Thursday, September 12, 2024
Home Blog Page 331

CND burries facts about SV40 cancer viruses in polio vaccines

Tries to rewrite history

by J. D. Heyes

A government agency that keeps secrets from the American people is about as newsworthy as “Dog Bites Man,” but there is something inherently insidious about it when it involves the public health.

Recently the Center for Disease Control and Prevention deleted from its website pages revealing that the government-sanctioned polio vaccine that was administered to some 98 million Americans from 1955 to 1963 had been contaminated with a primate form of cancer virus.

The pages that were deleted dealt specifically with the fact that the Simian virus (SV40), which at one time was exclusive to monkeys, began showing up in polio vaccines in 1960. “Because SV40 was not discovered until 1960, no one was aware in the 1950s that polio vaccine could be contaminated,” the CDC website explained.

In fact, it was only discovered, the agency said, purely by accident:

Soon after its discovery in 1960, SV40 was identified in polio vaccine. It was found in the injected form of the vaccine (IPV), not the kind given by mouth (OPV). At that time, rhesus monkey kidney cells, which contain SV40 if the animal is infected, were used in preparing viral vaccines.

Though the tainted vaccine containing monkey cancer virus was discovered in 1960, “existing polio vaccine stocks were not recalled and were used until 1963,” said the deleted site.

That means the agency was, for a period of years, conspicuously dispersing vaccines containing a possible link to cancer to hundreds of millions of people in the U.S., UK, Australia and the former Soviet Union. The website SV40Foundation.org has more details on just how the vaccine was used following discovery of the cancer link.

“In 1961, SV40 was discovered by Dr. Bernice Eddy of the National Institute of Health, Division of Biologics when she took the material used to grow polio vaccines and injected it into hamsters,” the foundation says on its website. “Upon the discovery that SV40 was an animal carcinogen that had found its way into the polio vaccines, a new federal law was passed in 1961 that required that no vaccines contain this virus.

However, this law did not require that SV40 contaminated vaccines be thrown away or that the contaminated seed material (used to make all polio vaccines for the next four decades) be discarded. As a result, known SV40 contaminated vaccines were injected into children up until 1963.”

Michele Carbone, a scientist at the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, discovered in 2004 that the Soviet polio vaccine may even have been contaminated after 1963 – and quite possibly up to the early 1980s, according to the trade journal New Scientist.

“The vaccine was almost certainly used throughout the Soviet bloc and probably exported to China, Japan and several countries in Africa. That means hundreds of millions could have been exposed to SV40 after 1963,” the report said.

Contradictory data

In refuting claims that SV40 in polio vaccines may have been responsible for some cancers, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) states that SV40 was also “present in cancers of people who either had or had not received the polio vaccine that was contaminated with SV40” [http://www.chop.edu].

In addition, CHOP notes, “people with cancers who were born after SV40 was no longer a contaminant of the polio vaccine were found to have evidence for SV40 in their cancerous cells.”

“Taken together, these findings do not support the hypothesis that SV40 virus contained in polio vaccines administered before 1963 cause cancers. In addition, available evidence suggests that SV40 virus is likely be transmitted to people by a mechanism other than vaccines,” the hospital said on its website.

But in 2005 the National Network for Immunization Information published a somewhat conflicting report regarding a link between SV40 and increased cancer rates.

“Although SV40 has biological properties consistent with a cancer-causing virus, it has not been conclusively established whether it has caused cancer in humans,” said the report. “Epidemiological studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during 1955-1963 do not show an increased cancer risk.”

But later, the same report seems to contradict itself.

“However, a number of studies have found SV40 in certain forms of cancer in humans, such as mesotheliomas – rare tumors located in the lungs – brain and bone tumors; the virus has also been found to be associated with some types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

Drug reform: Urugual goes off-piste, others prepare to follow

by the El Reportero’s wire service

José MujicaJosé Mujica

Uruguay’s pioneering approach to combating drugs has taken a decisive step in the legislative arena with the lower chamber of congress approving a bill legalizing the cultivation, sale and consumption of marijuana under the control of the State.

It is unlikely that Uruguay’s senate, where the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) also enjoys a majority, will obstruct its passage into law, and President José Mujica will promulgate it. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) immediately issued a public admonishment, but other countries are also shifting their positions, most notably Mexico, which could create an irreversible momentum towards legalizing marijuana. (Reporter by Latin News).

