Monday, October 19, 2026
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Current schools: Factory outlets

My (very controversial) column on the lives for which the schooling system prepares our children

by George Monbiot

In the future, if you want a job, you must be as unlike a machine as possible: creative, critical and socially skilled. So why are children being taught to behave like machines?

Children learn best when teaching aligns with their natural exuberance, energy and curiosity. So why are they dragooned into rows and made to sit still while they are stuffed with facts?

We succeed in adulthood through collaboration. So why is collaboration in tests and exams called cheating?

Governments claim to want to reduce the number of children excluded from school. So why are their curricula and tests so narrow that they alienate any child whose mind does not work in a particular way?

The best teachers use their character, creativity and inspiration to trigger children’s instinct to learn. So why are character, creativity and inspiration suppressed by a stifling regime of micromanagement?

There is, as Graham Brown-Martin explains in his book Learning {Re}imagined, a common reason for these perversities. Our schools were designed to produce the workforce required by 19th Century factories. The desired product was workers who would sit silently at their benches all day, behaving identically, to produce identical products, submitting to punishment if they failed to achieve the requisite standards. Collaboration and critical thinking were just what the factory owners wished to discourage.

As far as relevance and utility are concerned, we might as well train children to operate a spinning jenny. Our schools teach skills that are not only redundant but counter-productive. Our children suffer this life-defying, dehumanizing system for nothing.

The less relevant the system becomes, the harder the rules must be enforced, and the greater the stress they inflict. A current advertisement in The Times Educational Supplement asks: “Do you like order and discipline? Do you believe in children being obedient every time? … If you do, then the role of Detention Director at Michaela Community School could be for you.” Yes, many schools have discipline problems. But is it surprising when children, bursting with energy and excitement, are confined to the spot like battery chickens?

Teachers are now leaving the profession in droves, their training wasted and their careers destroyed by overwork and a spirit-crushing regime of standardization, testing and top-down control. The less autonomy they are granted, the more they are blamed for the failures of the system. A major recruitment crisis beckons, especially in crucial subjects such as physics and design and technology. This is what governments call efficiency.

Any attempt to change the system, to equip children for the likely demands of the 21st Century, rather than those of the 19th, is demonized by governments and newspapers as “social engineering”. Well, of course it is. All teaching is social engineering. At present we are stuck with the social engineering of an industrial workforce in a post-industrial era. Under Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and a nostalgic government in Britain, it’s likely only to become worse.

When they are allowed to apply their natural creativity and curiosity, children love learning. They learn to walk, to talk, to eat and to play spontaneously, by watching and experimenting. Then they get to school, and we suppress this instinct by sitting them down, force-feeding them with inert facts and testing the life out of them.

There is no single system for teaching children well, but the best ones have this in common: they open up rich worlds that children can explore in their own ways, developing their interests with help rather than indoctrination. For example, the Essa Academy in Bolton gives every pupil an iPad, on which they create projects, share material with their teachers and each other and can contact their teachers with questions about their homework. By reducing their routine tasks, this system enables teachers to give the children individual help.

Other schools have gone in the opposite direction, taking children outdoors and using the natural world to engage their interests and develop their mental and physical capacities (the Forest School movement promotes this method). It’s not a matter of high-tech or low-tech; the important point is that the world a child enters is rich and diverse enough to ignite their curiosity, and allow them to discover a way of learning that best reflects their character and skills.

There are plenty of teaching programs designed to work with children, not against them. For example, the Mantle of the Expert encourages them to form teams of enquiry, solving an imaginary task – such as running a container port, excavating a tomb or rescuing people from a disaster – that cuts across traditional subject boundaries. A similar approach, called Quest to Learn, is based on the way children teach themselves to play games. To solve the complex tasks they’re given, they need to acquire plenty of information and skills. They do it with the excitement and tenacity of gamers.

The Reggio Emilia approach, developed in Italy, allows children to develop their own curriculum, based on what interests them most, opening up the subjects they encounter along the way with the help of their teachers. Ashoka Changemaker schools treat empathy as “a foundational skill on a par with reading and math”, and use it to develop the kind of open, fluid collaboration that, they believe, will be the 21st Century’s key skill.

The first mixed-race school in South Africa, Woodmead, developed a fully democratic method of teaching, whose rules and discipline were overseen by a student council. Its integrated studies program, like the new system in Finland, junked traditional subjects in favor of the students’ explorations of themes, such as gold, or relationships, or the ocean. Among its alumni are some of South Africa’s foremost thinkers, politicians and business people.

In countries like Britain and the United States, such program succeed despite the system, not because of it. Had these governments set out to ensure that children find learning difficult and painful, they could not have done a better job.

Yes, let’s have some social engineering. Let’s engineer our children out of the factory and into the real world. published first in the Guardian
www.monbiot.com

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What on Earth is happening to our temperature?

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

Dear reader:

Perhaps you’ve heard that the Earth is warming and the glaziers will melt and so on… But you’ve probably also heard that all this about the global warming is just an engineered plan by the global government agents to expand and control the people. In other words, they claim is a fraud.
Well, this article written by Ed Hiserodt and Rebecca Terrell, will present to you their perspective, and you can be the judge. Due to lack of space, it will be published in three parts. THIS IS PART 1 OF THREE.

