#deputy ibarra
Text
Mga Ibong Mandaragit (The Preying Birds) by Amado V. Hernandez tr by Danton Remoto | Mando Plaridel is the lead character in this novel of social consciousness. His character combines the qualities found in Simoun and Ibarra, the two lead characters in national hero Jose Rizal’s novels: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Ibarra is the passive character in Rizal’s novels, while Simoun is the active propagandist who wakes up the people from their centuries-old sleep under Spanish colonialism.
After the war, society begins to know him as the brave editor of the Kampilan newspaper. He later becomes involved in the problems of the farmers with the abusive Monteros. Told from an omniscient point of view, Hernandez is able to enter the consciousness of the wealthy characters. He shows how the ruling classes-the politicians, landowners, judges, deputies and bishops-only protect their own interests, that is why they do not want to change the status quo.
Dr Sabio is the progressive president of a university founded by Mando, who used the treasure thrown into the sea at the end of Rizal’s second novel to help improve society. The money is used to fund Freedom University and set up Kampilan, the brave newspaper. The novel points to the cooperative system of land ownership as the way out for the landless poor. It implies that change can only begin when the eyes of society have been finally opened.
22 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Suspicious Death / Homicide The investigation into the death of Cynthia Denise Ibarra – Cabrera continued. On Saturday, March 20, 2021, investigators arrested Edwin Cordova, 28 years old out of Murrieta for murder. This is still an ongoing investigation and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department encourages anyone with information regarding the incident to contact Central Homicide Investigator Jose Vasquez at (760) 393-3529 or (951) 955-2777. On Thursday, March 18, 2021, deputies from the Southwest Station responded to the area of Camino Estribo and Pujol, in reference to a vehicle that had been located off the roadway and down a steep embankment. Deputies were able to make it down the embankment and gain access to the vehicle. Upon doing so, they located a female deceased inside of the vehicle. The female was identified as Cynthia Denise Ibarra-Cabrera, 30 years old out of Murrieta. This is an active investigation and no additional details are currently available. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department encourages anyone with information regarding the incident to contact Investigator Jose Vasquez at (760) 393-3529 or (951) 955-2777. #homicide #police — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3lYv5E5
0 notes
Text
Michigan charities held strong early in the pandemic. Will they persist this winter?
This pandemic has a manner of figuring out these residing on the razor’s fringe of American society, these bearing biggest burdens and those that may want a hand.
Nurses on the entrance strains. Freelance musicians with no earnings from gigs. Undocumented immigrants laid-off from their low-wage farm or kitchen jobs.
That final group doesn’t even have the posh of making use of for presidency help, mentioned Maria Ibarra-Frayre, an immigrant rights activist and deputy director for We The Folks in southeast Michigan.
“Should you’re undocumented, you don’t have entry to unemployment (advantages),” she mentioned. “That little little bit of a security web that was out there for most individuals isn’t there. You’re additionally not capable of apply for reasonably priced care, so you haven’t any medical insurance.”
From nonprofit lobbyists guaranteeing organizations acquired a chunk of $16 billion in federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to particular person GoFundMe campaigns elevating tens of 1000’s in assist for numerous causes, Michiganders united to fill gaps as COVID-19 ravaged the state.
Nevertheless, nonprofit and charitable communities concern that as Michigan stays in an indefinite state of coronavirus emergency, each the drive and monetary means to provide might diminish.
Native undocumented youth, guided by Ann Arbor artist Alejandro Chinchilla, an immigrant from Costa Rica, created this mural at Dos Hermanos Market. 412 W. Michigan Ave. in Ypsilanti, in 2015.Courtesy of WICIR
Charities noticed spring awakening
Ibarra-Frayre emigrated from Mexico to Metro Detroit when she was 9 years outdated. Her private expertise helped foster a profession in immigrant advocacy, and in March she launched an internet fundraiser to offer aid to undocumented residents in Washtenaw County and southeast Michigan.
The preliminary fundraising aim was $50,000. The full haul shortly surpassed that and now stands close to $63,000, which shocked her.
“We had not anticipated that individuals can be so beneficiant,” she mentioned. “There was only a move of people who wished to assist. Notably when the stimulus examine got here out, there have been lots of people telling us ‘we don’t want this cash’ and ended up donating their full $1,200 to us.”
These searching for assist can flip to the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Undocumented candidates are instructed to not use their names nor contact data when reaching out to the GoFundMe or WICIR.
Worldwide, GoFundMe campaigns in march raised $120 million for causes associated to COVID-29, according to a company statement on Sep. 2.
Maverick Levy, a senior at Michigan State, and his youthful brother Jett raised $26,336 to offer every day meals to medical workers at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
They first seen a necessity after speaking to an aunt who works there, and the fundraiser grew because the brothers realized it might additionally profit native eating places.
“We actually tried to kill two birds with one stone,” Maverick Levy mentioned. “Have meals offered to the hospital employees and giving a refund to the enterprise house owners that had been taking a tough hit through the prime time of the pandemic.”
One other profit was launched to help Nashwan Ayram, a 20-year-old son of Iraqi immigrant dad and mom who each died of coronavirus. The GoFundMe to help him and his youthful sisters Nadeen and Nanssy raised greater than $533,000 after protection from the nationwide information shops.
Native charitable efforts launched by people supplemented extra organized efforts all through Michigan. There are greater than 70 neighborhood foundations or United Manner shops that present particular COVID-19 help within the state, according to a study by the Lilly Household College of Philanthropy at Indiana College-Purdue College-Indianapolis.
Organizations such because the Coronary heart of West Michigan United Manner in Grand Rapids have offered $3.1 million in grants to native companies, in accordance with the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF).
These philanthropic efforts in Michigan mirrored a nationwide willingness to assist early within the pandemic. In the course of the preliminary months of COVID-19 outbreak, 56% of U.S. households engaged in charitable exercise in response to the disaster, according to the IUPUI study.
Nevertheless, whereas most households maintained their giving ranges in March and April, extra households decreased their giving than elevated because the disaster continued, the research said.
The size of the pandemic will check ‘donor fatigue’
The early phases of the pandemic for nonprofits was nearly salvaging payrolls, mentioned Kyle Caldwell, president and CEO of CMF. The council lobbied for nonprofits to be included within the small enterprise PPP mortgage program and helped present foundations help in procuring emergency funds, Caldwell mentioned.
“Many nonprofits had modified their enterprise fashions to earned income fashions, which made issues very arduous in a pandemic,” he mentioned. “Folks had been requested to remain dwelling, not essentially to exit and have interaction in fundraiser occasions, lots of which had been the lifeblood of our organizations. For our members, (we helped) present versatile funding, be certain there was public help to fill funding gaps.”
Caldwell credited the work of the Michigan Nonprofit Affiliation for educating lenders of the necessity for nonprofits to be made out there for added loans.
As well as, CMF compiled 50 different “pooled funds” to offer hole cash for foundations throughout the state. The $3.1 million offered by Hearts of West Michigan United Manner is an instance of that, but it surely’s too early to say how a lot CMF has consolidated at this level, Caldwell mentioned.
Even with these efforts, quite a lot of nonprofits have needed to shut down, he mentioned. CMF represents 85% of Michigan foundations, about 300 nonprofit charities.
“The true drawback with the pandemic is that it’s arduous to place folks in positions to assist with out sacrificing their well being,” he mentioned. “Human capital comes with dangers.”
With an approaching Michigan winter making in-person philanthropy outdoor unrealistic, the main focus for nonprofits is stabilizing their funds. That requires nonprofit leaders to seek out new methods to encourage donors, who might expertise “fatigue” because the pandemic drags on, Caldwell mentioned.
“What we noticed within the 2008 monetary downturn is that giving and nonprofits endured,” he mentioned. “We all know that individuals will proceed to provide in the event that they know the affect of their giving. There might be donor fatigue. There might be folks with monetary commitments that lower giving, however we haven’t seen that within the financial downturns of the previous.
“It’s actually going to rely on the size of this pandemic.”
The Accidentals throughout certainly one of their livestreams for Save Our Levels.Courtesy Picture, used with permission.
People could also be left within the snow
One neighborhood that might see its earnings sources stifled throughout coronavirus’ first winter: Musicians.
As bars and out of doors venues had been closed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in March, a overwhelming majority of artists noticed their gigs dry up, mentioned Elle Full of life, government director of the Michigan Music Alliance. The group began the Artist Aid Fund, an online fundraiser that garnered greater than $32,000 for numerous members of the music neighborhood.
That included reserving brokers, sound technicians and artists, Full of life mentioned. The alliance helped each kind of Michigan musician, from rappers in Flint to classical violinists in West Michigan, she mentioned.
The fund was closed after it served greater than 100 requests, she mentioned. It plans to reopen within the fall to organize for a winter with restricted alternatives for indoor performances.
“What folks want to appreciate is that regardless that out of doors actions are extra out there now, it doesn’t imply their financially profitable in any respect,” she mentioned. “For out of doors venues, loads of musicians aren’t snug gathering too many individuals collectively but, and for indoor venues, the restricted capability limits what the musicians can receives a commission (in ticket gross sales).”
The conundrum makes aid funds a needed stop-gap for artists squeezed by the monetary disaster.
“We’re anticipating the identical monetary pressure this fall,” she mentioned.
With charitable organizations on unstable floor heading into winter, it could be as much as particular person good Samaritans to forestall the weak from being left within the snow.
