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Colombian gov’t, FARC reach agreement to combat drug trafficking

[Author]by the El Reportero’s wire services[/Author]

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas pledged to sever all ties to drug trafficking and contribute to a definitive solution to the problem of illegal narcotics in the Andean nation once a final peace accord is reached with the government.
The FARC’s commitment was announced as part of an “agreement on illicit drugs” reached on Friday in Havana, the third accord that government and rebel negotiators have hammered out since the peace talks began in 2012.
Earlier, partial agreement was reached on land reform and the guerrillas’s participation in politics, while other issues, including the disarmament of the rebels and reparation for victims of the conflict, remain pending.
The FARC pledged to “contribute effectively and with the utmost determination, in different ways and through practical actions, to a definitive solution to the problem of illegal drugs.”
The guerrillas said that once the decades-long conflict is brought to a close they will end any links they maintained to drug trafficking as a “function of the rebellion.”
Colombian officials and their U.S. patrons say the FARC is deeply involved in the drug trade, while the insurgents insist that they merely impose a “tax” on illicit crops in areas under their control.

Vigilante leader cleared of homicide charges in Mexico
The founder of the self-defense groups that were formed to battle the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel in the western Mexican state of Michoacan has been cleared of accessory to murder charges due to lack of evidence, judicial officials said.
Hipolito Mora, who walked out of the prison where he had been held for just over two months at around 8:30 p.m. Friday, read a message in which he said he was confident that judicial authorities and the Mexican government would solve the crimes for which he was arrested in March.
The vigilante leader also said he would join a newly formed rural defense unit in the town of Buenavista Tomatlan and register all of his weapons. He added that the time he spent behind bars surely “saved my life” consider all the threats he faced from drug-trafficking gangs.
A spokesman for the court in Michoacán that ordered Mora released told Efe that Judge Plácido Torres Pineda upheld his defense team’s appeal against a March 19 decision ordering him to stand trial.
Judge Juan Salvador Alonso Mejía handed down that ruling eight days after Mora was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders of two suspected members of the Los Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel: Rafael Sánchez Moreno and his driver, José Luis Torres Castañeda.
The burned bodies of Sánchez Moreno and Torres Castañeda were found March 8 in Buenavista, a town near La Ruana in the Tierra Caliente region, which straddles Michoacan, Guerrero and Mexico states.
Luis Antonio Torres, leader of one of the self-defense groups that operates in Michoacan and a friend of Sánchez Moreno, accused Mora of being an accessory to the double homicide.

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Current sexualization of children predicted in 1932 novel

[Author]by Kit Daniels Book review
[/Author]

Alarming similarities between current trend to expose kids to sex and Brave New World

The current trend to “sexualize” young children, that is to expose children to sexual issues as early as kindergarten, shares striking similarities to the dystopian novel Brave New World in which children are encouraged to start exploring sex at a young age.
In the latest example of the trend, a couple of YouTube filmmakers produced a video in which they described homosexuality to children as young as five and asked for their opinions on the subject.
The filmmakers defended the video by stating that the “raw opinions of children” offer “incredibly valuable insight on our current society,” but the youngest of these kids likely had no clue about the subject until it was explained by the producers.
In a similar incident, a Kansas father of a 13-year-old girl became infuriated after discovering a poster hanging up at her school which listed several recreational sex acts, such as anal sex for example.
The school’s spokesperson referred to it as “district approved curriculum,” but the father disagreed.
“This has nothing to do with abstinence or sexual reproduction,” he said.
But Chicago public schools even went further than that by requiring mandatory sexual education in kindergarten classes.
As if these incidents weren’t concerning enough already, just compare them to Brave New World, a 1932 novel written by Aldous Huxley which anticipates a future society that is centrally controlled by a powerful government through the use of various techniques such as the sexualization of children.
In the book, the central planners encourage the populace to explore recreational sex starting from early childhood. The intent is to remove romantic relationships by cheapening sex in order to ensure that the citizens have complete allegiance to the state and not with each other through personal connections such as families.
This is further aided by the elimination of natural reproduction in favor of “creating” children in “hatcheries and conditioning centers” so that the World State in the novel can permanently limit the population to two billion people who are conditioned from birth to completely obey the government.
“The society described in Brave New World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to keep their subjects from making trouble,” Huxley wrote in his later essay Brave New World Revisited. “This they achieve by (among other methods) legalizing a degree of sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New Worlders against any form of destructive (or creative) emotional tension.”
“In 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.”
He also added that children are also highly susceptible to propaganda, a fact that really highlights the danger of exposing young kids to sex.
“They are ignorant of the world and its ways, and therefore completely unsuspecting,” he wrote. “Their critical faculties are undeveloped.”
“The youngest of them have not yet reached the age of reason and the older ones lack the experience on which their new-found rationality can effectively work.”
With all that said, it should be no surprise that the current sexualization of children is occurring mainly in the public educational system, which has a built-in bias towards large, powerful government.
Additionally, families in real life are also being frowned upon just like in Brave New World, such as the notable example in which MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry stated that your children are not yours – they belong to the community.
“We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” she said, adding that kids belong “to whole communities” instead.
Now although the current sexualization of children and the attacks on families in our society haven’t quite reached the extremes presented in the novel, the similarities between these current trends and Brave New World are alarming nonetheless, and it’s not entirely far-fetched to believe that our future society will inch even further towards Huxley’s complete predictions. Infowars.com

