Thursday, September 12, 2024
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Honduras: Drug trafficking and prevention in antidrug agenda

by the El Reportero’s wire services

The 25th meeting of Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies in Latin America and the Caribbean continues today in San Pedro Sula and the main topics are prevention and drug trafficking.
“We must translate this issue to a simple language: prevention, so that our people understand that we have to stand together”, said at the event the Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández.
Sponsored by the United Nations’ Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the meeting is attended by delegations from 44 countries and several international organizations.
During his speech, Honduran President Orlando Hernández emphasized the problems caused by the violence due to drug trafficking in the country, and acknowledged the need to continue moving forward on this issue.
“Hondurans must believe that we can restore security”, he added.
As on previous occasions, the President stressed the need of seeking solutions to the challenge of drug trafficking, and analyze it with a more regional approach.
Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world, with a homicide rate in 2014 of 68 per 100,000 inhabitants, the equivalent of about 16 deaths per day.
The Government acknowledged that most of the homicides are linked to drug trafficking in the territory.

Guatemala landslide kills 186
Guatemala raised today the death toll to 186, confirmed by a recent landslide that buried a community near the capital and where there are still nearly 300 missing.
The Public Prosecutor updated the data after the morgue received more bodies recovered in the last hours by rescue teams of the country and Mexican brigades.
According to the State Coordinator for Disaster Reduction, crews continue to search for the missing with the support of canine units, but with no hope of finding any survivors.
A huge landslide buried last Thursday El Cambray II locality, located at 15 kilometers from the Guatemalan capital and where the ground was saturated by the rains of the previous days.

Most Mexicans feel insecurity in residence places
Sixty-eight percent of the Mexican population older than 18 years old, feels insecure in their respective cities, according to the National Survey for Urban Public Safety (ENSU) announced Wednesday.
With information data from last September, the polled population showed that in the last three months, they have listened or seen in the surroundings of their houses situations, such as consumption of alcohol in the streets (73.2 percent), thefts or assaults (66,6 percent) and vandalism (57.6 percent).
They are all followed by the sale or consumption of drugs (42.1 percent), violent bands or pandillerismo (34.3 percent) and frequent shots with weapons (32 percent).
Regarding the expectation on the public safety, 34.9 percent thinks that it will be still equal, while 29.8 states that it will deteriorate. Only 12.9 percent thinks that it will improve.
Sixty-five point eight percent showed that it modified its habits, with regard to taking valuable objects, like jewels, money or credit cards and 58.5 percent did it with regard to allowing their younger sons to go out of the house.
The survey was spread by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

Binational policy forum on migration and global health

Compilted by the El Reportero’s staff

The XV Binational Health Week (BHW), an annual weeklong series of health promotion and health education activities that include workshops, insurance referrals, and medical screenings, has become one of the largest mobilization of the continent that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the immigrant Latinos living in the United States.
During the BHW, federal, state and local government agencies, together with community-based organizations and thousands of volunteers work hand in hand to bring a number of health education activities, including workshops, insurance referrals and medical screenings for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people, especially to those without medical coverage.
Over 400 participants will discuss immigrants’ health opportunities and challenges. Topics to be addressed: Chronic diseases, infectious diseases, violence from the public health perspective, occupational health, and access to healthcare.
The calendar of events in Northern California can be found in:
http://consulmex.sre.gob.mx/sanfrancisco/index.php/comunidadhttp://consulmex.sre.gob.mx/sanfrancisco/index.php/comunidad.
The inaugural event will take place on Monday Oct. 5 de at 10:30 a.m., at the The California Endowment, 1111 Broadway 7th Floor, Oakland.

The Library welcomes Kindie Rockers for 7th Annual Tricycle Music Fest
October is here and everyone knows it’s time to break out your dancing shoes for some Tricycle Music Fest fun.
Each week in October will feature a different performer, offering their brand of Kindie Rock!
Frances England will bring her Kindie Rock music to Parkside and Mission Bay Branches. From October sun on Friday, Oct. 9th at 4:30 p.m. at Mission Bay Branch. Then she will perform her toe tapping beats at the Parkside Branch on Saturday, Oct. 10 at 3:30 p.m.
Our third weekend of performances will be performed by none other than the Grammy and Emmy winning team of Lucky Díaz and the Family Jam Band. With their new featured album, Adelante!, they will be sure to get the crowd jumping, dancing and singing along. The Richmond Branch will be hosting them at outdoor family fun day on Friday, Oct. 16 at 3:30 p.m. On Saturday, Oct. 17 at 3 p.m., the band will be performing at Bernal Heights Branch.

Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds) Mexican roots, cross cultural, songs of conscience
Los Cenzontles, a group of musicians and dancers that digs deeply into their Mexican cultural roots to promote tradition, pride and cultural awareness. Through research, performance, media production and collaborations, the group has played a leading role in the roots revival in the U.S. and Mexico since 1989.
The groupo performs rancheras, boleros and many varieties of Mexican son including those from the traditional mariachi of Jalisco, pirekuas of Indigenous Michoacán and son Jarocho of Veracruz, and composes new music in traditional and cross-cultural styles that promote socially conscious messages of cultural awareness. They have released 23 CDs, three full-length documentaries and hundreds of digital videos, and will perform songs from the new release.
On Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, Doors open at 7 p.m., the Show starts at 8 p.m., $23 adv / $25 door.

Cuban singer Pablo Milanés dedicates concert to Gabo

by the El Reportero’s news services

Cuban singer-songwriter, Pablo Milanés, founder of the Nueva Trova Movement, will perform today in Colombia to pay tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, during the festival dedicated to the famous writer, coordinators confirmed.
Gabo came to my house in Havana, he liked to investigate my work, but much more than that, he loved to ask about what I composed and played my friends, the things I had not heard and ended fascinating him, and a close friendship was born, more musical than literary, the singer said.
In the concert organized in Medellín, as part of the festival that bears his name, I will launch an album he could not hear, entitled Renacimiento, with songs also influenced by Baroque and mixed with Cuban rhythms, the singer said in statements posted by El Colombiano website.
According to the author of the emblematic song Yolanda and El breve espacio en que no estás, the recent album includes songs in the style of changui, danzón, conga, jazz and son, maximum expression of the popular music in the island.
Milanés’ free performance in the Antióquia capital will be sponsored by the New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation, founded by García Márquez, who was recognized in life with the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Julieta Venegas gets two nominations in Latin Grammys 2015
Mexican singer Julieta Venegas said she felt very happy and surprised with the two Grammys nominations she has when it will take place on Nov. 19.
‘ In reality I am very happy and it was a total surprise, I was hoping for one nomination because the song Ese Camino got selected but not the record, to have two nominations was kind of a shock”.
The former San Diego/Tijuana singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas was nominated for her song, Ese Camino. She has one Grammy Award and five Latin Grammy Award wins to her credit.
Venegas, 44, is a former member of the pioneering Baja punk-rock band, Tijuana No.

Uruguayan film competes for Oscar Award
The Uruguayan film Una noche sin luna (A moonless night), which tells three parallel stories, is competing for the next Oscars, today confirmed the film producer Raindogs Cine.
German Tejeira’s film , starring Uruguayan actors Marcel Keroglian and Roberto Suarez and Argentine musician Daniel Melingo, is among several works competing for Best Foreign Film.
Tejeira began writing the script in 2006 and said: ‘I know how complex the way is, but is one of those things that may happen. We are in competition’.
The film is about three lonely characters that in the New Year’s Eve come to a small town in the Uruguayan countryside, where they have an opportunity to twist their destiny, informed the producers.
The film won last year the award for best feature film at the 10th edition of the Zurich Film Festival.

