Monday, September 9, 2024
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Competition opens for III Youth Film Festival

by Magdy Zara

 

Registration is now open to participate in the 3rd Youth Film Festival (¡Tú Cuentas! Cine Youth Fest) organized by the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network (HITN), with the aim of showcasing talent, creative storytelling and the vision of aspiring Latino filmmakers.

HITN is an organization charged with advancing the educational, cultural, and socio-economic aspirations of Hispanics in the United States through the development and distribution of quality, authentic content on television, online, and in the community.

Luis Alejandro Molina, director of ¡Tú Cuentas! Cine Youth Fest, when making the call he stated “we are firm in our commitment to nurture and promote emerging Latino talent in the film industry.”

Regarding registrations, Molina mentioned that they will be accepted through CineYouthFest.org until Aug. 2, 2023, however, the 31st of this month closes the period for those who will receive it for free. The festival will take place from October 9 to 16, 2023, coinciding with the end of Hispanic Heritage Month.

The award for the best films will be announced on September 11 and will be screened on CineYouthFest.org and the HITN GO app from Oct. 9 to 16, 2023.

For more information contact Luis Alejandro Molina: l.amolina@hitn.org

 

SF Boys Choir celebrates 75th anniversary

With a masterful concert, the San Francisco Children’s Choir celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding, a time that has been dedicated to musical education, vocal training and interpretive experiences at the highest artistic level.

The celebration will feature renowned soprano Shawnette Sulker, who has been invited for this very special occasion, as well as members of the Oakland Great Wall Youth Orchestra and young dancers from San Francisco’s Mannakin Theater and Dance Company. .

The concert will feature all levels of the Choir, Bell Ringers and SFBC Orchestra.

The Calvary Presbyterian Church, located at 2515 Fillmore St. on Jackson St. in San Francisco, was the setting chosen for this celebration, which will take place this June 3 at 7 p.m.

 

San José Museum of Art exhibits works by Yolanda López: Portrait of the artist

The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) opens its doors for the first solo exhibition of artist and activist Yolanda López (1942–2021), who created portraits that have become icons of feminist and working-class empowerment.

This exhibition examines the profound influence of López as an artist who radically reinvented representations of women in Chicana/a/x culture and society at large, and highlights the formative role the Bay Area played in artistic production and Lopez’s activism.

This exhibition Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist, is made up of a compendium of 50 of the most emblematic works of the artist in oil pastel, painting, charcoal, collage and photography, including self-portraits never before exhibited.

The show will be open to the public from July 7 to Oct. 29, 2023, at the San José Museum of Art, located at 110 South Market Street in downtown San José.

Hunger-fighting groups give mixed reviews to new CA budget proposal

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by Suzanne Potter

California News Service

 

Groups working to fight hunger in California are praising Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed changes to the state budget regarding food assistance for undocumented people, but say they do not go far enough.

The governor’s “May Revise” would allow undocumented immigrants over age 55 to participate in food assistance programs two years earlier than planned, starting in 2025 instead of 2027.

Tia Shimada, director of programs at Nourish California, said the state should not exclude people from CalFresh or the California Food Assistance Program because of their age or immigration status.

“Those inequities, they’re written into our policies,” pointed out. “They’re a choice, and California can do better. Gov. Newsom and the California state Legislature should end the unjust exclusion of immigrants from food assistance.”

Senate Bill 245 and Assembly Bill 311 would expand the food assistance programs to include from 580,000 to 670,000 low-income undocumented people under age 55. Opponents cited cost concerns.

Food insecurity is associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes and has been shown to impair cognitive development in children.

Ali Ahmed, a student at the University of California-San Diego, said it is tough for immigrant students who struggle to afford basic necessities.

“This is the case for many of my friends at school,” Ahmed observed. “These immigrants are left to rely on food pantries or have to make hard choices between paying for school materials or buying food to keep them nourished and ready to learn.”

Advocates have organized under the banner of the “Food4All” campaign, a coalition of 100 groups around the state. They say 46 percent of undocumented immigrants under age 55 experience food insecurity.

 

Too many kids age out of foster care without a permanent family

A new report shows the number of people between the ages 14 to 21 in the foster-care system has dropped by about half over a 15-year period – and that the reasons they enter the system are evolving. Researchers from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that in the Golden State, the percentage of kids entering foster care due to neglect went from 26 percent in 2006 to 66 percent in 2021.

Angela Vazquez with the Children’s Partnership said, especially in a wealthy state such as California, neglect really means poverty.

“We are pulling young people into a system that is not trauma-informed because their families are poor and lack real access to the kinds of services they would need,” she said.

The number of teens entering the system due to abuse went up 3 percentage points. And those entering due to behavior problems dropped from 45 percent to 11 percent over the same time period. There is some good news – the report also found a big drop in the use of group homes and in runaways, and a greater emphasis on placement with foster families, with relatives, and with supervised independent living.