What on earth is happening to our temperature?

by Ed Hiserodt and Rebecca Terrell

In the great climate debate, some scientists say that Earth’s temps have remained flat for two decades, while others claim that we are setting records each year. Who’s right?
 
Is 2016 the hottest year on record? It’s a hard question to answer, especially with the latest nail in the Climategate coffin. Retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate scientist-turned-whistleblower Dr. John Bates dropped a bombshell on Feb. 5, revealing to the U.K.’s Mail on Sunday that a groundbreaking NOAA study grossly exaggerated global warming and erroneously influenced the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The Mail quoted Bates accusing the agency of having timed publication of its flawed report in order to make “the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron.”

NOAA’s research supposedly contradicted claims of a pause in global warming since 1998, hence the name “Pausebuster Paper.” But Bates’ evidence shows that the agency knowingly overstated the speed of warming and falsely reported inaccurate high temperatures. Bates says his NOAA superiors ignored his vehement objections to publication of the faulty data.

Bates, a 40-year career meteorologist and climate scientist, explained that NOAA had replaced the readings gleaned from highly accurate Argo ocean buoys with temperature measurements from ships. The latter are notoriously inaccurate and undependable due to variability in measurement depth and because of heat from ships’ propulsion systems. “They had good data from buoys. And they threw it out and ‘corrected it’ with bad data from ships,” complained Bates. “You never change good data to agree with bad, but that’s what they did — so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.”

A second manipulated dataset was based on NOAA’s land records (the Global Historical Climatology Network, or GHCN), with records from about 4,000 weather stations. Bates told the Mail on Sunday that NOAA reported past temperatures as cooler than previously thought, and recent ones higher, so the warming trend looked steeper.
Additionally, the agency violated its own rules when it failed to archive its data for independent review and verification by other researchers and scientific bodies.
Instead, NOAA’s climate boss, Thomas Karl, thrust the unverified “Pausebuster Paper” upon an unsuspecting public. Karl had a pipeline to the Obama White House through his association with fellow alarmist John Holdren, Obama’s chief science advisor. Touted as the death of global-warming skepticism, “Pausebuster” was greeted with glee by the Paris delegates who wanted the warming hiatus to disappear. The U.S. House Science Committee, however, was suspicious of the paper and issued subpoenas for internal e-mails related to it. Then suddenly, the computer used to store “Pausebuster” suffered a “complete failure,” meaning, says Bates, that no one will ever be able to replicate or verify the data.

Global-warming alarmism was central to Obama’s administration, packed as it was with advisors dedicated to the party line. We may be so fortunate under the Trump presidency to see the victory of science over government propaganda. But how does real science answer the question: What on Earth is happening to our temperature?
Where Do You Stick the Thermometer?

For years, many climate scientists have assured us that there has been a “pause” in global warming — Earth has not heated up since 1998. At the same time, mainstream media have touted a “scientific consensus” that the pause is total fiction, global warming is repeatedly causing record high temperatures, and mankind is scorching Mother Earth with its insatiable consumption of fossil fuels.

Why the contradiction, and whom do you believe? Are the so-called climate-change deniers merely lunatics, blind to reality, or worse — are they liars in the pocket of Big Oil? On the other hand, are climate alarmists using global warming as an excuse to curb access to energy and promote a long-term environmentalist goal of population control? How can one camp claim a warming pause so conclusively, while the other side decisively asserts exactly the opposite?

The answer lies in Bates’ revelation — simply, it depends on where you stick the thermometer. NOAA has been poking it haphazardly into the oceans and into the air at the surface of the Earth and, according to Bates, cherry-picking the results. Its prejudiced outcomes fuel the climate-alarmist cartel. (NOAA maintains one of three major datasets of global surface temperature. The other two belong to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit [CRU] in Great Britain. The three agencies agree that man-made climate change is a dangerous reality.)

Climate realists set their sights slightly higher — namely, on the troposphere, which is the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere and varies in depth from 12 miles over the tropics to four miles over polar regions. The troposphere is where weather happens. Researchers measure air temperature in it by means of satellites that circle the planet over its poles, sensing by means of microwave instruments how much heat is given off from oxygen molecules. There are two organizations dedicated to collecting and analyzing satellite data: the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), a private company based in California.
Interestingly, competition has arisen, not between the organizations themselves, but between climate-change skeptics who trumpet the merits of the UAH dataset and the alarmist clique that looks to RSS since it works in close collaboration with NASA. Despite the perceived rivalry, both UAH and RSS predict a decrease in global temperature over the next 100 years, based on current trends. We will investigate this point further, but first, let’s look a little deeper into the surface and ocean temperature data. IT WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK.

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Moringa: The power-packed plant

by Melissa

The mighty moringa plant, or as it’s fondly called “miracle tree” is becoming the go-to plant to treat a variety of ailments. Moringa oleifera is originally found in its native country of South Asia, but is becoming abundant throughout the tropics. For centuries its leaves have been used to cure and prevent more than 300 different diseases.