In another book comment:

The global warming tipping point is near

by Andrew Thomas
American Thinker

Malcolm Gladwell’s great book The Tipping Point presents the case that sudden seismic shifts in society can result from small events, if the right factors are present. Tipping points happen when momentum toward an idea builds and finally crosses a threshold where it is evident that a major cultural change has occurred. The global warming tipping point is coming, but not the one anticipated by climate change “experts.”
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been dominant for the past three decades as absolute fact in the public mind. In the last several years, however, cracks in the fortress of “settled science” have appeared, and public opinion has begun to shift. Increasingly, alarmist predictions have failed to come to fruition.
In 2004, NASA’s chief scientist James Hansen authoritatively announced that there is only a ten-year window to act on AGW (presumably by transferring mass quantities of taxpayer funds to global warmist causes) before climate Armageddon destroys humanity. Well, that window has now shut tight, and AGW is AWOL.
Al Gore, the high priest of AGW theory, has closed all of his Alliance for Climate Protection field offices, and laid off 90 percent of his staff. Contributions have all but dried up since 2008.
Australia’s conservative government has severely curtailed the country’s climate change initiatives and is in the process of repealing its business-killing carbon tax. A group of German scientists predicts dramatic global cooling over the next 90 years toward a new “little ice age.”
Of course, even many “low information” folks have an awareness of the record increase in Arctic sea ice, as well as the current highly-publicized predicament of the cadre of wealthy global warmists stuck in record-high sea ice while on a cruise to the Antarctic to prove the absence of sea ice.
Now the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quietly downgraded their prediction for global warming for the next 30 years in the final draft of their landmark “Fifth Assessment Report.” The effect of this is that they are tacitly admitting that the computer models they have religiously relied-upon for decades as “proof” of AGW theory are dead wrong.
The tipping point is near. I can smell it.

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What César Chávez missed: the diversity of the farm workers movement

[Author]Roundtable conducted by David Bacon[/Author]

The new movie, César Chávez – History is Made One Step at a Time, directed by Diego Luna, tells the story of the Grape Strike of 1965.
This epic 5-year labor battle led to the organization of the United Farm Workers, and made César Chávez a social movement hero. The movie has provoked controversy over its depiction of his role, and the accuracy of the history it recounts of those events.
In this roundtable, labor journalist David Bacon, a former organizer for the UFW and other unions, explores these themes with four guests.

Eliseo Medina was a farm worker when the strike started, and became a noted labor organizer, first in the UFW and later in the Service Employees Union.
Doug Adair was an activist in the 1965 strike, and then worked the rest of his life as a farm laborer in the grapes in the Coachella Valley.
Dawn Mabalon is a professor of history at San Francisco State University, and an authority of the history of Filipinos in California.
Rosalinda Guillen comes from a farm worker family in Washington State, worked as a UFW organizer, and today organizes farm labor in Skagit and Whatcom Counties, north of Seattle, with Community2Community.
David: How did the movie square with your memories of the grape strike as a participant?
Eliseo: It’s a good time for this movie to come out and show not only the challenges immigrants face, but also the fact that they’re willing to struggle and that when they do they can win, regardless of the power structure. It could’ve done a much better job of telling the full story, but it’s impossible to tell 10 years worth of history in 2 hours.

David: The film presents the UFW as a movement mostly of Chicanos and Mexicanos, but it was also a multinational union, including African-Americans, Arab, and even white people. That doesn’t come through as much.

Eliseo: When I was a farm worker, before the strike began, we lived in different worlds — the Latino world, the Filipino world, the African-American world and the Caucasian world. I do wish that that had been more explicit because certainly the contribution that was made by the Filipino workers to the strike and the movement was an incredible part of the success of the union. The fact that we also had Caucasians and African-Americans participating in the strike never even gets brought up.
David: There has been criticism of the movie’s portrayal of Filipino workers. How do you feel about that?
Dawn: Filipinos had been organizing, not just that year, but for decades before. The growers had always divided Mexicans and Filipinos. What was so powerful about that moment in Delano was that those two groups defied this. But the way they came together was downplayed. There was so little context that there’s no understanding that it was these other people, in particular Larry Itliong, who really sparked the strike.

Larry went to Delano in the early 1960s, sent by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, the AFL-CIO union founded in Stockton. He already had decades of labor experience with the Alaskan salmon cannery union. He organized a failed strike of asparagus workers in Stockton in 1948 and a successful strike in 1949. He had more experience than everyone, Dolores Huerta and Cesar included.

