From: Huffington Post

Students should be focused on getting back to school right now, not worrying about whether their parents will be targeted because they look Latino. Policies that target immigrants and their families have left Latino youth feeling anxious and frustrated, yet motivated to defend traditional American values such as fairness, freedom, and respect for diversity.

Today, NCLR released A Wake-Up Call: Latino Youth Speak Out About Arizona SB 1070, the findings from a forum held in July with 150 Latino youth leaders about Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, which is under temporary injunction but has been widely criticized by civil rights groups for attempting to legitimize and legalize racial profiling. Young people are our future leaders, workers, and voters. Raising them in an environment where Latinos are vilified and face discrimination is detrimental to our nation.

SB 1070 took effect as of July 29, but a U.S. District Court judge enjoined some of the most controversial elements of the law, including those that would have legitimized racial profiling and preempted federal authority over immigration laws.

The temporary injunction is expected to be reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on November 2. Despite concerns over the constitutionality and consequences of this law, similar legislation has been floated in 22 other states. NCLR is among leading civil rights, labor, and faith organizations that have organized to boycott Arizona until the law is permanently repealed, overturned by the courts, or superseded by federal comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

NCLR researchers spoke with the Hispanic teenagers–most of whom are college students and second-generation Americans from across the nation–at its youth leadership convening, the Líderes Summit, during the 2010 NCLR Annual Conference in San Antonio in July. Their comments reveal the impact that anti-immigrant rhetoric, policies, and sentiment have on the everyday lives of Latino youth. One participant said that discrimination “is unjust and makes me as a Latino feel like less of a person.”

The youth spoke about their worries for family and friends, their alarm over racial profiling and discrimination, and growing concern over the disintegration of equality and respect for diversity. They expressed concern about the current collapse of American values, with one student saying: “It makes people lose hope for justice being served in the U.S.A.” They also spoke about their resolve to overcome these challenges by taking action and getting more engaged in their communities.

We will see more and more young Hispanics registering to vote and playing a larger role in determining our country’s political landscape. Rather than bashing immigrants and Latinos, politicians should focus on educating this next generation of leaders so they can in turn strengthen our economy and champion cherished American values such as fairness and justice.

Latino youth represent 22% of the U.S. population under the age of 18, and 92% are U.S. citizens. They are a potentially powerful voting bloc. According to Democracia U.S.A.’s analysis of U.S. Census data, 500,000 Hispanics will turn 18–making them eligible to vote– every year for the next 20 years. It would not be smart for our leaders to continue to ignore injustices against the Hispanic community. Now, more than ever, legislators must turn a deaf ear to the loud, divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate and work to find real solutions. Now, more than ever, Americans must take action and voice their disgust with SB1070. Make a personal pledge to boycott intolerance and send a message that enough is enough.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: Washington Post

Hector Ortega stumbled across the body of a fellow migrant as he walked across Arizona’s harsh desert in the searing summer heat. He tried not to look too closely.

With nothing to be done for the deceased, Ortega and the others trudged on, guided by a smuggler across the U.S. border, determined to complete their illegal odyssey even as they endured record-high temperatures and fever-pitch resentment.

At 64, the farm laborer with a weathered face, strong hands and silver hair protruding from his baseball cap was stoic about the body - someone’s journey cut short near a stand of scrub bush and cactus.

“What can you do about it in the desert?” he asked.

Deaths of illegal immigrants in Arizona have soared this summer toward their highest levels since 2005 - a fact that has surprised many who thought that the furor over the state’s new immigration law and the 100-plus degree heat would draw them elsewhere along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

But at the Pima County morgue in Tucson, Ariz., the body bags are stacked on stainless-steel shelves from floor to ceiling. A refrigerated truck has been brought in to handle the overflow at the multimillion dollar facility.

In July, 59 people died - 40 in the first two weeks when nighttime temperatures were the hottest in recorded history, hovering around the low 90s. The single-month death count is second only to July 2005, when 68 bodies were found.

Of this July’s deaths, 44 were on the Tohono O’Odham Nation, a reservation the size of Connecticut that shares 75 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico. The tribe is opposed to humanitarian aid on its lands, believing it invites violence.

Eighteen more people died in the first 23 days of August.

Even with the prospect of a torturous death, and the bitter wrath they face in Arizona, immigrants, including Ortega, say the state’s vast, sparsely populated terrain is still the best place for border jumpers.

“In Tijuana, you have two walls that you have to get over,” said Ortega, who first came across in 1976 to work in West Coast agricultural fields. “This is much easier here. You just have to watch out for the snakes. That’s why I prefer to walk in the daytime and not at night.”

