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Between tradition and modernity: II Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication

“Plenary on women in the Indigenous Communications during the II Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication. (PHOTO BY ORSETTA BELLANI)

by Orsetta Bellini

On October 13, 2013 the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication came to a conclusion. The meeting took place in the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec (Oaxaca, Mexico), and was an opportunity to think about the challenges that communicators in the Americas face: broadcasters, photographers, filmmakers, writers and journalists working in Indian television channels. They are adults, seniors, youths and even children who feel the urgent need to talk about the changing continent they live in. Some have just started small community projects, while others represent stable outlets in their countries, such as Canal 22 Nicaragua, which has the highest ratings in the area where it operates.
“Our traditional way of communicating has been orally, it´s the way we convey our indigenous languages. We need to rescue and strengthen communication without neglecting modern media,” says José Luis Matias Alonzo, documentary maker from the Nahua people in Guerrero, Mexico. The Indian media must learn how to combine tradition and modernity, and rescue their image given by state and commercial, which show them as folkloric, drunk and terrorists.”

The right of indigenous communication is recognized by various international conventions, but in many countries governments and de facto powers that do not allow its exercise.” In Honduras, the Lenca and Garifuna peoples work fully on community radio stations, and are strongly repressed by the authoritarian government”, says Wilma Calderon, from the Masta Miskito people organization. “The government is afraid because the radios broadcast information about what is actually happening in the country, for example about the hydroelectric concessions that are affecting the Lenca people.”

According to participants at Summit, the aim of community media is to report to the outside, while still communicating to the domestic market, through the use of the indigenous language that reflects the worldview of indigenous peoples. These media should enhance organizational processes, cohesion and indigenous identity, promoting a good life quality and the elimination of colonialism, racism and patriarchy.

According to Colombian misak Liliana Pachana Moila, who works on the creation of educational content for radios, “Indigenous media are a concern for governments, and even more in international fora like this. The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication is very important because it allows us to strengthen our network of mutual support, so we can generate international leverage.”

People from different parts of the continent were excited to meet in order to share experiences, debate and strengthen their communities in this cold town at Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. The summit’s closing statement called on national governments to respect the rights of indigenous communication and to make the necessary legislative reforms, in order to recognize their autonomy and the electromagnetic spectrum as a common good, as well as to ensure the allocation to indigenous media of frequencies derived from the digital transition.

A number of proposals came out of the summit, such as the establishment of a Multimedia Indigenous Communication Platform Abya Yala as a tool for articulating indigenous communication processes and as a space of socialization.

Another important proposal was building a mobile school for indigenous communication that would allow the training of politically trained communicators: communicators as political leaders use the media as a forum to denounce the abuses suffered by indigenous peoples, autonomous from the government and the boards of their own organizations.

The word “autonomy” was often heard during the event, and there are different views on how it can be applied. Some believe that the state has to provide financing to community media without affecting their autonomy, those who think that by accepting money from the government, autonomy is not possible, and those who believe that they do have to accept public financing, but not by all levels of the government and only under certain conditions. In fact, many media boycotted the summit just because it received funding from the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, which harasses numerous Mexican community radios.

In addition, defections were caused by the invitation to President Enrique Peña Nieto, considered responsible for human rights violations against indigenous peoples.

 

10 ways the Obamacare train wreck is screwing North American people

by Paul Joseph Watson Analysis

Obamacare is a big government boondoggle that will empower the nanny state to extort, intimidate, harass and surveil Americans like never before. Here are ten ways in which the Obamacare train wreck is screwing the American people.

1) Research by the Manhattan Institute documents how average insurance rate premiums will rise 99 per cent for men and 62 per cent for women under Obamacare. In states like North Carolina, men face a whopping 305 per cent average rate hike, whereas women in Nebraska will be paying on average 237 per cent more. Studies by the Congressional Budget Office found that some Americans will face premium increases of 203 percent under Obamacare. The new law will increase health care spending by over $7000 for a typical family of four. When we asked Americans on Facebook and Twitter if their costs would be higher or lower under Obamacare, virtually all said they would be paying significantly more.