The state offers life-skills training, vocational training, mentoring and housing assistance to help with the transition to adulthood.

But Todd Lloyd, with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said only 57 percent of foster kids older than 14 receive those services. And only 24 percent are still in the system at age 19.

“We really encourage states to consider ways that they can encourage young people to remain in foster care after the age of 18 If they don’t have a permanent family,” Lloyd said. “But we’ve seen nationally that the utilization of extended foster care after the age of 18 is actually very low.”

Data show that in 2020, only 26 percent of foster kids in California exited the system because they found a permanent home – and 70 percent left when they became emancipated or aged out.

 

 

 

Our community needs print newspaper as it preserves our culture

This column, more than an editorial, is intended to be a moral manifesto for our readers. More than 33 years have passed since El Reportero was born to be the voice of a community, the newspaper of Latinos in San Francisco. But how much has our society changed since then? How much have we changed? And how much has the media changed?

We live in one of the most developed cities in the world, a city that in other places would be called the “city of the future”, autonomous vehicles drive through our streets and packages are delivered by drones, scenes that are almost like scenes from science fiction stories. However, despite so much development, inequality is palpable in each of our avenues. This era is characterized by disparity and extremes – is this the price of “development”?

It is ironic that we live in an era where the greatest written records in all of human history are preserved and the biggest problem is the veracity of these words. An era where newsrooms no longer seek to do investigative and critical journalism, but rather the preservation of the status quo and the generation of new “needs” in the readers. More than journalism, nowadays it is marketing.

Faced with this dystopian panorama, at El Reportero we assume the moral duty to do real journalism, to inform and transform. To be an independent media that tells the stories that its community needs to read, to recover the tone that has been lost among the strident sound of social networks, to preserve our culture and our stories in the age of the liquid and ephemeral.

In El Reportero we are committed to write and investigate with our soul and not abuse the written word by computer to be the lighthouse in this sea of misinformation. Our community must continue to read in print and that is why we will expand. We will rethink the printed newspaper and give life to our digital transformation project. Where we will take our ideals to the new platforms on the internet. Our goal is to be the voice of the Hispanic community on all platforms.

Join us in this new project.

 

Fact checks gone wrong: UN-related document on sex with minors

by David Sidebotham, Op-ed contributor

An UN-related entity, the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ), recently released a document that seemingly called for the legalization of sex with minors. To say “this caused a panic among conservatives” is putting it lightly. At first pass, the document seems to advocate that minors can consent to sex. And conservative readers took that to mean “minors can consent to all kinds of sex” — which would include sex with adults. Fact-checkers, such as AP News, asserted that the document in question — called the “March 8 Principles” — were only describing sex between minors.

So, the question is: who is right? According to AP News’ Fact Check and Erin Murphy (a law professor from New York University), the “March 8 Principles” not only doesn’t call for decriminalizing sex with children but instead calls for the enforcement of child protection laws. Erin Murphy goes on to explain that instead of making a judgment about where the age of consent should be set, the document instead claims that if you set a minimum age of consent, you shouldn’t be able to evade it by getting married. She explains that the law is simply “[referring] to situations where laws set a minimum age of consent that don’t necessarily reflect the actual practice of sexual intimacy among young people.”

But there’s a real problem with this fact check. And it’s a common problem with many fact-checks. It has conflated expert opinion with fact.

It is true that the document does not specify that sex between adults and children should be legal. And it is true it only states that minors can consent to sex and has no specifications as to “with whom.” The “March 8 Principles” is very careful — as Erin Murphy asserts — not to prescribe age limits on sex one way or another. In fact, the “8 March Principles “(while making mention of other forms of abuse) make no mention of child sexual abuse at all. To many, this silence is deafening. It raises the question: if a report devoted to criminal law and sexual conduct is going to address child sexuality, why would it not address criminal sexual abuse? Different readers have arrived at wildly different conclusions to that question, resulting in their inferences coloring the “fact-checking.”

Erin Murphy and AP News are inferring information from silence. Specifically, they are interpreting silence on child sexual abuse as condemnation of that abuse. Conservatives are also inferring information from silence. They are interpreting silence on child sexual abuse as leaving an open door for that abuse — or at the very least that the authors consider it less worthy of mention than other abuses. Regardless of who you agree with, replacing facts with trusted opinions is a very dangerous game.

Political and social opportunists prey upon people’s inability to distinguish “fact” from “opinion.” Conflating the two is becoming a national crisis. In 2021, a Pew Research Center survey asked over 5,000 US adults to identify 10 statements as fact or opinion. Only one-quarter of respondents were able to identify all five factual statements, and only one-third correctly spotted all five opinions. From here, the trend of identifying “news I disagree with” as “fake news” and “news I like” as “fact” should come as no surprise. The divisiveness and damage caused by Americans living in “parallel realities” are self-evident for anyone engaging in any kind of political discourse post-2016.