He admits he’s afraid when he crosses, but states flatly, “It’s worth the risk.”

Even though - after two days of traversing the desert - he and his group were caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents when they reached a freeway and their ride wasn’t there.

Resting at a shelter for failed border crossers that sets atop a steep hill in Mexico overlooking the city of Nogales, Ortega expanded on his motives. “It’s the only way to make a little money to support my family,” he said.

The shelter is a simple but large home with warnings about the dangers of the crossing posted on its walls. It gives those who’ve been sent back across a hot meal of tortillas, rice and beans, and bunk beds stacked three high.

One room has been converted into a chapel. On a recent night, a woman sobbed quietly while another migrant tried to comfort her.

Ortega knows risks. He is from Apatzingan in Michoacan, where drug gangs have shot up federal agents and terrorized the impoverished farm town.

Roberto Hernandez de Rosas, a quiet 18-year-old with a quick smile, said his family paid a smuggler $1,500 to take him and his brother across the Arizona desert and on to Los Angeles.

Hernandez’s brother had already made the trip three times and the smuggler told them Arizona was still the easiest place to cross.

He was told it would cost twice as much to cross from Tijuana, where smugglers sell immigrants fake documents to walk through the port of entry.

“The town where I’m from, it’s like being in jail, it’s like a death,” said Hernandez, who is from a mountain village in the impoverished southern state of Puebla. “You have to think twice about crossing the desert, but when you don’t have any money, you need to look for a better life.”

Hernandez and his brother were spotted by a Border Patrol helicopter in the morning after walking through the desert during the night. Authorities returned Hernandez to Mexico but his brother was jailed because he’d been deported before.

Hernandez had been at the shelter for a few days waiting for his brother to be released from custody because he had all his documents. After that, Hernandez said he wanted to go back home rather than attempt another crossing.

But he expected his brother to try again because his 2-year-old son is in Los Angeles.

Most of those who trickled into the shelter planned to try again, shrugging off Arizona’s new law giving local authorities the power to arrest them - currently stayed by a federal court order. They are also unfazed by the Mexican government’s warning to its citizens to avoid the state.

Sofia Gomez, of an aid group called Humane Borders, said crossers are traveling through even more remote areas than in previous years. At the same time, anger over illegal immigration has led to people shooting up the water stations her group has placed in the desert.

“They’re taking a higher risk and they’re not making it,” Gomez said.

So far this year, the body count is at 171, the same number the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office had seen at this time in 2007, the year the office saw a record 217 deaths.

Most of the deceased were young, healthy men - at least at the outset of their trips. By the time they reach the morgue, many are in advanced stages of decomposition and beyond recognition. Bag after bag is tagged with “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” as officials wait for families to come forward to report loved ones missing.

But often the relatives of the deceased are waiting back home to hear from them, believing they are busy working in the United States.

“We thought the political climate in Arizona would be a significant deterrent to people crossing but as far as the deaths are concerned, they certainly have been what looks like is going to be the highest they’ve ever been,” said the morgue’s Dr. Eric Peters.

That doesn’t surprise Border Patrol Agent Colleen Agle, who works in the agency’s Tucson sector.

“Smugglers are the ones who determine where to take people, where they’re going to be walking, and they’re the ones deciding that certain areas are preferable,” Agle said. “They know they’re remote and they know we have difficulty accessing them, so they’re taking people through those areas. Unfortunately they’re just putting people’s lives at risk.”

Worried about their profits, smugglers will leave behind people who are injured or fall ill, she said.

The Border Patrol often comes to the rescue.

Agency statistics show that agents helped 1,281 people last fiscal year. That’s up from 1,264 rescues the previous fiscal year, but down from the all-time high of 2,845 rescues in fiscal year 2006.

Agle said smugglers often lie to immigrants, telling them they’ll only walk a couple of hours when they actually walk for days. Even so, the agency discourages water stations for crossers becauseauthorities say it encourages people to risk the journey.

Kevin Riley, 28, of Hopewell, N.J., came to the desert a year ago to volunteer for No More Deaths, a humanitarian group. He spends most of his time at the group’s remote, desert camp east of Arivaca, 13 miles north of Mexico.

Riley and other mostly 20-something volunteers from across the country hike up to 12 miles a day to fill desert water tanks stationed along popular migrant paths that cross unforgiving terrain dotted with palo verdes, mesquites and Saguaro.

Riley recently found a 34-year-old man who had been vomiting for days and was curled up with cramps, no longer able to walk. The man was rescued and hospitalized for four days.