2) The Obama administration claims that federal subsidies will counteract these rate hikes, but according to health care expert Avik Roy that’s simply not true. “You hear all these excuses from the [Obama] administration — that people are exaggerating the effect of the law,” Roy told CBS News. “But real people are getting notices from their insurers now. My blog is flooded with comments from people saying that they just got a huge premium hike,”

3) The Obama administration lied to the American people when it claimed that existing health insurance plans could be kept. Obama’s promise that, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what,” was complete baloney. Americans across the country are being informed that their existing health care plans are being canceled because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” “The promise that you could keep your old policy, if you liked it, has proved illusory, writes Kathy Kristof. “My insurer, Kaiser Permanente, informed me in a glossy booklet that “At midnight on December 31, we will discontinue your current plan because it will not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.” My premium, the letter added, would go from $209 a month to $348, a 66.5 percent increase that will cost $1,668 annually.”

4) Numerous analysts have concluded that the complete train wreck that was the launch of Healthcare.gov was in fact designed to fail in order to avoid a sudden backlash from Americans irate at the massive premium increases. Online database experts say the system wasn’t even tested before it was launched. “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not “troubled.” Not “glitchy.” A failure,” wrote the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said it should be delayed for a year. Only about 1 out of every 100 people who have attempted to enroll for a health care plan (if they could even access the website in the first place) have been successful.

5) For those Americans who are able to enroll in Obamacare, they are putting their private information at the mercy of hackers and NSA spies. IP addresses, social security numbers, private bank account details, employer details, email addresses and passwords are all being uploaded to a shoddily designed database that is wide open to penetration, and the record can never be deleted. “Obamacare is the meta-level con of tricking Americans into thinking they’re signing up for free health insurance when, in reality, the website primarily exists to scrape personal financial details, passwords, emails and social security numbers from Americans who will later be targeted by the government itself,” writes Mike Adams.

6) As a result of Obamacare, the general precedent has now been set, thanks to last year ’s Supreme Court ruling, that the federal government has the power to force Americans to purchase private goods and services. What’s next? Will the government force Americans to buy a certain brand of “eco-friendly” vehicle only? Will the feds force Americans to buy “licenses” to watch television, as happens in the UK? The door has now been opened with potentially disastrous consequences for financial freedom and the cancerous growth of big government.

7) Obamacare provides the IRS with a new justification to hunt down Americans deemed to be evading the new system. While claiming that the IRS will not target Americans who don’t sign up, the administration last year directed $500 million to the IRS “to help implement the president’s healthcare law.” With the IRS already claiming the power to prevent Americans who are merely under investigation from leaving the country, a House Ways and Means Committee study last year concluded that 16,500 new IRS agents would be hired to oversee the nearly two dozen tax levies imposed by Obamacare.

8) Many small businesses are firing workers and scaling back working hours in a desperate effort to avoid exorbitant Obamacare costs. Whereas giant companies like McDonalds have received waivers, almost half of small businesses said they froze hiring as a result of the Affordable Care Act and one fifth said they had been forced to fire workers. Numerous companies announced last year that they would be laying off hundreds of employees. Many businesses are also reducing the number of hours their employees work in order to avoid Obamacare mandates. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obamacare will be a disaster for the US economy, expanding the deficit by billions of dollars every year and “further spiraling America into an uncontrollable debt.”

9) Other small businesses have chosen to close down entirely. A chiropractic clinic in Pennsylvania was forced to close down as a result of receiving reduced payments from insurance companies thanks to Obamacare. CiCi’s Pizza franchise owner Bob Westford pointed out that the additional $221,000 in taxes as a result of Obamacare was $78,000 more than the combined profit of his three restaurants, making the decision to shut up shop a no brainer.

10) The only entities that seem to be benefiting from Obamacare are giant insurance companies, who have all seen their stock prices soar over the last three years. That’s unsurprising given that it was the insurance companies who wrote the foundational document for Obamacare in the first place.

Study: Chemotherapy increses cancer growth, resistance to cancer cells treatment

by Jonathan Benson

The cancer treatment scam that is chemotherapy has once again been shown in the scientific literature to be a major cause of, rather than a cure for, cancer. According to a new study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, chemotherapy not only promotes the growth and spread of cancer cells by damaging the healthy tissue that surrounds tumors, but it also causes cancer cells to develop full-on resistance to the popular treatment, morphing them into “super” cancer cells.

Researchers from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, learned this after observing the effects of chemotherapy on healthy cell tissue. What they found is something that we here at NaturalNews have been saying for years, but that the medical system as a whole is only just now waking up to — chemotherapy, which is a recognized poison, damages the DNA of healthy, non-cancerous cells, causing them to produce molecules that in turn produce more cancer cells.