Doug: The original spark in Delano was when Filipinos workers began sitting in at the camps. It wasn’t a strike with picket lines, but a sit-in and refusing to go to work. Larry began going around to the camps seeing if he could use the sit-ins to negotiate better wages.

David: The film did show the sit-in in the camps, which surprised me. Not many people know that happened, and it’s a very important part of history. The movie starts with a little section where Cesar is the head of the Community Service Organization (CSO), but doesn’t show him organizing protests about the bracero program, in which growers were able to bring workers from Mexico under very abusive conditions, sending them back at the end of the season. Should the movie have said more about it?

Doug: Workers first went on strike in Coachella in the spring of 1965 because the bracero program was being phased out. With braceros, it was almost inevitable that strikes would lose. When the government said growers had to offer $1.40 an hour if they wanted to hire braceros AWOC demanded the same wage. That was the spark that set off the strike. Actually if it had been up to Cesar, there wouldn’t have been a strike in Delano because he didn’t feel our union was ready. There was no money in the bank, and he wanted to do more organizing. He used to say “we’re not a union, and we’re not gonna start strikes.”

David: The movie stops when the industry-wide grape contract gets signed. Did the contract and the union change life for farmworkers and was it a permanent change?

Doug: When I worked under that first contract our wages and benefits were over double the minimum wage of American workers. We had a health plan that was the envy of many other unions. We could sit down with the growers and negotiate over grievances. We wouldn’t always win, but we could negotiate our working conditions.

The movie did show that workers can join together in spite of appalling conditions and improve their wages and working conditions. That did come through. It is a possible to change history with concerted action, by getting together.
Rosalinda: Today farmworkers can organize because of the example of the farmworkers in the 60s and 70s in California. The movie shows clearly what it looks like to organize and come together. This is one of the legacies of César Chávez, this coming together of different workers with different religions and different political views.

Doug: But I think the movie did show the viciousness of the growers and their local power structure; district attorneys and the cops and thugs on the side of the growers. The whole local structure was against the union and the farmworkers.
Rosalinda: And it’s still like that.

Eliseo: Clearly the union was able to begin lifting workers out of poverty. They had paid holidays, vacations and health insurance. Unfortunately, at the time when we were poised to completely change these workers’ lives we lost focus. As a result, workers today are back where they were before the union. Most are working at minimum wage again. Employers are back to just trying to get the work done in the cheapest way possible, regardless of the impact on workers.

David: At one point the growers say they are going to bring in “illegals” – they use that word, not “undocumented” – by the truckload. Do you think this experience shaped how Cesar saw the question of immigration?

Eliseo: The growers knew very well that divide and conquer was an important strategy, so they were not above using workers to break the strike, whether they were documented or undocumented. And they certainly felt that having a captive work force would make it easier for them. What the union wanted was to make sure that no one was used to break the strike, regardless of their status. The union and the strike was a movement of documented and undocumented people. Some of the strongest and most active people were undocumented. In many cases when workers began to organize, growers would call in the Border Patrol to scare people and arrest and deport them.

DUE TO LACK OF SPACE, THIS ARTICLE WAS CUT. TO SEE THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW, PLEASE VISIT: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16701/what_cesar_chavez_missed

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Latin Dance Fusion with Tika Morgan at Dance Mission Theater

[Author]Compiled by El Reportero’s staff
[/Author]
Tika’s Latin Dance Fusion brings together the music and basic steps of many Brazilian Dances, Salsa Suelta, Reggaetón and more into an accessible, high energy class. Experience the depth, beauty and power of these culturally rich movements founded in the African Diaspora. Class begins with body alignment, isolation’s, and stretching. You will learn choreography as you move by working in half time and through repetition. This class doesn’t stop and is a workout for the body and soul! You will sweat! Open level – Shoes optional.
On Tuesdays 6:30 – 7:45 p.m., May 6 to June 10. Only 6 classes! All Levels
$13/class or $60 for all six (class passes accepted).

Jazz Department at CCSF presents special guest artist, on trumpet from New York: Eddie Allen
City College Of San Francisco Music Department and Concert and Lecture Series present “The Spring Jazz Concert,” featuring the Advanced Jazz Band and The Jazz/Rock Improvisational Workshop. Directed by David Hardiman, Jr., Master of Ceremonies, David Hardiman Sr.
On Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at City College of San Francisco’s Diego Rivera Theater, Ocean Campus, at 50 Phelan Avenue San Francisco, Free!! Open to the public.

Exciting time at the Mexican Museum
Celebrate National Museum Day at The Mexican Museum during its free Family Sunday from noon to 3:30 p.m. After viewing La Cocina: The Culinary Treasures of Rosa Covarrubias, children and adults will paint pottery and plant their own Mexican herbs to take home. This event will take place on Sunday, May 18.
The Mexican Museum is open Wednesday – Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., located at Fort Mason Center, Building D, Marina Boulevard and Buchanan Street, in San Francisco. FREE Admission. The Museum offers a wide variety of programs, including Family Sundays, exhibitions, special events, lectures and public programming throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit: http://www.mexicanmuseum.org or call (415) 202-9700.
The Museum is currently preparing for the completion of its permanent home, which will be built in downtown San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Garden Arts District and is expected to open in 2018.