He was one of the lucky ones.

In February, Riley found a body. The volunteers called the sheriff’s department and then helped the officer carry out the body bag.

“We have some maps printed out actually showing us where people are dying,” said Riley, thin and bearded, “and one big frustrating point is the majority are in areas that we can’t go to.”

That would be the vast and treacherous Tohono O’Odham Nation that has barred water stations and has banned members of Humane Borders and No More Deaths from stepping foot on the reservation.

Tribal leaders blame illegal immigrants and smugglers for crimes on their land. Two years ago, the tribe dismantled four, 55-gallon tanks being filled up by one of its members, Mike Wilson.

Wilson, with the help of another tribal member and funding from Humane Borders, still makes a symbolic gesture each week. He puts out one-gallon jugs, forming the shape of a cross on the ground, at the former stations. He says it’s not enough.

The Tohono O’Odham Nation declined repeated requests for comment.

Omar Velasquez died on the reservation last month. He was with his 22-year-old wife, who survived the trip but declined to talk about what she or her husband experienced. According to an autopsy report, Velasquez was a healthy, 25-year-old. He was found wearing a blue baseball cap embroidered with “New York.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: The Plum Line

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is indignant that the State Department submitted a report to the United Nations Council on Human Rights with a paragraph on her state’s new immigration law. She’s accusing the administration of “submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations” and of “internationalism run amok.” And she’s charging that it’s hypocritical to single out the law while at the same time taking credit for “sophistication and breath of [the United States'] anti-trafficking efforts.”

It’s a stretch to characterize the report as seeking international approval of domestic law. It merely acknowledges that the Arizona law “has generated significant attention and debate” and that it “is being addressed in court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law.”

Brewer suggests that the administration’s enforcement effort has fallen short. Actually, the administration deserves credit for stepped up enforcement. It just hasn’t been able to do much else.

The administration signaling concern over whether the Arizona law violates human rights standards is somewhat at odds with its own record of strict enforcement. During Obama’s presidency, the number of deportations has grown to higher levels than those seen during the Bush administration. The administration has also expanded the “Secure Communities” program to every county along the Southwest border, much to the frustration of immigration-rights advocates. “Secure Communities” resembles the Arizona law in that it mandates that anyone arrested — not convicted, but arrested — by police have their identifying information forwarded to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, where their immigration status can be checked. According to immigration rights activists working with the federal government’s own numbers, most of the immigrants deported through the “Secure Communities” program were either non-criminals or low-level offenders. Critics complain that the law contains the same incentives for racial profiling and potential for dissuading undocumented immigrants from cooperating with police as SB 1070 in Arizona.

All of this makes clear that the administration isn’t anywhere near as squeamish about deporting illegal immigrants as it is about pushing through some kind of comprehensive immigration reform package. The federal government opposes SB 1070 not because of a concern about human rights, but because the Arizona law unconstitutionally preempts the federal mandate to set immigration laws. That’s probably partly why, when the administration filed its lawsuit against SB 1070, it alluded to potential problems with racial profiling without arguing that the law would be unconstitutional for that reason. (The other reason is that those lawsuits are hard to prove in advance of a law actually being enforced.)

If anyone should be angry, it’s not Brewer, but the immigration reform advocates who thought the administration’s emphasis on enforcement would coincide with a similarly rigorous effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.

November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.

My mother and I were denied entrance into Canada and sent back to the USA as if we were common criminals. I was separated from my mother and sent to a detention facility where I was forced to live with 60 men, many of whom were hardened criminals. There was no privacy and I was forced to use the facilities and showers while fully exposed. I lived in constant fear of being abused. I was without food for upwards of 14 hours a day and received little to no medical attention. When I asked for legal counsel I was threatened with criminal charges and jail time in a Federal Penitentiary. To this day I still have nightmares about being detained. Everything my parents taught me about human decency was replaced with humiliation. Mr. President I hope you are as outraged as I am hurt by this ordeal.

Bangladesh is extremely hot and humid. We have no air conditioning as the power goes out every day. These power outages can last twelve hours or more. The air is heavily polluted and I get food poisoning every week from the poor quality of food here. Raw sewage flows in open drains in front of our apartment. I see people outside with mangled bodies dying on the street because of the heat and starvation. I see mothers practically giving their children away because they are unable to feed them.

I do not know the language and I fear going outside because I am different from everyone else. Speaking in English is an easy way to be targeted here. We cannot afford to live in a safer area. I have not left the apartment for 8 months. It simply is too dangerous for me to leave the apartment unless my parents go with me. I cannot attend school due to the language barrier. I do not know anyone in Bangladesh.

