On Feb. 20 – amidst a sixth fatality and continued violence in the capital Caracas and the heavily militarised Western cities of San Cristobal and Mérida – President Nicolás Maduro announced the creation of ‘popular anti-coup commands’ under supervision of the ‘national anti-coup command’ led by the hard-line national assembly president Diosdado Cabello. (LatinNews Daily Report)

Venezuelan military extends equivocal support to Maduro

The most headline-grabbing development in Venezuela that week was the decision by opposition leader Leopoldo López on 18 February to hand himself over to the national guard to face charges of fomenting the unrest which led to three deaths six days earlier. Given the opposition’s limited capacity to influence events in Venezuela, however, the most significant development this week was the announcement by the Bolivarian armed forces (FANB) that it would “never accept a government which does not emerge through constitutional means”.

Opposing a coup is not the same as emphatic support for President Nicolás Maduro though and this pointedly leaves open the possibility of the FANB being prepared to accept an internal move to force him out. There are signs that Maduro’s authority is being challenged. He was compelled to dismiss the head of the Bolivarian national intelligence agency (Sebin) this week after his orders were disobeyed. (LatinNews Daily Report)

Experts discover building from 2,200 B.C. in Ecuador

Archaeologists discovered a building from around 2,200 B.C. in an archaeological and ecological park in the Ecuadorian capital at the foot of Pichincha Volcano, sources at the excavations told Efe.

“It is the most ancient archaeological find in Rumbipapa Park and in the city of Quito,” park supervisor Bernarda Icaza told Efe, adding that no identification or description has been made of the culture that lived in the area during the Formative Period when the building was constructed. Icaza noted that the find has “enormous” historical importance, because “it opens doors to further archaeological, historical and heritage research.”

The excavation was started two years ago by archaeologist Angelo Constantine. After digging down three meters, the flooring of a small dwelling was found. Park guide Danny Villacis, who worked on the dig, told Efe that carbon dating was used to determine the age of the site, where traces of human feces and urine were found.

Also found were scraps of human and animal bones from another period, presumably from a time after Pichincha Volcano erupted. Specifically, next to the building were also found traces of volcanic lava. “What destroyed this village was the eruption of Guagua Pichincha, and later the eruptions of Pululahua finished it off for good,” Villacis said. He said the discovery is singularly important because it shows “we are practically in our infancy” when it comes to studying historical subjects, and there is “still a lot of research to be done,” since many people refer to the Incas as their ancestors despite the fact that “thousands of years ago” there were already other people living here.

Bolivia Preparing to Take First Steps Toward Nuke Plant

Bolivia is preparing to take the first steps this year to develop an atomic program and become a producer of electricity using nuclear power, a Bolivian Nuclear Science and Technology Institute, or IBTEN, official said.

“Bolivia has very long-term plans to build a nuclear plant to generate electricity,” IBTEN adviser Hernan Vera told Efe at the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, headquarters in Austria’s capital.

The financial challenges posed by the development of a nuclear industry for Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in South America, will be “very great,” Vera said.

Bolivia’s nuclear efforts have the full support of the government, the IBTEN official said.

President Evo Morales said on Jan. 22 that the development of a nuclear energy industry was a “strategic priority” for Bolivia.

Why “legal” pot may turn out to be bad news?

March 8, 2014

by Pric Peters
Analysis

Legalizing pot may turn out to be a not very good idea. Not because the state (or anyone) has the right to tell a person what they may or may not ingest, freely buy or sell but because of the excuse it will give the police state to become even more authoritarian than it already is.

And yes, such a thing is possible.

Over the course of the last couple of weeks in at least two states (California and Pennsylvania) motorists have been stopped at random and “asked” to submit to swab-testing in order to ascertain whether they’ve been using “drugs” (that is, other than the drug alcohol).

Some have been “voluntary” – but expect them soon to become mandatory.

The LAPD, for one, will be forcing drivers at random “safety” checkpoints to submit to having their mouths swabbed for evidence of pot usage (and so on) since conventional

Breathalyzers can only detect alcohol.

The authoritarians are using the legalization movement’s successes to argue for widespread, routine use of swabbing-at-gunpoint, arguing that people will be more likely to smoke and drive (and so on) as a way to get around the Alky Nazis.

“There’s a growing recognition that driving under the influence of drugs is something we need to be clamping down on more effectively . . . (t)raditionally, our office has focused on drunken driving cases … we’re expanding drug collection and aggressively enforcing all impaired-driving laws,” says LA City Attorney Mike Feuer.

