Click here to view the embedded video.

Jack and Jill Politics has the scoop about the video and the reason Jasiri X wrote this rap song. Her blog post is a must read. I totally agree on Cheryl Contee view regarding society’s double standard on communities of color. In fact, the same question can also be asked “What If The Tea Party Was Brown?”

In the latest incident of violent rhetoric against the President, an anonymous user of Facebook who launched an online poll on Saturday asking “Should Obama be killed?,” with the choices of yes, no, maybe, and “If he cuts my health care.” More frighteningly, the poll drew attracted more than 700 respondents.

According to Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, the poll was created over the weekend using a third-party application that lets users conduct their own survey and they shut it down once they found out about it. What is truly disturbing, the poll was up for three days before it was yanked down. Giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt that they acted quickly did shut it down once they knew about, that would mean nobody had the audacity to notify Facebook.

Fortunately, GottaLaff from The Political Carnival noticed the poll and alerted the Secret Service immediately and provided them with a screen cap of the poll.

This is not the first time Facebook has made the news for being a forum used for all kinds of hate speech. People used this popular social networking site to post anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric to college students posting pictures from racist theme parties.

The press continues to look past the obvious and blaming healthcare controversy for the current backlash. For example, The Christian Science Monitor headline is ‘Kill Obama’ Facebook poll: latest sign of healthcare anger?;

Racism is not dead. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Report recently reported that the level of hate is rising. With the rise of hate, America is reverting back where blatant racism is becoming the norm.

As long as the right wing pundit dominate the airwaves with their fear mongering and lies, WE are in danger. The President is in danger.

Is there anyone out there interested in peace and unity anymore?

That was the subject of today’s conference call hosted by the Workplace Project, Long Island Immigrant Alliance, New York Immigration Coalition, and the National Council of La Raza.

The death of Lucero is cause for great concern because this is the latest expression of hate that is not only happening in Long Island, but in the nation as a whole. The tragic death of this man must be seen as an urgent warning and call to action.

What we are experiencing is not just an immigrant or Latino issue, but this “hate” has also spread to the African-American community as well. Racism is a serious problem in America. Police has already documented a range of disturbing incidents since the election. These incidents range from vandalism and vague threats to physical attacks. More disturbing, these insults and taunts have been delivered by people from all age groups; from adults to young adults to small children. These are just some of the incidents being reported: (h/t to jobsanger, James of The Mahatma X Files, and Nez of The Unapologetic Mexican)

* Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.”
* At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written “Let’s hope someone wins.”
* Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted “assassinate Obama,” a district official said.
* University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. “It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork,” Houston said.
* Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported.
* Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacon Township, PA
* A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted ‘Obama.’
* In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying “now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.”

These are just a few of the hundreds of incidents occurring across the country. In Texas, we have our fair share of anti-Obama and anti-immigration racism. On the campus of Baylor University in Waco, TX, a rope resembling a noose was found hanging from a campus tree the day the nation’s first black president was elected into office. A thin, white rope tied with a loop at the end was found by a Baylor student hanging from a tree. Earlier that week, there were reports that students made a barbecue pit bonfire out of Barack Obama campaign signs. University president is now reporting that the rope was apparently an abandoned rope swing and is also denying students were burning Obama signs in a barbecue pit.

In Austin, TX, it was reported that member of the University of Texas football team was expelled from the team for posting a very racist remark that crossed the line to eliminationism about President-elect Barack Obama on his Facebook page. On the status update section of his Facebook page, Buck Burnette posted, “All the hunters gather up, we have a n* in the White House.”

These incidents are just limited to Barack Obama. Just before the election, in Colorado County, west of Houston, TX, people were outraged over a racist theme party that involved at least one area school teacher after pictures surfaced onto the internet. The pictures were from taken at a pre-Halloween party in the small town of Garwood, TX. They portray white men in “black face” drinking 40-ounce bottles of beer and carrying buckets of fried chicken.

More troubling is the way our law enforcement is contributing to this problem. Last week, a Montgomery County, TX deputy was under fire following comments he made concerning the killing of 17 year old, Eugene Posana Villaruel. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) demanded an apology after Montgomery County spokesman Lt. Dan Norris said the Hispanic culture played a part in the teenager’s murder.

