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No goldfish on Arizona’s desert

by José de la Isla

José de la IslaJosé de la Isla

It’s said that goldfish have a memory that lasts three seconds. They live in the present all the time.

Human beings, on the other hand, have long-term as well as short-term memories. Our brains are perfect instruments for self-instruction.

We learn from the past and the errors of our ways.

That’s why I can’t get Diego out of my mind.

We met up four years ago when photographer Wilhelm Scholz and I were on assignment in the Arizona desert, south of Tucson, in the Mexican town of Agua Prieta. There my new-found friend Diego told me of his travels north from the highlands of Guatemala to his apprehension when he attempted to cross the line into the United States without papers. Without work or resources, he told me he was trying to find his way back home.

The man cried intermittently throughout the day. “The whole village left their farm plots when the death squads came,” he said as he spilled his odyssey.

Some 2,000 refugees from his area fled across the border into the Mexican state of Chiápas. He and his wife resettled on a plot of land to do the subsistence farming they had known all their lives. His wife bore a daughter. Shortly thereafter, she died.

He was told that a farm worker in the United States could earn up to $60 a day, 663 pesos back then. Able to borrow $1,200 for travel and expenses, he reached the border and paid a smuggler who promised to deliver him to a U.S. job. But he was caught. Stranded in the desert, Diego shared his experience and fears with me. He isn’t a goldfish.

He had no way to pay back the loan or reclaim his land in Chiápas, nor to feed and educate his daughter — not even the price of a bus ticket. Mexican officials told me they feared that Diego didn’t have the street smarts to keep from getting waylaid as he headed south again.

I have heard hundreds of stories from people trapped by similar circumstances.

I’ve also received streams of comments from elements among my countrymen who fervently believe people like Diego brought it on themselves.

They ought not to export their personal problems to the United States.

On March 17 the National Security Archive, a Washington, D.C., institute, disclosed documents confi rming that our government knew all along that the Guatemalan officials we supported with arms and cash from 1960 to 1996 were behind the disappearances and assassinations that led to the fl ight of thousands of Diegos. It is no longer possible for the United States to claim we had no such knowledge — that we are goldfi sh when it comes to Guatemala.

That small nation’s U.S.-backed army battled guerrillas in its highlands.

More than 200,000 persons were killed or reported missing during those years. Most were Mayan Indians, forced to take sides or murdered if they wouldn’t. Death squads ruled. Sometimes vengeful people used the political calamity as a pretext to settle personal scores, leveraging opportunities out of the horrendous situation.

We have been told before about what was happening, but by partisans and ideologues. So have others tried telling us, like novelist Francisco Goldman in his book The Long Night of White Chickens, Sister Dianna Ortiz who wrote about being sequestered and tortured in The Blindfold’s Eyes, and Nobel-laureate Rigoberta Manchu in her autobiographical account about her family and village.

The decades of official denials that have come our way don’t stand up. These new declassifi ed disclosures of old documents simply verify what others have been telling us.

Unless we accept the truth and correct our course, we have missed the ­value of having a memory.

Migrants who opted to flee their homelands are collateral damage, the human consequence of a script we sanctioned, if not wrote.

If we don’t insist, even now, on full disclosure and appropriate remedy, we become three-second goldfish, endlessly swimming inside the bowl, reinventing reality at every turn, and going nowhere.

[José de la Isla’s latest book, Day Night Life Death Hope, is distributed by The Ford Foundation. He writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service and is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). Contact him by e-mail at joseisla3@yahoo.com]. © 2009

More states join against federal mandate and protest with legislations

by Marvin J. Ramirez

Marvin J. RamirezMarvin J. R­amirez

It seems that legislators nowadays, because they don’t have any other ways to pay for an overweight government, or because they obey orders from their political supporters for political favors, are doing away with most of the safeguards that the Founder Fathers of this great nation created to assure, for the forthcoming generations, liberty and financial success that we the people can pass on to our children.