Replacing Cuba’s dual currency system: what are the issuesthat really matter?

The absence of proper money is the most fundamental weakness of Cuba’s economy. At present neither the convertible peso (CUC) nor the national peso (CUP) serve as a wholly satisfactory of value. Neither do they serve as a medium of exchange, nor as a unit of account. Reform of Cuba’s dual currency system will require much more than a devaluation of the CUC and a revaluation of the CUP, so that they are notionally of equal value. Whatever replaces the dual currency system needs to be stable and robust, and to be seen as such. A currency board system – similar to that which has worked well in Hong Kong since 1983 – appears to be a logical alternative. In the shortterm, currency reform will create winners and losers among Cuban households.

However, successful reform should generate tremendous benefits for all Cubans over the mediumto- long term. If managed properly, it could support the ongoing rule of the ruling Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) within a country that is far richer than it is today. (Reporter by Latin News).

Validity of Esquipulas peace accords extolled in Nicaragua

Managua, Aug 8 (Prensa Latina) Central America needs the official implementation of the Esquipulas II Accords, which were signed in Guatemala City in August 1987, but still fully valid, analysts agreed today in Nicaragua.

These agreements establish that each country has the right to organize in line with its people’s requirements and that revolutionary forces cannot be excluded from electoral processes, said historian Aldo Díaz Lacayo.

The agreements, signed by Presidents Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Vinicio Cerezo (Guatemala), Jose Napoleon Duarte (El Salvador), Jose Azcona (Honduras) and Oscar Arias (Costa Rica) were oriented to achieve peace, but also economic development, social justice and the restitution of the people’s rights, he recalled.

They are the guarantee that the process of social reorganization in these countries “is on, remains valid and it has to be supported,” said the former diplomat.

Central America is undergoing a rebirth of people’s movements, though those civilian organizations have to resort to the figure of a political party to take power, he stated, as published by El 19 Digital journal.

The name of Jesus has become a dirty word in politically correct America- Part 2

by Marvin Ramirez

Marvin J. RamirezMarvin Ramirez

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: As we continue being mind-controlled via the television with pornographically programming and lies by mainstream media, we are also being bombarded with content that encourages immorality and violence, and at the same time, removing our traditional believes in God from society and our school system, to the point that being Christian, is a political sin. The following article, written by Michael Snyder, of American Dream, brings us a very detailed evaluation of this issue. This is Part 2 and last.

The Name of Jesus has become a dirty word in politically correct America

by Michael Snyder
American Dream

And one of the biggest battlegrounds for religious freedom in America at the moment is the U.S. military.

Right now, there are some very powerful forces that are trying to eradicate all expressions of the Christian faith from the U.S. military. It has gotten so bad that a 23 year Air Force veteran was recently ordered to remove his Bible from his desk, and the Air Force recently came out and announced that service members are only allowed to talk about their faith if it “does not make others uncomfortable“.

The U.S. military is a far different institution than it once was. Today, political correctness rules the U.S. military.

If you doubt this, just check out this example…

Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes is a Christian chaplain currently serving in the U.S. Air Force. He is stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. As an ordained clergyman whose duties are to provide religious instruction and spiritual counseling, he has a page on the base’s website called “Chaplain’s Corner.”

Reyes recently wrote an essay entitled, “No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.” This common saying is attributed to a Catholic priest in World War II, made famous when President Dwight D. Eisenhower said during a 1954 speech: “I am delighted that our veterans are sponsoring a movement to increase our awareness of God in our daily lives. In battle, they learned a great truth that there are no atheists in the foxholes.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was absolutely outraged when they heard about this. They demanded that the commander of the base, Col. Brian Duffy, do something about the “anti-secular diatribe” that Reyes had authored.

In the old days, a  base commander would have had a good chuckle and then would have told the MRFF where to stick their complaint, but the old days are gone.

These days, base commanders cower subserviently before politically correct organizations such as the MRFF. Just check out what happened next…

Nonetheless, only five hours after MRFF’s complaint, the essay was removed from the website. Duffy has profusely apologized to MRFF for not stopping this religious leader from sharing religious thoughts.

