Friday, July 20, 2007
Not in Our Name
No En Nuestro Nombre!
A Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement
By JOHN ROSS
El Bush's Holy War on Iraq is coming to a critical juncture. As the Yanqui president implements his so-called "surge" of 30,000 new troops (150,000 total) in a desperate move to secure Baghdad, the insurgency has surged too. The more troops Bush pours in, the higher the Yanqui death count climbs. The April -May-June quarter with 320 invaders killed was the highest three-month casualty toll since this brutal war began in March 2003.
Meanwhile, the body count of Iraqi dead escalates daily. So-called "sectarian" killings are again on the rise despite the increased gringo presence in Baghdad. Factoring in the monthly massacre tallies and extrapolating from the John Hopkins University (U.S.)/Lancet (UK) estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion began, it is probable that as many as 800,000 Iraqis have lost their lives to Bush's genocide. 4.2 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes - 2.2 million are internal refugees and another 2 million have fled into Jordan and Syria where they are unwelcome and treated as badly as the indocumentados are up in Bush-landia. The United Nations is calling the Iraqi refugee catastrophe the largest exodus in the Middle East since Israel ran the Palestinians off their land in 1948 and the most critical in the world today.
All of this carnage obeys a calendar - the Yanquis' electoral calendar - which in November 2008 will select a successor to the bloody Bush. The Yanquis are like sun kings. They really believe the sun revolves around them, that they are really in charge. But for once the tables are turned. The Iraqi resistance - the so-called "terrorists" - holds some heavy cards and the 2008 U.S. presidential election will be determined by the kill rate in that wounded land.
Compas, when this terrible war began four years ago, we came together to stop the slaughter in a coalition named "No En Nuestro Nombre" (since fragmented), a slogan that we picked up from our counterparts in the U.S. anti-war movement. But the truth is that Bush's war has never been fought in the name the Mexicas gave this country. This has always been a gringo war - Bush vs. the rest of the world. Our wars are in Oaxaca and Atenco, Chiapas, against the sinverguenzas that have stolen this land, cut down the trees and poisoned the water, disappeared the Indians, forced us to guzzle Coca Cola and pump petroleum, and buy our tortillas at Wal-Mart.
Yet even if Iraq is not Mexico's war, we are invested in it - more than 200 young Mexicanos y Mexicanas tricked into serving in Tio Sam's army, are dead in Iraq according to the lista de los muertos kept by Fernando Suarez del Solar, the father of Jesus Suarez, the first Mexica to die in the invasion. Mexican civil society sent two groups of human shields to Baghdad to stand between Bush's bombs and the Iraqi people even before the war began. The Mexican-born doctor Augustin Aguayo was imprisoned by the gabacho military for refusing to return to Iraq. Solidarity, the globalization of resistance, is embedded in the Mexica genome.
Click here for the rest of the article.
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 7/20/2007 08:01:00 PM
The entire linked article is well worth reading. It expresses everything in attitude on the matter that zatikia has been in posting here and also what we hear in our chat room from all but Americans. In short, there is no such thing as an American leftist movement, there will not be, and we should not be wasting time pretending there is but instead be building solidarity with those where one can and does really exist and matter.
It hard for the Americans, including and perhaps especially those who deem themselves on the left, to contrast their spoken ideals with frivolous lives enjoyed through suffering of others and yet not grasp why rest of the world properly considers not just their leaders but each of them as the enemy?
Granted that the system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, housewives, and yes, self adoring intellectuals claiming leftist credentials. Many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on and priveleged by the system, they will fight to protect it rather than join to destroy it. As long as they do, these people are a willing part of that system, and that makes them legitimate enemy targets.
Telling Numbers
We had been running our polls for about one month at a time. The last one, our 14th, showed a trend that was not obvious in its running results. Because of that, we carried it longer and cut it off at 100 responses to see if the trend held. It did.
The poll was immediately noticeable at the top of the Forum’s left column. Anyone who reached the Forum could but was not required to vote. Only one vote was allowed to each user. The current results could only be seen after voting. There was no way to know the choices of particular individuals. The question asked was “If you had to fight for one, which would it be?” Possible responses were “Al-Qaeda” and “United States”. Here are the results.
It looks pretty even with a small majority supporting the United States. The numbers might be prejudicially suspect appearing on a politically leftist forum. They may be more representative however than that assumption would lead. We have had contacts from 140 nations. A large share of those originate from search engine queries devoid of significant political content and hitting on words and phrases of our posts.
The US backing of 55% is especially notable because that number also pops up in another context. Coupling the two appearances seem to reveal something otherwise hidden. The Forum’s Privacy Policy explains that the data we gather includes analysis of contacts by originating nations. It turns out that 55% of them are from the United States. Perhaps the two “55”s are not coincidental.
It is probably so that most voting Americans would support the US. How about the others? Focus on the remaining 45% from rest of globe who backed Al-Qaeda. Those outside the US seem in close unanimity to share Al-Qaeda’s evident belief the US is a justifiable military target.
The poll was immediately noticeable at the top of the Forum’s left column. Anyone who reached the Forum could but was not required to vote. Only one vote was allowed to each user. The current results could only be seen after voting. There was no way to know the choices of particular individuals. The question asked was “If you had to fight for one, which would it be?” Possible responses were “Al-Qaeda” and “United States”. Here are the results.
It looks pretty even with a small majority supporting the United States. The numbers might be prejudicially suspect appearing on a politically leftist forum. They may be more representative however than that assumption would lead. We have had contacts from 140 nations. A large share of those originate from search engine queries devoid of significant political content and hitting on words and phrases of our posts.
The US backing of 55% is especially notable because that number also pops up in another context. Coupling the two appearances seem to reveal something otherwise hidden. The Forum’s Privacy Policy explains that the data we gather includes analysis of contacts by originating nations. It turns out that 55% of them are from the United States. Perhaps the two “55”s are not coincidental.
It is probably so that most voting Americans would support the US. How about the others? Focus on the remaining 45% from rest of globe who backed Al-Qaeda. Those outside the US seem in close unanimity to share Al-Qaeda’s evident belief the US is a justifiable military target.
# posted by furtherleft @ 7/20/2007 02:56:00 AM
I wouldn't say it would be that clear cut, there may be people in the US who may sympathise with al-qaeda, likewise those who may sympathise with the us from outside. I personally didn't vote, although if i had to go one way it would be the US but only if by some miracle al-qaeda still existed and the us had become a workers state. Otherwise i'd remain a fighter against both the reactionaries of US capitalism and al-qaeda.
I look at struggle less as defining for whom to be cheered and more in focusing on who is the enemy to battle. Once the heart etches that line, it then becomes a matter of determining and applying the means necessary and available. I have little trouble in this case in knowing on which side of it I stand. It is not hard to count bodies and note who is on whose land. Communication in our chat room with those from around the world but beyond the borders of the US tell me I stand in solidarity with those on the far more populous and determined side.
Al Qa'eda created by the US to face Soviet Union, as simple as it is, go watch Rambo III....
In any case, Qa'eda rule of Afghanistan has been horrific, just when we thought there can be no worse than a Stalin's reign of oppression, we had a US offshoot product called Taliban.
I cant imagine how one can support Qa'eda
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Just Us Revisited
The jury convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on four of the five counts in the indictment: one count of obstruction of justice; two counts of perjury; and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. Libby is "the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a federal-level government scandal since National Security Advisor John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair" in 1990.
The presiding trial judge, Reggie B. Walton, sentenced Libby to 30 months in federal prison, a fine of $250,000, and two years of supervised release, including 400 hours of community service, and then ordered Libby to begin his sentence immediately. When Libby's appeal of Judge Walton's order failed, President Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence calling it "excessive," leaving the other parts of his sentence intact.
President Bush is still considering a full-on pardon of Libby.
-===-
In 2002, Martha Stewart was accused of insider trading and other crimes relating to statements that she made to investigators. Stewart went to trial and was convicted in March 2004 on four counts of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice. She was sentenced to prison, fined, and barred from serving on a public company Board of Directors and from serving in certain executive capacities for five years.
She served in Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia from October 2004 to March 4, 2005, after which she was placed under supervised release and required to wear an ankle bracelet for an additional 5 months.
Martha Stewart was convicted of the same two crimes. Both are high-profile and wealthy people. Martha served time; "Scooter" didn't because the president said he didn't have to do so.
-===-
A Georgia judge ordered the release Monday of a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17, a sentence that had been widely criticized as grossly disproportionate to the crime. A jury had found Genarlow Wilson, an honor student, guilty in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Although the sex act was consensual, it was illegal under Georgia law.
