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Colombia recovers stolen book of García Márquez

by the El Reportero’s news services

After an intensive search the volume of One Hundred Years of Solitude stolen during the Book Fair of Bogota, returned to the hands of its owner, who announced that he will donate it to the National Library of Colombia, today confirmed the press.
The text dedicated and signed by its author, Gabriel García Márquez, belongs to the private collection of Alvaro Castillo.
This bookseller treasures recognized the first editions of the works of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
According to reports from investigators in the case, the book was recovered in the La Perseverancia, located in downtown Bogota, in a sector where functions a market of pieces of great literary and cultural value, regardless of the law.
The book published in 1967 was to be sold on the black market worth 120 million pesos (about $ 60,000), said the police chief Rodolfo Palomino after providing details of the operation on the trail of this literary gem.
According to Castillo, there is a treasure that belongs to the country so you should be in the National Library.
This text disappeared the week before the Corferias exhibition complex, specifically the Macondo Pavilion, dedicated to revere the narrator and journalist who died last year in Mexico, victim of cancer.
The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered the best example of its kind written in Castilian after Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
Gabo left for posterity other prominent creations, among which Love in the Time of Cholera, which he defined as the most human of his writings, Of Love and Other Demons, Chronicle of a Death announced and a series of stories.

Mexican Cuarón to chair jury at Venice International Film Festival
Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón will chair the jury that will deliver the Golden Lion at the next Venice International Film Festival, according to organizers of the famous film festival.
Cuarón, who won a screenplay award in Venice with his classic Y Tu Mama También and then opened the event with Gravity will rule along with eight more members what is the best movie of the event.
The 72 edition of the contest will run from September 2nd to 12th, coinciding with the end of the busy Arts Biennial of the City of Canals.
The decision to entrust the presidency of the jury to Cuarón was taken by the board of the ‘Biennale’, whose cinema chapter is directed by Alberto Barbera.

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Corporate gods: “Obama, remember why we hired you; ram the TPP through