“You can fill in the blanks with Hispanic culture and how they, meaning the Hispanic culture, sometimes deal with family, sometimes thinks and or deals with family issues,” Norris said last week.

Last night, it was reported that the father of Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver was in critical condition after Houston police beat him after being stopped for outstanding traffic warrants. According to the family, he can communicate through notes and has described “the torture he went through.”

Community activist Quanell X showed reporters the paper towels Marvin Driver wrote on from his hospital bed. Driver wrote that the officers, whom he said he knew personally, took him to a Valero station, kicked him in the stomach, elbowed him in the neck and forced something down his throat.

“They picked him up and took him behind a Valero station by a dark road, where he was beaten and forced to swallow something. What they gave him to swallow, he said that they made the statement that he was going to see Jesus. Told him to ‘Swallow this. You’re going to see Jesus,’” Quanell X said.

There are endless examples of this, and they continue to this day. The one example that continues to stay fresh to this day is the tragic and brutal beating of David Ritcheson, Latino teen who was brutally beaten, tortured, and sodomized with a plastic pole by two white racist teenagers.

Tuck and Turner began kicking, beating, and stomping [David Ritcheson], Tuck wearing black, steel-toe boots, one of which was emblazoned with a swastika. Yelling “Beaner!” and other racial epithets, Tuck inflicted most of the damage. After one especially vicious kick, Tuck shouted “White power!” and gave a Nazi salute. Unable to fight back or defend himself in any way, [Ritcheson] just lay there and took it, mumbling and groaning occasionally.

Americans are proud that we are people with different backgrounds, faiths, viewpoints, and personal characteristics. A nation with a long history of slavery, segregation, and violent forms of racism, a country has finally came together and elected its first African-American president. However, outside of the public view, the number of hate crimes taking place in the US is on the rise.

Whether intended or not, we are in the midst of a growing culture of hate. If we want to continue to extol the virtues of freedom and rail against oppression, then it is vital as a Nation that we must prevent ourselves from falling destructively under the influence of racist schemes that that are dividing our nation.

Horn, 62, came under intense public scrutiny after the Nov. 14 shootings. Many supporters praised him as a hero for using deadly force to protect property, while as a murderer for not heeding the 911 operator’s instructions to stay in his house and wait for police. On the 911 tape, Horn can be heard telling Diego Ortiz, and Hernando Riascos Torres, “Move and you’re dead!” followed by two quick shots, a pause, and then a third shot. Both were shot in the back.

Horn’s attorney, Tom Lambright told 11 News, CBS local affiliate:

“I’m sure Joe will be delighted,” Lambright said. “I think the evidence showed that Joe was, in fact, within his legal rights to do what he did. He didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t have any other alternative.”

Community activist Quanell X has it right, “the message that the grand jury sent today is frightening.”

There seems to be an offensive ad running loose around the net called “Shoot The Rapper!” The advertisement features an animated rapper that resembles 50 Cent and a photographer whose camera you have to position to “shoot the rapper.” If you can, “You will win $5000 or 5 ringtones guaranteed.”

Actually, this is not the first time this has appeared. During the horrific events at Virginia Tech earlier this year, the ad was frequently spotted on MySpace, alongside the profiles of Virginia Tech students who happen to have lost their lives in that horrific tragedy. Peter Krasilovsky, on his “Local Onliner” blog was the first to notice this in his post about the Virginia Tech shootings.

Krasilovsky began complimenting the New York Times for its interactive feature about the victims until he noticed the banner ad on one of the student profiles on MySpace.com.

I was looking at one student’s MySpace profile, and noticed the rotating banner ad: “Shoot the Rapper, win $5,000.” I hope MySpace deletes the ad soon.

Shawn Gold, Chief Marketing Officer for MySpace, told Online Media Daily that said he was “unaware of the regrettable placement and that its occurrence was completely random.”

“That’s a random network ad that runs throughout our site, and it’s not connected contextually because we don’t place banner ads contextually on MySpace,” said Gold.

Added Gold: “It’s inappropriate if the ads are running on those profiles, and we can eliminate them from our network if that’s the case.”