But this response—which again appears to be a violation of Reyes’s First Amendment rights—is insufficient for MRFF. They said, “Faith based hate, is hate all the same,” and, “Lt. Col. Reyes must be appropriately punished.” (Emphasis added).

And thanks to the MRFF, special edition Bibles for service members have been banned from being sold on military bases…

Bowing to a complaint from a religious watchdog group, the Pentagon will no longer give consent for a publisher to use the official emblems of the military services on a line of Bibles sold on base exchanges.

The group claimed victory, but an association of former military chaplains is demanding that Congress overturn the Defense Department’s decision.

The Bibles, branded for each of four services as “The Soldier’s Bible,” “The Sailor’s Bible” and so on, are published by Life- Way Christian Resources’ Holman Bible Publishers, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Bible Convention, said Chris Rodda, the senior research director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The MRFF is a very insidious organization.

It is headed up by a man named Mikey Weinstein. He has called Christians “human monsters” and “enemies of the United States Constitution“. Weinstein is convinced that sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ while in the military is “sedition and treason” and should be punished as such.

You would think that people like Weinstein would be dismissed as lunatics, but unfortunately under the Obama administration he has been brought in as a special adviser to the Pentagon.

What a crazy world that we live in.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama himself has remained completely silent as a totally innocent American citizen is being tortured in an Iranian prison. If that prisoner was a liberal activist, Obama would be moving heaven and earth to get him released. But because he is a Christian, we haven’t heard a peep out of Obama, and many Christian leaders want an explanation…

One of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders wants to know why President Obama has remained silent as Iran tortures an American pastor held captive in one of the Islamic republic’s most notorious prisons.

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, told Fox News the imprisonment and torture of Pastor Saeed Abedini is a blatant example of “religious intolerance.”

“Many in the international community are expressing outrage over this blatant example of religious intolerance,” Graham said.

“I ask that our government do the same and demand that Pastor Saeed Abedini be released and allowed to return home to his wife and family in the United States.”

We are rapidly moving toward a time when followers of Jesus will be treated as second class citizens in America. The following are some other examples of this trend…

• A War Games scenario at Fort Leavenworth that identified Christian groups and Evangelical groups as being potential threats;

• A 2009 Dept. of Homeland Security memorandum that identified future threats to national security coming from Evangelicals and pro-life groups;

• A West Point study released by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center that linked pro-lifers to terrorism;

• Evangelical leader Franklin Graham was uninvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service because of his comments about Islam;

• Christian prayers were banned at the funeral services for veterans at Houston’s National Cemetery;

• Bibles were banned at Walter Reed Army Medical Center – a decision that was later rescinded;

• Christian crosses and a steeple were removed from a chapel in Afghanistan because the military said the icons disrespected other religions.

For much more on all of this, please see my previous article entitled “All Over America Evangelical Christians Are Being Labeled As Extremists And Hate Groups“.

This is not what America is supposed to be about.

How quickly we have turned our backs on the values of our founders.

In a recent article, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin tried to remind us of how far we have drifted from what our founders intended…

It’s a good thing that George Washington is dead and military history effectively banished from our campuses. Otherwise, we might remember the general order Washington issued upon taking command of the embattled Continental Army–and in Boston, no less. The general “requires and expects of all officers and soldiers a punctual attendance at Divine services, to implore the blessing of Heaven upon the means used for our safety and defense.” In the same way, any assistant professor of government hoping to achieve tenure will likely skim over certain sections of the first president’s Farewell Address, which reads: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.”

Will America be able to stand if we continue to try to push every shred of the Christian faith out of public life?

What do you think?

I am sure that a lot of people out there have some very strong opinions about all of this.

Immigration – What’s love got to do with it?

by Stephen Pitti
New America Media

As the Southern California harvest season came to a close in 1946, a young Mexican immigrant named Robert García paid tribute to the young women he had seen in the nearby town of Cucamonga:

Your beautiful women like flowers are just like the women of my people they show their love and deserve respect on the street and at home

His verse, published by a local Spanish-language newspaper, provided readers a rare glimpse into the emotional world of the thousands of imported laborers who had worked in local fields since the first months of World War II. Mexican “braceros” were much talked about but little understood in the United States of the 1940s. They had been celebrated for saving the crops and assuring an Allied victory prior to V-J Day, extolled for their efficiency and commitment to their jobs, and sometimes praised for showing remarkable, “natural” skills as farm laborers. But in the face of such rhetoric Robert García wrote about other matters: love, emotional attachment, and longing. In so doing he opened up a window into the dreams of migrants and immigrants that policymakers then and now have often preferred to keep shuttered.

