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by the El Reportero’s news services

Felipe Calderón

Whether it w­as his intention or not, President Felipe Calderón has raised the level of th­e d­ebate over the co­nvenience of legalising drugs as a means of delivering a blow to the finances of the drug cartels. He himself has admitted that the argument has its merits, but remains opposed to legalisation on the grounds that it would make no sense for Mexico  to adopt it unilaterally.

An ominous month for Calderón

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa opens this September, traditionally one of the most difficult months of the year for any president, in a fast weakening position. The opinion polls disguise this slippage: his support, at  55% (well above the 36%of the voters who backed  him in the 2006 elections) is still considerably higher than his disapproval rating of 37%. Nevertheless, his support is the lowest since he took office.

Changing perceptions: the U.S.  military in the region“Important economic and political trends have emerged [in Latin America]  in recent years. […] New regional, economic, political and defense [sic] structures have evolved, some excluding the US. These trends present both opportunities and challenges for US policy.” That is how a US Southern Command July 2010 white paper, “Command Strategy  2020: Partnership for the Americas”, defi nes the current situation in the region [Latin America]. For the US, the emergence of a new type of sub-regional cooperation  ceptical about the northern giant has provided the opportunity to re-shape perceptions on the role of its military in the region, placing special emphasis on its humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts (HA/DR).

Latin America’s moment

Latin America’s economic policymakers, apart from those in Mexico and Venezuela, are basking in an unusually unanimous chorus of praise. according to international organisations such as the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America (Eclac), South America will be one of the fastest growing regions, if not the fastest growing, in the world this year.

Bomb attack on Colombian DAS

Around 4pm on 8  September, a mediumpowered explosive device  was activated outside the offices of Colombia’s intelligence agency, the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), in the city of Pasto, capital of the southern department of Nariño.The explosion, which left 12 people seriously wounded but no fatal victims, is the latest in a series of deadly attacks launched by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), the two  largest leftwing guerrilla groups in Colombia, whom the government believe to be acting together; three individuals have been arrested. The attacks have led local security analysts  to question if the democratic security policy (DSP), which has been the central pillar of Colombia’s security improvements in the last decade, may have reached  its zenith, as the guerrillas appear to have adapted their modus operandi.

Latin America pays for China ties Exports from Latin America and the Caribbean will grow  again this year, driven large ly by demand from China. The high proportion of commodities may increase dependency on China, and Asia as a region, according to a report by a United Nations agency for the region.

“Clearly, trade relations between the region and China could give rise to center- periphery dynamics. We supply it with raw materials, with little added value, and it sends back manufactured goods,” Claudia Casal, a researcher at the non-governmental National Center for Alternative Development Studies (CENDA) in Chile and a contributor to an earlier non-UN report related to China, told IPS. (Latin News and China Times contributed to this report).

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by Jorge Mujica Mexico del Norte

I read the whole note, courtesy of my dear friend Gato Álvarez in an e-mail, and I just could not believe it. I had to look it up, old habit from an old journalist who wants to report the truth and not gossips, and I found it in several news agencies (not Mexican, actually, but  from Guatemala and even Spain, in the digital edition of El Mercurio.)

“The Mexican Superintendence of Administration of Taxes (go figure why this agency!) revealed the intention to build a wall in the estate of Chiapas. According  to the institution, the barrier would seek to control the influx of illegal merchandise. Superintendent Raúl Díaz said the state of Chiapas has the intention to build the wall alongside the Suchiate River, by the border between México and Guatemala. The reason to build it would be to stop smuggling boats. Besides, Díaz added, it could also work to stop the free transit of illegal immigrants”.

I still don’t believe it, despite the confirmation. Even worse, some reports  link the announcement with assassination of 72 immigrant brothers and sisters in the state of Tamaulipas.

But I realize than not believing it is just a shock  reaction. It is all real. The announcement is there. And the bodies are there, “piled up”, as our friend Raúl Dorantes says, “as used-up things”. In a second reaction, I realize how truthful was that sentence, wrongly attributed to Joseph Stalin but really authored by the German

journalist Kurt Tucholsky, “one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic”. In this case there are 72 deaths, but the real number goes up to  10 thousand; 10,000 immigrants whose lives has been wrecked, one way or the other, trying to make it  o the United States.

And no, I am not even talking about the 10 thousand who have died trying to cross the border since President Bill Clinton started “Operation Gatekeeper” and put up the first wall in the border in the mid 1990’s, but about the 10 thousand kidnapped in México by gangs, traffickers drug lords and Mexican  authorities.

The other 10,000

The number was given by the “Special Report of the National human Rights Commission (CNDH) on the Cases of Kidnapping of Migrants”, issued in México on June 16th, 2009. According to the CNDH “kidnappings of Central American immigrants by armed groups is commonplace”. The report documents the kidnapping of 9 thousand 758 migrants, just between September of 2008 and February of 2009, cases “in which Mexican  police and other authoritiesacted in unison with organized  crime, particularly the (drug dealers) Los Zetas, and members of the Mara Salvatrucha”.