People who call over text are more laid-back

by John Haltiwanger

I have a confession: I’m terrible at responding to text messages.
If anyone reading this has sent me a text in the past couple of years and I still haven’t answered, I apologize. Please don’t take it personally, I’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Truthfully, I’d much rather talk on the phone, but the caveat is I rarely feel like I’m in the right place or it’s the right time.
For that reason, I’ve often resorted to texting instead of calling, even though I prefer the latter.
Talking on the phone in public feels rude (and is often barred in many places), and with family and friends dispersed across the world in different time zones, it’s difficult to find an appropriate hour to speak.
Texting is far more convenient in this sense. It allows you to keep a conversation private and on your schedule.
Even still, I’m just not good at it. Sometimes I respond to texts days later, well after they’re relevant.
There’s no sense of urgency with texts, they leave things too open. It’s yet another sign we’ve turned into a society of procrastinators. We can push texts aside and answer them whenever we feel like.
But when I receive a call, I can’t help but answer it. I have to know why that person is reaching out — it’s exciting and even unnerving at times.
I feel a strange sense of nostalgia for the days I picked up my parents’ landline phone and called friends to catch up or make plans.
Over the course of high school and college, this ritual morphed into sending text messages, an impersonal exchange involving high frequencies of “yo,” “what’s good,” “lol,” “ttyl” and so on.
Yes, texting is admittedly far more efficient than calling in most cases, but it’s also pretty robotic and antisocial.
I’d rather actually speak to someone because I can get a truer sense of how that person is feeling. It’s hard to read emotions via text messages, even if there are emoji involved.
Tragically, society is working against me and anyone else who prefers the dying art of a good phone conversation.
Americans are texting decidedly more often than calling, particularly when compared to other countries. As the Chicago Tribune puts it:
US smartphone users are sending and receiving five times as many texts compared with the number of phone calls each day, according to the International Smartphone Mobility Report by mobile data tracking firm Infomate.
In total, Americans spend about 26 minutes a day texting. That compares to spending about six minutes a day on voice calls.
Correspondingly, recent data from Pew Research Center shows smartphone owners use their phones for texting more than anything else.
Pew also found 80 percent of teens say texting is one of their top three ways of communicating with their closest friends, compared to 69 percent who said the same thing about calling.
Indeed, it seems people, particularly teens, are avoiding phone calls like the plague. Texting is now the way of the world.
As noted above, this seems to be tied to a desire for control, and it may have broader social implications. Some theorize the reliance on texting is damaging people’s interpersonal skills.
In other words, by texting instead of actually conversing, we’re becoming increasingly socially awkward.
Conversation is a skill that has to be cultivated. When you communicate digitally more than verbally, you avoid conversation and become less adept at it.
Sherry Turkle is an MIT psychologist and expert on technology and communication.
In her words:
The complexity and messiness of human communication gets shortchanged [with texting]. Those things are what lead to better relationships.
Simply put, one could argue those who call instead of text are better with people and develop stronger relationships.
They’re less socially awkward because they don’t fear conversation, given they’re well-practiced at it.
As Turkle explained to NPR, young people told her they preferred not to talk on the phone because “you can’t control what you are going to say, and you don’t know how long it’s going to take or where it could go.”
This suggests they feel anxious about phone calls and are generally more uptight. From this perspective, one could say there is something more laid-back about preferring calls to texts — it’s more spontaneous.
No one is arguing if you prefer texting you’re a socially-awkward control freak. But there is definitely something to be said for hearing someone’s voice and being confronted by the emotion infused in it.
Laughter is far more powerful and contagious than “lmao.” Sarcasm is far more detectable when it’s spoken.
Anger is way more discernible in someone’s tone than in passive aggressive messages.
Verbal communication is one of the human race’s greatest advantages, strengths and gifts — it’s vital to our survival.
We are an inherently social species and depend on the bonds we form to carry us through the trials and tribulations of life.
There’s nothing wrong with texting, but we were granted the ability to speak for a reason and it shouldn’t be wasted.

In Defense of Humanity – Part 1 of two parts

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers: The following article, first published by AntiCoruption Society, interestingly expands on previous articles published by the El Reportero on the subject of how corporations have been taking over our society, our country and our lives – and have, by corporate laws – given artificial life to corporations and treated as living creatures, in their effort to dehumanize and replace humans with robots. – Marvin Ramirez. This is 1 of two parts

First published by the Anticorruption Society

Here are some of the reasons why humanity is amazing and wondrous and can never be replaced by The Corporation’s robots (machines) or any other bizarre ‘pseudo-form’ of Post-Human. [See Aaron Frantz’s documentary The Age of Transitions.]

1) Humans have an infinite capacity for love throughout their entire lives. The ‘love list’ can be quite long: parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, pets, nature, music, poetry, and art et cetera et cetera. It is our unlimited ability to love that saves us and brings us back to life when we’ve suffered a severe loss. [See Love is Just a Series of Actions.]

Since the globalists, like the Rockefellers and their corporations (who are funding Transhumanism) love money and power above all else, they have no clue what an infinite capacity for love is or even looks like.
2) Humans (who haven’t been severely damaged) can easily empathize with others, including plants and animals. This ability to empathize is the basis of The Golden Rule and has been recognized by nearly all religions.  Kindness grew out our ability to empathize and even the ‘rules of etiquette’ were written as a way to make people feel valued and respected.
3) Humans are amazingly creative. We are continually inventing music, art, literature, and even advanced technology.