Consider it blowback – the lashing back at us Mundanes over the minor successes the decriminalization movement has had partially repealing the imbecilic (and evil) “war” on some “drugs.”

A little freedom gained here – more freedoms surrendered there.

One of the farcical aspects of this business not yet commented upon – so far as I have been able to determine – is that pot (to say nothing of other “drugs”) affects the body quite differently than the drug alcohol. Time sense may be altered, but physical coordination may not be affected. It is a very debatable question – in terms of hard facts – whether a person is “impaired” after having smoked a quantity of pot vs. a quantity of alcohol. There are – as yet – no objective standards defining impairment. Merely to test “positive” is sufficient insofar as the law is concerned. This seems unfair on the face of it. But then, it is equally unfair to define a person as “drunk” according to a generalized and arbitrary BAC threshold, even in cases where the person’s driving cannot be faulted.
Much more unfair, though – and also not yet remarked upon – is the fact that while alcohol in the bloodstream dissipates within hours of drinking (and no trace will remain after 12 hours or so) the physical evidence of smoking pot (and probably partaking of other “drugs” as well) can remain in the body for weeks after imbibing. A person who tests positive for pot, in other words, is by no means “stoned” at the time of testing. Yet he may be thrown in prison and his vehicle taken away from him regardless.

Minimally, these tests are outrageous on that account alone.

People who’ve given no indication they’re “impaired” or “high” forced to submit to testing of their bodily fluids and tissues – and then presumed “impaired” or “high” if the tests detect the presence of residual compounds in their system.

These tests are abusive in another way, too.

Swab testing is also DNA testing. A way to collect biological fingerprints of entire populations. Remember: These tests are performed generally, without any individualized suspicion or specific probable cause. Everyone who has the bad luck to roll up on a “safety” checkpoint is required to Submit and Obey.

Is it really going too far to imagine – in this day and age, given what is now happening routinely in this country, including forced anal/vaginal probing by the side of the road – that this power will not be abused? That our DNA will not be collected – and (like everything else) kept somewhere for eventual (inevitable) use against us?

Keep in mind the fact – not “conspiracy theory” – that the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that any person merely taken into custody – that is, prevented from leaving by being forcibly detained, but not convicted of having committed any crime – can be forced to submit to a DNA test (see here).

“DNA identification of arrestees is a reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, representing the court’s majority decision.

Ah yes, “reasonable.”

Just like the “reasonable” random, bereft of any specific reason to suspect impairment (or anything else fishy) checkpoints that now litter the landscape of the former home of the free but increasingly land of the cowed.

Back in January of 2012, Dear Leader Obama signed into law the (get hold of your gag reflex) Katie Sephich Enhanced DNA Collection Act, which provides states with oodles of federal taxpayer-looted “funds” to facilitate DNA collection by your local Officers-Not-So-Friendly.

If you think those funds will not be used – and the latest power conferred not abused – then perhaps you will be interested in purchasing a bridge I own in Brooklyn. I can make you a very good deal, I swear.

Will Americans ever reach their breaking point?

Or are they already broken?

Throw it in the Woods?

Harvard research links fluoridated water to ADHD, mental disorders

March 8, 2014

by Ethan A. Huff

A leading cause of ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) and autism in children could be the hidden chemicals lurking in the foods we eat, the water we drink and the products we consume, says a new study recently published in The Lancet. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) found that, among other things, the fluoride chemicals added to many public water systems in North America directly contribute to both mental and behavioral disorders in children.

Building upon earlier research published in 2006 that dubbed fluoride as a “developmental neurotoxicant,” the new review included a meta-analysis of 27 additional studies on fluoride, most of which were from China, that linked the chemical to lowered IQ in children. After thorough analysis, it was determined that fluoride obstructs proper brain development and can lead to autism spectrum disorders, dyslexia, ADHD and other health conditions, a “silent epidemic” that many mainstream health authorities continue to ignore.

According to the two main researchers involved in the study, Philippe Grandjean from HSPH and Philip Landrigan from ISMMS, incidences of chemicalrelated neurodevelopmental disorders have doubled over the past seven years from six to 12. The reason for this is that an increasing number of mostly untested chemicals are being approved for use without the public being told where and in what quantities such chemicals are being used.

“[S]ince 2006, the number of chemicals known to damage the human brain more generally, but that are not regulated to protect children’s health, had increased from 202 to 214,” writes Julia Medew for The Sydney Morning Herald.

“The pair said this could be the tip of the iceberg because the vast majority of the more than 80,000 industrial chemicals widely used in the United States have never been tested for their toxic effects on the developing foetus or child.”

