Monday, October 19, 2026
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Back to the Picture Gallery presents artist and curator Martha Castrillo’s exhibition

by Marvin Ramírez

In a warm and cozy art exhibition, Servio Gómez, proprietary of Back to the Picture, hosted a special opening reception of artist and curator Martha Castrillo Cheng’s exhibition of 18 different artists from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds in the Mission District of San Francisco.

An enthusiast SF resident originally from Nicaragua, Castrillo, who originally studied interior design and psychology at SF State University and now a consummated painted and curator, invites those art lovers to come enjoy her displayed art at Back to the Picture Gallery, at 934 Valencia St, at 20th St.

You will be able to see works of artists of the category of MCCLA art teacher Calixto Robles, of brothers André and Gabriel Castrillo, of renowned world traveler Nicaraguan-Chinese photographer Robert Siu, and Myrna Funes, (who is not a cousin of El Salvador former president Mauricio Funes as it was previously reported), Antonio Huerta, Rich Nyhagen, Felipe Acosta, Alejandra Blum, Vladimir Cuevas, José Islas Colin, Marlene Jahoor, Kevin Lu, Jason Mecier, Mark Nestra and Dan Stingle.

They are being exhibited now until March 12. Don’t miss it! Back to the Picture, 934 Valencia St., between 20th and 21st Streets. For more
call Derek Hargrove, gallery general manager at (415) 826-2321.

7th Annual San Jose Jazz Winter Fest 2017

San Jose Jazz proudly announces the official Winter Fest 2017 lineup: Roy Ayers, Donny McCaslin, The Cookers, Wallace Roney, Villalobos Brothers, Ben Allison & Think Free, Huntertones, Kim Nalley and Kalil Wilson, Mary Stallings, Natalie Cressman, Ron E. Beck Soul Revue, Reva DeVito, CME, Mark PLSTK, Shea Butter, Chale Brown, Troker, Jazz Organ Fellowship with Akiko Tsuruga and Tony Monaco, The Eulipions Jazz Sessions, Silvestre Martínez, and some of the Bay Area’s premier youth jazz ensembles.

Within the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose Jazz Winter Fest 2017, the Jazz Beyond series, co-curated with local production house Universal Grammar, presents buzzy young stars pushing the boundaries of jazz, soul and hip-hop and the Next Gen performances showcase top regional student jazz ensembles and offer up master classes.

Coming up from now through March 3, 2017, San Jose Jazz presents its 7th Annual SJZ Winter Fest 2017, featuring more than 25 concerts in downtown San Jose, Saratoga and Palo Alto.

Now thru Friday, March 3, 2017, at Cafe Stritch, The Continental, Schultz Cultural Arts Hall at Oshman Family JCC (Palo Alto), Trianon Theatre, MACLA, Café Pink House (Saratoga), Poor House Bistro, Hedley and other venues in Downtown San Jose. Event Info: sanjosejazz.org/winterfest. Tickets: $10 – $65.

Five continents of fashion and fantasy

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA) 40th Anniversary celebration will kick off with a retrospective show of costumes, designed by Mario Chacon, award-winning, Salvadoran designer. Spanning a creative career of over 50 years, the costumes will be presented in a runway show on Saturday, March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Theater.

Also, Join us for the reception afterwards with music by the trio “El Guajiro.”

Models, representing the diversity of the community, will showcase a lavish line-up of 75 one of a kind costumes, including Historical, Ethic and Carnaval styles.

Mario is highly regarded in the Mission District for the many fantasy costumes that he has designed and produced for numerous Carnaval San Francisco contingents over the years.

Mario Chacón studied architecture in El Salvador, but a costume design program at City College of Los Angeles ignited his passion for fashion and design. Mario’s designs have been featured at the deYoung Museum and are on permanent display in San Salvador. His most recent exhibition is in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, a historic town outside the capital.

Luis Echegoyen, pioneer of Bay Area Latin television, will host the show. Immediately following the show there will be a meet-and-greet in the Gallery on the 2nd floor providing an opportunity to talk to the designer and mingle with the costumed models.

FASHION SHOW on Saturday, March 11, at 7 p.m. Theater | RSVP on Eventbrite.

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María Elena Salinas to be inducted into Nab Broadcasting Hall of Fame

by the El Reportero’s news service

Award-winning journalist and co-anchor of Noticiero Univision María Elena Salinas will be inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Broadcasting Hall of Fame at the 2017 NAB Show Television Luncheon on Monday, April 24 in Las Vegas.

Salinas began her journalism career in 1981 as a reporter, anchor and public affairs host at Univision’s KMEX-34 in Los Angeles. Her daily reporting to the growing Hispanic community in Southern California led to her joining Jorge Ramos as co-anchor of the national Spanish language news program Noticiero Univision in 1987.

In 2015, Salinas received a Peabody Award, Walter Cronkite Award, an Emmy and Gracie for her documentary special “Entre el abandono y el rechazo” (Between Abandonment and Rejection), a prime-time report on the exodus of Central American children to the United States. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Mickey Leland Humanitarian award, and in 2012, she became the first Latina to receive an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Iran reiterates criticism of Trump by praising Oscar for The Salesman

Iran received today the Oscar won by director Asghar Farhadi with ‘’The Salesman’’ as another triumph for his cinematography and an occasion to lash out at US President Donald Trump’’s immigration policy.