Have you noticed very recently, that some laws that have been passed in the states have been ignored by the federal government and not respected? Why? Because with the loan dollars from the Federal Reserve the feds can bribe states legislators and the devil himself.

But this is sending a chill alarm to the states that are creating legislations to remind the feds, that it was the states that created the federal government, and not the other way around. They are considering the feds actions, a very serious aggression.

Now a great number of states in the Union are drafting legislations to assert their states sovereignty over the continued federal expansionism which buys states’ liberty for Federal Reserve Notes (green money) that they borrow from the Federal Reserve, in the name of us and our children’s future.

Actually, constitutionally, the Federal government only has jurisdiction in Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgen Islands, Washington, D.C., its territories, and the federal buildings. And, for your information, the Federal Government, which operation is funded by the Federal Reserve Bank, the privately-owned bank which prints the United States’ currency (the dollar), was created by the states to serve the states, not to control them.

In fact, it is subordinated to the states’ mandate. This has been changing over the years, thanks to corrupt legislators, who in their quest for money have been eroding the citizens’ state rights, giving more power to thefeds over their lives.

In an appealing headline on an internet site, Oklahoma was one of the fi rst of several states to say no to the feds’ expansionism.

They send the feds a declaration, which reads as follows: “Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federalgovernment to cease and desist certain mandates; and directing distribution.

“The powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people… “Whereas the Tenth Amendment defi nes the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more.”

A growing number of states are in the process or passing, have passed, or are in the process to draft bills, that affirm 10th Amendment rights. Some affirm additional rights and/or give specifi c reasons. New Hampshire has written the most aggressive legislation. And all this is happening because of the federal government overreaching against states’ rights.

Matt Shae, a Washington state representative, is one of those brave state legislators

who have introduced its own legislation intended to stop the feds.

Speaking in a telephone conference at a news internet TV show, Shae said: “We’re trying to send a message to Barack Obama, the President of the United States that we are a sovereign state and we want to be treated as such,” while citing the so infamous federal mandate, “No Child Left Behind,” which comes with a lot of requirements, and orders the states to implement it – without any funding sources for its implementation.

And it adds by citing the recently Newsweek cover, which indicates that now we (the United States) all are socialists. We know the feds are currently nationalizing banks and key industries.

“ We think that this type of federal intervention and overreaching is exactly why states governments are starting to fight back… and I think we need to reclaim our sovereignty, particularly over these massive areas with unfunded mandates expecting the states governments to foot the bill,” Shae said.

Oklahoma and New Hampshire for example, have bills telling the feds that they are not going to allow guns confiscation, after the feds wrote bills banning semi-automatic guns and to require Americans to submit to psychological testing.

“I think right now we’re in a crisis as state legislators throughout the country… and it’s incumbent upon us to take the message of what’s happening in our states and our local governments and take it to the President of the United States and say, “Enough is enough. We’re not gonna take this anymore,” Shae said.

He cited that Washington State came under the same compact that Montana did when it became a state back in the late 1800s.

“And as part of that 3compact, we have in our state constitution that we have the right to bear arms in defense of ourselves. And it’s a lot more specific than the federal constitution is.

­There’s been, as most concerned citizens know, runs on ammunition and guns in sporting goods stores all over the country but especially in Washington as well.

“So, I think this is one of those times in American history where people are starting to wake up and one of the other reasons for my bill was to help wake people up to this issue,” he said.

Oklahoma, have passed these resolutions saying, “No” to the New World Order, “No” to tyranny, “No” to the FEMA camps, “No” to the gun confiscation.

I, personally, am afraid that California is in danger of becoming a puppet of the federal government with legislators like Fiona Ma, who seems to be in the business of ceding more powers to the feds. She is struggling to get the U.S. Arms Forces to recruit our youth for their dirty wars abroad and possibly to crash civil protest within the U.S. with her AB 223 legislation that will require the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to reinstate Junior ROTC in San Francisco public schools.