The fundraising pages talked about on this article are listed beneath:
Undocumented immigrants
Beaumont Hospital meals
Michigan Artist Relief Fund
The Ayram family
Learn extra from MLive:
Igloos, heated tents among ideas for Michigan restaurants anxious of looming cold weather
7 factors that will determine how Michigan’s economy fares this fall
Michigan businesses don’t have 20/20 vision on bringing workers back to the office
With 4,000 new businesses per week, Michigan entrepreneurship hits record levels during pandemic
Michigan’s August unemployment rate was 8.7% – the same as July
Northward bound: How the pandemic changed Michigan’s summer tourism patterns
Source link
from WordPress https://ift.tt/3kJXA6B
via IFTTT
0 notes
Text
Coronavirus pandemic exposes inequality in Ecuador’s Guayaquil | Ecuador
When Victoria Sanchez and her mother, Eufemia Nicolaza Sanches Pin, showed up at their local public hospital in Ecuador’s Guayaquil for Sanches Pin’s weekly dialysis treatment last month, hospital staff refused to let the mother, a diabetic, in because she had a runny nose.
Hospital staff worried it could be COVID-19 and said they could not risk exposing other patients in the dialysis ward, Sanchez says they told her.
With no money to go to a private clinic or pay for transportation fees to get to the other two public hospitals at the opposite end of the city, the mother and daughter went home.
A doctor later confirmed the runny nose was caused by a throat infection. Sanchez’s mother quickly grew too weak to move on her own. A week later, she was dead.
Following Sanches Pin’s death, Sanchez called the emergency lines, but no one would come to pick up her mother’s body in their neighbourhood of Monte Sinai, which lies on the northern periphery of the city. The body stayed in the house for four days, while Sanchez ran around the city looking for a coffin and a cemetery she could afford. She eventually asked her church community for help, who built a coffin for free and helped raise funds for a cheaper cemetery plot in the neighbouring district.
“Thank god, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to bury her,” Sanchez says, through heavy tears. “I feel anger and sadness, because maybe if someone would have helped at some point, she would still be with us.”
A woman looks into a coffin holding the dead body of her mother after she died at home during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Guayaquil, Ecuador [File: Vicente Gaibor del Pino/Reuters]
Sanchez is not alone. Ecuador’s coastal city of Guayaquil has been one of the hardest-hit areas of COVID-19 in Latin America. Last month, photos of dead bodies lying in the streets or on park benches flooded social media, showing the collapse of the local healthcare and mortuary systems.
According to official figures, there were 37,355 confirmed coronavirus cases and 3,203 COVID-19-linked deaths in Ecuador as of Monday, but many say the numbers are drastically underreported. Last month, the state registry released data showing that over 10,000 deaths were recorded for the months of March and April, just for the province of Guayas, where Guayaquil is located. Officials say this is nearly 6,000 more deaths than the same time period in the last two years, leading many to conclude that the vast majority are COVID-19 related. They also include deaths that could have been prevented had the healthcare system not collapsed under the weight of COVID-19, yet no data exists to make this differentiation.
Human rights workers say the virus has highlighted the city’s vast social inequalities, and has disproportionately affected working-class families. Many of these families now find themselves jobless, turned away from saturated public hospitals, facing inflated costs of medication and mortuary services, and having to adapt to a quarantine they cannot afford.
Waiting 2-7 days for bodies to be picked up
Billy Navarrete, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Guayaquil, said at the peak of the crisis at the end of March, he received more than 100 messages and phone calls in just one weekend from families reporting that officials had not come to pick up the dead body of their recently deceased family member. These families had been waiting anywhere from two to seven days for these bodies to be picked up. In some cases, they were forced to put the cadavers on the street, either for fear of contagion or to escape the smell of decomposition.
“There were an infinite amount of testimonies,” Navarrete said.
“All of them were from lower-class neighbourhoods,” he told Al Jazeera.
Some of these neighbourhoods include Monte Sinai, Bastion Popular, Suburbio, and Trinitaria in the northern and southern peripheries of the city. Many of these communities do not have access to basic services like sewage systems or drinking water, and have high population densities. These provide the perfect conditions for a virus to spread, Navarrete said.
Ecuador Indigenous community fears extinction from coronavirus (1:48)
Luis Alfonso Saltos, architect and urban planner in Guayaquil, said people who live in peripheral regions that lack infrastructure would inevitably end up being more exposed to the virus, and carrying it greater distances, as they are forced to leave their home or neighbourhood to find basic necessities.
“Understand citizen logic. If you don’t have water in your house or a store nearby, that obliges you to have to leave and find it,” Saltos said.
In April, Saltos collaborated with local journalist Blanca Moncaya to collect and map reports left by families on social media platforms, begging for help to remove the cadavers of their loved ones from their homes. The map indicates that the vast majority of these reports came from either the city centre, where there was a large flow of people, or in the peripheral areas in the north of the city, where there are higher population densities and lack of infrastructure, he said. Although this data is not conclusive, it provides an idea of the dynamics of the virus, he added.
Hard to stay home
Despite being the commercial capital of Ecuador, Guayaquil is one of the most unequal cities in the country. It has the highest poverty rate, at 14 percent, and the highest rate of workers in the informal economy. Nearly half of the working population in the city work in the informal sector, according to the national statistics institute. The informal sector includes jobs like street vendors and domestic workers, those who live off their daily wages with no social security benefits, and earn well below the national minimum wage of $400 per month.
Ecuador’s strict quarantine measures have weighed particularly heavily on these families in Guayaquil. Like most places in the world, lockdown measures include social distancing and the prohibition of all non-essential businesses, but it also includes a strict 2pm curfew, enforced by military and police, that has been in effect since mid-March.
“I don’t agree with the government who always blames the people for not staying at home. You can stay at home when you have your necessities met, and savings in the bank,” said Giselle Viteri Cevallos, with the local organisation Asphalt Women (Mujeres de Asfalto) that promotes the rights of women of African descendent.
Many people continue to leave their homes every day to sell lemons and toilet paper on the street, she said.
The coronavirus has also disproportionately affected African descendent communities in Guayaquil, which has the largest Black population of any city in Ecuador. Most in this community are informal workers who live in the same marginalised areas that were harshly affected, said Viteri. Not a day goes by that she does not get news that someone she knows has died, she added.
Healthcare system unprepared
Compounding the situation is the country’s healthcare system, experts say. Ecuador has a three-tier healthcare system, which includes public hospitals that serve everyone; social security hospitals, generally for people with permanent jobs who pay into the system; and private clinics.
Ricardo Ramirez Aguirre, a retired physician in Guayaquil and head of a regional Anti-Corruption Commission, said the public and social security hospitals in the coastal city have shown “improper handling” of the COVID-19 crisis. Several people have reported hospitals turning away non-COVID-19 patients, leaving them with nowhere to go. Others reported that hospitals not designated to treat coronavirus were turning away patients with dengue thinking it was COVID-19.
Thousands of Ecuadorians took to the streets on Monday to protest austerity policies implemented by the government. Big rallies organised by unions and other social organisations were seen in cities such as Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Latacunga, Ibarra, Machala and Urcuqui [Jonatan Rosas/Anadolu]
The problem is due to historic mismanagement of the public healthcare system, said Ramirez, which has worsened since President Lenin Moreno reportedly cut nearly 4,000 jobs in the healthcare sector nationwide last year. During the pandemic, the government also failed to provide protective gear to hospitals or assure long term job security for new recruits, so many healthcare workers refused to fill necessary positions, said Ramirez. At least 117 doctors and nurses lost their lives while treating COVID-19 infections in the province of Guayas alone, according to local unions.
Those most affected by these hospital conditions have been the marginalised urban sectors, according to Ramirez, where families survive off of their daily income so have been unable to maintain quarantine.
“It’s from here that many of the patients come from who go to public and social security hospitals, because the transmissibility is higher in these conditions,” he said.
Apart from saturated hospitals, one of the biggest struggles for families is paying for medication and mortuary services, as high demand has shot up prices. Paracetamol that normally costs $0.25 a pill can no longer be found in pharmacies, but is being sold for $4.00 in informal commercial areas, said Viteri. Some families have also been forced to go into debt, as they try to pay the high costs of a coffin and cemetery plot, which could range from $3,000 to $5,000, for their deceased family members.
Earlier this month, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed warned the global crisis is a health, humanitarian and development emergency, which will hit the most vulnerable populations hardest. She also urged governments to address the inequalities in their country, saying “We have a unique opportunity now, to leverage this crisis to kick-start a Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
Families, who are looking for their deceased loved ones who have been lost or misidentified during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), hold signs during a protest, in Guayaquil [Santiago Arcos/Reuters]
Navarrete said Guayaquil has stabilised over the past month, since the central government created a special taskforce to collect the cadavers piling up in homes and city streets, after reports of the bodies exploded across international media. But the government still is not doing enough to help lower-class families, he added. The Ministry of Interior did not respond to several requests for comment by the time of publication.
By the third week in April, Guayaquil Mayor Cyntia Viteri announced a series of initiatives, including the implementation of testing and medical teams in the most affected marginalised communities. The city government also began a weekly project, called the “Strategic Plan for Door-to-Door Service”, to deliver more than 100,000 food rations to the most affected areas of the city, according to the mayor’s press office.
“We are working intensely on all fronts to help citizens,” the mayor’s office told Al Jazeera.
Back in her neighbourhood of Monte Sinai, Sanchez says she received donations from the municipality at the beginning of April, but it has not come back. Many people in her community are hungry and anxious, she says.
“It’s hard to see all of this. I feel powerless at times not being able to help,” Sanchez says. “I want to, but I can’t.”
Thinking back to the night of her mother’s death, she remembers how often she tried calling officials for help, but it never arrived.
“They said to call back, but when I did, nothing. No matter how much I called, I never got help. I never even got to speak to a doctor or anything like that,” Sanchez says. “I wish I could have done more, but I couldn’t do it.”