In addition to the specialized press, all news media – printed, radio, television and digital – echoed the award given by the Hollywood Academy to the Best Foreign Language Film today (yesterday in Los Angeles), but above all, they highlighted the message of Farhadi.

The Persian director explained that his absence at the ceremony was ‘out of respect for the people of my country and those six other nations who have been disrespected by the inhuman law that prohibits the entry of immigrants to the United States,’ alluding to a recent and controversial decision by Trump.

Following a provision by the White House new tenant, the United States issued a visa veto for citizens of Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries, sparking widespread criticism from human rights organizations, social activists, and religious circles.
‘Dividing the world into the us and our enemies categories creates fear,’ said Farhadi, who already won a golden statuette in 2012 in the same category for his film ‘A Separation’ (2011).

His message was read to the public by two Iranian-Americans who represented the director at the 89th Academy Awards, Anousheh Ansari, the first engineer female space tourist, and Professor Firouz Naderi, former Director of Solar Systems Exploration at NASA.

Farhadi added that the stance of the new US Republican administration is ‘a dishonest justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries that have been the victims of aggression.’

Meanwhile, sources in Tehran hailed the second laureate for Iranian filmmaking, particularly for Farhadi, but honored his position announced on Jan. 29 of refusing to travel to Hollywood, even if he was granted an exception to the presidential order.

While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was proud of the Oscar Award and the position of the film director, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) issued an open letter to Trump, blaming him for his immigration policy, Middle East interventionism and treatment to women.

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Are you ready for four years of ball-busting?

by Jim Goad

This essay is intended solely for our male readership. Our three female readers can sit this one out. Go bake us a pie or knit us a sweater or something.

Men: If Hillary Clinton had won, you might as well lop off your testicles with a meat cleaver and ship them parcel post to Washington, DC. Either that, or you can wait until the new Queen Bee’s Castration Squad knocks down your door and leaves your groin as flat and smooth as a Barbie Doll’s crotch. Get ready to have a vagina spot-welded onto where you used to have a penis.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

Consider this: Many idiotic American voters pulled the lever for Obama in 2008, thinking he’d usher in a “post-racial America” rather than a “most racial America.” But instead of eight years of racial healing, we were bludgeoned with ceaseless disparagement of All Things White. If Clinton were to win, the focus will shift toward All Things Male.

Consider that women are four times as plentiful as blacks; it has been my experience that they are also 100 times more vengeful. If anyone at this point is stupid enough to think that electing a woman because she’s a woman will improve relations between the sexes, you deserve to be publicly gelded on a Pay-Per-View special by a female pygmy named Sappho X.

“Angry women may put Hillary over the top in order that she can put men at the bottom.”

As a man, you should be concerned that millions of American women would walk into polling precincts on Tuesday, wrap their gummy labia firmly around the lever, and yank it hard for Hillary Clinton’s cold womb. I suspect they won’t be doing it out of a love for other women—H. L.
Mencken famously said that no one hates women as much as other women—but due to lingering, stinking, lifelong hatred for the male of the species.

Do they hate men because men actively oppress them? I think not. I think they hate men because men are dumb enough to submit to such endlessly ball-shriveling hectoring. They hate men because men are so supremely stupid, they actually think that women are oppressed in this society.

I firmly believe that ideas such as “patriarchy,” “rape culture,” and “women are second-class citizens” are sick jokes concocted by cackling shrews who don’t believe a word of it but who are keenly aware of what gullible, submissive boobs most men tend to be.

I also believe that most women are keenly aware that society bends over backwards to treat them better than men.

After all, women live longer—as the joke goes, “Men die younger than women because they want to.”

Women may not make as much money as men, but that’s because they don’t work as much. And they certainly don’t see anything unfair or “sexist” about leaving nearly all of the most dangerous jobs to the boys. But they definitely spend more money than men, and it’s estimated that over the next decade, they will control a staggering two-thirds of all consumer wealth in the US. For the most part, men have been relegated to the role of worker drones—they are here to provide and then die. And if there’s a woman willing to take the job, then men are simply here to die.

For all the yippety-yap you hear about racial disparities in criminal sentencing, the gender gap is six times as wide. Whereas male offenders are merely considered “evil,” women are thought to have “emotional problems” and are far more likely to receive counseling than they are to be tossed in a cage.

But still, that’s not quite enough unfairness for some women. A mannish twat writing in the Washington Post two years ago argued that women should never be put in jail—for anything.

Just as all criticism of Obama for the past eight years has been rerouted and redefined as “racism,” the press is already falsely branding all untoward sentiments regarding Hillary Clinton as “misogyny.”

A gay man writing for The New York Times whines about “Hillary’s Male Tormentors,” whose ranks allegedly include not only Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump, but also Anthony Weiner and…Bill Clinton.