During that time, there was an outcry for websites like MySpace to become more responsible with their advertising. On Poynter.org, Peter Zollman stated that “media should have advertising standards” in order to prevent instances like this from happening again.

The time has come for a company with the global reach and influence of Fox Interactive Media to set some real standards in advertising, and send advertisers with such a delightful message as “Shoot the Rapper” into the trash heap. Or make them choose a better message. Or a worse Web site.

The Internet has become a vast network of information that offers users a sense of connectivity in addition to multi-media content. In this manner, the social nature of the Internet has become the latest rage, with the increasing use of social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, owned by NewsCorp and the deep pockets of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, available not only for personal use but for professional networking as well.

It is not a secret that Wall Street are cashing in on this phenomenon, according to eMarketer, MySpace and Facebook will account for 72% of U.S. social network ad spending in 2007 and an ever greater 75% in 2008. It is estimated by 2010, spending will hit $2.15 billion. It seems that advertising is a major problem with social networking sites because many advertisers rely on “contextual advertising.” This is where ads you view on a web page are delivered based on the content of a web page that’s being viewed. In other words, the ad system sees what you are viewing on any web page because it has already examined the words on those page or through other factors. The system then delivers up in some fashion an ad that’s related to that topic.

What makes this ad very disturbing are the cross hairs that are supposed to look like camera but it seems pretty obvious as the African American cartoon figure walks across the red carpet, while they are ducking and dodging at the same time, the goal is to shoot the rapper. The crux of the matter, many remain ignorant of the true nature of this issues – the attack on the hip hop culture.

Hip Hop music is a product, produced by giant corporations for mass distribution to a carefully targeted and cultivated demographic market. What the public sees, hears and consumes is the end result of a process that is integral to the business model crafted by top corporate executives. The artist, the song, the presentation – all of it is a corporate product.

So it is not surprising to see that this ad did not go over very well within the hip hop community. Hip-hop artist, Rasheeda, told A-list Magzine about the “hypocrisy one deals with living in this country every day.”

“[This is] a perfect example of the hypocrisy one deals with living in this country every day. They fire Don Imus, then say Hip Hop is to blame. We grow up watching action movies and then are told Gangsta Rap is bad. We have shows like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ and then wonder why kids don’t want to work at McDonalds…It’s only a matter if time before Anderson Cooper is interviewing Jim Jones about MySpace, watch and see.”

The anti-social aspects of commercial hip hop are perceived as a “Black” problem, rather than the entertainment corporations that created and profit from them. However, let it be understood, this truth DOES NOT EXONERATE sexist hip-hop from its shameful contribution to the debasement of women.

According to Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, the major record labels actively suppress positive hip hop by withholding promotional support of both the above- and below-the-table variety. Ford revived how one of the corporate labels conducted a study that discovered that “tweens,” the demographic slice between the ages of 11 and 13, were the most “active” consumers.

Early and pre-adolescents of both genders are sexual-socially undeveloped – uncertain and afraid of the other gender. Tweens revel in honing their newfound skills in profanity; they love to curse. Males, especially, act out their anxieties about females through aggression and derision. This is the cohort for which the major labels would package their hip hop products. Commercial Gangsta Rap was born – a sub-genre that would lock a whole generation in perpetual arrested social development.

It is a multibillion-dollar industry, accounting for one of every five records sold in America. Although the faces of hip-hop are predominantly Black and the Black community the real power-players are Universal Music and Viacom who are pushing on what gets produced and promoted in hip-hop. It is also part of the existing domestic/neo-colonialism in which the which mass media is playing a leading role.

Like Latina/os, African Americans must also sell their labor cheaply and be willing to conform themselves to the needs and will of an elite in order to “succeed.” The pervasiveness of violence, misogyny, conspicuous consumption, and product promotion in hip-hop is the systemic need produced by the music industry. In our society today, ethnic culture is used as a form of social control, that which becomes “pop culture” in that it suddenly becomes the norm. Dr. James Peterson, founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC and assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania State U. at Abington further explains how the banner ad is an assault on African Americans culture:

“The mainstream media are doing everything they can to assassinate the character of our culture…The ad takes on more popularity now because of the backlash and the systematic attempt to kill Hip Hop by scapegoating it for all of the ills of American society, including gun violence, misogyny and racism….We need to redress Anderson Cooper, Jason Whitlock, and Oprah Winfrey. These folk are taking out rappers for real – not in some animated advertisement.”