by Jon Rappoport
NoMoreFakeNews.com

“Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei. The TPP is the largest economic treaty in history, including countries that represent more than 40 per cent of the world´s GDP.” (Wikileaks)
“Since 1945, no American President has escaped vetting by elite Globalists. Partisan politics plays no role in this process. The one overriding issue of every Presidency has been: make sure Globalist legislation and treaties pass through to completion. Do not obstruct them. A little crooked President named Nixon got it in his head to erect anti-Globalist tariffs. He found himself on the floor looking up, with Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller’s man, staring down at him, assuring him his days in the White House were over.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport).
Obama is under the gun. Not since he pressured Congress, on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, to pass Obamacare, has he worked so hard and sweated so much.
The latest Globalist treaty, the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), is on the table.
Elite mega-corporations all over the world, the Council on Foreign Relations (Rockefeller), the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission (Rockefeller) want the TPP to be ratified by the 12 member nations. They really want it. They insist on it.
Obama has run into Congressional roadblocks. They appear to be temporary, but make no mistake about it, he was put into office to bring this treaty to fruition. Failure is not an option.
Whatever Obama has to promise, to whomever he has to promise it, he’s making deals. Side deals, back room deals, upside down deals.
His masters don’t care that he’s a lame duck President at this point. Lame duck, waddling duck, it makes no difference. He’s got to come through.
And he knows it.
He also knows, because the TPP is another Globalist treaty, that more jobs will flee the US, more cheap imported goods will flood the US market from countries where slave wages prevail, where environmental laws aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. He knows those cheap goods will sink more American businesses.
He knows no private citizen anywhere in the world who doesn’t run a big corporation has read the contents of the TPP—and won’t read them before its passage.
Obama has had his marching orders for 10 years. He realized going in who his bosses were.
The Globalists don’t play games when it comes to a treaty like this. The TPP is their baby.
Remember Pelosi? She blew the whistle during the midnight negotiations on Obamacare. She said to her Congressional colleagues: “If you want to know what’s in the bill, you have to vote for it. Then you can read it.”
People began to wake up to the fact that, when thousand-page bills are on the table, legislators either can’t read them or choose not to. They just vote the way they’re told to.
So here is another one: the TPP. Congressional representatives have to go into a sealed room and read it. They can’t make copies. They can’t tell the public what’s in it.
Senator Rand Paul just went into the room. When he came out, he said he didn’t even know whether he’d read a draft or the final version.
He said he couldn’t disclose what was in the treaty. Why not? Who made that decision? Under what illegal authority are legislators prohibited from revealing the details of a treaty that will, when passed, bind all Americans and citizens of 11 other countries?
Leaks indicate that the TPP will set up private courts to rule on disputes between corporations and governments. For example, a foreign corporation tries to export a product to the US. They’re blocked. They appeal to this court. Relevant US law and US courts are ignored. Questions pertaining to environmental harm or toxicity of the product are decided in secret.
As Wikileaks notes, “Similar mechanisms have already been used. For example, US tobacco company Phillip Morris used one such tribunal to sue Australia (June 2011 – ongoing) for mandating plain packaging of tobacco products on public health grounds; and by the oil giant Chevron against Ecuador in an attempt to evade a multi-billion-dollar compensation ruling for polluting the environment. The threat of future lawsuits chilled environmental and other legislation in Canada after it was sued by pesticide companies in 2008/9. ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] tribunals are often held in secret, have no appeal mechanism, do not subordinate themselves to human rights laws or the public interest, and have few means by which other affected parties can make representations.”
Like GATT, NAFTA, and CAFTA, the TPP is a Globalist treaty that expands the power of mega-corporations around the world. At will, they move their manufacturing operations to places where workers are virtual slaves. They sell goods across borders, without paying billions in tariffs, regardless of the effects on smaller competitors, who are torpedoed and forced out of business.
All treaties under consideration should be published in full, at least two years before member nations vote on them. Then we would have time to see and understand what’s in them.
The secret shroud surrounding the TPP is a criminal farce.
Mainstream media dupes are fond of saying that those who warn against global dictatorship are crazy conspiracy theorists.
Well, what do you call it when a secret treaty expanding the international power of mega-corporations is passed into law, when that law supersedes every other law and court of the member nations?
Would you call it “a good business decision?” “Employment enhancement?” “Smarter people helping the rest of us?”
In the US, Congressional legislators are prancing and dancing and fencing. They aren’t at all sure they know what’s in the TPP. But their debates are taken seriously, as if they actually mean something.
It’s the blind leading the blind leading the blind. But behind it all, the architects of the TPP are fully aware of the meaning and consequences of what they’re doing.
They plucked Barack Obama out of obscurity to carry out a job. This job. Passage of the treaty.
So much for “the leader representing the people.”
Ditto for the other 11 members of the TPP.
Puppet show. Shadow play.
Organized crime.
The TPP treaty is a kind of religious document. We have to take it on faith. We have to accept what the priests are telling us.
They’re our pipeline to the corporate gods.
I’ve quoted the following interview in previous articles. It reveals the kind of Globalist power I’m talking about.
Here is a close-up snap shot of a remarkable moment from out of the past. It’s through-the-looking-glass—a conversation between reporter, Jeremiah Novak, and two (Globalist/Rockefeller) Trilateral Commission members, Karl Kaiser and Richard Cooper. The interview took place in 1978. It concerned the issue of exactly who was formulating US economic and political policy, which would include trade treaties like the TPP.
The careless and off-hand attitude of Trilateralists Kaiser and Cooper is astonishing. It’s as if they’re saying, “What we’re revealing is already out in the open, it’s too late to do anything about it, why are you so worked up, we’ve already won…”
NOVAK (the reporter): Is it true that a private [Trilateral committee] led by Henry Owen of the US and made up of [Trilateral] representatives of the US, UK, West Germany, Japan, France and the EEC is coordinating the economic and political policies of the Trilateral countries [which would include the US]?
COOPER: Yes, they have met three times.
NOVAK: Yet, in your recent paper you state that this committee should remain informal because to formalize ‘this function might well prove offensive to some of the Trilateral and other countries which do not take part.’ Who are you afraid of?
KAISER: Many countries in Europe would resent the dominant role that West Germany plays at these [Trilateral] meetings.
COOPER: Many people still live in a world of separate nations, and they would resent such coordination [of policy].
NOVAK: But this [Trilateral] committee is essential to your whole policy. How can you keep it a secret or fail to try to get popular support [for its decisions on how Trilateral member nations will conduct their economic and political policies]?
COOPER: Well, I guess it’s the press’ job to publicize it.
NOVAK: Yes, but why doesn’t President Carter come out with it and tell the American people that [US] economic and political power is being coordinated by a [Trilateral] committee made up of Henry Owen and six others? After all, if [US] policy is being made on a multinational level, the people should know.
COOPER: President Carter and Secretary of State Vance have constantly alluded to this in their speeches. [untrue]
KAISER: It just hasn’t become an issue.
Source: “Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management,” edited by Holly Sklar, 1980. South End Press, Boston. Pages 192-3.
This interview “slipped under the mainstream media radar,” which is to say, it was ignored, buried, sat on, censored.
US economic and political policy run by a committee of the Trilateral Commission—the Commission had been created in 1973 as an “informal discussion group” by David Rockefeller and his sidekick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, much later, was Obama’s mentor in the months before he was sworn in for his first term as President.
To inhale the scent of Obama’s approach to TPP negotiations, here is a quote from his first appointed US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk. Replying to his critics, Kirk wrote: “I am strongly offended by the assertion that our [TPP negotiating] process has been non-transparent and lacked public participation.”
This comment, in the face of the fact that the exact terms of the TPP are still secret.
(Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed, Exit From The Matrix, and Power Outside The Matrix).

