­by the El Reportero’s staff

Los Cojolites

The creator of so many of the most romantic pieces lately, Álvaro Torres, brings his powerful voice to many of his fun in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Among his most successful hit include: Algo especial” (Something Special), “Acariciame” (Caress Me), “Un poquito de amor” (A Little Bit of Love), “La Unica” (The Only One), “Lo Que Se Dice Olvidar” Si Estuvieras Conmigo (If you were here with me) and “Nada se compara contigo” (Nothing Compares to You). The show include the participation of other artists.

On Saturday, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m. at Roccapulco Supper Club, 3140 Mission Street, SF. For more info call 415-821-3563.

What’s Washington doing about health care event

The League of Women Voters of San Francisco (LWVSF) and OWL of San Francisco (The Voice of Midlife and Older Women) invite you to participate in discussion about health care. The panel of speakers include experts in the health care issue.

On Thursday, Sept. 10, from 6-7:30 p.m., at the Koret Auditorium, SF Main Public Library, Lower Level. For more info call 415-989-8683.

A jewel of Veracruz in the Mission

Los Cojolites, a collective of soneros who currently work and live together in Jaltipan, Veracruz, Mexico, brings the rhytmn of Joroche with all its Veracrucian flavor.

Los Cojolites are a collective of soneros who currently work and live together in Jaltipan, Veracruz, Mexico.

The name “Los Cojolites” comes from a bird (Pencople purpurascens Wagler), a kind of pheasant that was vererated as a god of the trees by the ancient Nahuatl speaking people who lived around this area. The Cojolite Bird is especially known for the length of is song, a full uninterrupted five minutes of it, at the crack of dawn.

Friday, September 11th, at 8:00 p.m. Door opens at 7:00 p.m., at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street @ York St., San Francisco. More info call at 415-648 3349.

Mexical Classical star Horacio Franco in the Bay Area

Horacio Franco is now at days one of the most succesfull mexican classical musicians, his vast repertoire ranges from Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary works.

­Enjoying virtual rock star status he has broken the stereotype of the traditional

classical musician. He is particularly devoted to those living in the more vulnerable and unprotected sectors of societies everywhere.

A frequent soloist with virtually every Mexican orchestra, Horacio Franco also appears with distinguished ensembles around the globe, among them: American Composers Orchestra (Carnegie Hall debut, 1994), San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Symphoniker, Hungary’s Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Tokyo Solisten. Of special note is Horacio’s record of appearances over seven consecutive seasons with the famed Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

by José de la Isla

HOUSTON — A big battle is brewing in of all places the library.

It all started when Google, the Internet search engine and media giant, began scanning millions of books without permission. That led the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to file a class-action suit. Now a $125 million settlement might be in the offing that could lead to a book registry for author and publisher rights and royalties and a huge online archive of millions of books.

Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo have joined the Open Book Alliance, a coalition opposed to the settlement because they claim it gives Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of books.

Submissions to the court are likely to bring these and other objections forward.

The Alliance (also called the “Sour Grapes Alliance” by Google) claims Google and the authors and publishers schemed to monopolize access, distribution and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world.

Besides Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon, the Alliance also has in its ranks nonprofit author groups, library institutions, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the New York Library Association.

Alliance members fear the Google Book Search Settlement will restore access to millions of out-of-print books and will one day make Google a virtual digital library monopoly. The Open Content Alliance (not to be confused with the “Open Book Alliance”) opposes the Google settlement because “orphan books” can be commercialized.

Orphan books, although out of print, remain under copyright and the rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. OCA suspects Google will become the legal guardian of millions of books. Google has been scanning the pages of those and others as part of its plan to bring a digital library and bookstore, unprecedented in scope, to computer screens across the United States.

According to Michael Kirkland, speaking for Google, the settlement will feature full online access for purchase. Institutional subscriptions will allow patrons access to the entire corpus of scanned books. Each public library in the country will also have a free public access terminal available.

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest and oldest Hispanic advocate group for civil rights, education and employment opportunities, submitted an amicus letter to Judge Denny Chin supporting the settlement.

Although he confined his argument to rather conventional school and library interface there is a broader argument to make.

U.S. education is unique because of an ethic that a curious person wanting to learn something should have access to that knowledge.

That ethic arose when Andrew Carnegie, soon after the 1900s, underwrote and encouraged a system of about 3,000 free public libraries in 47 states. Almost all municipalities soon followed the example with city libraries for self-guided and reference instruction. There are today more than 123,000 libraries of all kinds, according to the American Library Association.

In U.S. history, the library system, the land-grant college system of 1862 and the community college system after World War II have been among the greatest reform advancements in social and economic development. When the various author, ­publisher, commercial and anti-trust concerns get worked out in the Google matter, at the heart of any accommodation should be the value about satisfying the curious which has served the nation so well.

And there is one other. Door-to-door encyclopedia salesman convinced many parents in the second half of the last century they needed to make an investment as part of their children’s education. We were reminded of that during Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. She was a beneficiary of that. I was one. Possibly you were too.

The Information Age equivalent of the encyclopedia salesman is at our door, except that now millions of books in hundreds of thousands of libraries in a hundred languages are inside his demonstration case.