Writing for The Nation, the supremely hideous Katha Pollitt frames the election as a heroic mission wherein Hillary Clinton vanquishes “Badly Behaved” men.

That doesn’t sound like a drive for equality to me; it sounds like a lust for vengeance.

A girl recently texted me about a female friend of hers who’s getting married:

She doesn’t want a loving respectful relationship with a husband – she wants reparations from men. She told me probably about a month ago something like, “I’m not trying to turn a kitten into a lion but you have to learn to be an apex predator – be mean to men…it’s your birthright.”

I was in Brooklyn to cover the election in various capacities. That night I chanced upon this sign near a subway stop:
WARNING…NEW YORK CITY GIRLS WILL KILL YOU

I’m sure I will be dismissed as paranoid and uptight for suspecting that this sign is a wee bit more than a joke. But I will be dismissed by precisely the same people who’d shit their diapers and call the police if the word “GIRLS” had been swapped out with “BOYS.”

The air is thick with misandry. Can you smell it? Angry women could’ve put Hillary over the top in order that she could put men at the bottom.
And it won’t be about equality—it’ll be about reparations.

Animosity between the sexes is natural rather than a “social construct.” It is so pervasive that it may be genetically hardwired. But in the current climate, such animosity is only being encouraged in one direction, while it is demonized in the other. When people talk about “sexism,” it’s as if galloping misandry doesn’t exist.

If you even remark on the double standard, they cackle that you’re a “scared little boy” and they’ve “touched a nerve.”

Gender shouldn’t be an issue in this election or any other. But if women insist on making it one, men would be wise to follow suit.

And in the nightmare scenario if she had won, men would have also been wise to heed the advice of dead gay junkie William S. Burroughs:
Find yourself in a matriarchy walk don’t run to the nearest frontier.

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Inside the invisible government: war, propaganda, Clinton & Trump

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

To those who have heard rumors that there are plans from a small group of wealthy people called the ‘elite,’ to reduce the population in the US and the world. This article, written by F. William Engdahl, which is the transcript of an interview, illustrates some of those claims. Hope you will enjoy reading it. – MR

Genetics are the new eugenics: How GMO’s reduce the human population

by F. William Engdahl

The following is from an interview transcript

Last year, we had a series of mergers in the agribusiness’ GMO-corporations worldwide. This has created an alarming concentration of corporate power in the hands of basically three corporate groups.

The first one is Bayer AG of Germany, which made a friendly takeover of Monsanto. The reason for this was that Monsanto became identified in the public mind as pure evil and everything bad about GMO’s, which was accurate. This became a burden on the whole GMO project. So, Bayer stepped in, which has a friendly image of an aspirin, harmless, nice company, but in fact is the company that invented heroin in the 1880’s and made gas for the ovens of Auschwitz during WWII. It’s one of the dirtiest agribusiness companies in the world with a series of homicides and pesticides that killed off bee colonies and many other things that are essential to life and to nature.

ChemChina – China State Chemical giant – for some reason took over Swiss Syngenta, which makes weed-killers.

Then, Dow Chemicals and DuPont merged their GMO businesses together.

So, we have three gigantic corporate groups worldwide controlling the genetically-modified part of the human food chain. As dangerous as the GMO crops are and the more they sell, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are the chemicals that by contract must be applied to those GMO seeds by the corporations. They demand that if you buy roundup ready soybeans or corn, you must use Monsanto (now Bayer) roundup.

Therefore, this is giving more corporate power to the GMO industry than ever before and that’s an alarming trend. They are putting pressure on the bureaucracy in Brussels. One example: there was a massive public campaign against the renewal of the license of the European Commission for Glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most widely used weed-killer in the world. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsanto’s roundup. The other ingredients are Monsanto’s corporate secret, but the combination of them is one of the most deadly weed-killers.

The World Health Organization’s body responsible for assessing genetic dangers made a ruling the last year that Glyphosate was a probable cancer-causing agent.

The license came up for automatic renewal last year – a 15-year license. The EU commission for health was prepared to automatically renew it for 15 years. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is responsible allegedly for the health and safety of European citizens, recommended approval based on a German study by the German Food Safety Agency that was simply lifted 100% from studies given by the private corporation Monsanto! So, the whole chain was corrupt from the beginning and all the information was rigged. In reality tests have shown that in minuscule concentrations, lower than in recommended levels in Europe and in the US, Glyphosate causes kidney disease, liver disease, and other illnesses that are potentially fatal.

Now, Glyphosate has shown up in urine tests, in urban drinking water, in gardens, in ground water and so forth. And that gets into the system of childbearing women, for example, with embryo. It’s all in this!

The EU commission, despite a million petitions – this is a record setting – and despite recommendations from leading scientists around the world to not renew the license, made a compromise under huge industry pressure and renewed it for 18 months. Why did they renew it for that time? Because at the end of 18 months, they were told by Bayer and Monsanto that the takeover of those two giant corporations will be completed and Bayer is going to replace Glyphosate with another, likely more deadly toxin, but not so well-known as Glyphosate. So, they simply bought time. And that is just one example.