Source link
قالب وردپرس
from World Wide News https://ift.tt/2TN7kSe
0 notes
Photo
Pictures last night from 1st I Heart 64 Awards last night. Thank you Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson, 64th District and Staff Compton College President, Staff and everyone involved for having the venue on campus. Rudy Melendez SBCC Thrive L.A. for partnering for this event and Victor Ibarra our field deputy for Wilmington supporting our organization and our community. (at Compton College) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9JDzFRA_6l/?igshid=1hca8pvu4e9lj
0 notes
Text
DOJ announces newly promoted, appointed prosecutors
#PHnews: DOJ announces newly promoted, appointed prosecutors
MANILA – Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Monday announced the appointment and/or promotion of prosecutors to posts throughout the country.
They are:
1) Ivy G. Rufo-Subibi -- Davao City Assistant City Prosecutor;
2) Dennis Francisco Araojo – Zamboanga City, Regional Prosecutor;
3) Joyce Preston Adlao – Cebu, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor;
4) John Quincy Dantes Carandang – Caloocan City, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor;
5) Rommel Garan Calupig – Ilocos Norte, Provincial Prosecutor;
6) Marinela D. Lumagui-Sayoto – Imus City, Associate City Prosecutor;
7) Benedict Kato Pataras – Benguet, Deputy Provincial Prosecutor;
8) Jerry Anton Paolo Unabia Malamug – Makati City, Assistant City Prosecutor;
9) Gerald Buenaventura dela Cruz – Nueva Ecija, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor;
10) Charmian Maria Ferrer Abella – Mandaue City, Assistant City Prosecutor;
11) Erwin Canlas Manguera – Tarlac City, Associate City Prosecutor;
12) Chonita Lara Maagad – Dapitan City, Associate City Prosecutor;
13) Queen Ann D. Manongas-Icao – Surigao del Sur, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor;
14) Maridel Carandang Asadon – Manila, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor;
15) Fides Camacho Victorio – Makati City, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor;
16) Aris Saldua Manguera – Makati City, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor; and
17) Orville FernandeZ Ibarra – Nueva Vizcaya, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor.
Guevarra also announced the appointment of Sergio Rubrico Calizo Jr. as new chairperson of the Bureau of Pardons and Parole, replacing Natividad Dizon. (PNA)
***
References:
* Philippine News Agency. "DOJ announces newly promoted, appointed prosecutors." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1110171 (accessed July 27, 2020 at 11:40PM UTC+14).
* Philippine News Agency. "DOJ announces newly promoted, appointed prosecutors." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1110171 (archived).
0 notes
Text
Population Studies
AMA
Directed by Lorna Tucker
The untold story of the involuntary sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service well into the 1970s.
Ama tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.
The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Asetoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimert Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.
It is estimated over a twenty-year period between 1960 and 1980 that tens of thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Due to poor record keeping during this era the number may in fact be much higher. Many of these women went to their graves having suffered this incredible abuse of power.
The film ends with a call to action - to back a campaign to get a formal apology from the US government, which would then open the door for the women to bring a lawsuit.
DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 74 minutes
BIRTH ON THE BORDER
By Ellie Lobovits
This intimate and personal documentary follows two women from Ciudad Juarez as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border legally to give birth in Texas, putting their hearts and bodies on the line as they confront harassment at the hands of U.S. border officials.
One million people legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day in both directions. Among them are women who cross for the purposes of childbirth. With the threat of obstetrical violence in Mexican hospitals and the desire for natural birth with midwives, Gaby and Luisa make the difficult decision to cross the border to El Paso, seeking a safer future for their children. Even with papers, their journeys are uncertain.
Against the backdrop of oppressive U.S. border policy and growing debates over immigration, these women's stories of risk, strength, and resilience shed light on the realities and challenges of life on the border.
DVD (English, Spanish, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 28 minutes
THIS IS HOME: A REFUGEE STORY
Directed by Alexandra Shiva
Sundance award-winner puts a human face on the global refugee crisis by providing an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugees arriving in the US and struggling to find their footing.
THIS IS HOME is an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in America and struggling to find their footing. With only eight months of help from the International Rescue Committee to become self-sufficient, they must forge ahead to rebuild their lives in a new home: Baltimore, Maryland. They attend cultural orientation classes and job training sessions where they must "learn America" -- everything from how to take public transportation to negotiating new gender roles.
When the newly imposed travel ban adds further questions and complications, their strength and resilience are put to the test. Through humor and heartbreak, this universal story illuminates what it's like to start over, no matter the obstacles. THIS IS HOME goes beyond the statistics, headlines, and political rhetoric to tell deeply personal stories, putting a human face on the global refugee crisis.
DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 91 minutes
GEEK GIRLS
By Gina Hara
Nerdy women - the "hidden half" of fan culture - open up about their lives in the world of conventions, video games, and other rife-with-misogyny pop culture touchstones. While geek communities have recently risen to prominence, very little attention is paid to geek women. Filmmaker Gina Hara, struggling with her own geek identity, explores the issue with a cast of women who live geek life up to the hilt: A feminist geek blogger, a convention-trotting cosplayer, a professional gamer, a video-game designer, and a NASA engineer. Through their personal experiences in the rich cultural explosion of nerdom, GEEK GIRLS shows both the exhilaration of newfound community and the ennui of being ostracized. These women, striving in their respective professions and passions, face the cyberbullying, harassment, and sexism that permeate the culture and the industry at large. A rich conversation-starter for any class on Pop Culture and Feminism.
DVD (Color) / 2017 / 83 minutes
ONLY ME GENERATION - AN INTROSPECTIVE LOOK INTO CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY
The one-child policy, a part of China's family planning policy, was a population planning policy of installed by the Chinese government. It was introduced in 1979 and began to be formally phased out in 2015
"Only Me Generation" is a documentary that explores the effects of the China's "One Child Policy" from the perspective of the policy's first generation point of view.
Almost 30 years ago, the Chinese government first introduced the "one child policy" to alleviate social, economic and environmental problems. Three decades later, they are now looking at a relaxation of the policy. The result is that the babies born under the current policy are a unique population set with issues and challenges that are different from those of other Chinese generations; most notably that they grew up as "only children".
This film provides a unique look into a unprecedented government policy that changed the rules of a society, impacted far more than a generation, and can now be studied on a variety of fronts. The film raises numerous questions and serves as a wonderful launching point for discussion and debate.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of "only children" in a generation of only "only children"?
What are the pressures that these children, the results of the policy, have lived under?
How have parental expectations changes due to family limits on the number of children permitted?
What are their social experiences now that these Only Me Generation children are now adults?
What are the ramifications, if any, of relaxing the policy now after so many years?
DVD (Color) / 2016 / 58 minutes
LAS MARTHAS
By Cristina Ibarra
Unlike any other, the annual debutante ball in Laredo, Texas is part of a lucrative month-long festival honoring George Washington's birthday. LAS MARTHAS follows two young women as they prepare for this elaborate rite of passage: Laurita, a 13th-generation debutante descended from Laredo's original Spanish land grantees who questions debutante society's class system geared toward girls like herself; and Rosario, a high-achieving, Mexican-raised and U.S.-schooled outsider struggling to understand the elite society's unspoken rules.
Tracing the event's origins back to 1898, the film works to unravel why a town like Laredo - with a population that is 98% Mexican - feels such affinity for America's Founding Father. Despite history and all odds, the celebration perseveres and flourishes thanks to the Mexican American girls who wear the gilded burden of our past. LAS MARTHAS is a beautifully drawn and sometimes humorous, coming of age portrait of these two young women as they navigate this complex tradition in a time of economic uncertainty and political tension over immigration and Border relations between the US and Mexico.
DVD (Color) / 2013 / 69 minutes
MOTHERS
By XU Huijing
Mothers is a gripping cinema verite documentary that shows how China's one-child policy plays out in the daily lives of women in a northern Chinese village.
There are not a lot of job prospects in Ma, a community of 2,000 in Shanxi Province. Factories have closed, young people are leaving, and declining numbers are more of a problem than over-population. Still, town officials must strictly enforce the one-child policy. In the case of Ma, this means meeting an annual quota for the sterilization of women who have had more than one child.
At the heart of the documentary lies a high stakes cat-and-mouse game. On one side are the male deputy mayor Zhang Guo-hong and the female local director of women's care, Zhang Qing-mei, On the other: a schoolteacher named Rong Rong who is a mother of two - and who has managed so far to avoid sterilization. Now - faced with the prospect of failing to meet their quota - Qing-mei and Guo-hong are determined to make sure Rong Rong doesn't outwit them again. They appear at her house early in the morning, try to track her down through her relatives (including a grandmother who emphatically berates Guo-hong), and hold out a carrot in the form of the residency papers she will need for her second child.
Meanwhile, Qing-mei also travels through town on her red scooter, spreading the gospel of family planning at rallies and celebrations, and trying to exhort as many women as possible to submit to sterilization.
Without resorting to voice-over, Mothers offers a powerful feminist perspective, as we watch men developing and enforcing reproductive policies for women. Here, women's bodies are not an ideological battleground, but the epicenter of the conflict over the most banal of undertakings: meeting a quota. Eventually, even Guo-hong admits to the camera, "We're just scared of losing our jobs. Do you think I am really committed to this?"
DVD / 2013 / 68 minutes
POPULATION BOOM
Director: Werner Boote
How many people are too many? And who's one too many? Is this even the right question to ask? One thing is certain: 25 years ago there were five billion of us. Today, there are seven. Dwindling resources, mountains of toxic waste, hunger and climate change - the results of overpopulation?
In Population Boom, acclaimed director Werner Boote (Plastic Planet) traverses the globe armed with a World Bank umbrella to examine the myths and facts about overpopulation. Like a contemporary Socrates with a wry sense of humor, Boote questions the conventional wisdom. From Kenya's slums to Dhaka in Bangladesh to New York City, China, Japan and elsewhere, Boote speaks with everyone from demographic researchers to environmental activists, and comes to a surprising conclusion. It isn't overpopulation that threatens humanity's existence. Rather, it is the developed world's patterns of over-consumption and constant pursuit of immediate profit that looms over our future.