[José de la Isla’s latest digital book, sponsored by The Ford Foundation, is available free at www.DayNightLifeDeathHope.com. He writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service and is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). E-mail him at joseisla3@yahoo.com.] © 2009

by Antonio González

President Obama is headed for a headache as hopes for a democratic resolution of the crisis in Honduras fade. If deposed President Manuel Zelaya, who was democratically elected in 2005, is not soon restored to power in this U.S.-dependent Central American country, a popular rebellion is inevitable. Civil war may ensue.

Latin America analysts fear more coups will be attempted by extremist forces in Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia, given Washington’s appearance of tacit acceptance of the coup..

The initial positive reaction by President Obama gathered by denouncing the coup has withered away as the coup government thumbs its nose at the world, closes down media outlets, and violently represses protesters.

However reluctantly, Washington, D.C., is at the center of this dilemma because of this country’s decades-old intimate ties with Honduras’s elite. At the recent summit between Mexico, the United States and Canada, Obama decried critics who advocate a more aggressive U.S. policy to restore President Zelaya to power. Obama stated, “…the same forces that decry U.S. intervention in Latin America now want us to intervene in Honduras.

They can’t have it both ways…” But classifying calls for this country to honor its own policies as intervention is wrong. No one wants U.S. troops or proxy forces to march in. The president’s critics are accurate in that he has only partially/belatedly enforced laws that mandate cutting off aid to countries that overthrow elected governments.

Laughably, our State Department still hasn’t declared that a coup occurred, leaving us isolated in the world with a “half-coup” policy. The Organization of American States, the UN and European Union among others have taken clearer and tougher positions toward the two-month-old political military dictatorship.

In practice, the soft Obama policy of backing Costa Rica President Oscar Arias’s feeble brokering efforts has given the coupist-government breathing space to outlast Zelaya’s backers. Indeed, the de facto effect of Obama’s policy enables the coupist-government to play out the clock until November, when a blatant cooked “demonstration” election will keep a rump government in power.

Already Brazil, Mexico and Colombia have stated they will not support any Honduran “government” that results from the “demonstration” elections.

There are several implications if the situation continues to deteriorate. Fraying relations between the U.S. and Latin America will accelerate downward, even more so if coups are attempted in other countries.

The Honduran “street” is radicalizing. Before the coup, President Zelaya had low approval ratings. Today he is the hero of a growing movement that recently mobilized

300,000 protesters. if the coup continues, armed rebellion will begin. Dictatorships lead to massive refugee flows. Already there are reports of rebel training camps along the Honduras-Nicaragua border.

President Obama can ill afford another disappointment among U.S. Latinos now that he has postponed immigration reform till next year.

What explains President Obama’s misplay?

First, he was occupied with the domestic economic crisis and the Middle East. Second, his initial, mostly-correct attitude towards the coup was soon modified by a State Department lukewarm toward President Zelaya.

In essence, U.S. reluctance to squeeze out the Honduran “coupists” reflects concerns over revolutionary trends in Latin America that deposed Zelaya agreed with.

This is a serious strategic mistake that will haunt Mr. Obama if not corrected soon. No matter what one thinks of the civic revolutions in places like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and until recently Honduras, they are democratically elected, non-violent and popular, representing long-held yearnings for change.

Obama should engage with Latin America’s efforts to develop itself through home-grown, alternative models. No serious analysis can defend U.S.-inspired western economic policies that have so clearly failed to provide progress for Latin America’s 400 million- strong population over the last generation.

How can Obama right his course? Simple, He should receive President Zelaya publicly — something he has yet to do, State should declare a coup has occurred and immediately cut off all aid to the de-facto government, seize its U.S. assets, and together with close allies (Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru) issue a public deadline to the coup-ists to step down from power now and receive amnesty.

If not, announce that sooner or later its conspirators will be tried for crimes for which they are patently guilty.

­The coup-ists will turn tail in weeks, Hondurans and Latin Americans will breathe a sigh of relief and President Obama will be lauded for leading the pursuit of democracy and justice.

(Antonio González is president of the William C. Velásquez Institute in Los Angeles. Email: media@wcvi.org) ©2009

by Marvin J. Ramirez

Marvin J. Ramírez­

Note from the editor: Much has been said about Google turning over information of users in China, about what and who is searching what in the internet, etc. Some of those believed to be critical of the government had been arrested. “The Internet now is being censored in the U.S. exactly the same as in Communist China. Steps are being taken to limit what web sites Americans will be allowed to visit,” as reported by Prison Planet Sept. 7, 2007. The Americans have designed software that accommodates Chinese censorship and help prosecute dissidents.

Before this issue becomes a similar scenario in the “free world,” El Reportero exposes the situation in the following article by Declan McCullagh.

by Declan McCullagh

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government’s role in cybersecurity.

In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity

should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller’s revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a “cybersecurity workforce plan” from every federal agency, a “dashboard” pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” in six months–even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the ­government would exercise control over your computers or network.

The Internet Security Alliance’s Clinton adds that his group is “supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national security perspective.”

Update: I just talked to Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, on the phone. She sent me e-mail with this statement: The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks.

To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.

Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for an on-the-record answer to these four questions

that I asked her colleague on Wednesday. I’ll let you know if and when I get a response.