Today, even the most respected news sources often equate expert opinions with facts. So, what’s the solution?

To begin with, expert opinions should be clearly labeled as such and promoted as such. It is very hard to overstate the importance of the expert opinions of Erin Murphy and the others quoted in the AP News article. Those opinions do not have to be facts to be valuable. Treating opinions as fact is not only misleading for readers but it fails to acknowledge the value those expert statements have as opinions.

Secondly, fact-checkers often try to address multiple versions of the same story. For example, since publishing their Principles, the ICJ has condemned pedophilia and clarified they do not advocate for abolishing age of consent laws (a point AP News included in their fact check). But condemning pedophilia after the fact does not change whether the “March 8 Principles” left a loophole for child sexual abuse. The claim “ICJ promotes child sexual abuse” is significantly easier to disprove than “The March 8 Principles allowed for pedophilia.” The reason for this is that even if the ICJ didn’t intend to allow for that kind of sexual abuse, the actual wording of their principles may still have done so by accident. And that kind of analysis doesn’t fit neatly into a “fact check.”

To deal with this complexity, fact-checkers sometimes generalize allegations, picking the easiest version of an allegation to refute — as was the case with the AP News article. While this simplifies the task of writing an article, the fact check usually becomes a “straw man” fallacy — meaning it refutes the easiest version of the argument to disprove and not necessarily the argument being discussed.

Rather than running the razor’s edge between “summarizing arguments” and “strawmanning arguments,” fact-checkers would be better served by engaging in what is called “steelmanning” an argument. Steelmanning is the practice of addressing the strongest version of an argument, even if it is not the version that the person you’re arguing with specifically presented. Doing this forces the fact-checker to consider objections to their claims and forces them to consider all facets of an argument. Generally speaking, a rebuttal that works on a steelman will also refute a strawman; whereas a rebuttal of a strawman will usually fail to refute a steelman.

It is only through sticking with the facts (rather than relying on interpretation) and fairly representing counterarguments that people can fully understand complex documents like the March 8 Principles. As long as expert opinions and strawmen fallacies are presented as facts, American people will be forced to piece the puzzle together themselves.

– David Sidebotham is a founding member of Telios Teaches with over a decade of experience in curriculum management. He takes attorney generated curriculum and translates it into online courses that are accessible to all learners, while still remaining informative to learners who may be subject matter experts themselves. Telios Teaches includes both sexual harassment and child protection training.

Study: Supplementing with vitamin D helps prevent cancer, especially if it’s taken more frequently

by Ethan Huff

Many people are already aware of the bone-protective effects of vitamin D, but did you also know that the “sunlight nutrient” protects against cancer?

Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (GCRC) put together a new study about it showing that supplementing with vitamin D – this can include just going outside and exposing your skin to natural sunlight – can help reduce cancer mortality in patients with a cancer diagnosis by up to 12 percent.

Put another way, cancer patients whose doctors are likely telling them that chemotherapy and radiation are their only options can take matters into their own hands by getting more vitamin D, which could keep them from dying – and possibly, in conjunction with an aggressive anti-cancer diet and lifestyle regimen, overcome the disease entirely.

An exhaustive analysis of 14 previous projects conducted at the GCRC of “the highest scientific quality,” covering upwards of 105,000 participants, revealed that vitamin D deficiency is prolific, including among cancer patients, many of whom are grossly deficient in this life-promoting, health-protecting nutrient.

In Germany specifically, about 15 percent of the adult population overall is deficient in vitamin D, just as a reference.

One of the studies the GCRC team looked at involved patients with colorectal cancer. An astounding 59 percent of the colorectal patients were found to be deficient in vitamin D – this being a much higher percentage than the overall population.

Based on this study alone, it appears as though vitamin D deficiency is directly correlated with poor health, including a serious chronic illness like cancer. Had these patients had optimal vitamin D levels, would they even have cancer in the first place? (Related: Check out this Vitamin D Infographic to learn more about the health benefits of vitamin D.)

Rates of vitamin D deficiency are much higher among cancer patients than the general population

While scientists have stopped short of claiming that vitamin D can protect against the development of cancer – they probably can’t say this, even if they do actually believe it, in order to get their papers published – they do admit that vitamin D deficiency is much more prominent among cancer patients than it is among the general population.

“Based on current studies, vitamin D3 supplementation probably does not protect against developing cancer, but it could reduce the likelihood of dying from cancer. However, previous studies on cancer mortality have yielded very different results, and we were interested in the reasons for this,” said Ben Schöttker, an epidemiologist at the GCRC, in a media release.

“By re-evaluating all previous studies on the topic, we wanted to help produce robust results on this issue, which is so relevant to population health.”