On top of all this, my parents are both ill and have been for months. My father suffers severe asthma attacks that make him bedridden on most days. My mother has post traumatic stress and cannot accept the fact that she is not at our home in Texas.

These events transpired after we were approved to receive our Green Cards. ICE forced my family to leave knowing that Green Cards were available to us. We have been waiting for our Green Cards for 15 years now.

Mr. President, you are the most powerful man in the world, all I ask from you is to bring me home. All I ever wanted was an education so I could become an engineer. I just want to go home and go back to college. Please don’t keep me exiled any longer. Please bring me home.

Sincerely,
Saad Nabeel

The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice.  Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap. 

1. Sign the DREAM Act Petition
2. Join the DREAM Act Facebook Cause
3. Send a fax in support of the DREAM Act
4. Call your Senator and ask them to pass the DREAM Act now.
5. Email kyle at citizenorange dot com to get more involved

Below is a list of previous entries in the DREAM Now Series:

Mohammad Abdollahi (19 July 2010)
Yahaira Carrillo (21 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - Tell Harry Reid You Want the DREAM Act Now (23 July 2010)
Wendy (26 July 2010)
Matias Ramos (28 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - The CHC Has To Stand With Migrant Youth Not Against Us (30 July 2010)
Tania Unzueta (2 August 2010)
Marlen Moreno (4 August 2010)
Weekly Recap - The Ghost of Virgil Goode Possesses the Republican Party (9 August 2010)
David Cho (9 August 2010)
Ivan Nikolov (11 August 2010)
Yves Gomes (16 August 2010)
Selvin Arevalo (18 August 2010)
Weekly Recap - Latino, LGBT, Migrant Youth, and Progressive Bloggers Lead For the DREAM Act (20 August 2010)
Carlos A. Roa, Jr. (23 August 2010)
Myrna Orozco (25 August 2010)
Lizbeth Mateo (30 August 2010)

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: AZ Central

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Community College District on Monday, accusing it of discrimination for requiring extra paperwork from new employees who were not U.S. citizens.

The suit claims that at least 247 newly hired employees who were not citizens were required to present additional work-authorization documents beyond those required by law between July 2008 and January 2010.

The district, which did not require the extra documents from U.S. citizens, stopped the practice in January, during a Justice Department investigation.

The Immigration and Nationality Act requires employers to treat authorized workers in the same manner as U.S. citizens, according to Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.

The suit says that Glendale Community College offered a part-time math teaching position to Zainul Singaporewalla in August 2008. He accepted and produced a Department of Homeland Security form proving his permanent legal status as well as a California driver’s license and Social Security card.The college then asked Singaporewalla to fill out a non-U.S. citizen employee tax data form, and to provide a permanent resident card, which staff told him was a federal requirement. When he questioned the validity of the request and was unable to produce the card, the job offer was rescinded.

The suit, filed after a yearlong investigation by the Justice Department, calls for the community college district to pay a penalty of $1,100 for each non-U.S. citizen who was authorized to work but was required to supply additional documentation.

Tom Gariepy, spokesman for the community colleges, said Monday the district would have no comment on the suit.

Singaporewalla could not be reached for comment. He is listed on the faculty of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: MariaElenaSalinas.com

“If the level of violence in some Latin American cities were measured by the standards used by the World Health Organization, it would be considered an epidemic.” That is how Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, describes the rampant violence in Latin America.

A region that has a long history of armed conflicts and struggles for social justice is now being taken over by thugs, drug dealers, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, gangs and common criminals. Insulza said in a recent speech that of the top 10 countries in which most crimes are committed, more than half are Latin American.

The discovery of 72 bodies at a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, is a grim reminder of the on-going violence in that country as a result of the drug war. The bodies were found after the sole survivor of a deadly attack on immigrants was able to escape and reported the incident to marines at a nearby checkpoint. The navy raided the area, had a shootout with the alleged assailants and found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women inside a structure, some piled on top of each other.

It’s still unclear how long they had been there or if they all were shot at the same time. The survivor, who had been shot in the neck, according to media reports told authorities that he was with a group of immigrants from Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador and Honduras. They apparently were trying to make their way to the border to enter the United States when they were ambushed by members of the Zetas drug cartel. When they rejected demands for money and collaboration, the assailants opened fire, the Ecuadoran survivor said.

The massacre in Tamaulipas is one of several that have occurred in recent months. Mass graves with dozens of bodies have been discovered in North and Central Mexico. Since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drug cartels in 2006, more than 28,000 people have been killed.