This week marks an important moment for considering such perspectives. While young Dream activists sit in detention in Arizona for challenging policies that deny them and their family members in Mexico the ability to travel to see one another, elected officials continue to debate policy proposals for overhauling the current immigration system and increasing spending on border enforcement.

Some of these issues date to Robert García’s time. Just over sixty years ago, on August 4, 1942, the United States and Mexican governments signed the international labor agreement, known as the Bracero Program, that would bring him and more than a million others to the U.S. as agricultural workers. It was the expectation of official negotiators that contracted braceros would never be given the chance to put down roots in the United States: The program was designed only for men, and it was meant to allow sons and husbands to leave their kin for a limited number of weeks with the promise that they would return home at the conclusion of the harvest.

Braceros were idealized as laborers with strong arms (“brazos” means “arms” in Spanish), and little thought was given to their ambitions. But because participants like García showed more flexibility and more heart than policymakers had anticipated, developing new desires and friendships, and sometimes new permanent homes, in places like Cucamonga, braceros soon reshaped communities in both the United States and Mexico.

In ways that policymakers never anticipated, these migrants fell in and out of love from Arkansas to Zacatecas after 1942, maintaining relationships with family and friends on both sides of the border. Few policymakers recognized these dynamics, insisting instead on understanding workers as little more than game pieces on a North American board, one defined by nation-states and labor demands, and one that government officials could control with real confidence.

Blind to love, they saw the Bracero Program as a handy system of ladders and chutes, guaranteeing that contracted men would move from one identifiable square to another, at the appropriate time, and that they would then transition back down the board at the end of the game, sliding home to Mexico once their work contracts ended.

García and his peers were never passive pawns playing this type of game, nor were they guided only by economic calculations or government directives. Like so many others in American history, they often followed their hearts, and some braceros anticipated establishing new families in the United States from the start. A popular Spanish-language song recorded in Los Angeles in 1948 entitled “El Bracero y La Pachuca,” for example, celebrated the dashing, romantic young migrant worker aiming to settle down despite the Bracero Program’s restrictions on their permanent residency in the U.S. In flowery verse, he recited love poems to a young Mexican American woman, his “linda princesa encantada (beautiful enchanted princess),” to no avail.

The history of braceros and other migrants in the United States reminds us that love and romance have clashed with government policies in many civil rights struggles, and that love’s challenge to the legal order has often made our democracy more expansive and responsive. Even when denied permanent residency, valued only as temporary workers and not as citizens in the making, as in the case of imported laborers at midcentury, immigrants formed and reaffirmed loving relationships that were both intensely local – based in workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools – and insistently transnational – with children, siblings, extended family living abroad, across increasingly militarized borders.

Forged over decades, these bonds have certainly changed the United States for the better, creating millions of families of mixed immigration status today, and assuring that churches and most local institutions from coast to coast now include both immigrants and the U.S.-born. These realities have challenged our policymakers, of course.

But with so much at stake, the U.S. must legally recognize the ties of love that continue to bind our residents to one another. Immigrants’ courageous efforts to remain connected with their kin, to support and stay faithful to them, should remind us of the core values that we claim to uphold as a nation. Stephen Pitti is a professor of History and American Studies at Yale University and director of the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program. He is author of the books, “The Devil in Silicon Valley: Race, Mexicans, and Northern California” (2003) and “American Latinos and the Making of the United States.” (2012)

Asange: Rand Paul libertarians “only hope” for the future of America

Wikileaks founder also praises Matt Drudge for ‘breaking media censorship’

by Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

During a live question and answer conference call held at Deakin University in Melbourne earlier today, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange praised Matt Drudge for breaking establishment media censorship in the United States, while heralding Rand Paul and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party as the “only hope” for the future of America.

Asked what he thought of the political commentator, Assange labeled Matt Drudge a “news media innovator,” noting that he came to prominence by “publishing information that the establishment press in the United States would not.”