Moringa is sometimes called “drumstick tree,” or “horseradish tree,” and is easily recognized by its sturdy small, round leaves. Each one packed-full of protein, beta carotene, calcium, potassium, vitamin C and so much more. For more than 4,000 years, it has been used to make medicine and as a source of food. In fact, the use of moringa pre-dates the days of Alexander the Great, when he and his troops fought the mighty Ancient Maurian warriors of India. According to Roman historians, these warriors hardly ever got sick and survived on little sleep. After countless battles, Alexander’s armies eventually fell under the siege of the Maurian’s.
Health Benefits

This little wonder plant is popular around the globe, especially in impoverished areas such as Thailand, Malawi, Senegal, and India where it’s used as a nutritional supplement. One great thing about moringa is that it grows in almost any weather condition, which allows people to cultivate the plant year-around for it’s nutrients.

One-hundred grams of dry moringa leaves can offer:
• 9 times more protein than yogurt
• 15 times more potassium than bananas
• 10 times more vitamin A than carrots
• 25 times more iron than spinach
• 17 times more calcium than milk
• 12 times more vitamin C than oranges

Rich in antioxidants

Moringa leaves are full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene, vitamin C, quercetin and chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid is known to lower blood sugar levels in animals by slowing the cells’ absorption of sugar.

Lower blood sugar

Moringa seems to have an anti-diabetic effect on the body, because of plant compounds called isothiocyanates found in the leaves. A study showed that women who took moringa leaf powder daily over the period of three months reduced their blood sugar levels by 13.5 percent.

Protect against harmful arsenic

Unfortunately, food supply contamination has caused a spike in arsenic toxicity, which can be found in staple foods such as rice. It’s also made it’s way into our water supply. Moringa leaves and its seeds have shown the ability to protect against the possible side effects of arsenic toxicity, a prevalent problem in populated countries.

Used as a purifier of water

Taking moringa regularly can also have a positive effect on the digestive tract. It is extremely high in fiber, which aids in the cleaning out of intestines and digestive system. Moringa contains isothiocyanates, which has anti-bacterial properties to help rid your body of H. pylori, a bacteria known to cause ulcers and gastric cancer. Another fun fact is that the seeds are now the chosen method for purifying water even over conventional materials.

Here are some common ways to implement moringa into a well-balanced diet:
• Adding fresh leaves in meals
• Toss them in a salad or steam like spinach
• Blend the powdered form into smoothies

The powder can also be added as a supplement to soups, casseroles, smoothies, and other foods for extra nutrition. Remember that moringa has a distinctive flavor, so it’s best to use it sparingly when first trying it. A little goes a long way! Moringa oil is also utilized for skin care products such as soaps, face oils, or cold-pressed it for cooking. (Natural news).

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Arrested while applying for a green card

US immigration experts fear policy shift

by Susan Zalkind
A report by the Guardian

Multiple cases of people being arrested while seeking green cards marks a dramatic shift in immigration policy, say observers: ‘This is what we all feared’
Leandro Arriaga arrived at the immigration office with his US citizen wife and three-month-old daughter on Wednesday.

Their lawyer knew the meeting was a risk. Arriago, 43, who had come to the US from the Dominican Republic in 2000, did have an order of deportation out against him. But she had never had a client detained at a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) meeting before.

The arrest of Arriago and at least three other people in Massachusetts this week while they were applying for their green cards marks a dramatic shift in immigration policy, say attorneys and experts.

My undocumented friend: Carlos does the work few in Vermont want to do

A total of five individuals were arrested in total according to a statement from Immigration Customs Enforcement (Ice), which was responding to “an investigative tip”.

Susan Church, the head of the New England chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says that at least three of those people were in the process of applying for green cards and did not have criminal records.

“This is what we all feared,” said Church.

She said Wednesday’s detentions, first reported by WBUR, signify that the goal of Donald Trump’s administration is not to target criminals or in the president’s words, “bad hombres”, for deportation.

“These people universally are trying to follow the laws, they are trying to follow the rules,” said Church. “[These] people are not placed in hotel rooms when they are arrested, they are placed in detention with other individuals with significant records, and they are held there without any significant opportunity to get bond, without any opportunity to see a judge, it’s utterly inhumane.”

Arriaga owns five properties, two in Lawrence and three Springfield, which he maintains and rents. He pays taxes, say his attorneys. Along with his four American born children, ranging in ages from three months, to thirteen years, he also supports his mother-in-law and his wife’s grandmother.

In Massachusetts, Trump’s immigration crackdown harms drug epidemic fight

The Arriagas were meeting at USCIS to get an I-130 approval, or permission to apply for a green card on the basis of his wife’s citizenship. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the legitimacy of the couple’s relationship.

Catherine was interviewed first and then Leandro. Then the USCIS officer told the Arriagas and Palumbo to take a seat in the waiting area.

“She told us that she needed to review his previous file,” said Palumbo.

Then the officer called Leandro and Palumbo back. Palumbo said the USCIS officer sat them both down, asked if he was aware of a final order of removal, and called in two officers from Ice to detain him.