Health choices predict cancer survival

by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, (Michigan) — Head and neck cancer patients who smoked, drank, didn’t exercise or didn’t eat enough fruit when they were diagnosed had worse survival outcomes than those with better health habits, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“While there has been a recent emphasis on biomarkers and genes that might be linked to cancer survival, the health habits a person has at diagnosis play a major role in his or her survival,” says study author Sonia Duffy, Ph.D., R.N., associate professor of nursing at the U-M School of Nursing, research assistant professor of otolaryngology at the U-M Medical School, and research scientist at the VA Ann Arbor Health care System.

Each of the factors was independently associated with survival. Results of the study appear online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The researchers surveyed 504 head and neck cancer patients about five health behaviors: smoking, alcohol use, diet, exercise and sleep. Patients were surveyed every three months for two years then yearly after that.

Smoking was the biggest predictor of survival, with current smokers having the shortest survival. Problem drinking and low fruit intake were also associated with worse survival, although vegetable intake was not. Lack of exercise also appears to decrease survival.

“Health behaviors are only sporadically addressed in busy oncology clinics where the major focus is on surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Addressing health behaviors may enhance the survival advantage offered by these treatments,” says Duffy, a U-M Cancer Center investigator.

Complicating matters is that many of these health behaviors are inter-related. For example, smokers might also be heavy drinkers, making it more difficult to quit. It’s not enough, Duffy points out, to refer someone to a smoking cessation program if alcohol is a major underlying problem.

In addition, previous research has associated many of these health behaviors with preventing cancer. In the current study, a third of the patients reported eating fewer than four servings of fruit per month. Nutrition experts recommend two servings of fruit per day.

“Eating fruits and vegetables, not smoking and drinking in moderation can have a big impact on a person’s risk of getting cancer in the first place. Now it appears that these factors also impact survival after diagnosis,” Duffy says.

The next step for the researchers is to look at behavior changes over­time to determine if changing health habits when a person is diagnosed can impact survival. That will help determine what types of interventions or services should be offered to patients in the clinic.

Head and neck cancer statistics: 35,310 Americans will be diagnosed with head and neck cancers this year and 7,590 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

The U.S. Supreme Court narrows authorities of Voting Rights Act

by Gast6n Kuperschmit

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled March 9 by the narrowest of margins, 5-4, to limit the protections afforded by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, saying that state legislatures are not required to draw electoral districts to the benefit of non-white candidates in districts where they encompass less than half of the population. Writing for the majority in Bartlett v. Strickland, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated race must be considered only in redistricting where “a geographically compact group of minority voters” comprise 50 percent or more of a single-member district.

The case before the Court concerned District 13 in North Carolina where the African-North American population prior to the redistricting after the 2000 Census was 39 percent. Afterwards, it was reduced to 35 percent. Plaintiffs unsuccessfully argued that state officials engaged in vote dilution.

The dissent through Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed with plaintiffs that the ruling was “difficult to fathom and severely undermines the [Voting Rights Act’s] estimable aim.”

Following the ruling, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund released a statement expressing disappointment with the Court’s conclusion: “Bartlett v. Strickland closed the courthouse doors to many Latinos and other minority communities who face discrimination with regard to voting.”

The timing of this decision is critical as the federal government prepares to conduct the 2010 Census, which is the precursor to congressional redistricting. MALDEF stressed that with the meteoric increase in Hispanic population since 2000Mhe protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act are of utmost concern to the community.

The Court is scheduled to hear a case involving the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Act this term. It requires that states with a history of racial discrimination receive federal consent before amending voting laws.

­Several groups are expected to look at the implications that Bartlett will have on voting districts with significant Hispanic populations that do not meet the requirement of 50 percent.

Alan Clayton, Director of Equal Employment Opportunity at Los Angeles Chicano Employees Association, who filed a complaint with the Department of Justice in 2003 regarding the redistricting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, states that this decision will not impact that case.

However, he says, there are districts within California that may be affected and he is reviewing any potential impact in that state.

For more information contact Alan Clayton at (626) 979-4902. Hispanic Link.