# posted by Konrad Roeder @ 7/18/2007 10:02:00 AM
I have a deeply concerned American reader of our forum posts here that feels justice is not being done. A mistake in this Libbys details seem to have been made and she feels the world needs to know the truth of this piece of trivia. So, out of courtesy and fair play, I post the correction here that she has been so kind to email me. “You say on your front page that Scooter Libby is the highest ranking White House official convicted of a crime since Iran-Contra. This is a lie. That honor would go to Henry Cisneros, Clinton appointee”.
Cisneros was the U.S. Secretary of HUD from 1993 to 1997. He plead guilty to making false statements to federal officials and was fined $10,000. He received a full pardon by President Bill Clinton in January 2001. And you are right, Zatikia, as the head of HUD, he had attained cabinet rank where as Scooter Libby was only an assistant to the President. I stand corrected on this minort point. However, the major point is that unless you are politically connected, you do hard time. If you are a cronie, it looks like you get a get out of jail card.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
No End In Sight
This War Is Lost
[The author of this article has some ideas worth thinking about]
No, this isn't about the war in Iraq that a certain senator in the US was talking about recently. It's about another war that has been going on far longer, a war that has cost much more in both money and lives in the US and now, in México. It is the drug war, a war that transcends many US administrations and has no end in sight.
No, this isn't about the war in Iraq that a certain senator in the US was talking about recently. It's about another war that has been going on far longer, a war that has cost much more in both money and lives in the US and now, in México. It is the drug war, a war that transcends many US administrations and has no end in sight.
I remember attending a lecture back in the mid 1940s by an agent of what is now the Drug Enforcement Administration describing how violent the drug business was and the cost to society. Nothing has changed in sixty years except that it is much worse.
The US National Institute on Drug Abuse says that between 1985 and 1992, the cost to society increased by 50%. The trend continues. Overall cost to US society (including health costs, productivity and enforcement costs) was $108 Billion in 1992 and increased to $181 Billion in 2002. The raw cost of the illegal drugs imported has been around $60 Billion USD for years. $16 Billion in health care costs in 2002 and rising. Productivity costs in 2002 were $129 Billion and rising. Drug related crime; either direct or committed while "under the influence" is the single largest category of crime in the US.
According to the US Bureau of Justice, drug arrests have risen for adults from around 350,000 in 1970 to about 1,600,000 in 2005.
Want to see something scary? The general price trends for drugs from 1981 through 2003 have been down . . . while the purity of the drugs is much higher! And you think this war is being won?
Here's something else to think about. Of worldwide heroin grown, heroin in México has been dropping from 5,450 hectares in 1990 to 2,700 hectares in 2002. In Afghanistan, it has gone from 12,370 hectares to 206,000 hectares in the same period. The biggest jump up was in 2002 and 2003. Yeah, and you thought that the war there would help this issue. Think again.
What this is doing to México is something else. It's now a full fledged shooting war in México. With this much money flying around, someone is going to supply the US market come hell or high water. You can't pick up a paper without seeing 5 or 10 assassinated, and in May, in one shoot out between drug gangs, 22 were killed near the northern border. Police, including police chiefs and commanders are fair game. And now, direct attacks on the Mexican army by better-armed drug fighters have become common. In one instance, the attackers traveled in a convoy of more than 15 vehicles to the battle. And most escaped on horseback into the rugged mountains.
The Mexican chief of drug intelligence for the Department of Justice (PGR) was assassinated in his auto in downtown México (City) in the last week of May in broad daylight.
In early May, four bodyguards assigned to protect the children of the governor of the State of México were killed. The governor said that it must be "mistaken identity" and shrugged it off. Later that day a severed head with a "narco note" was delivered to an army post nearby telling the governor that more would come. This is becoming a standard practice with heads turning up everywhere.
The Fox administration started war against the drug gangs by arresting and imprisoning the cartel leaders. The effect was to destabilize what was a more or less orderly business. Then the lower ranks (the "young Turks") started wars between the cartels for the control of the lucrative drug market in the US.
The Calderón administration took the war to a new level by using the Mexican army to directly attack the gangs and try to reclaim México for the Mexican people. (More than 24,000 troops are committed now.) The problem is that it seems so far that the drug gangs are stronger than the army and navy combined.
The drug smugglers are even getting into human illegal immigrant smuggling by using the people as human shields to smuggle drugs across the border.
There has been a hint of another line of thinking down here now. Why not simply declare peace with the drug gangs and "make a deal" with them to let Mexico alone. If the US wants to buy drugs . . . that's their problem.
True, that line of thinking has been strongly rejected here . . . at least for now. But if the US doesn't clean up their act, who can condemn this line of thought? After all, who maintains this enduring illegal market? Considering this state of affairs, isn't is fair to ask the US when, after 60 years of failure, are they going to get serious about their own drug problem?
México fully cooperates in stopping illegal immigrants from "sensitive" countries transgressing México to the US. How about some cooperation from north of the border on drugs?
Just like illegal immigration, this is a market driven affair.
by Richard N. Baldwin T., at HispanicVista.com contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Chat News
The Further Left Chat Room
The Further Left Chat has been on Pal Talk since the middle of April now. It was a good choice of places to land, lots of people from all over the world. Each with their opinion of what is going wrong and where that wrong comes from and telling how things are done in their country. A world view seen thru the eyes of our chatters.
Even a handful of grateful escapees from America have decided to stay around and they are providing good views of why they decided to leave, and their new views from other lands. And we have some of our old time regulars too, and a few, but very few, Americans that stayed in their country but still somehow manage to see the truths of it and tell the inside view. All in all, a very good combination.
Learning and understanding and exchanging ideas and information is what we need for a hope of getting things back under some sort of balance again. Exposing the lies. Passing along our truths to link them together to make them stronger. With the ability to decide who should stay and who is there to just detract, the chat room is really shaping up into something very worthwhile.
What we are trying to accomplish, in this much abused world, is a place for people to gather to exchange what they have learned and how it fits or differs from each other, in order to gain more knowledge. It is a room for people to unite that are moving in the same direction, freedom from oppression, a balance with living in what is left of our planet, and stopping the Americanization of the world, each in our own way.
We are getting a lot of comments saying that such a room is needed and appreciated, and that we are the only real leftist chat on this system, which is an encouraging compliment to know.
It has been a lot of work and dedication but for all of us involved, it has been well worth it.
Here are two good links that have recently come into the chat
Peak Oil rewritten and corrected by our chat member HiTecVagabond
Bill Moyers – Talk Tough on Impeachment. Sent in by chatter Coasta
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 7/16/2007 11:27:00 AM
Stats for Further Left on Paltalk: Time 17 Jul 2007 10:00 UTC; Created Apr 14 2007; Age in days 94; Approximate typical max capacity 11; Max members ever 13; Number of admins 5; Number in group 11; Number actively banned 78; Number of entries since created: 6615; Average entries per day 70.
I also worked on the Punta Colonet, Baja California Wikipedia article which is about an unspoiled Baja California Pacific Coast inlet that will be turned into a multi-billion dollar deep water mega-container port. It will be the third largest port in the world behind Hong Kong and Singapore. It's main purpose appears to be to bypass union labor and environmental regulations in the US as 200 miles of railroad will be needed to connect it to civilization. I need someone to translate this article into Spanish so that it can be submitted to es.wikipedia.org
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Keeping People In
Senators voted 83-16 to add a fencing between US and Mexico...
The House voted 260-159
Bush hardly ever vetoes anything
The administration has allocated billions of dollars to beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico and the U.S.-Canada borders
...the wall will be 15 feet high to prevent people from going to work.... (we don't have a problem with terrorists hopping the border and suicide-bombing discos or shopping centers)
...eventually it will stretch from shining sea to shining sea....
No one in the US media told you the fence seems to be planned to work for both directions
Are you sure you be able to leave????
The House voted 260-159
Bush hardly ever vetoes anything
The administration has allocated billions of dollars to beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico and the U.S.-Canada borders
...the wall will be 15 feet high to prevent people from going to work.... (we don't have a problem with terrorists hopping the border and suicide-bombing discos or shopping centers)
...eventually it will stretch from shining sea to shining sea....
No one in the US media told you the fence seems to be planned to work for both directions
Are you sure you be able to leave????
# posted by Konrad Roeder @ 7/15/2007 02:08:00 AM
ok starting to look like a cheep meaner version of the china wall but who's the mongols .If we are the land of the free and home of the brave why do we need fences to keep us in and others out ?when is america the smart going to wake up to all this harming ?mental and other wize?
The fence shows the mentality of America and represents what they are. Backwards and hostile and paranoid. The only good thing about it, is when their nation does explode, or implode, it will slow them way down when they start running towards Mexico for safety.
