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Hundreds of migrants continue march through Mexican territory

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Hundreds of Central American migrants continue their march through the Mexican territory to the United States, with no incidents reported despite the fact that they violated the rules of this country.
The 1,000-people contingent entered Mexico on Tuesday. They did not enter Tapachula presumably due to the acts of violence happened there that day when two municipal agents were shot to death by a presumed gang member, governmental sources informed.

They said that the Central Americans walked on the south beltway and agreed to spend the night in Viva Mexico community, located on the outskirts of Tapachula, already heading towards Huixtla municipality.
The migrants arrived in the Rodolfo Robles International Bridge on Monday, located on the border between Mexico and Guatemala.

They asked the national immigration authorities on Tuesday to give them the card for humanitarian reasons, but as the response was negative, they decided to enter the country without documentation.

Opposition accepts official approach on Mexican National Guard
The opposition bloc in the Mexican Senate accepted Thursday President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s position that the armed forces should be part of the National Guard for the next five years.

After more than two months of intense negotiations, debates, lobbying, criticisms and disagreements, the group of four parties opposed to the government agreed with the ruling Morena to establish a period for the return of the Armed Forces to their barracks, and to replace a transitory article on the issue they had withdrawn from the proposal for constitutional reform.

It was the most controversial point of disagreement of the draft with the constitutional reform of the National Guard and that the opposition advocated because his command was civilian and not military, which created, according to Lopez Obrador, a cartoon of the current and failed federal police.

During this period, the Army and the Navy will continue in the fight against organized crime, while consolidating the new police corporation responsible for public security tasks when it already has 50,000 troops recruited from among the country’s youth and more than 300 regional coordinators are operational.
Although the main part of the controversial document has already been resolved, there are still some other points that are expected to be cleared up during the course of the day to reach the plenary session of the Senate without major problems and with the support of all the political forces.

The change of attitude of the opposition was not free, as Morena had to accept several modifications aimed at clearly establishing the civil character of the organization and committed to secondary legislation, referring to three laws, the organic law to govern the National Guard, the registration of detainees and the Legitimate Use of Force, will be approved in a 60 and 90-day period.

The four opposition parties, Institutional Revolutionary, National Action, Democratic Revolutionary and Citizen’s Movement insisted that the Operational Coordination to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff be directed by the Secretariat of Security and Protection with the support of the Defense and Navy.

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Will growers’ demands for wage cuts get help from the U.S. government?

by David Bacon

California growers have complained of a tight labor market for years, as a militarized border and a decade of mass deportations restrict the flow of migrants into the fields. Some growers, like Salinas’ D’Arrigo Brothers Co., have signed union contracts and provided better wages and benefits in order to attract a stable workforce. Others, however, are actively seeking to hold wages down. This recipe for confrontation has produced an escalating legal battle in Washington DC, and a walkout by hundreds of tangerine pickers in the Central Valley.

Growers have increasingly turned to H-2A visas for guest workers, with the decade ending in 2018 seeing a more than 370 percent increase, with no decline in sight. In Washington DC, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, a national lobbying organization for U.S. growers, filed suit in January against the U.S. Department of Labor to freeze the wages of H-2A guest workers at a level barely above the minimum wage.

H-2A workers are recruited by growers every year in other countries, mainly Mexico. They’re given visas for less than a year, which require them to work for the employer that contracts them. They must leave the country when their work is done. Growers have to advertise for local workers first, and can only bring in guest workers if none are available.

Companies using the H-2A program must apply to the U.S. Department of Labor, specifying the work, and the living conditions and wages workers will receive. Each year the Federal government sets state-by-state an Adverse Effect Wage Rate – the wage growers must pay H-2A workers. It is set at a level that supposedly won’t undermine the wages of local workers, but it’s usually just slightly above the minimum wage. In 2019 the AEWR wage in California is set to increase from $13.18/hour to $13.92. California’s minimum wage, for employers with more than 25 workers, will go to $12.00.

On Jan. 8, the day before the new H-2A wages were to go into effect, the NCAE was denied a temporary injunction to halt the increases. The organization then filed suit to roll back AEWR wages to 2018 levels. Michael Marsh, NCAE president and CEO, said the increases were “unsustainable,” and would cost growers “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Agribusiness is being “hammered by unfair retaliatory tariffs,” he charged, in a dig directed against Trump’s trade war with China.