This agenda of GMO is not about the health and safety; it’s not about increasing crop yields – that’s a lie that has been proven in repeated tests in North America and all around the world. Crop yields for farmers, using GMO plants, may increase slightly for the first 1-2 harvest years, but ultimately decline after 3-4 years. And not only that! We’ve been promised by Monsanto and other GMO giants that the use of chemicals will be less, because of these “wonderful” traits that GMO plants resist. In fact, the weeds become resistant and you have super weeds, which are 5-6 feet in a height and choke out everything. It’s a catastrophe. So, farmers end up using added weed killers to kill the super weeds. This whole mad playing around with the genetic makeup of nature is a disaster from the beginning.

The real agenda of GMO, which I have documented in great detail in my book “Seeds of Destruction”, comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. It comes out of the 1920s-1930s Eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930’s, right up to the outbreak of World War II when it became politically embracing too, financed the Nazi Eugenics experiments of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and in Munich. Why did they do this? Their goal was the elimination of what they called “undesirable eaters”. That is called population reduction.

After the war, the head of the American Eugenic Society, who was a good friend of John D. Rockefeller, at the annual conference of the American Eugenic Society said: “From today, the new name of eugenics is genetics”. Moreover, if you keep that in mind – genetic engineering, the Human Genome Project and so forth – they all are scientific frauds. Russian scientists have proven that the entire Genome Project utterly disregarded 98% of the scientifically valuable data in favor of 2 percent  that was completely nonsense and a waste of billions of dollars.

Therefore, they have been obsessed with the idea of how to reduce human population in a way that would not be so obvious as simply going out and carrying out mass-sterilization.

Actually, they have done that in Central America together with the World Health Organization by giving certain vaccines that they cooked-up to have abortive effects. Therefore, the women of child-bearing age in Central America were given these vaccines against tetanus. The organization of the Catholic Church became suspicious because the shots were given only to women, not to men. And they found that there was buried in the vaccine an abortive effect that made it impossible for women to conceive and bear children. This is all covert population reduction.

These are the Western patriarchs who believe they are the gods, sitting on the throne with great dignity, controlling mankind. I think they are a bunch of fools, but they have this agenda of genetic manipulation. It’s against nature, it’s chemically unstable. And I have to congratulate the Russian Federation that they had the courage and the moral concern for their own population to ban GMO cultivation across Russia. That was a step forward for mankind. I would hope that Russia will use its influence to get China to do the similar thing, because their agriculture is in dire need of some healthy Russian input. But this step by Russia to make a GMO-free agriculture is a great step for mankind.

The original source of this article is Katehon

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Sleep disorders: symptoms, causes and treatments

by Dr. Serge Gregoire

Sleep is a vital part of our physical and mental well-being but unfortunately, thousands of people suffer from a variety of sleep disorders.  Some can be very mild and barely noticed by the effected person such as snoring or grinding of the teeth while asleep.  Others can be much more severe and even dangerous such as the type of sleep disorders that interfere with breathing or that cause a person to fall asleep at random times beyond their control.

Symptoms:

Disorder sleep symptoms can range from small, minor symptoms to much more severe and troublesome.  Here is a list of some of the more common sleep disorders and their symptoms.

Restless Leg Syndrome: As the name suggests this disorder is characterized by involuntary jerky leg movements that can make falling asleep difficult.

Bruxism: This disorder involves a clenching of the jaw or grinding your teeth while you are asleep and is often not noticed by the person suffering from the disorder

Sleepwalking: Perhaps one of the most well-known sleep disorders, this disorder sleep symptom involves walking or performing other routine activities such as getting dressed or making breakfast while in a sleep state.  Again, the sleepwalker is unaware of their actions.

Narcolepsy: One of the more serious and dangerous of the sleep disorders; those who suffer from Narcolepsy may fall asleep while performing regular activities such as talking or driving.  It is characterized by an uncontrollable urge to sleep regardless of how much rest you may have gotten the night before.

Insomnia: Restlessness or an inability to fall asleep.  This can be mild and occasional or severe and reoccurring.

Sleep Apnea:  This is one of the other more worrisome of the sleep disorders.  This disorder’s sleep symptom can be somewhat frightening since it involves a pause or a stop in breathing while asleep.

These are but just a handful of the some of the more widely known sleep disorders; however, there are dozens of others that you may want to learn about.

Causes:

Sleep disorders stem from a variety of causes including physical pain such as back pain, pain from a recent injury, neck pain, and headaches.  Stress and anxiety can also be leading causes of sleep disorders.  Hormonal changes due to pregnancy, the onset of menopause, or menstruation can also be factors that interfere with normal sleep.  The side effects of various medications can lead to sleep disorders as can some medical conditions such as sciatica and endocrine imbalances.  Environmental noise and distractions can also be culprits in stealing your sleep.

Treatments:

Sleep disorders have a variety of treatments from using aromatherapy oils blended to aid sleep, for example by using one of the sleep mists that you can spray your linens with before you go to bed to help you relax.  A variety of herbal remedies using chamomile and other herbs can be effective.  When stress and anxiety are causing the disorder’s sleep symptom, learning relaxation and stress management techniques can often have a great effect on your ability to get much needed sleep.  Some disorders are more severe and may require medication and treatment by a physician.  So if you feel that you are suffering from a sleep disorder and one of the standard remedies do not seem to help, consult your healthcare provider.

