News

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 presidencial 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.

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.

sent by an anonymous author

A few days ago, Elena D’Angelo de Marcone, an Argentine lady of 86
years of age appeared in a public hearing of the Parliament of Tucumán
to defend “with tooth and nail the family “  before the attempts to
legalize the “marriage” between people of the same sex. 

Doña Elena affected to the legislators and all present ones during one
of the so many public hearings summoned by the Commission  of General
Legislation of the Senate of the Nation, in order to know the opinion
and desire the town of the provinces on controversial project of law
that tomorrow will be put under voting.

“X X” for them? And that corresponding the psychological characteristics will accompany them until death? , it questioned.

Doña Elena considered that to give the force of law to the unions
between people the same sex, “is like using a pair of shoes, both for
the left foot, or both for the right foot. Is that how they spend their
time? 

Are the problems of those minorities are going to condition and change
the healthy customs of the Argentine family? “It is possible that we
are prepared to go to jail to deny to us to resign to our more
expensive moral values? Or is that the laws are turned to so immense
and absolute power that they make ever more useless the use of free
will? You, men and women, Senators of the Nation are going away to make
people in charge of so large felony?  Although in the House of
Representatives this law already has been approved, you can still
reflect and change history “, she reminded.  

“Be that as it may,  they know one thing: the Argentine family
lives,barks, and annoys in the belly of each generous and sacrificed
mother, and in the heart of each male and courageous man who fights for
life and to bring children into the world, or better, into the Mother
country. This Mother country ours needs people and not of aborted
children, nor drugs and ways to prevent births and less of these
sterile pairs that form a culture of death! “, it added. See the
problem of  gay marriage in the U.S.A.. http://www.gloria.tv/
?media=79991  

by Jorge Mujica Mexico del Norte

Some news this week… the Senate could hold hearings on the reform. Even
more news, the hearings would be led, if they happen to happen, by four
Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell along Jon  Kyl plus
John McCain andLindsey Graham.

The last ones are, supposedly, about the only Republican Senators who
support immigration reform… or at least used to… But the reform these
Senators want hearings on is not immigration reform but the 14th
Amendment reform. Our readers may wonder why Latinos should care if
four Republican Senators discuss the U.S. Constitution, so let’s make
it clear: if they change it, they could take away the citizenship
status to millions of Latino and other immigrant’s kids.   

The 14th Amendment is the one granting citizenship to all persons born
between the line where Mexico ends and the line where Canada starts,
plus a bunch of islands all over the planet and Alaska. It was approved
on July 9, 1868, and it starts with  “All persons born or naturalized
in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It
was approved to give citizenship to the sons and daughters of former
slaves after the Civil War.  

These Republicans say they wan to change it because, Lindsey Graham
told Fox News “the birthright citizenship is a magnet for illegal
aliens to the United States.” Graham added that it would be a move to
stop something he calls “birth tourism, in which travel firms in China
sell travel packages designed to allow pregnant women to give birth in
the US.”. I can see the danger now! Can you imagine 100 million Chinese
women coming to give birth in the U.S. each year? By 2015 we would be
the Chinese United States!   

In The Hands Of The Enemy

The argument is idiotic and the target here is not Chinese, but the
sons and daughters of undocumented immigrants. Besides idiotic, it is
not new. Back in 2008 the Republican Party discussed an amendment to
the 14th  

Amendment that read something like “To be a U.S. citizen you would need
that at least one of your parents be a citizen of the United States and
that neither of both have violated the immigration laws”. It was not
approved under the consideration that it could harm John McCain’s
presidential campaign…  

To change the Constitution you need two thirds of the vote in each
chamber in Congress, plus the approval of 34 state legislatures,
meaning this amendment to the amendment is going nowhere except maybe
…China or further away… As Republican delegates realized two years ago
at their National Convention, taking away their citizenship to children
of the undocumented would only increase the numbers of those in need of
legalization to around 16 million instead of 12.  

The question is, then, why proposing the amendment now? The answer is simple: elections.

It seems Republicans already decided Latino voters don’t decide
anything. In other words, instead of trying to win back the Latino vote
they have lost because of their anti immigrant politics, they are
trying to win the white vote they lost in 2008 to Barack Obama. Wise
strategy… in the short term, but Latinos will have more and more votes
in a few years, so it is a short-sighted strategy for the long term.
But obviously the issue here is not pregnant Chinese tourist and
neither undocumented parents, but the U.S. perception of immigrants and
how far to the right they can take the discussion of the immigration
reform.    