“It is a result of the self-censorship of the establishment press in the United States that gave Matt Drudge such a platform and of course he should be applauded for breaking a lot of that censorship,” said Assange, adding that he agreed with some of Drudge’s political positions and disagreed with others.

Assange went on to note that Drudge is now primarily a collector of “interesting rumors” and that social media has mirrored his model of news gathering.

The Wikileaks founder then addressed a follow-up question about former Congressman Ron Paul and current Senator Rand Paul, remarking, “I’m a big admirer of Ron Paul and Rand Paul for their very principled positions in the US Congress on a number of issues,” noting that they have been “the strongest supporters of the fight against the US attack on Wikileaks and on me.”

Assange also hailed the Pauls for their opposition to drone strikes and extrajudicial assassinations, noting how they came from the libertarian intellectual tradition of “non-violence,” in relation not just to offensive war but also tax collection and abortion.

Asked what he thought of the groundswell of support from young people for Ron and Rand Paul, Assange noted that virtually every Democrat in Congress had been “co-opted by the Obama administration” or co-opted by DC social networks,” while the establishment wing of the Republican Party was “completely in bed with the war industry”.

Assange said that both major parties had joined forces to adopt an approach that “compromises the future of US democracy,” noting that such a method had nothing to do with conservatism.

“The Republican Party in so far as how it has coupled together with the war industry is not a conservative party at all and the Libertarian aspect of the Republican Party is presently the only useful political voice in the US Congress,” said Assange, adding, “It will be the driver that shifts the United States around – it’s not going to come from the Democrats, it’s not going to come from Ralph Nader, it’s not going to come from the co-opted parts of the Republican Party.”

“The only hope as far as electoral politics is concerned in the United States presently is the Libertarian section of the Republican Party,” Assange concluded.

The five questions put to Assange were chosen as a result of an online voting system. The questions about Matt Drudge and Ron & Rand Paul came third in the poll.

Eydie Gorme: one of the first cross-over artist for Latinos

by the El Reportero’s news services

Eydie Gorme and husband (1998 photo).Eydie Gorme and husband (1998 photo).

Latinos are remembering Eydie Gorme, who died yesterday at age 84, as one of the first entertainers to cross-over to the Spanish-speaking market.

Gorme was better known as the other half of the Steve & Eydie duo but she also made a name for herself as a solo artist in the 50s and 60s with such hits as Blame it on the Bossa Nova and You Need Hands.

For Latinos she is remembered for the 1964 hit “Amor” recorded with the legendary Mexican Trio Los Panchos. Her other Spanish-language hit Sabor a Mi became one of her signature tunes for Latino audiences. Two of her Spanish-language albums Muy Amigos/Close Friends (1977) with Puerto Rican singer Danny Rivera and “La Gorme” (1976) were nominated for Grammys.

Steve Laurence her husband and partner once said “Our Spanish stuff outsell our English recordings, she’s [Gorme] is like a diva to the Spanish world.”

Gorme was at home singing in Spanish since she grew up speaking Spanish with her Sephardic Jewish parents in New York. Her first job after graduating high school in the Bronx was as a Spanish interpreter.

During her multi-decade career Gorme performed with such super-stars as Frank Sinatra, Plácido Domingo, and Andy Williams. She had a three-octave range to her voice and was honored with numerous awards including a Grammy and Emmy. The couple was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In 2009 Gorme officially retired from the stage.

Gorme died with her partner and husband of 55 years Steve Laurence, their son David and other family members at her side. She died after a brief but undisclosed illness in a Las Vegas hospital. The couple lost their other son Michael at age 23 to a heart condition.

New book looks at traditional Mexican cooking

A group of anthropologists, historians, writers and biologists have published a book about the richness of Mexico’s traditional cuisine, the first cooking to be included on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

unknown

“It’s really a very important achievement,” Margarita de Orellana, director of publishing house Artes de México, told Efe.

“(We) fought like medieval knights to get traditional Mexican cooking considered something very important and universal in the cultural world,” De Orellana said.

The campaign organized by the Mexican Gastronomical Culture Conservatory, or CCGM, resulted in UNESCO declaring Mexico’s cooking capart of the world’s cultural heritage on Nov. 16, 2010.