Merchants unite

by Marvin Ramírez

Members of the Latin Business Network during their six monthly reunion at La Corneta Restaurant.: (photo by Marvin Ramírez)Members of the Latin Business Network during their six monthly reunion at La Corneta Restaurant.(photo by Marvin Ramírez)

While business is down for most merchants nationwide and the city looks for ways to finance for most social services that serve the poor, a group of merchants are uniting as a block to find ways to survive a predictable financial collapse that many experts call, will be worse that the Great Depression in the 1920s.

­“What can we do?,” asks Mission merchant Jorge Luis García Linares, who worries about the taxes the might increase. He and several other merchants, have organized a group that meet once a month to brainstorm and come up with ideas in how to approach the decrease in sales vs. an increase in taxes.

The group, called Latin Business Network, created on December 2008, had their sixth reunion on March 26, which attracted approximately ­72 business owners and other guests, most of them business owners, and professionals.

San Francisco’s District 9 Supervisor David Campos recognized to El Reportero, that although is trying to help businesses, tax increases are contemplated “Our agenda is to protect business,” Campos said, but was admitted that taxes are imminent.

Nicaragua, vietnam ink oil deal

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

Daniel OrtegaDaniel Ortega

Vietnam will begin prospecting for oil in Nicaragua within four week, according to an agreement signed here between both countries´ state-run companies.

The agreement was signed Monday night in Managua by a PetroVietnam delegation, headed by Dinh La Thang, and Francisco Lopez, president of the state-owned company Petronic.

Lopez announced oil technology transference between both countries will immediately begin, to complement works being done at the oil refinery under construction in Nicaragua with the support of Venezuela.

The refinery is part of the agreements signed by Nicaragua under the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which is also backed by Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras and Dominica.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attended the signing ceremony between Petro Vietnam and Petronic.

U.S. to fund actions in Mexico against drug traffic

The administration of US President Barack Obama will invest 700 million dollars to support the Mexican government in its war against drug traffi cking, said the White House in a communiqué Wednesday.

The text of the communiqué picks the concern of the US President because of the growing violence by thedrug cartels in the north of Mexico, which are already infl uencing US regions limiting with Mexico.

The 700 million dollars will be saved in the funds of the Merida Initiative, a program promoted by former US President George W. Bush to fight the drug illegal trade in Central America.

Barack Obama promised he would do his job in the war against drug traffi cking and reduce the drug demand in the national market, just like his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon requested many times.

US National Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a press release that the Executive would increase border control, by sending more agents and equipments to the zone.

The new agents will have the mission to avoid the smuggling of drugs and people from Mexico to the US, and neutralize the traffic of weapons arming the drug cartels.

Salvadorians honor Archbishop Romero Salvadorian priests and numerous parishioners attended on Tuesday, March 23, a mass to pay homage to Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, on the 29th anniversary of his assassination by death squads.

The religious ceremony will take place at the Metropolitan Cathedral in this capital, presided over by San Salvador Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar.

On Saturday, they began the activities to honor Romero, who is an emblematic symbol of the struggle for peace, justice and national unity.

Honduran president proposes constitutional revamp

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is calling for a new constitution in his Central American nation, following the path of his leftist allies in the region.

Zelaya announced late Monday his government will hold a nationwide poll on June 24.

The poll will gauge whether Honduras should hold a binding vote in November on whether to draft a new charter.

If Hondurans agree, the government would convoke an assembly that would write a new constitution adapted to “substantial and significant changes” that Honduras has experienced since its current constitution was adopted in 1982 as the country was emerging from military rule.

Zelaya did not give details about what changes a new constitution might include, but similar recent reforms promoted by other Latin American leaders have expanded presidential powers and eased bans on re-election. Zelaya’s four year term ends in early 2010 and current law bans re-election.

