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­by Mark Carney

Workers and religios people protest against Hotel Hilton. ­(photo coutesy of Local 2)

Embroiled in a tense, seventeen month-long contract dispute, Local 2, the San Francisco hotel workers’ union, has this month increased the pressure on downtown hotels with a series of actions. In response, the hotels have enlisted the assistance of powerful business lobbies, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.

On Tuesday, Jan. 18, hundreds of hotel workers protested in front of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Union Square. At issue, in addition to the Hyatt’s notoriously anti-union stance and one of the highest workplace injury rates in the industry, is a complaint the Hyatt has filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), claiming that Local 2 is unlawfully allocating money away from a child/elder care fund into a legal fund. Although allocations are strictly stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement, in practice a small measure of flexibility has historically been granted to the union.

Riddhi Mehta, Local 2 spokeswoman, questioned the sincerity and purpose of the complaint, saying, “Around eight years ago, the union switched over two cents an hour from the overfunded Legal Fund to the underfunded Child and Elder Care Fund. Nobody objected eight years ago: Why now?”.

In explaining the allocation, Mehta cited the increased cost that the federal government charges for immigration documents. “Of the 1,000 claims made in the last six months to the Legal Fund, 75 percent were related to immigration; Hyatt workers, ironically, are the second-highest benefi ciaries of the Fund,” said Mehta, hinting that the Hyatt may also have an anti-immigrant agenda.

Many observers noted that, in the press conference announcing the complaint, little mention was made of the complaint itself. Instead, Hyatt general manager David Nadelman and representatives of powerful business lobbies, both national and local, spoke of the detrimental economic impact of the stalled contract negotiations, which they asserted to be entirely the fault of Local

2. “A prolonged labor action has a negative impact on our economy where tourists contribute $8 billion annually, 70,000 jobs are directly involved and $500,000 in tax revenue is generated, argued Joe D’Alessandro, CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association.

Two weeks ago, on Jan. 7, Local 2, together with several prominent law professors, protested in front of the Hilton Union Square Hotel. The protest, consisting of a picket line and a rally, was in support of the national boycott of Hilton hotels undertaken by groups allied with labor unions.

­The picket line, made boisterous by the indignation of the workers and the chanting of union songs to the accompaniment of a drummer and two saxophonists, lasted four hours.

The chants, fittingly, were short and catchy, such as this one: “We’re gonna pull the plug, We’re gonna shut them down, San Francisco is a union town.” Passersby, both in cars and on foot, showed support for the rally, although most likely those staying in the Hilton disapproved.

During the rally, several well-known law professors spoke in favor of a boycott which their own professional association, the American Association of Law Schools, had chosen not to honor. Karl Klare, a professor of Law at Northeastern University, urged on the workers, telling them that, “ In every generation workers have to devise new strategies… The conventional strike is no longer the weapon of choice for unions.”

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por Mike Adams,

Natural News

(NaturalNews) It’s one of the most common false arguments of GMO pushers: There’s nothing to be worried about with genetically modified foods, they argue, because almost everything is genetically modified, they claim. What they’re referring to is the genetic selection used in the long, slow development of many crops such as wheat, which originally began as a grass but was shaped generation after generation through the selection of larger seeds, ultimately leading to modern-day wheat.

This stands in stark contrast to genetic engineering, which is the artificial inserting of genetic code (often from animal species, by the way) into the DNA of a plant. This is a completely artificial, interventionist “engineering” of the DNA of a plant that wildly differs from mere genetic “selection.”

GMO poison pushers attempt to confuse people with these terms by claiming that “lots of foods are genetically modifi ed,” thereby blurring the distinction between genetic selection versus genetic engineering. I’ve even heard top-level scientists attempt to use this false argument, hoping that no one will notice.

The simple truth is that genetic selection works in harmony with natural processes of gene variation within a species. If you grow corn, and you save the seeds from your best-tasting corn to plant the next generation of corn, you are engaged in genetic selection. This is natural. But the GMO industry doesn’t even want you to be able to save your seeds from one generation to the next. They use “terminator” technology in the seeds to ensure that the second generation of seeds is non-viable.