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Meet the secretive group that runs the world – Part 3

NOTE  FROM THE EDITOR:

Dear readers, I found this great article, previously published by Zero Hedge, on one of the most secretive banks: the Bank of the International Settlements. This is the bank that is above all banks, top of the top of the world controllers. Higher than all world Central Banks. Super interesting! THIS IS PART THREE OF A SERIES.

Nothing comes closer to the stereotypical, secretive group determining the fate of over 7 billion people, than the Bank of International Settlements

by zero hedge

Over the centuries there have been many stories, some based on loose facts, others based on hearsay, conjecture, speculation and outright lies, about groups of people who “control the world.” Some of these are partially accurate, others are wildly hyperbolic, but when it comes to the historic record, nothing comes closer to the stereotypical, secretive group determining the fate of over 7 billion people, than the Bank of International Settlements, which hides in such plain sight, that few have ever paid much attention.

WHEN I EXPLAINED to friends and acquaintances that I was writing a book about the Bank for International Settlements, the usual response was a puzzled look, followed by a question: “The bank for what?” My interlocutors were intelligent people, who follow current affairs. Many had some interest in and understanding of the global economy and financial crisis. Yet only a handful had heard of the BIS. This was strange, as the BIS is the most important bank in the world and predates both the IMF and the World Bank. For decades it has stood at the center of a global network of money, power, and covert global influence.
The BIS was founded in 1930. It was ostensibly set up as part of the Young Plan to administer German reparations payments for the First World War. The bank’s key architects were Montagu Norman, who was the governor of the Bank of England, and Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank who described the BIS as “my” bank. The BIS’s founding members were the central banks of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and a consortium of Japanese banks. Shares were also offered to the Federal Reserve, but the United States, suspicious of anything that might infringe on its national sovereignty, refused its allocation. Instead a consortium of commercial banks took up the shares: J. P. Morgan, the First National Bank of New York, and the First National Bank of Chicago.
The real purpose of the BIS was detailed in its statutes: to “promote the cooperation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations.” It was the culmination of the central bankers’ decades-old dream, to have their own bank—powerful, independent, and free from interfering politicians and nosy reporters. Most felicitous of all, the BIS was self-financing and would be in perpetuity. Its clients were its own founders and shareholders— the central banks. During the 1930s, the BIS was the central meeting place for a cabal of central bankers, dominated by Norman and Schacht. This group helped rebuild Germany. The New York Times described Schacht, widely acknowledged as the genius behind the resurgent German economy, as “The Iron-Willed Pilot of Nazi Finance.” During the war, the BIS became a de-facto arm of the Reichsbank, accepting looted Nazi gold and carrying out foreign exchange deals for Nazi Germany.
The bank’s alliance with Berlin was known in Washington, DC, and London. But the need for the BIS to keep functioning, to keep the new channels of transnational finance open, was about the only thing all sides agreed on. Basel was the perfect location, as it is perched on the northern edge of Switzerland and sits al- most on the French and German borders. A few miles away, Nazi and Allied soldiers were fighting and dying. None of that mattered at the BIS. Board meetings were suspended, but relations between the BIS staff of the belligerent nations remained cordial, professional, and productive. Nationalities were irrelevant. The overriding loyalty was to international finance. The president, Thomas McKittrick, was an American. Roger Auboin, the general manager, was French. Paul Hechler, the assistant general manager, was a member of the Nazi party and signed his correspondence “Heil Hitler.” Rafaelle Pilotti, the secretary general, was Italian. Per Jacobssen, the bank’s influential economic adviser, was Swedish. His and Pilotti’s deputies were British.
After 1945, five BIS directors, including Hjalmar Schacht, were charged with war crimes. Germany lost the war but won the economic peace, in large part thanks to the BIS. The international stage, contacts, banking networks, and legitimacy the BIS provided, first to the Reichsbank and then to its successor banks, has helped ensure the continuity of immensely powerful financial and economic interests from the Nazi era to the present day.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST forty-seven years of its existence, from 1930 to 1977, the BIS was based in a former hotel, near the Basel central railway station. The bank’s entrance was tucked away by a chocolate shop, and only a small notice confirmed that the narrow doorway opened into the BIS. The bank’s managers believed that those who needed to know where the BIS was would find it, and the rest of the world certainly did not need to know. The inside of the building changed little over the decades, recalled Charles Coombs. The BIS provided the “the spartan accommodations of a former Victorian-style hotel whose single and double bedrooms had been transformed into offices simply by removing the beds and installing desks.”
The bank moved into its current headquarters, at 2, Centralbahnplatz, in 1977. It did not go far and now overlooks the Basel central station. Nowadays the BIS’s main mission, in its own words, is threefold: “to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in these areas, and to act as a bank for central banks.” The BIS also hosts much of the practical and technical infrastructure that the global network of central banks and their commercial counterparts need to function smoothly. It has two linked trading rooms: at the Basel headquarters and Hong Kong regional office. The BIS buys and sells gold and foreign exchange for its clients. It provides asset management and arranges short-term credit to central banks when needed.