Is overpopulation a myth with the sole purpose of covering up larger and far more important problems, and making the world's population the scapegoat of a far more complex game? 'It is not about how many of us there are, but about how we treat each other,' Boote recognizes. Population Boom starts with this as the basis for a debate, and becomes a cinematic journey with the masses between myth, facts and politics.
DVD (English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi with English Subtitles) / 2013 / 90 minutes
FUTURE FOOD: STAY OR GO? (CHINA)
Directed by Alex Gabbay
Who will grow China's food as young people leave the countryside for the cities?
In many remote areas of China young people have little choice but to stay on the land, and yet they may face a destitute future, with millions of farmworkers in China earning less than two dollars a day. Although there are some exceptions, farming is not generally seen as a "sexy" career choice.
The reality is that in China and around the world, young people are fleeing the countryside and moving to the big cities. Who will grow the food that feeds future generations? How can young people be convinced that farming is a good option? Californian-born Rand and his wife Sherry are the founders of Resonance China, a social media agency in Shanghai. They use the internet to create and identify trends and tricks that can create a buzz for global brands. FUTURE FOOD sets Resonance a task: can they make farming popular with young people?
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes
HUMAN SCALE, THE
Directed by Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Influential Danish architect Jan Gehl argues that we can build cities in a way which takes human needs for inclusion and intimacy into account.
50% of the world's population lives in urban areas, by 2050 it will be 80%. Cities have become the primary human habitat. According to revolutionary Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, if we are to make cities sustainable and livable for people we must re-imagine the very foundations of modern urban planning. Rather than examining buildings and urban structures themselves, Gehl and his team meticulously study the in-between spaces of urban life, the places where people meet, interact, live, and behave.
How do the spaces that surround us enhance or disturb our interactions with others? How can we make our streets more accessible by foot or bike? Through his world acclaimed work, Gehl has been leading a revolution in urban planning that has been transforming cities worldwide. From the expanded pedestrian spaces in New York's Union Square, to Copenhagen's famed bike lanes, to the rebuilding of earthquake devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, Gehl's team bring real solutions that promise a more humanistic dimension to cities where people are not displaced by congested streets, skyscrapers, and the car-centric urbanism of the 1960s and '70s.
Stunningly photographed, THE HUMAN SCALE travels around the world to explore how Gehl and other like minded designers, city planners, and urban activists have begun to transform such cities as as New York, Beijing, Christchurch, and London.
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 77 minutes
SKYDANCER
By Katja Esson
Renowned for their balance and skill, six generations of Mohawk men have been leaving their families behind on the reservation to travel to New York City, to work on some of the biggest construction jobs in the world. Jerry and his colleague Sky shuttle between the hard drinking Brooklyn lodging houses they call home during the week and their rural reservation, a gruelling drive six hours north, where a family weekend awaits. Their wives are only too familiar with the sacrifices that their jobs have upon family life. While the men are away working, the women often struggle to keep their children away from the illegal temptations of this economically deprived area. Through rich archive and interviews, Academy Award-nominated director Katja Esson explores the colourful and at times tragic history of the Mohawk skywalkers, bringing us a nuanced portrait of modern Native American life and a visually stunning story of double lives.
DVD (Color) / 2011 / 74 minutes
WHICH WAY HOME - ORIGINAL
Directed by Rebecca Cammisa
The personal side of immigration as child migrants from Mexico and Central America risk everything to make it to the US riding atop freight trains.
As the United States continues to build a wall between itself and Mexico, WHICH WAY HOME shows the personal side of immigration through the eyes of children who face harrowing dangers with enormous courage and resourcefulness as they endeavor to make it to the United States.
The film follows several unaccompanied child migrants as they journey through Mexico en route to the U.S. on a freight train they call " The Beast." Director Rebecca Cammisa ("Sister Helen") tracks the stories of children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year old Hondurans who are desperately trying to reach their families in Minnesota, and Jose, a ten-year-old El Salvadoran who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center, and focuses on Kevin, a canny, streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, fleeing an abusive stepfather, and whose mother hopes that he will reach New York City and send money back to his family. These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the ones you never hear about - the invisible ones.
DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes
POPULATION CHANGE: MIGRATION TO THE UK
This resource looks at the causes, impacts and management of the UK's current period of rapid immigration. The DVD is designed to encourage students to think about migrants' different countries of origin, motivations, intended durations of stay and their socio-economic situation both in the UK and back home. The DVD talks to a range of people, including economic migrants from Poland and Latvia, Kurdish asylum seekers and an illegal immigrant from Africa.
DVD / 2008 / 40 minutes
BEHIND THE BOOM: MIGRANT WORKERS IN CHINA
Over two hundred million migrants work illegally in China. Coming from the countryside into the cities, they power the country's massive economic growth. This film features two powerful reports which offer contrasting views of migrants in Shanghai.
REPORT 1
Kejun is 33 years old. He comes from one of China's poorest provinces. Searching for a better life, he was hired by a construction company in Shanghai, where he now works for 5 dollars a day, 7 days a week.
China has approximately 200 million migrant workers. Most live like Kejun.
Chinese law prohibits the rural population to move into the cities. But the Chinese economy has become dependent on this cheap workforce from the countryside. So the law is often ignored. Migrant workers live their lives in the city under constant threat.
Kejun and his cousin make a visit home to their village. One year has gone since they last saw their children. "I am so excited to come home now," says Ka. "My life in Shanghai consists only of work - I do nothing else. You can get used to it, but it is very lonely."
But Kejun's cousin is worried. She is six months pregnant, yet according to the law she shouldn't be. If someone in her village denounces her to the authorities, she will have to pay a huge fine - 600 dollars.
Kejun's uncle Changhong is a head-hunter and it was he who hired Kejun. He's on the lookout for fresh workers for Shanghai's building sites. The younger - and the cheaper - the better for him.
Uncle Changhong's latest recruit is packing for a new life. He will have to leave his wife and his little son behind. "I am very sad to leave my home," he says, "I will miss everything here -- especially my family and my parents. The other workers have told me that you can return home only once a year."
REPORT 2
Shanghai - the glittering epicentre of China's boom economy. Xu Chuanruo, a 52-year-old street sweeper, came to Shanghai five years ago, leaving behind his wife and two kids in Hubei province, 1,000km away.
In Shanghai Xu can make up to 1,200 yuan per month -- about $200. In China that's good money -- but this requires a 12-hour day, seven days a week.
Xu lives with seven other people in a single room and sends $100 per month back to his family. He spends what little spare time he has practicing the disappearing art of calligraphy.
Meanwhile in a small workshop a team of migrant workers are making decorations for the New Year's celebrations. The lowest of the low are Zhang Yongqiang and his aunt Zhang Suqing who scavenge for styrofoam scraps.
Communist China has no welfare net for its 100 million migrant workers -- they either work or go hungry. But the garbage collectors say that even a lowly job in Shanghai is better than the poverty of their village.
Yet being a migrant worker doesn't necessarily equal poverty. Yang Mei has been in Shanghai for 12 years and now runs her own restaurant.
All the staff in her restaurant are migrant workers. Many waitresses here are young and a long way from home. 19-year-old Zou Heyan arrived from Szechuan - a 4-day train trip - only about a week ago
"I'm not used to the life here yet," says Zou, "I feel weak like jelly after a day's work. I suffer from diarrhoea as I'm not used to the climate ...At home we didn't have enough to eat. I've experienced hardship, so I can bear a lot."
DVD / 2007 / 27 minutes
POPULATIONS ON EARTH
Is the world overpopulated? Will population continue to explode in the cmning century or will it level off as it did after the agricultural revolution? Students usually hear only one side of this important issue. (In 2003 a United Nations panel reversed itself, and now fears population decline more than population explosion-even in the developing world!). This program presents many sides using new year-2000 video footage from China, India, Africa, Europe and the U.S.
DVD / 2006 / (Secondary, College) / 26 minutes
RAIN IN A DRY LAND
Directed by Anne Makepeace
Two Somali Bantu families leave behind a legacy of slavery in Africa and find new homes in urban America.
In 2004, thirteen thousand Somali Bantu refugees realized their dream of coming to America. They are now living in fifty cities across the country, becoming the largest African group from a single minority to settle in the United States at one time.
RAIN IN A DRY LAND chronicles two years in the lives of two extended Somali Bantu families as they leave behind a two-hundred year legacy of oppression in Africa to face new challenges in a strange new land. The film begins in January, 2004, at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where our featured families are stunned by what they learn about America in their "Cultural Orientation" class: refrigerators, stoves, bathtubs, elevators, stairs, buildings taller than one storey, schools, and all the things we take for granted in modern life. As their awe and excitement grow, the audience fears for them. How will these illiterate Muslim farmers who speak no English manage to survive in America?
These opening scenes in Kakuma introduce our featured families, both dynamic, charismatic, and very different in nature. Arbai is quick, strong, affectionate, a single mother of four with a great sense of humor and an easy contagious laugh, despite her devastating past.
Madina is fierce, vulnerable, wounded, strong; her husband Aden is volatile, moody, soulful, determined to provide for his huge family but uncertain and a bit naive about the life that lies ahead. Their witty, resourceful teenage sons, Ali (17) and Warsame (15), figure prominently in the film, as do Arbai's beautiful teenage daughters, Sahara (13) and Khadija (16).
The documentary follows these two families to America and through their first two years in their new homes. Aden and Madina, sponsored by Jewish Family Service, settle in the grim mill-town of Springfield, Massachusetts; while Arbai's family settles in Atlanta.
Despite racism, poverty, failures of the school system, and severe culture shock, both families do find ways to survive in America, and to create a safe haven for their war-torn families. The film ends with two vivid celebrations: the naming ceremony of Aden and Madina's first American-born child; and the traditional wedding of Arbai's oldest daughter, a colorful reunion of hundreds of Somali Bantu families converging on Atlanta from all over America.