That alone is a crime against humanity because it forces a seed monopoly upon farmers and consumers in developing nations and fi rst-world nations. This is why any individual or organization that is in favor of seed-termination technology in GMOs is supporting a crime against nature.

As usual, the powerful corporations pushing GMOs are attempting to blatantly confuse consumers (and journalists) over the difference between genetic selection versus genetic engineering. None of the biotech GMOs are created through selection processes along.

They all are based on artifi cial genetic engineering. 10 facts you need to ­know about GMOs:

• GMOs are created through artificial genetic engineering of plant DNA, usually through inserting animal genes into plants.

• Genetic “selection,” in contrast, is a natural process whereby people plant seeds, generation after generation, from their crops that demonstrate desirable characteristics. This is how wheat, corn and other crops were developed over centuries of seed selection.

• The GMO industry uses seed terminator technology to forbid seed saving and planting, thereby forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year (creating a seed monopoly and a single point of control for food).

• People who promote GMOs are engaged in crimes against humanity and crimes against nature. They promote dangerous technologies that threaten the future of life on earth by causing genetic pollution and a sharp loss of seed diversity.

• GMOs have been linked to at least 200,000 suicides in India over the past decade due to failed crops (http://www.naturalnews.com).

• The GMO industry has financially taken over much of the mainstream media, politicians and science journals (http://www.naturalnews.com/031093_u…). They will not stop until they achieve complete control over the world food supply, enslaving humanity in a food monopoly.

• GMOs cause “genetic pollution” that damage other crops and ultimately threaten the reproductive viability of crops in the long term. The future of food is jeopardized by GMOs.

• The GMO industry is now attempting to brand all opponents of GMOs as “unscientifi c” by claiming that GMO = science, and therefore anyone who opposes GMOs is automatically an opponent of science (http://www.naturalnews.com).

• The GMO push into Europe is a confirmed conspiracy involving U.S. officials and GMO corporations, as revealed in a Wikileaks cable that the mainstream media has still refused to report (http://www.naturalnews.com/0 3 0 8 2 8 _ G . . . .

• The next great food famine (and mass starvation) will undoubtedly be caused by GMOs. And yet the industry claims that GMOs will save the planet from starvation! Only in a crooked, corrupt world could an industry claim to be saving the world while actually enslaving the world. Watch NaturalNews editor Mike Adams rap about GMOs in the hit song, “Just Say No to GMOs.”

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

On live TV on Jan. 27, President Hugo Chávez threatened Pedro Rodríguez, the executive president of BBVA Banco Provincial, the country’s third largest bank by assets, with expropriation if the bank didn’t help deliver on low income housing projects. The bank later issued a statement vowing to work with the government. Chávez, who is seeking re-election in 2012, has made housing his main priority for 2011, after the recent floods emergency displaced over 25,000 families.

The government is under pressure for failing, despite repeated promises by the president over the past decade, to tackle the country’s acute housing deficit. Chávez blames private construction firms and past governments, but the government’s average new build of 34,000 units a year in the last five years is down by more than a third on the previous government.

Dilma – echos de Piñera?

The ground literally shook under President Sebastián Piñera’s inauguration in Valparaíso on March 11, 2010, as central and southern Chile was rocked by strong aftershocks in the aftermath of one of country’s worst ever earthquakes less than fortnight earlier on Feb. 27.

The heavens certainly opened over Dilma Rousseff’s historic inauguration as Brazil’s first woman president on Jan. 1, but that was nothing compared to the torrential rains that deluged parts of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro a few week later. Like Piñera, Dilma was thrown a huge curve ball in the shape of an unprecedented natural disaster in her first weeks in office.

As in Chile, Brazil’sdisaster preparedness and emergency relief planning was found wanting, prompting citizen anger and criticism from as far away as the United Nations (UN). But like the businessman Piñera, the technocrat Dilma reacted with a cool and calm head, promising to unleash “the great organisational capacity of Brazil’s federal government” to see to it that some 5.0m (mostly low income) Brazilians are moved out of designated ‘at risk’ areas in coming years. Dilma has thus set the bar high for her new administration. She might do well to cast an eye towards Chile, where after a year marked by the trauma of the earthquake and then the glory of the operation to rescue 33 trapped miners, Piñera is now the least popular Chilean president since the return to democracy in 1990.