Fluoride must be immediately removed from public water supplies for child safety

While pesticides dominated the duo’s list as the most pervasive and damaging chemicals whose presence the public is largely unaware of, fluoride, which is intentionally added to public water supplies as a supposed protectant against tooth decay, is also highly problematic. It is also largely ignored by public health authorities as a possible factor in childhood development problems, even though the science is clear about its dangers. Like lead, certain industrial solvents and crop chemicals, fluoride is known to accumulate in the human bloodstream, where it eventually deposits into bones and other bodily tissues. In pregnant women, this also includes passing through the bloodstream into the placenta, where it then accumulates in the bones and brain tissue of developing babies. The effects of this are, of course, perpetually damaging, and something that regulatory authorities need to take more seriously.

“The problem is international in scope, and the solution must therefore also be international,” stated Grandjean in a press release, calling for improved regulatory standards for common chemicals. “We have the methods in place to test industrial chemicals for harmful effects on children’s brain development — now is the time to make that testing mandatory.”

To learn more about the dangers of fluoride and the science behind why it is harmful and anything but beneficial for teeth, be sure to visit the Fluoride Action Network’s website. You can also check out the abstract of the new study, entitled “Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity,” here: http://www.thelancet.com.

What you wanted to know about the New World Order

March 8, 2014

by Marvin Ramirez

Marvin Ramirez

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Dear readers of El Reportero, I want share with you the following article, published by a website called, Spoon-Fed Truth, which contains just what I was looking for, information that would define in more detail what the meaning of The New World Order was. Many of you have heard it so many times by the Bushes, and even Obama. Well, I hope you will enjoy it and come up with your conclusions. Remember, this type of information – labeled as Conspiracy Theory, is never covered in the mainstream media, as they are believed to serve the agenda of The New World Order. El Reportero is reproducing it as it was written by its original author/s. This is Part 1 of a series of two.

— “In the New Order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.” Antonio Gramsci, Italian Socialist politician.

“We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” (February 17, 1950, as he testified before the US Senate).

The term New World Order (NWO) has been used by numerous politicians through the ages, and is a generic term used to refer to a worldwide conspiracy being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group of genetically-related individuals (at least at the highest echelons) which include many of the world’s wealthiest people, top political leaders, and corporate elite, as well as members of the so-called Black Nobility of Europe (dominated by the British Crown) whose goal is to create a One World (fascist) Government, stripped of nationalistic and regional boundaries, that is obedient to their agenda.

Using various organizations and compartments to make up their machine, they rule the world covertly. The elite are the unofficial unelected government that is really ruling our world, they are the CEO’s of the establishment. They have created various branches of their unofficial government, or rather “capitals”. There is the Military capital, in Washington D.C, the Vatican in Rome, which is the spiritual capital, and London, England as the financial Capital. All three of these are independent. They have their own laws, and own constitutions. Using the brute force of war, the guise of spirituality known as religion, the power of money they have been manipulating the world at their will. Behind it all are forces working collectively to unite the world underneath a One World Government with them ruling at the top. The common term used to describe this One World Gov1ernment plan, even used by the elite themselves, is the term “New World Order”.

The New World Order is already nearly complete with the United Nations increasingly assuming the role of world government; the world court already exists in the Netherlands; NATO is in place to expand into the world army; World Bank/IMF are centralizing banking; and Union currencies like the Euro and the coming Amero are consolidating world currency. The European Union has centralized Europe, The North American Union (SPP) is now underway, and so is the Asian Union (APEC). The end result and stated mission is global government under the unelected communist-based United Nations. They want to have one all-powerful world King/President with a world army at his disposal. They want a top-down system of global governance that dictates world law from a centralized body and complete interdependence of all nations, economically, politically, and militarily.

“The supra-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” — David Rockefeller.

They control society from the inside out, and top to bottom. The elite perform manipulating maneuvers and have been “legally” destroying America and other countries all over the world for centuries. They have taken over education, the media, they have rewritten history, The manipulating maneuvers are performed by their minions, often members of secret societies, or fraternities such as The Order of Skull and Bones (hereafter called The Order). Collectively they have focused on specifically changing society with an eye towards the globalist goal of a One World Order. In order to drastically alter civilization, members of The Order infiltrate society’s institutions and use their influence, backed by the vast wealth of the international bankers, to gain absolute control.

The societal elements as defined by Antony C. Sutton in An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones:

· Education – how the population of the future will be have.