The increases directly affect a sizeable chunk of the farm labor workforce. According to the Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey, the best analysis of farm worker demographics for over two decades, there are about 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., about three quarters of whom were born outside the U.S., and half of whom are undocumented. Last year growers were certified to bring in 242,762 H-2A workers – a tenth of the total workforce and a number that is rising rapidly. Holding down their wages would save growers a lot of money.

But halting the increase would also impact farm workers as a whole. Farmworker Justice, a Washington DC farm worker advocacy coalition, says the average family’s yearly income is $17,500-$19,999. A quarter of all farm worker families earned below the federal poverty line of $19,790.

Farmworker Justice and the United Farm Workers both requested to intervene in the NCAE suit on the side of the Department of Labor, upholding the wage increases. “The growers’ suit will affect farm workers across the country,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “If H-2A wages are frozen, fewer farm workers already living here will want to work for them. Growers will have an excuse to bring in more H-2A workers. It’s becoming more like the bracero program.

Growers have challenged the formula used by DoL to calculate the yearly wage increase. Under President George W. Bush they knocked it out, but President Barack Obama reinstated it. Now the AEWR increase formula is being challenged again, under another grower-friendly administration. Last May 24 the secretaries of Agriculture, Homeland Security, State and Labor issued a “H-2A Agricultural Worker Visa Modernization Joint Cabinet Statement” promising to change the program rules “in a way that is responsive to stakeholder concerns and that deepens our confidence in the program as a source of legal and verified labor for agriculture.

While the suit would have a national impact, it is closely connected to California growers. President Tom Nassif of the California-based Western Growers Association belongs to President Trump’s agricultural advisory board, and prominent WGA member Dennis Nuxoll sits on the NCEA executive committee. NCEA President Michael Marsh was CEO of Western United Dairymen and an officer of the Almond Board of California, both headquartered in Modesto.

Farm worker advocates worry that the Trump administration’s Labor Department may not vigorously defend the wage increase against the growers’ legal challenge. “We would intervene in the NCEA suit no matter what,” said Bruce Goldstein, director of Farmworker Justice. “But we are clearly concerned about what position DoL will take in defending against it, in light of the President’s other anti-worker and anti-regulatory actions.”

The suit is one of a number of moves made by growers in the past two years to roll back H-2A wages and protections. At the instigation of the Washington [State] Farm Labor Association (WAFLA), one of the U.S.’s largest H-2A labor contractors, Washington State’s Employment Security Department and the U.S. Department of Labor effectively slashed the legal minimum for farm worker wages by up to $6 per hour. ESD and the Department of Labor agreed with WAFLA to remove an AEWR piece-rate minimum for picking apples, the state’s largest harvest, effectively lowering the harvest wage by as much as a third.

The assault on farm worker wages has also surfaced in Congress as Republicans in the House and Senate introduced bills in the last two years to also end protections for H-2A workers and expand their recruitment. Republicans representing California’s San Joaquin Valley in the House supported these bills, which failed, but two of those representatives were turned out of office in the midterm elections. What attitude their freshman Democratic replacements will take has yet to be seen. Some California Democrats, however, especially Senator Diane Feinstein, have a record of supporting growers’ use of the H-2A program
Senator Feinstein and Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, however, have reintroduced a bill, the Agricultural Worker Program Act of 2019, which would allow undocumented farm workers to gain legal status by working a minimum number of days, pass security checks, and meet other requirements. “The bill would minimize the need for employers’ use of the H-2A guest worker program by providing a meaningful opportunity for immigration status for the hard-working undocumented farmworkers who put food on our table,” said a statement from Farmworker Justice.

Grower efforts to cut wages have affected workers who are not H-2A visa holders as well. Low wages for farm workers even provoked a strike after New Years, at one of California’s largest agribusiness corporations, the Wonderful Company. On January 11 hundreds of field hands refused to go to work harvesting tangerines in Kern County orchards, after the piece rate they were being paid was lowered from $53 to $48 per bin.

Striking pickers told the media that a fast worker could harvest two bins a day. Assuming an 8-hour day, they would earn about $12 per hour. Some told UFW organizers that they often made less than the $12/hour legal minimum, a violation of state law.