The whole wranglings over the wall and immigration have been quite interesting as the US rling class faces quite a dilemma. They are reliant of cheap immigrant labour to keep holding workers wages down (similar to the UK), but on the other hand many on the political right will have been elected on lsightly xenophobic anti-immigration platforms. From a class perspective what needs to happen is for workers to be organised both inside and outside the US for better wages and conditions, their seems to be signs of this happening in China recently (see www.chinaworker.info) and for an example of how immigrant workers could be organised alongside US-born workers look at the struggle of the GAMA construction workers in Ireland.
This is what the wall says to me: We USA people know we vampirized and destroyed the economies of Latin America thru neoliberalism and such tricks, and we know you are fleeing the wreckage. We ARE responsible for you being here, but we don't care. You aren't coming HERE. Go die somewhere.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Two Countries
It was the best of times to see their heritage, culture and natural wonders. The rich there have large haciendas with huge villas on them. The other half lives in shacks made of pressboard, tar paper and corrugated steel. We notice the class struggle between the rich and poor, but we tend to ignore it. Perhaps we briefly stop to toss a coin toward the mother and child begging on the side of the road. Often, the sharp contrast is reflected with statements like "If the poor wanted to work, they would" and "It's amazing what money can buy".
Some of their more motivated people come up to work in our country harvesting our crops, building our homes and babysitting our children. Some of them want to come here so bad that they will cross the border illegally. For the longest time this too was ignored since the hard workers from the south provided much needed cheap labor. I've loved Mexico ever since taking regular spring break trips during my college days. I often feel myself drawn back to Mexico as if there was a magnet pulling me. For some reason I like the place. It's not so much about how many toys you have, but all about family.
Things changed recently. Since 9/11 we fear that our country will be invaded by terrorists and illegal aliens. A Great Wall of Mexicoproject is underway. Over 700 miles of wall are being constructed of concertina barb-wire fence with room for patrol vehicles, guard towers, military police, guard dogs, etc. There are even rumors of mine fields, tanks and jets to patrol this border. No one seems to mind the wall since we are told it will preserve our jobs. But people feel that it will not help the war on terrorism.
Meanwhile the border to the north is pristine and kept that way. There is a 1925 treaty that enforces a “boundary vista”. The border commission has the legal authority to demand removal of any structure that encroaches within 10 feet of the border from either side. A few months ago, a family that built a fence to keep their dogs from running off to Canada was determined to have built their fence too close to the border. The knee-high wall had to be promptly removed. However, things took a different turn recently when Bush had the commissioner fired for not preserving the property rights of the people with the fence and the dogs.
Although building a wall on the Canadian border has been brought up, construction has never been authorized.
So what is this wall between Mexico and the US really for?
1) Combating terrorism - no. They can just come in from Canada.
2) Combating illegal aliens - no. They can come in through Canada. They come in on boats from Cuba and Haiti.
3) Maybe it's to keep us from leaving? run to Canada
4) Maybe it's in preparation for a war. But what kind of a war?
A war of aggression to take Mexico's oil? - maybe
Another Mexican revolution? - maybe
What happens when oil becomes more expensive? The cost of transportation goes up. Will China be able to deliver their stream of goods to the US? Their goods will be much too expensive once fuel costs go up. What if things were made in Mexico again and the labor costs were forced down further to match China wages? What happens in Mexico once their oil runs out - a bunch of unhappy people.
Maybe this is why they want the wall so bad - so that we can feel like we are on the other side of a class struggle - Just like the days of Charles Dickens.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Facing Deportation
Longtime Advocate for Immigrants
Now Faces Deportation
New York Times July 11
For Victor Toro, last week seemed like any other week in his life as one of the best-known advocates for immigrants and other dispossessed people in New York City. He met with other activists in Rochester to discuss what they should do about the recent collapse of the immigration bill in Congress.
On Friday, his meetings completed, Mr. Toro boarded an Amtrak train to return to his home in the Bronx. But Mr. Toro is an illegal immigrant. And it was on that train that he was discovered. He was arrested, jailed and then released early Monday morning after posting bond.
He now faces deportation.
Yesterday he was home with his wife and daughter, awaiting what is next in his odyssey. It began in the 1970s when he was a political prisoner in the jails of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, veered for a time into Europe and Mexico, then into New York City, where he became known for more than two decades of community and political activism.
Belatedly, Mr. Toro now plans to seek political asylum, but where he once feared only Chile, he said he now fears the United States as well.
Mr. Toro, a striking figure who wears his long white hair in a ponytail and has a luxuriant white mustache, foresaw none of this when he boarded the train in Rochester.
Suddenly, United States border patrol agents entered Mr. Toro’s car and went from seat to seat, asking passengers whether they were citizens, residents or visitors. Mr. Toro answered, in Spanish, that he was not an American citizen.
Did he have any identification? the agents asked. Mr. Toro showed them a Chilean passport, which had expired in 2005 and had no entry stamps for the United States. Can you explain the lack of entry stamps? the agents asked.
“I am here illegally,” Mr. Toro said in Spanish, according to his daughter, Rosa Toro, who acted as interpreter during a phone interview.
Mr. Toro was handcuffed, placed in a van with other immigrants who could not provide papers, given an orange jumpsuit, and imprisoned at Cayuga County Jail in Auburn, N.Y.
Ramon Rivera, a spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection, said such random checks were becoming increasingly routine at train stations, bus stops and airports since the terror attacks of 9/11.
Detainees like Mr. Toro are asked during processing whether they seek political asylum, Agent Rivera said, and there is no record that Mr. Toro sought such asylum last week.
For Mr. Toro, 65, interactions with governments are filled with dread. When he was a left-wing political activist, General Pinochet’s regime tortured him after the coup that toppled Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973, he said.
Both he and Nieves Ayress, now 56, who later became his wife, have said they had electrodes attached to their genitals in Chilean jails.
In 1976, he fled Chile for Sweden, Norway and other European countries, but he did not seek asylum anywhere there, said Carlos Moreno, Mr. Toro’s lawyer. For years, Mr. Toro went from country to country, finding himself at last in Mexico.
In 1984, he illegally crossed the border into the United States at El Paso, settling later in the Bronx, Mr. Moreno said.
Mr. Toro and Ms. Ayress, both political activists, started Vamos a la Peña del Bronx in 1987, a storefront group that provided clothing and food for poor people, help with immigrants’ problems, shelter for battered women and health education for those who were H.I.V. positive.
In 1998, the group won an award and a $50,000 grant from Union Square Awards in Manhattan for community service. “We were looking for groups that were operating on pure passion but who had no economic resources,” said Iris Morales, director of the philanthropy.
During more than two decades in the public eye, Mr. Toro was hiding his immigration status in plain sight, his lawyer said. Mr. Toro was arrested three times in the 1990s for nonviolent offenses: once for a political demonstration, a second time for a noise complaint, and a third for a building permit dispute.
Mr. Toro was never asked about his immigration status after his arrests, Mr. Moreno said. In addition, his home is opposite the 40th Precinct police station.
General Pinochet died last year, his regime replaced by a freely elected government, so why doesn’t Mr. Toro simply return to his homeland?
Rosa Toro said that the Chilean government declared him officially dead, a fact that chills her father.
“In Chile, the dictatorship would declare a person dead,” Ms. Toro said, “so that if you came back and something should happen to you, no one would know because you were already dead, officially.”
Ms. Toro, 27, was born in Havana and is a legal resident. Her mother is an American citizen. Mr. Toro had hesitated seeking asylum, in part, because the recent failed immigration bill seemed to promise amnesty for illegal immigrants like himself, Ms. Toro said. He had sought a new Chilean passport, but both times Mr. Toro was told that he was dead.
“Now, in both places, no one is very concerned about my father,” said Ms. Toro, a schoolteacher. “In the U.S. he could be deported, and in Chile he doesn’t exist.”
Mr. Moreno acknowledges that he faces substantial hurdles when Mr. Toro appears before an immigration court. No court date has been set.
Nonetheless, Mr. Toro has a strong case for political asylum because he has contemporary witnesses and photographs documenting physical abuse in Chile, Mr. Moreno said.
“Yes, he has some explaining to do,” Mr. Moreno said.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Iraqi Posters
Iraq's Horror Movie PostersA message from the Iraq resistance."People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain .We are simple people who chose principles over fear.
Click to see the rest of the posters
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Tent City
In Raymondville, Texas
No wonder American claims it spends so much money on immigration. Look at what they waste it on.