Morales struggles with ­Bolivian reconciliation bid President Evo Morales marked the start of his sixth year in power and his second as Bolivia’s first ‘plurinational’ President with a call for “reconciliation” and “strategic alliances” in his annual state-of-thenation address. His popularity is at an all-time low due to the gasolinazo (his failed attempt at scrapping state fuel subsidies). Food prices are also soaring. The appeal is directed not only at traditional opposition sectors such as the Santa Cruz agricultural lobby – currently demanding measures to boost production – but also at Morales’ support base, which proved key to his recent defeat.

Sandra Torres de Colom – a First Lady “like no other”?

Upon taking office in January 2008, President Alvaro Colom declared that his wife, Sandra Torres, would be a First Lady “like no other”.

The full meaning of this is becoming apparent amid mounting speculation that, despite some constitutional doubts, she will stand as the presidential candidate for the ruling centre-left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) in the September 2011 general elections. Her possible candidacy is also significant in the context of the emerging regional tendency where leaders faced with constitutional barriers to their immediate re-election, have entertained the idea of promoting their wives’ election as a means of preserving power and influence beyond their mandates. Latin News.

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por Rosalba Ruíz

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There is no strong economic argument to change dramatically the number of low-skilled immigrants in the United States, at least in the short run, says a report just released here by the Migration Policy Institute. That’s the conclusion of economist Harry Holzer, a Georgetown Public Policy Institute professor who reviewed stacks of research literature to assess the costs and benefits low-skilled immigrants bring to the U.S. economy.

His report, “Immigration Policy and Less-Skilled Workers in the United States,” suggests some directions that immigration reform can take, highlighting the importance of the labor market. Key among the suggestions is one that has tied this nation in political knots for years: a pathway to legal residency for undocumented workers.

A response panel of experts — economists and public policy administrators that included MPI president Demetrios Papademetriou and former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner — drew an audience of some 200 persons to MPI on the subfreezing morning of Jan. 13. Offered the chance to broaden the dialogue with questions, they joined in to raise other immigration policy concerns such as social and humanitarian aspects.

Costs and Benefits

Immigration has increased the number of less-skilled workers (those without a high school diploma) in the United States since the 1980s. Holzer’s report suggests that the impact of this expansion on the wages and employment prospects of less-skilled workers is minimal. Among his cited reasons are that immigrants consume products and services, increasing overall labor demand, and that employers adjust production techniques to take advantage of the larger supply of lowskilled workers that immigration generates.

As far as who benefits, in general it is the employers, who pay lower wages, and consumers, who pay less for goods and services: high-income consumers  benefi t from reduced childcare, landscaping and restaurant tabs, for example. The low-income consumer receives cheaper food, medical care and housing.

However, costs and benefits are complex and differ, depending on many variables, such as immigration fl ow, legal status of the workers, and the condition of the labor market and the economy at the time, he qualifi es. If there is an infl ux of low-skilled workers, this might improve the net real earnings (due to higher earnings and lower prices) of higher-income, native-born consumers, but might reduce them for lower income U.S. workers.

Workers who are undocumented usually are paid less than authorized ones, so “it would be better if we convert them to legal immigrants,” Holzer explained, adding that too often the cost/benefit discussion is framed around the legal status of the lowskilled workers. Immigrants here illegally tend to be scapegoated, he pointed out, saying a question that should be asked is how we help native-born unskilled workers via education, workforce development or market interventions. Policy Changes Because it is nearly impossible to determine an optimal level for lessskilled immigrants, Holzer said U.S. policy should aim at maximizing benefi ts; minimizing costs and helping immigrants who stay in the country integrate and gain upward mobility.

­The report points to some ways to do that: First, provide pathways to legal status and citizenship for low-skilled workers already here and a legal route for future workers by using provisional visas that make it possible for some temporary workers to become permanent residents. Second, allow lessskilled workers on employment-based visas to switch employers more easily and gain a path to citizenship.