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Trump plan: Deport to Mexico ‘all’ immigrants crossing illegally the border

The idea is part of a raft of immigration proposals signed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly that are likely to spur international and legal challenges

by Ginger Thompson and Marcelo Rochabrun

Buried deep in the Trump Administration’s plans to round up undocumented immigrants is a provision certain to enrage Mexico — new authority for federal agents to deport immigrants caught crossing the southern border to Mexico, regardless of where they are from.

If present immigration trends continue, that could mean the United States would push hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans, even Haitians into Mexico. Currently, such people are detained in the U.S. and allowed to request asylum.

President Trump wants them to do so from Mexico, communicating via videoconference calls with U.S. immigration officials from facilities that Mexico would presumably be forced to build.

The new authority for immigration agents is among the dramatic, some would say untenable, tactics the Trump Administration is preparing to deploy as it upends President Obama’s policies on illegal immigration.

A pair of memos signed by John Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, and disclosed over the weekend by McClatchy outline the plans for what present and former government officials say will be a massive roundup of undocumented immigrants.

Officials disclosed that two former Senate aides to Attorney General Jeff Sessions drafted the plan without input from career DHS policy staffers. The ideas aren’t new. Many of the approaches described in the memos come from a law that Congress passed in 1996, which policy makers and law enforcement agents disregarded as either unenforceable or absurd.

Among them was the Mexico part of the plan, for example, which calls for returning undocumented immigrants “to the foreign contiguous territory from which they arrived.” The memo goes on to point out how foisting the immigrants onto Mexico would benefit DHS’s budget, saying that it would, “save the Department’s detention and adjudication resources.”

However, former senior Mexican and American immigration officials said it could very well create new security problems along the border, as authorities in each country push unwanted migrants back and forth.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association said that the proposal would violate U.S. law and international treaty obligations. Mexico is as likely to embrace the plan as it did the notion of paying for a wall. “I would expect Mexico to respond with an emphatic ‘No,’” said Gustavo Mohar, a former senior Mexican immigration and national security policy official. Spokespeople for DHS and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Whether viable or not, the Trump administration’s deportation plans mark a dramatic departure from decades of policy and practice. Current and former immigration policy officials say that while the details of how the administration intends to carry out the plans remain unclear — if not insurmountable — the administration’s overall message to enforcement agents across the country is clear: limits have been lifted.
President Obama attempted to focus enforcement efforts on immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes, and on those who were caught while or shortly after illegally entering the country. His administration deported record numbers of immigrants, most of whom had only been accused of minor crimes and immigration violations.

The Trump administration says it, too, is focused on deporting criminals, but it has redefined crimes to include any activity that might bring a conviction, including entering the U.S. without permission. Effectively, that makes virtually everyone in the U.S. without a proper visa subject to roundup at their workplace or home. The only clear exception, according to the enforcement plan, is for immigrants who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children, known as Dreamers.

“Anyone who complained about Obama as the deporter-in-chief,” said David Martin, formerly DHS’s principal deputy general counsel, “is unfortunately going to get a taste of what it’s like when someone is really gung-ho.”

Greg Chen, the policy director at AILA, said the Trump plan would “effectively unleash a massive deportation force with extremely broad authority to use detention as the default mechanism for anyone suspected of violating immigration law.”

The question looming over the proposals is how many of them, with all their legal and logistical obstacles, will the president actually be able to carry out.

The memos, for example, authorize the Border Patrol to hire 5,000 new agents, even though the force has never been able to fill the slots it has already been allotted. Some 60 percent of applicants to the Border Patrol fail the required polygraph, and those who pass take 18 months to get sent out into the field.

The Trump plan calls for the expansion of a George W. Bush-era program, known as 287g, which allows DHS to deputize state and local police as immigration agents. It was touted after 9/11 as a critical “force-multiplier.” But by 2010, some of the country’s largest police departments were refusing to participate because they believed it would shatter the trust between their officers and the communities they were sworn to protect. Meanwhile, participating agencies, which foot the bill for the program, were suddenly saddled with new debts and hounded by accusations of racial profiling and other abuse, forcing the Obama administration to suspend expansion of the program.

Until now, the enforcement of summary deportation laws, known as “expedited removal,” have been limited to those apprehended within 14 days of illegally entering the country and within 100 miles of Canada or Mexico. The memos signed by Kelly would allow use of those laws anywhere in the country against anyone who entered illegally within the past two years.

Lucas Guttentag, a DHS adviser and Stanford law professor, said this would “unleash chaos,” violate due process, and meet challenges in court, similar to those that scuttled the administration’s travel ban.

There would also be aggressive challenges, lawyers said, to plans that would allow immigration agents to deport unaccompanied minor children who crossed the border illegally, rather than uniting them with parents or other relatives in the U.S. They also expect legal opposition to a proposal that would strip undocumented immigrants of existing privacy protections, allowing personal information such as asylum cases or immigration violations to be publicly disclosed.