Benefit dance for El Tecolote
Sway to the hot Latin rhythms of the 10-piece Cesar’s Latin All-Stars in a benefit dance-concert for El Tecolote newspaper on Saturday, May 17, from 9:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the new Cesar’s Latin Palace located at 820-26th Street near Third St., in San Francisco. The evening includes a food sale and raffle. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is $10. Must be 21 years or older. There is plenty of security and free parking. For more information, call Mabel Jiménez at (415) 648-1045.

Visceral – Carlos Mojica and Kamalky Laureano at Paul Mahder Gallery
The Paul Mahder Gallery is pleased to present Visceral, new photorealistic paintings and drawings by two important new artists from the Dominican Republic, now living in Mexico City, Carlos Gomez Mojica and Kamalky Laureano. This exhibit marks the West Coast Premiere and only the second time their work has been seen in the United States.
Visceral, a photorealistic paintings and drawings by artists Carlos Gómez Mojica
and Kamalky Laureano. Opening Public Reception Saturday, May 17, 2014, 6-8 p.m., at 3378 Sacramento Street @ Walnut, San Francisco, California. Admission is free. For more info paul@paulmahdergallery.com or call (415) 474-7707.

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Antonio Banderas on Hispanic artists and their roles in Hollywood

[Author]by the El Reportero’s news services[/Author]

 

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas said here that he is proud to be a part of the generation of Hispanic artists who managed to open the doors of Hollywood and consolidate themselves in the movie mecca.

Banderas, who was in Bogota to present his new ladies’ fragrance, “Her Golden Secret,” recalled at a press conference his early years in movies and gave details about his most recent film project, The 33, about the Chilean miners who were trapped in a collapsed mine for 70 days in 2010.

The 53-year-old actor said that one of the first things he was told when he arrived in the United States was that if he stayed in Hollywood “I was going to be a villain all my life” in terms of the roles that came his way, since “blacks and Hispanics” are (or were) the bad guys in film.

The interesting thing, Banderas added, was that when he starred in the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, the bad guy was blond and “had blue eyes.”

Hispanics who have made a career in movies or in any other professional sphere in the United States “have struggled a lot, have come from countries in conflict, where many difficulties have occurred” with the aim of having their children go to college, Banderas said.

The children of those pioneers “currently are in positions of power (and that) had to be reflected in Hollywood,” he added.

 

Eva Longoria at Tribeca Film

Festival with Her “Food Chains” Documentary

Actress Eva Longoria showed her more committed side at the Tribeca Film Festival as producer of “Food Chains,” a documentary about the abuse farm workers suffer and which, according to her, now means the achievements of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta have been dismantled.

Twenty years after the death of farm workers’ leader Cesar Chavez, who in the 1970s led the fight for Latino laborers’ rights and formed the United Farm Workers union, Longoria asked the New York festival audience what it is that’s making us go backwards.

The film documents the six-day hunger strike that members of the UFW went through at the doors of the powerful Publix supermarket chain to demand a 1-cent pay raise for farm workers for every pound of tomatoes they pick.

The film also reviews the dark history in the fields from the days of plantation workers when the United States was founded to the massive abuse of farm workers by vast supermarket chains to get the lowest, most competitive prices.

The actress, known by most TV viewers for playing Gaby in “Desperate Housewives,” said the treatment of field hands in Florida and California is not, contrary to what people think, a subject related to immigration. It’s something much deeper, she said, it has to do with human rights.

“Food Chains” reveals chilling data about the food industry, in which supermarkets alone generate worldwide revenues of some $4 billion a year – but pay field hands an average of $12,000 a year to gather, in the case of tomato harvesters, about 2 tons of food per day.

 

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Why the people must say no to Globalization

It is necessary to recognize that the globalists, pawned in governing the world under the World Government (New World Order) headed by the U.N., have a major obstacle in the way for their harmful plans: Russia and Syria, and partly, also China and North Korea.

That’s why it is important to stop the advance of Globalism, not supporting its advance towards the destruction of Russia and Syria, since it helps supporting a world balance. It’s better to have three opinions than only one.

If perhaps you think in Globalism, you must compare it with Internationalism. Globalism wants to get rid of the borders and with it the constitutions of every sovereign nation to govern them at its pleasure from a central government, without borders to stop them, and in this way to control the wealth and economy of the world through the International Monetary Fund, which is the Central Bank of the World.

Internationalism trades between sovereign countries that are governed by their own constitutions and laws and with mutual respect among nations.

The globalists do not want independent nations, rather they want dependent nations that cannot hinder their pretensions. At present, they want to turn Ukraine into a country-client and to enslave the country by in-debting her up to the neck – as they have done with their clients of Europe (which are no longer countries), – and nations in the Third World, who will continue to be lent to without limits until they are not able to pay. The globalists will then foreclose on their on them and take their resources, which eventually turn their countrymen into slaves of the World Bank.

