por David Bacon­­

New America Media

Residents of Lanare, California, have discovered dangerous concentrations of Arsenic in their water supply­. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)

­NOTA DEL EDITOR: Here we present the second of a two-part series about contaminated water in the community of Lanare.

— In 2002 Lanare residents got a $1.3 million grant from the Federal government to build a plant to remove the arsenic. But after it went on line five years later, it only ran for six months. After that, the community’s residents no longer had enough money for the chemicals and power to keep it going. Even shut down, however, they still have to come up with $54 every month to cover that loan, paying basically for water they can’t drink. Inside every home there’s a faucet with water you might risk using to wash dishes or clothes. But when Angel Hernandez or Isabel Solorio hold up a glass to the light, the water is cloudy. So in the corner are the stacks of water bottles for drinking and cooking.

In the summer heat, on the border between Fresno and Merced Counties, the temperature rises to over 100 degrees. Water is no luxury. It sustains life. Everyone has to drink enough to replace what their bodies lose, even those like Mary Broad, who sits in the shade of her porch most days.

Dozens of similar small communities, or colonias, spread out across the state have similar water problems. Activists in 17 unincorporated areas of next-door Tulare County formed AGUA, La Asociacion de la Gente Unida por el Agua (The Association of People United for Water).

In Lanare, Hernandez, Solorio and several other residents, including Juventino Gonzalez and Jesus Medina, organized a group to press the state to take responsibility for providing water, Comunidad Unida en Lanare (Community United in Lanare). As a first step, they asked the state to survey Lanare and surrounding communities, acknowledge that such a need exists, and make a plan to meet it. California Rural Legal Assistance filed suit on their behalf last year, saying California’s Safe Drinking Water Act requires the state to formulate a Safe Drinking Water Plan.

The state hasn’t come up with a Safe Drinking Water Plan since 1993. CRLA attorneys point out that if authorities had followed the law and come up with one,, it would have been obvious that this poor small community could not have afforded to operate an expensive arsenic treatment plant. Letting the state off the hook, however, a local Fresno County judge ruled that California’s budget crisis trumped its obligation to create such a plan.

The state budget crisis, however, hasn’t stopped nearby Riverdale, only four miles from Lanare, from proposing another arsenic removal plant. The Riverdale Public Utilities District hopes to use funds from Proposition 84, a $5.4 billion water bond. It was just awarded $500,000 for a preliminary study for a project that would break ground next year.

CRLA lawyer Phoebe Seaton wrote to the state health department, saying that, “Given finite and scarce state and federal resources, the need for a safe, reliable and affordable source of water for both Lanare and Riverdale, and the Department’s statutory duty to explore consolidation of water systems, the Department must consider the consolidation of Lanare’s and Riverdale’s water systems.”

Public health officials, however, say connecting Lanare to that Riverdale plant, or even expanding Lanare’s own idle plant, would be too expensive. The state has hired a private contractor to operate the Lanare plant, but the operation is in receivership, and it hasn’t produced water anyone can drink for four years. When the Public Health Department wouldn’t say whether Lanare was included in its plan, Comunidad Unida began working with Fresno’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which is charged with avoiding expensive duplication of municipal and county services, including water.

In a report due to be released on August 24, Executive Officer Jeff Witts notes that “residents are currently relying on failing septic tanks­for wastewater services, there are no streetlights, sidewalks, and there is no adequate storm water drainage. The levels of poverty in Lanare make it that much more important that residents have access to an affordable source of drinking water.” The LAFCo report concludes that “A shared arsenic treatment facility that serves both Riverdale and Lanare would provide operational efficiencies and economies of scale that would improve service, water quality and affordable access to clean water for both communities.” It even advocates a system to allow Lanare residents to abandon their failing septic tanks, and connect to the sewers of Riverdale.

Meanwhile, however, the water in Lanare still looks cloudy, and residents fear drinking it. And they still pay $54 a month for it. “The government has forgotten us – they live outside our reality,” says Juventino Gonzalez, who moved to Lanare 41 years ago, when it only had 12 families. “All that time we’ve been isolated from the larger communities around us, while our neighborhood gets filled with drugs and trash. Water’s just one problem, but if we can find an answer to it, maybe we can solve others too. We’re willing to try almost anything.”

­by UC Davis Health System News

UC Davis researchers find adipose cells that cause diseases in patients with metabolic syndrome.

UC Davis Health System researchers have discovered biological indicators that explain why some obese people develop chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases, and others don’t. Researchers adopted a fresh focus to specifically see the body fat of individuals with metabolic syndrome, which is a disease characterized by high levels of blood pressure, high levels of glucose on an empty stomach, excessive abdominal fat and abnormal levels of cholesterol.

They found out that adipose cells release biological markers associated to a resistance to insulin and chronic inflammation, conditions that generally cause diabetes or heart diseases.

“Our study shows that obesity is not always the same and that certain fat can actually be toxic”, said Ishwarlal Jialal, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism professor and main author of an article entitled “Deregulation of Adipose Tissue in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome”, published today on Internet in the Clinic Endocrinology and Metabolism Magazine.

“We have proven that the fat in individuals with metabolic syndrome is more than what can be explained regarding obesity. It indicates us that the metabolic syndrome is a high risk condition for obese individuals”. Although previous studies using circulating blood discovered some of these biological indicators in individuals with metabolic syndrome, the current study is the first in identifying fat as a contributor for these markers.