The 180-page book honors Mexican cooking, focusing on what it brings to society.

“People don’t pay attention to the richness we have. The idea is to celebrate it,” De Orellana said, adding that the international success of traditional Mexican cooking “had not been bragged about enough.”

The book, titled “Elogio de la cocina mexicana. Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad” (Artes de Mexico, 2013), features contributions by 18 specialists, photographs, reproductions of pre-Columbian codexes and paintings by Mexican artists of traditional dishes.

The authors examine different traditional ingredients, such as corn, avocado and cacao, as well as kitchen utensils like the “metate,” a type of stone pestle and mortar.

One of the contributors, historian Miguel Leon-Portilla, wrote a chapter titled “La antigua palabra de nuestros mayores” (The Ancient Word of Our Elders), which discusses “the forms and etiquette of the Aztecs toward food,” De Orellana said.

Artes de Mexico has been working for two decades to shed light on the country’s cultural heritage, publishing several book collections and nearly 100 issues of a magazine that has featured the work of about 600 experts on art, history and popular culture. (Hispanically Speaking News).

Estaire Godinez to cause sensation at Yoshi’s

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Estaire GodinezEstaire Godinez

Estaire Godinez returns for a musical journey and birthday bash with family & friends not to be missed.

A smoldering vocalist and ace percussionist, the Oakland, California-born Mexican-American Godinez has recorded on more than sixty albums. And has been consistently sought after for her essential performance skills by a number of world-renowned artists.

From stints with Prince to Coke Escovedo to the Brothers Johnson, to George Benson, she has proven herself a stylistic chameleon capable of wearing dozens of musical hats. And they all “look” fantastic on her. At 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 17, at Yoshi’s. http://yoshis.inticketing.com/events/326051.

Latin Rhythm Clinic/workshop with John Santos

Five-time Grammy nominated percussionist/composer/producer/bandleader and San Francisco native, John Santos is one of the top percussionists in the field and has been teaching locally and internationally since the 1970s. along with Guillermo Guillen, he founded the first Latin Music Ensembles at the Mission Cultural Center beginning in 1977 under the auspices of the California Arts Council. John returns to the MCC with this clinic/demonstration where he will share the nuts, bolts, and general Latin rhyth timbales, bongos, cajón, chekere, guiro and maracas.

Saturday Aug. 24, from 12 p.m. – 2 p.m. $10 General Audience, at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.

Another handcraft inspiration by Soad at StudioSoad

It was over the summer that Soad got inspired while playing with Allie and Dominic (her niece and nephew) to design a new series of earrings – handmade one at a time exploring color, shape, pattern. She’ll be showing and selling those for the first time along with the paintings she’s been working on this year. Come by and see what she’s up to in her studio, #101 beyond the gallery wall … StudioSoad open during the reception for Four Squared at Arc Gallery next Saturday night.
Four Squared is a unique exploration of the works of 16 Bay Area artists. Each of the artists has produced 16 small works, presented in 16 clusters giving the audience the experience of 16 micro solo exhibitions.

On Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, 7-10 p.m., at Arc Studios & Gallery, 1246 Folsom (btw 8th & 9th Streets) San Francisco.

Salvador Santana & Miles Schon

Salvador Santana, plus Miles Schon will be coming through town for two great nights, at George’s in San Rafael on August 23rd, Silo’s in Napa on August 24th. Salvador also performs with his band at Yoshi’s in Oakland on August 25th.

What a real immigration reform would look like

Clue: It’s not a new guest worker program

Oralia Maceda asks her question at the Fresno meeting.

by David Bacon

Oralia Maceda asks her question at the Fresno meeting.
An immigrant mother from Oaxaca, Maceda asked the obvious last weekend in Fresno. At a meeting, talking about the Senate immigration reform bill, she wanted to know why Senators would spend almost $50 billion on more border walls, yet show no interest in why people leave home to cross them.
This Congressional blindness will get worse as immigration reform moves to the House. It condemns U.S. immigration policy to a kind of punitive venality, making rational political decisions virtually impossible. Yet alternatives are often proposed by migrant communities themselves, and reflect a better understanding of global economics and human rights.