Schöttker, who helped lead the research with the help of colleagues, discovered that the more vitamin D a cancer patient takes supplementally or gets from natural sunlight, the greater his or her chances of having a positive recovery and outcome.

Cancer patients who took a low dose of vitamin D daily ranging from 400 to 4,000 international units (IU) per day experienced better outcomes compared to those who took much higher doses ranging from 60,000 to 120,000 at fewer intervals over the course of one month or less.

Daily dosing, the researchers found, is much better for cancer mortality, than less frequent dosing.

“We observed this twelve percent reduction in cancer mortality after un-targeted vitamin D3 administration to individuals with and without vitamin D deficiency,” Schöttker reported. “We can therefore assume that the effect is significantly higher for those people who are actually vitamin D deficient.”

Making mental health an integral part of primary care for older adults

by Selen Ozturk

 

With a quarter of Californians aged 65 or older by 2030, the state is looking for ways to better meet the mental and behavioral health needs of its older adult population

San Francisco resident Fancher Larson has spent much of her career advocating for the rights of people with mental health challenges. An older adult, she was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and now worries what will happen to a younger relative with behavioral health challenges for whom she is the primary care giver if she’s unable to care for him.

Larson’s story is among the array of mental and behavioral health challenges that older adults in California and across the country are facing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m not so worried about myself as about what will happen to my relative,” said Larson, a patient advocate at the non-profit San Francisco Mental Health Clients’ Rights Advocates. “Nobody should be shipped to a county facility and wind up being medicated because they don’t have help.”

Larson spoke during an April 27 roundtable discussion on the behavioral health needs of Bay Area older adults organized by the California Department of Aging (CDA).

Held at the On Lok 30th Street Senior Center in San Francisco, the event drew patients, clinicians, CDA staff, social workers and other community leaders who shared their experiences as more older adults contend with physical, mental and financial challenges even as pandemic restrictions recede.

The gathering is part of state-wide efforts to improve services for older adults under California’s Master Plan for Aging, a 10-year blueprint aimed at enhancing state- and local-level support in five key areas: housing, healthcare, social equity, caregivers, and financial security.

Fifteen percent of California residents are aged 65 or older. That number is expected to rise to 25% by 2030.

CDA Director Susan DeMarois said the goal of the roundtable – the first of four, with three more in Fresno, San Bernardino, and Ukiah – is to garner community input that can shape policy around meeting the behavioral health needs of older adults, who have seen a spike in physical and mental health problems since the start of the pandemic.

Experts attribute the trend in part to the increased social isolation resulting from pandemic-related restrictions and say that addressing that isolation by making mental health resources more available is key.

“Mental health is still a taboo in many communities of color,” said Michelle Fonseca, a resident of the city’s Mission neighborhood who is working to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Adelman, along with On Lok Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ben Lui, both stressed that mental and behavioral health support needs to be better integrated into primary care services.

“Effective behavioral health services are those that are integrated into primary care,” said Lui. “For seniors with behavioral health conditions, there is often associated instability, and a good public health prevention model needs to address these problems upstream, like housing, financial planning, and transportation needs.”

Jim DeRoche, a senior citizen living in San Francisco, said trauma-informed training of care workers was key to connecting with older adults like himself. He also described his experience with the phone-based Friendship Line, operated by the Institute on Aging.

Seniors who used the Friendship Line “reported a marked decrease in depression, anxiety and loneliness over six months,” said Institute on Aging Vice President of Integrated Care Services Mia Grigg. “This trust-based emotional care is a part of primary care.”

Roundtable participants agreed that coordinating efforts to integrate behavioral health into primary care services needs to start at the state level.

“For many older adults with mental illness who then develop dementia, that new diagnosis means they’re no longer eligible for previously used mental health services,” said Jennifer Stephens-Pierre, the director of Alameda County’s Area Agency on Aging. “Without legislation to change this, they fall into a space where they want to underreport one illness over the other to keep getting the care they need.”

Mark Salazar, CEO of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, said his agency has seen “significant drops in 30-day and six-month readmission rates” after integrating peer staff with Marin County behavioral health services through the San Francisco Department of Public Health and San Francisco General Hospital.

Other participants shared their own experiences of coordination among mental and behavioral health programs, imploring CDA leaders to reflect this at the state level.

“We’ve been able to serve seniors most effectively through Openhouse SF when we coordinate across programs — mental and behavioral health outreach with help for homeless seniors services,” said Adelman.

But that city-level coordination is not enough, she added.

“I ask state leaders to invest in organizations that create the physical and legal infrastructure… to help seniors in their own communities.

Carrot carotenoids found to enhance and protect eye health

by Ethan Huff

 

May 5, 2023 – Did you know that the retina of the eye is an extension of the human brain? And did you know that carrots, eggs, and leafy greens are loaded with nutrients that help protect and promote optimal eye health?