“They’re also told to report to work at a given time, but the work sometimes doesn’t start for a few hours, and they’re not paid for waiting,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. She estimated that there were about 1800 workers on strike on January 11. “They tried to talk with the company, but the company refused to talk with them. We don’t know yet if the management will come to the table. The workers want to work, but they also want to be respected.”

A statement by Mark T. Carmel, director of corporate communications, said Wonderful was “disappointed that some of our third-party labor contractors decided to protest at one of our fields.” A month ago, however, the company said it was raising its wages to a $15/hour minimum in all its subsidiaries, including Wonderful Citrus, Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds, Wonderful Orchards, Wonderful Nurseries, POM Wonderful, JUSTIN Wines and Landmark Wines.

Wonderful’s billionaire owner, Los Angeles investor Stewart Resnick, called his workers “dedicated and hard-working employees … our greatest asset, and the reason for our tremendous success as a company.” Co-owner Lynda Resnick added “this substantial investment in our workers will have an immediate and meaningful impact on their lives.”

The Wonderful Company was known as Paramount Farms until it changed its name in 2015. Its parent corporation, Los Angeles-based Roll Global, also operates the FIJI Water and Teleflora companies. In a 2016 Mother Jones article, writer Josh Harkinson said the Resnicks “are now thought to consume more of the state’s water than any other family, farm, or company. They control more of it in some years than what’s used by the residents of Los Angeles and the entire San Francisco Bay Area combined.”

Paramount Farms had a long history of labor conflict. In 1999 it broke an effort by a thousand workers to join the Laborers Union, in its huge packing plant near Lost Hills on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. At the time the company issued a press release saying that “employees are doing well and do not need a union,” and that its pay and benefits “are superior to most employers in the area.” In 2002, however, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that it had illegally threatened workers with firing, and had illegally fired Margarita Aviso and Leticia Ortiz for supporting the union.

Romero said that workers, meeting at the UFW’s historic “40 Acres” headquarters in Delano, on January 14 discussed the possibility of organizing a union, filing a petition for an election at Wonderful, and bargaining a contract. During the day the company offered to reinstate the $53/bin wage, and the pickers decided to go back into the orchards the following morning. A statement by Wonderful’s Mark Carmel said, “We’ve resolved the main concern raised by our third-party labor contractors and are currently paying the same bin rate for picking mandarins that we previously paid for clementines. Our workers are back on the job and operations have returned to normal.”

UFW Vice-President Armando Elenes felt they’d taken a big step. “They came out of the strike with real leaders and a good organization,” he said. The strikers are mostly indigenous Mixteco migrants from Oaxaca. Two years ago workers from the same indigenous farm worker community struck the Gourmet Trading Company’s grape vinyards, also over a cut in wages. They then voted for the UFW in a union election, and the company agreed to a union contract covering over 500 employees.

“Our main focus nowadays is trying to talk with the company to avoid conflict,” Romero explained. “But some growers take longer to understand than others that this is a better way. Stewart Resnick is a powerful man. But is he willing to get beyond this and recognize what workers want?”

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TPS Holders from Honduras and Nepal Sue Trump Administration

They want to prevent unlawful deportation of 100,000 people

by El Reportero’s wire services

Six adults with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and two U.S. citizen children of TPS holders filed a class-action lawsuit today seeking to stop the unlawful termination of TPS for over 100,000 TPS holders from Honduras and Nepal and prevent the separation of tens of thousands of U.S. citizen children from their TPS-holder parents. The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and ACLU Foundation of Northern California in the release, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Sidley Austin.

In October of 2018, the Court enjoined the termination of TPS for Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador, finding substantial evidence that the terminations were motivated by racism and violated the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs in Bhattarai v. Nielsen allege that the terminations of TPS for Honduras and Nepal suffer from the same legal flaws and should be set aside. Plaintiffs also allege that the terminations are unconstitutional because they require the U.S. citizen children of TPS holders to choose between their country and their family.