It does not take a rocket scientist to make this deduction, of course, as simple common sense dictates that blasting healthy cells along with unhealthy cells is going to cause damage to all of the cells. But this is apparently big news up in the Northwest, where scientists are apparently baffled as to how this can be. And we are not talking about minor damage here — according to the figures, major damage to healthy cells occurs as a result of routine chemotherapy treatments.

“[T]he researchers found that chemotherapy can cause fibroblasts (cell DNA) to increase production of a molecule called WNT16B by 30-fold in tissues surrounding  a tumor,” explains the group Cancer Research U.K. in a recent report on the study. “This then helps cancer cells to grow, invade neighboring cells and resist chemotherapy,” it adds. ‘Super’ cancer cells caused by chemotherapy more deadly than ever.

As if this is not bad enough, the same team found that another major side effect of chemotherapy is cancer cells grow more virulent than they were before the treatment.

Like “superbugs” and “superweeds,” which we now know developed resistance in response to conventional drug therapies and chemical sprayings, respectively, these “super” cancer cells no longer respond even to the most aggressive forms of chemotherapy, which means cancer itself is becoming more deadly. “These results delineate a mechanism by which genotoxic therapies given in a cyclical manner can enhance subsequent treatment resistance through cell nonautonomous effects that are contributed by the tumor microenvironment,” explains the study abstract.

You can read the fully study abstract here: http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v18/n9/full/nm.2890.html.

Not surprisingly, at least one doctor heavily vested in the cancer industry has already come out to call not for an end to chemotherapy but rather for the development of new treatments that might alter the body’s natural resistance mechanisms to better accommodate the toxic effects of chemotherapy. This is how the conventional medical system operates, of course — simply add new drugs into the mix to cover up the side effects of other drugs, and lather, rinse, repeat. “Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy,” explains Dr. Allen Levin, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, in his book, The Healing of Cancer. “Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade, yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors.”

If you or a loved one suffers from cancer, there are alternatives to chemotherapy and radiation. The Gerson Therapy; Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s antineoplastons; cannabis oil containing high levels of healing cannabinoids; and freshly-juiced marijuana leaves are all viable cancer treatment protocols that have healed many people. You can learn more about each of these methods at the following links: http://gerson.org, http://www.burzynskiclinic.com, http://www.sfweekly.com, http://www.naturalnews.com.

Report: Latino-owned businesses bring in $100 billion a year to Californa economy

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Hugo MéridaHugo Mérida

Hispanic-owned businesses contribute more than 650,000 jobs and more than $100 billion annually to the California economy, which makes them fundamental to the prosperity of one of the nation’s largest states.

“Hispanic businesses are vital for the California economy,” Hugo Merida, president of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, told Efe.

California, with some 38 million inhabitants, of whom 39 percent are of Hispanic origin – the same percentage as Anglos – is among the world’s top economic powers, ahead of countries like Mexico and Spain and at the same level as Italy and Russia, according to figures provided by the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

Merida noted the importance of money spent with Latino businesses by the approximately 14 million Latino consumers.

“Hispanics buy from Hispanic businesses like stores and restaurants because what they consume is not provided by other companies,” he said.

The California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, together with the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, recently published a study showing there are some 700,000 businesses created or owned by Latinos, which contribute some 650,000 jobs to the California economy.

“In Los Angeles County alone we estimate there are approximately 200,000 Hispanic businesses,” Merida said.

Drug cartels deliver aid to storm victims before government does Members of the drug cartel “Los Zetas” distributed groceries to residents of various colonies of the city that suffered the ravages of Tropical Storm “Ingrid”.

The groceries were packed in plastic bags and

Has the United States suffered a coup d’etat?

by Marvin Ramirez

Marvin J. RamirezMarvin Ramirez

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Much has been said about the little-by-little lost of freedoms in the United States since the coward killings on the 9/11 attacks, which gave life to the infamous Patriot Act, responsible for these lost of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. The following article, authored by Dr. Paul Craigs Roberts, explains that what really has happened is that the Constitutional government has ceased to exist via a coup d’eat and replaced by an international banking cartel.

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/paul-craig-roberts
Global Research, July 14, 2013
paulcraigroberts.org

The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”

An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.

The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”

The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate.

The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were more legitimate.

The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, 1or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.

Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”

If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary.

For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.

The President of the United States has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient. The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.

The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington. Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.

On Washington’s orders, its European puppet states refused overflight permission to the Bolivian presidential airliner carrying President Morales and forced the airliner to land in Austria and be searched. Washington thought that Edward Snowden might be aboard the airliner. Capturing Snowden was more important to Washington than respect for international law and diplomatic immunity.

On July 12 Snowden met in the Moscow airport with human rights organizations from around the world. He stated that the illegal exercise of power by Washington prevents him from traveling to any of the three Latin American countries that have offered him asylum. Therefore, Snowden said that he accepted Russian President Putin’s conditions and requested asylum in Russia. Insouciant Americans and the young unaware of the past don’t know what this means. During my professional life it was Soviet Russia that persecuted truth tellers, while America gave them asylum and tried to protect them. Today it is Washington that persecutes those who speak the truth, and it is Russia that protects them. The American public has not, this time, fallen for Washington’s lie that Snowden is a traitor. The polls show that a majority of Americans see Snowden as a whistle blower.

It is not the US that is damaged by Snowden’s revelations. It is the criminal elements in the US government that have pulled off a coup against democracy, the Constitution, and the American people who are damaged. It is the criminals who have seized power, not the American people, who are demanding Snowden’s scalp.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/ Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force.

Under the Obama tyranny, it is not merely Snowden who is targeted for extermination, but every truth-telling American in the country. It was Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, recently rewarded for her service to tyranny by being appointed Chancellor of the of the University of California system, who said that Homeland Security had shifted its focus from Muslim terrorists to “domestic extremists,” an elastic and undefined term that easily includes truth-tellers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden who embarrass the government by revealing its crimes. The criminals who have seized illegitimate power in Washington cannot survive unless truth can be suppressed or redefined as treason. If Americans acquiesce to the coup d’etat, they will have placed themselves firmly in the grip of tyranny.

Debt ceiling 2013: Start caring, millenials, or you will pay the price

by Melanie Breault

Congress had little time to make a decision about the debt ceiling, whether they would increase the nation’s borrowing authority or cause the U.S. to default on its loans. Progress was made during the Columbus Day weekend.

While these “adults” continued to “negotiate” how the budget should look, the rest of the population had to wait and wonder the possible outcomes. Jeff Fecke outlined for Truthoutfour possible scenarios, including a “worst case scenario: the second great depression.”

While a second great depression would be devastating for all Americans, and the entire global economy, it would catastrophic for millennials. But where are these millennial voices speaking out against this issue?

Stephen Calabria interviewed a few senators for PolicyMic, asking them what a default would mean for young people. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) implied we could use the budget debt ceiling debate as leverage to slow the growth of the federal government, saying, “So to the extent we could use the budget ceiling under the current law as leverage to get a long-term deal to slow the growth rate of the federal government, then I think the use of that particular tool could be very, very helpful to millennials.”

But how is this “tool” of less government beneficial to millennials who, as research found through the Swindled campaign, are being stuck with the tab collected by our older generations? Swindled: How the Millennial Generation Will Pay the Price of Washington’s Paralysis found, “Someone who is 65 today will receive an average of $327,400 more benefits than she paid in taxes,” while future Americans will have a tax burden of “60 cents of every dollar they earn.”

The question is not about how much government is needed, but what our current government does with its debt and debt payments. As Ryan Schoenike explained also for PolicyMic, we millennials cannot handle this future debilitating debt under our current economic circumstances, including our unemployment rate of 16% and most of us being underemployed making less than what we could be making.

Gurwin Singh Ahuja, policy advocate for Generation Progress at the Center for American Progress, likewise stressed that “young Americans actually have the most to lose if the debt ceiling is not raised.” He told PolicyMic that raising the debt ceiling does not mean the government will spend more, but that the debt ceiling simply gives Congress the authority to pay for previous spending.

“If we reach the debt ceiling, there will be higher interest rates, higher debt payments, and higher taxes for a generation,” he said. “Millennials will be paying higher taxes and getting less services for a government that does not work for us.”

Ahuja said a lot of credit, including student loans, credit cards, cars, and homes, is connected to interest on treasury bonds, which is a widespread industry practice. Congress tied student loan rates to Treasuries because treasury rates were so low and students could take advantage of the rates at the time, a 3.86 interest rate. He said that if we reach the debt ceiling, borrowers starting July 2014 will likely have higher interest rates of that year.