· Money – the means of holding wealth and exchanging goods.

· Law – the authority to enforce the will of the state, a world law and a world court is needed for a world state. · Politics – the direction of the state.

· Economy– the creation of wealth.

· History – what people believe happened in the past.

·Psychology– the means of controlling how people think.

· Philanthropy – so that the people think well of the controllers.

· Medicine – the power over health, life and death.

· Religion – people’s spiritual beliefs, the spur to action for many.

·Media – what people know and learn about current events.

· Continuity – the power to appoint who follows in your footsteps.

“The nations of the world are increasingly recognizing the authority of international law. We now have the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and the World Court just to name a few.

We have a World Court to adjudicate the international laws of the emerging world government.”– Irvin Baxter.

The war on men: 9 ways masculinity is under attack

March 8, 2014

by Paul Joseph Watson

Men are facing a full frontal assault on their rights, health and culture like never before. The war on masculinity has never been so brutal – but it’s not a war being waged by women. The attack is coming directly from the top, as the establishment desperately attempts to emasculate and disempower men in order to force women to be more dependent on the state, thereby enabling more power to be centralized and aiding the growth of big government.

Here are ten ways in which the state has declared war on men and masculinity;

1) Falling Fertility

Sperm counts amongst men have significantly decreased over the last half century and particularly over the last 25 years. In some European countries, sperm counts have dropped by as much as a third since 1989. Part of the fall can be explained by exposure to pesticides, endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol A, and the many other artificial horrors that increasingly pervade our water and food supply. Many have made the connection between falling sperm counts and the open calls by innumerable elitists to drastically reduce world population by as much as 95 percent. Research shows that underpopulation, not overpopulation, will be the major demographic crisis of the 21st century as a result of humans failing to achieve the replacement rate of 2.1 children.

2) Chemical Warfare “Feminizing” Boys

Exposure to phthalates, which are found in many plastics, is “feminizing” boys by blocking normal male testosterone and causing genital abnormalities, according to scientists. “Boys exposed to high levels of these in the womb were less likely than other boys to play with cars, trains and guns or engage in “rougher” games like playfighting,” according to a BBC News report. According to Elizabeth Salter-Green, director of the chemicals campaign group CHEM Trust, phthalates are a true “gender-bender” because they lead to a reduction in “male behavior”.

3) Degradation of Positive Masculine Role Models

Whereas 50 years ago, advertising, Hollywood and television was filled with examples of positive masculine role models that young men could look up to, today’s entertainment industry routinely portrays men as clueless and bumbling oafs at best (think Homer Simpson, Everybody Loves Raymond, Married With Children) or at worst as aggressive sexual predators. Since advertising is primarily aimed at women, men in commercials are also now routinely depicted as either being emasculated losers or stupefied morons. Young men consuming this content grow up thinking that it is acceptable and even encouraged to aspire to these character traits. In doing so, they are robbed of their natural masculinity and find it extremely difficult to attract well-rounded women, who are rightly disgusted by such behavior.

4) Metrosexual Malaise

Second wave feminism was a creation of the establishment itself and at its core has little whatsoever to do with genuine concern about women’s rights. Radical feminism deliberately confuses gender roles and makes young men apprehensive about exercising their masculinity for fear of being seen as overbearing or aggressive towards women. This has contributed to an entire generation of “metrosexual” men who are promiscuous, unwilling to commit to a relationship and unable to fulfil a women’s basic needs for healthy companionship, destabilizing society and making it more difficult for women to find suitable long term partners with whom to have children.

5) The ‘Men are Paid More’ Myth

The establishment promulgates the myth that men are paid more than women because of discrimination, feeding into feminist doctrines about patriarchal systems oppressing women in the workplace. In reality, the “wage gap” of around 19 per cent between the two sexes in the United States is explained by a number of reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination, including the fact that men work more hours and men seek less desirable jobs that pay higher. As a result, men account for 93% of workplace deaths despite being only 54% of the workforce. 94% of workplace suicides every year are also men. The establishment buries these shockingly high male workplace fatality figures because they completely contradict the myth that the jobs market discriminates against women.

6) The “Privilege” Trap

Statists, collectivists and their mouthpieces in the media and the establishment claim that western men (in particular white men) cannot express a valid opinion on any issue related in any way to a “minority” (such as feminism or immigration) because they have “privilege.