Plaintiff Keshav Raj Bhattarai, a member of Adhikaar and Nepali TPS holder shares, “I am proud to be a part of this lawsuit, for all the other Nepali TPS holders like me. With TPS I have been able to build a new life here with my family and I have a found a stable job. When I see so many people’s lives at risk in losing TPS, I am troubled to see that this country would harm its hardworking workers and people. I wish to continue working to support this country, and also continue supporting the rebuilding of Nepal, which is still recovering from the earthquake.”

Plaintiff Donaldo Posadas Cáceres, a member of the Painters’ Union (IUPAT DC21) with TPS from Honduras explains, “I’m taking part in this lawsuit not just for myself and my daughter but for everyone who would be hurt by our TPS being taken away. Forcing our children to choose between the life they have here or a country they don’t know is unfair. Sending all of us to danger and instability is unjust. I’m proud to have been a union painter for two decades in this country and it does not feel right to see all of that just cut away.”

Jessica Bansal, NDLON’s Co-Legal Director, said: “The Trump Administration is illegally trying to gut the humanitarian TPS program, but TPS holders are fighting back. They have already won a temporary reprieve for hundreds of thousands of TPS holders. With today’s filing, they seek to protect tens of thousands more.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are members of diverse organizations fighting to defend TPS in the courts and in Congress, including Adhikaar, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), AND the National TPS Alliance.

Jenny Zhao, Staff Attorney at Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, said: “The Trump Administration’s plan to end TPS for Honduras and Nepal must be stopped before it causes immeasurable harm to TPS holders, their families, and their communities.

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17-year-old enters postgraduate program at Harvard University

Dafne Almazán became the world’s youngest psychologist at 13

by the El Reportero’s wire services

A student who became the world’s youngest psychologist at the age of 13 is now off to Harvard University, the first Mexican minor to be admitted to a postgraduate program and also the youngest in 100 years.

At the age of 10, Dafne Almazán Anaya, now 17, began an undergraduate degree in psychology at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), where she graduated after three years of study.

At Harvard, Almazán will study for a master’s degree in mathematics for teaching.

“My plan is to design and work with models for teaching mathematics to gifted children, which is one of the focuses of the degree,” the young genius revealed in a statement.

She added that she plans to graduate from the Harvard program in one year, which at 18 would see her join the ranks of a select handful of others in the history of the prestigious institution.

Almazán has been a speaker at several national and international professional conferences, including the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children and the American Education Research Association.

She has two professional certificates from Harvard centering on gifted education. In 2016 Almazán was named one of Forbes 50 Most Powerful Women in Mexico, and last year she received Mexico City’s Youth Award.

She was also part of the first generation of the CEDAT intellectual potential program, one of Latin America’s most important centers for the identification of gifted children.

Almazán is fluent in four languages and in her free time has practiced ballet, gymnastics, ice skating, taekwondo and oil painting.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Over 12,700 Central Americans eported in January

Tegucigalpa, Feb 9 (Prensa Latina) More than 12,700 Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran citizens were deported during January, mostly from the United States and Mexico, according to official data published in Tegucigalpa Saturday.

In January, according to the Consular and Migratory Observatory of Honduras, the number of Honduran returnees rose to 4,586, 8.3 percent more than in the same period last year.

The figure does not include the 7,270 Hondurans who left in caravans since October 2018 with the aim of reaching the United States and had to return from Guatemala and Mexico.

There are just over a million Hondurans, three million Guatemalans and 2.8 million Salvadorans living in the United States, according to various sources.

The Guatemalan Migration Institute reported that 6,168 deported citizens arrived in January, while El Salvador received 1,976.

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are part of the so-called North Triangle of Central America, an area affected mainly by violence and poverty.

In mid-October, several migrant caravans left these countries towards the United States and, in retaliation, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to substantially reduce foreign aid to these nations.

Trump is highly questioned for his controversial anti-immigrant policies, including zero tolerance of undocumented immigrants and the idea of building a wall on the border with Mexico.

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CalFresh benefits for March will be issued on a single day, Friday, March 1, 2019, for most households

by Community news

Normally, CalFresh nutrition benefits are issued from the first through tenth of each month. The single-day issuance of March benefits is a one-time event that was approved by the state in order to shorten the gap in food assistance payments. This gap was caused by the early issuance of February benefits due to the partial federal government shutdown.

CalFresh clients can check their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card balance for issuance of March benefits beginning on the first of the month. The San Francisco Human Services Agency (HSA) will continue all other CalFresh operations as usual.