The official Mexican response to the Report was simple until today: “It’s Los Zetas” and that’s it. Starting today is the wall in Chiapas. “And there is not”, says Fernando Batista, regional director of the CNDH “a  reduction on the number of cases”, due to “the impunity”, and the lack of a “particular public policy in favor of immigrants by the three levels of government, specially the federal level”, despite the fact that the Mexican Immigration Institute, Mexican equivalent of ICE, “counted last month, in Tamaulipas alone, 815 rescue actions of Central American immigrants”,and another 130 in the rest of the country. The kidnappers made, as profits from their actions according to the CNDH, “an average of fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars per immigrant”, a grand total of some “25 million dollars”  in six months.

Besides the killing climate in the desert, the drowning currents of the Rio Grande, police persecution, ICE, the smuggling mafias, or the corruption in the sale of contracts by state authorities for temporary workers who sell visas at a higher price than what the smugglers charge at the border, now immigrants have to  deal with kidnappers who want them to pass drugs or just for the rescue money.

Some say the killers just sent a message to the U.S., México and Central American that reads “Here we decide who crosses the border, enters and leaves the Mexican territory”. The New York Times editorial agrees, stating that given the lack of a working immigration system “we left to the Drug  Lords, just like in the case of our drugs, the flow of our immigrant workers”.

They are right. It was not Los Zetas. It was Barack Obama, the gringo Senators and Congressmen, Democrats and Republicans, Felipe Calderón, Carlos Slim,  the Guatemala and Honduras governments, the Mexican Immigration Institute, Janet Napolitano and John McCain, and the American people who rejoice when they pay one dollar for then limes harvested by working hands without See COLUMN page 4 working documents. They all created the system that does not allow international workers to legally go where jobs are waiting for them; who turned the movement of people into a deadly crime and a profi table business. h t t p : / / mx.groups.yahoo.com/ group/mexicodelnorte/

The article below has to be regarded as a natural cure for lung cancer. D.H was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2000. As of April 2004 he managed an overall decrease in lung  cancer tumor mass by about 90 percent.

by Gang Wu

Ron Pardini is not a medical doctor. Yet he is seen as a hero by his cancer-stricken neighbor, “D.H.” Pardini helped the 78-year-old after D.H. was  diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

“In 2000 he was told by his doctor he had only a few months to live,” said Pardini, a professor of biochemistry and associate director of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Nevada, Reno. “But five years later, he is still alive, and has even gained a little weight.”

The cancerous tumors found in D.H.’s lungs have shrunk to 10 percent of what they were in 2000, according  to last year’s computed tomography (CT) scans.

What worked with DH is not a common medical treatment such as chemotherapy or surgical excision. It was a nutritional intervention, drastically increasing the patient’s intake of omega-3 fatty acids, which are often found in fish oil or golden algae oil.

Pardini’s previous research showed that omega- 3 fatty acids significantly depressed the growth of human mammary, ovarian, colon, prostate and pancreatic cancer cells that were injected into athymic mice—also known as nude mice

His studies  also demonstrated that fish oil consumption improves a mouse’s responsiveness to chemotherapy.

Fish oil research was  inspired by observations that Inuit Eskimo populations have less breast and prostate cancer deaths.

So far, though, most studies in this country are limited to animal models, but a case study about D.H., which was published in the recent issue of the Nutrition and Cancer journal, could be a major step forward for human clinical trials.

While beginning to take high dose of fish oil and golden algae oil capsules daily, D.H. also reduced  corn-based foods from his diet. Corn contains omega- 6 fatty acids that Pardini said are found to increase cancer growth.

Pardini is optimistic of what his findings may  contribute to cancer treatment.

“We ha ve good evidence for employing nutritional interventions to improve cancer treatment and patient well-being,” he said.

Pardini wants to be able to provide viable non-toxic,  over-the-counter solutions for the numerous people with fear of cancer in the back of their minds.

The Nutrition and Cancer article is co-authored by Nevada nutrition Professor David Wilson and University of Nevada medical school Professors, Steven Schiff, Stephen Bajo and Randall Pierce.

­A new political era without Democrats and Republicans is being born
­Congressm­an Ron Paul and presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

by Marvin Ramírez

While the mainstream media keep the people living in an illusion with yellow journalism images and entertainment mockery that make many believe that everything is fine in the country – a movement of people denouncing that everything is really not alright, is unfolding.

Three third-party candidates, Congressman Ron Paul, vice presidential candidate and former San Francisco Supervisor Matt González and John Dennis, 8th Congressional District  candidate, will stage a big rally from 2 to 4 p.m. in San Francisco Civic Center on Sept. 4, which promises to be the beginning of a united front against the status quo and the monopoly of politics by a multi-millionaire elite.