Of the 850 known carotenoids in the food supply, just three of them – lutein, zeaxanthin, and astaxanthin – are capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. And it is these three that Dr. Joseph Mercola says are critical for producing macular pigment in your eyes.

It appears as though lutein in particular accumulates throughout the body, which draws from these stores to promote vision, cognitive function, and more. The others are important, too, and it is critical for you to understand that you must obtain these carotenoids from healthy foods because they do not occur naturally in the body.

Lutein has a protective, anti-inflammatory effect on the body. It is available both in supplement form as well as in dark leafy greens, avocados, egg yolks, tomatoes, and carrots, among other foods.

“Lutein concentrates in your macula – the part of your retina responsible for central vision,” Mercola writes. “Along with zeaxanthin and mesa-zeaxanthin (a metabolite of lutein), these three carotenoids form the retinal macular pigment, which not only is responsible for optimizing your visual performance but also serves as a biomarker for the risk of macular diseases.”

“Lutein is also found in the lens, where it helps protect against cataracts and other age-related eye diseases. Among carotenoids, lutein is the most efficient at filtering out blue light – the type that comes from cellphones, computers, tablets, and LED lights.”

(Related: Back in 2010, researchers found that fruit and vegetable carotenoids help to protect women against ovarian cancer.)

Lutein deficiency linked to dementia, brain degradation

Blue light, in case you are unfamiliar with its detriments, is terrible for your eyes. It creates oxidative stress that can increase the risk of cataracts and other forms of macular degeneration and vision loss.

Lutein acts as a type of shield to protect your eyes against blue light damage, which is becoming even more of a problem as cities replace their orange-tinted street lights with blue light-emitting LEDs, which are white-looking, bright, and heavily straining on the eyes.

“As the peak wavelength of lutein’s absorption is around 460 nm which lies within the range of blue light, lutein can effectively reduce light-induced damage by absorbing 40 percent to 90 percent of incident blue light depending on its concentration,” reported a team of scientists out of Harvard Medical School and The University of Hong Kong, writing in the journal Nutrients.

“The outer plexiform layer of the fovea, where the majority of axons of rod and cone photoreceptor cells are located, is the retinal layer having the highest density of macular carotenoids including lutein. Hence the photoreceptors are protected against photo-oxidative damages from blue light.”

Another thing lutein does is protect the brain against dementia and other forms of degradation. It likewise suppresses the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, which stimulates the formation of blood vessels that are capable of being upregulated in many types of cancerous tumors.

“As inflammation and abnormal angiogenesis in retinal vasculature are major pathogenic mechanisms of many ocular diseases, lutein’s functions in suppressing inflammatory response and VEGF expression make it effective in reducing the severity of these diseases,” the aforementioned research team further noted in their research.

The moral of the story, here, is to eat more carrots, dark leafy greens, pastured eggs, and other carotenoid-rich foods, which may help to protect your eyesight, not to mention the protective effects it offers in cancer prevention.

 

Peso hits 7-year high against US dollar

by the El Reportero‘s wire services

 

The Mexican peso appreciated to its strongest level against the US dollar in seven years on Monday, but weakened slightly on Tuesday.

The peso gained around 0.9 percent on Monday to trade at 17.42 to the US dollar, its strongest level since May 2016.

When markets closed on Tuesday, one greenback was trading at 17.48 pesos, according to the Bank of Mexico (Banxico). Even with the slight decline, the peso is almost 11 percent stronger than it was at the start of the year.

“The Mexican peso continues to go from strength to strength. Banxico’s policy of matching the Fed hiking cycle is really paying dividends,” wrote Chris Turner, ING’s global head of markets, in an article posted to the bank’s website.

“And the peso stands to be the prime beneficiary of nearshoring trends,” he added, referring to the relocation of companies to Mexico to be close to the United States market.

At 11.25 percent, Banxico’s benchmark interest rate is in fact well above the United States Federal Reserve’s 5 percent-5.25 percent rate, a situation seen as favorable for the peso.

Turner wrote that “Banxico’s maintenance of a 600-650 basis point spread above Fed rates has helped USD/MXN volatility levels fall and [allowed] the peso [to] stand out as the world’s preferred carry trade currency.”

He noted that the board of Mexico’s central bank will meet this Thursday to discuss monetary policy, and said that “one last hike” to 11.5 percent is possible before the tightening cycle is paused or stopped.

Carlos González, director of economic analysis at the Monex financial group, said that the possibility that the Fed – which raised rates earlier this month – has already reached the end of its tightening cycle has benefited the peso.

Omar Larré, co-founder of investment management company Fintual, said that the “attractive level” of interest rates in Mexico and the “perception” that the peso is “low risk” have contributed to the appreciation of the Mexican currency.