CalFresh Benefits for April

On Friday, April 15, President Trump signed a federal spending bill, thereby avoiding a second federal shutdown. Based on this action, we are assuming that the state will issue April 2019 benefits on the usual staggered cycle of the first through the tenth of the month. For announcements and news regarding CalFresh, please visit www.sfhsa.org/calfresh.

HSA continues to closely monitor the situation and work with partners at the state level to help CalFresh benefits stay available without interruption. We will inform you if anything changes.

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Higher ethnic pride leads to lower risk of depression in young Latinos

by Fernanda Lima Cross, M.S.W.

ANN ARBOR: Latino youth who identify strongly with their ethnic group are less likely to develop symptoms of depression, according to a University of Michigan study.

Previous research has shown that depression affects US-born Latinos. and immigrants of all ages at higher rates than members of any other ethnic-racial group.

“Latino teenagers have an elevated risk of depression, so it’s important that we identify ways to protect them,” said Fernanda Lima Cross, a PhD candidate at the U-M in developmental psychology. “As they develop ethnic pride and learn about what it means to be Latino, they can serve as a buffer against depression.”

The aim of the study, published in the journal Development and Psychopathology, was to better understand the aspects of adolescent development on ethnic-racial identity and its relationship with the development of depressive symptoms among young Latinos.

The data was obtained from a longitudinal study that examined culturally relevant mechanisms to reinforce positive outcomes among youth among Latino families residing in southeastern Michigan. The 148 participants, who were between 13 and 14 years of age at the beginning of the study, answered the surveys annually for three years.

Cross and his colleagues examined the role of the three aspects of ethnic-racial identity among Latino adolescents: 1) the centrality or importance of ethnicity or race for one’s identity 2) private respect (how one perceives one’s own ethnicity or race) and 3) public respect or how one believes that others perceive their ethnic origin or race.

They asked the young people to indicate how often they experienced depressive symptoms, using the Depression Scale of the Epidemiological Studies Center.

“We followed these teenagers during a critical moment in their lives, as they developed their ethnic identity, we met who they are as members of their ethnic group and we learned what it means to be Latino,” Cross said. “Ethnic identity is related to a wide range of outcomes in life, including academic success and general well-being.”

The study findings suggest that several dimensions of ethnic-racial identity are associated with fewer depressive symptoms in different ways at different stages of adolescence.

For example, the degree to which the ethnicity of adolescents was fundamental to their self-esteem was related to lower depressive symptoms as they progressed in adolescence. Younger adolescents with higher positive perceptions of their ethnicity had lower rates of depressive symptoms one year later.

“At younger ages, what mattered most were adolescents’ perceptions of being Latino,” Cross said. “But, as they got older, the perceptions of others about Latinos played a bigger role and were associated with lower depressive symptoms.”

Cross says that this research can be useful to mental health providers working with this population, especially now that young Latinos are growing and developing their identities in an environment of social exclusion and stigmatization where immigrants from their ethnic group are commonly denigrated.

“Teenagers are definitely capturing these negative messages from society, the good news is that parents and young workers can help counteract them by reminding young people of the positive contributions Latinos make,” said study co-author Deborah Rivas-Drake. , professor of psychology and education and author of the book “Below the Surface: Talking with Teens about Race, Ethnicity, and Identity.”

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Roma actress generates criticism after appearing in photo with lighter skin

Yalitza Aparicio admits photo was retouched but wasn’t bothered by it

by the El Reportero’s news services

The indigenous Mixtec actress nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Roma has set tongues wagging after she appeared in a photograph with a lighter than usual skin tone.

Yalitza Aparicio posted a photo to her social media accounts Monday in which she is holding a white Lenovo laptop as part of a campaign to promote the Chinese technology company.

But it was Aparicio’s pale skin rather than the laptop that grabbed the attention of many social media users.

Some said the lighting used for the photo had made her complexion appear much lighter than usual, while others argued that, in an act of blatant racism, her skin had been whitened digitally, with makeup, or by both.

“. . . They bleached Yalitza in this photo for Lenovo, the only things we should bleach are clothes and sheets,” one Twitter user wrote.