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Five items you see that every day that contain animal ingredients

by Jeanette Padilla

When you start to read the fine print, it becomes very clear that avoiding animal products in non-food items is nearly impossible. It’s hard enough trying to navigate through food items to avoid eating something containing animal byproducts; avoiding animal products in non-food items is an entirely different challenge. A growing number of individuals are becoming part-time vegetarians and opting for meatless meals one or more days a week. This growing trend is a welcomed one since it will help lead to healthier lifestyles, less livestock-produced methane and happier animals. However, many individuals are not aware of the many animal-derived ingredients used in common everyday products, some of which you’d never guess contain animal ingredients.
Toothpaste
Glycerine, also known as glycerin or glycerol, is a common ingredient in toothpaste. It’s present in nearly every brand of toothpaste as well as in many beauty products. Glycerin can be sourced from animals or vegetables, which makes it tricky when trying to avoid animal products. Animal-derived glycerine comes from the fatty tissue of animals. The fat contains triglyceride molecules, each of which contains three fatty acid chains all connected to a glycerol base. When processed, the bonds between the fatty acids and the glycerol are broken and glycerine results as a byproduct.
Soap
The majority of all bar soaps contain animal-derived tallow. This is what gives them the ability to moisturize. Some individuals choose to use tallow soap because of specific allergies. However, most people using bar soap won’t ever realize that they’re washing with animal fat. If you’re using a large brand of bar soap, chances are, your soap has tallow in it. Current Dove soap bars list the ingredient as “sodium tallowate.”
Shampoo
Glycerin may not be the only animal-derived ingredient in your personal care products. According to information from PETA, there may be over 20 animal-derived ingredients in your shampoo. Ingredients may include “panthenol,” “vitamin B” and “amino acids,” all of which can be derived from animals.
Fabric softener
Tallow or tallowate is the fat derived from animals such as cows, sheep, pigs and horses. The fat is rendered down and after a few chemical alterations is added to fabric softeners like Downey. On the bottle, it’s labeled as “dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride.” What it really is: fat coating your clothing.
Plastic bags
Animal ingredients in cosmetics, beauty products, and similar products isn’t too far-fetched, but how about in plastic bags? Yes, even plastic bags have animal-derived ingredients. Animal fat is added to plastic bags, such as those you get at the grocery store, pharmacy, retail stores and just about everywhere really. The fat serves as a “slip-agent” and is added to a large array of other plastics as well. Yet another reason to forego plastic bags and switch to reusable bags made from animal-friendly materials.
Animal fat is used in a large variety of products, from cosmetics and personal care products to plastics and even some electronics. The fat typically comes from cows, pigs, sheep or horses. Additionally, some products are processed using animal components even though they may not be a part of the final product. Food items such as sugar are processed using cow and horse bones, and beer and wine are clarified using fish bladders, also known as isinglass. Vegetable-sourced substitutions are available to be used in place of all of these animal-derived components; however, using animal-derived components is far cheaper. Natural News.