\The White House has said the memos are still under review, with final versions expected on Tuesday. And some of the provisions explicitly acknowledge that it could take years before DHS has the manpower and money to pull off what the president has ordered. Immigration enforcement agents, however, have already begun filling the policy void by launching raids and deportations, including some that advocates worry are meant to test the limits. Meanwhile panic has taken hold in many immigrant communities.

“The level of fear is more than anything we’ve ever seen,” said Marielena Hincapi´E, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. She said the plan’s sweep, “sent a chill to my bones,” because it threatens to do irreparable harm to millions of families. She added, “This all seems aimed at changing who we are as a nation.”

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At CPAC, panelists discuss role vetting, assimilation play in national security

by Fred Lucas

Extreme vetting and a border wall are the key issues facing the country under President Donald Trump’s administration—but aren’t the silver bullet solution to immigration, experts and members of Congress said Saturday.

“Extreme vetting is something that applies to the refugee side of this debate,” said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., during a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

The forum was titled “If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?” and covered a number of illegal immigration issues, from the national security impact to the economy.

On Jan. 27, Trump signed an executive order for a 120-day pause to temporarily block immigration from seven Middle Eastern terrorism hot spots—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.  

Buck said the United States either shouldn’t take refugees from those countries, or take them only after doing adequate background checks.

“Really, what the president was talking about, what Congress was talking about, is when we’re dealing with countries that are hot spots of terrorism that are destabilized as a result of civil war, we don’t have the ability to go into those countries and find records to determine if someone has health issues, or criminal background, or is radicalized in some ways,” Buck said.

The Trump administration calls this approach “extreme vetting,” but critics charge it is a “Muslim ban.”

After judicial setbacks, the Trump administration will take a dual track of defending the current order, while also drafting a new order, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said.

Washington state and Minnesota sued to stop the president’s executive orders. A federal judge in Seattle suspended  enforcement of the order. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld that temporary restraining order.

Multiculturalism prevents a common national identity and language, said Mike González, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
“This issue of multiculturalism has to be solved no matter what we do with immigration,” González said. “We can do all the vetting we want, but if people come in and they are assimilated into groups, we are going to have a problem unless we take care of that.”

This extends into national security, he said, because often the younger generations are taught multiculturalism in schools.

“This is true for radicalization,” González said. “It’s not really the immigrant, the guy who comes in. It’s his child or the second generation that becomes radicalized.”

This largely has been a government construct, he said.

“We have always been multiethnic. We have never been multicultural,” González said of America. “Immigrants are pressed into ethnic groups that form the building blocks of multiculturalism.”

On Jan. 25, Trump signed other executive orders regarding immigration. One order called for “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism.”

Trump said he will ask Congress for an initial payment to build a wall at the border with Mexico—a project already authorized under the 2006 Secure Fence Act. After that, Trump said, he will seek reimbursement from the Mexican government.

Trump also issued an order scaling back funding for “sanctuary cities,” the term for municipalities that refuse to cooperate with federal officials in enforcing immigration law.

Immigration can’t be addressed without reintroducing the idea of a guest worker program, said Helen Krieble of the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation, who was the biggest advocate of the gate referred to in the title of the forum.

“You will never deport 11 or 12 or 15 million illegal immigrants,” she said.  

An audience member shouted, “Why not?”

“Because you can’t. It’s logistically impossible,” Krieble responded. “If that person has got a self-supporting job, has never committed a crime in the United States, they have no path to citizenship, no path to a green card, and no use of our social services, to allow him to apply for a simple work permit so that they are here legally is a good idea.”

However, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., insisted: “You build the wall and plan for the gate. We have to secure the border. That has to be job one.”

He added:
That takes a wall, that takes technology, that takes boots on the ground. That takes all this administration says they are committed to doing. Similarly, they are talking about, I think  President Trump calls it,  a beautiful gate. He wants a gate. He wants people to have access. But, if folks are here, and they are then applying for these jobs that Helen is talking about, that has the potential to be very problematic.

If you are going to move in that direction, that’s why I say you have to do three things first—border control, internal enforcement, and you have to take away their inducements. But if you have inducements to come to America and apply for this card, then you have an inducement to be here, perhaps even illegally. If you’re going to allow this kind of program, you would want them in your home country to obtain that card and then work it out that way.

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

This report has been modified to flesh out the concluding quotation from Biggs, and to clarify González’s point on younger generations of immigrants learning multiculturalism at school.

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How immigrants can protect their rights under Trump’s travel ban & deportation orders

by the El Reportero’s wire services

President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting the flow of refugees from predominantly Muslim countries into the U.S. has left many immigrants. Federal judges have ruled to temporarily halt Trump’s ban, which prevents the entry of any refugees for 120 days, bans citizens of seven Muslim countries for 90 days, and blocks Syrian refugees indefinitely, but right now it is unclear whether these rulings will require detainees to be admitted into the U.S.

As of now, the White House has reportedly reversed its position on green card holders, saying that they will be admitted to the country. A statement from Homeland Security, though, is not making people any less fearful: “The Department of Homeland Security will continue to enforce all of President Trump’s Executive Orders in a manner that ensures the safety and security of the American people.”