DVD (Color) / 2006 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 82 minutes
AGEING POPULATIONS
This excellent resource examines the current issues surrounding an ageing population in the UK, using East Devon as a case study. It illustrates the causes, impacts and management of the UK's ageing population and changing dependency ration. It shows how governments, NGOs and individuals are meeting the challenges at a national and local level. It then explores the strain on healthcare, transport, housing, the pensions time bomb and the growing crisis of care.
DVD / 2005 / 28 minutes
EVERYONE THEIR GRAIN OF SAND
By Beth Bird
This award-winning documentary reveals the struggles of the citizens of Maclovio Rojas in Tijuana, Mexico as they battle the state government's attempts to evict them from their homes to make way for multi-national corporations seeking cheap land and labor. Filmmaker Beth Bird followed the fiercely determined residents for three years as they persistently petitioned the state for basic services like running water, electricity and pay for their teachers, only to be met with bureaucratic stonewalling. Eventually, several community leaders are targeted for persecution, and one is arrested while others are forced into hiding.
Balancing these stories of hardship, Bird also captures intimate scenes of daily life in Maclovio Rojas, revealing hard-won triumphs such as the building of a school by hand and the graduation of an elementary school class. This compelling and ultimately inspiring documentary is an eye-opening look at the human cost of globalization and a moving testament to the power of grassroots activism.
DVD (Color, With Spanish Subtitles) / 2005 / 87 minutes
MANAGING YOUTHFUL POPULATIONS: AN AFRICAN CASE STUDY
A fantastic resource that covers all the issues and implications associated with managing a youthful and growing population. The Gambia, with one of the most youthful populations in the world, is used as a case study. The role of contraception and family planning is looked at in detail, as are the pressures on resources and the environment. The programme then looks at how governments and NGOs are working together to provide schools, housing and healthcare.
DVD / 2005 / 31 minutes
LIFE 4: RETURN TO SREBRENICA
Survivors of the massacre in Srebrenica struggle to heal their communtiy and build a new future.
Srebrenica is a traditionally Muslim town in the north east of Bosnia. In July 1995 it became the site of the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two-a symbol of the horror of the Balkan wars. After a three-year siege, Serb armed forces entered the town and, over the following four days, massacred between 7000 and 8000 Muslim civilians, mostly men and boys. Another 35,000 Muslims, mostly women and children, were driven out into other parts of Bosnia. Now international aid, and the burials of victims of the massacres, are part of a process allowing the town to move forward, and begin to build a new future. The story of Srebrenica today, a town slowly reconciling itself to its past, unfolds through interviews with returning refugees, and those who can't face ever going back; with the International Commission for Missing People; with EU Ambassador Michael Humphries; and with Lord Paddy Ashdown, internationally appointed administrator of Bosnia.
DVD (Color) / 2004 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes
CITY LIFE: MISSING OUT
Anemia threatens the population of Niger and Tanzania.
Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, and less than a third of the population has access to any health care. Malnutrition remains the main cause of maternal and infant mortality and well over half of all pregnant women suffer from iron deficiency anemia. This program from the City Life series follows two traditional birth attendants as they try to persuade women to take iron folate supplements and visit hospitals, which is often prohibitively expensive.
The program also visits Tanzania, where malaria is blamed for the increase in anemia. In some areas, ninety-three percent of children suffer from the condition. Unicef believes that the way forward is micromultinutrient pills which contain iron folate and other vitamins. But is this a sustainable solution for Tanzania? Unfortunately, the possibility that donors may pull out of distribution programs is high. Young, adolescent girls already constitute a majority of those missing out on supplemental programs. Mothers of the future are in danger.
DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes
CITY LIFE: PAVEMENTS OF GOLD
Increase in urban poverty and population, caused by globalization, threatens Peruvians.
Urban poverty is one of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century. In 1950, three hundred million people were living in urban areas; by 2001 that figure had increased to 2.85 billion, or almost half the world's population. And the flow of rural migrants arriving in the world's mega cities shows no signs of slowing down. -- "It is a trend which cannot be stopped," says Anna Tibaijuka, the new executive director of the UN Center for Human Settlements, "even in the developing countries..."
With the backdrop of Lima, Peru, this program examines the enduring magnetism of big cities -- and asks whether the migrants who have moved here now feel that city life is the answer to their dreams.
DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes
CITY LIFE: THE HEALTH PROTESTORS
Health care advocates demand universal health care for the world's population at international convention in Dhaka.
In 1978, the World Health Organization's Alma Ata conference promised to deliver basic health care for all the world's population. Today, that promise remains unmet in too many countries and cities of the developing world where health is still the prerogative of wealthy elites -- and the poor remain trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and ill-health.
Frustrated by the failure of the international community to deliver on its promises, doctors, health professionals, and civil rights activists from around the world convened in Dhaka in December 2000 at the People's Health Assembly. Their mission was to draw up a charter of their own demands for health care, framed in the new People's Health Charter.
This third episode in City Life follows the process -- from a fifty thousand-person rally in Calcutta, through heated debates with World Bank spokespeople in Dhaka and argumentative late-night drafting sessions -- to the final triumphant publication of the Charter on the final day of the Assembly.
DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes
LIFE: BECAUSE THEY'RE WORTH IT
Micro-credit, education, health information, and hope provided to impoverished Chinese.
Internationally, the definition for absolute poverty is living on an income of under $1 a day. But the Chinese government has a lower threshold: the definition for poverty in China is living on 66 cents a day. Out of a total Chinese population of 1.3 billion, there are 42 million Chinese who are poor.
This episode of Life looks at a scheme which is helping poor people break out of the cycle of poverty and ignorance -- by providing them with small loans, basic health information, education...and hope.
In Wang San Ping village, near the Chinese border with Burma, in the southwest of Yunnan province, Yu Gui Hua and her friend Hu Zang Hua have used their loans from the scheme to build plastic greenhouses to grow vegetables all year round. They've repaid the first loans, and have even more ambitious plans for the second loan they're going to take out: this time, Yu Gui Hua has her sights set on a guest house, a car park -- even a restaurant.
But the micro-credit scheme, funded by UNICEF in China, does more than help women on to the first, vital step of the economic ladder. It also helps them gain friends, basic knowledge on how to improve their health -- and, crucially, self-esteem. As 83-year-old Ji Ki Ren Di, a woman from the Bai Yi caste in Mei Gu, a clan-based slave society until 1956, sums her situation up: "I was born a slave and was forced to live in a grass shed....Now we live in a solid house. I don't think that I can live much longer, but I have lived long enough to see my family free. Now every day is a little better..."
DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 24 minutes
LIFE: THE SILVER AGE
Growing population of elderly worldwide seeks purpose and care.
Mrs. Bani Gupta is a widow who lives alone in Calcutta. Like so many Indian women, she'd devoted her entire life to looking after her family. So when her husband died and her children left home, she felt she's lost her reason for living.
It was only when she joined the West Bengal Women's Association and realized how many other women were in the same predicament that she discovered a new purpose to her life.
Bani Gupta's story is typical of millions of elderly women worldwide. Advances in science and health care mean that more people are living longer -- with over 560 million aged 60 and over in the world today.
In parts of Europe, North America and Japan, the proportion of older people in the population is rising faster than any other group. The result, often, is a growing population of old people with too few young people to take care of them.
This program explores the implications in three very different countries: Japan, India and Tunisia. "Increasing numbers of the world's population are living well beyond retirement. In a time of shrinking resources for the middle-class, this film poses the uncomfortable question, 'Who will care for the aged?'" Timothy McGettigan, Professor of Sociology, University of Southern Colorado
DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes
DEVELOPING STORIES 2: POPULATION AND MIGRATION - DESOUNEN: DIALOGUE WITH DEATH
Impressionistic look reveals the reality of daily life in Haiti.
Years of economic and political chaos in Haiti have led to environmental devastation, crushing poverty and a mass exodus of Haitians trying to reach the mecca of the United States. The tragedy is that the islanders who realize this dream are precisely those with the drive, initiative and energy needed to rebuild their homeland's shattered economy.
Raoul Peck's evocative documentary takes the form of a journey through Haiti-a journey with different travelers, along different routes, to different destinations in the Caribbean's poorest country.
Guiding the viewer along the way is the narrator, a fictional, wise old peasant, who draws on his ancestral knowledge of life and death, to provide a running commentary on the plight of the real life Haitians he encounters on his travels.
DVD (Color) / 1994 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 50 minutes
DEVELOPING STORIES 2: POPULATION AND MIGRATION - THE LEGACY OF MALTHUS
Argues that overpopulation is not the real cause of poverty in India or elsewhere.
In this thought-provoking film, Deepa Dhanraj takes on the international population establishment, challenging the entrenched view that overpopulation is responsible for poverty and environmental degradation. In India, peasant farmers are being evicted from their land and then accused of being feckless, poor, irresponsible and unable to feed their families. Dhanraj argues that it's the same process that took place in 19th century Scotland during the Highland clearances.
By skillfully intercutting reconstructed scenes from the Napier Commission of enquiry into the Highland clearances, interviews with contemporary Rajasthani village women today, archival US news footage and current day propaganda films warning of the dire consequences of global population increase, Dhanraj argues that nothing has changed.
DVD (Color) / 1994 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 52 minutes
DEVELOPING STORIES 2: POPULATION AND MIGRATION - THE TALE OF THE THREE LOST JEWELS
A tale of love and hope in the Gaza Strip.
Shot in the final, turbulent days of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, Michel Khleifi's film tells the tale of a magical love story between two adolescents in a time of war and danger.