The high level of remittances flowing into Mexico – almost US $14 billion in the first quarter of 2023 – is also a positive for the peso, while President López Obrador has pointed to his government’s economic management, including its predilection for austerity, as a factor in the currency’s current strength.

However, as the news agency Reuters reported, some analysts attribute the peso’s recent gains to a weakening of the greenback.

Luis Gonzali, a portfolio manager with investment firm Franklin Templeton, said that a decline in the value of the US dollar – most recently due to the possibility that the U.S. Congress won’t approve an increase to the United States’ debt ceiling before the end of May – has benefited the peso.

“A big part of [the peso’s strength] is the dollar’s weakness,” he said.

However, Gonzali also acknowledged that incoming investment flows and Mexico’s healthier finances compared to those of other emerging market economies have benefited the peso.

Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis at Mexican bank Banco Base, said that the peso could continue appreciating to 17.05 pesos to the US dollar in the near term due to the expectation that the Fed won’t continue lifting interest rates.

That expectation causes capital to move out of the United States to other countries, including Mexico, she said.

“However, in the medium term the peso could moderately depreciate … [as a result of] lower flows of dollars into the country due to the possibility of a recession in the United States,” Siller said.

With reports from El Financiero, El Economista and Reuters.

How to exercise good financial health

Hosting Seminars in Majority Black and Latino Communities

Sponsored content from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

 

With spring in full bloom – now is a perfect time to start a fresh a foundation for a healthy financial future. Good financial health is the foundation on which strong and resilient households, communities and economies are built, but the reality is, many struggle to manage their financial daily lives.

In recognition of Financial Literacy Month, our friends at JPMorgan Chase offered top financial tips to help achieve financial freedom and build generational wealth.

– Small steps lead to bigger opportunities: No matter what amount of money you have, taking small steps towards building a solid financial foundation is key. Whether it’s saving a little more each month, starting to save for the first time or monitoring your credit score, these steps can help you prepare for the unexpected while setting you up for long-term success.

– Establish good credit: The main elements of securing a good credit score include paying your bills on time, the length of time you’ve had a credit history, and the amount and type of accounts you have. Potential lenders will use this information to determine your credit risk. Managing your finances wisely will help you establish strong credit, a practice that will pay off when you want to make larger purchases like a car or a home.

– Embrace digital tools: Apps, online goal sheets and budget builders are a great way to manage your finances. Look into what digital tools your financial partner offers. Whether it’s credit and identify monitoring, or setting up repeating automatic transfers from your checking account to your savings account, these tools will help keep you on track with your payments and savings goals.

– Include the whole family in the process: It’s never too early to get kids started on their financial journey. Ask your bank about opening up a joint checking account geared towards children to help them establish good financial habits. A joint account can offer features designed to help kids learn the importance of saving and meeting their financial goals, whether it’s tracking their spending, creating recurring payments and setting spending limits, or being rewarded when completing chores and earning an allowance to deposit. Once your child understands the importance of saving the money they earn, they can begin to build savings habits that will last a lifetime.

– Ask for help: Whether it’s meeting with a banker or talking to friends or family, conversations and advice can be critical to improving financial health, from building a budget to more complex matters like saving for retirement.

– Keep the conversation going: Talk with your partner or other family members regularly about your financial goals and how you plan to achieve them, and check in with your children to discuss their financial activity – whether it be what or where they’re spending, how much they’re earning, or their savings goal. These discussions all provide opportunities to keep money as part of your family conversations.

Establishing solid financial habits can be a lifetime process, but it’s easier if you learn the fundamentals as early as possible. It’s never too early, or too late, to begin your journey, and this month is a great time to get started or recommit to your financial health. For more financial health tips, visit chase.com/financialgoals.

Mexico embraces Assange – his father tours North America

Julian Assange’s father and brother ended a 48-day North American tour in Mexico City, getting the president’s support and a letter from Mexican MPs to Joe Biden demanding he drop the charges, reports Joe Lauria from Mexico

 

by Joe Lauria, in Mexico City
Special to Consortium News

 

John and Gabriel Shipton have been on and off the road on three continents for three years appealing to ordinary citizens and the powerful about the plight of their son and brother, Julian Assange, imprisoned for possessing and publishing U.S. “defense information” that revealed prima facie evidence of state crimes.

The Shiptons are spreading their message through the documentary film Ithaka, produced by Assange’s brother, which chronicles the odyssey of their father in Britain, Europe and the United States in pursuit of his son’s freedom.

The Shiptons brought their film to Toronto and 55 cities across the U.S., meeting in cinemas and universities from New York to Tulsa to Decatur, GA.

Their campaign ended its 7-week North American tour at the end of April in Mexico, where they were embraced not only by Mexicans in the street but by the country’s highest office holder and members of Parliament. The Shiptons received a firm endorsement from the president and a letter from national legislators to Joe Biden demanding he let Assange go.