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Hard labor in the organic patato field

by David Bacon

By 7:30 in the morning it is already 80 degrees in a potato field in Lamont, in the southern San Joaquin Valley. By mid-afternoon here it will reach 107. The workers moving up and down the rows are not dressed in shorts and tank tops, though. They wear multiple layers of clothing, including long sleeves and, in the case of women, bandannas that cover their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.
Farmworkers know how to handle heat. They work in these intense conditions every day. ‘’Clothing is like insulation,’’ says Evelina Arellano. ‘’It actually protects you. And if I didn’t wear my bandanna, by the end of the day it would be hard to breathe because of the dust.’’ [The names of the workers in the field have been changed-Ed.]
The rows are as long as two football fields, each a deep furrow next to a mound bearing the potato plants. Between the potatoes grow weeds, some spreading out next to the dirt and others growing as tall as the workers themselves. On this day in mid-June the farm labor crew is pulling the weeds.
Men and women walk from weed to weed, bending down low, pulling each out by the roots. You can hear the breath expelled by each effort to tear a big one from the ground.
Everyone carries a bag on his or her back, and stuffs the weeds into it. As workers move down the rows, the bags expand and get heavy. The weeds are scratchy, even with gloves, and as the morning wears on, the sun gets hotter. There is a lot of dust everywhere in the air in the southern San Joaquin Valley, which has some of California’s worst air quality.

Soon you are unable see to the far edge of the field next to this one.
If this were a potato field like most in the valley, the dust would contain pesticide and herbicide residue. Here the dust may be unpleasant, but it is not toxic, because the field is growing organic potatoes for one of California’s largest producers of organic vegetables, Cal Organic Farms.
Potato plants take from three to four months to grow to maturity, and this field contains anywhere from 17,000 to 22,000 plants. Probably back in late February or early March, it was seeded with potatoes or pieces of potatoes that contain the eye, from which the new sprout grows. Cal Organic Farms says it can get two crops a year in the San Joaquin Valley.
This field is almost ready to be harvested, and weeds can interfere with the operation of the mechanical harvester. Weeds also compete for water, not a minor factor given California’s drought, and can provide an environment for pests that can damage the tubers.
So a healthy attractive organic potato-ready for au gratin, potato salad, or your grandmother’s adobo – is much more a product of workers’ labor than the non-organic kind. Organic produce not only has created somewhat healthier conditions for these farmworkers, it has also meant more work. Since the grower cannot use herbicides, weed removal is accomplished by hand. That means workers are hired to remove them, instead of spraying the field with chemicals.
Cal Organic Farms grows a variety of vegetables, and other operations also require human labor instead of chemical inputs. As a result, the work season for a Cal Organic crew lasts longer than for many other farmworkers.
‘’I started on January 27th,’’ explains Josefina Reyes, ‘’and I’ll work until November 1st.’’
Hernandez and her husband, Alfredo, are the oldest workers in the crew. They are no longer able or willing to do what others do to get nine months of work a year: hit the road to northern California or even Oregon and Washington. Organic farming gives them enough work so that they can live in Lamont year-round. If they save their money, they will be able to make it through the three months of winter when growers are not hiring.
At lunch break the couple talk to each other quietly in Mixteco, an indigenous language that was spoken in their hometown of Tlaxiaco, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, long before Columbus arrived in the Americas.
For lunch small groups of friends sit together at the side of the field, and some build small fires to heat their tacos. One popular taco filling is chorizo, the spicy Mexican sausage, mixed with papas, or potatoes. Organic potatoes are expensive in the market, but these workers are surrounded by fields of them. Many like the idea of eating food with no pesticides as much as anyone. Farmworkers are exposed to much greater pesticide levels than what is contained in food. Many here in this crew worked in sprayed fields earlier in their work lives, and pesticide residue is omnipresent in small farmworker towns like Lamont.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Lamont and the southern San Joaquin Valley were strongholds of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the union founded by Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, and Dolores Huerta. At the height of the UFW’s strength, the base wage for farm labor in this area was two to three times the minimum wage. Translated into today’s terms, this would be $16-24 per hour. One method the union used to get wages up was to ban labor contractors, and instead to operate union hiring halls. In the 1980s the union lost most of its contracts here, the hiring halls disappeared, growers went back to using contractors, and wages fell. Worker abuse increased as well.
Low wages and abuse are as prevalent in organic agriculture as they are in the non-organic sector. Case records at the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency (Cal OSHA) show that organic growers and contractors have engaged in practices that were prohibited forty years ago.
The organic potatoes from the Lamont field by now have been harvested, and are sitting in the bins at stores, and in the potato drawer in kitchens across the country. The weeding crew has moved on to some other field, getting the next vegetable ready for its journey to the plate. Despite their hard work, however, it often seems as though these workers live in a different dimension. We may eat the food they produce, but most people do not know what it is like to labor out in the heat and dust, or what it takes to get food onto the dinner table.
Those broccoli florettes sauteed in cheese and wine, the green onions chopped onto that fish steamed with soy sauce and sesame oil, the carrots in that chilled potato salad-they all came from somewhere. That somewhere is likely a field like the one in Lamont. And the hands that pulled the weeds, so those vegetables would flourish, belong to Josefina and Alfredo Reyes, Natalia Arevalo, Evelina Arellano and others like them.
They are connected to us. We all eat the product of their labor.