Third, set employer visa fees at a level sufficient to offset some of the costs that low skilled immigration impose. And finally, to ensure fl exibility in the numbers admitted so that flows can respond to employer demand and macroeconomic conditions.

If those strategies were implemented, said Holzer, the risk of worker exploitation would be reduced.

por David Bacon

Children of migrant farm workers, many of them from indigenous Mixtec families from Oaxaca, attend Ohlone Elementary School. Natalia Gracida-Cruz, a tutor who speaks Mixteco, helps Ruth Espinoza, Héctor Cruz and Gabriela Díaz. (PHOTO BY DAV ID BACON)

WATSONVILE, California – Migrant Education is a product of the civil rights and farm worker movements of the 1960s. California’s Migrant Education Program was established in 1967, two years into the five-year historic grape strike by the United Farm Workers.

That strike, and the farm workers movement that it helped to ignite, gave migrant workers and their allies the political power necessary to get the state’s educational system to respond to their needs. Today migrant education programs are one of themost important ways that farm worker families can win social equality and a future for their children beyond the fields.

The Pajaro Valley district includes thousands of students who travel with their families every year because their parents are migrant farm workers. The demographics of farm labor have changed radically over the last three decades. Today a large percentage of families come from Oaxaca and the states of southern Mexico. Many come from communities where people speak indigenous ­languages that were old when Columbus arrived in the Americas. The most common language among Watsonville students is Mixteco, although a few students speak Triqui or Zapoteco.

Families qualify as migrants because the parents work in farm labor, and have moved at least once in the last few years. In addition to education programs, children also get help with medical and dental care.

The program has a very active parents group, with large meetings every month during the work season.

Watsonville is close to the campus of the University of California in Santa Cruz, and university students help farm worker kids begin to think about the possibility of going to college.

by Mike Adams

Natural News

(NaturalNews) To hear it from proponents of the vaccine industry, vaccines are based on rock-solid science that proves them to be completely safe and widely effective. These beliefs, however, are not factually based on real science but rather a persistent vaccine mythology that has been propagandized by the vaccine industry, medical practitioners and even governments which underwrite vaccine risks.

Today, the International Medical Council on Vaccination (www.VaccinationCouncil.org) has released, exclusively through NaturalNews.com, a groundbreaking document containing the signatures of over 80 family physicians, brain surgeons and professors of pathology, chemistry and immunity, all of which have signed on to a document stating, on the record, that vaccines pose a significant risk of harm to the health of children and that there is no real science backing the “vaccine mythology” which claims that vaccines are somehow good for children.

This groundbreaking document, called Vaccines: Get the Full Story, is available as a free download from NaturalNews.com. Click the report cover image on the right to go directly to the download page, where you’ll find downloads available in 9 languages, including Spanish, French, Hebrew and Russian.

You have permission to share this report. Please also share the download page with others so that moms and parents can get educated about the risks associated with vaccines and thereby protect their children from the risk of harm caused by vaccines.

The vaccine industry’s message is like a broken record: Vaccines are “safe and effective,” they say. But repeating a lie over and over again does not magically make it true. Any such declaration of vaccine safety or effectiveness must be based on actual scientific inquiry, and the real science is utterly lacking on vaccines. Did you know, for example, that MMR and seasonal flu vaccines have never been clinically tested against nonvaccinated individuals?

Did you also know that even though vaccines can cause longterm damage in children, with symptoms appearing months or even years later, they are typically only assessed for side effects for two or three weeks?

What you’ll find in this free downloadable report

Here’s some of what you’ll find in this eye-opening report from the International Medical Council on Vaccination (www.VaccinationCouncil.org)

• A list of the many MDs, PhDs, NDs and other medical professionals who are signing onto this document and taking a stand to critically question the myth that vaccines are proven to be both safe and effective.

• Why vaccines have NEVER been proven safe or effective.

• A list of some of the serious health side effects caused by vaccines.

• Why autism is associated with vaccines.

• The profit motivation behind the pharmaceutical industry’s persistent vaccine push.

• A list of which institutions and organizations profit from your sickness.

• The shocking truth about what’s used to make vaccines ­(aborted fetal tissue, 59 different chemicals, DNA from diseased animals and more).