As bad as the crime rate is in Mexico, it’s even worse in Venezuela. A recent New York Times article highlighted the gravity of the situation: 43,792 murders have been committed in Venezuela since 2007. According to the National Statistics Institute, in 2009 alone there were 19,133 homicides; that is one every 30 minutes. Most are attributed to social, economic and political tensions. More than 90 percent of the crimes go unsolved, without a single arrest. It is three times more dangerous to live in Venezuela than in Iraq, the Times article points out.

Colombia has had its share of violence, with an internal war between government forces supported by right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerilla groups. But the most recent acts of violence are worrisome. Two separate hit lists appeared on Facebook, warning the young people on the list to leave the town of Puerto Asis in less than three days. Three of those on the hit lists, ages 16, 17 and 19, were killed in different incidents. A fourth was injured.

Colombian federal officials and Internet forensic experts were trying to determine who is behind the lists, which included 69 boys’ names and 31 girls’ names.

Youth also are the main protagonists in the ongoing violence in Central America, especially in El Salvador and Honduras. Rival gangs are killing each other off. Drug dealers are infiltrating the gangs. And although the government denies it, there are reports of death squads doing social cleansing. The archbishop of El Salvador recently called upon authorities in that country to stop the violence after a 6-year-old girl was found decapitated.

These are just a few examples of the violence that is ravaging many Latin American countries. The OAS secretary-general is right — violence in Latin America is reaching epidemic proportions. The symptoms are visible, and the causes are many: poverty, lack of opportunities, corruption, impunity and a breakdown in values. It seems as if some members of society have no respect for life and no fear of death. Let’s hope a cure is found soon. The bloodshed has to stop.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: The Unapologetic Mexican

YESTERDAY’S SICK WARMONGERING SCION OF AMERICA, George W. Bush, once appeared on television and sternly scolded the People for taking television too seriously.

That is, this pampered rich boy who had every thing stolen for him in his life, swaggered up on his pulpit and berated the entire nation, warning us not to have too many emotions and thoughts due to all the televised news about death in Iraq; about suicide bombings in Iraq; about the Empire spasms that lashed out taking lives, maiming babies, weeping spent uranium. “The explosions on your TV.”

And I think that little irony there says it all about today’s media, about today’s “News” channels. We are supposed to take them seriously, even as they tell us not to do so. An inverted knot of suppressed and sublimated emotion and mangled thought process is how they’d have us. A busted open container they can pour poison into. But before that, like a vampire, suck up the energies and spirit of so many, and from all sides of the political spectrum. Inside this beast’s festering jaws are clenched a fabricated world brightly and wretchedly illuminated as if by 100,000 limbs set alight by white phosphorus.

Inside that box, the Iraq disaster is done with. Inside that box, it makes sense to keep bleeding billions into the Afghanistan sands. Inside that box, no important questions matter. Inside that box, your own heart and mind can’t fit. What would (does) our world look like outside of that box?

Today’s Right wing is not worth listening to any more than it makes sense to stick your arm into a spinning garbage disposal. What of those those who watch these hell-hearted plasticmen and seethe? Or mock them on a blog? Or debunk TV arguments every day of the year? A massive amount of energy and time is spent doing this. It’s sort of weird. Who do they watch for? Not for me. Some will claim it is a service. Do they do it for you? They deplete their own energies, and accomplish what? What is accomplished each day by doing this?

In truth, I’m sure it is a service for a few. Is it the most valuable service? Perhaps not. What of pooling all that time, pooling any monies, and creating a new station. Or perhaps a new network via radios. Yes, radio. This tool that many more people can use, and even carry mobile. A tool that many of lesser means can broadcast with, no less.

And to do what? Simply reporting the state of the world as it truly is. Sowing the airwaves with hope, with positivity, with history lessons. With plans, with campaigns, with community. Completely tuning out the false narrative as you would tune out a sick individual on a corner, ranting about death, devils, and disaster. Would you follow that person around, reinterpreting all their madness for the crowd? Would you shout side by side and call it a service?

This motion is not so much popular, though. The shape of thought that would completely swerve away and build something new in the place of something unsightly, unsafe, or unsound. Is that a revolutionary act? It is, by definition. Reform seeks to take something broken and reshape it. Redundancy says do it over and over even when it does nothing much. Revolution says that Thing is not worth reshaping, nor is it worth your energies and time. Revolutionary thought says you have the power and means and ability to make something new, in place of the old. But today’s Left is not revolutionary, of course.