In fact, humans are so creative it is very difficult to hold us back. There are literally millions of websites, blogs and facebook pages on the internet today; each one representing human creativity. This was a problem for the robber barons at the beginning of the industrial revolution, as Scott Noble’s documentary Human Resources so brilliantly explains.  They have put a lot of time and money into transforming humans into ‘human resources’. But new ideas, including ones for free energy, are being invented all the time despite the fact the would-be global energy controllers keep suppressing them.
4) Humans can express extraordinary beauty with both their voices and their bodies. These qualities have been with us for millennia. Both song and dance ‘bubble’ out of so many humans from within their spirit (soul), it is obvious they are innate qualities in our species. They are many times a direct expression of joy that comes from deep within our hearts.  Have you ever watched a small child do a ‘happy dance’? It is obviously innate.
5) Humans are funny. Humor can just bubble up from our spirit (soul) and come out of our mouths in seconds. When humans gather together, laughter always accompanies us, even when it seems inappropriate. We can’t help it, it is a part of who we are.
6) Humans are both fascinating and dear due to our uniqueness, our inconsistencies, our idiosyncrasies, and our relative unpredictability. It fact, it is impossible to predict when human inconsistencies will surface. People can claim to dislike all things in a category, but there will almost always be an exception. And, how many times have we said: “I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I did it anyway.” How many times have we all missed the forest for the trees? How many times have we changed our minds? No matter how hard the ‘controllers’ try to depict humanity as the ‘masses’, we are all unique, both spiritually and physically.
7) Humans are capable of self-sacrifice . . . in fact we do it all of the time. Mothers give up sleep to tend to their children, fathers work at jobs they hate to put a roof over their family’s heads, people take in their elderly parents who can no longer care for themselves, firefighters risk their lives to save people in burning buildings, soldiers fight and risk death to protect their ‘countries’ [who, at the moment are not worth these soldier’s sacrifices], people with very little give money to aid others in need, and the list goes on and on.
8) Humans never stop learning, whether we want to or not. Each and every day we are exposed to new information and expand our knowledge, even if only in small ways. This process never stops as we all have an infinite ability to learn.
9) Humans have wisdom and common sense which grows exponentially over the course of our lives.  Here is some evidence of extraordinary wisdom by Nicholas Gordon, author of the Poems for Free website:
Wisdom is Based in Human Nature
The principles of wisdom are not only discernible by reason but engraved upon the heart. This is because wisdom is part of human nature, which has evolved over millennia and is in all people the same.
One may ask, then, why all are not wise. The answer is that all are wise to varying degrees, just as all are to varying degrees intelligent, dexterous, creative, curious, and so on.
Wisdom guides our behavior so as to enable the species to survive. It does this in two ways. First, since society is the principal means of human survival, wisdom enables us to live with one another in relative peace. Second, since reason and will offer us uniquely the alternative of suicide, wisdom enables us to attain happiness and survive despair.
If experience were food, wisdom would be taste, enabling us to distinguish good from bad. And although all are endowed with taste, the education of taste enables one to make subtler distinctions and finer judgments.
Similarly with wisdom: the principles are inborn, but their application is much enhanced by upbringing, schooling, reading, conversation, the cultivation of good habits, and the emulation of the wise.
We are born with a taste for beauty and goodness, finding in them our deepest and most lasting pleasure. This is our gift as humans, though because of varying endowment and education we enjoy this gift to varying degrees. TO CONTINUE NEXT WEEK.

Big Pharma in death throes?

Drug companies jack up prices as economically strained Americans seek affordable alternatives

