por David Bacon

San Jose city workers and union members rallied to protest a proposal to take away bargaining rights from the union.  (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)

Members of the city workers union in San Jose, the capital of California’s Silicon Valley, marched Tuesday to City Hall and packed the council chambers, in a growing confrontation with Mayor Chuck Reed over proposed budget cuts. Yolanda Cruz, president of Local 101 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, spoke to a rally of hundreds of union members in a church behind City Hall. The union will fight, she said, not just the imposition of drastic service reductions, but also the Mayor’s threat to go to the ballot with a measure to require an election every time city workers want a raise or benefit increase.

“We will not be forced to pay for the city’s economic crisis with our bargaining rights,” she declared. Cruz was supported by the union’s national secretary treasurer, Lee Saunders. He compared Reed to Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who rammed a measure through that state’s legislature drastically curtailing public worker union rights. “They think they can bring Wisconsin to California,” Saunders thundered to an angry crowd. “That’s just sonot going to happen.” The church exploded in cheers.

Later union members marched to City Hall for a second rally with community supporters. Cindy Chávez, former city council member and now executive secretary of the South Bay Labor Council, told union members that the rest of Silicon Valley’s labor movement would give them the same support public workers in Wisconsin received from unions throughout the country.

Local labor and community groups have backed Local 101 in previous conflicts with the city. In 1981 the union struck for nine days, and won the nation’s first contract provision guaranteeing women equal pay for work of comparable worth. At the time, women earned 18 percent less than men in sex-segregated jobs.

The strike challenged sex discrimination that was pervasive throughout city employment. But even more, it was an indictment of the low wages and inequality suffered by hundreds of thousands of women who make up the vast majority on the production lines in Silicon Valley’s huge electronics plants. That fight earned the union respect from working women in the valley that has lasted 30 years.

­Mayor Chuck Reed intends to put that loyalty to the test. San Jose has a projected budget deficit of $115 million for next year. He has announced drastic service cuts, including the elimination of over 400 city jobs. Citing a “fiscal emergency,” his threatened initiative on the November ballot would raise the city’s retirement age and cut the pensions of retirees.

by Dave Gabriele

Does using a cell phone have an effect on the brain? According to a 2011 study titled “Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism,” the answer is absolutely. The study, headed by Nora D. Volkow, M.D. and conducted by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, examined the effect of cell phone use on the brain by utilizing positron emission tomography (PET) on 47 participants.

Cell phones were placed against the ears of the participants for a period of 50 minutes while PET scans measured brain activity.

Two scans were performed: one while the phones were off and a second time while the phones were on. The PET scans were used to detect the effect of the cell phone radiation on the brain’s glucose metabolism. The glucose metabolism affects every area of the brain and is associated with cellular and behavioral brain function. It plays a role in memory and cognition, as well as diseases such as schizophrenia, stroke and diabetes.

The study found that the cell phone radiation did not change the entire brain’s function, but significantly affected the regions closest to the antennae. The orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole, nearest to the ear, had a 7 percent increase in glucose metabolic activity.

“These results provide evidence that the human brain is sensitive to the effects of RF-EMFs from acute cell phone exposures,” the paper concluded. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

In an associated editorial, Henry Lai, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Lennart Hardell, M.D., Ph.D., of University Hospital, Orebro, Sweden, question whether the results of the study suggest the possibility of other effects on brain function, such as neurotransmitter and neurochemical activities. “If so, this might have effects on other organs, leading to unwanted physiological responses.

­Further studies on biomarkers of functional brain changes from exposure to radiofrequency radiation are definitely warranted.” Nora D. Volkow, M.D., has been the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health since 2003. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.

S O U R C E S :

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/8/82 8h t t p : / / w w w . s c ie n c e d a i l y. c o m / r e l e a ses/2011/02/110222162308.h t m

Dave Gabriele, D.Ac, BA, is a registered acupuncturist and health researcher helping people in and around the Greater Toronto Area. He has been a teacher of Chinese martial arts since 1997, including the arts of Taiji and Qigong.

In 2006, he received a BA from York University followed by a diploma in TCM Acupuncture from TSTCM in 2010. He is currently studying Chinese Herbology and Western Nutrition with the goal of becoming a doctor of Chinese Medicine.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Álvaro Colom

On May 16, President Alvaro Colom declared a state of siege in the northern department of Petén, following a massacre there three days earlier, carried out by presumed members of the Mexican drug gang, Los Zetas, who killed 27 peasant workers, decapitating 25 of them.

Though Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in the region, the massacre is one of the most brutal since the end of the country’s 30 year civil war (1960-96). It underlines the growing problem posed to the country by the presence of Mexican drug gangs, which have stepped up their actions in response to antigang measures implemented in their own home territory.

Cuba’s (r)evolution

On 19 April President Raúl Castro closed the ruling Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC)’s sixth party congress with a defiant vow “to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of capitalism”.

It’s unclear what the 79-year old Castro meant by “capitalism”, but it’s certainly the case that the ruling gerontocracy that was (re-) confi rmed in the leadership may well struggle with the planned transition to a mixed system, whereby a centrally planned economy run by a one party state is expected to co-exist in harmony with a limited private  entrepreneurial sector forthe fi rst time in fi ve decades.

Correa’s “yes” will prove a Pyrrhic victory

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa faces a real test of his mettle now after he failed to get the resounding victory he had anticipated in a national referendum on 7 May.

The result, far from reasserting his authority after last September’s police uprising, will have revitalised the beleaguered opposition, especially indigenous groups and leftist dissidents.

It is important to note, however, that the disparate opposition lacks a clear fi gurehead; that Correa remains by far the most popular politician in Ecuador; and that the split vote refl ects a desire to constrain Correa rather than to replace him.