The fact is, this banner ad is bordering on of eliminationism by using coded language to mask its true intent, definitely an underhanded advertising tactic. Eliminationism, according to Dave Neiwert of Orcinus, is behavior that is meant to shut down any type dialogue for the purpose of “outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.”

Even though a camera is used to “shoot” the rapper and not the “gun” one would expect, the desired effect is to trigger a perception in which the person assumes a weapon would be used if they click the ad. Considering a camera is used when they actually play the game, the advertising company actually played on an average person’s own prior conditioning and frame of reference with the use of the cross hairs, which is the trigger that actually fools the person. The advertising company is able to get away with it because to the paparazzi photographer viewing the page, it is nothing more but a reference of taking the rappers picture.

It is these malicious tactics that we must focus. As people criticized MySpace, nobody actually questioned the company that made the ad. As a result, the ad continues to float around. One could compare this ad to the internet video game “Border Patrol” that was also floating around the Internet where the object of the game is to “kill as many ‘wetbacks’ as possible as they cross the US border. If we are really want to make a change in our society, we must not be afraid to go after those who are making and pushing this poison on us.

Every state uses violence to enforce its rule against its enemies, but we must recognize that a major change has occurred. At the heart of today’s repression has to do with America’s addiction of mass incarceration, especially young African-American men. In today’s age of globalization, the basis for mass out-migration is clear. Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Mexico and Canada, Mexico has been flooded with cheap subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in serious unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers to look for jobs elsewhere in order to feed their families.

The existence of the American Gulag – the mass caging of people of color – took place through a cultivation of fear with the goal of destroying the Constitution through Bush’s bogus War on Terror. If there was ever a clear indication Alberto Gonzales was in it for himself to acquire power and prestige rather than improving the Latino community, it was his first act as Attorney General. Soon after Gonzales’ confirmation by the Senate, his first act as Attorney General was to carry out a massive clandestine dragnet operation with fellow Mexican-American Ben Reyna, former US Marshal Direction. Under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), Falcon Operation FALCON is a nationwide fugitive apprehension operation involving hundreds of state, federal and local law-enforcement agencies. Between April 2005 and October 2006, Operation Falcon carried out three unprecedented federally coordinated mass arrests. More than 30,000 fugitives, including immigrants, were arrested in the largest dragnets in the nation’s history and, according to US Marshall chief Ben Reyna. That is just the beginning; just recently, Gonzales announced he was going to increase similar type operations at the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Through the Violent Crime Impact Team, or VCIT, initiative, ATF uses innovative technology, and an integrated federal, state, and local strategy to identify, investigate, arrest and prosecute the most violent criminals in the 25 cities where we have VCIT teams. This program has been tremendously successful, thanks in part to the support of your local law enforcement partners, and your federal partners in the DEA, FBI and the Marshals Service – and we’re going to be expanding it to more cities soon. … They are: Orlando, Florida; Mesa, Arizona; San Bernardino, California; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

And as an important step in making sure that we have the tools needed to get the job done, we are sending to Congress comprehensive crime legislation. … First, it will improve a number of existing criminal laws to close gaps and strengthen the penalties and tools we have already. That means extending the statute of limitations for violent crimes and establishing enhanced penalties for violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.

The groundwork has been laid with newly predictable identified “threats” which are now firmly embedded in the collective unconscious of America. Fear attempts to silence dissenters from speaking out about the truth regarding the subjugation of a power-crazed, dictatorial administration whose control continues to expand exponentially with each passing rumor of imminent peril.