Raymondville is about an hour North from the border town of Brownsville, TX. It is a small town with a population of about 10, 000. It houses the $65 million futuristic "Tent City". It has been described as a “futuristic tent city...made of Kevlar-like material” without windows and ringed by barbed wire. The facility is located next to a State and Federal Prison, keeping the undocumented immigrants as criminals in the largest immigration detention center in the US. It holds 2,000 immigrants who speak more than 40 different languages in windowless hothouses. They are locked down 23 hours a day. Some will spend years there before being sent back home. They are often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Criminal "Just-Us"
President Bush reduced Lewis "Scooter" Libby,s "excessive" 30-month prison sentence to an impressively short sentence of zero days (probably for being a good boot-licker). After all, we are reminded by the media that he is a fine Republican American, a great father and a Christian too.
However, Bush kept in place the $250,000 fine (with a special $400 special acessment) which were both paid in a matter of 3 1/2 days. I really wonder if he had to do something painful like cash out his rainy day fund (built-up over the course of 15 years by defending organized crime figure and billionaire Marc Rich) or something like selling a portion of his KBR stocks. God forbid that he had to take out a mortgage on his home.
Will he ever visit a probation officer's office ever??? Nah. District Judge Reggie Walton, who was appointed by President Bush, already said that federal law "does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervised release without first completing a term of incarceration." I'm sure he won't have to submit to a DNA sample, give piss-test samples, stay within a 50 mile radius or his home, be under house arrest when not at work, wear a GPS tracker, give up his right to vote, own a gun or anything harsh like that. Perhaps he won't qualify for a security clearance for his next job. Not. You won't see anything like this for Scooter.
And the last piece - the record will show the fact that Libby lied under oath in connection with an investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent. That record be gone in January 2009. Bush will simply wave his pardon wand as he leaves office, maybe even sooner. Maybe parts or whole sections of his Wikipedia "coatrack" article will disappear too. I know of other Republican crooks that have managed to do this already.
What is the point of prosecuting any of these crooks if an unfavorable decision will simply be annulled by proclamation? As you can see, criminal "Just-Us" is special version of the law reserved for a special few, not even for the likes of Paris Hilton.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Addicted America
This story of Zehnli Ye Gon, copied below, is what America creates. It is a fact, America uses more illegal drugs than any country in the world, and also a fact that there are more drug addicts there than anywhere else in the world. One must question why, since it is suppose to be the very best of all. America also has more designer drugs and enhancers that they distribute thru their doctors than any other nation in the world. The reason is their government has programmed them to be dependant and to not think for themselves, they easily turn to drugs. And the reason for that, is so they can be used as government tools. For example, telling their public that the reason why their children turn to drugs is because Mexico makes them illegally. Instead of looking at the obvious, it must be a flaw in themselves and lack of a correct upbringing and a warped society.
And what else is obvious, is that if America gave their people what they crave and seem to need, what real freedom demands, and made their own drugs of choice for them, or at least let Mexico do it legally, this whole massive problem would just disappear, no laws broken, no need to go to war over it, no need to fill up prisons over it, or tip the balance of Mexico over it.
This article about Zehnli Ye Gon should be read in its entirety, right down to the revealing end. This man is now living in America, since he is now a known criminal here in Mexico, how strange. It shows the immense amount of money that temps business minded men into this illegal drug trade for American consumption. From duffle bags of $100 dollar bills to 150 tons of illegal drug ingredients in a ship, to government scandals and lies to stories of wild excess. Keep in mind, America is at fault, with its laws, with its drug addicted society to its greed for what makes the most profit the quickest. There would not be men like this here in Mexico thriving off the illegal profits if not for America. Why can’t they just go away and leave us alone, mind their own business and tend to their fast failing nation
By MARK STEVENSON and MICHAEL RUBINKAM
MEXICO CITY -- It was the largest seizure of cash in the history of
drug enforcement: $207 million, mostly in crisp $100 bills, stuffed
into walls, closets and suitcases in the Mexico City home of a
Chinese-born businessman.
Zhenli Ye Gon told The Associated Press that most of the money
belonged to Mexico's ruling party. He said party officials delivered
it last summer in duffel bags stuffed with $5 million apiece and
threatened to kill him unless he guarded their cash.
In a statement Sunday night, the Mexican government called his
tale "a perverse blackmail attempt" aimed at getting himself off on
drug, weapons and money-laundering charges and at blunting President
Felipe Calderon's war on drugs, which has mobilized the army and
extradited a record number of top-level traffickers.
The government says Ye Gon made millions supplying traffickers with
the raw material to make a pure, highly addictive form of
methamphetamine that has flooded U.S. markets, and said his
story "is not only false, it is ridiculous."
The statement from the attorney general's office, which was a
response to a letter sent by Zhenli's U.S. lawyer to the Mexican
Embassy in Washington, said the lawyer demanded special treatment
for Ye Gon and suggested he would go public with his accusations
against the National Action Party.
"These lawyers are unscrupulously and uselessly seeking to blackmail
the Mexican government with absurd and unbelievable accusations, in
an attempt to discourage the government from bringing all the weight
of the law to bear against Mr. Zhenli Ye Gon," it said.
Eleven people, including several of Ye Gon's relatives, have been
charged with drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico.
Ye Gon met with the AP recently at his lawyer's New York office. The
44-year-old calmly recounted his version of events, complete with
mysterious guards and blood-chilling threats. Most of his story
about his alleged relationship with the ruling party hinges on
claims that are hard to prove.
Ye Gon said he had no prior relationship with the National Action
Party and has no idea why he was chosen to hold the cash. And the
name he gave as his main campaign contact doesn't match that of
anyone who worked on Calderon's national campaign team.
Born in Shanghai, Ye Gon migrated to Mexico in 1990 and became a
citizen in 2002. He imported textiles, clothing and shoes, and made
a fortune as a reseller of commodities seized by Mexican customs.
He founded a pharmaceutical company, Unimed, in 1997. He said he
became one of the nation's largest importers of pseudoephedrine, an
ingredient in cold medicines that is also used to make
methamphetamine. After 2004, however, Ye Gon said he stopped
importing pseudoephedrine because of the controls placed on the
chemical by the Mexican government.
He said he has never sold illegal drugs and doesn't even know what
meth looks like.
Mexico says otherwise. Agents intercepted a ship from China last year that purportedly carried more than 19 tons of pseudoephedrine acetate, all of it illegally imported by Ye Gon, according to the government. Officials say he was building a massive factory in Mexico to process the component into a form usable to traffickers. Mexican labs already supply about 80 percent of the meth in the U.S. market.
Ye Gon said the substance on the ship was another, proprietary chemical used in cold medicines, and that Mexican officials botched the laboratory analysis. He supplied AP with reports from two American chemists, including a former official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who said the testing procedures were severely flawed.
What isn't in dispute about Ye Gon is that he lived the life of a high roller.
The married Ye Gon squired his mistress around in a Lamborghini. During frequent trips to Las Vegas, he said he bet $150,000 a hand in baccarat, his favorite game. He was such a treasured customer that one of his favorite haunts, The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, gave him a Rolls-Royce.
And no wonder: Between 1997 and 2006, Ye Gon lost nearly $41 million while gambling in the U.S., according to a police affidavit filed in Las Vegas.
Ye Gon's high-rolling ways have been curtailed dramatically since the raid on his home. He said all of his bank accounts, including those in Hong Kong and the U.S., are frozen. He is staying with a friend in the United States but wouldn't say where.
"I don't want to live like that," he said. "I want to make things clear as soon as possible. If the DEA tomorrow asks me, I will go with them, cooperate with them, or FBI, or CIA. I'd like to talk with them."
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 7/04/2007 07:51:00 PM
Quite incredible post.
Do you think the accusations against the Mexican govt is true?
Addiction is also biological.
From all I have read, it seems highly unlikely that he is tied to the Mexican government. The story is to far fetched. But it has caused a stir.
Several more things of interest. This mans ship carrying the illegal drugs from China first went thru the Port of Long Beach California, before going on to Mexico where it was discovered. Did America let it pass or is their security that poor? And this man is in America right now, and wanted by Interpol in 170 countries, doing press interviews and not getting caught.
And one must consider the inspiration to make an arrest like this, the agencies involved, Mexican and American, get to divide up all the spoils, from the millions of dollars and his homes and labrotories, down to the rolex watches and Ming vases. If drugs were legal, they sure would not be getting a cut of it.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Grave Error
Defeat called a 'grave error'
Mexican President says American Senate encourages
Mexican President says American Senate encourages
Illegal Immigration
[It must be realized that America wants to keep the situation with immigrants and drugs illegal. They do not want things to work out, they want to keep things agitated and steadily getting worse. You can't create a war and be able to militarize the border with making peace and good relations. And the American government cannot rally its people to hate and anger and the want of bloodshed by getting along with its neighbor.]
