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Idiotic environmental predictions  

by Walter E. Williams

 

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.” Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970. This time it’s not about weather. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil.”

There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day, too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous energy claims, in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That’s enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.

Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear’s. The major difference is today’s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Pantothenic Acid: how B5 heals acne, hair and skin  

Foods Highest in Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) on a wooden table.

by Critical Health News

 

You don’t hear a lot about it, but it’s one of the most ubiquitous of the all the vitamins. It’s called pantothenic acid, a named derived from the Greek word “pantheon”, meaning “found in all quarters”. Indeed, the nutrient, also known as Vitamin B5, is an essential constituent of every one of the 100 trillion cells in the body.

B5’s main role is to help the body process and utilize lipids; it facilitates fat burning inside cells. It’ can be a helpful supplement to speed healing, especially of the skin and the digestive tract. It’s also a player in the production of anti-aging steroid hormones associated with growth, repair and fertility But, pantothenic acid is not only valuable as an internal nutrient. When it’s topically applied it can have some interesting and helpful cosmetic effects too.

One of the most important benefits of pantothenic acid, in its topical form, is its effect on acne. Its fat processing properties help the skin slow down excessive secretion of oils, reducing shine and helping eliminate facial and back acne. Pantothenic acid used directly on the skin has anti-inflammatory and anti-irritant properties too. It can prevent he formation of scars and speed the healing of broken and wounded skin. It has also been effectively used to treat burns and surgical wounds. The first beneficiaries of the power of panthenol were soldiers. In the 1940’s Swiss Medical researchers seeking new treatments for burn victims during World War Two, came up with the idea of using the vitamin topically. In short order, the drug company Hoffman Laroche, best known for their invention of Valium, came up with the idea of using it to beautify the hair. In 1947 they started to manufacture a shampoo featuring the vitamin. They called it “Pantene”. It became one of the most successful and iconic hair care brands ever and is still one of the bestselling shampoos in the world.

If you want to take advantage of the power of panthenol for preventing hair breakage, improving shine and radiance or if you want to use the vitamin to improve skin health, you don’t need to spend money on fancy products. It’s easy to go the “do-it-yourself” route as pure panthenol, the cosmetic form of Vitamin B5, is inexpensive and readily available on the internet. It comes as a viscous liquid that can be directly added to shampoos or skin creams and lotions. But you are going to have to make sure you use a healthy dose. According to information published in the Journal of Cosmetic Science, it takes 1.0 percent panthenol to have an effect on skin integrity. In my experience I’ve had to use even more.

If you find the liquid form too difficult to work with (and it is quite sticky), powdered panthenol is also available. You can dissolve two teaspoonfuls to a cup of water to make a 4.0 percent solution. Store it in the fridge and add as desired to your favorite hair and skin care products making your own home-made panthenol rich beauty products.

Central Valley investment booms but leaves workers behind  

by Mark Hedin

Ethnic Media Services

 

FRESNO – California boasts the world’s fifth-largest economy, with Central Valley’s agricultural exports a key driver. In the state’s continuous economic growth, only the Bay Area has been able to keep up with or outpace the per capita growth of Central Valley’s Gross Domestic Product index.

But beneath all that economic activity and seeming prosperity lies another, harsher reality: The Central Valley consistently experiences some of the worst conditions in the entire country for unemployment, poverty, air pollution and contaminated drinking water.

On the campus of UC Merced, the new Civic Capacity Research Initiative (CCRI) has been crunching those economic numbers. On Wednesday, Oct. 2, CCRI, along with the Central Valley Partnership and the FMTK Central Labor Council, convened approximately 200 representatives of labor unions and local community- and faith-based organizations to discuss the Central Valley’s economic disparities and possible ways to address them, CCRI Project Director Ana Padilla said.

In the breadbasket of America “is a community of forgotten people … small rural areas with high levels of poverty,” said Dillon Savory, executive director of the Fresno-Madera-Tulare-Kings Counties Central Labor Council, in opening remarks as he introduced CCRI’s Edward Flores, associate professor of sociology at UC Merced.