Rufino Dominguez, who now works for the Oaxacan state government, describes what Maceda knows from experience: “NAFTA forced the price of corn so low it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the U.S. to work because there’s no alternative.” The reason for the fall in prices, according to Timothy Wise of the Global Development and Environment Institute, is that corn imports to Mexico from the U.S. rose from 2,014,000 to 10,330,000 tons from 1992 to 2008.

Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year NAFTA took effect, and 811, 000 tons in 2010. This primarily benefited one company, Smithfield Foods, which now sells over 25% of all the pork in Mexico. Mexico, however, lost 120,000 hog-farming jobs alone. The World Bank says extreme rural poverty jumped from 35% to 55% after NAFTA took effect due to “the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant rural wages, and falling real agricultural prices.”

Growing poverty fueled migration. In 1990 4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the U.S. In 2008 12.67 million did, around 11% of all Mexicans. About 5.7 million were able to get a visa, but another 7 million couldn’t, and came nevertheless. If our families needed to eat and survive, most of us would cross borders too, despite the risks. In fact, this is what the ancestors of many U.S. citizens did.

And if walls could have stopped this wave of people seeking survival, they would have already. Instead, hundreds of people die on the border very year, a number that increases with the rising number of agents and walls.

The $47 billion for border enforcement in the Senate bill will boost income for contractors and companies selling drones and helicopters. Border Patrol agents will become a familiar sight in cities far from the border. But this will not stop migration, nor is it intended to.

The Senators envision a new system in which hundreds of thousands of people will cross the border as “guest workers.” U.S. immigration policy rejected that idea in 1965 — that it should supply vulnerable workers at low wages to employers. Replacing the old bracero guest worker program of the 1950s, we set up a system to help families reunite in the U.S., with labor rights and freedom of movement.

The Senators are moving backwards. In their scheme, the price of legalization for some undocumented people is programs that peg guest worker wages close to the minimum. This will impact other workers as well, including immigrants already here. They restrict family visas and give more work visas to employers. In the House, conservative Representatives would scrap legalization entirely. They only want guest worker programs, with more walls and punishment to force migrants into them.

Neither the Senators nor the Congress members will do anything to give Oaxacans a choice – to leave or to stay home. Yet that’s what Maceda and her organization, the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB), believe is a big part of the answer.

Their alternative is to renegotiate NAFTA to end the causes of displacement. They would give residence visas to the undocumented already here, and end today’s mass deportations and firings of thousands of workers. Future migration, they say, should provide visas to families, not labor recruiters for Wal-Mart or growers. “We want to be treated as more than cheap labor,” Maceda says.

FIOB is a unique organization because it’s made up both of migrants in the U.S. and people in the towns from which they come. It held discussions in both places – among migrants here and migrant- sending communities in Mexico.

“We have to change the debate from one in which immigration is presented as a problem to a debate over rights,” concludes Gaspar Rivera Salgado, a UCLA professor and former FIOB coordinator. “We want rights for migrants in the U.S. and at the same time development that makes migration a choice rather than a necessity — the right to not migrate. Both are part of the solution.”

But Rivera Salgado cautions that walls and contract labor are no answer, nor is making towns in Oaxaca dependent on guest worker programs to survive. “The right to stay home, to not migrate, has to mean more than the right to be poor, or the right to go hungry.

Choosing whether to stay home or leave only has meaning if each choice can provide a meaningful future, in which we are all respected as human beings.” http://www.progressive.org/real-immigration-reform.

New bill aims to make ‘smart meters’ mandatory for entire nation

by Jonathan Benson

There is a sinister agenda underway to forcibly convert every standard electric meter in the U.S. to the “smart” variety under the guise of promoting renewable energy interests. And one of the latest pieces of Trojan horse legislation pushing for this ominous transformation is the Smart Grid Advancement Act of 2013, introduced by Representative Jerry McNerney (D-Cal.) and co-authored by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.), which would force utilities all across the country to convert their customers to smart meters.

The new bill, as stated in a recent press release posted on Rep. McNerney’s website, would require virtually all energy utility companies nationwide to implement so-called “smart grid technologies,” which in turn would require the installation of smart meters on customers’ homes and businesses. Smart meters, as you may already be aware, contain wireless communication components that are not only a serious threat to human health, but also a monumental detriment to personal privacy.