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS and MARION LLOYD
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
President Felipe Calderon of Mexico blasted the U.S. Senate's rejection of the immigration bill on Thursday, calling the senators' action "a grave error" that avoided a "sensible, rational and legal solution."
"It's a mistake," Calderon said. "First, because it's a problem that's not being confronted. And with this evasive action the U.S. Senate is making it worse.
"Secondly, by closing the door on legal immigration, the only thing the Senate does is open the door to illegal immigration."
Calderon, appearing at a joint news conference with the visiting President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, said he continues to oppose a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that was approved by Congress last year. Some 370 miles of fencing will be constructed by 2008, about 153 miles inside Texas. Another 400 miles would be built later.
Calderon 'more realistic' More than a tenth of Mexico's 110 million people now live in the U.S., many illegally.
As the United States has beefed up border security, people from Mexico and Central America have opted for new — and often perilous — ways of making it across.
On Tuesday, U.S. agents manning a California border checkpoint discovered three Mexican emigrants hiding out inside a truck engine. One of them, a woman, was admitted to a hospital after suffering severe burns from the running motor, according to newspaper reports.
Calderon has placed less emphasis than his predecessor on lobbying for changes in U.S. immigration law, partly, analysts say, out of concern about getting burned.
Former President Vicente Fox's relationship with President Bush soured over Mexico's refusal to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the failure to work out an immigration agreement with Washington.
"Fortunately, Calderon has been more realistic," said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a Mexico City-based foreign affairs analyst. "He's put fewer eggs in the immigration reform basket and it's not so costly for him and his diplomacy."
Negative impact forecast However, Fernandez said the failure to move ahead with the reform would have a "very negative impact" on U.S.-Mexican relations, calling immigration "a huge stone that's complicating the relationship in other areas."
The topic of immigration was also part of talks between Calderon and Ortega, who agreed to work together to guarantee "the full respect for migrants' human rights," according to a joint statement.
Ortega, a one-time Marxist president of Nicaragua following that country's 1970s leftist revolution against a U.S.-backed dictator, was in Mexico City to strengthen ties with Mexico and to visit the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The Nicaraguan president had vowed to make the pilgrimage if he won election this year, which he did, returning to power 17 years after being voted out of office.
Nicaraguans account for relatively few of the Central Americans migrating illegally to the United States. Most come from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have migrated to Costa Rica for work.
Calderon has been working to repair ties with the rest of Latin America that had become frayed under Fox.
Like his predecessor, Calderon is a political and economic conservative.
He argues that the opportunities offered by the 13-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement can only be fully realized with a freer flow of labor between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"The American economy could not prosper or advance without the labor of both Mexican and Central American migrants," Calderon said.
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 7/03/2007 02:41:00 PM
The Germans had a saying at the entrance to their concentration camps: "Arbeit Macht Frei", or work shall set you free. Isn't that the promise being made by these continual amnesty programs? I'm not so sure I would trust these forked-tongue norte Americanos.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Something Better
How Immigrants Improve The Curve
by Rosa Brooks
‘The impact of immigration - legal and illegal - on jobs, schools, healthcare, the environment, national security, are all very serious problems,” insists Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a man famed for his extreme anti-immigration views. “But more serious than all of them put together is this threat to the culture. I believe we are in a clash of civilizations.” Tancredo’s right about that last bit. We are in a clash of civilizations - and someday, immigrant culture may even displace some aspects of American culture.
We’d better hope so.
Americans? We’re fat, decadent and getting dumber all the time. Our life expectancy, which rose for most of the last two centuries, is stalling because so many of us are obese. While most of us know everything there is to know about Paris Hilton, we know next to nothing about history, geography, international politics or the workings of our own government.
In American culture, the Xbox reigns supreme among boys, we market thong underwear to prepubescent girls and a growing number of adults think a McMansion with fewer than one bathroom per resident is the height of privation.
Our forebears tamed the West, but today, most of us couldn’t tame a paper bag. If we had to cross the country in covered wagons, we’d be dead well before we reached the Mississippi.
Now contrast “our” culture with that of recent immigrants. On all too many measures, immigrants look a whole lot better.
Immigrants exhibit no shortage of pluck. It takes guts to leave your home and everything you know - even if a green card awaits. And when it comes to illegal immigrants, just getting here takes astounding courage. Illegal immigrants endure astonishing privation and risk - just for the chance to improve their lot by doing the backbreaking work so few native-born Americans have the inclination to do. While we demand McMansions, they share cramped apartments. We’re up to our ears in consumer debt; they save almost every dollar to send to their less-well-off relatives.
The younger generation of illegal immigrants is particularly impressive. Each year, thousands of unaccompanied children cross into the U.S. without their parents, many literally walking here from villages in El Salvador and Guatemala. Could our sheltered and chaperoned children manage such a trip on their own?
Immigrants tend to be straight arrows too. A 2002 survey by the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that an overwhelming majority of immigrants believe that they have a duty to “work hard and stay off welfare” and “respect people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds.” A Harvard study found that immigrant students also have more positive attitudes toward education than U.S.-born young people.
And contrary to widespread perceptions, immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. A study in Chicago looking specifically at Mexican immigrants found that “first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) … were 45% less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans.” Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson suggests that increased immigration may have been a factor in reduced crime rates in the 1990s.
Another study done in New York City found that immigrants looked pretty good across the board. Compared to their native-born peers, for instance, “foreign-born [adolescents] had less asthma, less obesity, fewer school days missed and less involvement in substance use, sex, delinquency and violence.” On average, immigrants even live three years longer than the rest of us.
No wonder Tancredo and his supporters are terrified of immigrants!
Immigrants put us to shame. They’re healthier, stronger, thriftier and braver. If we can’t get them to assimilate, they may well displace us. Thursday’s death-by-filibuster of the immigration reform bill - which ended the prospect of a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented workers - might slow the cultural displacement, but it won’t stop it.
Fortunately for us native-born types, most immigrants are willing to overlook our flaws and assimilate. According to the Public Agenda survey, 80% of immigrants consider the U.S. “a unique country that stands for something special in the world,” and 87% say it’s “extremely important” to “speak and understand English.”
But we should pause before we insist that immigrants assimilate. The same studies that show immigrants are healthier and less violent also suggest that the inoculating effects of immigrant status wear off over the years. By the time you get to the grandchildren of immigrants, you can no longer detect much difference.
In other words: Immigrants beware! Assimilation into American culture may be hazardous to your health and your values.
As for the rest of us - instead of insisting that immigrants assimilate to our culture, maybe we should consider assimilating to theirs. It might be the only way to bring back the values of our ancestors - who were, as everyone knows, immigrants themselves.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
We Want
We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,
But have less real communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall mean but short characters;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window
But nothing in the room
- - His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.
And to think he says "we", not just americans
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,
But have less real communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall mean but short characters;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window
But nothing in the room
- - His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.
And to think he says "we", not just americans
# posted by littlebitofsonshine @ 6/30/2007 09:59:00 PM
me i would think with true educating and healing .So many who even i call friends have so much hate and disgust in them sad we cant want healing for self and the world as one people and all stop being so racist or countryist and start being humanist me i think that would be the first step allowing the truth no country is perfect no place as a whole has children raised who are not mentally or physically harmed .We need to stop all harming and lies and teach only truths and stop blaming allways someone else cause its the whole worlds falt not 1 county,s cause this county america usa is made up of [people of all so called races and country
expatriates from some where unless 100% native to this continent no mater where your body is or your loyalty we as humans need to stop blaming others and do what we can to change the whole world for a healthier and more honest place in healing not harming in balance with nature and not try to control everything from what animals allowed to live and what country is allowed to destroy themselves .Many country's don't allow freedoms some places your killed if you even say you don't like something going on or point out the truth of poisons known to harm humans as well as bugs .hugs a tree and know we are all of this earth and there is no other one like it .stop the hate learn to love
Thursday, June 28, 2007
They Ask Why?
Mexicans cross the border for the high wages. America is a nation of people that get large paychecks to enable them to pay the high price of living and supporting their unrealistic life styles and their governments desires. Due to American mentality many of them just skimp by, making their payments and keeping up with their neighbors and friends, acquiring their posessions and luxuries, and so feel close to their edge frequently. Like the whole game could fold in front of them. They must keep ahead, no matter what, or loose it. But with Mexicans, who know what survival really is and live with it closely, they come to a country like America and its simple and they are able to easily take advantage of it and use it how they need too. They can stick together and make it work. They don’t go for the game, the brainwash, the dream, just the money.