And right now, the globalists have almost encircled Russia to destroy or diminish her power, which will allow them to govern the world without obstacles, under a socialistic system assisted by the World Health Organization (entrusted to vaccinate the slaves), and the UNESCO (entrusted to control the education of the slaves with irrelevant teachings and mediocre education, including the supply of funds endowed to the Universities, so that they promote the global courses of study that will help them govern the slaves: International Relations, International Commerce, Global Economy, etc.) and adhere them to the International Court of Justice in the The Hague, which is the one Court that will decide any case that should arise as far as in a small village like Masaya, Nicaragua, on the course of the waters of a river, for example.

They already destroyed the European republics with the European Union, the African countries with the African Union, and the Asian countries with the Asian Union, and the banker-gangsters now bribe the chiefs of the former countries with their famous aid and loans at low interest. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that these unions of countries are governed by officials not elected in elections by the people.

During the administration of Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, he, together with President George W. Bush of the United States, and the Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien, signed the la the North American Union (Unión de Norteamérica). However, this agreement has not materialized, and they have kept it low profile.

And rumors are going around that they now want to create the Central American Union, but we will not allow it. We must denounce it! They already are spreading the idea throughout the whole American continent with those famous free-trade agreements… Wake up, Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans!

For now, those countries are still sovereign nations because they have their own constitutions and Supreme Courts of Justice. However, they could become obsolete if they adhere to the The Hague and sign all the agreements and treaties offered by the U.N., like the small arms control treaty, which will disarm the peoples and in doing so, block their chance to rebel or defend themselves from the enemy – which sometimes is their own government). And this includes the climatic control agenda, which goal is to impose a global tax on all the people in the world for allegedly causing global warming by merely existing as human beings, which essentially places a tax– and a price– on life.

And that’s why the reduction of population is in the agenda via the extermination with vaccines, the pandemics, the water pollution and the air, and the wars – that do not happen by chance.

Ah, I almost forgot: now with Monsanto, the production of food, energy, and exports and imports would be monopolized by a world central government.

Pay attention to the U.N. Agenda 21, because all this agenda is in there, as well as the nationalization of private property. Just watch out why some governments dictate the prices and want to control production in other countries – especially the self-designated Socialists nations. Liberty is in danger, dear reader. Say no to globalization and to the emerging global government. Do not support anything the United Nations mandates.

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Families of immigrants beg Obama to stop deportatiions

[Author]by the El Reportero’s wire services[/Author]

Immigrant mothers on Wednesday visited Washington to deliver more than 1,000 postcards on which they are urging President Barack Obama to use his executive power to halt deportations.

Coinciding with the May 11 celebration of Mother’s Day, immigrant mothers traveled to Washington from Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco to make their request.

United by a common history, emigration to the United States in search of a better life for their family or fleeing from threats in their countries in some cases, now the women are afraid that a family member will be deported, or even themselves, and that they will be separated from their children.

It is a fear that brings tears to the eyes of Monica Ruiz, who arrived in the United States 23 years ago as an undocumented migrant, “with high hopes because my daughters were going to have all that I didn’t have,” as she said at an event at the doors of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation, near the Capitol.

But the daily reality is that “they can detain me and separate me from my daughters,” she said, urging first lady Michelle Obama, as a mother, to intercede for her and other mothers: “Let her heart be moved and let her know the suffering that, for mothers, is separation from their children.”

The mothers were accompanied by members of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, or NALACC, and other supporters of the Power of the Pen campaign.

The activists recalled that Obama said in his State of the Union address that he would use his executive power when Congress did not take action to move forward, and therefore they asked him to use “the power of his pen” to halt deportations given the failure of the House of Representatives to approve immigration reform.

NALACC president Angela Sambrano recalled that in the last six years more than two million people have been deported.

Sambrano emphasized the “irreparable” harm that is done to children by deportations and said that in Mexico there are some 500,000 U.S.-born children who have left this country because their parents have been expelled, while others have remained in the United States with some other relative.

 

Ten members of elite police unit in Tamaulipas arrested for links to cartel

Ten members of an elite police unit in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas were arrested on charges that they had links to a criminal organization and handed over to federal prosecutors, state officials said.

The state police officers are suspected of having ties to a gang that operates in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, the Tamaulipas Public Safety Secretariat said in a statement.

The officers were riding in patrol cars in an area outside their assigned sectors when they were arrested, the secretariat said.

“The initial questioning established that there are indications that the state police officers colluded with a criminal group, so it was decided to arrest them and turn them over to federal prosecutors to determine whether there is enough evidence to make a case,” the secretariat said.

The secretariat said last October that the special police units had been deployed in Tamaulipas’s 43 municipalities to “provide security and peace of mind to residents.”