“They ask, ‘Do you want to see your wife and children? and he says, ‘No, no, I don’t want her to see me like this,’” said Catherine Arriaga.

Leandro Arriaga is now being held in the Bristol County jail.

“It’s too hard,” says Catherine of being left to care for her infant daughter on her own. “All his life here,” she says. “He has no criminal record, he has four children here, he is a hard worker and I don’t what happened.”

Church, who tracks detentions in New England, says that under the later years of the Obama administration, people who did not have criminal records were not priorities for deportation. Under George Bush’s administration, she only once had a client detained at the USCIS office, but she was released the same day.

The recent arrests mark a stark change in tactics, said Church. “This administration is processing them, detaining them, and my understanding is not letting them go,” she said.

Brian Doyle says he has a client who was detained under similar circumstances on the same day, 29 March. His client, a Brazilian woman in her late 30s, is also married to a US citizen and has a US born teenage child. She is a small business owner who employs between 8-12 people, and asked that her name not be released.

She came to the United States in 2001 and overstayed her visa. She does not have a criminal record, he says.

She was detained immediately after she and her husband were interviewed for I-130 approval, which would have paved the way to her obtaining a green card.

She is now being held in the Suffolk County house of corrections.

Doyle, who called her arrest “shocking”, says the detention is the first in his career under these circumstances.

Ice said in a statement that all five individuals arrested have deportation orders against them, and all will be “held in custody pending removal from the United States.”

Palumbo says she is working to get Arriaga released, but his arrest will dramatically change how she advises clients in the future. In a recent consultation, she met with a client who had an order of deportation but had been married to her American husband for five years. “I have to say to her, listen I have a client be arrested so I don’t feel comfortable doing a process if your husband is going to be arrested.”

Church added: “This is a whole new class of people who now has to live underground.”

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This law puts homeowners at risk of property rights violations

by Pat Nolan David Safavian

The owner of the resort didn’t ask his guests why they were there. He offered plush accommodations to those seeking to get away.

Sometimes, guests would come to play golf at the private and very exclusive country club. Other times, they used the fabulous spa services down the road. Still others wanted to simply enjoy the nearby beach.

But people came and stayed at the resort, and it was profitable. Some would call it a huge success.
But not all of the guests were good people. A few brought their drug habits with them. And in 30 instances (over a period of 17 years in which the owner and his wife rented out rooms to guests 125,000 times), law enforcement got involved.

The local police knew that the owner wasn’t involved in drugs. He and his wife were model citizens who took pride in their establishment. They even cooperated with law enforcement when something suspicious was going on with their guests.

But the police also knew that the resort was valuable, and that its millions in worth could add to the police department’s budget under forfeiture law. But under state law, the local cops didn’t have enough evidence of crimes to institute state forfeiture proceedings.

Undeterred by limits imposed by the Massachusetts Legislature, the police utilized a workaround. Federal law provided a lower threshold for seizing assets. The local police could circumvent state rules on forfeiture by turning the case over to the feds.

Using a program called Equitable Sharing, if local law enforcement could convince the Justice Department to institute forfeiture proceedings, the locals would get a cut.

So the police went to the Drug Enforcement Administration and convinced it that the resort should be forfeited. The Drug Enforcement Administration then convinced the Justice Department, which authorized the seizure.

Served with a federal notice of civil forfeiture, the resort owner was told that he had to prove he was innocent in all this. If he failed to do so, Uncle Sam could take the property, auction it off, and keep the proceeds—most of which would end up in the coffers of the local police department.

The owner and his wife, who built the business, would end up with nothing, despite not having been charged with any crime, let alone convicted of anything.

This property is not Mar-a-Lago, and the owner is not Donald Trump. But this is a real case involving the Caswell Inn in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in 2009.

The owner was baffled by the seizure of his hotel because he had always had a good relationship with the local police department. He asked a police official why they targeted him rather than a nearby motel that was notorious for prostitution and drug dealing. The officer explained that they had looked up the other motel’s assessed value and found that it was heavily mortgaged.

The police would have gotten very little money if they seized that one. But seizing the unmortgaged Caswell Inn would net them millions of dollars.

This process is a clear conflict of interest. The local police department profits from these seizures, even if there is no conviction of a crime. The more that is seized, the more money goes back to the police for things like new equipment and retirement programs.

Civil asset forfeiture has turned many law enforcement agencies into modern “Sheriffs of Nottingham,” robbing from the so-called rich to give to the poor local police departments. Outraged citizens have taken to calling this nefarious process “policing for profit.”

Unfortunately, it’s not out of the ordinary. According to The Washington Post, more assets were seized under civil forfeiture proceedings than were stolen in all of the burglaries that took place in the United States in 2014.

The owner of the Tewksbury hotel was very fortunate. The Institute for Justice learned of his case, and undertook the legal fight to get his hotel back. They won.
But it is worth noting that there is no way that the owner could have paid for such top-notch lawyers out his own pocket. Few others can afford to fight the government.

Prosecutors argue that forfeiture is an important weapon in the war on drugs. That may be true, but only if it is tied to a crime for which there is an actual conviction.