Yusef, a 12-year-old refugee growing up in the Intifada, lives with his mother and 15-year-old sister. His brother is a fugitive; his father has been in prison for the last nine years. But Yusef has a world of his own. He loves birds and drifts into the wilderness at every opportunity. One day he runs into Aida, a beautiful, wild girl his own age. He becomes completely infatuated with her, and tells her he wants to marry her when they grow up. But she replies that only the suitor who finds the three jewels, lost in Latin America, from her grandmother's necklace can win her hand. And so begin his attempts to reach Latin America...
DVD (Color) / 1994 / (Grades 10-12) / 50 minutes
DEVELOPING STORIES 2: POPULATION AND MIGRATION - THE TREE OF OUR FOREFATHERS
A refugee family makes the long journey home, returning from exile to Mozambique.
During the 15-year civil war in Mozambique, one and a half million people fled to seek refuge in neighboring countries. There was no time for ceremonial leave-taking, no time to pay the proper respects to the dead. But in 1993, with the war finally over, the refugees began to return home.
Licinio Azevedo's moving documentary is the story of one family's long journey back to seek the forefathers' atonement under the village tree.
The film follows Alexandre Ferrao and his extended family as they toil home across a land emptied of people and littered with the twisted scrapmetal of warfare. At night, around the camp fire, the family recount their experiences of the years in exile and their fears for what they might find when they finally reach home.
DVD (Color) / 1994 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 53 minutes
http://www.learningemall.com/News/Population_202001.html
0 notes
Text
Robert Maynard & Russia
Here is the latest show I did on how American conservatism is getting off track:
https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/immigration-policy-and-hijacking-american-conservatism
Here is a show I did on the the role Russia is playing in this mess:
https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/trump-russia-investigation-and-mafia-state
https://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/186245814632/the-hijacking-of-american-conservatism
When I saw that Robert Maynard did a show on Russia's Mafia State, Putin and their "so-called" relation to Trump, I knew I would have to post something in return.
Here's a description of the show:
One of the reasons Mueller had difficulty determining how direct the contacts were between members of the Trump campaign and the Russia state apparatus, was that they were looking at that state apparatus as if it was part of a traditional nation-state. That was a major mistake, as Russia has morphed into a "Mafia State' since the collapse of the old Soviet Union. The relationship between major figures in Russian organized crime and the Putin regime is complicated and Trump has had decades to build these relationships. The whole thing was beyond the limited scope of the Mueller investigation.
https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/trump-russia-investigation-and-mafia-state
Robert, in his discussion of the topic (called by some the "Russia-gate Psy-op")...Robert would have us to believe that Russia is the main country or culprit, behind the whole affair...WRONG! Sorry Robert! One needs to look at the Ukraine very closely if we're to get an in-depth understanding of what this whole fiasco is all about.
Below are a number of links that will take you to the profound analysis of Dave Emory, the anti-fascist Radio Personality who has been "airing" the underpinnings of Geo-politics since 1979.
When you read about Roger Stone (in the first of Dave Emory's articles), think Neil Salonen. Stone & Salonen apparently worked together in the early 1970's...And when Emory talks (in this same article) about Roy Cohn, think Michael Warder (#2 American member in the "USA UC Power Structure" in the 1970s)...It seems as if Cohn was advising Michael Warder during the same period:
UNITED STATES HOSTS SUCCESSFUL WACL CONFERENCE
A distinctive array of speakers, diligent work by the American Council for World Freedom, and the participation of 400 delegates and observers...worked together to create the very stimulating World Anti-Communist League Conference. The conference...was held in Washington, D.C. on April 8-11 (1974).
The keynote address on the opening day of the session, delivered by Bruce Herschensohn, Deputy Special Assistant to the President...Other speakers included Congressman Richard Ichord...and WACL participants Dr. Ku Cheng-Kang (Honorary Chairman of WACL), Yaroslav Stetsko and youth leaders Neil Salonen (FLF), Roger Stone (Young Republicans), and Ron Robinson (YAF). Outgoing WACL President Raimundo Guerrero, ACWF President Thomas A. Lane, incoming WACL President Fred Schlafly, and WYACL President Ibarra also spoke.
https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/RisingTide/RisingTide-1974/RisingTide-740422.pdf
New Age Frontiers Newsletter - November 1969
Student Fast for Freedom - Neil Salonen
Because Vietnam is now America's most crucial national issue, we felt that FLF must take a clear and decisive stand, to be responsible to our created mission. Our campus program has been geared toward uniting the efforts of as many students as possible, to create a coordinated response to the radical activities of the violent revolutionists. In a meeting of all those student groups who were interested in supporting our policy of PEACE WITH FREEDOM, a broad coalition was formed with the Student Coordinating Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam; the Washington, D. C., Young Republicans; and the Young Americans for Freedom. The coalition adopted the name STUDENT FAST FOR FREEDOM and formed a steering committee for all planning...The Fast Coordinators, Neil Salonen (FLF) and Charlie Stephens (SCC)…
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/naf/NAF-1969-11-00.pdfNew
Michael Warder Collection
Correspondence Files (Box 8) - William F. Buckley...Roy M. Cohn
Box 10 - Public Officials and Celebrities - often, images taken with MW, mostly New Yorkers, incl. Abe Beame, Roy Cohn, Ed Koch, New York Mets team members
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft5w1007dw/entire_text/
Developing information about the cast of characters in the “Russia-Gate” psy-op, we highlight the political allegiance of “Team Trump”–the operatives involved with Trump’s campaign and business dealings with Russia, as well as Robert Mueller, former FBI chief and a very special prosecutor indeed. Although Trump certainly had links to Russian mob figures, they are by no means the prime movers in this drama. Most importantly, we detail the political resumes and deep politics underlying the cast of characters in this drama, tracking the operational links back to Joe McCarthy and the red-baiting specialists from the first Cold War. Joe McCarthy legal point man Roy Cohn is, to a considerable extent, the spider at the center of this web.
Cohn...was Trump’s attorney for much of “The Donald’s” professional life...
Roger Stone...was Donald Trump’s campaign manager and later dirty tricks operative...
Stone was introduced to Trump in the 1980s by the notorious Roy Cohn. Then a Manhattan lawyer who represented several reputed mobsters, Cohn had become infamous in the 1950s as the chief inquisitor during Joe McCarthy’s “Red Scare” hearings in the United States Senate. After McCarthy’s inquisition was shut down, Cohn began a new life as a political and legal fixer. He became a mentor to Stone and Trump and taught both men how to manipulate the media and bully opponents...
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-966-dramatis-personae-of-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
Below is Dave Emory's first "real" mention of the Ukraine in the whole Russia affair probed by Robert Mueller (2nd Article by Emory):
With the media and political establishments turning handsprings over “Russia-gate,” we examine in detail one of the incidents prominent in the presentation of the supposition that “our democracy” was manipulated by the Russians.
In late January, Trump point man for “matters Russian”–CIA/FBI operative Felix Sater, a long-time associate of his and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andrii Artemenko were proposing a cease-fire/peace plan for Ukraine. This has been spun by our media as constituting yet another of the “Russia controls Trump” manifestations.
The facts, however, reveal that this was not a “pro-Russian” gambit but an ANTI-Russian gambit! In addition to the CIA/FBI affiliation of Sater, it should be noted that Artemenko was part of the Pravy Sektor milieu in Ukraine, one of the most virulent of the OUN/B successor organizations in power in that benighted nation.
Sater, Artemenko and others were working on a plan to rehabilitate Ukrainian nuclear power plants in order to generate electricity for Ukraine and the Baltic states, freeing those former Soviet republics from their old Soviet electrical power grids.
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-967-update-on-ukrainian-fascism-the-russia-gate-psy-op-and-the-possibility-of-a-third-world-war/
Here are the rest of the links (3rd article, ect.) that talk extensively about the TRUE NATURE of the Russia-gate Psy-op:
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-981-the-ukrainian-fascist-foundation-of-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-982-manafort-and-the-snipers-the-azov-battalion-and-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1007-alfa-males-part-4-911-the-underground-reich-and-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1008-alfa-males-part-5-lee-harvey-manafort-the-russia-gate-psy-op-and-the-underground-reich-habsburg-redux-part-2/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1009-the-deep-politics-of-habsburg-redux-and-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1010-summary-analysis-of-the-habsburg-redux-russia-gate-psy-op-material/
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1022-edwin-manafort-the-coming-of-fascism-to-ukraine-and-the-russia-gate-psy-op/
Get an education here, Robert! You need to completely re-evaluate how you see certain parts of history and certain elements of our current state-of-affairs.
Good luck to you Robert! I have faith in you! I believe that you can change your paradigm!
'til the next,
Don Diligent
0 notes
Text
Linked to Odebrecht case, Guzmán Ibarra, Deputy Administrator of Dominican state owned bank, resigns
Linked to Odebrecht case, Guzmán Ibarra, Deputy Administrator of Dominican state owned bank, resigns
Deputy administrator of Government Businesses of Dominican state owned bank BanReservas, Jose Manuel Guzman Ibarra, resigned this Sunday. His resignation comes days after a journalistic investigation revelaed his alleged involvement in bribes that Odebrecht would have paid for the construction of the Punta Catalina thermoelectric plant.