Nigorette, a fashion photographer and photography teacher, also said the image of Aparicio had been digitally manipulated to make her appear whiter, an act she said “breaks all professional ethics of [image] retouchers.”

The photographer told the newspaper Milenio that it was evident that a front light had been used for the photo but added that it was equally obvious that it had been digitally altered, pointing out that the skin tone on Aparicio’s hand didn’t match that of her face and that her hair had turned “almost gray.”

Nigorette explained: “It’s necessary to understand that skin is a reflective surface, and in that sense, if we want to represent a person as he or she is, we have to manipulate . . . the brightness in a way that [the person’s skin] recovers a little bit of its natural luminosity, tone and texture . . . The last thing we expect is for the media to fall into the typical error of racist ‘beautification.’”

In other Roma’s film news:

Roma star appears in video celebrating the ancestral beverage pulque

Yalitza Aparicio makes a short appearance in the promotional video

Although it’s not a prominent role, Academy Award nominee Yalitza Aparicio appears in a short musical clip shot as a promotional video for a community band in her hometown of Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca.

The indigenous actress who made her acting debut in Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma was approached last summer by José Manuel Cruz Velasco, director of the musical group Raíces de Tlaxiaco.

Cruz said he had known Aparicio and her sister Edith since they were young girls and that they always joined the workshops organized by the local House of Culture. “For that reason I wanted to invite her, and she supported us by appearing in the videoclip.”

At the time, Aparicio had just finished shooting Roma. Cruz recalled that Aparicio spoke about about her experience but “back then we had no idea of the impact she would have.”

Cruz’s project was to film a musical clip for his group’s Pulque Bendito song, which shifts between the band members — all children and teenagers — and scenes of a ceremony in honor of the maguey in which citizens of Tlaxiaco enjoy pulque, an ancestral beverage obtained through the fermentation of the plant’s sap.

Aparicio herself only appears near the beginning of the video as part of the maguey ceremony. Cruz explained that she had to leave soon after to travel to Mexico City where she received the news that Roma would premiere on August 30 at the Venice International Film Festival.

The Pulque Bendito video was posted to Raíces de Tlaxiaco’s YouTube channel on October 15, where it has earned close to 10,000 views.

Tlaxiaco is a city and municipality in the Mixteca region of the state, about 100 kilometers northwest of Oaxaca city.

Source: El Financiero (sp).

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10 Oscar nominations for Roma, including best film, director and actress

Filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón was himself nominated in four categories

by the El Reportero’ news services

The accolades for Roma, the award-winning film by Alfonso Cuarón, continued today with the announcement of the Oscar nominations — fully 10 of them, including best picture, best director and best actress.

The filmmaker himself became the third person ever to be nominated in four categories in a single year, joining a short roster that includes Orson Welles and Warren Beatty. Cuarón was nominated for direction, cinematography, original screenplay and best picture.

Yalitza Aparicio’s debut acting performance earned her a nomination as best actress, a singular list that also includes another first-timer, Lady Gaga, along with Glenn Close, Olivia Colman and Melissa McCarthy.

The nominations earned by Roma, described by the newspaper SFGate as a “deeply personal exhumation of [Cuarón’s] Mexico City childhood,” also included best supporting actress, best foreign language film, best production design, best sound editing and best sound mixing.

Roma also gave the film’s distributor, Netflix, its first best-picture nomination, a prize that has until now eluded the streaming giant.

Only one other film was nominated in as many categories as Roma this year— Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.

Best-actress nominee Aparicio, 25, who plays a domestic worker in the home of a family living in Mexico City’s Roma district in the 1970s, is the second Mexican actress to earn the nomination. The first was Salma Hayek for her role in Frida in 2002.

Roma had already made history earlier this month when it became the first foreign language film to win the award for best picture at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, where it won three other awards as well.

Other awards won by the film include two Golden Globes for best director and best foreign film.

The other best-film nominees this year are Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, A Star Is Born and Vice.
The Academy Awards will be broadcast Feb. 24 at 7 p.m.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Economista (sp), SFGate (en).

The Oscar nominee has reason to feel proud

Yalitza Aparicio has captivated audiences with her first-ever acting role in Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece Roma. Her nominatioan is a momentous occasion for a multitude of reasons: she’s only the 4th Latin American actress to achieve this honor and the only one to be indigenous, reported Vanessa Erazo.