‘Tear Down the Statue of Liberty’

The Shiptons met President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for an hour on April 20 at the historic Palacio Nacional, built in 1522 on the site of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II’s palace. It houses some of Diego Rivera’s finest murals. Obrador moved his residence and offices there in 2018.

On July 4, 2022, U.S. Independence Day, Obrador told a news conference: “If they take [Assange] to the United States and he is sentenced to the maximum penalty and to die in prison, we must start a campaign to tear down the Statue of Liberty.”

Eight days later, on July 12, Obrador met Biden in the White House. Afterward, he said,

“I left a letter to the president about Assange, explaining that he did not commit any serious crime, did not cause anyone’s death, did not violate any human rights and that he exercised his freedom, and that arresting him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression.”

Obrador has twice offered political aslyum to Assange, whom he’s called “the best journalist of our time.”

John Shipton told Consortium News after his meeting with Obrador that he admired the president’s guts. Gabriel Shipton said Obraror had “reconfirmed his unconditional support for Julian’s freedom.”

The unconvicted Assange has been incarcerated since April 2019 on remand in London’s harsh Belmarsh Prison awaiting a British decision on a U.S. demand that he be brought in chains to an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom.

There he would face charges under the controversial Espionage Act.  If convicted, he could be sentenced to a maximum 175 years in a U.S. dungeon.

At a press conference at the Chamber of Deputies immediately after leaving the Palacio Nacional, John Shipton said there was “a new dawn” in the fight to free Assange. “The sunlight is brilliant and it is led by President Obrador.”

Shipton told Consortium News at the news briefing that in his meeting with the Mexican president “there was some indication” that Biden and Obrador have had a conversation about Assange, “but the details of that conversation I don’t know.”

Obrador has joined other Latin American leaders to form a pro-Assange bloc publicly advocating for his release. Shipton said the political movement to free his son “encompasses the entirety” of Latin America:  including the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Venezuela and Mexico.

“This new power emanating from Latin America has begun a change in the geopolitical circumstances of the world,” Shipton said. “Important in that change is the freedom of Julian Assange and the freedom of each of us to speak to one another and publish what we think freely.”

Deputies Petition Biden

The Chamber of Deputies is an extraordinary place where citizens have set up markets to sell their wares on the Parliament grounds. It is a sign of the kind of community found in Mexico that would be impossible to see inside the gates of the U.S. Capitol, Westminster or at Parliament House in Canberra.

About thirty representatives joined the Shiptons at the Chamber of Deputies press conference, where lawmakers said a parliamentary group of 100 senators and deputies had also sent a letter to Biden, through the U.S. embassy, telling him to free Assange.

Parliaments in Australia, Britain and Brazil have similarly written to Biden. Seven U.S. members of Congress wrote to the U.S. attorney general arguing that Assange should be set free.

“This puts Mexican lawmakers in the forefront of a global movement for freedom of expression,” Gabriel Shipton told the press conference. “They are speaking up with a growing movement all around the world calling for Julian’s freedom, but also for all of our freedom.”

He called on the Mexican lawmakers to form friendship groups with legislators who support Assange in other countries, and to also put forward motions in Parliament in support of his brother.

The Mexican legislators at the press conference indeed announced they would be forming a permanent commission to work “with our counterparts in the U.S. Congress to not leave a single day to not demand the immediate release of Julian Assange.”  The commission will also reach out to like-minded members in the British parliament.

John Shipton told the press conference that there were cross-party groups supporting Assange across the world:   one-third of the Greek parliament; 50 in the Australian legislature; 25 in Westminster and as many as 90 in the Bundestag. He said he’d now like to see the U.S. Congress pass a motion supporting his son.

“We are seeing before us a global problem, which requires a global movement,” he said, that includes “the press, parliaments, the institutions of state and as demonstrated in Latin America by the presidents of the great states of Latin America.”

Greeted in the Street

After they left the Chamber of Deputies, the Shiptons toured a recently opened museum dedicated to climate change and biodiversity called Barco Utopia.

As they arrived from their bus they were greeted by a crowd in the street.

Mexican Premier

On the following night the Mexican premier of Ithaka was held in a packed auditorium at Instituto Nacional de Formation Política.

Journalist Alina Duarte told the audience that WikiLeaks had published cables that revealed the government of President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) “was willing to integrate, to deliver … our national security, our territory — it didn’t matter at what cost — … to the Barack Obama administration, everything that it required.”

Duarte said the cables revealed that leftist leaders in Mexico were spied on by the U.S. at that time, including Obrador.  The Mexican corporate media had a pact with government in 2011 not to report any of these details, she said.

John Shipton told the audience that he and Gabriel had conducted 61 such question and answer sessions on their North American tour. “The further south we traveled the warmer the climate got and the warmer the people,” he said.