 

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3 common medical procedures that ruin your long-term health

by Derek Henry

Today’s custom is that if a person has a more serious health issue, conventional medicine is the unquestionable source of answers. Although results often appear to be helpful and “life-saving” on the surface, there often comes serious long-term damage that severely compromises quality of life. In that vein, here are three hospital procedures that can ruin long-term health.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy has been widely used with one or more cytotoxic drugs, with the expectation that this deadly poison will kill off rogue cancer cells and leave the patient with enough healthy cells to regain their health.
Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, observed the effects of chemotherapy on healthy cell tissue and found that it damages the DNA of healthy non-cancerous cells which in turn causes them to produce molecules that in turn produces more cancer cells.
Even worse, they also found that a major side effect to this procedure is that cancer cells grow more virulent than they were before the treatment. As a result these “super” cancer cells no longer respond to chemotherapy, which means it becomes even more deadly.
Take a more natural approach to kill off cancerous cells, without severely damaging the body, and look to eliminate all forms of sugar.

Vaccines
Vaccines have become a heavy debate that has left many people wondering whether vaccinations are the panacea to all the dreaded illnesses we can contract, or simply a poisonous injection that has little effectiveness compared to a healthy and holistic lifestyle.

Recently, shocking statements were noted on the package insert of the “Diphtheria and Tetanus DTaP Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed” (also known as the Tripedia vaccine) that stated that this vaccine had not been evaluated for its “carcinogenic or mutagenic potentials or impairment of fertility.”

It was also noted “adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.”
However, some may believe that vaccine side effects are worth the long-term immunity they provide against infectious disease, as opposed to building up natural immunity. Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, explains the error in that thinking:
“Whereas natural recovery from many infectious diseases usually stimulates lifetime immunity, vaccines only provide temporary protection and most vaccines require ‘booster’ doses to extend vaccine-induced artificial immunity.”
So to maintain that artificial immunity, people are often subject to additional injections full of dangerous preservatives and agents, which puts their long-term health at more risk.
Take a more natural immune building approach by increase immune building foods and herbs and getting plenty of vitamin D, while reducing and eliminating processed foods, refined sugar, alcohol, and glutinous grains.

Antibiotics

Prescription antibiotics are perhaps the most widely used form of medication, and have saved the lives of many with deadly bacterial infections. However, much like chemotherapy, antibiotics do not distinguish between good and bad, and as a result wipes out all bacteria in its path.

With more than 100 trillion good bacteria in the body (10x more than cells) that play a critical role in overall health and well-being, killing them is not an effective answer to maintain good health. In fact, destroying those helpful bacteria will slowly but surely destroy digestive and immune function, which can then result in severe complications like Candida and cancer.
Look into more natural antibiotics like garlic, colloidal silver, oil of oregano, Echinacea, and manuka honey.

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Activists in Easter Ukraine sound alarm on CIA-led death squads

CIA has overturned political movements unacceptable to the political and financial elite in U.S.

[Author]by Kurt Nimmo[/Author]
[url href=”Infowars.com”]
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Soon after the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Pentagon began to rely on CIA-trained Afghan paramilitaries to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Kandahar, Khost, Paktia, Paktika and other provinces. The Counterterrorist Pursuit Team was modeled after U.S. Special Forces. It engaged in a number of activities, including delivering insurgents to the CIA for interrogation. In addition to Afghanistan, the team crossed over into Pakistan to hunt down senior al-Qaeda leaders, according to author Bob Woodward.

The CIA’s Special Operations Group was involved in Afghanistan prior to the invasion and establishing the elite Afghan paramilitary team. “They don’t play by the normal rules because they don’t have to,” Tod Robberson wrote for The Dallas Morning News in October, 2002. “That’s a big reason why the United States increasingly prefers to deploy CIA paramilitary troops whenever it prepares to enter global hot spots such as Afghanistan or Iraq. U.S. military officials and other analysts say the CIA has a long history of sending highly trained commandos to some of the world’s most dangerous places, sometimes well in advance of conventional fighting forces but often right alongside them.”

“At the end of the day, the most important aspect of these operations is that no one knows about them,” Charles Heyman, editor of London-based Jane’s World Armies, told the newspaper.
CIA in Ukraine Despite this rule it is no secret both the CIA and the FBI are working with the February junta in Kyiv. The German tabloid Bild reported last Sunday the American agencies “are advising the interim Kiev government on how to stifle the growing unrest in the country,” according to The Moscow Times.
Prior to this, in mid-April, it was discovered CIA director Brennan had visited the capitol of Ukraine. Speculation flew fast and furious, from Forbes speculating Brennan’s trip was about cyberwarfare to The Daily Beast suggesting the visit concerned intelligence-sharing.

Considering the overall objective in Ukraine, such speculation misses the mark. If the Kyiv regime is going to prevent secession and mutiny within the important industrial and agricultural oblasts of the country, it will use a heavy and brutal hand, one specializing in covert warfare, murder, and terrorism. The CIA was designed specifically to conduct unconventional war behind the scenes and not play by the rules.