by L.J. Devon

People are tired of being used as pawns in a rigged economy. They’re sick of a medical system that abuses them for everything they’re worth. People are beginning to abandon the rules of the game, exiting a complicated medical system that has played them for a fool. People no longer want to be moved around like chess pieces by the master hands of pharmaceutical companies that only add new side effects to their life while draining their finances. They are tired of being played by competing pharmaceutical companies, which play for checkmate, not for healing.
The American medical system is full of caring people, but from the top down, pharmaceutical economics are set up to keep people sick and dependent. The evil in the pharmaceutical industry is beginning to show more than ever.
Drug’s price goes from $13.50 to $750 as maniacal sociopath takes charge
The most recent example of Big Pharma’s evil comes from Turing Pharmaceuticals. Founder and chief executive of the new startup, Martin Shkreli, took ownership of a 62-year-old drug called Daraprim and raised the price of each tablet from $13.50 to $750. A few years ago, Daraprim cost only $1 a tablet, but as new pharmaceutical companies acquired its marketing license, its price rose sharply. Now, under the command of 32-year-old Shkreli, the pill costs 750 times what it used to cost a few years ago. Sales of the drug in 2010 were $667,000. By 2011, sales jumped to $6.3 million, even as prescription numbers stayed the same at around 12,700.
For several decades, Daraprim has been used to treat toxoplasmosis, which is a parasitic infection that can be passed on to a baby born from an already infected mother. It’s a rare infection but is still observed in AIDS patients who have compromised immune systems.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association wrote to Turing Pharmaceuticals, blasting them for price gouging that is “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.”
Staying true to his arrogance, Shkreli replied, “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business. This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he said. “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”
When he was in his 20s, Shkreli also drew ire while piloting MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company. He was caught trying to convince the FDA to approve certain drugs made by the companies his stocks were shorting.
Big Pharma committing suicide as greed bleeds through
Turing Pharmaceutical’s outrageous price increases are not the only signs of the pharmaceutical industry imploding in on itself. In fact, many pharmaceutical companies now buy up old drugs, give them new marketing appeal, and then jack up their price as if they are some “specialty” drugs.
When Rodelis Therapeutics acquired the drug Cycloserine, they jacked up the price of 30 pills from $500 to $10,800.
When Valeant Pharmaceuticals bought up an old heart drug called Isuprel, the company quickly raised the price by 525 percent, ultimately drawing a Congressional investigation led by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders and Maryland Representative Elijah E. Cummings. Sanders and Cummings found out that the drug’s price had already been quintupled by the previous Big Pharma buyer. They also found out that an antibiotic called Doxycycline shot up from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849 by April 2014!
The pharmaceutical industry is masquerading as a system that promotes healt,h but all it really does is dominate people’s lives through price gouging and unwanted side effects. The more people begin to see this, the more they will turn to the actual answers that promote holistic healing. Big Pharma is committing suicide as its greed bleeds through. The manipulative climate of pharmaceutical economics is not conducive for healing. The more people realize that, the more they will seek answers outside of the pill bottle. Natural News.