It will be a non-partisan, antiwar, anti-Washington and anti-incumbency free speech rally, and is expected to attract a big crowd of Green Party, Republicans and Independents members and sympathizers from many parts or the country.

This denunciation includes violation of the Constitution (Patriot Act, FISA), illegal wars, usurpation of the basic human and bill of rights of the people, taxation without representation, an imposed police state that mostly serves to collect taxes for the international bankers and not serve the people, and the advent and consolidation of a new world government to control the masses and enslave North Americans through the United Nations and the current corrupt banking system.

This enslavement, activists say, is conducted via the private Federal Reserve Bank, owned by the International Monetary Fund, a foreign corporation. Paul wants just that, to take away the power to printing the currency from a private bank and give it back to the government, including the introduction of a new bill to audit the U.S. gold reserves, which are reportedly stored at the New York Federal Reserve and Fort Knox.

Currently, the Federal Reserve Bank prints the paper money (the dollar), which is backed by nothing, and then loans it to the government with interest  – while the people pay the interest. He believes that by having the government to start issuing money, it will eliminate all interest rates that everyone, including the government, now pay on all loans when purchasing automobiles, student loans, real estate, etc.

Paul has championed the cause to remove the Federal Reserve Bank as the issuer of money for a longtime, and has submitted legislation to Congress for it, but it has failed to pass. This would also eliminate the national debt and save the nation from an eminent economic collapse.

“Today’s coming together of third party candidates marks the beginning of the realignment of American politics,” said Green Party leader Ralph Nader, while criticizing the current two-party political system funded by the same money donors that holds a monopoly of the entire U.S.  political system.

“The strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two-party system (Democratic and Republican), which in reality is a one-party system with no possible chance for the changes to occur which are necessary to solve our economic and foreign policy problems,” Paul said in an interview.

“I think its important to build alliances, especially with others whom we may disagree with on other issues, in order to achieve the critical mass we need to truly end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to keep these conflicts from expanding, as they currently are, into Yemen and Pakistan,” said vice presidential candidate and former San Francisco Supervisor Matt González in an interview to Fog City Journal.

And while many worry of the danger Paul is exposing himself to, with his political revolution challenging the bankers, he doesn’t seem to be dissuaded from his political goal to guarantee Americans their civil liberties, privacy rights, low taxes, low regulation while opposing the police state.

by Raisa Camargo

Editorial cartoonists delight in exaggerating the size of Barack Obama’s ears, but families being torn apart by federal immigration policies are wondering if he’s ever going to listen to them. In the latest attempt to repair the nation’s broken immigration system, more than 500 children paraded outside the White House on July 28 to prevent the deportation of their parents.

Elementary school students Jonathan Monterosa and Edgar, who didn’t reveal his last name, traveled from Chicago to stand and march for more than two hours under a blazing sun.

“We want to keep  ourfamily united,” Jonathan told Hispanic Link.

Edgar added that his father feared deportation as he described his personal terror — and he’d be left alone with nothing to eat.

An estimated four million children are citizens living in the United States, mostly born here to an undocumented parent, according to data collected in  2008 by the Pew HispanicCenter.

The number of children who risk losing their parents overwhelms the 400,000 persons the Immigration Customs and Enforcement Agency (ICE) anticipates deporting this fiscal year. That is nearly a 10 percent increase above the total in 2008 during the Bush administration.

Congressman Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois, speaking before the march, bared the empathy he felt for the children while stressing the importance of immigration reform to a crowd of more than 1,500 persons. He was arrested in May for civil disobedience along with 35 advocates in favor of the DREAM Act outside the White House.

“The next time I come to the White House and they shackle me, I am not going to bring $100 to pay the fine. If they let me go, I am coming back because of these innocent children,” Gutiérrez, who is Puerto Rican, said in Spanish. He repeated his promise severaltimes. “We are not going to permit leaving them without shelter, without justice and left in need of their parents’ love.”

Advocates and children representing organizations in states spread from coast to coast — Florida, Maryland, Illinois, Texas, Illinois, California — waved signs with slogans and wore shirts emblazonedwith such pleas as “Don’t Deport My Mom” and “It’s in your hands, Mr. President.”

Daisy Cuevas, the 7-year-old girl who told Michelle Obama this past spring about her mother’s undocumented status, energetically led the march.

The crowd shouted in unison, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, Obama escucha, estamos en la lucha, aquí estamos y no nos vamos!”

Although the vibrant speeches captivated onlookers across the streets, for parents waiting on their deportation status, the march was more than just a gamble.

Viviana Oxlaj López worried about her six children’s wellbeing if she is deported back to Guatemala. She said her 10-yearold daughter was becoming ill thinking about the separation.  Hispanic Link.