“A source close to Ukraine’s security agencies has told the RIA Novosti news agency that Brennan came to Kiev last Saturday and met with Ukraine’s security chiefs before the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said it was launching a special operation against those pressing for federalization in the east of Ukraine,” The Voice of Russia reported on April 14.
The CIA boasts a long and sordid record in stifling political movements, often with violence, those unacceptable to the political elite in the United States.
“Secret CIA operations constitute the usually unseen efforts to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority governments, always with the hope that overt military intervention … will not be necessary. The more successful CIA operations are, the more remote overt intervention becomes, and the more remote become reforms,” writes former CIA case officer Philip Agee.
Ukrainian fascists instrumental during Cold War
Widely unknown and never mentioned by the establishment media is the fact the CIA has long shared a relationship with the ultra-nationalist and fascist faction now ruling Ukraine. The United States established important links with Ukrainian emigre groups beginning in 1945 at the outset of the Cold War began.

The Strategic Service Unit (SSU), the successor to the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, during the Second World War, and the precursor to the CIA, learned ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine were resisting Soviet occupation following the war. The SSU cooperated with a number of Ukrainian groups opposed to the Soviets, including those who collaborated with the Nazis during the war and harbored deep hatred toward Jews, Poles and Russians.

By 1949 the CIA use of Ukrainians received official sanction in Washington. Project CARTEL was initiated to support resistance within the Soviet Union. By 1950 the U.S. had entered into discussions with the British on further supporting the ultra-nationalist resistance to Soviet occupation.

The CIA “maintained an operational relationship with the Ukrainians that provided to be not only its first, but also among its most resilient projects with anti-Communist emigre groups,” writes Kevin C. Ruffner in a declassified CIA document. “With Agency funding, the Ukrainians established a research institute in New York and published a number of anti-Soviet publications… From this base in the United States, the Ukrainians continued their struggle against Soviet oppression until the collapse of the USSR.” CIA collaboration with emigre Ukrainians continued after the fall of the Soviet Union, most successfully during the 2004 Orange Revolution, and included such notables as American-born Kateryna Yushchenko, the wife of Viktor Yushchenko, who was hoisted to power after the western-engineered revolution.

“Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidential elections is firmly backed by the Washington Consensus,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2004. “He is not only supported by the IMF and the international financial community, he also has the endorsement of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House and the Open Society Institute.” NED is, for all practical purposes, the bastard child of the CIA. “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly,” NED president Carl Gershman told The New York Times in 1986, three years after the subversive organization was established. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.”“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” added Allen Weinstein, who drafted legislation creating NED, a few years later.

While NED works over the board with NGOs and “democracy” groups in foreign countries to overthrow governments targeted by the financial and political elite, the CIA deals in the dirty business of violence against targets when the ballot box fails or a counter revolution begins.

It would be naive to assume the CIA is not currently working hand-in-hand with its Cold War partners, the neo-Nazi and fascist ultra-nationalists who are presently directing Ukraine’s security apparatus against opposition in the eastern and southern part of the country. This effort, as Brennan’s visit revealed, is of upmost importance following the failure of the Ukrainian military to impose junta rule in rebellious areas.

Punitive action against resistance by CIA and Right Sector Iskra-news.info, a Russian language site, believes the Natsgvardii, the Ukrainian National Guard, is working closely with Right Sector on a “punitive action” against activists in the east who plan a referendum on autonomy this Sunday.

“We understand that people are highly motivated. Because they have been three months in the Maidan. They are all volunteers. They agreed they want to defend Ukraine. They will be given the opportunity to show themselves,” Deputy Interior Minister Nikolay Velickovic said about new members of the National Guard in April.

“Kiev is not only faced with the stubborn resistance of the militia, but also to the unwillingness of the army to conduct large-scale operations. Soldiers do not have enough uniforms and supplies, vehicles or fuel,” a report posted on the site from eastern Ukraine states. “Therefore, to a large extent, the government is counting on the newly created Natsgvardii and the militant Right Sector.” The National Guard and Right Sector are “involved with foreign mercenaries.” These allegedly include the American firm Greystone (formerly Black Water) and “30 foreign military sabotage groups of between four to six people each from Germany, Poland, the United States and Georgia.”

Another Russian language website, 57.mid, carries a report from Ukraine claiming the CIA has teamed up with Right Sector to “maximize the number of casualties among the civilian population in order to outshine the massacre of May 2 [the House of Trade Unions fire that killed at least 46 people]” and terrorize the pro-Russian population of the Odessa, Mykolayiv and Kherson regions.
If these reports are indeed accurate, there may be a wave of terror and bloody reprisal in the lead-up to the referendum vote. Fascist gangs, steeped in ethnic hatred and a distorted nationalistic mythos, paired with neoliberal imperatives directed with ruthless precision by the CIA, will result in a new crisis, possibly one that will ultimately prod a reluctant Russia to intervene.
“When India was neoliberalized, far-right thugs backed by and even steered by local police, roamed the streets at night targeting the homes of various leftists such as labor leaders, writers and political opposition and dissidents,” writes Scott Creighton. “Countless people were dragged from their homes and beaten to death by the mobs in front of their wives and children while the law stood by and did nothing. This was done to ensure the stability of the new neoliberal system for years to come.”