Asked what were the chances of Assange obtaining asylum in Mexico, Shipton said it was up to the Latin American presidents who back Assange. He said it depended on “the influence that these great nations of South America, together,  in concert exercise in … Washington.”

Gabriel Shipton called on the audience to press their representatives in the Chamber of Deputies to make sure they begin their work on Assange’s case with the permanent commission in the chamber, which would be the first of its kind in any parliament.  “Sometimes politicians like to say something, and then forget,” he said. “So they need the media, the journalists to keep them accountable.”

Asked how youth organizations can be brought into the Assange movement, John Shipton said: “Obrador informed us that freedom in Mexico — sovereignty — came at the cost of six wars; against France, one, against Spain, one, against the United States, four.”

Shipton said that on the previous day there had been a celebration in Veracruz of the “defeat of the United States incursion in 1914 into Mexico to steal more land.” He said:

“We see from that, that your sovereignty, your freedom, your freedom to be Mexico exists, and it rose upon the tears of women and the blood of men. To teach this to young people is understanding that it came only on the tears of mothers, daughters, wives and the cries of children.”

This is the “vital lesson” to teach the young, he said, “of the creation of what we know now as Mexico.”  Shipton went on:

“We also learned from Lopez Obrador that this history has to be available to us. And that Julian Assange is an example of the importance of information and knowledge available to us to understand how we came to be and how Mexico can continue to be. These great themes of nation and sovereignty, and information and history come together in the persecution of Julian Assange.

So in understanding and teaching us, Obrador furthers the capacity and the defense of sovereignty in every nation; of freedom of every person; and subsequently his asking for the freedom, and demanding the freedom of Julian Assange.”

In response to a question about how people in the U.S. reacted to the Shiptons’ tour, Gabriel Shipton said,

“They are very concerned because it is their rights, their constitutional rights through the First Amendment that this prosecution of Julian is affecting also. So many people we meet all through the United States, whether they’re on the right or on the left, they all support what we are doing because they can see how it affects them. How it affects their own democracy. They are very emotional as well. Some audiences were in tears … because of the injustice they can see on screen. We all have inside a yearning for justice and revulsion for injustice.”

Returning to the theme of the importance of knowledge and WikiLeaks’ role in disseminating it, John Shipton told the following story:

“When Rafael Correa won government in Ecuador, he read the files in the Cables set about Ecuador. One of the files revealed that the United States embassy was paying the wages of the elite police force in Ecuador. Confronted with this problem, to establish a stable government, he came up with an elegant solution: pay all the police force the same wage as the elite police were getting. So he had a stable government. So, with wit and knowledge we will prevail.”

Back Home

The Shiptons headed home to Australia the day after the screening to continue lobbying a Labor government in Canberra that has been perfecting the art of sitting on the fence when it comes to their citizen Assange.

After pressure, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at last revealed in an ABC interview last week that he has made his position clear to the U.S. Justice Department. “We’re working through diplomatic channels, we’re making very clear what our position is on Mr Assange’s case,” Albanese said. “This needs to be brought to a conclusion.”

The North American tour, the growing number of world leaders and parliamentary groups, the human rights and press freedom organizations, and direct action such as by Code Pink on Antony Blinken’s stage on World Press Freedom Day, underscores the significantly increased pressure on the Biden administration to release Assange.

The U.S. knows what it is up against. Biden knows. In 2010 he said there was no evidence to charge Assange and the administration he belonged to did not charge him.  There is no new evidence since then in the case, but the Trump administration indicted him anyway, and Biden has continued to pursue that prosecution.

Though it forms no part of the indictment, the Democratic Party and the C.I.A. have been incensed by WikiLeaks releases that affected them and Biden would likely face their wrath  were he to release Assange.

Nevertheless, this growing movement of presidents, parliaments, the public and human rights and press freedom groups is sending a clear message to Washington: the world can see through U.S. “values” when that includes locking up a journalist who was just doing his job.

Australian MPs Meet Kennedy

With Biden just two weeks from a visit to Australia he is starting to get the message even more directly. A cross party delegation of Australian legislators met on Tuesday morning in Canberra with Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador.  MP Julian Hill pushed for the meeting. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Senator Andrew Wilkie as saying:

“This is an intensely important time with the US President about to visit. It would be very unhelpful if he comes to Australia and this issue is still unresolved, it will hang over us all in an uncomfortable way.”

“The US and Australia have a very important and close relationship, and it’s time to demonstrate that.” Wilkie said.  Senator David Shoebridge, who also met with Kennedy, was quoted as saying: “The fact that the ambassador allocated precious time to this issue ahead of President Biden’s visit is a useful indication of the visibility of the campaign to free Assange.”

Shoebridge said: “The end of Australia’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ on Assange last week is an important step forward and brings us closer to a just conclusion of the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange.”

(Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe)

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