Flores presented his research paper, “Inequality at the Heart of California” (https://tinyurl.com/Inequality-at-the-Heart-of-CA), which draws on data collected by the Census Bureau to detail how California’s economic growth fails to include many of the people who create it: the workers.

As Flores’ work explains, the breadbasket at the moment consists of the California counties with the highest unemployment rates — 10.6 percent for the Central Valley’s eight counties. And within that, workers earn the second-lowest median wages of any region in the state — almost two-thirds of them falling short of the living wage calculation of what it takes to “avoid consistent and severe housing and food insecurity.”

Such circumstances, Flores said, “particularly affect communities of color.”

“We continue to be disadvantaged in the Central Valley, but we don’t have to be,” Flores said. “We’re making progress and the opportunity’s there, but … for policy to effectively address issues of regional economic inequality,” his report concludes, “policymakers must stop asking ‘how do we bring more economic development?’ and instead ask, ‘what do we want economic development to look like?’”

This circumstance is not confined to California. Despite some situations that are unique or extreme in California, similar inequities can be found in varying degrees across the country, so strategies to ensure equity in communities’ growth merit wide consideration.

Prominent among the speakers were state Senator Maria Elena Durazo, who represents East and Central Los Angeles, and Madeline Janis of Jobs to Move America. Working together in Los Angeles, they helped pioneer the use of community benefit agreements (CBAs) to ensure that public/private partnerships more fully consider the greater public good before allocating public resources to private enterprise.

Too often, Janis said, governments allow themselves to be bullied into surrendering tax breaks or other benefits to appease companies that threaten to abandon growth plans or even leave the community. If such concessions yield only low-paid jobs and environmental degradation, the community may have been better off without such development, she said.

By researching what the companies actually want, and recognizing what the communities have to offer them, growth can be tailored in ways that more fully serve a community, rather than simply exploit its resources, Janis noted. You have to be “confident and willing enough to call a bluff at a negotiating table,” she said.

“Politicians will only move when confronted with the force of organized people who are willing to outlast, outsmart and pressure them,” Durazo said. “Time after time, I’ve experienced a legislative process committed to protecting the status quo rather than changing it. Most impactful,” she said, “has been organizing hundreds of thousands of workers into the labor movement, especially immigrant workers.”

In a panel discussing community benefit agreements, Janis and Ben Beach of the Partnership for Working Families spoke with Sandra Celedon of Fresno Building Healthy Communities about CBA strategies Janis and Durazo developed in Los Angeles. Their Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy negotiated the nation’s first CBA, and Partnerships for Working Families has had a role in dozens more.

In these, a community can require that an employer commit to meeting various community needs, for instance, by committing to providing workers a living wage or maintaining environmental standards in the design and execution of a proposed project.

Chuck Riojas, of the Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, emphasized the value of project labor agreements (PLAs) that include mandatory apprenticeship programs in government building contracts, and cited the recently constructed UC Merced campus.

Another successful example they highlighted is the Oakland Army Base, where “extensive organizing work” led to limits on the use of temp agencies, “fair chance” hiring policies to provide opportunities for former inmates, access to jobs and training.

Public sector negotiators have some valuable cards to play in dealing with business interests, they reminded the audience. Much of the land businesses seek to develop is publicly owned, for instance, and government is a major purchaser (20%) of all manufactured goods, Janis emphasized.

As an example of where public pressure can be brought to bear on private development and use of public resources, she mentioned the California Competes Tax Credit Committee, which meets three times per year to distribute various state concessions to businesses. Currently, a third of those concessions, she said, pertain to the Central Valley.

“The problem is: None of you are there,” she said. “Know that these huge subsidies are going out the door. And that’s just one program that I happen to know about.”

Other Central Valley characteristics and challenges Flores described included the high rate of complex and multiple households and relatively low rate of home ownership.

“I never knew about project labor agreements or community benefit agreements,” Wasco Mayor Alex Garcia said. “The role of complex family households isn’t a surprise – I live that every day. What’s surprising about the poverty of the Valley is that it’s not because of a lack of investment. It’s just not been equitable.

“I’m worried for the future but I am encouraged by the leaders in this room who have come together to think deeply and share experiences.”