Democrats responded via Congressman José Serrano, who stated in an
editorial that “the Constitution should never be changed for the
worst”, and call the attention to the fact that the Republicans’
amendment would not affect undocumented immigrants but their U.S.
citizen children, and that would be unconstitutional.  

The only answer from the Obama administration came via Janet
Napolitano, head of Homeland Security and therefore highest immigration
authority, who declared herself “surprised” by the Republicans “they
presented this idea instead of discussing immigration reform”. The bad
part of her statement is that she added, “Immigration reform depends on
the cooperation of the Republican Party. Democrats can’t do it
themselves”.  

To me that sounds like “immigration reform depends on the enemies of
immigration reform”. It is to surrender. If Republicans do not deserve
a single Latino vote, it looks to me like Democrats do not deserve a
single one either…

México del Norte can read at: http: //mx.groups.yahoo.com/ group/mexicodelnorte/

by Jenny Thompson The Health Science Institute

A California researcher has called on the federal government to “step
back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets.”

Right. I can see it now: Federal HFCS agents roaming grocery store
aisles and hanging out beside soda machines where they’ll advise 
consumers to step back on their HFCS consumption.

Or maybe this researcher– Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA–has something else
in mind. Maybe he’s aware that the U.S. government has generously
contributed to the HFCS boom by imposing high tariffs to discourage
sugar imports, while subsidizing farms thatproduce the raw material
for  HFCS: corn.

In any case, Dr. Heaney just wants to help cancer patients  live longer.

Can’t argue with that.

Cancer 101

When Dr. Heaney and his UCLA team recently exposed pancreatic cancer
cells to fructose, they found that fructose prompted a dramatic growth
of the malignant cells.

In the journal Cancer Research, they wrote, “These findings show that
cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase
proliferation.” And even worse, they believe that fructose may have
this effect on other types of cancer cells–not just pancreatic cancer. 

Of course, the Corn Refiners Association immediately responded with a
press release, calling the conclusions of the UCLA study “premature.”

Fair enough. After all, it was a lab study, and what happens in a Petri
dish can be very different from what happens in the body.

Still, I’d be willing to bet a paycheck that further research will very
likely show that fructose does play some sort of role in cancer cell
proliferation. For two reasons: 1) HFCS intake has already been linked
with increased pancreatic cancer risk, and 2) It’s all about sugar,
which is 50% fructose and 50 percent glucose. 

About 80 years ago, German Otto Warburg, Ph.D., showed that glucose is
a potent fuel for cancer cell growth. And this wasn’t some harebrained
theory. It was proof. And it won Dr. Warburg a Nobel Prize.

For decades, the medical community has been aware of the danger for
cancer patients who eat foods with added sugars and refined simple
carbohydrates. So for every cancer patient, this advice should be
considered Cancer 101: Wean yourself from these foods, and then
restrict consumption as much as possible. 

As for high fructose corn syrup, if you have cancer, you can’t go wrong
to avoid it completely. And if you don’t have cancer… well, you can’t
go wrong to avoid it completely!

But whatever you do, don’t wait for the government to dream up some
bureaucratic Rube Goldberg program designed to step back our HFCS
intake.

­

by Jonathan Farrell

The gloomy forecast reaching the media lately is that by the year 2037 Social Security will run out of money. Yet groups like the Gray Panthers who made protest outside the New Federal Building on Mission at 7th Street in San Francisco on Aug. 14th say Social Security is not going broke.

by Michael Marcell & Luis Carlos López

A study released Aug. 11 by the Pew Hispanic Research Center shows that
340,000 of 4.3 million (8 percent) babies born in the United States in
2008 were the progeny of undocumented immigrants — with most coming
from Hispanic parents.  

Pew found that nearly four in five of the 5.1 million children under
age 18 of unauthorized immigrants were born in this country and
therefore U.S. citizens.

“Overall, Hispanics who live in the U.S. have higher rates of fertility
than do whites, blacks or Asians,” the Pew said. “Among Hispanics, the
foreign born have higher rates of fertility than the native born.”  

The study comes as some senators are making strides on Capitol Hill to redefine what it takes to be a U.S. citizen.

Currently, section one of the 14th amendment of the Constitution
states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside.”  

Some have proposed changing the amendment to exclude U.S.-born children
of undocumented immigrants from being considered citizens to help
resolve the illegal immigration problem. Senators Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) held
hearings Aug. 3 to discuss such possibility.   

Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said addressing the issue of birthright
citizenship would move comprehensive immigration reform legislation
forward because it would be one method of preventing more undocumented
immigrants from entering this country.  

President Reagan addressed the first wave in 1986 when he signed an
amnesty bill that provided a path to citizenship for 2.7 million
persons.

Bishop told Hispanic Link Aug. 6, “We are now in the second wave of
illegal immigrants…Senator Graham is committed that we don’t have a
third wave.

Bishop stressed Graham’s position that changes should not jeopardize
the status of people who have already been granted birthright
citizenship .

Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, said in a
statement that Graham and McCain, once leading Senate advocates for
comprehensive immigration reform, in joining with Senate Republican
leaders Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl in support of repealing birthright
citizenship, have led her to “conclude that, with some exceptions, the
Grand Old Party has either taken leave of its senses or of its
principles.”  

Elizabeth Weidruff, chief counsel for the ConstitutionalAccountability
Center, said, “The text and history of the 14th Amendment clearly
include children of non-citizens or undocumented immigrants in the
guarantee of citizenship for those born on U.S. soil.”

Others are echoing Graham’s call to action and have a different interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration
Reform, said that being a U.S. citizen implies a deeper connection to
one’s nation that someone who comes to the U.S. for opportunistic
reasons cannot understand.

“The amendment says ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof’, are citizens,” He said. “The issue is:
what does it mean to be in the jurisdiction of the United States? Does
it mean, simply, that you’re here and you have to stop at the red
lights like the rest of us, or is their some deeper meaning to the
concept of what it means to be in the jurisdiction of the United
States?” Hispanic Link.   

by the El Reportero’s news services

This week (August 25) marks the start of four weeks of campaigning for
the September 26 legislative elections in which the opposition, which
boycotted the last election in 2005, is hoping to secure up to 40
percent of the 165 seats up for grabs in the unicameral National
Assembly (AN).   

As ever, all elections in Venezuela effectively become a referendum on
President Hugo Chávez himself. The ruling Partido Socialista Unido de
Venezuela (PSUV), which is not particularly popular as a party, is
already calling on its supporters to ‘vote for Chávez’, despite the
fact that he is not on the ballot - and despite the fact that pollsters
have identified mounting voter fatigue with the president.  

Colombia’s Farc call for Unasur summit A

Colombian guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia (Farc), released a public letter addressed to the Union of
South American Nations (Unasur) in which it offered to “put forward our
vision of the Colombian conflict in a Unasur summit”. The letter is the
second call from the group for a dialogue since President Juan Manuel
Santos was elected on June 20. On July 30, ‘Alfonso Cano’ (Guillermo
Sáenz), the leader of the Farc, released a video message in which he
asked Santos to “talk”. The administration, however, has refused to
hold a dialogue with the guerrillas as long as the latter continue to
refuse the government’s three preconditions to hold talks: the release
of all hostages; the release of all child soldiers; and an end to the
use of land mines.   

Peru leader charged with rebellion eyes politics

A Peruvian protest leader facing rebellion charges stemming from deadly
clashes last year announced Wednesday that Amazon Indians are looking
to form their own political party, and he may be its presidential
candidate.  

Aidesep, an umbrella group representing 65 tribes across the Peruvian
jungle, is collecting signatures to register the new party and could
pick a candidate as soon as September for next April’s election, said
Alberto Pizango, a Shawi Indian who is the group’s president.

“If the people propose that I be the political figure who can carry
forward their grand ideals, their grand proposals, their grand
projects, I will accept” the nomination,” Pizango said.   

The new party is to be known as the Alternative Alliance of Humanity. It also intends to field congressional candidates.

Farc bomb attack and court ruling on US base accord could boost Santos

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos announced during his
investiture on August 7 that the successes of his predecessor Alvaro
Uribe (2002-2010) on the security front had left him free to
concentrate on economic issues and social justice. Within the first 10
days of his term, Santos was given two sharp reminders that he will not
be able to switch off on security at  Any point.

Firstly the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) sent a
stark warning to Santos that it remains a force by detonating a car
bomb in central Bogotá. Then, the constitutional court (CC) ruled that
the October 2009 Defense Cooperation Agreement between Colombia and the
US was unconstitutional. Both developments could actually have tangible
benefits for Santos. (Latin News and Associated Press contributed to
this report.)