Without a conviction, the current system turns our legal rights upside down. When assets are seized, the owners are presumed guilty until proven innocent. They have the burden of showing that their ownership of the asset was not the result of criminal activity. Otherwise, the government gets to keep the money.

Proving the negative is very hard to do, particularly when the government has seized all your assets and you have no funds to hire a lawyer. That isn’t just unfair.
It’s un-American.

The abuse of asset forfeiture has prompted a growing number of states to restrict its use to when someone has been convicted of a crime.

To get around these restrictions, the federal government uses an equitable sharing law, which allows federal agencies to seize and launder proceeds, and then cut the local police in on the back end. It’s a pretty nifty way for the Justice Department and local police to conspire and get around limits imposed by state legislatures.

This issue arose just last month when Trump met with local law enforcement officials. During the meeting, a Texas sheriff complained that proposed reforms to civil asset forfeiture in the Lone Star State would hurt his ability to fight drug traffickers.

Without anyone to explain to him the unfairness of civil asset forfeiture, the president seemed to side with the sheriff and against state efforts to reform it.
Trump won his election by fighting for the “little guy” against an overbearing and dishonest government. Civil asset forfeiture is a prime example of just how overbearing and dishonest the government can be.

The next time asset forfeiture comes up, the president should remember the case of the hotel in Tewksbury. Under current law, his prized resorts are just one Hollywood star with a coke habit away from being seized.

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El Salvador bans mining

by the El Reportero’s wire services

El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban all metal mining yesterday. The law blocks all exploration, extraction and processing of metals, whether in open pits or underground, as well as use of toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury, reports Reuters.
Legislators from across the political spectrum approved a bill that turned a decade-old moratorium on mining into law — an initiative with broad public support, including the influential Roman Catholic Church, reports the New York Times. The ban aims to protect the country’s water supply, and thwarts international companies’ efforts to tap into a gold belt running across the country’s northern provinces.
The initiative follows a long-standing dispute with a Canadian-Australian company over an environmentally questioned gold project, explains the Financial Times. Last year, the World Bank’s arbitration tribunal threw out a seven-year suit filed by a unit of Canadian-Australian company OceanaGold, over its failure to be granted permits for the El Dorado project in the north of the country.
Activists say the project risked damaging already scarce and contaminated water supplies, in the second most environmentally degraded country in the region. Retaining rainwater in El Salvador is difficult due to unsustainable farming practices and inadequate industrial controls. More than 90 percent of the country’s surface waters are estimated to be polluted by toxic chemicals, heavy metals and waste matter, according to the Guardian.
The vote built on increasing popular opposition to mining projects in the region and activists hope it can serve as a model for other countries, according to the Guardian. Campaigners in favor cast the issue as “No to mining, yes to life.”
Activists around the region — where protesters against mining interests routinely turn deadly — are watching the case closely, according to FT, though partial bans are in place in other countries, for example prohibiting the use of cyanide or open-pit mining.

Canada benefits from Mexico tourism while USA suffers

Exchange rate and visa changes have impact
Mexicans are forsaking visits to the United States, many in favor of Canada where their money goes further and visa requirements have been scrapped, according to the latest data from ForwardKeys, which predicts future travel patterns by analyzing 16 million booking transactions a day.
While US President Trump has talked about building a wall on the Mexican border, Canada has been enjoying a boom in visitors.
The timing of their visa waiver – falling around the time of the US election – appears to have been particularly apposite.
According to the data, starting March 2016 there was a 16 percent increase in travel in the period up to the US presidential election. When visa-free travel came into effect on Dec. 1, 2016, there followed an 82 percent increase compared to the preceding year.
Before November’s US election, bookings from Mexico to the US were down 9 percent. After the US presidential election, the decline persisted in the face of an increasing fall in the value of the US dollar (USD) against the Mexican peso (MXN).  The setback was not uniform however, as there was over 3 percent growth in business travel to the USA, most notably to Detroit.
Olivier Jager, CEO ForwardKeys, said: “Attributing the fall in Mexican visitors to the USA to Donald Trump’s rhetoric is not proven. Currency concerns are much more likely explanation, combined with the recent relative relaxation of entry restrictions to Canada.”

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Iconic street artist MAN ONE paints a portrait of new body of work

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Oakland, CA – Sánchez Contemporary, one of Oakland’s newest galleries, is pleased to announce İSomos Americanos? a groundbreaking solo exhibit by Los Angeles-based graffiti artist, Man One. İSomos Americanos? Will be a significant departure for the street art legend, utilizing mixed media and abstract surrealist portraiture to explore the question of the show’s title: “Are we American?” The answer is no longer apparent.

Opening April 8, İSomos Americanos? Will showcase an entirely new body of work consisting of 20-30 mixed media pieces on wood and mediums he’s never used before, including oil, crayons and acrylics. Exhibition Runs: April 8 – May 13, 2017.

Preview: Friday, April 7 2017, during Oakland First Friday art walk. Opening Reception: Saturday, April 8, 2017 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. Closing Reception & book signing May 13, 2017. Sanchez Contemporary, 1951 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. www.sanchezcontemporary.com.