Americans always jump at the chance to make more money, that is what their society teaches them, more is better, even required, if your a good citizen. They even send much of their work overseas to other countries workers because it is more profitable to them. At this point they readily abandon the needs of their own country and its workers, and the excuse that they need to make more money is enough for them. But yet they despise the Mexican and fail to understand that basically, the point and history of America, is to make money. This is Americans highest goal and what they live for. It is what they judge each others worth by, how much you have. The Americans say, it proves our country is the best, because Mexicans leave their own country for ours. But their idea of best, just means we have more money. And Mexicans know better, America has no heart, no future. Its just a place to make money in to better things back home, where they really want to be. Money is a necessity, but it does not make those who have more of it, better or right.
And Americans will ask, if Mexico is such a great place, why is everyone leaving? Like all they can fathom of the situation is the numbers fed to them of how many have come, but see no reasons behind it. They seem to willfully ignore the fact that living next to a so called Super Power that sucks up and uses everything it can anyway it can, causes a small nation just coming to its own again, severe imbalances. Americans only want to complain about the results of what they do, without attaching themselves to the blame. From the theft of Mexico’s land, to NAFTA and The War on Drugs, America severely uses and abuses it neighbor. Time honored ways of life have been destroyed by this, causing changes in the poor peoples way of life that can never really be resurrected. They did not want to loose their homes and fields to modern ways and Americanization, they were more than content, they were in their place on this planet. Not poor, just natural. Mexico is not yet equipped to handle this displacement. And for decades on end, America has beckoned, come to us, we need your cheap labor. The border turned its back and let them slide on thru, making only a little fuss for those who like a fuss. Mexicans just drifted back and forth, benefiting all. And then came the 911 mentality, patriotism and fear. And the American government used this to turn its peoples attention to its latest distraction, hating Mexicans and feeling threatened. Not realizing this whole crisis is not over the workers, but over much deeper darker deeds. To stir a war at the border and militarize it, to arm and finance an opposition army here, to destabilize Mexico, to weaken it from within. And to make Americans feel like they must defend themselves, so what they do to countries like Iraq is really ok, its just in self defense of the American Way. Them against the Terrorists.
Americans refuse to educate themselves with the truth, as their lies won't fit in with it. America should open its borders to the workers and it should call off the war on drugs and give their own people what they want, freedom of choice. Give Mexico a chance to get solidly on its feet and deal with real problems of their own country, not always trying to deal with the problems America has caused them. They are also saying that they would accept the workers, but they are illegal, and illegal is a no no, when it suits their needs. It never bothered them before, and it does not bother them that what they do to Iraq is illegal in the eyes of the world. But that the poor here of Mexico, trek thousands of miles with no more knowledge than their work is needed, that they don’t have the right piece of paper is trivial. I am sure that many of these Americans' ancestors would not have gotten papers if they had not had to board a ship that demanded it of them and did not give them the simple choice of just walking in across land that was once theirs. Give them their papers when they get there and decide they want to stay awhile and learn the system a bit. So very few can get them before they come. There is little way for the poor and uninformed to accomplish this paper feat before getting there. America welcomed these people before, legal or illegal and now they must live with that decision and message.
And besides, it is not ALL of Mexico going to America for better wages, that is a ridiculous delusion. The majority of Mexicans are right here, working living improving themselves and their nation, building a future. And for Americans to think that ALL Mexicans are poor is so incredibly stupid of them. It shows the extent of their governments brainwashing and the narrowness of their view and education.
When it comes time for America to finish its fall from power, they will deserve whatever they get. Evil America. May their illgotten land be taken over by much better people.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wise Ideas
Fidel Castro vs. Bush War PolicyDue to its importance, Prensa Latina integrally reproduces reflections by the Cuban President Fidel Castro
IDEAS CANNOT BE KILLED
A few days ago, while analyzing the expenses involved in the construction of three submarines of the Astute series, I said that with this money "75,000 doctors could be trained to look after 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States.” Now, along the lines of the same calculations, I wonder: how many doctors could be graduated with the one hundred billion dollars that Bush gets his hands on in just one year to keep on sowing grief in Iraqi and American homes. Answer: 999,990 doctors who could look after 2 billion people that today do not receive any medical care.
More than 600,000 people have lost their lives in Iraq and more than 2 million have been forced to emigrate since the American invasion began.
In the United States, around 50 million people do not have medical insurance. The blind market laws govern how this vital service is provided, and prices make it inaccessible for many, even in the developed countries. Medical services feed into the Gross Domestic Product of the United States, but they do not generate conscience for those providing them nor peace of mind for those who receive it.
The countries with less development and more diseases have the least number of medical doctors: one for every 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 or more people. When new sexually transmitted diseases appear such as AIDS, which in merely 20 years has killed millions of persons, -- while tens of millions are afflicted, among them many mothers and children, although palliative measures now exist-- the price of medications per patient could add up to 5,000, 10,000 or up to 15,000 dollars each year. These are fantasy figures for the great majority of Third World countries where the few public hospitals are overflowing with the ill who die piled up like animals under the scourge of a sudden epidemic.
To reflect on these realities could help us to better understand the tragedy. It is not a matter of commercial advertising that costs so much money and technology. Add up the starvation afflicting hundreds of millions of human beings; add to that the idea of transforming food into fuels; look for a symbol and the answer will be George W. Bush.
When he was recently asked by an important personality about his Cuba policy, his answer was this: “I am a hard-line President and I am just waiting for Castro’s demise.” The wishes of such a powerful gentleman are no privilege. I am not the first nor will I be the last that Bush has ordered to be killed; nor one of those people who he intends to go on killing individually or en masse.
“Ideas cannot be killed”, Sarr¡a emphatically said. Sarr¡a was the black lieutenant, a patrol leader in Batista’s army who arrested us, after the attempt to seize the Moncada Garrison, while three of us slept in a small mountain hut, exhausted by the effort of breaking through the siege. The soldiers, fuelled by hatred and adrenalin, were aiming their weapons at me even before they had identified who I was. “Ideas cannot be killed”, the black lieutenant kept on repeating, practically automatically and in a hushed voice.
I dedicate those excellent words to you, Mr. W. Bush.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 28, 2007
6:58 p.m.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Fortress America
A border fence with a hole big enough for Mexican trucks
If we define one slice of "globalization" as the effort of
multinational corporations to cut costs by exploiting cheaper labor
overseas, then the Mexican trucker fight offers as good a
demonstration as one could hope to find on how fraught with
contradictions the whole project is. Globalization requires more
permeable borders while security concerns demand bigger walls. But
bigger walls -- the creation of an impregnable Fortress America in
which no al-Qaida sleeper cell, illegal immigrant, or pollution-
belching Mexican trucks can get through -- could just as easily fuel
the kind of anti-American resentment that makes achieving true
security impossible. And attempting to protect the standard-of-
living differential that exists between the U.S. and Mexico (by, for
example, keeping cheaper Mexican truckers out) only serves to
maintain the very imbalance that spurs people to cross the border,
legally or illegally, in the first place.
[The rest of the article follows below and is well worth the read. The issue over the Mexican trucks shows just one of the many ways America uses the NAFTA agreement for its own advantage and the oppression of others.]
A border fence with a hole big enough for Mexican trucks
On Tuesday, a House Subcommittee on Transportation Security and
Infrastructure Protection held a hearing on "Cross-Border Trucking
Threats." At one point, Stephen Russell, the founder, chairman and
CEO of Celadon Group Inc., one of the dozen largest trucking
companies in the United States, compared the situation in North
America to that of Europe.
If you put yourself in Europe and were a pasta maker in Venice and
had an order to ship pasta in a truckload to Amsterdam, it wouldn't
go in an Italian truck to the French border, a French truck to the
Belgian border, Belgian truck to the Dutch border, Dutch truck to
Amsterdam. It would be taken by an Italian truck or a Dutch truck
going through.
And that's how it works for Canadian truckers in North America --
they drive from Canada across the border into the U.S. and then back
again. But not Mexican truckers. They must unhook their trailers
just south of the border, where their cargo is transferred by local
trucking companies across the customs line and then shifted to
American trucks. For years, the Bush administration has been
attempting to fulfill a requirement of NAFTA that would permit
Mexican truckers the same freedom to operate as Canadian truckers. A
pilot program is supposed to allow 100 Mexican trucking companies to
start hauling goods across the border this summer, but has been
delayed by congressional opposition.