7) The Legal System Discriminates Against Men

In both divorce and child custody proceedings, it is widely acknowledged that courts heavily favor women and discriminate against men. Men are routinely hit with onerous alimony payments even if women are capable of working and earning a good paycheck. Men only receive custody of their children in around 10 per cent of divorce cases in the United States. The ironic thing about this system is that it has primarily been instituted by other men, emphasizing again how the war on men is being waged not by women, but by the primarily male-dominated establishment itself.

8) Masculinity as a Dirty Word

Dissident feminist Camille Paglia recently wrote a Wall Street Journal piece in which she warned, “What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide.” Paglia was referring to how the emancipation of masculine virtues by the establishment threatens to create massive destabilization in society due to less and less men being able to fill traditionally “masculine” roles in the jobs market. Paglia points to schools cutting recess, the effort to deny the biological distinctions between men and women, and the left’s characterizaThe college girls, forced to stay in the house, decide to do a report on the psychological processes they suffer throughout that day.

“It’s a realistic film that could really have happened. Youths use their mobile phones to make videos of themselves at a party or when they’re engaged in some activity, but these girls are filming each other during an entire day,” Carcamo, who took part in the production of “Gloria,” a prizewinning movie at the Berlin Intertion of controversial opinions as “hate speech” as examples of how masculinity is being deliberately eroded. “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now,” warns Paglia, adding that young men have, “no models of manhood.”

9) Domestic Abuse Against Men

Whereas women have numerous safety nets to turn to if they become victims of domestic abuse, men have virtually none, despite the fact that domestic abuse against men is a huge and growing problem. In the UK for example, 44 per cent of domestic abuse victims are male, while more married men suffer abuse at the hands of their spouse than married women. While domestic abuse against women is constantly highlighted by the mass media, domestic abuse against men is a complete non-issue.

Conclusion

A totalitarian society can only survive if the male population has been gelded, emasculated and disenfranchised. With this natural bulwark against tyranny removed, the elite can centralize power and pursue collectivist tyranny unopposed. This is why men and masculinity are under assault on every level – and why both men and women should join forces to fight back against this common enemy.

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.7.

FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet. (Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News).

Spanish production team in Hollywood campaigning for Oscar

March 8, 2014

by the El Reportero’s news services

09 La Película

The team behind Spain’s “Aquel no era yo” (“That Wasn’t Me”) were at a reception on the roof of the Andaz West Hollywood Hotel as part of their campaign for the Oscar in the category of Best Short Film, Live Action.

Director Esteban Crespo, star Gustavo Salmeron and members of the crew screened the film for around 100 invited guests, including a substantial contingent from Southern California’s Spanish expat community.

The event, organized by the Madrid regional government and the Spanish Tourist Office in Los Angeles, showcased both Crespo’s film and the attractions of Spain’s capital as a vacation destination.

“I’m enjoying the experience,” the filmmaker told Efe as he gazed down on the city.

Since arriving here at the beginning of the month, Crespo and his colleagues have been taking every opportunity to get “Aquel no era yo” in front of the Academy voters before the March 2 Oscar gala.

“I came with the intention to do everything we could to win that Oscar and we are calm in the knowledge that we have done everything,” he said. “If we don’t win it’s because there is another film that’s better, or because it just works out that way.”

Crespo sees The Voorman Problem, featuring Hobbit star Martin Freeman, as the main rival to his film.

“If you have an actor of that level, your campaign is at another level than ours,” the Spaniard acknowledged.

“I am very conscious of how the Academy works. The best films don’t win,” Crespo said. “For me, in fact, I love watching the ceremony, (but) the film I want never wins.”

Chilean producer unveils first film shot entirely on mobile phones

The first Chilean film shot with mobile phones – “09 La Pelicula” – is a suspense movie produced by Martin Carcamo and filmed with the telephones of its leading characters.

“Three cell phones are filming at the same time during the movie,” Carcamo said in an interview with Efe.

Carcamo, a television host, is making his debut as a screenwriter and executive producer with this creation.

The film, hyperrealistic in style, tells the story from the subjective points of view of Carolina, played by actress Juanita Ringeling, Andrea (Isidora Cabezon) and Florencia (Catalina González).

“It’s a different kind of story, a little dirty in style and was filmed by the actresses themselves,” Carcamo said.

The plot follows the experiences of three journalism students who shut themselves up in a house to work on a university project, when suddenly police warn them that just a few kilometers (miles) away, a couple has been murdered.

The college girls, forced to stay in the house, decide to do a report on the psychological processes they suffer throughout that day.

“09 La Pelicula,” the first work by director Javier Aguirrezabal, will screen in Chilean theaters starting March 13.