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The Orwellian re-branding of “mass surveillance” as merely “bulk collection”

by Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept

Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media re-labelled “torture” with the Orwellian euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand “mass surveillance” as “bulk collection” in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal). In the past several weeks, this is the clearly coordinated theme that has arisen in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as the last defense against the Snowden revelations, as those governments seek to further enhance their surveillance and detention powers under the guise of terrorism.
This manipulative language distortion can be seen perfectly in yesterday’s white-washing report of GCHQ mass surveillance from the servile rubber-stamp calling itself “The Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament (ISC)”(see this great Guardian editorial this morning on what a “slumbering” joke that “oversight” body is). As Committee Member MP Hazel Blears explained yesterday (photo above), the Parliamentary Committee officially invoked this euphemism to justify the collection of billions of electronic communications events every day.
The Committee actually acknowledged for the first time (which Snowden documents long ago proved) that GCHQ maintains what it calls “Bulk Personal Datasets” that contain “millions of records,” and even said about pro-privacy witnesses who testified before it: “we recognise their concerns as to the intrusive nature of bulk collection.” That is the very definition of “mass surveillance,” yet the Committee simply re-labelled it “bulk collection,” purported to distinguish it from “mass surveillance,” and thus insist that it was all perfectly legal.
This re-definition game goes as follows: yes, we vacuum up and store literally as much of the internet as we possibly can. Then we analyze all the data about what you’re doing, with whom you’re speaking, and who your network of associates is. Based on that analysis of all of you and your activities, we then read the communications that we want (with virtually no checks and concealing from you what percentage of it we’re reading), and store as much of the rest of it as technology permits for future trolling. But don’t worry: we’re only reading the Bad People’s emails. So run along then: no mass surveillance here. Just bulk collection! It’s not mass surveillance, but “enhanced collection techniques.”
One of the many facts that made the re-defining of “torture” so corrupt and indisputably invalid was that there was long-standing law making clear that exactly these interrogation techniques used by the U.S. government were torture and thus illegal. The same is true of this obscene attempt to re-define “mass surveillance” as nothing more than mere innocent “bulk collection.”
As Caspar Bowden points out, EU law is crystal clear that exactly what these agencies are doing constitutes illegal mass surveillance. From the 2000 decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Amann v. Switzerland, which found a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and rejected the defense from the government that no privacy violation occurs if the data is not reviewed or exploited:
The Court reiterates that the storing of data relating to the “private life” of an individual falls within the application of Article 8 § 1  …. The Court reiterates that the storing by a public authority of information relating to an individual’s private life amounts to an interference within the meaning of Article 8. The subsequent use of the stored information has no bearing on that finding (emphasis added).
A separate 2000 ruling found a violation of privacy rights even when the government is merely storing records regarding one’s activities undertaken in public (such as attending demonstrations), because “public information can fall within the scope of private life where it is systematically collected and stored in files held by the authorities.”
That’s why an EU Parliamentary Inquiry into the Snowden revelations condemned NSA and GCHQ spying in the “strongest possible terms,” pointing out that it was classic “mass surveillance” and thus illegal. That’s the same rationale that led a U.S. federal court to conclude that mass metatdata collection was very likely an unconstitutional violation of the privacy rights in the Fourth Amendment.
By itself, common sense should prevent any of these governments from claiming that sweeping up, storing and analyzing much of the Internet — literally examining billions of communications activities every week of entire populations — is something other than “mass surveillance.” Yet this has now become the coordinated defense from the governments in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. It’s nothing short of astonishing to watch them try to get away with this kind of propagnadistic sophistry. (In the wake of our reports with journalist Nicky Hager on GCSB, watch the leader of New Zealand’s Green Party interrogate the country’s flailing Prime Minister this week in Parliament about this completely artificial distinction.)
But — just as it was stunning to watch media outlets refuse to use the term “torture” because the U.S. government demanded that it be called something else — this Orwellian switch in surveillance language is now predictably (and mindlessly) being adopted by those nations’ most state-loyal media outlets.
The other night, I was on the BBC program Newsnight to discuss the new report. As usual, they decided to interview me first, and then interview a security services official after me, so that I could not respond to what the official said. In this case, the interviewee after me was former GCHQ director David Omand (last seen refusing to answer a difficult question about surveillance from the U.K.’s often-excellent Channel 4 by literally walking away from the interview, insisting he had to catch a train).
The somewhat contentious BBC interview from last night is worth watching, in part because Omand literally demands that there be no more surveillance disclosures or debate because The Committee Has Spoken (also a clearly coordinated message). But it’s worthwhile even more so because this interview illustrates the “bulk collection” language fraud that is now being perpetrated with the eager help of the largest media outlets in these countries:

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2 million Mexicans in precarious jobs, according to expert

by the El Reportero’s wire services

The recent protests of the day of workers of San Quintín, in Baja California, made visible today the conditions of precarious work of approximately 2 million peasants and Mexican natives, affirmed the doctor Armando Bartra.
The teacher of the posgraduate course on Rural development of the Unit Xochimilco of the Metropolitan Autonomous University expressed that this situation has increased in the last 30 years.
He highlighted that this is an exercise of violence that is practised from the moment in which the whole family works.
This activity facilitates the work of children and women t, that is why when they come to the famrs, they all work but not get paid, as it is the case of children, he said.
Bartra pointed out that it is necessary to demand the fulfillment of the Constitution and the Federal Law of Labor, since the rights of the workers are not recognized as it happens with other sectors, and for that reasonit among their demands it is to receive at least a daily salary of 200 pesos (15 dollars).
Mexican university designs hand prosthesis
Experts at the Universidad del Valle de Mexico (UVM) have designed a low-cost, patent-free electromechanical hand prosthesis called Dextrus Hand, engineer Josué Rico said today.
The average cost of this kind of orthopedic equipment could exceed a hundred thousand dollars, therefore it is important the prosthesis has a low cost since many people in need of them lack the money to obtain them, he said.
The prostheses are printed based on a free code known as Open Hand Project, created by Joel Gibbard in the United Kingdom., he added.
The new prototype, built together with engineering students, consists of a group of engines, pulleys and batteries that operate mechanically the movement of the fingers.

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Carnaval SF 2014- 2015

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One Love: A Musical Adventure in Unity, Peace and Music

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

The College of San Mateo proudly invite you to a super evening of musing.

Featuring the best of its repertoire will be The CSM Reggae Band, with Special Guests and dancers, and refreshments. Only $5 donation. FREE PARKING at Beethoven Lot 2. May 13, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. For more information: Email ramirezr@smccd.edu or call (650) 574-6372. https://www.facebook.com/events/1578058212448377.