Creating An Immigration Human Zoo
The binding force of society, largely, is a web of symbols that enables individuals to control and make sense out of experience in patterned ways. Here in the US, we are are the pioneers of the public relations industry. The the whole purpose of the PR industry is to aggressively shape a consumer desire and create value in commodities by imbuing them with the power to transform the consumer into a more desirable person. Symbols instill beliefs and shape attitudes that underpin social structures. Today’s menacing symbol that is dominating our newspapers, flood broadcast channels, and fuel political campaigns – the barbarian Brown hordes threatening to crash the gates and destroy the foundations of civilization – are the undocumented immigrants. What hard to escape are concentration camp-like images of “caging” practices: people behind fences, hands clutching wires, guards.

With an ever-increasing racist and repressive system, the restriction of our freedom of movement with detention centers serving as an immigration human zoo. The primary use of these detention centers serves as the symbolic taming of the “ethnic other,” which only reinforces a sense of “Anglo superiority” that is based on a Western binary opposition that considers all non-conforming forces as almost non-existent, and if existent then it is branded as evil and must be destroyed. The history of colonial extermination in the process of territorial and political domination is evidence of this behavior.

One can even make the argument that detention camps can be compared to the relationship between pets and farm animals to humans according to Ghassan Hage in his book White Nation. The only difference between a farm animal and pet is that a farm animal is still too wild to be able to wander freely in the home. Now just substitute “nation” for “home” and “ethnic other” for “animal” it is hard to escape the fact that this is the exact thing that is occurring here in the US. “Guest workers” are considered to be somewhere between a trusted pet and a wild beast who needs to be tamed in order to wander freely. And like the duties and responsibilities of a work horse on a farm, “guest workers” are used as a tool for other peoples advantage, never to roam around free.

What is Anglo superiority? According to Samuel Huntington, author of Clash of Civilizations and The Hispanic Challenge, in his latest article, Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite he writes:

America’s Anglo-Protestant culture has combined political and social institutions and practices inherited from England, including most notably the English language, together with the concepts and values of dissenting Protestantism, which faded in England but which the settlers brought with them and which took on new life on the new continent.

For Huntington, America is thus the battleground for the heart and soul of Western civilization. Anyone who wants to become successful and wealthy in America must conform to Anglo-American cultural values and take English as their language. To which Huntington, Latinos pose as a threat to liberal democracy. In other words, Latinos are not willing to be tamed and should be locked up.

The current detention population is in response to a backlash against undocumented immigration that actually began in the mid-1990s and that is now out of control since 9/11. According to Detention Watch Network, a D.C.-based advocacy group, in 1994, the number of detained immigrants by the federal government on any given day was 7,444. Currently, the government is able detain 22,000 immigrants on any given day. This year, President Bush intends to provide new funding for another 6,700 beds, which would make the gain since 1994 virtually fourfold. The number of removals every year from the U.S. – whether formal or “voluntary” – is even greater. In 2004, they totaled 1,238,319, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics.

Rising inequality can result in an increase in racial bias for scapegoating or advancing xenophobic and nationalistic tendencies. By this fall, the ICE will already have already spent an estimated $1 billion per year to detain over 27,500 immigrants in eight ICE operated Service Processing Centers (SPCs) and seven contract detention facilities. In addition to those facilities, detainees are also being held in local jails and privately run prisons across the US. According to ICE, the average time a detainee spends in one of America’s concentration camp is approximately one month, although some detainees have reported that have been held for several years.

As the “New World Order” marches on, one’s outlook in life will continue to look not so bright and cheerful as most people would have planned, or hoped, it to be. What is not often told in the corporate media are the American families who are broken up because of our ineffective system. As US lawmakers grapple with a long awaited immigration bill, families are being separated by the many mistakes in the exceedingly complicated process to obtain visas and permanent residency which leads to life-changing consequences for foreign spouses of American citizens and their family members. The number of people barred from the United States under this draconian policy is increasing. Since 2000, 21,500 have been prevented from returning for a decade. In 2006, the annual tally nearly doubled over the year before to 13,209. Many American nuclear families are shattered because families are forced to make one of the hardest decisions of their lives – remain estranged from their spouses and minor children or leave the US and become an American exile.