Its creators foresee the movie doing the rounds of international film festivals in the near future.

Unusual Standards music concert

March 8, 2014

Compiled by the El Reportero staff

7 boxes film

An unforgettable, outside the box concert of funky Afro-Caribbean tinged jazz “standards” with more unusual turns and surprises than a roller coaster, as we deconstruct the standard and reconstruct the familiar.

This world-class team of supreme vocalists are among the most adventurous anywhere.

Featuring The John Santos Sextet: Melecio Magdaluyo, Dr. John Calloway, Saul Sierra Marco Diaz, David Flores. With special guests: Faye Carol, Kenny Washington, Kellye Gray and Destani Wolf.

On Sunday, March 2, 2014, at 4 p.m., at the gorgeous new SFJAZZ Center at 201 Franklin at Fell St., San Francisco. http://www.sfjazz.org. 866-920-5299.

Get on the bus to Sacramento! Defend Community Colleges!

The Save CCSF Coalition is organizing for the annual March on March 3 that brings students, faculty and community to the state capital to let our elected officials know that education is a right and should be accessible to all.

If you would like to ride the bus to Sacramento, fill out the at tached form: https://docs.google.com/form/d/1_q1tsRv2RvYRfOsLQ6RbNoas5FQaZUAaeAqhDpVrqBc/viewform.

Monday, March 3, 2014. Contact Nancy Reiko Kato at nrkato@rocketmail.com or 415.994.5785 for more info or to get involved. www.saveccsf.org or info@saveccsf.org.

Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013

While the general public is all too familiar with superheroes such as Superman, Spiderman, Batman and others, lesser known is how many women drew comics in the early 20th century. While many of these talented women, like Nell Brinkley, were the superstars of their day, they’ve fallen into relative obscurity.

Through photos, letters, original artwork, toys, comic books and other ephemera, this exhibition showcases women cartoonists from the late 19th century to the present, including the first prewoman comic strip artist, Rose O’Neill, and her comic The Old Subscriber Calls, in Truth Magazine in 1896.

At the San Francisco Main Library, Fourth Floor, 100 Larkin Street, on March 8 – June 5, 2014.

Cine + Latino Film Fest presents 7 Boxes film

7 Boxes (7 Cajas) was an official selection in the last edition of the CMSF Latino Film Fest back in September. It is having its theatrical release this month across the United States and making a stop in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater. We’ll have a meet-up on March 5th. CMSF followers get a $1 off admission buying tickets online or at the door. Scroll down for additional details.

Join us for a drink & film viewing! Meet up at Dalva Bar next door from the Roxie at 5:30 p.m. Film starts at 7 p.m. No host bar.

7 Cajas / 7 Boxes starts Friday February 28- thru March 6th at the Roxie Theater 3117 16th Street (Between Valencia & Guerreo). The discount code is ‘CineMas’ – online or at the door March 5th 7pm screening.

In Spanish & Guainformaciónrani with English subtitles. 100 mins.

Abrazos de San Pancho: the San Francisco Nicaragua Solidarity Movement film

An exciting documentary about the Nicaraguan Revolution and the San Francisco based Nicaragua Solidarity Movement that was part of from the 70s to 1990.

You are invited to the first showing of our trailer for “Abrazos de San Pancho: the San Francisco Nicaragua Solidarity Movement,” which will be shown along with the Bay Area premiere of the documentary “En la Casa, la Cama y la Calle” (in the Home, the Bed and the Streets), and will feature San Francisco Poet Laureate, Professor, and Activist Alejandro Murguia.

Join us for a great evening. Check out all the details below.

On Thursday, March 20, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., at the Eric Quesada Community Center- 518 Valencia St (near 16th St.)

There will be wine, food, poetry, music and networking. Cash, checkes and credit card donations welcome at the door or online at www.mamasclinic.org.

Boxing

March 8, 2014

The Sport of Gentlemen

Saturday, March 1 – San Antonio, Texas (HBO) –

Featherweights: Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 28 KOs) vs. Vasyl Lomachenko (1-0, 1 KOs).

Saturday, March 1 – Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany

Junior lightweights: Robert Stieglitz (46-3, 26 KOs) vs. Arthur Abraham (38-4, 28 KOs).