Chapo University? Narco’s family plans school for indigenous in Sinaloa

by Mexico News Daily

 

A chain of coop stores and a pharmaceutical company are also planned, using Joaquín Guzmán’s assets

The family of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán will build a university for indigenous students in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, according to a Mexican lawyer who represented the convicted drug trafficker.

José Luis González Meza, who revealed in September that “El Chapo” wants his money to go Mexico’s indigenous communities, said that Guzmán’s family will receive financial support from a range of foundations in order to open the university in the ex-narco’s birthplace.

It will be designed by Guerrero painter Hugo Zúñiga and have several different faculties, he said. The total cost of the project is unclear.

González said that he was hopeful that President López Obrador would make the time to travel to Badiraguato and preside over a groundbreaking ceremony during his tour of Sinaloa this weekend.

“What we’re hoping for is that … he’ll go to Badiraguato and along with Chapo’s mom, María Consuelo, he’ll lay the first stone and the work to build the university will finally start,” he said.

The president said in February that his government was committed to the establishment of a new public university in the town that will specialize in forestry, while this week he pledged to extend the agroforestry employment program Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) to parts of the country where illicit crops are grown, including Badiraguato.

González said that two other projects backed by Guzmán’s family are also planned, provided that assets seized from the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel are returned to Mexico.

One is the establishment of a cooperative-run chain of stores and the other is the creation of a pharmaceutical company, the lawyer said.

The aim of the former project, González said, is to replicate the cooperative stores that existed when Joaquín Hernández Galicia was the leader of the Pemex workers’ union, an era that spanned almost three decades from the early 1960s to the late 80s.

He said that the new stores would sell a range of products, including “food, coffee, tequila, beer [and] mezcal” for up to 50 percent less than their usual retail price.

If the pharmaceutical company idea gets off the ground, it would start off selling cheap medicine in Mexico but could expand into Central America once production ramps up, González said.

Both the cooperative store chain and the drug firm will be led by management teams made up of campesinos and indigenous people, he added.

“They’re going to be the future industrialists of this country,” González said.

The lawyer reiterated that the billions of dollars that United States authorities are seeking in forfeiture from Guzmán rightfully belong to Mexico.

López Obrador said in July that González had convinced him that Mexico has a claim to Guzmán’s assets and pledged that his government would seek to seize them.

“I believe that everything confiscated that has to do with Mexico should be returned to Mexico, to the Mexican people, and I believe that the United States government is going to agree to turn [it] over,” he said.

Guzmán was found guilty of drug trafficking by a United States federal court in February after a three-month trial during which jurors heard tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, high living and a massive drug-smuggling operation that moved at least 180 tons of cocaine into the United States, along with heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.

He was sentenced to life in prison on July 17 and transferred soon after to the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, the United States’ most secure penitentiary.

Source: Milenio (sp).

Census Bureau seeks driver’s license data, including citizenship and eye color

Two former Census Bureau directors said they were puzzled by the agency’s request

 

by Sam Levine

 

The U.S. Census Bureau has asked several states to turn over driver’s license records that include personal data like eye color as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to obtain citizenship data.

The Census Bureau said Tuesday that it requested the information as part of its effort to use existing government records to compile data on citizenship. The agency said it was requesting the records to comply with Trump’s July executive order asking it to do just that after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the president’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. 

The proposed citizenship question effort set off a firestorm of criticism from civil rights groups and activists who said it would discourage marginalized people, including noncitizens and people of color, from responding to the decennial survey. After the court ruling, the Trump administration has said it would gather citizenship data through other methods, potentially enabling lawmakers to redraw districts to benefit Republicans by leaving noncitizens out of the census count.

HuffPost obtained a draft memorandum the Census Bureau submitted to multiple states that would govern the sharing of driver’s license records. The document outlines a request for monthly driver’s license records between 2018 and 2023. It asks for 11 fields of information that would potentially be on a driver’s license ― including citizenship status and eye color. (The Census Bureau’s request for driver’s license records was first reported by The Associated Press.)

It’s not unusual for the Census Bureau to seek data from states. But two former directors of the Census Bureau said that asking for this specific data is both surprising and unnecessary. 