Partial calendar listing of artists at SFIAF 2017

Opening Night on Thursday May 25 will include multiple performances featuring the spectacular GuGu Drum Group from Shanghai, China. From France the US debut of Stereoptik who perform an ingenious shadow puppet play Dark Circus. Local artists STEAMROLLER will revive their signature hit Siamese Dream and Fort Mason Center residents Embark Gallery will present View from the Pit. The whole evening will be serenaded by the authentic powerhouse Puerto Rican sounds of the Latin Rhythm Boys.

The Bay Area debut of pianist Pablo Estigarrabia from Argentina, ABADÁ Capoeira in collaboration with dancers from Brazil, Europe and Canada.

San Francisco International Arts Festiva, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture May 25 – June 4, 2017 $12.50 SPECIAL FOR MARCH ONLY! Box Office and More Information: www.sfiaf.org 415-399-9554.

We Work In The Fields of the North photo exhibition

Farm workers are among California’s poorest residents. A third make less than minimum wage. In San Diego, Santa Rosa, Coachella and Salinas, migrants sleep in shacks or tents under trees, or crowd 10 to a room in trailer parks. Rural homelessness and poverty are widespread, but invisible. In The Fields of the North makes them visible, demonstrating who is responsible for producing the food we eat and showing that social justice problems are suffered in common by both urban and rural communities.

Award winning photojournalist David Bacon photo exhibit is currently being displayed.

Bacon’s images of farm workers are a striking revelation of the labor necessary to put food on America’s tables. Black and white images provide a glimpse into the lives of those who work in the fields and capture both the struggle and the hope of their existence.

It started January 11 and will end on April 11 2017. At the Riverside Art Museum, 3425 Misison Inn Ave., Riverside, California.

http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2017/01/photography-exhibition-trabajamos-we.html

6th Annual Tiburon International Film Festival

Tiburon International Film festival, a showcase for independent feature and short films from around the world, will present over films from 27 countries at its 16th annual event with topics from drama, fiction, politics, music, animation, children…to current events.

The festival popular program, Marin Filmmakers, once again will shine upon the local filmmakers and talents, with such films as: Charlie vs Goliath, The Pastoralist, Persepolis, a Virtual Reconstruction, As The River Flows, Bay Area Showcase with such films as: Angeltown, Letters from Alcatraz, Youth, Stars, Solo.

On April 14-21, 2017, Playhouse Theater [40 Main Street, Tiburon].

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Director finds own film among bootleg copies

Copy of Oscar winner Moonlight was at a vendor’s stall in Yucatán

by the El Reportero’s news services

What else would an internationally renowned filmmaker expect to find at a Mexican street vendor’s stall of pirated films but one of his own?
That’s what happened this week to Oscar Award-winning director Barry Jenkins during a visit to the small city of Muna, Yucatán.

Having stopped to buy some fruit at a market, Jenkins was walking past a vendor of videos when he spotted his own film, Moonlight, or Luz de Luna in Spanish, which won best picture at this year’s Academy Awards.

He described the experience on Instagram:

“Walking by the bootleg man in Muna, Mexico and look what I found. To fully comprehend this, you must know that Muna is a town with a population of 11,000 souls, a small-town lover’s kind of small town on the way to the Mayan ruins of Uxmal. We stopped for some fruit at an open air market and lo and behold, Luz De Luna. Mama we made it!”

Several Mexicans responded to the post. While a few offered a “Viva México!” several others apologized and some saluted Jenkins’ sense of humor over the issue.
There’s no telling how bootlegged copies affect box-office receipts but Moonlight’s financial situation is not bad. As of this month it has grossed US $55.5 million worlwide; it cost $1.5 million to make.

Juried Awards Champion Emerging Artists and Global Cinema

The San Francisco Film Society today announced the films in competition for the Golden Gate Awards (GGAs), which will distribute nearly $40,000 in total prizes this year in various narrative and documentary categories. Films are selected with an emphasis on bringing attention to innovative and quality filmmaking regardless of participation in other festivals.

The films were announced at the Festival press conference on Wednesday, March 15. Independent juries selected the winners in all categories, which will be announced at the Golden Gate Awards, Sunday, April 16.

Some of the films were directed by a couple of Latino film directors.

Donkeyote, by Chico Pereira, Spain/Germany/UK, is competing in the documentary feature category.

A Spanish man’s quest to defy barriers and borders in search of the American West by planning a journey on the Trail of Tears with his donkey by his side is its own quixotic trail of laughter and tears. The understanding between man and animal has rarely been so intimately conveyed as it is in Chico Pereira’s winning tale, a stunningly photographed film that hovers between documentary and fiction, one inspired and performed by a real-life character with outsized dreams.

Everything Else, Natalia Almada, Mexico/USA/France, is competing in the New Director category – narrative feature.

Academy Award-nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel) gives a masterfully controlled performance as Doña Flor, a solitary bureaucrat whose lifelong service in a government office has left her markedly unsympathetic towards her clients. Shot with an attentive and deeply empathetic lens, documentarian Natalia Almada’s narrative debut is a starkly intimate portrait of a woman at odds with her life who may still have a chance to escape her isolation.