This has left many immigrants and refugees from the seven countries included in Trump’s ban — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia — scrambling to understand their rights.

Here’s what immigrants and refugees need to know to keep themselves safe.

The U.S. Constitution includes protection for refugees

Michael Wishney from Yale Law told Teen Vogue that foreign nationals, including refugees, are protected under U.S. law. The minute they are on American soil they have the right to due process and to be “free of invidious discrimination based on race or religion.”

Refugees also have rights under international law

According to UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, the 1951 Refugee Convention is the “key legal document” that outlines the rights of refugees. This “customary international law” states that refugees should not be returned to a country where they are likely to have their life and freedoms threatened.

Demand to speak to an attorney

United We Dream recommends that if an officer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows up to your door with a warrant — you don’t have to open your door without them having one — ask for an attorney. Anything you do say can be used against you, which is why it’s best to let an attorney handle all aspects of your case. They can make sure you get a hearing, which you are entitled to.

The government will not pay or provide you with a lawyer, but immigration should provide you with a list of free or low-cost legal representation. If you see a judge before finding representation you can ask for more time.

Do not leave the country at this time

According to the Huffington Post, attorneys are advising that non-U.S. citizens avoid traveling outside of the U.S. at this time.

“I don’t want to make people scared for no reason, but I think caution is best right now until we see what that exact language will be,” Nermeen Arastu, clinical law professor at CUNY School of Law, told HuffPo. “If you’re a not U.S. citizen, don’t leave right now.”

If you must travel abroad, do not do so without speaking to an immigration attorney first.

Do not sign anything

This may be the most important piece of advice for anyone, including green card holders since a swipe of the pen could be catastrophic. There have been cases in which green card holders were asked to sign a Form I-407, which causes the signee to voluntarily give up legal status.

According to the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), this agreement means that you “won’t get a hearing, you will have to leave the U.S., and you may never be allowed to enter the U.S. again or get legal immigration status.”

To make things easier, the NILC is providing printable cards for immigrants that can be handed to officers. They explain that you are choosing to exercise your legal rights: “I will remain silent, and I refuse to answer your questions. If I am detained I have the right to contact an attorney immediately. I refuse to sign anything without advice from an attorney.”

Manufacturing facility in Mexico due to threats of economic retaliation by United States President Donald Trump.

Nisshinbo Holdings Inc. announced yesterday it was dropping plans to build a brake manufacturing plant, estimated to represent an investment of close to US $90 million, said a report by the Nikkei Asian Review.

The company is the first from Japan to change its investment plans in Mexico in response to the U.S. government’s threats of import tariffs.

The report said the parts that were to be manufactured in Mexico were destined for the U.S. market, and that the plant will probably be built in that country instead.

The news agency AFP quoted Nisshinbo spokesperson Kiyohiro Kida saying that “Mexico was the strongest candidate [to host the new plant], but we decided to backtrack.”

A day before the firm’s announcement, executive managing director Takayoshi Okugawa stated that “We’ve abandoned Mexico… we must chose a different place other than Mexico.”

Nisshinbo is a leader in brake friction materials, with 15 percent of the global market, and has investments in textiles and electronics production as well.

While Nisshinbo was saying goodbye to Mexico, Nissan was reaffirming its commitment.

Nissan Motor Company said yesterday it was moving forward with its plant in Aguascalientes, called Compas, a billion-dollar joint manufacturing facility it is building with German auto maker Daimler AG. The new factory will build next-generation premium compact vehicles for the Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti brands.

“[The project] is under way, on schedule, and by the end of our fiscal year, new Infiniti cars will be produced there,” said Nissan corporate vice-president Joji Tagawa.

But other manufacturers may yet bail on Mexico.

An economist with the Japanese cooperative bank Norinchukin told AFP that “similar movements [to that of Nisshinbo] are expected” from other firms.

Trump’s policies “could affect companies with plants in Mexico as well as those who were expecting to invest there,” he added.

Nonetheless, abandoning projects in Mexico will have a “negligible impact” on the Japanese economy as Mexico represents half a percentage point of that country’s foreign direct investment, said an economist with the Tokyo branch of the Credit Suisse bank. (Via Mexico News Daily)

US deported more than one million Mexicans in five years

In the last five years, 1 million 372,883 Mexicans were repatriated from the United States, according to data from the Interior Ministry (Segob) released today.

Segob statistics indicate that the annual number of deportations has been declining, although Mexicans occupy the first place of expelled people from that country.

The year 2012 registered the greatest number of returned Mexicans with 369,492; while for 2015 the figure fell to 207,398.
Segob said that in 2016, 219,923 Mexicans were deported, most of them from Michoacan, Guerrero, and Oaxaca.

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PG&E opens annual Better Together STEM Scholarship Program

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today is inviting high school and college students throughout central and northern California to apply for a Better Together STEM Scholarship. The program awards a total of $100,000 in scholarships annually to local high school, community college and non-traditional students pursuing higher education in the engineering, computer science, cyber security and environmental sciences.