Especially after facing racist attacks online, Aparicio knew that landing an Oscar nomination would have a tremendous impact on her community.

Thankfully, a friend woke up her up early in the morning armed with a laptop to stream the nominations while they were announced live and a camera to catch Yalitza’s reaction. It’s impossible to watch without crying.

No Manches Frida releases on March 15

In this over-the-top sequel to the smash hit No Manches Frida, the all-star cast of the original (Omar Chaparro and Martha Higareda) and some fresh new faces (Itatí Cantoral and Aaron Díaz) leave the school yard and hit the beach in No Manches Frida 2! But there’s trouble in paradise… literally.

When the seemingly reformed ex-con Zequi is about to marry the love of his life, the lovably nerdy Lucy, wedding day jitters turn into a full blown fiasco and Lucy calls the wedding off. Meanwhile, the school finds itself in deep trouble and the gang heads to the water to compete in the tournament of their lives.

Once they’re all seaside, Lucy runs into her high school sweetheart Mario, whom since she last saw him has transformed into a smoking hot hunk. He’s coach of the opposing squad and Zequi finds himself a rival in more than one competition. Now he has to pull out all the stops to wrangle in his rowdy kids, win Lucy back, and in case that wasn’t enough, save the school from shutting down by leading Frida High to victory!

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Political correctness is much more harmful than people realize

by Amalric de Droevig

A recent poll found that Political Correctness is extremely unpopular in America, even amongst moderates and independents, which got me thinking on the subject. There exists an old quote from a famed British psychiatrist by the name of Anthony Daniels regarding Political Correctness. It is the best quote I know of on the subject, and I have been mulling it over for some time, considering its meaning and its implications. The quote reads:
“Political Correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.

A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine Political Correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.“

In this way, Political Correctness can be seen not only as a form of narrative control and truth suppression, but as a type of relentless bullying.
Speech codes and persistent propaganda no one is even allowed to object to (like diversity worship or the fictions we constantly hear about human equality), reinforce society’s sense of powerlessness. If you can get people to assent to obvious lies, or better yet to repeat them, or better still to absorb them, which is to say to lie to themselves, there is virtually nothing you can’t make them do. You have broken the seal, as drinkers say.

It is as if you have forced a man to murder an innocent, or to rape his own sister. You have destroyed a bit of his soul, you have forced him to surrender, to submit, to choose pragmatism over rectitude, to abandon his reason for the sake of social or professional survival. Once a man has lost his sense of shame, of pride, of agency, of integrity, once he must abandon his own conscience and put on a performance for all the world to see just so that he’ll be socially accepted, he’s a sheep being led to slaughter at that point. He has been subjugated completely. His heart is a gaping wound. He has been warped and debased to his core, to his essence.

We must see Political Correctness then as a very intense form of psychological and spiritual warfare. The goal of it is not just to censor ideas and words and keep people in the dark. The ultimate goal is to destroy the subject’s sense of right, and the subject’s sense of shame, and most importantly, the subject’s will to resist, to live a life of authenticity, of honor, of virtue. Once these dams are broken, vice flows effortlessly downhill for the individual, and for societies living in the shadow of these dams, known colloquially as principle, conscience, probity, integrity, honor and civic virtue— the things that uphold human civilization.

If people aren’t even willing to stand up and rebuff the most glaring of falsehoods, what will they stand up to? They will go along with most anything at that point. People conditioned to wear a mask every day of their lives, to present to the world a perfectly false self, to celebrate things no decent or sensible person could or would celebrate, have already assented to the intolerable.

When the most unthinkable atrocities arrive, they will be more than ready to tolerate them. They have had ample practice tolerating the unthinkable already. They have already assented many times to denying the reality right before their very eyes, and to countenancing what they know in their hearts to be pure evil.

If we understand Political Correctness this way, we must understand Political Correctness to not only be an assault on the truth, which it is of course, but as the main front of a war on human liberty itself, on free minds, on free peoples, on free nations. Political Correctness paves the way for the army of horribles behind it, by turning madness into gospel, meekness into fashion, and surrender into habit.