Generation Progress works “with and for young people to promote progressive solutions to key political and social challenges,” and after hearing from young people, Ahuja said he felt compelled to write a piece on the subject of the debt ceiling.

“Millennials will have less investment, less spending for universities and higher debt payments causing slower economic growth,” he continued. “And we’ll be living with that for the rest of our lives.”

Now, are we millennials doing enough to voice our concerns? Brendan Fallon of RYOT Newstried to put this issue in layman’s terms for the average millennial by creating a narrative of a young person needing a credit-line increase to be approved by his or her conservative fatherwho refuses to “over ill-informed and unpopular views not based in economics, science, history or reason.” Fallon wrote, “Hopefully he will increase the debt limit with no strings attached so you can sit down and hammer out a budget deal without the threat of a total collapse hanging over your head.”

Adults can get as mad as they want over this debt ceiling debate, no matter what side of it they’re on.

But when it comes to who will be really suffering the consequences, it’s going to be us, and the sooner our generation realizes this and tells our congressmen and politicians that we will not be left holding the bag after they’re gone, the better off we all will be.

Mexican author Ana Clavel wins Ibero-American novel prize

by the El Reportero’s news services

Ana ClavelAna Clavel

Mexican writer Ana Clavel was announced Tuesday as the winner of the 6th Elena Poniatowska Ibero-American Novel Prize for her work “Las ninfas a veces sonrien.”

Born in 1961 in Mexico City, Clavel is the author of “Fuera de escena” (1984), “Amorosos de atar” (1992) and “Paraisos tremulos” (2002).

Coming with a cash prize of 500,000 pesos ($38,461), the award will be presented on Wednesday during the inauguration of the 13th Mexico City Book Fair, by capital Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera and municipal Culture Secretary Lucia Garcia Noriega y Nieto.

A panel of judges comprised of Cristina Rivera Garza, Anamari Gomis and Julian Herbert – last year’s recipient – selected Clavel’s novel from among the 94 entries.

The book’s plot allows readers to immerse themselves “in the world of a joyful sexuality, experienced through the senses of Ada, a girl, teenager and later woman, who tells of the discovery and development of her sensuality.”

The storyline tells what happens to Ada but it blends her story with “mythical elements such as nymphs, princesses, satyrs, newts, fairies and other fantastic beings,” the Mexico City government said in a statement.

Established in 2007, the prize was created in honor of acclaimed author, journalist and social activist Elena Poniatowska, a naturalized Mexican who was born on May 19, 1932, in Paris.

International Book Fair opens in Mexico City

With the participation of some 200 publishers and the same number of authors, the 13th International Book Fair opens today in Mexico City’’s Zocalo.

At this cultural festival, running until the 27th, multiple literary activities are planned, including book launches, talks, round tables and conferences, with domestic and foreign writers present.

In the opening ceremony, Mexican storyteller Ana Clavel will be granted this year’s Ibero-American Elena Poniatowska Prize, for her novel “Sometimes, nymphs smile.”

A jury composed of the writers Cristina Rivera, Anamari Gomis and Julian Herbert, prize winner at the previous edition, chose this novel from a group of 94 novels.

This is the sixth edition of this award, instituted by the city government in recognition of the important contribution of Poniatowska to the development of national culture. Among the numerous works of the recognized intellectual are novels, essays, short stories, theater’s works and poetry.

Festival of Mayan Culture begins in Yucatan, Mexico

The Second International Festival of Mayan Culture, with a program of 540 activities, will start today in the city of Mérida and in the municipalities of the Yucatán.

The Festival, lasting until November 3, will offer a sample of that ancestral worldview through artistic and gastronomic events. Activities include baseball games, dances, music, paintings, games, crafts and food from pre- Hispanic times, as well as a demonstration of indigenous medicine.

The objective is to support the preservation of values, identity, traditions and Mayan language, said Jorge Esma Bazán, director of the event. The program is enriched by the participation of artists participating in the Cervantino Festival, taking place in the State of Guanajuato. Honduras and Chiapas are the guests of honor at this edition, which is being attended by representatives from 30 nations.

Mexican government offers free books to preserve Spanish in the US

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Bill OrtizBill Ortiz

The Mexican Government provides funding for free schoolbooks in order to be used as support for the education of children who speak Spanish. This is expected to strengthen the cultural ties of children and young people of Mexican origin residing in the United States and contribute to the teaching of Spanish as a second language.

