in friendlier environmental conditions”, explained Mr. Batlle