Asking about eye color, in particular, “is very strange,” said Kenneth Prewitt, who served as director of the Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

 “I cannot imagine how it would be useful in constructing population statistics, which is the task of the Census Bureau — not detailed data about individuals,” Prewitt said.

 In general, driver’s licenses aren’t particularly good indicators of citizenship because motorists are only required to update them once every few years, during which their citizenship status may change, Prewitt said. Driver’s license info is only useful for finding addresses and ages, he said.  

 “Beyond that, they’re no data there,” he added. “That’s not data that’s particularly hard for the Census Bureau to get.”

 

Cuban immigrant dies of apparent suicide in Louisiana ICE detention center

The asylum-seeker was found unresponsive in his cell at Louisiana’s Richwood Correctional Center, which has a history of violence.

A Cuban man legally seeking asylum in the U.S. died of an apparent suicide on Tuesday while detained at an immigration detention center in Richwood, Louisiana.

Staff at the Richwood Correctional Center found 41-year-old Roylan Hernández-Díaz unresponsive in his cell. He was later pronounced dead by medical personnel at 2:20 p.m. Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday.

Hernández-Díaz’s death is still under investigation, though ICE reported that he appeared to have strangled himself.

Hernández-Díaz had been in ICE custody for nearly five months. He initially applied for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, in May, The Associated Press reported.

Border agents deemed the immigrant “inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” ICE said in its news release. He was transferred to ICE custody on May 20.

Hernández-Díaz’s wife, Yarelis Gutiérrez, told BuzzFeed News that her husband was seeking asylum in the U.S. after speaking out against leaders of the Cuban government and being persecuted for it.

Gutiírrez also said that immigration officials had asked her husband to provide more evidence to support his asylum claims, which proved difficult because he was in a detention center, according to BuzzFeed. (by Carla Herreria).

The Richwood Correctional Center, a private detention facility operated by LaSalle Corrections, began housing undocumented immigrants earlier this year after signing a deal with ICE to take in detainees. 

 

Mexico expresses concern about situation in Ecuador  

by the El Reportero’s wire services

 

The government of Mexico expressed today in a statement its concern about the serious events that occur in Ecuador and called for respecting the rule of law and human rights.

‘Mexico strongly condemns all forms of violence, reiterates its commitment to the right to free demonstration and rejects the use of excessive force by the State, which must be used exceptionally and always governed by the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality and responsibility ‘, emphasizes the text.

In the communiqué issued by the Foreign Ministry, the Mexican executive urges the parties to avoid violence and favor dialogue as the only way to find solutions.

‘In that sense, it expresses its concern about the criminalization of opposition actors, since this does not pay in the resolution of the conflict’, it adds.

The statement also expresses its solidarity with the Ecuadorian people and joins the position of various international actors to accompany a peaceful solution.

For more than a week, hundreds of thousands of Ecuadorians have expressed their rejection of a group of economic measures by the Lenin Moreno government that laces the pocket and quality of life of a large majority.

Through various demonstrations and with a national strike started yesterday, protesters demand the repeal of the ‘pack’, a term to name the unpopular measures applied by the administration of Moreno.

Stand out among the approved provisions, the elimination of the fuel subsidy and reduction of labor rights (salary cuts and vacations for the public sector), which affect large majorities.

In addition, others such as the reduction of tariffs, elimination of the advance of the income tax, reduction of the tax on the exit of currencies, which benefit the well-off classes of the South American country.

No more IMF is another of the demands in the mobilizations starring indigenous organizations, workers, students, academics, women, youth, and more social sectors, against what they consider recipes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Last March, Ecuador signed an agreement with the IMF for 4.2 billion dollars, which will be paid for three years, provided that the Government adheres to an economic program established in the agreement.

The program requires an adjustment of about six percent of the Gross Domestic Product and other cuts that include the dismissal of public sector employees, increased taxes and rebates to public investment.

 

Nicaragua invests in infrastructure with support from regional bank

Nicaragua will invest millions of dollars in completing and improving the country’s road infrastructure and drinking water distribution with support from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), which, as was confirmed today, granted huge credits for these purposes.