Zelaya has forged increasingly close ties with Latin America’s leftist bloc, led by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez. He brought Honduras into the Chavez-founded Bolivarian Alternative trade bloc that also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. (Prensa Latina and Associated Press contributed to this report).­

Latino community needs free choice act

by Gabriela D. Lemus

The Latino community should whole-heartedly get behind the Employee Free Choice Act. Introduced March 10, the bill has a majority of support in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, but business groups are spending heavily to make sure the Senate does not reach the 60 votes that it needs to survive a filibuster.

EFCA levels the playing field for workers by ensuring a more democratic decision-making process, providing employees the room to be full partners with management.

At a minimum, democracy involves freedom of speech and freedom to organize collectively around issues. In the case of workers, a minimum standard of democracy involves the ability of workers to discuss and debate amc of harassment from either unions or corporate management as to whether they would like to join a union.

EFCA would reinvigorate the National Labor Relations Act, giving workers additional protections to bargain collectively and join a union. Time and again, we have witnessed that the current system for workers to form unions to bargain over wages and benefits is broken. As a result, the National Labor Relations Board would be better able to ensure that the processes regarding authorization forms are fair, thus preventing coercion from either side.

In 2008, workers represented by unions earned a median weekly salary of $886. This compared to non-unionized workers, with median weekly earnings of $691.

In particular, young men and women just entering the work world benefit from protections that collective bargaining provides.

Latinos are among the youngest population group in the United States. Their median age is 25.8 years – more than 10 years younger than that for the U.S. population as a whole.

Also worth mention: they have more children and greater family stability.

More than half are fully bilingual.

Needless to say, union membership would assist them not just in earning a livable wage.

It could move many into jobs where they learn more skills, take on greater responsibilities gain added benefits.

Latino workers want to join unions. Union membership, long in decline, actually increased in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual report.

The unionized share of the U.S. workforce climbed to 12.4 percent last year from 12.1 percent in 2007, an increase of more than 420,000 members.

While the gains were broadly shared across demographic lines and occupations, growth was strongest in the public sector, among Hispanics, and in Western states, driving the largest increase in more than a quarter of a century. More than 120,000 Hispanics became Union members last year. Their membership rate rose1nearly a full percent to 10.8 percent from 9.8 percent in 2007.

EFCA offers workers added access to such benefits as health insurance and pensions. Management gains from the skill sets, contagious motivation and increased productivity that satisfied workers provide. It follows that productive workers help companies grow profits and capital for further economic growth.

As President Obama reminds us daily, the need to revitalize our communities is paramount. Urgent.

Which communities will succeed in doing so?

Where unions are stronger, not only are wages higher and health insurance more accessible; there are numerous other benefits.

In states with higher Union density, it is more likely that poverty will be reduced. There will be more homeowners than renters and better schools because there is greater public education spending per pupil. The three are inter-related.

Together they bring an unintended benefit —a significant reduction in crime. Compare states where Unions are strong with those where they’re weak. In the former, public dollars are more likely to go to schools and less likely to building jails.

By bolstering the middle class, educating our communities and ensuring they are healthy, we give people hope. That’s the essence of the American Dream. The Employee Free Choice Act can help make it real again. Hispanic Link.

(Dr. Gabriela D. Lemus is executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), with headquarters in Washington, D.C. Email: glemus@Iclaa.org).

Boxing

Friday, Jan. 30 — at TBA, South Africa

  • ­Francois Botha vs. Ron Guerrero.

Saturday, Jan. 31 — at Guadalajara, Mexico

  • Marco Antonio Barrera vs. John Nolasco.
  • Jorge Solis vs. Monty Meza Clay.

Friday, Feb. 6 — at Salisbury, MD (ESPN2)

  • Yusaf Mack vs. Chris Henry.

Saturday, Feb. 7 — at Anaheim, CA (Showtime)

  • WBC/WBA/IBF superflyweight title: Vic Darchinyan vs. Jorge Arce.
  • Antonio DeMarco vs. Almazbek Raiymkulov.

Friday, Feb. 13 — at TBA, USA (ESPN2)

  • Jesus Gonzales vs. Richard Gutierrez.