How do to obtain them?

These collections may be obtained by educational institutions, schools, school districts, public libraries, centers or associations of parents or community, meeting the following requirements:

• Serving children and young people of Mexican origin or Latin American.

• Pick up the books, or cover the costs of transportation of the books, from its location in San Francisco.

• Explain, briefly and in writing, the use of the collections, by specifying the number of users that will be benefited, and indicate data of the institution, address, phone number and email.

• Deliver this proposal to the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco by email.

Applications should be sent to: Jimena Sierra, link to community programs, at jsierra@sre.gob.mx. Deadline is Oct. 24.

Santana trumpeter Bill Ortiz & Hector Lugo y la Mixta Criolla

A longstanding member of the Santana band and lifelong San Francisco resident, Bill Ortiz who released his newest full-length CD titled Highest Wish, will be performing a Latin Jazz show with an all-star band. Ortiz will help the “Friends of the AMP” celebrate the final show of a very successful series with a performance at 3pm with his All-Star Band at The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in McLaren Park on October 26th, 2013. The opening act for this show is Hector Lugo and La Mixta Criolla who performs at 2 p.m.

Portraits of parents returning home from incarceration through the eyes of their children

New America Media presents portraits of parents returning home from incarceration through the eyes of their children.

Join us for a video screening and panel discussion to explore the important role children play in successful reentry and the challenges they face as they work out relationships with the returning parent.

As thousands of prisoners are released under Gov. Brown’s realignment program, the people who were most impacted by their incarceration – their children – must now face another challenge: their parents’ return. Their stories of hope, disappointment, love and reconciliation are key to understanding what it will take to realize the promise of realignment: prisoners who come home to their families for good.

Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, at 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (Lunch will be provided). At the World Affairs Council, 312 Sutter St., Suite 200m San Francisco.

Tribute to Santana and fundraiser

Sounds of the Streets is a tribute to Santana as well as a fundraiser for Milagro Foundation, which benefits underserved and vulnerable children around the world. This foundation was started by Carlos Santana and his family. During the will be a short PowerPoint presentation outlining the era (1960s) and the location (the Mission District of San Francisco) presented by CSM Ethnic Studies professor, Rudy Ramírez. Thereafter, a live performance by the Mission Street All-Stars will play selections from the first three albums.

This event will be held at the College of San Mateo Theater, Bldg.3 o n Nov.13, from 7 – 9 p.m. Free parking in Beethoven Lot 2. $10 general, $7 students, staff, faculty.

The Mexican uprising deepens with teacher’s strike

Teachers block highways in Mexico City as they protest against education reform legislation. (PHOTO BY RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

by Kent Paterson
Frontera NorteSurs

Less than one year after taking office, the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faces serious challenges to its core policies. Leading the opposition are tens of thousands of public school teachers protesting the new No Child Left Behind-like law they contend will cost jobs, aggravate educational inequities and lead to privatization.
The protest, which counts months now, is expanding in both scope and participation and more and more assuming the character of a multi-issue popular movement.
Increasingly, the teacher protest is transforming from a single-issue opposition to education reform into a broad movement against the cornerstones of the Pact for Mexico, the political program promoted by President Peña Nieto and the leaders of the Big Three political parties, which implements controversial educational, labor, energy and taxation reforms.

In Chiapas, for instance, teachers, labor unions, university students, farmers, and community activists have forged the Unitary Struggle Front from the fire of the teacher strike.

“This will help us because from now on every struggle will be shared by the working class and not just a particular sector,” said Alejandro Ovando Rodríguez, Front spokesman. “That’s because the education, tax and energy reforms will affect all the Mexican people.”

This week, even as sizable chunks of the country were reeling from the left- right double punch delivered by Hurricane Ingrid and Tropical Storm Manuel, teachers and their allies intensified their protests.

Thousands of educators blocked not only the glitzy hotel zone of touristic Cancun for a repeat time, but temporarily cut off the principal access points to the entire city. Fellow teachers in Tlaxcala did the same thing.

In Baja California, teachers infuriated by the state government’s initiation of firing procedures against 75 strikers and the levying of fines against hundreds of others, blockaded commercial export lanes in the border city of Tijuana and announced the expansion of protests to Mexicali, Tecate, Ensenada, and the agro-export region of the San Quintin Valley. In Chiapas, where an estimated 70,000 teachers and their supporters staged a September 14 protest rally, rank-and-file members of the official SNTE union issued a call for a “teacher and popular uprising” and later occupied a Pemex plant.