Lately I hear a lot about how while so many are misguidedly blaming ALL muslims for 9/11, it was only a small cadre of radical extremist muslims who attacked us on 9/11.

Is that true?

Do you even know–as a person–who attacked us on 9/11? I don’t. How am I to know? How are we to know? I still have the newspaper where some foggy screen caps of a Fake Osama Bin Laden were shown supposedly crowing about the WTC attacks. For a tape that would be the hardest evidence in USA possession of who made the biggest hit on our country in its entire history, it faded out of existence very fast, eh? But then, I already said it’s fake.

Do you know it was the Taliban? Really? Why? Because your TV told you? Because the lying, corrupt government told you? That same government that was making deals with the Taliban in August of 2001? The same government that has been trying to sink its derricks into Central Asian oil fields for years? Why? Because they claimed 19 passports floated out of the completely exploded plane down onto the street and somehow stuck out in all that clutter, debris, ash, and litter?

What evidence do we have that the WTC were taken down by the people our government claims? What evidence personally? What trials brought to light the guilty? What process made this clear? What oracle pronounced this truth? The very same TV that our own government’s head of state told us not to take seriously? What forces forbade you to question this? The Right, and yes, the Left, too. From Bill Maher to DailyKos—earnest questions about this catastrophe that changed everything in our nation, from law to war to monies spent in congress, to school lessons—were verboten. Despite the shabbiest case ever built against any major crime. And those who insisted we examine it were demonized by those same Liberal forces, as we are today. Just as it has been the Liberals overwhelmingly leading the charge to sneer at those of us who still believe in protest, rallies, and boycotts.

That is your (Professional) Left.

Obviously, in 2010, what is ancient is again new. The empire is well into its recycling phase. We see conquer and divide. Hucksters and snake oil salesmen. Blatant class war. PSYOPS and a host of control mechanisms to provide a manufactured reality that keeps the People scattered, confused, scared, angry, and mostly, full of fake information. We were attacked and traumatized a decade ago, lied to about it by those who are supposed to protect us and be of us, and this rending of the truth helped destroy us as a confident and sane people.

We tried again to hope and believe in truth when Obama was elected, but as much as some “progressives” still cling to their ideology and party, it’s clear on a gut level that we were had and that the strongest forces in our nation today are those of war, greed, and deception.

And now, nobody believes in much of anything anymore as a result. And we are fast unraveling. Truth means nothing and TV pays it not even the tribute of a gesture. Racism is part of everyday speech, political campaigns, and dialogue. Hate groups are hand in hand with government. White supremacists roam the border and carry badges and guns, too. Laws that let police be even more racist in their operations than before are being launched left and right.

Even those who fight every day to maintain belief know, in their belly, that the game is rotten to the core. This is driving us mad, it is wrecking national sanity. Or causing people to simply turn away.

It’s not just because Obama is black that the nation is flipping out. It’s also because all the illusions of national identity and ideology that we were given as children have fallen apart. Now naked power rules, and shows itself in gross class war and cooked up news shows, court rulings, and police actions that make clear who will be okay tomorrow, and who will not. Those of us with little money or position understand we will soon be living in mildewed tents on the outskirts, while those with money or power will continue to enjoy tax breaks, ballrooms, and well-buttered toast smothered with imported jams.

Dreams of justice and fairness have been toppled.

Once that sinks in fully, things will become very ugly indeed. But many of us are in denial, in shock, or yet to see the final foundation buckling. Still listening to the siren song of TV.

Were there someone or some ones capable of organizing even a fraction of us—they’d need lots of money, and yet not to be beholden to the ideology of the Right—we might have a chance against our enemies. Our enemies are greed and disinformation. And a state out of control. It is those same illusions given us as children. It is the inertia that shoves us cliffward. It is the voice of the Television. It is today’s Liberal brain, brain like a slave, stooped over with the load of delusion, but weary and with no place to go to get away from it. The Left is a zombie holding a flag, with all its sly use of the Right’s most drastic weapons, with its reinforcing at key moments, what harms the People, with no real plan or courage to enact something better, something revolutionary. At every juncture where the Left might make a real stand and make a difference, it suddenly caves in. Just when the People might again hope or benefit. But it must. Because, you see, even the “left” politicians on the national stage know the deal. They hold no hope for justice or truth, either. But LIBERAL is their brand and they are stuck with it.

The GOP? The GOP is but the blood-flecked ID expanding like a rogue universe of wicked cells, the diseased and disintegrating lobe of the human condition. The freaked out, frantic, midnight acid-head mind that whips and coils like a half-smashed snake in the sand.