Guzmán Ibarra communicated his decision through his Twitter…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Blog Post: Larson’s Workers’ Comp Case Roundup (8/26/2018)
The following are some noteworthy cases that are being reported in an upcoming release of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law. Assaults. In one bizarre and tragic Alabama case, the court awarded death benefits to the surviving spouse of an accountant who was stalked and then shot to death by an assailant who blamed the accountant for tax problems in his business [see Lawler & Cole CPAs, LLC v. Cole , 2018 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 115 (July 13, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 8, § 8.01[2], n. 51.1]. An increasing number accept the idea that the strain of enforced close contact may in itself provide the necessary work connection. Accordingly, in an Arizona case [see Ibarra v. Industrial Comm’n of Ariz., 2018 Ariz. App. LEXIS 122 (July 31, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 8, § 8.01[6][a] n. 146], the court adopted the Larson Treatise's "Friction and Strain" Doctrine and awarded compensation for injuries sustained in a fight between two corrections officers who had no contact with each other outside the workplace. Kinds and Elements of Disability. In one recent decision, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma held that the sections of the state’s Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act that require use of the “current edition” of the AMA’s Guides to determine permanent partial disability do not violate the Constitution [see Hill v. American Medical Response , 2018 OK 57 (June 26, 2018)], Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 80, § 80.08[2] n. 6.3]. Hospital and Medical Benefits. The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine recently held that an employer may not be required to pay for an injured worker’s medical marijuana use. Indicating that it was deciding the case on “narrow” grounds, the majority reasoned that there was a “positive conflict” between the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Maine Medical Use of Marijuana Act (MMUMA) and that, under such circumstances, the CSA preempted state law [see Bourgoin v. Twin Rivers Paper Co. , 2018 ME 77, 2018 Me. LEXIS 79 (June 14, 2018], Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 94, § 94.06 n. 27]. Utilizing California’s “Posse Law, Private Citizens Were Barred From Suing County for Police Force’s Actions. In a case involving an utterly bizarre fact pattern, a California appellate court held that a civil action for negligence and misrepresentation filed by two private citizens against a California county was barred by the exclusive remedy provisions in Cal. Labor Code § 3366 (California’s “posse” law). The two citizens, a husband and wife, did not work for the county. They were telephoned by a Trinity County deputy who asked them--because of their proximity to the incident--to “check on” a neighbor who had placed a 911 call for help. According to the plaintiff’s allegations, the deputy told them the call was likely related to inclement weather. The deputy also omitted information that suggested potential criminal activity. Plaintiffs unwittingly walked into a murder scene and were brutally attacked by the man who apparently had just murdered their neighbor and her boyfriend. Under § 3366, any person “assisting any peace officer in active law enforcement service” is deemed to be an employee of the public entity for whom he or she is “serving,” and workers’ compensation benefits are the exclusive remedy afforded for any injury [see Gund v. County of Trinity , 2018 Cal. App. LEXIS 522 (June 4, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 28.03[1], n. 4.2]. Office Worker’s Mold Exposure Does Not Qualify as Occupational Disease. A Louisiana appellate court affirmed a ruling by a workers’ compensation judge that the claimant, an office worker, had not suffered an occupational disease within the meaning of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act related to her alleged exposure to mold in the office. Citing prior authority, the court indicated that mold exposure in the workplace generally falls outside the compensation scheme based upon the meaning of occupational disease within the statutes [see Lyle v. Brock Servs., LLC, 18-50 (La. App. 5 Cir. 07/31/18), 2018 La. App. LEXIS 1477 (July 31, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 52, § 52.03[1] DIGEST n. 3]. Hearing Impairment Limitation Ruled Unconstitutional. A Kentucky statute, Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 342.7305(2), which provides workers’ compensation benefits for occupational hearing loss only where a claimant’s binaural hearing impairment, converted to impairment of the whole person, results in impairment of more than eight percent pursuant to the AMA Guides, is unconstitutional, said the Court of Appeals of Kentucky [see Napier v. Enterprise Mining Co. , 2018 Ky. App. LEXIS 108 (Mar. 23, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 52, § 52.05[3], n. 24.1]. Injured Worker’s “Undocumented” Status is Economic Factor to Be Considered in Determining Level of Permanent Disability. In a split decision, the Supreme Court of Idaho held that the plain wording of Idaho Code Ann. §§ 72-425 and 72-430 require that all personal and economic circumstances that diminish the ability of the claimant to compete in an open labor market must be considered when determining whether an injured employee is entitled to permanent disability benefits, including his or her status as an undocumented immigrant. The Court reversed a Commission decision that the claimant’s undocumented status should not be considered. Here, the claimant illegally immigrated from Mexico, purchased a social security card, and used it (and a subsequently purchased second card) to get a series of jobs until he was seriously injured in a painting accident. The dissent argued that the multiple illegal acts of both the claimant and the employer should not be ignored [see Marquez v. Pierce Painting, Inc. , 2018 Ida. LEXIS 155 (Aug. 3, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 66, § 66.03 n. 42.3]. Placement of Rods and Screws Did Not Constitute Continued Remedial Treatment; Statute of Limitations Not Tolled. A Florida court held that the orthopedic surgical placement of rods and screws within the injured worker’s spine to aid in stabilization was not the sort of continuing remedial treatment that would toll the statute of limitations [see Ring Power Corp. v. Murphy , 238 So.3d 906 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 126, § 126.07[8], n. 40.2]. No Claimant’s Attorney Fees Available for Appellate Work in Kansas Comp Case. The Court of Appeals of Kansas held that attorneys representing claimants at the appellate court level in the state fall between the cracks when it comes to awards of attorney’s fees, even when successfully representing their clients [see Pierson v. City of Topeka , 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 33 (June 15, 2018), Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, Ch. 133, § 133.02, DIGEST n. 4]. © Copyright 2018 LexisNexis. All rights reserved. This article was excerpted from an upcoming release of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).
Blog Post: Larson’s Workers’ Comp Case Roundup (8/26/2018) published first on http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/workers-compensation/rss.aspx
0 notes
Text
Comunicado web: 2nd International Forum on Gender and Cybersecurity
Organized jointly by the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Modernization and the Organization of American States, the 2nd International Forum on Gender and Cybersecurity was opened today and will be held through 30 May at the Palacio San Martín.
The opening speech was delivered by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Daniel Raimondi, and the Minister of Modernization, Andrés Ibarra.
Comunicado completo: https://ift.tt/2l5xyOe
0 notes
Text
WELCOME TO VOX Spain has been published at http://www.theleader.info/2017/09/04/welcome-vox-spain/
New Post has been published on http://www.theleader.info/2017/09/04/welcome-vox-spain/
WELCOME TO VOX Spain
New political party expands into Alicante Province
VOX is a right wing political party that is now expanding into the Alicante Province. Although it was formed in Madrid at the end of 2013 by 4 former members of the Partido Popular, it is only now that the party is beginning to establish itself in this part of Spain.
Made up for the most part of middle class professionals, self-employed people, housewives, retirees, entrepreneurs and students, the party says that it feels cheated by many current politicians who are not representing the electorate in the way that they should.
Vox pledged to be more active in defending Spanish national unity, saying that in their new party program they would restore central power while “respecting Spain’s cultural diversity”.
Vox say that there is a widespread passivity towards the institutions. New stories of corruption find their way into the news with monotonous regularity. Each one sounds like the one before. They affect not only the main political parties, the government and trade unions but even the royal family, hence they intend to establish a party that truly represents the Spanish people.
On Saturday afternoon in Alicante the party presented the Coordinators of Vox de Alicante and Province in the Restaurant La Cantera.
This presentation was made by the Provincial President Ana María Cerdán who was accompanied by members of the Provincial Executive Committee (CEP), Jesus Esteban Cabañero , Antonio Estañ González and Guillermo Martin Villaseñor.
Because of the party’s recent growth, Elche now also has a Coordinator, Manuel Ibáñez Prado, who was appointed in April and who is now supported by Amparo Cerda Sarrenes.
In Crevillente the coordinator is Carmen Mendiola Ibarra, while Elda and surrounds welcome Francisco Rosique Amat. In Javea, the Marina Alta area and Denia the coordinator is Marcos Sanz Miralles.
Directors were also announced for both Orihuela and Torrevieja, Javier Saura Saura, Carolina Vagará García and Juan Carlos Ramos Gomez while in San Vicente del Raspéig Francisco Palencia Soriano was named as the party leader.
These 8 municipalities are expected to expand Vox’s presence in the province of Alicante as the Provincial Executive Committee begins to hold a series of meetings and talks with many of the municipalities.
The Deputy Secretary for Recruitment, Juan Francisco García Molto, who was also presented at the assembly, said that he is about to begin working on the creation of work and action groups in the region.
With the arrival of Vox the political battle for Spain’s centre-right voters has now become tougher – and more crowded – than ever.
0 notes
Text
A Journalist’s Murder Underscores Growing Danger in Mexico
AP, Aug. 4, 2017
MEXICO CITY--The absence of editor Javier Valdez Cardenas is deeply felt at the weekly newspaper he co-founded, but his presence is everywhere.
A large photo of Valdez displaying his middle finger, with the word “Justice,” hangs on the facade of the Riodoce newspaper building in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan. Two reporters in their 30s, Aaron Ibarra and Miriam Ramirez, wear T-shirts that display his smiling, bespectacled face or his trademark Panama hat. The masthead of the paper still bears his name, and each issue has a blank space where his op-ed column should be.
Valdez was one of seven journalists in seven states killed this year for reporting on the mayhem wrought in Mexico by organized crime, corrupt officials and ceaseless drug wars. As bodies pile up across the country, more and more of them are journalists: at least 25 since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and 589 under federal protection after attacks and threats.
Mexico is now the world’s most lethal country for journalists, more even than war-torn Syria. And the killers of journalists in Mexico are rarely brought to justice. Although a special federal prosecutor’s office was established in 2010 to handle such cases, it has only prosecuted two, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“The greatest error is to live in Mexico and to be a journalist,” wrote Valdez, a legend in Mexico and abroad, whose killing is seen as a milestone in Mexican violence against journalists.
On the morning of May 15, Valdez left the Riodoce office. He drove just a couple blocks before his red Toyota Corolla was stopped by two men; he was forced out of his car and shot 12 times, presumably for the name of the paper--which translates as Twelfth River.
His body lay for 40 minutes in the middle of a sunbaked street, with a kindergarten on one side and a restaurant on the other, his hat next to his head as if shielding his eyes from distraught family and friends gathering around him.
“I understood that as a message,” said Francisco Cuamea, deputy director of the Noroeste newspaper: Anyone could be next.