“This clearly shows that the metabolic syndrome is of high risk for obesity and needs to be treated seriously”, said Jialal, who runs the Laboratory of UC Davis for Metabolic Research and Arteriosclerosis. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 35 per cent of adult Americans have metabolic syndrome, and its preponderance is increasing even in children and young adults globally.

The metabolic syndrome doubles the risk of a person’s likelihood of developing heart diseases -which can lead to heart attacks and strokes — and represents five times higher risk to develop diabetes. “It is a pest of these times”, said Jialal, who is also chief editor of the Metabolic Syndrome and Related Diseases magazine.

In the present study biopsies have been conducted to extract the subcutaneous adipose tissue, which makes up about 80 per cent of the body fat, from 65 patients’ buttocks: 39 recently diagnosed with metabolic syndrome and 26 obese. Researchers also carried out standard measurements such as blood pressure and level of glucose in an empty stomach, waist circumference and body mass index (BMI). Glucose measurements were used to estimate insulin resistance, and the waist measures such as the BMI, were used in the statistical analysis to compare the subjects of the study with their peers in the control group.

Then Jialal and his assistants measured 11 biological markers for diabetes and heart disease, and confronted the number of macrophage in the adipose tissue. These macrophages create a crown-shaped structure around the adipose cells that have surpassed their blood provision and have died. The presence of macrophages -cells of the immunologic system that swallow and destroy the cell residue –indicates the type of inflammatory response involved in the heart diseases.

Last year, Jialal published a study with the same 65 patients, indicating that they had dysfunctional endothelial parent cells (CPEs) and less endothelial parent cells than the subjects in the control group.

Eventually these cells make up the coating of the blood vessels and are used to measure heart health. Like in the current study, this abnormality can’t be explained simply by obesity.

The metabolic syndrome can be reversed with diet and physical activity to lose weight, although according to Jialal, other types of treatment might also be necessary. “I have been doing this for 34 years. It is difficult to achieve that people maintain therapeutic changes in their lifestyles”, said Jialal.

“Once people have diabetes or heart diseases, it is too late and much more expensive due to the complications that arise. Metabolic syndrome is the precedent. It is there where we should intervene”, said Jialal.

For more information, visit healthsystem.ucdavis.edu.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

The biggest news event in Latin America over the last week, at least in the judgement of the world’s media, was an announcement by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez that he plans to repatriate the country’s gold reserves forthwith.

The biggest news event in the world over the last week is the imminent fall of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Is the juxtaposition of the two developments apposite?

Cuban assets abroad to be targeted

On Aug. 24 Miami-Dade Circuit court judge Beatrice Butchko, awarded $2.8bn in compensation to Gustavo Villoldo in relation to the damages caused by the Cuban state for his father’s “forced suicide” as a result of the 1959 Revolution. The award beat the world record in compensation.

In his remarks before judge Butchko, Villoldo said he was tortured for five days and that he had been the target of murder attempts several times after he left Cuba.

Villoldo added that his father committed suicide as a consequence of the many threats his family received –by the way, he was a shareholder in society with dictator Fulgencio Batista of a vehicle manufacturing company.

According the Cuban News Agency, the “candid” judge forgot that the plaintiff, 72, joined the American army in the 1960s, used to be a CIA employee, and brags about having helped in capturing Argentinean-born guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia, in 1968.

Russia says no to Iran-Venezuela missile deal

On Aug. 24 the Russian news agency Interfax cited a source closely involved in the proposed S-300 surface-to-air missile purchase by Iran, through Venezuela, as saying that Russia would not agree to the deal under any circumstance.

Iran expects international courts to authorize the supply of Russia’s S-300 air defense systems to Iran. The Russian authorities have refused to sell the surface-to-air missile to the Asian Islamic republic following international sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

“From a legal standpoint, we consider that the supply of S-300 does not fall under the UN resolution,” Sajjadi said Wednesday at a press conference in Moscow, as reported by Russian agencies.

­Counter-cyclical policies

The region’s two big economies, Brazil and Mexico, are bracing themselves for another bout of international economic turbulence. Mexico argues that its healthy reserves, its industrial competitiveness and low foreign debt make it armor-plated against any crisis. We’re not so sure and prefer Brazil’s more dynamic and broader defensive economic strategy.

FROM THE EDITOR: Dear readers of El Reportero, the bilingual newspaper.

As you might have been witnessing lately, our paper has gone beyond from previously covering stories that start with Latinos do this, Latino do that, Latinos go on strike… etc., to running stories that cover issues with important national and international tilt, events that are significantly shaping the economic, social and political life of our country and most countries in the world.

We have started engaging in the denunciation of government corruption, which in alliance with the international banking elite and the mainstream media – as we know it –is on the works of creating a New World Government, with great implication to our God-given liberties.

With this in mind, I am happy to introduce the following story of a tiny country, that even though is so small, their revolution was able to shake up the whole European Union, and has made an ongoing impact in the new Spanish Revolution 2011, which by design, has made little impact in the mainstream media.

by Deena Stryker

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many UK and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalised, while the Kroner lost 85 percent of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents.

The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North.

But if we had accepted, we would have becomethe Haiti of the North.”

In the March 2010 referendum, 93 percent voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn’t stop there: they decided to draft a new  ­constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money.

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging 3711to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.