Saturday, March 1 – Johannesburg, South Africa –

Minimumweights: Hekkie Budler (24-1, 7 KOs) vs. Karluis Diaz (21-4, 14 KOs)

Saturday, March 8 – Las Vegas, Nevada (SHOWTIME) –

Junior middleweights: Carlos Molina (22-5-2, 6 KOs) vs. Jermell Charlo (17-0, 13 KOs);

Lightweights: Omar Figueroa (22-0-1, 17 KOs) vs. Ricardo Alvarez (23-2-3, 14 KOs);

Junior featherweights: Leo Santa Cruz (26-0-1, 15 KOs) vs. Cristian Mijares (49-7-2, 24 KOs).

NAFTA hurt workers on both sides of the border

February 21, 2014

Anti NAFTA activists protest at the border against the lost of jobs at both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

by Jaisal Noor
The Real News
Question & Answer

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. NAFTA made the United States, Canada, and Mexico the largest free trade area in the world, linking 450 million people producing $17 trillion worth of goods and services.

Now joining us is David Bacon. He’s an award winning photojournalist, author, immigrant rights activist, who spent over two decades as a labor organizer. His most recent book is The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration.

DAVID BACON, AUTHOR, JOURNALIST, PHOTOJOURNALIST: Thank you.

NOOR: So, David, this 20-year anniversary of NAFTA has been both celebrated and sort of mourned, depending on what side you lie on this debate. I wanted to get your response from this quote in The Economist that was just published earlier today. The quote goes:

“… Mexico—an emerging market hitched to two larger, rich ones—has been NAFTA’s biggest beneficiary. Import competition has improved Mexican manufacturing productivity; foreign direct investment has surged. More important, membership of NAFTA has shored up Mexico’s domestic political commitment to open markets, and provided a template for the country’s other free-trade agreements. . . . The deal has not closed the vast income gap with Canada and America … but it has helped make Mexico more stable and prosperous. That should be a cause for celebration on both sides of the border.”

David Bacon, what is your response?

BACON: Well, actually, I think that’s a pretty honest quote, because what it’s really saying is that NAFTA was a source of profits because of the way the markets in Mexico were opened to large corporations, especially U.S. corporations. So there were some people who benefited from the last 20 years of the agreement. And they include Mexican billionaires. Mexico created a large number of billionaires, especially during the first ten years of the agreement. One of them, Carlos Slim, went on to become the world’s richest person for quite a while. And U.S. corporations also did very well in Mexico because of this opening of the market.

Ordinary Mexicans, however, did very poorly as a result. And I think the best and the most telling statistic is that during the period of NAFTA, from ‘94 to the present, about 12.6 million people from Mexico are now living in the United States. When the treaty went into effect, it was only about 4.6 million people. So 8 million people came to the United States overwhelmingly because they had little alternative to doing that if they wanted to survive economically. So NAFTA produced changes in Mexico which affected drastically the lives of ordinary working people and farmers.

This opening of the market essentially led to, for instance, Mexico losing a lot of its auto parts industry [that were] producing for auto manufacturers in Mexico. Mexico became an export platform, where the purpose of auto plants, assembly plants, parts plants was to produce for the U.S. market [inaud.] because [incompr.] other Mexican market, when in effect the income for most Mexicans really went down during the NAFTA period.

So what NAFTA did was it made Mexico even more of a kind of a lo-wage reserve area in which U.S. corporations could then relocate production in order to make goods not for the sake of sale in Mexico, but for the sake of sale in the United States. So Mexico became tied very tightly to the U.S., but not in a way that benefited ordinary Mexicans. It benefited people at the top, but did not benefit people at the bottom. NOOR: And you’ve done a lot of reporting on the conditions at the Mexican side of the U.S. border.

Often when NAFTA is discussed, we only talk about the impact on the U.S. itself. Talk about what–talk about the factories that have been created on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border and the conditions that workers endure in those factories.

BACON: Okay. Well, NAFTA accelerated the development of these factories called maquiladoras along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those factories existed there before NAFTA went into effect. But the number of factories and the number of workers in those factories mushroomed as U.S. corporations–and not just U.S. corporations, but other corporations wanting to use Mexican labor to produce for the U.S. market located factories there.

So the average wage in a Mexican maquiladora stayed flat during the entire NAFTA period. So workers in a maquiladora today are making maybe $6, $7 a day.

The price of a gallon of milk in a Mexican supermarket is not very much different from what it is on the U.S. side of the border. So a woman working assembling televisions for Sony or Sanyo or Panasonic in a maquiladora in Tijuana, for instance, has to work half a day just to buy a gallon of milk for her children.

So you find hundreds of thousands of workers who are living in neighborhoods, barrios, in which people are–the streets are unpaved, there’s no sewer system, people are stealing electricity from the wires because there are no social services or electrical services. People couldn’t afford to pay for them even if they could. And this is when people are working.