Resistance to letting Mexican truckers roam the U.S. interstate
highway system has been orchestrated by an odd-bedfellows alliance
of environmental organizations, independent truckers and the
Teamsters Union. But at the subcommittee hearing there were only
glancing references to the concerns often expressed by such groups
as to the safety or environmental cleanliness of Mexican trucks.
This was an opportunity for politicians to bolster their homeland
security profiles. So there was much grandstanding by both Democrats
and Republicans, who asked what they hoped would seem like tough
questions about how security would be enforced at the border. How
accurate are the databases of truck drivers? How would we know where
the truckers go after they cross the border? How do we determine
which trucks would be designated high-risk and require closer
attention? There were imposing references to all kinds of
technological fix-it solutions: "large-scale X-ray and gamma imaging
systems and a variety of radiation portal detection devices."
It was all a waste of hot air. The real issue underlying the Mexican
trucker controversy is not terrorism or the environment. It's
economic. Mexican truckers cost less per mile than either American
truckers or Canadian truckers. The American Trucking Association and
big trucking companies like Celadon support opening up cross-border
trucking, because the big trucking companies are multinational
operations that own fleets of Mexican trucks in addition to their
American and Canadian trucks. They'd love to be able to use their
cheaper Mexican fleets to transport goods all the way to the
ultimate point of destination. Independent truckers would face
tougher competition, so they are naturally opposed.
If we define one slice of "globalization" as the effort of
multinational corporations to cut costs by exploiting cheaper labor
overseas, then the Mexican trucker fight offers as good a
demonstration as one could hope to find on how fraught with
contradictions the whole project is. Globalization requires more
permeable borders while security concerns demand bigger walls. But
bigger walls -- the creation of an impregnable Fortress America in
which no al-Qaida sleeper cell, illegal immigrant, or pollution-
belching Mexican trucks can get through -- could just as easily fuel
the kind of anti-American resentment that makes achieving true
security impossible. And attempting to protect the standard-of-
living differential that exists between the U.S. and Mexico (by, for
example, keeping cheaper Mexican truckers out) only serves to
maintain the very imbalance that spurs people to cross the border,
legally or illegally, in the first place.
Raul Salinas, the mayor of Laredo, Texas, a city in which 13,000
trucks go back and forth across the border every single day, made an
interesting point in his testimony to the subcommittee. If the U.S.
wants assurances as to the safety and security of the Mexican
drivers coming across the border, then it needs good relationships
with Mexican authorities.
You know, one of the problems that we have today is that, if we
don't establish databases, if we don't have the informants, the
confidential informants, if we don't have dialogue with our
neighbors, here we are thinking about -- well, I think it goes
beyond thinking about building a wall, you know. We ought to be
building bridges of friendship.
And really, that's where we have a little bit of a problem. How do I
expect to work with our counterparts, with our business people on
the other side, when we're going to build a fence?
Raul Salinas is the mayor of a city that is an integral part of a
metropolitan area that spans the border, so his discomfort with
anything that makes cross-border interaction harder is easy to
understand. He'd much rather the border between the U.S. and Mexico
was like the border between, say, France and Spain.
How the World Works has previously explored how, during the process
of European Union integration, fears were often expressed that
opening the borders of the European community to poorer countries
like Spain and Portugal would result in a flood of cheaper labor and
consequent economic misfortune for the working classes of the richer
countries. It didn't work out that way at all, but the exact same
fears are now playing out with respect to the integration of the
latest new EU members from Eastern Europe.
Integrating Mexico into a North American equivalent of the EU poses
much greater challenges than EU integration. The economic
disparities are greater, the border is bigger, the cultural
animosities more intense. And it doesn't help at all that the chief
advocates of making it easier to cross the border are those who want
to exploit the cost savings possible by shipping goods in Mexican
trucks. True security will only come when Mexican truckers are paid
as well as American or Canadian truckers. Want cross-border
trucking? How about a cross-border trucker's union?
-- Andrew Leonard
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 6/24/2007 10:53:00 PM
I see you and I are part of Beak's ever-increasing fan club.
I love it when the wingnuts become such valuable research assistants.
Great site here... will add it to my blogroll!
Solidarity,
JB
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Another Solution?
GENERAL TAYLOR'S ATTACK ON MONTEREY.ANOTHER BORDER SOLUTION
By Ed Quillen
Denver Post Columnist
After watching an immigration-reform bill that had bipartisan support stall in the U.S. Senate last week, it struck me that most of its opponents probably aren't just against that particular bill. They don't want any immigration bill to pass.
Consider Colorado's own Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Littleton Republican and candidate for the presidency. His distinguishing issue is his antipathy to illegal immigration. If the system were reformed, his issue would go away, and he would return to obscurity.
Little wonder, then, that he threatened to go out and support primary opponents of any Republican senators who supported the proposal and who were up for re-election in 2008. As long as he can run around shouting, "No amnesty for those who break the laws of our country" (unless the lawbreaker happens to be named "Libby"), then Tancredo is important. If the issue goes away, so does his prominence.
But just in case somebody wants a solution, there is one: Finish the job begun in 1846.
That was the year the United States provoked a war with Mexico by sending soldiers into a disputed area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Texas had just joined the Union. Mexico insisted the Nueces was its western boundary; Texans had more expansive notions of their domain.
Eventually some shots were fired. President James Knox Polk could claim that the American flag had been insulted, and he got a declaration of war from Congress. (That seems quaint now, but there was a time when the federal constitution meant something.)
American forces quickly took the northern parts of Mexico. Santa Fe was occupied without a shot being fired, and though there was some actual fighting in California, the U.S. Army and Navy soon prevailed.
However, the Mexican government refused to recognize reality and come to terms with the United States. To make that happen, Gen. Winfield Scott landed at Vera Cruz in February 1847. After 260 miles and six months of fighting, outnumbered and far from home, he captured Mexico City.
Now that the United States could acquire Mexican territory, there was a question: How much? There were American politicians who wanted to take it all, instead of settling for the current boundary (as adjusted by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase).
Those expansionists were opposed by moralistic do-gooders, primarily from New England and the Midwest, who saw the Mexican War as nothing more than a conspiracy by slave owners to expand their domain. The more of Mexico the United Sates took, the argument went, the more slave states, and thus more power for the "slavocracy."
Thus the border was essentially the result of a domestic political compromise. Had it not been for anti-war whiners like Abraham Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau, the Stars and Stripes might have flown clear down to the Yucatan Peninsula.
Slavery is not an issue anymore. Already, many Americans construe illegal immigration from Mexico as an invasion, which can be defined as an act of war, giving the current administration a plausible excuse to respond militarily. Our Army, Navy and Air Force should be able to roll right over Mexico's small military.
Invading and annexing Mexico would obviously eliminate the major source of illegal immigration, since Mexican citizens would become American citizens. Mexico is the sixth-ranking oil producer in the world, and the 10th-largest exporter, so adding it to the United States would improve our energy security.
Granted, some prissy countries might denounce "unilateral American aggression," but those opinions carry little weight with the current administration, which should be able to spin the action as a "humanitarian relief effort to bring freedom and democracy to oppressed people who have been fleeing their current government by the millions."
It should be noted that even though we have a good track record here, the first Mexican War lasted two years, when President Polk had expected it to last only 90 days. And the ensuing occupation was not always pacific, as evidenced by the insurrection in Taos that included the brutal murder of Territorial Gov. Charles Bent.
So the second American conquest of Mexico might be more difficult than it appears at first. But it would be worth the price, since it will improve our border security, enhance our domestic energy supplies and put an end to nearly all illegal immigration. How could even Tom Tancredo be against that?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
War Foretold
Mark Twain and the Sins of Our Race
by Ramzy Baroud / June 18th, 2007
I found this article on Dissident Voice. I'll reproduce it here.
When I resorted to Mark Twain’s writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his “The Mysterious Stranger,” although published in 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that we hold as a “matter of course” — a favorite phrase of his. It summons the awful tendencies of “our race”: our irrational drive for violence, be it burning “witches” at the stake or engaging in wars that only serve the “little monarchs and the nobilities”
As the Iraq war rages on, Twain’s words ring truer by the day. “The loud little handful will shout for war. Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will out shout them and presently the anti-war audiences will thin and lose popularity. Before long you will see the most curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men. And now the whole nation will take up the war cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.”
“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after the process of grotesque self-deception.”
Twain, whose genius undoubtedly surpasses time and space, wrote the above passages nine decades before the world’s leading statesmen, President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair forged their case for war, based on falsities and refused to examine any refutations; they rallied millions, investing in their ignorance and blind patriotism to carry out a war whose outcome is akin to genocide. The text was also written long before the thousands who stood for human rights, rallied and organized against the war, defended the constitution and civil liberties were “shouted out” and “stoned from the platform”; thousands of those “fair men” and women have endured such a fate, the latest being Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved American mother who lost her son, Casey, in Bush’s war for oil, strategic repositioning of the empire and the neoconservatives’ ceaseless hunt for Israel’s illusive “security”. She too was shouted out, and in a heart-wrenching letter, she reached the conclusion, most difficult for any mother to reach, that her son, Casey died for nothing.