Native student and family disappointed

They met with university president re native genocide

by Vincent Schilling

One week after 19-year-old Native American student Chiitaanibah Johnson of California State University, Sacramento says she was disenrolled from her U.S. History class for disagreeing with her professor over the existence of Native American genocide, Johnson and her family met with Sacramento State President Robert S. Nelsen to discuss the matter. Though Johnson and her family say the meeting was cordial and sincere, they feel disappointed and say they fear neither the school nor the president will be taking any action that will satisfactorily address their concerns.
President Nelsen agreed to meet on Thursday with Johnson as well as her mother, Martina Johnson, father Kurt Johnson and Cindy La Marr (Pit River and Paiute), Executive Director of Capitol Area Indian Resources, Inc. in Sacramento, an organization that advocates for the academic and cultural rights of American Indian students. Nelsen told the family and the University has told ICTMN in an email that the President will also be meeting with Professor Maury Wiseman, the professor involved in the matter, at a later time.
Johnson says she was comforted by the meeting’s informality but fears a viable solution may never happen. “The president was respectful, open and I didn’t expect it to be just him,” she said. “I thought someone would be recording it or there would possibly be a lawyer present, but there wasn’t.
“But when we pressed for a solution,” says Johnson, “the president told me that his hands were basically tied. I thought at least the professor’s class might be monitored or evaluated on some level. But the professor is still teaching and going on with his class.”
Cindy La Marr, who has worked with public schools and universities for many years for the benefit of Indian country, says she was not as impressed by Nelsen’s cordial demeanor. She told ICTMN that some of Nelsen’s proposed solutions were not sufficient. “I asked if the instructor would be required to attend this, and he said, ‘No.’”
La Marr says that when she and the family asked if there was going to be any disciplinary action against the professor, President Nelsen said Professor Wiseman was protected by his faculty’s labor union. La Marr says after the Johnson family’s repeated attempts to ask if the professor would be disciplined were deflected, they decided to leave. “I continually asked, ‘What is your plan?’” Martina Johnson said. “The President just told us, ‘It is out of my hands.’”
In addition to speaking to ICTMN, student Chiitaanibah Johnson also issued a written statement addressing her thoughts on the meeting.
“The President was fair, open and welcoming in hearing my concerns. I appreciated his candor regarding the bureaucratic and regulatory restrictions his office is subject to with regards to the limited actions he is allowed to take with regards to the issues at hand.
However, I am particularly concerned that while CSU-Sacramento officials are working to transfer me into another course, Professor Wiseman, under protection of the faculty teacher’s union and legal team, is still teaching under no observation or supervision while under investigation and that curriculum changes to actually address GENOCIDE are even less likely.
Having met with the CSU-Sacramento President, a fair and reasonable resolution to these issues appears unlikely within the current bureaucratic bounds of the university.
There are three very important points we want to make very clear:
Genocide is and always has been wrong.
Teaching otherwise is wrong.
Instructors demonstrating such lack of academic rigor and acting in a manner both aggressive and intimidating manner of stifling student questioning should be held accountable in a manner both fair and timely.”
Chiitaanibah Johnson’s father Kurt Johnson added to his daughter’s remarks and told ICTMN, “The professor’s statements were a product of a direct lack of academic rigor. Academic freedom does not preclude academic responsibility.”
ICTMN has reached out to Sacramento State regarding the meeting. University spokesperson Elisa Smith replied in an email with the following statement:
President Nelsen had an extensive, fact-gathering meeting with Ms. Johnson and her family as he attempts to achieve a positive resolution in this matter.  He also is meeting with Prof. Wiseman.
As the fact-finding continues, and because this is an ongoing personnel matter, we cannot comment further at this time.
In the meantime, President Nelsen’s message to the campus earlier this week speaks for itself:
We at the University believe in academic freedom, and we also believe in civility and rigorous academic research. Our standards must be high, and we must follow the processes that we have put in place to ensure that the rights of students and faculty are protected.
Johnson says when she first returned to the school after the incident, she felt as if people were looking her way but not overtly staring or being intrusive. Though she says she is disappointed in the outcome thus far, she is encouraged by the outpouring of support from Indian country.
“It is what it is. I had no idea what to expect based on what happened but I told myself not to be not to set on the idea that the professor would be reprimanded,” she says. “I thought they might make him apologize or something else. The president basically said his hands were tied and there was only so much he could do.
“I feel unresolved about the issue.  But my mom says, ‘There are Indian people all over the country that are supporting you because they know the truth and they know you stood up for them.’
“There is a conversation now,” says Johnson. “And people are talking about whether genocide has happened. My father said something that really affected me. He said, ‘Even if nothing else happens, the circulation of this story and the effects on conversations across the country are more than my own grandfather could have done.’ If I had done something like this back then, it could have gotten me killed. But here I am.
“I didn’t realize how good having the blessing of so many Indian people would feel. I’ve only known the natives of the outer rings of my family or in college, but I’ve never felt so connected to Indian country.”
Follow ICTMN’s Vincent Schilling on Twitter – www.twitter.com/VinceSchilling