• An overview of some of the most dangerous vaccine ingredients, including aluminum and formaldehyde.

• The truth about conflicts of interest in the vaccine community and why doctors profit from vaccination policies.

• Why vaccinated children have far worse health outcomes than unvaccinated children (and why the vaccine industry refuses to test vaccines against the long-term health outcomes of unvaccinated children).

• How to opt out of “mandatory” vaccines.

• Important advice for parents about how to protect the health of your children while saying NO to vaccines.

• Online resources for learning more about the dangers of vaccines.

Why this is a must-read report

This report by the International Medical Council on Vaccination (www.VaccinationCouncil.org) is an absolute must-read for parents everywhere.

It describes little-known facts about vaccines, children and immune health that the vaccine manufacturers and government health authorities don’t want circulated. Whether or not you choose to vaccinate yourself or your children, you owe it to yourself to hear both side of the story before making a decision, and this report tells you the side of the story that your doctor probably doesn’t know and your government absolutely does not want you to hear.

That’s because governments underwrite vaccine risk through their government compensation programs. Thus, it is in the interests of governments that vaccines never be shown to cause harm.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Felipe Calderón

February has got off to an awful start for the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. The centers of the country’s second and third biggest cities, Guadalajara and Monterrey, looked like war zones as drug gangs challenged the authorities on 31 January and 1 February. The national employers’ organization, Coparmex, says that the violence is now running at intolerable levels.

Referendum raises real disquiet over direction of Correa’s Revolution

There is nothing Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa likes more than an electoral challenge. It is fair to say, however, that he would not have expected one on the scale he now faces when he drafted a referendum calling for constitutional reforms to the penal code and the judiciary.

The referendum has caused ructions in his left-wing coalition Alianza PAÍS (AP): two cabinet members and four deputies have departed so far. But perhaps more worryingly, estranged allies and founders of his ‘citizens’ revolution’ are taking arms against the referendum, which ­they are portraying as an unabashed power grab. Correa is accusing them of personal betrayal; they are accusing him of betraying the principles of the Revolution. A febrile political atmosphere will prevail over the coming months.

by Gustavo Martínez Contreras

SHENANDOAH, Pa.— The scheduled Jan. 24 sentencing of two local high school football stars following their federal convictions relating to the beating death of a 25 year-old immigrant worker from Mexico, runs a baffling path through the U.S. jurisprudence system and its application of “hate crime” law.

First tried in state court by an all-white Schuykill County jury in 2008, Brandon J. Piekarsky and Derrick M. Donchak were acquitted of racial intimidation charges.

Now both men face up to life in prison for violating the rights of Luis Ramírez Zavala following a different set of charges brought on by the U.S. Justice Department. Two years after the attack, a federal jury in Scranton, Pa., convicted these young Ramírez Zavala’s brutal beating.

They were accused of violating the criminal component of the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it a crime to use a person’s race, national origin or ethnicity as a basis to interfere, with violence or threats of violence, with a person’s right to live where he or she chooses.

The jury also found that Donchak conspired to, and did in fact, obstruct justice.

On the night of July 12, 2008, Piekarsky and Donchak, then 16 and 18 years old, were among a group of six young men who confronted Ramírez Zavala and began screaming racial slurs, “Go back to Mexico” and “Tell your fucking Mexican friends to get the fuck out of Shenandoah.”

HIS BRAIN OOZED OUT

Ramírez Zavala was beaten, kicked and stomped on. An autopsy showed that his skull had a double fracture: one in the back of the head and another on the left side. His brain oozed out and swelled up, causing his basic functions to stop.

He was taken to Geisinger Regional Medical Center, where he died two days later due to his massive head injuries.

In the first trial, the allwhite jury found Piekarsky guilty of one count of simple assault, while Donchak was found guilty of one count of simple assault, three counts of corruption of minors and three counts of furnishing alcohol to minors.

The verdict outraged immigrants’ rights organizations as well as politicians, who pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a separate investigation.