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How the United States will end

by Dave Hodges

The following is an analysis of what has been learned about the pattern America will follow on the path to its demise and final resting place. But America isn’t just going to end, it will, and already is, morphing into a new entity which will be complete divorced from its original founding principles and culture.

The foundations of God, family, country

The three virtues listed in the subtitle are what America used to aspire to be. Because of our sinful nature, America never achieved great heights with regard to the attainment of our ideals, but at least the ideals were in place.

These three goals dominated our goals. This is no longer true as witchcraft now occupies an equal position to Christianity. Over half of our children grow up in a broken home and our children attend schools who no longer teach or aspire to the ideal of American excellence. America is no longer a nation of rules. It is a nation of power, greed and avarice. Every perversion is embraced and those that still aspire to traditional values (e.g. Christian, pro-Constitution) are labeled as domestic terrorists in such government documents as the 2008 MIAC Report. Up is down and down is up.

Russian defectors warned us this would be coming as the Communist/Muslim Brotherhood influence dominate the national agenda and in particular, the Democratic party that has been selected to complete the takedown of America.

America has become a rudderless ship of amoral and immoral people cast adrift in a sea depravity and Satanic principles.

Control of the media

Where a 1968 Brady Bunch TV episode was the FIRST ever TV show to display a husband and wife sleeping in the same bed, today’s displays on TV regarding language, sexual behavior and adherence to the rule of law are virtually non-existent. We make fun of classic TV shows such as Leave It to Beaver, yet, this used to be the Happy Days norm.

Instead of entertainment that reflected a consensus of moral values being displayed in our TV shows, literature and movies, these entities are now the trendsetters. The smug concept of Hollywood is on full display as they continue to take America to new depths of depravity and I am speaking about Breeder Babies, trafficking and far left attitudes that are hypercritical of anything representing God, family and country. A nation that follows the values of Hollywood is a lost nation.

The news media

For a nation to lose its way and descend into traditional one-world globalism that is decidedly Satanic in nature, the flow of information must be controlled. And thanks to Bill Clinton, the FCC broadcast regulations had to be changed and they were in the mid 1990’s when Bill Clinton permitted regulations to be struck down that prevented unlimited media ownership by a select few. It used to be illegal to own a newspaper and a radio station in the same market, or one TV station and one radio station. TODAY, SIX MEN CONTROL 95 PERCENT + OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. And again, anything that represents traditional American values is cast in a negative light as the people are bombarded with the relentless brainwashing of messages that promote Godless behavior and the acceptance of the New World Order agenda and America, for the most part, has become “Dumb unto death” as Steve Quayle likes to call it.

Most of America does not even know that their country is being destroyed along with their collective futures. This is not about riding out a bad economic cycle while waiting for the good ‘ole days to return. This is not about American downturn, this is about an American takedown.

Lapsed into a coma

Trump was elected and then America went back to sleep. The politically ignorant just assumed that Donald Trump would ride in on his white horse and save the day.
The globalists are taking out the eyes and ears of the people.

The globalists rightfully blame the IM for getting Trump elected and delaying their takeover of the country. Now the social media giants of Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are dismantling the IM one broadcaster, one writer, one activist at a time. Trump gave the country a chance to become a nation of activists and instead we are a nation of slacktivists.

With the ongoing take down of the IM (e.g. Alex Jones, Paul Watson, Lisa Haven and myself to name a few), the Rip Van Winkles’ of this country will nobody to awaken them from their slumber for the final battle. Within six months, the eyes and ears of the people will likely be all but gone. The people will never know what hit them and they certainly will not have a centralized rallying point from which to organize against this planned and final takeover.

Some have asked me why don’t the globalists just takeover right now all at once. The main answer to that question is that the globalists are not plundering the resources and the labor of the people. When the last bit of blood has been squeezed from the last turnip, the end will come swiftly.

When the final resources are gone and the citizen journalists are out of the way, the path to national Armageddon will continue at breakneck speed.
Jade Helm 15 and UWEX 16.

During Jade Helm 15, I warned the country that these were drills designed to eliminate any vestige of resistance against the New World Order takedown of the country. This is where the country will come to understand the reasons for the NDAA and the FEMA camps. We will soon enter America’s darkest hour.

What is standing in the way? The answer is Donald Trump. However, the Deep State has managed to create such a quagmire that Trump can get nothing done. And America’s political fickleness will rear its ugly head to give the Democrats control of the House in 2018. And when that happens, Donald Trump will be impeached. Today’s Russian allegations are laying the framework for impeachment. November of 2018 will become the D-Day to destruction. The globalists have tipped their hand. They will use the Russian threat to impose virtual martial law. All opposition to the coming war of depopulation will be silenced. As Bill Ayers, Obama’s political benefactor, predicted, millions will disappear.

The great war of depopulation

America has one last task to perform before it is laid to rest. It must start the great war of depopulation. Remember, the globalists have repeatedly stated that they want to reduce the population by 90% and by any means possible. Out of the ashes will arise the Phoenix of the New World Order.
What lies ahead?

Christianity will be outlawed and every perversion including pedophilia will be openly practiced. The world will embrace the new religion of GAIA. A new servant class, drawn from the small number of “deplorables” will service the new elite who will have morphed into some form of existence which will be the result of transhumanism. Satan will firmly be in control of planet.
 