Monsanto loses GMO permit in Mexico – judge sides with the bees

by Arjun Walia

A number of countries around the world have now completely banned GM food and the pesticides that go with them, or have severe restrictions against them. This comes after the world has experienced a massive resistance against Monsanto and other biotech giants that manufacture GMOs and pesticides.
It’s (the resistance) also a result of numerous studies that have emerged showing the environmental and health dangers that are associated with pesticides, as well as health dangers that could be associated with GMOs.
The latest country to make headlines with regards to banning Monsanto products is Mexico, as a group of beekeepers was successful in stopping Monsanto from the planting of soybeans that are genetically modified to resist their Round-up herbicide.
Monsanto loses Mexican permit
Monsanto had received a permit to plant its seeds on over 250,000 hectares of land, which equates to approximately 620,000 acres. That’s a lot of land, and they managed to get the permit despite thousands of citizens, beekeepers, Greenpeace, Mayan farmers, The National Institute of Ecology and other major environmental groups protesting against it.
According to The Guardian:
“A district judge in the state of Yucatán last month overturned a permit issued to Monsanto by Mexico’s agriculture ministry, Sagarpa, and environmental protection agency, Semarnat, in June 2012 that allowed commercial planting of Round-up ready Soybeans.  In withdrawing the permit, the judge was convinced by the scientific evidence presented about the threats posed by GM soy crops to honey production in the Yucatán peninsula, which includes Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán states. Co-existence between honey production and GM soybeans is not possible, the judge ruled.”
Mexico is the fourth largest honey producer and fifth largest honey exporter in the world.
These Pesticides Are Killing Bees and Farmers Are Unable To Export Pollen From GMO Crops
Bee colonies are declining very fast, threatening food security all over the world, and as the guardian reports:
“GM crops could devastate the important European export market for Mexican beekeepers, where the sale of honey containing pollen derived from GM crops has been restricted since a landmark decision in 2001 by the European Court of Justice.”
Here is more on a study that found GM pollen destined for Europe after this ruling, and according to local farmers, threatens the honey industry. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-gmo-soybean-pollen-threatens-mexican.html.
Below is a summary of the problem (apart from massive bee declines):
“David Roubik, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and his colleagues developed the ability to identify pollen grains in honey in Panama and in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s when they studied the effects of the arrival of Africanized bees on native bees. “Nobody else can do this kind of work in the ‘big field’ environment and be confident that what they are seeing are soybean pollen grains,” said Roubik. They found that six honey samples from nine hives in the Campeche region contained soy pollen in addition to pollen from many wild plant species. The pollen came from crops near the bee colonies in several small apiaries. Due to strict European regulations, rural farmers in the Mexican Yucatan face significant price cuts or outright rejection of their honey when their product contains pollen from GMO crops that are not for human consumption. The regional agricultural authorities, furthermore, seemed unaware that bees visited flowering soybeans to collect nectar and pollen”
A study is published in the US National Library of Medicine and in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology shows how several recent studies illustrate glyphosate’s potential to be an endocrine disruptor. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with the hormone system in mammals. These disruptors can cause developmental disorders, birth defects and cancer tumors.
A group of scientists put together a comprehensive review of existing data that shows how European regulators have known that Monsanto’s glyphosate causes a number of birth malformations since at least 2002. Regulators misled the public about glyphosate’s safety, and in Germany the Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety told the European Commission that there was no evidence to suggest that glyphosate causes birth defects.
A new study out of Germany concludes that Glyphosate residue could reach humans and animals through feed and can be excreted in urine. It outlines how presence of glyphosate in urine and its accumulation in animal tissues is alarming even at low concentrations.
It’s also been linked to Alzheimers, Parkinsons Disease and Autism.
A recent study conducted by researchers from RMIT university, published in the journal Environmental

Research found that an organic diet for just one week significantly reduced pesticide (commonly used in conventional food production) exposure in adults.
Thirteen participants were randomly selected to consume a diet consisting of at least 80 percent organic or conventional food for precisely seven days, afterwards crossing over to the alternative diet from which they started.

Urinary levels were used for analysis. The study found that urinary dialkylphosphates (DAPs) measurements were 89 percent lower when they ate an organic diet for seven days compared to a conventional diet for the same amount of time.
“A lot of these agents were initially developed as nerve gases for chemical warfare, so we do know that they have toxic effects on the nervous system at high doses. Conventional food production commonly uses organophosphate pesticides, which are neurotoxins that act on the nervous system of humans by blocking an important enzyme. Recent studies have raised concerns for health effects of these chemicals even at relatively low levels. This study is an important first step in expanding our understanding about the impact of an organic diet” (source) – Dr. Liza Oates. Natural News.

Pope stressed importance of “Substainable Development” among others

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Francis said during his address at the UN, that economic and social exclusion is a violation of human rights and urged for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, wars and drugs trafficking, because of their high cost in lives and the suffering caused to mankind.
When addressing to a plenary session of the UN General Assembly, Pope Francis regretted that many people are victims of conflicts.
The Pope also demanded urgent action to tackle the dramatic reality of exclusion and inequality, and stressed the importance of the Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Sustainable Developtment, a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, contains the key elements for the creation of a new social, economic and population reduction order, which, according to experts, is the globalists’ agenda contained in the Agenda 21 action plan, that ends private property and reduces the population of the world to no more than 500 million people.
It is an action agenda for the UN, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels. The “21” in Agenda 21 refers to the 21st Century. It has been affirmed and modified at subsequent UN conferences.