But crafty politicians like Rep. McNerney and Rep. Cartwright are couching the technology as a viable way to help save people money by lowering their electricity bills. This explanation, of course, is meant to divert attention away from the not-so-enticing fact that the technology is really nothing more than a massive, interconnected government spying and control apparatus.

“[The bill] would apparently require all electricity providers, including rural cooperatives and municipal utilities, to join the ‘smart’ grid and install ‘smart’ meters,” explains the energy freedom advocacy group StopSmartMeters.org.

What else does this inauspicious bill aim to accomplish?

According to a summary of the bill, posted as H.R. 2685 at GovTrack.us — you need to read between the lines to really understand what is being stated in this summary — certified Energy Star appliances and other energy-saving products will be required to contain wireless technologies capable of communicating with both energy providers and potentially even the government.

“[T]he bill would require appliances with the Energy Star label to include wireless transmitters that cannot be turned off, in order to communicate (and presumably cough up your private data and respond to orders from Big Brother Smart Grid to switch you off at a moment’s notice, as happened to dozens of people in Northern California recently when their not-so-smart-AC program cut off their air conditioning at the height of the recent heat wave,” adds StopSmartMeters.org.

“The bill would also establish a ‘smart grid information center’ that would presumably create pro-smart-grid propaganda at the taxpayer’s expense.”

Smart meters exposed as part of NSA ‘PRISM’ spying scam Even worse is the fact that Landis Gyr, a major smart meter manufacturer that describes itself as a “world leader” in smart grid technology, let the cat out of the bag that the National Security Agency (NSA), which we now know actively spies on innocent Americans’ phone calls and text messages, also uses smart meters to spy on Americans.

Thanks to a Natural-News reader tip, we learned that Landis Gyr recently had a company voicemail message that admitted smart meter technology is part of the NSA’s “PRISM” spying and surveillance program.

Since gaining national attention about this admission, Landis Gyr has apparently altered its company voicemail message to omit this indicting information.

Your help needed to oppose HR 2685, the Smart Meter Trojan Horse Act H.R. 2685 has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for consideration, which means this is the first point of contact in effectively killing this bill. StopSmart-Meters.org has set up a helpful action page that you can use to contact not only the committee but also the bill’s sponsors and the rest of your Congressmen: http://stopsmartmeters.org.

Gov’t urged not to keep immigration activists in solitary confinement

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Mary Meg McCarthyMary Meg McCarthy

The National Immigrant Justice Center urged the Department of Homeland Security on Friday not to hold in solitary confinement the nine immigration activists known as the DREAM 9.

The NIJC’s executive director, Mary Meg McCarthy, cited press accounts indicating that the young people were in solitary last week and that at least two of them are still in that situation.

“(S)olitary confinement should never be used to retaliate against individuals who speak out for their rights inside detention,” she said in a statement.

“If the government feels it cannot safely maintain custody of individuals who are demanding their rights but who pose no threat to the community or flight risk, then the humane solution is to release them from detention,” McCarthy said.

The activists entered the United States from Mexico on July 22 at the Port of Entry in Nogales and requested humanitarian parole as “DREAMers” – named after the proposed DREAM Act that would legalize undocumented youths who were brought to the country as children – who should never have been deported or forced to leave.

Some of them had been deported, others returned to Mexico voluntarily and three decided to go visit family members after being approved for Deferred Action, which provides a work permit and avoids deportation but does not authorize leaving the United States.

The group is waiting at Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center for a response to their request for political exile.

The DREAM 9 would have joined the 300 people who are kept in solitary confinement every day in the immigration detention system, the NIJC said.

“There is growing agreement by the medical and corrections establishment that solitary confinement is psychologically harmful, and the United Nations has called solitary confinement that extends beyond 14 days torture,” McCarthy said.

1...330331332...599Page 331 of 599

SELECTIONS

POPULAR TICKETS

POPULAR CATEGORY

ABOUT US

Welcome to our Marvin J. Ramirez website! We are an innovative newspaper located in the heart of San Francisco. With a relentless passion for telling powerful stories, we inform our community with truthful news, insightful analysis, and compelling reporting.

Contacto: lreportero@aol.com

FOLLOW US

© Copyright 2023. Agenciadigital.pw. All rights reserved.