Vanquished, demoralized peoples do not fight back, they do not rise up and deliver themselves from Marxist tyranny. They applaud rather than cringe (as all people of sound mind would do) when their overlords trot out, on national television, an 11-year-old drag queen dressed up in the attire of a street hooker. They do nothing when told that 9-year-old boys are perfectly capable of deciding to start physically transitioning into girls via powerful, permanently mind-altering and body-altering pharmaceuticals.

They remain silent when they are told that East Asians and whites are the real racists for not wanting to be systematically racially discriminated against in hiring and university admissions countrywide. Because who would assent to absurdity is half-way to atrocity already. He has sacrificed a piece of his soul for security, but will not receive it. The universe never has and never will reward such a bargain.

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Drink more water. This simple and holistic advice is the best way to optimize urological health

by Zoey Sky

It’s a good thing that people are becoming more interested in natural remedies for various aches and pains, but it’s also important to stay hydrated. After all, not enough people understand how drinking enough water regularly is crucial to keeping your bladder, kidneys, and pelvic organs healthy.

Hydration and urological health

Urological health, which involves your bladder, kidneys, and pelvic organs, can be maintained with a free, holistic, and simple method: proper hydration. This might sound incredibly easy, but not everyone remembers to drink enough water every day. Since the human body is made up of more than 60 percent water, hydration is essential for the proper function of every organ system in your body.

Listed below are important facts about hydration and urological health that you need to keep in mind if you want to stay healthy.

Bladder

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) occur when urine has pooled in your bladder long enough to allow bacteria to grow. A person with UTI will suffer from symptoms such as burning, itchy, and painful sensations.

Other symptoms of a UTI may include:

– Bloody urine
– A burning sensation when urinating
– Cloudy urine
– Increased urgency of urination
– Increased frequency of urination without passing much urine
– Pelvic pain (in women)
– Rectal pain (in men)
– Urine that looks like cola or tea
– Urine with a strong odor

There are many risk factors that can cause UTI, such as an enlarged prostate and sexual activity. However, you can reduce your risk by emptying your bladder more frequently. If you’re hydrated, your bladder will tell you when it’s full and ready to be emptied, so always relieve yourself when you feel the urge to urinate. Urinating consistently throughout the day will help eliminate harmful bacteria from your body and prevent infections.

If you have an overactive bladder (OAB), restricting or reducing your fluid intake won’t solve the problem. In fact, not drinking enough water may cause an over-concentration of urine in the bladder, which can then result in irritation.

Irritation in the bladder can cause spasms or UTIs and aggravate OAB symptoms. Like maintaining a healthy weight, you need to find the right balance between over- and under-hydration to keep your bladder healthy.

Kidneys

Water is the “housekeeper” of the kidneys. It helps the kidneys eliminate waste from the bloodstream and it gets rid of the “trash” via urine. Drinking enough water keeps the blood vessels dilated so they can nourish the kidneys with essential nutrients.

Dehydration can impair kidney function and severe or prolonged dehydration may eventually result in kidney damage. Consistently low urinary volume is a significant risk factor for the development of painful kidney stones.

If you’re not drinking enough water, you produce less urine. When urine is in concentrated form and your water intake isn’t enough to dilute it, you may start to develop kidney stones. (Related: Why plenty of water is vital to optimum health.)

Pelvic organs

Water does more than keep your bladder and kidneys healthy. Staying hydrated is also linked to your sexual health.

Being properly hydrated helps promote efficient blood flow throughout the entire body. Optimal blood flow benefits men because it is necessary to achieve and maintain an erection. If you’re dehydrated, you can suffer from erectile dysfunction.

On the other hand, women need to stay hydrated because it helps keep the vagina lubricated during sex. Dehydration can reduce lubrication, which may result in painful intercourse.

Proper hydration may vary per person, especially since your water intake depends on your activity and personal needs. If you exercise regularly, you need to drink more water compared to a person who doesn’t go to the gym that frequently. Older adults need to stay hydrated throughout the day.

In general, the average healthy person should drink at least 30 to 50 ounces of water at consistent intervals throughout the day. Don’t chug too much water at once because over-hydration is also bad for you. If you don’t like drinking plain water, add fruit slices to your water and enjoy a zesty drink.

Always stay hydrated for better urological health. (Natural News).

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