Sam Francisco International Arts Festival returns to Fort Mason

Tickets are now available for the 2015 San Francisco International Arts Festival and for the month of March 10 percent of the seats for all shows are on sale at the incredibly special Early Bird Price of $12.
There are 70 performing arts ensembles from the Bay Area and 16 different countries presenting their work at this year’s Festival, which is co-presented by Fort Mason’s FMC Presents series.
These and more are some on the long list of talent participating in this year’s performers.
Gabriel Urgell-Reyes – Meeting Ginastera
Gabriel Urgell invites the audience to an in-depth exploration of classical works for piano by outstanding Latin-American composers Argentinian Alberto Ginastera and Carlos Fariñas from Cuba.
Hugo Candelario and Grupo Bahia with Colombian Soul
Traditional Colombian South Pacific Coast Dance and Music with contemporary choreography and fusion.
Jesús Díaz
The Festival welcomes Jesus Díaz widely respected and recognized by many mus cians and fans for his contributions to the richness of an ever expanding Afro-Cuban musical genre worldwide.
For the full list of artists and more information, dates, times and the on-line box office call 415-399-9554 and 800-838-3006 to purchase tickets over the phone.
The festival runs from May 21 to June 7, $12 Early Bird Tickets Now On Sale.

My Name is Tango, World Premiere
Me Llamo Tango explores the soul of tango, not simply a lover’s tryst, but a venerable embrace of cultural solidarity and self-expression. This is the premier performance of the Debbie Goodwin Dance Company (DGDC), sponsored by the long-running, successful non-profit arts organization, Alma del Tango. Guest artist Eduardo Saucedo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) brings the cultural heritage of Argentina to the presentation through both drama and dance. Seth Asarnow y Su Sexteto Tipico are one of the premiere tango orchestras in the United States, dedicated to preserving the authentic style of Golden Age tango.
The newly formed Debbie Goodwin Dance Company (DGDC) represents the culmination of director Debbie Goodwin’s 20 years of performances, choreography, teaching and collaboration within the Bay Area tango community.
Fri May 22 9:30 p.m.
Festival Central, Building A, at Fort Mason, SF
Tickets: $15-$30 Reserved Seating & General Admission

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Colombian police on the trail of stolen book of García Márquez

by the El Reportero’s news services

Colombian police analyzes the video security cameras Corferia fairgrounds, where it was stolen a copy of the first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
The theft was detected on Saturday night at the Macondo Pavilion, where he is honored at the International Book Fair in Bogotá (FILBO) the Nobel Prize for Literature, a year after his death in Mexico City.
National morning news refer that investigators received the recordings of the security cameras and other information provided by the fact the authorities of Corferia and FILBO organizers, whose last day takes place on Monday, after its inauguration last 21 last month.
The stolen copy is from the first 1967 edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Editorial Sudamericana de Buenos Aires, which then printed eight thousand copies.
The book was delivered on loan for display at FILBO-2015 by the bookselle  Alvaro Castillo and contains a dedication by the novelist in the name of its owner.
“For Alvaro Castillo, his friend Gabriel”, expresses the dedication contained in the stolen copy now, which its owner said is invaluable.
Executives of the Book Chamber of Colombia and Corferia director, Andrés López also stressed the incalculable value of the missing volume.
The emblematic work of Gabo has been printed in more than 30 million copies, translated into some 35 languages. With it, the Colombian writer was awarded in 1982 the highest distinction awarded by the Swedish Academy of Letters, the Nobel Prize.

Canada comes alive with a fusion of Latin Music styles and rhythms
Koerner Hall comes alive with a fusion of Latin music styles and rhythms 24 May 2015.
Sultry and sensual, the music of Latin cultures urges countless couples toward dance floors around the world’s and continues to exert a potent influence on other genres.
Tango, flamenco, bossa nova, fandango, klezmer, afro-samba, and jazz are among the styles featured in an evening of musical “encounters” featuring internationally acclaimed guitar virtuosos Grisha Goryachev and Fabio Zanon.
The all-star lineup also includes Argentinian bandoneon player Héctor Del Curto, Colombian singer María Mulata, and Juno Award-winning pianist and composer Serouj Kradjian. Co-pro duced with the Royal Conservatory of Music as part of its 21C Music Festival, and including world premieres by Canadian composers Andrew Staniland and Mark Duggan, this colourful event also pays tribute to Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan American Games songs.

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