The financial entity approved the allocation of 333,874,540 dollars to partially finance a new phase of the Road Improvement and Expansion Program, a construction plan assumed by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.

The second loan amounts to 251,470,000 dollars, which will be used to finance part of the project for the Improvement and Expansion of Potable Water and Sanitation Systems in 7 Cities, to be executed by the Nicaraguan Company of Aqueducts and Sewers.

The total amount exceeds 585 million dollars.

 

Supreme Court judge resigns in Mexico pending investigation

President Andres Manuel López Obrador explained Friday that the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Medina is due to an investigation into assets held abroad.

Last night, Medina unexpectedly presented his resignation which still has to be accepted by the Senate, without giving his reasons.

The resignation comes a few months after an investigation against Medina for alleged money laundering by the Financial Intelligence Unit was revealed.

In 2015, then-President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) proposed Medina join the Court, after which his candidacy led to a social media campaign against the approval of his appointment.

But on March 11 of that year, the Senate approved his integration into the Court by 83 votes, for a period that should end on March 9, 2030.

SF Board of Supervisors Outreach advertising to the Hispanic Community in SF – October 2019

October 2019 Outreach Ads

 

GET FREE, TRUSTED HELP WITH YOUR CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION!

The San Francisco Pathways to Citizenship Initiative provides free legal help from community immigration service providers at our free workshops. Resources for the citizenship application fee are available onsite. Learn more at sfcitizenship.org

When: Sunday, November 24, 2019. Registration is open from 9:30 am – 12:30 pm. No appointment needed!

Where: Chinatown YMCA, 855 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

 

APPLY TO BECOME A CENSUS TAKER!

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau is responsible for conducting the nationwide census. While the next census will be taken in 2020, the Census Bureau is recruiting now to fill important temporary positions with great pay and flexible hours. Be a Census Taker and make a difference in your community! Apply online at 2020census.gov/jobs.

 

Child support matters can be complicated, stressful, and confusing. The Department of Child Support Services helps parents understand the process so they know their rights and options for making and receiving support payments. Call us today at (866) 901-3212 or visit our office at 617 Mission Street to learn how we can help you. Information is also available online at www.sfgov.org/dcss.

 

COME JOIN THE SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT!

 

The mission of the Fire Department is to protect the lives and property of the people of San Francisco from fires, natural disasters, and hazardous materials incidents; to save lives by providing emergency medical services; to prevent fires through prevention and education programs; and to provide a work environment that values health, wellness and cultural diversity and is free of harassment and discrimination.

 

Chief Jeanine Nicholson invites you to join a highly respected Fire Department and serve the community of one of the most beautiful cities in the country.

 

San Francisco’s first citywide American Indian Initiative celebrates the culture and contributions of local Indigenous Peoples. Spanning three months, The Continuous Thread: Celebrating Our Interwoven Histories, Identities and Contributions will include over 20 public events including exhibitions, a temporary light-art project, community celebrations, concerts, a film festival, a fashion show and more.  The ambitious Initiative coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz, the one-year anniversary of the City’s first Indigenous Peoples Day and the anniversary of the removal of the Early Days sculpture in the Civic Center after decades of community objections to its racist and historically inaccurate content. Dates: October 4 – December 15. Visit sfartscommission.org for more information.

 

The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach.  Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access.  The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly.  No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions. – CNS3294253

10.4.19.

The South also exists

Musical Dreams in Homage to Rafael Manríquez

 

Compiled by the El Reportero’staff

 

Joyful evening of roots music from the tip of South America to the Rio Grande, presenting: John Santos – Afro-Caribbean Sabor, Osvaldo Torres & Silvia Balducci – Andean whispers Marci Manríquez’ experimental ballads & Latin American music

Also featuring Luis Valverde’s Dance Company, a colorful, soulful Andean Dance Troupe.

This concert honors the music of Rafael Manríquez, the prolific Chilean composer who graced the Berkeley and San Francisco Bay Area stages for over 30 years with masterful presentations of the Latin American Song.

Saturday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m. / Show: 8 p.m. at the Freight and Salvage. Cover charge $26 Adv. / $30 door (plus fees)

 

Diverse writers share their stories

The San Francisco Public Library is hosting a celebration of women of color authors, who will be reading from and talking about their writing, as well as how their various backgrounds influence their creative works.