It wasn’t until December 2009 that a fed- eral grand jury indicted both men on a hate crime charge, thus avoiding a finding of double jeopardy — the instance in which a person or group of persons are prosecuted twice for the same crime — that the defense sought to prove until the trial’s end.

In a 14-page opinion, Judge Richard Caputo wrote, “In the present case, the federal prosecution serves divergent interests for the state prosecution, including equal protection rights and the integrity of federal criminal investigations.

This Court is not the proper forum to reverse more than 80 years of Supreme Court precedent permitting subsequent prosecution by separate sovereign without violating the double jeopardy clause.” In opening statements, defense attorneys downplayed race as a factor in Ramírez Zavala’s death.

Both James Swetz and William Fetterhoff, who represented Piekarsky and Donchak, respectively, said the fatal beating was a product of factors other than ethnic hatred. “We’re talking about alcohol, youth and testosterone. Those are the themes in this case, not race, and certainly not federally guaranteed housing rights,” Swetz told the allwhite jury.

But testimony from Colin Walsh, a key witness, showed Donchak felt deep hatred toward Shenandoah’s growing Hispanic community. “Yes, he didn’t like Hispanics; he really didn’t like them,” Walsh, 19, said. “He called them fucking Mexicans, fucking spics.”

He also said that Donchak would listen to racist music, and specifically sing the song “White Man Marches On” while driving around with friends. The song is taken from the sound track for the movie American History X.

In his account of the attack, Walsh, who reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors and is now awaiting sentencing, said that both Donchak and Piekarsky yelled racial slurs at Ramírez Zavala. “Derrick punched him in the face and called him ‘spic’, and Piekarsky yelled racist slurs. He was yelling at him, ‘fucking Mexican’.Later I heard him yell, ‘Tell your fucking Mexican friends to leave Shenandoah or you’ll be fucking lying next to them’ as we were leaving.”

Donchak is also charged with conspiring with some of his friends, their parents and members of the Shenandoah Police Department to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault immediately after the beating.

Witnesses testified that Piekarsky told them not tell anyone he had kicked Ramírez Zavala in the head.

“I asked who kicked him,” witness Benjamin Lawson testified. “Brandon  Piekarsky said, ‘I did, shh!’” The group began to make up the cover-up story they would tell police, Lawson recounted.

Another witness, Brian Scully, told the jury that Piekarsky arrived at the Donchak house with his mom as the teens talked about the fight. “We got to get a story. This is bad,” said Scully. “We thought if we had the same story it would be believable.” He added that Piekarsky cautioned him at least twice not to tell anybody he had kicked the deceased in the head. Former Shenandoah policemen Matthew Nestor, William Moyer and Jason Hayes face charges of conspiring to obstruct justice during the investigation.

The three of them, along with the Shenandoah Police Department, are standing trial this week in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

A federal indictment ­charges them with conspiring to obstruct justice during the investigation into the fatal beating The federal investigation shed light also onto the wrongdoings of the Shenandoah Police Department. Matthew R. Nestor, William Moyer and Jason Hayes, three former policemen of that department, face federal charges for participation in the coverup of the crime. Just after Luis Ramírez’s death, many Latino residents expressed fear of the police. Those who spoke, under anonymity, told stories of abuse and intimidation done unto them or somebody they knew

FEDS INDICT POLICE

Even I, as a journalist, was denied information several times. “Nothing happened here,” then-Lieutenant Moyer told me once.

“We don’t have anything for you here.” As it turns out, they probably had plenty of information from everybody, and were hoping it would go away.

In a federal indictment, Nestor, Moyer and Hayes, who were chief, lieutenant and officer, respectively, along with the Shenandoah police department, are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice during the investigation into the fatal beating. Moyer has also been charged with witness and evidence tampering and lying to the FBI.

If convicted, the defendants face 20 years in prison on each of the obstruction charges and an additional five years in prison for conspiring to obstruct justice. Moyer faces an additionalfive years in prison for making false statements to the FBI.

Piekarsky and Donchak are being held at the Pike County Correctional Facility pending their Jan. 24 sentencing. Both face life in prison. Hispanic Link.

(Gustavo Martínez Contreras is a freelance writer and contributing columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. Email him at pasajero@gmail.com.)