Saturday, Feb. 14 — at TBA, USA (HBO)

  • Alfredo Angulo vs. Ricardo Mayorga.
  • WBA/IBF/WBO lightweight title: Nate Campbell vs. Ali Funeka.

Saturday, Feb. 21 — at Atlantic City, NJ (HBO-PPV)

  • WBO welterweight title: Miguel Cotto vs. Michael Jennings.

Saturday, Feb. 21 — at Youngstown, OH (HBO-PPV)

  • WBC/WBO middleweight title: Kelly Pavlik vs. Marco Antonio Rubio.

Friday, Feb. 27 — at Hollywood, FL (ESPN2)

  • Glen Johnson vs. Daniel Judah.

Should natural resources – such as water – be turned into a prate monopoly?

by Franck Poupeau

The Progress Report Increasing criticism of market globalisation has not prevented multinationals from controlling such essentials as water, where there are vast potential profits. The market is dominated by two big French multinationals, Vivendi-Generale des eaux and Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux. They now control nearly 40 percent of the world market, each serving, and billing, more than 110m people, Vivendi in 100 countries, Lyonnaise in 130.

They owe their profits to the deregulation of trade and the complicity of international institutions and national governments. The market is all the more lucrative because the water services in nearly 85 percent of the world’s cities are run by public or state companies.

The two French giants and their subsidiaries have been signing highly remunerative privatisation contracts on the water market for 15 years. The successes of Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux in China, Malaysia, Italy, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Australia and the United States cannot beat those of Generale des eaux (now Vivendi), sometimes in association with Suez-Lyonnaise, as in Buenos Aires in 1993.

Over the last 10 years, Vivendi has entered Germany (Leipzig, Berlin), the Czech Republic (Pilsen), Korea (Daesan complex), the Philippines (Manila) and Kazakhstan (Almaty). It is also represented in the US by its subsidiaries Air and Water Technologies and US Filter.

But the water multinationals have had setbacks. They have been forced to withdraw from some South American countries and to seek “compensation” from international authorities. In Tucuman, Argentina, in 1997 the population started a civil disobedience campaign against a Vivendi subsidiary, refusing to pay their bills in protest at deteriorating water quality and doubled charges. Generale des eaux had acquired the province’s privatised water and sewerage concessions in 1993. But its immediate increase in the price of those services (averaging 104 percent) brought protests from the consumers.

“The first to organise themselves were the towns in the interior, in the region of sugar cane production where there was a long experience of struggle. At first, seven small cities formed a committee and later established the national association in defence of the consumers of Tucuman”.

The provincial government then called for penalties on the company after finding tap water contaminated.

Faced with the payment boycott, Generale des eaux first threatened to cut off supplies.

Then it tried to renegotiate the contract before finally withdrawing and refusing to fulfill its obligations. It brought an action against the Tucuman consumers before the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which found in the province’s favour.

(The ICSID is part of the World Bank.) Since then, a change in provincial government has removed legal protection for the payment boycott.

SOCIAL EFFECTS OVERLOOKED

Local loss of control over water charges goes hand in hand with price increases that deny the poor access not only to the water service but also to clear information about minimum health standards.

Water privatisation in La Paz, Bolivia, is an example.

In Alto Lima, the oldest and poorest quarter of La Paz, in February rain formed muddy streams that overflowed the sewers and flooded the roadway. The unpaved streets are rutted and potholed, piles of refuse testifying to the absence of public cleaning; they have not been lit at night since that service was also privatised.

The monopolies are a total failure. The most basic services are now provided by nongovernment nonprofit organizations.

Antonio has lived in Alto Lima since he was a child. It is a working-class district nearly 4000m above sea level; the richer folk live lower, at 3,200 m. Alto Lima overlooks the rest of the capital, but it takes over an hour to reach the city centre. That is why Antonio goes to the centre so rarely: it is too far and too expensive. Antonio cannot understand why water, which is flowing so freely here, is no longer available for him to wash 2or drink. Since the supply was taken over by the French Aguas del Illimani consortium (which belongs to Lyonnaise des eaux), its price has risen from 2 to 12 bolivianos (Bs). Most of the population cannot afford that and have replaced showers by communal washing facilities, for which they also have to pay.