I’m not better than anyone else in all of this. I soothe myself with TV, too. I dive deeply into illusion. I simply happen to turn to it for storytelling, for movies. Otherwise, I’ll be out in nature. Give me the sun, the wind, the water, and the touch of someone close to me. And give me stories. Stories of clear-eyed humans, of paths lined with golden wheat that sways in the sun, trod by brave souls undertaking important journeys. Give me stories of unpolluted hearts, and simple, wise, and humble humans. Give me stories of the past, of over there, of a day faraway. A day when this looming tower of babbling bullshit has finally collapsed and lain itself upon the ground to bake and bleach under an aging sun, before long to be but a skeleton for tomorrow’s mountains.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: Ponte Al Dia

In anticipation of the 2012 Olympics, VisitBritain, the UK’s government-funded tourism agency, is providing tips on how to greet people from abroad.

For instance, they are told Indians may seem noisy and impatient, the behaviors of living in chaotic cities. Never pour a glass of wine for an Argentine backwards, a sign of hostility. Avoid winking at a Hong Kong visitor. And never call a Canadian an American.

With Mexicans, don’t bring up the 1840’s U.S.-Mexico war or undocumented immigrants. They prefer to talk about history, culture and museums.

Dan Pak recently wrote in the Korea Times some words of advice. Because Asian cultures discourage showing emotion in daily life, Americans consider them too stiff and formal. He said that although the custom is changing, Korean brides are prohibited from smiling at their own weddings.

U.S. folks are easygoing, he says. They even smile at people they don’t know.

Pak suggests, however, that Koreans should never try to hide embarrassment with a smile or a laugh. People in the U.S. would be mystified when the circumstances clearly suggest embarrassment.

One reason is because it’s all right to strike up a conversation with anyone virtually anywhere, even strangers, to establish a new harmony. Of all the people in the world, U.S. dwellers are probably the easiest to converse with, and they don’t care when one has limited language skills. Even pantomime, broken and accented English win sympathetic gestures.

But even an advanced student of kinesics can get befuddled through mixed messages. For example, by now everyone knows there’s a rhetorical flu that associates undocumented immigrants with what unfortunately are called anchor babies. An imagery has begun to spread that undocumented immigrants are having babies in the United States and using them like a hall pass, to serve as the basis for parents and relatives to gain citizenship after the anchor infant reaches 18.

It’s a long wait, but those disposed to believe it are not much interested in sociological and demographic explanations, or that most babies are products of romance, not policy strategies. Some Washington lawmakers claim it’s all part of a conspiracy to crawl through green card and restrictive immigration loopholes. That perspective gained momentum in August.

That’s when Senator Linsay Graham (R-S.C.) referred to human birthing as “drop and leave.” Latino groups, especially women, responded energetically to what they perceived as a wrong-headed willingness to change the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment in order to deny citizenship to some perceived as less desirable newcomers. A brilliant essay by Gebe Martínez, Ann García and Jessica Arons, from the Center for American Progress, recounts a dismal history concerning making chattel of slave/owner children and sterilizing Chinese and Native American women and Latinas.

GeekyAsianGuy.com posted on Aug. 13 six exceptionally common-sense strong arguments for maintaining birthright citizenship. He cited the case of San Franciscan Wong Kim Ark, who in 1890 went to visit China, his parents’ birthplace. U.S. authorities refused to let him back in the country. Many children of deported parents could encounter a similar prohibition one day in the near future. Fortunately, in 1898 the Supreme Court confirmed, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark , the man’s birthright.

If the subject comes up again soon and you see a lot of people smiling, it is because they are embarrassed that, in the current atmosphere, a birthright has trouble staying a birthright.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: Reuters

The U.S. government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole southwest border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security in this election year, a top official said on Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said U.S. Customs and Border Protection would begin flying a Predator B drone out of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Wednesday, extending the reach of the agency’s unmanned surveillance aircraft across the length of the nearly 2,000 mile border with Mexico.

“With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the southwest border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground,” Napolitano said during a conference call.

“This is yet another critical step we have taken in ensuring the safety of the border and is an important tool in our security toolbox,” she added.

Illegal immigration and security along the porous border with Mexico has become a hot topic this year, when the ruling Democrats’ control of Congress is on the line in November 2 elections.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed a $600 million bill that would fund some 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law enforcement officials along the border, as well as paying for two more unmanned drones.

Napolitano said the additional aircraft pledged under the bill, together with the new aircraft soon to begin operations in Texas, would increase the Customs and Border Protection drone fleet to six by the start of next year.