Award-winning Pakistani writer and artist, Sehba Sarwar, will read from her recently-published debut novel Black Wings. This book is about a story of a mother and daughter who struggle to meet across the generations, cultures and secrets that separate them. Bay Area-based writer Fan Wu will read from her critically acclaimed novels, including Beautiful as Yesterday, a book about two sisters who were born and brought up in China and now reside in the United States. Her writing explores the impact of history and memories on one’s life. Lastly, fourth-generation Southern Californian Liz González will share from her multi-genre collection Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds. Her book explores memories, pivotal experiences and cultural influences that shaped her when growing up as a nontraditional Catholic Mexican American in San Bernardino.

Liz González is the author of Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos New and Selected (Los Nietos Press 2018) and the poetry collection Beneath Bone (Manifest Press 2000). Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have been published widely and recently appeared in Voices de la Luna, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, and Voices from Leimert Park Anthology Redux. She was recently featured on Latinopia.com, KUCR’s Radio Aztlan, KPCC’s Unheard L.A-Baldwin Park, and The Palacio Podcast.

Her awards include an Arts Council for Long Beach Incite / Insight Award, an Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Artistic Grant, a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Residency, an Irvine Fellowship at the Lucas Artists Residency Program, a Macondo Casa Azul Writers Residency, and a Hedgebrook residency.

On Thursday, Oct. 17 at 5:30 p.m., at the SF Main Library, 100 Larkin St., Chinese Center, 3rd Floor. Free.

 

A Permanent Town Square in the Excelsior? 

Excelsior Action Group and Sunday Streets Bring the Vision to Persia Triangle on October 20

 

San Francisco – Excelsior residents have dreamed of creating a permanent town square and public mini park at the Persia Triangle, a site formed by the intersection of Mission Street, Ocean and Persia Avenues in the heart of the neighborhood, for years. As local efforts ramp up to make the community space a reality, the Excelsior Action Group (EAG) and Sunday Streets are transforming the space – currently an auto repair shop – into a pop-up park at Sunday Streets Excelsior, taking place on Oct. 20 from 11am-4pm.

“It is important for our neighborhood to have a dedicated public space and Persia Triangle has been on our hearts and minds for a long time,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safai. “I am fully committed to working with the community and various City agencies to make the acquisition of Persia Triangle a reality.”

Post-production center will be created for indigenous cinema

by the El Reportero’s news services

 

Within the framework of the Imcine Conference, the government of the State of Chiapas and the federal Ministry of Culture will sign an agreement to create the post-production center for indigenous and Afro-descendant cinema of Imcine in La Albarrada, San Cristóbal de las Casas.

In a statement, the Ministry of Culture informed that the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (Imcine) will carry out a series of activities on October 10, 11 and 12, aimed at the creators and communities of the southern region of the country, and will be given to To know the results of the call for the Stimulus for audiovisual creation in Mexico and Central America for indigenous and Afro-descendant communities (ECAMC).

The signing of inter-institutional collaboration agreements with the states of southern Mexico will also be carried out, where the Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, and the director of Imcine, María Novaro, will be present.

Willem Dafoe will be Guest of Honor at the 17th FICM

The extraordinary actor Willem Dafoe will return to the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) as a Guest of Honor for the Mexican premiere of The Lighthouse (dir. Robert Eggers), a film that stars along with Robert Pattinson.

His prolific career of nearly five decades, in which he has participated in more than 100 films, includes works with leading directors such as Paul Schrader, Oliver Stone, Werner Herzog, Abel Ferrara, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese, and four nominations for Oscar: in 1986 for Platoon (dir. Oliver Stone), in 2000 for The Shadow of the Vampire (dir. E. Elias Merhige), in 2017 for The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker) and in 2018 for Van Gogh: in the door of eternity (dir. Julian Schnabel).

 

Famous singer Mercedes Sosa dies

The famous Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, admitted to a hospital for weeks because of a pulmonary liver problem, died on Sunday at the age of 74.

His remains are veiled in Buenos Aires, in the National Congress, where thousands of people who want to say goodbye are concentrated.