As the week wore on, rolling work stoppages were reported in Michoacán and other states. Contingents of pro-movement parents, students and small farmers turned out for marches in Veracruz and elsewhere.

“If there is repression, there will be revolution!” chanted students and teachers in Xalapa, Veracruz, where police violently broke up a protest on the city plaza last weekend.

\In Mexico City, thousands of public school teachers from around the country were undeterred by the government’s eviction of their protest encampment last week. Now reinforced by university students and faculty, the movement flexed its muscle with more street marches and demonstrations outside commercial television stations the protestors accuse of being behind a concerted campaign of teacher-bashing.

“The protests have made evident the enormous incapacity of politicians and media personalities to understand the nature, composition and behavior of the national teachers,” wrote La Jornada columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro. “Every two days, an imminent end to the problem and a return of the teachers to the states is announced.

The press even shows pictures of teachers packing their suitcases. Despite this, every day more teachers arrive in Mexico City and increase their protests in other places of the country.” Organizationally separate from but ideologically akin to the teachers’ movement, another anti-Pact for Mexico mobilization picked up steam this week when a group of prominent politicians, intellectuals and activists issued a four-point statement that rejected President Pena Nieto’s education, energy and tax reforms as harmful to national interests.

Among the personalities issuing the call for peaceful civil resistance were Coahuila Bishop Raúl Vera, former national university rector Pablo González Casanova and human rights activist Miguel Concha. The appeal was jointly supported by left opposition leaders Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, two men who had long been politically distanced. In a statement, the group slammed a “media campaign of lynching” against the “just causes” of the teachers, and urged the Mexican people to resist the “sacking of the nation and of our people that the government and transnational oil companies promote.”

In recent days, Mother Nature tossed another ingredient into an already boiling political stew. “Biblical” rains and flooding unleashed by Hurricane Ingrid on the Gulf coast and Tropical Storm Manuel on the Pacific side of the nation disrupted the lives of more than one million people and caused nearly 100 deaths, with the number of fatalities likely to reach much higher. Neighborhoods and commercial centers were inundated, highways and bridges washed out, homes buried in mud, and rural communities isolated.

The storms laid bare the myriad social and economic contradictions always simmering beneath the surface of Mexican life: rural versus urban, rich versus poor, indigenous versus non-indigenous, developed versus undeveloped, government versus society.

Already, sharp polemics are raging over the alleged unpreparedness of the government to first warn of and then respond to the double disasters. In Mexico and Latin America, natural disasters, which always contain a large man-made component, frequently have significant political consequences, as witnessed by the 1972 Nicaraguan earthquake that spelled doom for the longrunning Somoza regime, or the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that is widely credited for eventually helping bring about an end to the domination of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Perhaps with history in mind, President Pena Nieto has been careful to visit Acapulco twice since Manuel slammed into the city. Manuel’s impact was hardest felt in the southern state of Guerrero, a stronghold of the teacher and other social movements.

“Chilpancingo is totally collapsed,” is how Mayor Mario Moreno described the situation in the Guerrero state capital in the aftermath of Manuel. In the countryside, scores of communities were rendered incommunicado and the threat of hunger and deprivation mounted. In a statement, the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Mountain, a non-governmental organization which works closely with indigenous communities in the impoverished La Montana region, sharply criticized the government response to Manuel.

“There is a complete lack of coordination among the three levels of government and there is no political representation that is attending with speed the proposals and demands of the victims,” Tlachinollan charged. “Until now, the victims of La Montana are not receiving sufficient attention from government agencies, and the worst consequences of these natural disasters falls on the population of the region in extreme poverty. Once again, the most marginalized men and women are also the most forgotten.”

As the fall season kicks in, the after-effects of Ingrid and Manuel, the militancy of the teacher movement, protests against the upcoming energy and taxation legislative packages, and a host of other contentious local and regional issues are all carving out a quite surprising and explosive political landscape.

A variety of Mexican news media sources contributed to this report.

Frontera NorteSur is an on-line source for U.S.-Mexico border news, produced by the Center for Latin American and Border Studies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. For a free electronic subscription, email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu.