The Predator B drones are made by defense contractor General Atomics. They carry equipment including sophisticated day and night vision cameras that operators use to detect drug and human smugglers, and can stay aloft for up to 30 hours at a time.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: Latina Lista

Cyberspace has been blazing with news of bad-girl-socialite Paris Hilton’s felony charge for being found with .8 grams of cocaine in her purse in Las Vegas over the weekend.

Now news reports are saying that she probably won’t even see any jail time. Forget the officer could smell marijuana from the car and that Hilton was trying to shut the window when she saw the officer.

Forget that this comes on the heels of her South African bust for possessing marijuana, though the charges were later dropped. Forget that in her purse, aside from the cocaine, there were Zig Zag wrappers used to roll marijuana joints and a half of a tab of Albuterol — two items that she actually claimed were her’s and not some friend she supposedly lent her purse to.

All in all, it’s pretty amazing, or not, that this repeat offender can rest on the strong possibility that she won’t ever serve time though she had enough drugs and paraphernalia that shows she was doing something illegal that night.

Unfortunately, Ramsey Muñiz didn’t have Paris Hilton’s blond locks, fame or beauty to keep him from serving a sentence that his supporters say was staged to silence one Latino activist who was a thorn in some peoples’ sides.

Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz is 67-years-old. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, Muñiz should be enjoying retirement and spending time with his familia.

Instead, he finds himself sitting in the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, TX — going on 17 years in a life-without-parole sentence on drug charges that his supporters, of which he has many, say are bogus.

Ramsey Muñiz, from Corpus Christi, Texas, was an up-and-coming Latino lawyer in the early 70s. His childhood of being active in school student councils and fighting for more inclusion of Latinos on all levels hinted at what he would accomplish in his adult life:

“(He) changed the face of politics in Texas,” said Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin (who represented Muniz). “He gave power of inclusion to Hispanic Americans. He particularly changed the face of political offices in South Texas. There has been a lot of resentment from the Establishment because of that. A lot of people would like to see him fall because of who he is and what he did.”

And that’s what happened. From 1976-1994, Muñiz found himself on the receiving end of various drug charges that his supporters claimed were staged to discredit him and the work he was doing at the time in Texas Latino politics.

The last charge stuck. In 1994, he was arrested in a sting operation.

On a business trip, he was arrested on March 11, 1994 in Lewisville, TX, events unfolding as follows:
On March 10, DEA Agent Kimberly Elliott tracked Muniz to the Lewisville Ramada Inn, checked his telephone toll calls, and recorded his license plate number in the parking lot. The following day, he was entrapped after agreeing to return a prospective client’s car (in fact, a government agent) to a rental company. It was a sting, 39 kilograms of cocaine planted in the trunk, uncovered by drug-sniffing dogs when he was confronted.

Prosecutors prevailed by withholding key information from the defense, intimidating jurors to convict, and getting right wing justice to go along. As a result, during proceedings, the court ruled that Agents had probable cause to stop and search regarding a suspected drug deal, though no plausible reason connected Muniz to an $800,000 one with a perfect stranger.

During proceedings, prosecutors claimed he checked into his motel under a false name to hide his identity. In fact, Ramada records proved otherwise. He was also accused of making suspicious phone calls from the lobby. In fact, all phone records confirmed they were for legitimate business. Another false claim was that motel employees alerted DEA agents about him. When interviewed, they denied it. The entire case was fabricated to convict, prosecutors doing it by lying, their usual strategy against political activists opposed to systemic injustice.
Unfortunately, the state of Texas has a horrendous record when it comes to railroading and framing people of color for drug busts.

Because of the past events in his life, Ramsey still has not lost the focus of his life-long fight:

“Even now as I find myself confined in the darkness of this oppressive political system, I firmly believe with my life and heart that we, as a people, as a race, as a nation within a nation, will never be totally liberated, until we formulate and establish our ‘own’ political power in America.”

Was arresting and charging Ramsey a way to put this outspoken Latino leader in “his place?”

Since being in prison, Ramsey has been nothing less than a model prisoner still claiming his innocence.

How sad that a guilty socialite gets more attention than an innocent man whose only crime was fighting for justice for Latinos.

Now, it’s time to get justice for Ramsey.

This month, Ramsey’s wife, Irma, sent a letter to President Obama asking the President for Executive Clemency for Ramsey. Given all the particulars of Ramsey’s case, it certainly is one that warrants a review from the Justice Department — and one not to be forgotten by the Latino community.

Who knows if through Ramsey’s efforts the Sleeping Giant would have woken sooner?

Popularity: 2% [?]