The CIA cut its teeth on this sort of murderous behavior in Indonesia where it methodically compiled exhaustive lists of enemies, a tally ultimately resulting in the death of an estimated 250,000 people by the Suharto regime.

“For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials,” the Spartanburg, South Carolina Herald-Journal reported on May 19, 1990.

A similar pattern appears to be unfolding in eastern Ukraine. “So going back to Friday’s slaughter of dissidents and labor leaders in Odessa. Sound familiar?” Creighton asks, comparing the CIA’s behavior in Indonesia to that now forming in Ukraine.

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Hunger on the border – Latino elders struggle to eat in South Texas

[Author]Yolanda González[/Author]

DALLAS, Texas–For Guadalupe and Socorro Lechuga, getting enough to eat every day is the biggest challenge they face in their old age. “We’re usually hungry because it’s hard to get enough to eat, except when someone gives us some vegetables,” said the married couple, who are 76 and 62 years old.

Residents of one of the settlements called colonias along the southern border of Texas, the elderly couple, originally from Mexico, say they can only spend $10 to $15 per week to supply a minimum pantry of beans, sugar and coffee.

Barely enough Social Security Guadalupe receives a monthly paycheck of $700 from Social Security. Even if he could find work at his advanced age, he is confined to a wheelchair stemming from an injury he received from a fall, he said. Socorro doesn’t work and takes care of him.

“That money is barely enough to pay the rent for the land where we live, the electricity, water bills and the truck we use, so the remaining money is used to buy some food,” the couple explained. They live in a colonia, an unincorporated community along the border, called Cardenales Delta, in the outskirts of Mission, Texas.

Sometimes they eat potatoes, packaged instant soups, eggs and bread that are included in the food given away by local groups, as well as vegetables donated by nearby farmers, said Guadalupe, who emigrated from Zacatecas, Mexico decades ago.

“My monthly check isn’t enough for food since it doesn’t increase when food prices go up,” he noted. “We aren’t getting by with what we make, but we try,” he said.
The Lechugas’ case is not unique. The number of Hispanic elders who suffer from hunger and food insecurity is a reality in Southern Texas, according to research by Joseph Sharkey, PhD, and colleagues at the Texas A&M Health Science Center of the University of Texas A&M.

Choosing Between Medicine and Food “In the homes of elders of Mexican origin, there are limited financial resources that often make people have to choose between paying for services or medicine and other expenses such as food,” said Sharkey.
The report analyzes the results of a field study among 95 elderly participants in 14 groups living in four border areas of South Texas. Participants were interviewed in Spanish about the conditions of their food supply by promotoras de salud, or community social workers.

Among the research findings are that elders of Mexican origin in that region deal with crucial challenges that prevent them from getting food. Key barriers to nutrition are advanced age for employment, language barriers since many are monolingual, physical disabilities, lack of education and immigration status.

Despite this, “The elders are strong and face their reality of social disparity as a situation that is better than living in Mexico in most cases,” said Sharkey, who stressed that their poverty level in South Texas is similar to that of Mexican immigrants elsewhere in the United States, such as in Georgia and New York.

The Texas A&M study found that 91.6 percent of elders interviewed were born in Mexico, 55.8 percent are married and 63.2 percent make less than $700 per month. A little over half said they are on food stamps, over one-third resort to food banks or seek support from churches, and one-fourth get free meals provided to seniors.

“Most of the elderly respondents come from the countryside, and many used to plant their vegetables and raise livestock as a food source, in addition to collecting wild fruit or other food in their home country. Now they can’t do that here,” Sharkey added.

Food insecurity remains high 

Sharkey noted that some of the colonias along the southern border of Texas, have implemented community gardening programs using raised beds on the otherwise arid soil, to grow vegetables the residents can share.

Some local efforts to improve the food supply and prevent hunger among elders include education about managing and acquiring food, such as instructions on proper refrigeration and information about buying economical and nutritious food, Sharkey said.

Sharkey cited another recent survey of 140 elderly women, which found that two out of three experience hunger in the colonias on the Texas border.

Texas has the second-highest rate of food insecurity in the United States and is home to 9 million households at risk of hunger, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
What’s more, Texas has the two counties with the most extreme poverty level nationwide, Cameron and Hidalgo, both on the Texas-Mexico border. More than four of 10 residents there, most of them Hispanic, live in poverty, according to research by the University of Texas at Austin.

The study found that more than half of impovertished elders in those counties are Hispanic and that most impoverished communities along the Texas-Mexico border were concentrated in the colonias.
The National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) has pointed out that many elders in the United States suffer from hunger and food insufficiency. According to that organization’s president Yanira Cruz, “Many old people go to bed on an empty stomach.”

The poverty level among Hispanic seniors in the United States is 17.9 percent, according to a recent report by NHCOA. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 70 percent of Latino seniors are “economically vulnerable,” while 30 percent are so impoverished they face hunger or food insufficiency.

Yolanda González Gómez wrote this story for HuffPost Voces with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, a project of the Gerontological Society of America and New America Media.

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