Valdez, 50, left a wife and two adult children. There have been no arrests--which is no surprise to the national press corps.
“Nobody wants to get involved with the death,” said Juan Carlos Ayala, a professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa who has spent 40 years studying violence in the state. Authorities have been silent about any progress in the case. “Either they’re complicit, or they’re idiots.”
Sinaloa is home to the cartel of the same name that was long run by notorious kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Since Guzman’s arrest last year and extradition to the United States in January, Sinaloa has been one of the country’s bloodiest battlegrounds, as rival factions fight to fill the vacuum. Someone or several people are shot dead in the street every day in Sinaloa, and the cemetery is filled with ornate, two-story mausoleums for drug kings, larger than many homes for the living.
In Sinaloa, “it was impossible to do journalism without touching the narco issue,” said Ismail Bojorquez, a co-founder and director of Riodoce, who is wracked with guilt for failing to protect his friend.
When Valdez won an award from the Committee to Protect Journalists for his courage in 2011, he freely acknowledged that he was frightened. “I want to carry on living,” he said at the time. “To die would be to stop writing.”
His death has forced other journalists to question their own assumptions about how best to do their jobs and stay alive.
It used to be that there were certain unwritten rules. It was OK to report on corruption as long as you were careful not to publish key details or appear to take sides. You must think carefully about story placement and timing. Don’t accept money from anyone. Know the red lines for crime gangs.
The old rules, journalists say, no longer apply. In times of fracturing cartels, shifting political alliances and near-total impunity for attacks on journalists, it’s no longer clear who can and can’t be trusted, what is or isn’t safe to report.
Less than two months after Valdez’ death, the Riodoce staff met to talk about security.
It’s important to change their routines, they were told. Be more careful with social media. Don’t leave colleagues alone in the office at night. Two senior journalists discussed what felt safer: to take their children with them to the office, which was the target of a grenade attack in 2009, or to leave them at home.
Security experts wrote three words on a blackboard: adversaries, neutrals, allies. They asked the reporters to suggest names for each column.
Allies are crucial. In an emergency, they would need a friend, a lawyer, an activist to call.
The longest list, by far, is enemies. There are drug-traffickers, politicians, businesspeople, journalists suspected of being on the payroll of the government or the cartels, a catalog of villains who make the job of covering Mexico’s chaos a daily dance of high-risk decisions.
Ramirez was unsettled by a recent Facebook comment on a story of hers about shell companies contracted by a previous governor. “These reporters are looking to end up like Javier Valdez,” said the anonymous poster, though the comment was later deleted.
Still, she says she has no intention of giving up on Riodoce or its mission.
“We have a commitment to Javier, to ourselves,” said Ramirez.
Ibarra admits that covering the drug trade scares him. But he, too, intends to remain.
“Mexico is going to hell,” he said, “and that’s why I became a reporter.”
0 notes
Text
New Post has been published on ObodoInfo
New Post has been published on http://obodoinfo.com/atlanta-police-conduct-biggest-marijuana-seizure-citys-history/
Atlanta Police Conduct Biggest Marijuana Seizure In City's History
Atlanta Police Conduct Biggest Marijuana Seizure In City’s History
Atlanta police arrested a truck full of Marijuana this has been place the Biggest Marijuana Seizure In City’s History the estimate of the goods cost is 9 million dollars this is the biggest ATL in history
Atlanta police seized a truck carrying almost 6,000 pounds of weed. They estimate that the $9 million bust is the biggest in ATL history.
Atlanta police announced today that they recently carried out one of the largest marijuana busts in their city’s history. They stopped and seized a truck that was stocked with an amount of weed that is estimated to have a street value of about $9 million.
On Monday, Atlanta police got a tip that a cargo truck was moving through the city. They then alerted state police, who quickly organized a traffic stop and were able to detain the vehicle in question. Atlanta police then stormed the scene, taking the driver, 29-year-old Jose Ibarra, and the truck into custody.
What they found was 208 bales of marijuana, weighing a total of 5,824 pounds. Each package was shrink-wrapped and had been covered with chlorine in an effort to evade the noses of drug-sniffing canines.
“We think it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest, marijuana seizures we have ever had in the city,” said Deputy Chief Darryl Tolleson. Atlanta Police Sergeant Warren Pickard told WGCL-TV, “I’ve never witnessed this amount of marijuana.”
Police would not reveal where the mass amount of weed came from, nor where it was headed, as the seizure has prompted an ongoing investigation. As reported by Channel 2 News, the Atlanta Police Department is united against the legalization of marijuana.
0 notes
Text
Time Takes Another Life In Cuban Politics
Time Takes Another Life In Cuban Politics / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Havana, 8 January 2017 — Faithful, hard-line and knowledgeable
of the ultimate secrets of dissidents and ministers, Carlos Fernandez
Gondín made his mark on the Ministry of Interior (MININT), the most
feared Cuban institution. But shortly after taking over the portfolio in
2015, life played a bad trick on him and he had a stroke, and this
Saturday he became the most recently deceased of a dying gerontocracy.
His death, at age 78, came as no surprise to anyone. The official note
says he died "because of complications of a chronic illness," and on
June 6, at the celebration of the creation of the Ministry of the
Interior, he did not appear on the cameras of national television,
something that fanned the rumors about his state of health.
The powerful ministry he led controls the police, immigration and
aliens, prisons and the omnipresent State Security, among other
departments. Gondín arrived at the top of the institution thanks also to
the perfect fidelity he always showed towards Raul Castro, under whose
orders he fought in the Second Eastern Front in the years of the fight
against Batista.
Gondín made his career in the Cuban army, graduating from the Matanzas
School of War and was later selected to study at the Soviet Union's
Frunze Academy. He participated in the military adventures in Angola and
Ethiopia, reaching the position of second in command of Cuban troops in
Angola.
From 1980 he sat on the Central Committee, the highest organ of the
Communist Party of Cuba which decides the number of members of the
Politburo, the maximum circle of power in the nation. He was also an
elected member of Parliament as of the seventh legislature.
In 1989, MININT's leadership was purged and Fidel Castro named Abelardo
Colome Ibarra, known as Furry, as interior minister while Gondín became
the first deputy minister. Both had worked together since in 1978 when
Gondín was named to head the Counterintelligence Directorate of the
Armed Forces
"He was a man of the Armed Forces who came to MININT at a time when it
was purged of its more open and reformist elements," political scientist
and historian Armando Cuban Chaguaceda told 14ymedio from Mexico.
According to the academician, there has always been a rivalry between
the Ministry of the Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces that
climaxed with the conviction of General Arnaldo Ochoa and 13 others
accused of getting rich through drug trafficking operations in 1989.
"The MININT apparatus has more sophisticated people than the
military. There are many people dedicated to analyzing, to thinking,
especially those who are in contact with the outside," explains
Chaguaceda. He believes that Gondín's death will not affect the current
policy on the island. "Until proven otherwise it is more of the same,"
he says.
Gondín was also known for being a meticulous man, who knew how to stay
in the shadows. He was considered the eminence grise after the
political repression during the mandate of Furry. Several dissidents
point to the recently deceased military man as the main organizer of the
arrests, house arrests and strict surveillance against opponents,
especially against the Ladies in White.
However, shortly after assuming the position of minister, Gondin
suffered a stroke that left him unable to perform his duties. Since then
and to date, Cuba's most powerful ministry has been under the command of
Vice Admiral Julio Cesar Gandarilla Bermejo, first deputy minister of
the Ministry of the Interior who comes from the Ministry of the Armed
Forces Military Counterintelligence arm.
The analyst Julio Aleaga, author of a study about who's who in Cuban
national politics, told 14ymedio that Gondín's time in management was
"very short" and when he was named to the post "it was already known
that he was a sick man." When asked who will fill the vacancy, he points
to Gandarilla Bermejo, who has completed missions in 11 countries,
including Angola, and who is also a septuagenarian.
Aleaga discards the idea that Alejandro Castro Espín, son of the current
ruler, and a man whom many point out as possible replacement, will be
placed at the front of the ministry. "If they were preparing Alejandro
to ascend in the control of the dynasty, he would hold a position at
another level, not in the Ministry of the Interior," he says.
For his part, Juan Antonio Blanco, executive director of the Cuban-based
Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, is skeptical about the arrival of a
reformist era with the death of Gondín.
"It is more likely to be related to facilitating the ascent of the
grandson, Raul Guillermo Rodríguez Castro and the son, Alejandro Castro
Espín, within MININT and the elite of power," he says.
For Blanco, "What is coming is the definitive consolidation of Castro's
succession before 2018," the year in which the second term of Raul
Castro ends.
For his part, Chaguaceda says that it is difficult to establish a
parallelism between the longevity of Cuban rulers and that of the
elderly secretaries of the Communist Party in the Kremlin during the
time of the Soviet Union. By 1982, a successive chain of deaths had
renewed Soviet rule and allowed a younger generation to take power and
implement change. The fundamental difference would be that in the Soviet
case the rulers were part of the nomenklatura and not the creators of
the system itself, as is the case in the Cuba.
"In Cuba the succession is given, in the life of the founder and with a
decade of development, while in the USSR, Brezhnev, Andropov and
Chernenko died in quick succession, which shook the ossified bureaucracy
of the politburo," the expert explains.
Many of the members of the Politburo are in the seventh decade of their
lives. In the coming months obituaries and new appointments could appear
very frequently in the Cuban press.
Source: Time Takes Another Life In Cuban Politics / 14ymedio –
Translating Cuba -
http://ift.tt/2jkoPVv
via Blogger http://ift.tt/2j9d8BQ
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
vocaloidgifs
Vocaloid gifs
glamrockfoxy-official
Glamrock Foxy
winter-barnes
ky (:
tenaraichou
畑とくらしの手習帖
lie-and-secret
unbecoming