The private concession has seen a deterioration in service as a result of cost-cutting job losses. The team of 18 technicians who used to check nearly 80,000 water meters in the northern district every month has been cut in half and given other maintenance tasks. It is rare that any house’s consumption is recorded accurately and they are billed without regard to the amount used.

Lack of maintenance is making interruptions in supply increasingly common, and they take longer to be repaired. Businesses sometimes have to resort to old wells.

“Water is now a luxury in Alto Lima,” according to a worker. A luxury he can no longer afford.

Aguas del Illimani has already been prosecuted for cutting off municipal water authorities for several weeks; that included all the schools. But in general, the supply is cut with impunity.

Some try to blame the citizens, not the monopolists.

Alvaro Larrea Alarcon, an engineer with the National Regional Development Fund, says the concession could be profitable if the population changed its habits and consumed more. “The population has to be taught that it must get used to paying water bills. They grow up without water and use public facilities or the river. They are used to not having water in the home. It’s a question of culture. They have to be taught to take a bath, to water their plants, wash their cars.”

Why do the people put up with such lack of consideration?

Cochabamba in Bolivia is the only town where the local people, together with peasants from the surrounding ­area, have found the strength and resources to respond and reverse the privatization of the water supply. But then the Aguas del Tunari group (controlled by the U.S. multinational Bechtel), which was trying to get a foothold there, did not put as much energy into “public relations” and lobbying as the French groups did.

We live in a disguised dictatorship

­by Marvin Ramírez

Marvin J. RamirezMarvin J. Ramírez

Had not been because of the wonderful things the internet provides us all in terms of information, we would continue being ignorant, since colleges and universities – I have come to discover – do not tell us the real history and facts.

The mindfully.org, an internet website, opens it page with a provocative headline: “FEMA concentration camps: locations and Executive Orders.”

Wow! I never imagined I would be reading and writing about these issues, about the United States of America! These would fit instead to the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany.

It may be easy to find fault with the premise of this article, starts the article, but you may even know of numerous sites that are not used as camps. But the plain fact remains that the U.S.A. maintains illegal prisons around the world. It remains a secret only to imbeciles in the U.S. The rest of the world knows for certain that it’s quite real.

The way things are going in the US, it’s not a matter of if, but when these underused facilities come online to serve the master — otherwise known as Moloch. Most likely, not many Japanese in the US doubt the premise of this article. And for Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, the article must hit a hard note, explains the article.

So, what makes you think it can’t happen here?

El Reportero has been writing about these touchy issues in an effort to inform the public with information that exists behind the stage or behind the curtain, that will affect everyone of us in the event the elite bankers decide to send the troops after the citizenry, who are expected take on to the streets in protest for the government abuse and tyranny.

This is expected as the government continues to draft legislations to disarm the population – a clear violation of the United States Constitution’s Second Amendment – nationalize the banking industry, and intervene on people rights in every area of our lives.

Halliburton subsidiary received a $385-million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide “temporary detention and processing capabilities.”

The contract — announced Jan. 24, 2006 by the engineering and construction firm KBR — calls for preparing for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies, such as “a natural disaster.” The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when, wrote Peter Dale Scott in a commentary for Pacific News Service.

The powers granted to the President until now, makes him practically a dictator. His order is by decree, and called Executive Orders.

Following you will read the orders by which the American people will be deprived from those inalienable rights afforded by the framers of the Constitution. Here are some of the Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

  • ­EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
  • EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

We must pray the Creator to help us defeat the evil that is coming up us.

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Welcome to our Marvin J. Ramirez website! We are an innovative newspaper located in the heart of San Francisco. With a relentless passion for telling powerful stories, we inform our community with truthful news, insightful analysis, and compelling reporting.

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