But Bush is adamant to carry on with his costly endeavor that has espoused so many new chasms within his country, and in the world at large: religious contentions and political turmoil, damage that neither Mr. Bush, nor his most luminous advisors have the will nor the brains to remedy.
“But what does it amount to?” says Twain, using one of his story’s characters, an angel to convey the idea: “nothing at all. You gain nothing. You always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously re-performing this dull nonsense” to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touches them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; “whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not shamed of it, but proud.”
Sheehan couldn’t get an answer for why Casey was killed; many more might want to live with the illusion that their loss didn’t go in vain; but dead American bodies continue to arrive back to US soil only at night; the wounded are maltreated and hidden from the public eye, only occasional courageous reports manage to break the silence and the perfected propaganda. In Iraq, the sheer number of dead and dying defies belief; the entire country is now gripped in an endless strife that shall define the cultural and social disposition of future generations; it?s often easy to comprehend and come to terms with a total number of deaths when they are presented in a neatly packaged chart or a website, no matter how harrowing; but once you learn of the individual stories, you wonder whether the days of burning witches at the stake were better times: a young girl raped before her own family and later killed with her own baby; entire families massacred in broad daylight; militants chopping off limbs and ears and noses under the watchful eye of the Iraqi police, for their victims belonged to the wrong sect and stood on the wrong side of the war.
“The Mysterious Stranger” ended up being a figment of a little boy’s imagination — or was it? — its meaning is overreaching and very much real. The war is real and frightening and hurtful; it’s not an intellectual argument; it cannot be reduced to a few images and captions and editorials; nothing can ever capture a moment where a mother receives the corpse of a son or the scene of a father kneeling before the shattered body of a daughter. It’s all real, and it’s all our own doing, whether by supporting, financing and fighting the war, or by staying silent as it rages on.
# posted by Puppeteer @ 6/19/2007 07:59:00 AM
Excellent Post. Mark Twain had much more to say than just a good story that Hollywood could use. To bad America did not pay more attention to what it reads, they may not have turned out so ignorant.
I found it striking. i'm not much into American classics, to my shame, not for any particular reason.
But my dilemma is: do people actually read nowadays?
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A Mother's Tears
I been thinking !!!!How many mothers have cryed during war.
Does anyone have the names of all the children who have ever been killed in war?
Does each country add up the lives of the children ?
Can people who just demand of them selfs to hate others so blindly and in such disrespect ever count the cost our children of the world ?
I as a american ask this of the world when will it stop?
Does anyone have the names of all the children who have ever been killed in war?
Does each country add up the lives of the children ?
Can people who just demand of them selfs to hate others so blindly and in such disrespect ever count the cost our children of the world ?
I as a american ask this of the world when will it stop?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Trotsky In English
Click here for YouTube of Trotsky speaking English.
# posted by Frank Partisan @ 6/13/2007 05:44:00 AM
wow! i didn't expect him to sound like that, mind you i'm not sure what i expected him to sound like. good find anyway.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Evil Deeds
Heed The Warning SignsI see America doing two things right now with Mexico that really should be looked at and made public so the truths of it can be sorted out and displayed as a whole that will enable the world to see it clearly.
America is not just severely abusing Mexico and its people, but they are setting them up for worse. This War on Drugs they have created is to just get the American public sympathy and fear behind their efforts, and to cover up for deeper reasons and actions. The NAFTA Invasion is meant to destabilize the country and take advantage of it. The War on Migrants serves many purposes, some obvious, and many others little known to the public.
One of the things I have been observing is the direction the drug war is taking. First America makes drugs illegal and creates an underground market to meet the needs of its people. Drug lords and drug territories are established and a lax system of controlling it legally is set up. So the profits come in, everyone on the take and getting their share, one way or another, off the illegality of it. Then next, tear this system apart by pretending America is protecting its citizens from themselves by cracking down on Mexico. The drug trade then splinters into many many want to be drug leaders, down to the local gangs and neighborhoods. This has caused chaos and untold harm to government and society here. The battle is on, the demand for drugs increase and the violence fighting for dominance in this war spreads like a plague. Mexico is blamed for this, America paints a picture to the world to show how it is our fault for not cooperating.
Now, to make matters even worse, the Americans are supplying these drug gangs with weapons, they pour across the border in huge supply. Weapons that compete with the military here. The Mexican military which America has demanded they fight their own people over this war. Soon America will have these gangs organized into small armies that will help them continue to undermine this country and its present government. They already have an iron grip on Mexico’s throat with their drug policies and how they use them to control even what type of world loans we can get here and what type of international help for progress can be had. America is doing nothing less than trying to destroy Mexico, any way it can.
And I have been watching the way this immigration farce has been going. They are setting it up like a money making business that specializes in oppression as its main working tool. No more the easy flow of workers crossing back and forth, picking up the work Americans feel they cannot do themselves. Being able to pay low wages is not enough profit now. There are many things that are wrong with the new immigration policies, but one that really deserves attention is Americas ability to now jail these workers and put them to work for free in these facilities. American jails are crowded with the innocent, and now they will have their share of people because they were seeking work that they got the message was available for them if they could get there.
Here are some quotes of what is planned when the Mexican workers are caught now.
Illegal entry – 6 months in prison
2nd illegal entry — 2 years in prison
3 misdemeanors plus illegal entry — 10 years in prison
Felony with 30 months in prison followed by illegal entry — 15 years in prison
Illegal reentry after deportation — 2 years in prison
Visa fraud — 15 years in prison
Making criminals of these people is wrong in everyway. America is a nation that does not care about people, but only how to use them. They have stirred up this whole stink in order to open up the situation for more abuse. Their decisions are not ones that take in the welfare of humans or the needs of others. Any policies or laws they are making are to spread the oppression even deeper.
Criminal nation, it needs a lesson that will forever stop it from the evil it does in the name of its progress.
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 6/11/2007 05:08:00 PM
An interesting example I just found.
Say a wife of someone granted the new Z visa status comes to live with her husband – illegal entry number 1 since she cannot get a visa to live with her Z husband for probably 15-20 years. Lets say she’s lucky and does not get caught so she avoids 6 months in jail.
Her mom dies so she goes home for the funeral and a week or so later reenters illegally and is caught.
Bingo — prison for 2 years..
After 2 years she is deported (and of course is now permanently barred from legalizing her status).
Desperate to be with her husband (and maybe children), she again enters without inspection and is caught.
Bingo, 10 years in prison.
Halliburton and the other private prison builders pop the champagne and toast the Grand Bargain. By the way, in the federal system, there’s no early release for good behavior
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Free Puerto Rico
Trying to Shake the Invader Loose
FREE PUERTO RICO: End Colonialism NOW!!
Every year a Delegation from Puerto Rico comes to the United Nations to testify to the U.N. De-Colonization Committee; to make the case for the liberation of Puerto Rico, Vieques and the release of the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War.
This delegation is made up of various activists from the different
organizations throughout Puerto Rico that fight for the independence of Puerto Rico.
A little history [Wikipedia]
Since Puerto Rico is a territory and not an incorporated State of the United States of America, not all constitutional rights, privileges and immunities provided by the U.S. Constitution were extended to the island and its residents by the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. The Jones Act established that Puerto Ricans born prior to 1899 were considered naturalized citizens of Puerto Rico, and anyone born after 1898 were declared naturally-born citizens of the United States; unless the Puerto Rican expressed intentions to remain as a subject of Spain. Since 1917, all Puerto Ricans, whether born within the U.S. or in Puerto Rico are citizens of the United States.
Puerto Ricans residing in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the U.S. Presidential election, nor are they represented by a U.S. Representative or Senator. They are represented by a Resident Commissioner in the U.S. House of Representatives who has the right of voice, but not vote. Puerto Ricans residing in the United States, however, do have all rights and privileges associated with residing in a U.S. State.
As statutory U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans may enlist in the U.S. military. Puerto Ricans have been included in the compulsory draft, when it has been in effect. Puerto Ricans have fully participated in all U.S. wars since 1898, most notably in World War II, in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the current Middle-Eastern conflicts. Recently, nearly 60 Puerto Ricans have died serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
Click here for The Puerto Rican Political Prisoners website
The poet Mariposa puts it best when she declares, “I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico was born in me.”