12 facts about Obamacare launch train that every American should know

by Michael Snyder
American Dream

Even though it is nearly impossible to get signed up for health insurance through the Obamacare websites, if you don’t currently have health insurance you better get signed up by January 1st or you will get slapped with a fine. Is this fair? Of course not. But this is the way that the U.S. government works in the 21st century. They put unreasonable demands on people, and then the government punishes them heavily when they are not able to comply.

The launch of the online “health insurance exchanges” which were supposed to make signing up for Obamacare a breeze has been an abysmal failure. There have been a great many examples of government incompetence over the years, but this one might take the cake. The Obama administration spent more than 93 million dollars to set up these websites, and they are so hideously dysfunctional that hardly anyone has actually been able to get signed up for Obamacare over the first ten days. But instead of delaying the individual mandate, the Obama administration is using the threat of a fine to force millions of Americans to use a system that is a complete and total nightmare.

The following is how USA Today (hardly an opponent of Obama) described the launch of Obamacare… (http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/10/07/health-care-insurance-exchanges-obamacare-editorials-debates/2940207/).

Alas, the administration managed to turn the experience for most of those visitors into a nightmare. Websites crashed, refused to load, or offered bizarre and incomprehensible choices. Even though the system was shut down for repairs over the weekend, Monday’s early reports continued to suggest an epic screw-up.

And Digital Trends was even harsher in their assessment of the launch… (http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/)

It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The launch of Obamacare has been such a disaster that it is really hard to find the words to adequately describe it. The following are 12 facts about the Obamacare launch train wreck that everyone should know…

#1 According to a survey that was just released, approximately 90 percent of the people that have tried to enroll for Obamacare say that they were not able to get signed up.

#2 And many of those that believe that they did get “signed up” are not actually enrolled in a health insurance plan. In fact, health insurance executives say that only about 1 out of every 100 applications being submitted on the Obamacare health insurance exchanges contain enough information to get an applicant successfully enrolled in a health insurance plan.

#3 The Iowa Obamacare exchange has enrolled a grand total of five people in Obamacare at this point.

#4 The Hawaii Obamacare exchange was so bad that the entire site has been taken down and will eventually be relaunched.

#5 Early this week, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that health insurance executives were saying that only “hundreds” of Americans had successfully enrolled through the Obamacare websites so far.

#6 One online database programmer had the following to say about the Healthcare.gov website: “It wasn’t designed well, it wasn’t implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it.”

#7 The Obama administration received numerous warnings that the launch of the health insurance exchanges was going to be a major disaster. Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite those warnings and intense criticism from Republicans, the White House proceeded with an Oct. 1 launch.

#8 According to one estimate, it cost more than 93 million dollars to build Healthcare.gov.

#9 When you create an account on Heathcare. gov, you are handing over a whole host of personal information to the federal government which may end up being used for a vast array of different purposes.

#10 According to Politico, there is no way to delete an account once you have created one on Healthcare.gov… Once you finally make it into HealthCare.gov, it’s not clear how you get out. For those who’ve bustcoed through glitches on the federal Obamacare insurance website to create an account, there’s no clear, obvious way for consumers to delete the accounts if they choose — at least not in the current incarnation.

#11 One expert believes that it could take up to two years before the technical glitches are ironed out of  Obamacare. “I think it could easily take up to two years before all these things are working working smoothly,” said Lisa Carroll, president of the Mosaic Insurance Exchange and the Small Businesses Service Bureau in Massachusetts. “This is just an ecommerce project of epic proportion,” said Carroll. Carroll said the complicated task of getting all facets of the federal health insurance market to interact with each other correctly is made more complicated by rule changes and clarifications that have to be accounted for by software.

#12 The system is so bad that even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer is saying that the individual mandate should be delayed for a year. And a lot of Americans that already had health insurance are also discovering the pain of Obamacare.

Millions of health insurance policies all over the country are being canceled, and tens of millions of other Americans are seeing their health insurance premiums go through the roof. This is even happening to a lot of impoverished Americans even though Obama specifically promised that his health care program would lower costs for the poor. The following is a letter from a 26-year-old recent college graduate that has gone viral on Facebook…

The health care system in the United States was already a complete and total mess, and now Obamacare has made things much, much worse. But if you choose not to participate in the system, Obama is going to send the IRS after you and slap you with a big fine. Are you as upset about this as I am? If so, please share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

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