Scholarship winners will receive $5,000 per year renewable for up to four year

“PG&E is investing in promising students today because they will be the leaders, dreamers and innovators of tomorrow. PG&E is proud to support them and help lay smooth path for them so they can achieve even greater things in their education and careers,” said Travis Kiyota, vice president of community relations and public affairs for PG&E.

Students pursuing a degree in one of the following STEM disciplines are eligible: Engineering (electrical, mechanical, computer, industrial or environmental), Computer Science/Information Systems, Cyber Security or Environmental Sciences. Applicants must plan to enroll in full-time undergraduate study for the entire 2017-2018 academic year and be pursuing their first postsecondary degree at a PG&E partner school in California.

The deadline to apply for the PG&E Better Together STEM Scholarship is March 31. Scholarship winners will be announced this summer. For more information and to apply, visit pge.com/educationprograms.

PG&E has a long history of supporting local educational initiatives, providing more than $75 million over the last decade. Since 2012, PG&E’s Better Together STEM Scholarship Program has awarded more than $3 million to accomplished students based on a combined demonstration of community leadership, personal triumph, financial need and academic achievement.

In addition to the STEM Scholarship Program, PG&E’s 10 employee resource groups (ERGs) voluntarily raise funds for scholarships to help offset the cost of higher education. In 2016 alone, the ERGs awarded a record $430,000 in scholarships. Since 1989, more than $4.5 million in ERG scholarships have been received by thousands of recipients.

PG&E’s broader Better Together Giving Program further demonstrates the company’s commitment to building a better future together. With a focus on education, economic vitality, the environment and emergency preparedness, PG&E is aligning charitable resources with the company’s values. Working closely with local community organizations, PG&E is helping to create a strong, resilient and sustainable California. Community investments are funded entirely by the company’s shareholders.

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Open Studio – Last Sunday of every month

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Urban landscape artist Anthony Holdsworth has captured the spirit of an entire neighborhood.

“Many of the paintings featured in my Holiday Exhibition remain on the walls. Join me for a cappucino, or a glass of wine and conversation.”
At 351 Lewis Street, two blocks NW of West Oakland BART, Jan 29, Feb 26, Mar 26, April 30, May 28, at 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
For info call 510.836.1681, or write to anthony@anthonyholdsworth.com. For directions to studio and further information: www.anthonyholdsworth.com.

7th Annual San Jose Jazz Winter Fest 2017

San Jose Jazz proudly announces the official Winter Fest 2017 lineup: Roy Ayers, Donny McCaslin, The Cookers, Wallace Roney, Villalobos Brothers, Ben Allison & Think Free, Huntertones, Kim Nalley and Kalil Wilson, Mary Stallings, Natalie Cressman, Ron E. Beck Soul Revue, Reva DeVito, CME, Mark PLSTK, Shea Butter, Chale Brown, Troker, Jazz Organ Fellowship with Akiko Tsuruga and Tony Monaco, The Eulipions Jazz Sessions, Silvestre Martinez, and some of the Bay Area’s premier youth jazz ensembles.

Within the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose Jazz Winter Fest 2017, the Jazz Beyond series, co-curated with local production house Universal Grammar, presents buzzy young stars pushing the boundaries of jazz, soul and hip-hop and the Next Gen performances showcase top regional student jazz ensembles and offer up master classes.

Coming up from now through March 3, 2017, San Jose Jazz presents its 7th Annual SJZ Winter Fest 2017, featuring more than 25 concerts in downtown San Jose, Saratoga and Palo Alto.

Tuesday, Feb. 14 – Friday, March 3, 2017, at Cafe Stritch, The Continental, Schultz Cultural Arts Hall at Oshman Family JCC (Palo Alto), Trianon Theatre, MACLA, Café Pink House (Saratoga), Poor House Bistro, Hedley and other venues in Downtown San Jose. Event Info: sanjosejazz.org/winterfest. Tickets: $10 – $65.

Pueblo Fest 2017 has landed

PuebloFest, the first-ever three-day Latin music festival in the U.S., with an expected crowd of more than 30,000 daily attendees, will celebrate not only Latin music, but culture and entrepreneurship.

The first of its kind, PuebloFest will take place from March 17-19, 2017 at the International Agri-Center in Tulare, CA, the heart of the Central Valley and home to 1.6 million Hispanics. For three days, guests will enjoy some of Latin music’s greatest artists, food, cultural expos, and community workshops.

The festival will feature six entertainment stages including the Main Stage with major musical performers, a rodeo stage with equestrian competitions, a cultural stage featuring traditional mariachi and folklorico, and a Millennial stage with EDM DJs.

New SFMOMA contemporary art exhibitions

A Slow Succession with Many Interruptions: William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time, Runa Islam: Verso.

William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time: Making its West Coast debut at SFMOMA, artist William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time (2012) is an immersive installation combining synchronized video projections featuring live action, animation and dance, with audio feeds that incorporate music and sound and a central kinetic sculpture called “the elephant,” which breathes a steady rhythm from the center of the gallery.

On View through April 2, 2017, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco.

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