And, of course, by tying the Mexican economy so tightly to the U.S. one, what also happened is that when we went into a recession in the United States, we stopped buying what those factories were producing, which meant that hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs in those factories.

Since the border was right there, a stone’s throw away, many of those workers really had no alternative but to cross the border and look for work in the United States if they wanted to survive.

So NAFTA led to increased displacement of people, it led to increased migration because of these poor working conditions.

Those working conditions and those low wages were the selling point, really, to get corporations to build those factories and to invest in Mexico. So what NAFTA did was it created an incentive on the part of the Mexican government for holding incomes down, actually, for the vast majority of Mexican people as a way of kind of encouraging corporate investment.

And it wasn’t just holding incomes down and wages down. Other things happened as a result of this policy of trying to do anything to encourage corporate investment.

One of the things that we saw in the last few years was the Mexican government declaring that the state-owned power and light company in Central Mexico no longer existed, because essentially they were setting up the electricity system in Mexico for privatization. As a result of that, they fired the 44,000 workers who worked for this stateowned power company and destroyed their union.

Now the Mexican government and the Mexican Congress and the new administration there has passed a change to the Mexican Constitution which will now allow for the privatization of Mexico’s number-one economic asset, which is its oil industry, and also the electrical industry. So certainly some people are going to gain by that. You know, you can call that progress or growth if you want to, but in fact for most Mexicans what it really means is that they lose control over the key assets, the key economic assets that the Mexican state and the Mexican government controls, in the interests of selling them off to private investors. And at the same time, the people who work in those industries, they lose their unions, they lose their jobs, their wages go down. So really for most people it results in a loss.

That’s why so many people are coming to the United States, as a result of that.

Nicaraguan constitutional changes go into effect allowing Ortega to remain in office

February 21, 2014

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Daniel Ortega

Changes to the Nicaraguan constitution that allow President Daniel Ortega to run for re-election as many times as he wishes entered into force Tuesday with their publication in the official gazette.

The document was dated Feb. 10, but the Web site of the official gazette was knocked out Monday by a group of hackers calling themselves the Algerian Ghosts.

The amended constitution eliminates both term limits for presidents and the requirement to win an absolute majority at the ballot box to become head of state.
From now on, a plurality will be sufficient.

Other new provisions give Ortega the authority to reactive retired military personnel and police and to place them in civilian organizations within the executive branch.

The president will also be able to keep public officials in posts for the time he deems appropriate.

The reforms were pushed through at the end of last year by the governing Sandinista party’s majority in congress and approved despite the rejection of the opposition, social movements, civic groups, feminist organizations and businessmen. “We reject the reforms because they were born illegally,” the leader of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, Ana Margarita Vigil, told Efe.

The opposition’s argument is that there was insufficient consultation regarding the reforms and, because of their impact, they should have been submitted to a referendum.

Ortega, 68, who won reelection in 2011 with 62.45 percent of the vote in an process plagued by accusations of irregularities, is currently in his second consecutive term and third overall.

The president has spent almost half his life as the undisputed leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which toppled the fourdecade- long Somoza dictatorship in the late 1970s Nicaragua’s next general elections are scheduled for 2016.

Spain-China relations tense following arrest warrants for ex-president

A Spanish judge’s decision to issue arrest warrants for China’s former president and other senior officials in a case over alleged genocide in Tibet could harm relations between the two countries, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. “China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to the erroneous acts taken by the Spanish agencies in disregard of China’s position,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

“Whether or not this issue can be appropriately dealt with is related to the healthy development of ties,” she told reporters during the ministry’s regular daily briefing. She commented a day after Spanish National Court Judge Ismael Moreno issued warrants for the arrest of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who retired a decade ago, and four other erstwhile top officials.

The case was brought by pro-Tibetan activists in Spain. The National Court agreed to hear the case based on the principle of universal jurisdiction and on the fact that one of the plaintiffs – a Tibetan monk – has Spanish citizenship.

pain’s Parliament was set on Tuesday to debate a bill presented by the governing conservative Popular Party to restrict the conditions under which Spanish courts may investigate alleged crimes committed outside the national territory.

If approved, the measure would paralyze the case against the former Chinese officials.

China respects the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and, therefore, it is not commenting on what may occur in the Spanish Parliament, the foreign ministry’s Hua said Tuesday.

China insists Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, though Tibetans say the “Roof of the World” was effectively independent until being occupied by the Red Army in the early 1950s.

Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India after a failed uprising in the late 50s.

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