Could these be the “final days”, I am not sure, but I would not bet against it.

Cognitive dissonance and bystander apathy have their hidden price. God gave us one final chance to get it right and we are collectively slapping away the hand of God and embracing Satanism by default. There is no third option. If you can’t get on board with saving America, at least get on board with saving your soul.

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The elites won’t save us – Part two

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Dear readers:

The following article, written by American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, professor at Princeton University, and author of several New York Times best-sellers, Chris Hedges, is one of those pieces that extracts real juice from the things the mainstream media almost never get to touch – because they are mostly submitted and controlled by the power to be, private interests and corporate greed. Because of lack of space, it will be published in two parts. THIS IS PART TWO OF TWO. – Marvin Ramírez.

The elites won’t save us

by Chris Hedges

“The resiliency of democratic institutions has been encouraging—the courts, the protests,” Nader said. “Trump boomerangs himself. He personally outrages people around the country based on race, gender, class, geography, his lies, his false statements, his narcissism, his lack of knowledge, his flippancy and his morbid desire to respond to slurs with tweets. He is not a smart autocrat. He weakens himself daily. He allows the opposition to have more effect than it ordinarily would.”

“Most dictatorial heads of state deal with abstract ideologies—the fatherland and so forth,” Nader went on. “He doesn’t do much of that. He attacks personally, low on the sensuality ladder. You are a fake. You are a loser. You are a crook. You are a liar. This arouses people more, especially when he does this based on gender, race and religion. The best thing going for the democratic awakening is Donald Trump.” 

Nader said that Trump will, however, be able to consolidate power if we suffer another catastrophic terrorist attack or there is a financial meltdown. Dictatorial regimes need a crisis, either real or manufactured, to justify total suspension of civil liberties and assuming uncontested control.

“If there is a stateless terrorist attack on the U.S. he is capable of concentrating a lot of power in the White House against the courts and against Congress,” Nader warned. “He will scapegoat the people opposed to him. … This will weaken any resistance and opposition.”

The tension between the Trump White House and segments of the establishment, including the courts, the intelligence community and the State Department, has been misconstrued as evidence that the elites will remove Trump from power. If the elites can work out a relationship with the Trump regime to maximize profits and protect their personal and class interests they will gladly endure the embarrassment of having a demagogue in the Oval Office.

The corporate state, or deep state, also has no commitment to democracy. Its forces hollowed out democratic institutions to render them impotent. The difference between corporate power and the Trump regime is that corporate power sought to maintain the fiction of democracy, including the polite, public deference paid to bankrupt democratic institutions. Trump has obliterated this deference. He has plunged political discourse into the gutter. Trump is not destroying democratic institutions. They were destroyed before he took office. 

Even the most virulent fascist regimes built shaky alliances with traditional conservative and business elites, who often considered the fascists gauche and crude.
“We have never known an ideologically pure fascist regime,” writes Robert O. Paxton in “The Anatomy of Fascism.” “Indeed, the thing hardly seems possible. Each generation of scholars of fascism has noted that the regimes rested upon some kind of pact or alliance between the fascist party and powerful conservative forces. In the early 1940s the social democratic refugee Franz Neumann argued in his classic Behemoth that a ‘cartel’ of party, industry, army, and bureaucracy ruled Nazi Germany, held together only by ‘profit, power, prestige, and especially fear.’”

Fascist and authoritarian regimes are ruled by multiple centers of power that are often in competition with each other and openly antagonistic. These regimes, as Paxton writes, replicate the “leadership principle” so that it “cascades down through the social and political pyramid, creating a host of petty Führers and Duces in a state of Hobbesian war of all against all.”

The little führers and duces are always buffoonish. Such strutting demagogues appalled liberal elites in the 1930s. The German novelist Thomas Mann wrote in his diary two months after the Nazis came to power that he had witnessed a revolution “without underlying ideas, against ideas, against everything nobler, better, decent, against freedom, truth and justice.” He lamented that the “common scum” had taken power “accompanied by vast rejoicing on the part of the masses.” The business elites in Germany may not have liked this “scum,” but they were willing to work with them. And our business elites will do likewise now.

Trump, a product of the billionaire class, will accommodate these corporate interests, along with the war machine, to build a mutually acceptable alliance. The lackeys in Congress and the courts, puppets of corporations, will, I expect, mostly be submissive. And if Trump is impeached, the reactionary forces that are cementing into place authoritarianism will find a champion in Vice President Mike Pence, who is feverishly placing members of the Christian right throughout the federal government.
“Pence is the perfect president for the Republican leaders who control Congress,” Nader said. “He is right out of central casting. He looks the part. He talks the part. He acts the part. He has experienced the part. They would not mind if Trump in a fit quit, or had to resign…”

We are in the twilight stages of the rolling corporate coup d’état begun four decades ago. We do not have much left to work with. We cannot trust our elites. We cannot trust our institutions. We must mobilize to carry out repeated and sustained mass actions. Waiting for the establishment to decapitate Trump and restore democracy would be collective suicide.

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