Students-teachers were attacked in Iguala by elite troops
Ayotzinapa students-teachers, disappeared on Sept. 26, 2014, were attacked in that date by an elite groups led by the then sub-director of Iguala Police (Mexico), was released today.
According to witnesses’ statements, the special group, known as ‘Los Belicos’, was led by police deputy director, Francisco Salgadoes and was used in ‘immediate response’ actions.
According to testimony, the students were attacked on the night of September 26, 2014 by masked men who fired heavy weapons.
‘Los Belicos’, also responded to the command of the then Mayor, José Luis Abarca, who used them to monitor access to Iguala. Besides being members of the criminal group ‘Guerreros Unidos’ (United Warriors).
The involvement of ‘Los Belicos’ in the events of Iguala is established from some statements of witnesses affirmed in the preliminary investigation that the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) opened last week in a public version.
‘People who seem to be from the state, as they were uniformed differently, even carrying body armor, with hoods covering their faces, wore tactical team’, was collected in the statements of one of the witnesses.
From these and other statements was established that ‘Los Belicos’ managed to block the tracks way in which the students were travelling, in the 024, 025 and 027 patrols, and attack them later with bullets and took those who are still missing.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, admitted today in Jamaica the atrocities committed during slavery in the colonial era, but ruled out making reparations for Britain’s role, despite the Caribbean demand for compensation.
During his speech to the parliament of the island, the president stated it would be wrong to ignore the painful aspects of that period and expressed his pride for his country as it abolished this form of servitude.

A poet’s Love – combining song, aereal dance and theater

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Zaccho Dance Theatre (ZDT) will premiere A Poet’s Love, a new work created by Zaccho’s Artistic Director Joanna Haigood and Brooklyn-based singer/actor José Joaquín García.
A Poet’s Love is a new creation based on the Dichterliebe song cycle from classical German composer Robert Schumann. A Poet’s Love takes the form of sixteen discrete vignettes, each one responsive to and deeply immersed in the musical and poetic context of a song in Dichterliebe.
The complete work – combining song, aerial dance and theatre – will be performed at Zaccho Studio in San Francisco and will feature members of ZDT’s performance ensemble as well as José Joaquín García, who will perform the songs accompanied by well-known Bay Area pianist Frederick Harris.
On Friday Oct. 2, 2015. Additional performances will occur Saturday, Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. and Sunday Oct. 4 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $20 at the door, but seating is limited. To guarantee and pre-order tickets please visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2182219. Feel free to call us at 415.822.6744 or send an email to christopher@zaccho.org for more information.

La Casa de las Madres kicks off Domestic Violence Awareness Month Standing
An event on behalf of La Casa will take place, and all proceeds from the event will go support La Casa, San Francisco’s oldest and largest anti-domestic violence provider. La Casa helps women, teens, and children of all ages affect change and break cycles of violence.
La Casa de las Madres’ annual premier fundraiser, the redHOT party, will be held on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015 from 6 – 9 p.m. at 111 Minna Gallery at 111 Minna Street in San Francisco.

The Library welcomes Kindie Rockers for 7th Annual Tricycle Music Fest
October is here and everyone knows it’s time to break out your dancing shoes for some Tricycle Music Fest fun.
Each week in October will feature a different performer, offering their brand of Kindie Rock!
Aaron Nigel Smith will kick off the 7th Annual Tricycle Music Fest full of reggae beats reimagined for the child in you and with you, the party gets started on Friday, Oct. 2 at 3 p.m. at the Portola Branch. The fun will continue on Saturday, Oct. 3 at 4 p.m. in the Main Library’s Children’s Center.
The following week Frances England will bring her kindie rock music to Parkside and Mission Bay Branches. From October sun on Friday, Oct. 9th at 4:30 p.m. at Mission Bay Branch. Then she will perform her toe tapping beats at the Parkside Branch on Saturday, Oct. 10 at 3:30 p.m.
Our third weekend of performances will be performed by none other than the Grammy and Emmy winning team of Lucky Díaz and the Family Jam Band. With their new featured album, Adelante!, they will be sure to get the crowd jumping, dancing and singing along. The Richmond Branch will be hosting them at outdoor family fun day on Friday, Oct. 16 at 3:30 p.m. On Saturday, Oct. 17 at 3 p.m., the band will be performing at Bernal Heights Branch.

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