Return of Manuel Zelaya to Honduras announced

F o r m e r H o n d u r a n President Manuel Zelaya will return to Honduras between May 27 and 29, his legal advisor, Rasel Tome, said Tuesday. ­Zelaya will arrive at Toncontin international airport in the capital, where thousands of Hondurans will gather to welcome him, organized by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), Tome said. Zelaya is returning to Honduras a few days before the 41st Assembly of the Organization of American States in El Salvador, which begins June 5.

While two trials on corruption charges against Zelaya were annulled, the FNRP insists that the government is responsible for his personal safety once in Honduras, where his wife recently denounced a conspiracy to murder him.

Zelaya has been living in the Dominican Republic for more than a year after Honduran soldiers kidnapped him and sent him to Costa Rica on June 28, 2009. Honduras was expelled from the OAS, which set the safe return of the Honduran president as a condition for re-entry.

by Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com

T h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.

President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat. But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like Eliot Spitzer, Strass- Kahn has been deleted from the power ranks. Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greeddriven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.

P e r h a p s t h e m o s t dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn’s book is that he was far ahead of America’s French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multimillionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

As Henry Kissinger said, “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” In politics, sex is handed out as favors and payoffs, and it is used as a honey trap. Some Americans will remember that Senator Packwood’s long career (1969-1995) was destroyed by a female lobbyist, suspected, according to rumors, of sexual conquests of Senators, who charged that Packwood propositioned her in his office. Perhaps what inspired the charge was that Packwood was in the way of her employer’s legislative agenda. Even those who exercise care can be framed by allegations of an event to which there are no witnesses. On May 16 the British Daily Mail reported that prior to Strauss-Kahn’s fateful departure for New York, the French newspaper, Liberation, published comments he made while discussing his plans to challenge Sarkozy for the presidency of France. Strauss-Kahn said that as he was the clear favorite to beat Sarkozy, he would be subjected to a smear campaign by Sarkozy and his interior minister, Glaude Gueant. Strauss-Kahn predicted that a woman would be offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros (more than $1,000,000) to make up a story that he raped her. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387625/IMF-chief-Dominique-Strauss-Kahnfeared-political-enemy-paywoman-allege-rape.html

The Daily Mail reports that Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions are supported by the fact that the first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party – who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened. Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a ‘friend’ working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened. The first person to re-tweet Mr Pinet was Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor who had previously publicized details of multi-millionaire Strauss-Kahn’s luxurious lifestyle in a bid to dent his left wing credentials.

Strauss-Kahn could just as easily been set up by rivals inside the IMF, as well as by rivals within the French political establishment.

Michelle Sabban, a senior councillor for the greater Paris region and a Strauss-Kahn loyalist said: ‘I am convinced it is an international conspiracy.’

She added: ‘It’s the IMF they wanted to decapitate, not so much the Socialist primary candidate. ‘It’s not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That’s how they got him.’ Even some of Strauss-Kahn’s rivals said they could not believe the news. ‘It is totally hallucinatory,’ said centrist Dominique Paille.

‘If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life. I hope that everyone respects the presumption of  innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.’ And Henri de Raincourt, minister for overseas co-operation in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, added: ‘We cannot rule out the thought of a trap.’

Michelle Sabban is on to something when she says the IMF was the target. Strauss-Kahn is the first IMF director who is not lined up on the side of the rich against the poor. Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions were of Sarkozy, but Wall Street and the US government also had strong reasons to eliminate him. Wall Street is terrified by the prospect of regulation, and Washington was embarrassed by the recent IMF report that China’s economy would surpass the US economy within fi ve years. An international conspiracy is not out of the question.

Indeed, the plot is unfolding as a conspiracy. Authorities have produced a French woman who claims she was a near rape victim of Strauss-Kahn a decade ago. It would be interesting to know whether this allegation is the result of a threat or a bribe. As in the case of Julian Assange, there are now two women to accuse Strauss-Kahn. Once the prosecutors get the odds of two females against one male, they win in the media.

It has not been revealed how the authorities knew Strauss-Kahn was on a fl ight to France. However, by arresting him aboard his scheduled flight just as it was to depart, the authorities created the image of a man fl eeing from a crime.

The way Amerikan justice (sic) works is that prosecutors in about 96 percent of the cases get a plea bargain. US prosecutors are permitted by judges and the public to pay for testimony against the defendant and to put sufficient pressure on innocent defendants to coerce them into making a guilty plea in exchange for lesser charges and a lighter sentence. Unless the hotel maid has a spell of bad conscience and admits she was paid to lie, or gets cold feet about perjuring herself, Strauss-Kahn is likely to fi nd that Amerikan criminal justice (sic) is organized to produce conviction regardless of innocence or guilt.

­On May 16, the day folpero lowing Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the US Supreme Court threw its weight behind the Amerikan police state by destroying the remains of the Fourth Amendment with an 8-1 ruling that, the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, Amerika’s police do not need warrants to invade homes and search persons. This ruling is more evidence that every American is regarded as a potential enemy of the state, not only by Airport Security but also by the high muckety- mucks in Washington.

The conservatives’ “war on crime” has created a police state, and conservatives, who originally stood for limited government and civil liberty, are euphoric over the expanded and unaccountable powers that a conservative Supreme Court has handed to the police.

On the same day the federal government reached the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which forced the Treasury to “borrow” money from federal employee pensions in order to continue funding Amerika’s illegal wars and crimes against humanity. The breached debt ceiling serves as an appropriate marker for a country that has squandered its constitutional heritage and has arrived at moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy.

— Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.