“La Negra” Sosa, recognized worldwide as one of the main folk and popular voices of Argentina and Latin America, remained in an intensive care room since September 18. This week he had been connected to an artificial respirator.

The medical report released on Saturday established that his state of health was delicate due to the “deterioration of his organic functions.”

“It was the voice of those who had no voice at the time of the dictatorship and brought anguish for human rights in Argentina to the whole world,” said musician Víctor Heredia, with whom Sosa shared the stage.

 

Honduran film nominated for the 2020 Oscar Awards

Café con Sabor a Mi Tierra is the selected film that will represent Honduras for the consideration of The American Film Academy at the Oscar Awards in the category “Best Non-English Speaking Film”.

The Honduras Selection Committee, chaired by the filmmaker Jurek Jablonicky, approved for Coffee with Flavor to My Land to represent Honduras in the 92nd edition of the Oscar Awards to be held on February 9, 2020.

This category has the representation of 93 countries, including countries with a lot of cinematic tradition such as Spain, Argentina, and Mexico, winners the previous year. Central America is represented this year by Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras.

Coffee with Flavor to my Land is a film by Sin Frontera Estudios directed by the Honduran Carlos Membreño and is based on real events with a focus on human value, sacrifice, struggle and work behind an aromatic cup of coffee that is consumed in Honduras and the world; the love of the family, heritage, culture, values ​​and, above all, the positive image of the country.

Federal Reserve’s latest bailouts more proof bad times ahead

by  Ron Paul

 

Since Sept. 17, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has pumped billions of dollars into the repurchasing (repo) market, the first such intervention since 2009. The Fed has announced that it will continue to inject as much as 75 billion dollars a day into the repo market until Nov 4.

The repo market provides a means for banks that are temporarily short of cash to obtain short-term (usually one day) loans from other banks. The Fed’s interventions were a response to a sudden cash shortage that caused interest rates for these short-term loans to climb to 10 percent, far above the Fed’s target rate.

One of the factors blamed for the repo market’s cash shortage is the Federal Reserve’s sale of assets it acquired via the Quantitative Easing programs. Since launching its effort to “unwind” its balance sheet, the Fed had reduced its holdings by over 700 billion dollars. This seems like a large amount, but, given the Fed’s balance sheet was over four trillion dollars, the Fed only reduced its holdings by approximately 18 percent! If such a relatively small reduction in the Fed’s assets contributed to the cash shortage in the repo market, causing a panicked Fed to pump billions into the market, it is unlikely the Fed will be continuing selling assets and “normalizing” its balance sheet.

Another factor contributing to the repo market’s cash shortage was a major sale of US Treasury securities. Sales of government securities leave less capital available for private sector investments, increasing interest rates. This “crowding out” effect provides one more justification for the Federal Reserve to pump more money into the markets.

The crowding out effect is just one way federal debt increases pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates low. Increasing federal debt increases pressure on the Fed to maintain low interest rates to keep the federal government’s interest payments from reaching unsustainable levels. The over one trillion dollars (and rising) federal deficit is the major reason the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates low or even adopt the insane policy of negative interest rates.

The American people are not even allowed to know what banks benefited from the Fed’s intervention in the repo market, or what plans the Fed is making for future bailouts — even though the people will pay for those bailouts either through increased taxes, debt, or the Federal Reserve’s hidden inflation tax when the next crash occurs. Of course, the average people who will lose their savings and their jobs in the next crash will not be bailed out. This is one more reason why it is so important Congress takes the first steps toward changing monetary policy by passing Audit the Fed.

The need for the Fed to shove billions into the repo market to keep that market’s interest rate near the Fed’s target shows the Fed is losing its power to control the price of money. The next crash will likely lead to the end of the fiat money system, along with the entire welfare-warfare state. Those of us who understand the Fed is the cause of, not the solution to, our problems must redouble our efforts to educate our fellow citizens on sound economics and the ideas of liberty. This way, we can create the critical mass necessary to force Congress to cut spending, repeal the legal tender laws to restore a free market in money, and audit, then end, the Fed.

(Ron Paul is a former U.S. congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity).

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