The brutal immigration human zoos throughout this country US – the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, TX, the Willacy County Detention Center in Raymondville and the numerous deportation prisons – represents nothing more than reminder of the empty promises of liberty, justice and democracy made by the neo-colonial power structure that brought them here. In truth, their abused and hollow meanings behind their supposed help and goodwill continue to be unmasked and being replaced by terror, hunger and injustice! No matter how much they seek to live a modest life, fend for their families, enjoy a decent education or even struggle for the right to live, they are demonized, imprisoned and sent to their deaths through hunger and repression brought on by the very same societies that benefit from their devastation and misery. It is the bureaucratic machine of oppression that works tirelessly to strip them of their human rights and to keep them faceless so they can simply remain as objects to be stared at and talked about – just as it was envisioned by P.T. Barnum with his own personal human zoo.

To reflect on these realities could help us to better understand the tragedy. We have a crisis that is threatening our existence. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we have to accept this inept government, which allows this to happen. We can do something about it instead of being forced to decide to either leave this country or accept the authoritarianism that has developed. A true democracy should not consist only of secret police and domestic espionage operations and generals and admirals with their approach to justice – meaning, they will let you know what justice is. When it come to the issue of humanity as opposed to power – I have chosen humanity. A free society owes it existence to the tenets of freedom. People of color have never had a breath of freedom in this suffocating society.

Today, in America, too much emphasis is given to secrecy and not enough emphasis is given to the question of justice and to the question of humanity. These dignified deceptions will not suffice. We have had enough of power without truth. I intend to fight for the truth. I suggest that not only is this not un-American, but it is the most American thing we can do – because if the truth does not endure, then our country will not endure.

With the 2008 election approaching fast, the fact is, if we do not wake up quick, we can hope for little substantive change in the next administration if we don’t pressure any of the current Democratic Party candidates for justice. The current “GOP Lite” formula that the Democratic Party is adhering to is a bankrupt centrist ideology with no principles, and which inspires far too few to go out and vote the decadent neocon murderers out of office.

In our country the worst of all crimes occurs when the government murders truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. Once this occurs, they can do away with anybody if they should dare to fight for freedom.

I call on every refugees, migrant and anti-racist progressive-minded people to come together in order to demonstrate that another world is possible and that solidarity, justice, brother- sisterhood and liberty are more than empty words. Now is the time not to back down. We are fighting for our lives!

It was later in the evening, my father asked if I saw his email and when I told no, he was shocked. Since he didn’t know what I blogging about, it was hard for to understand why I didn’t. I was in shock when I saw on what took place on the video. So I dropped what I did, to write about the border killing. After doing some quick research, nobody was talking about it. I didn’t do it because I could get the jump. I did it because a human life was taken away in the blink of an eye right before me. This was not an X-box game where this person will another life and simply walk away when the video is over. NO, his life is gone. A mother has lost her son, and an uncle has lost his nephew. After yesterday, I am beginning to wonder what the world has come to.

In the mist of all the bickering and finger pointing, lives are being lost on the border mother has lost her son, a young man is rendered fatherless, a sister or a brother becomes an only child, and the world has lost a child who could have made a difference.

Regardless on who is to blame, it happened. For a country who professes in protecting the “sanctity of life,” but is willing to rationalize about snuff out another is pure hypocrisy. All it does is continue the never ending cycle of violence continues. People sleep snug in their bed, [tag]xenophobic groups[/tag] are dancing for joy because it just mean one less “spic” to worry about, while another life will be lost, children jailed in one of America’s concentration camps, and families are separated. Nothing gets done and the status quo of suffering and violence is preserved.

It is time to stop everything that is causing the rage to build and fester! In nothing, people need to stop pointing fingers and reflect on what could justifiably be done now to stop this from occurring again!

This weekends video is dedicated to those who are committed para [tag]la causa[/tag]! Because this fight is worth fighting for!

Pitbull: [tag]305 Anthem[/tag]

[Note: 5/04/07 - Unfortunately, [tag]YouTube[/tag] I mean [tag]Google[/tag] has decided to [tag]Censor[/tag] this video and has taken it down. That is OK I have another copy of it. I will put it back up, soon.]

According to the Union-Tribune, it was a case of “self-defense.”

Surveillance video of a deadly shooting last month of a would-be illegal migrant by a Border Patrol agent is prompting calls by the Mexican government for an investigation, although it shows the agent apparently firing in self-defense.

Self-defense from what? This type of behavior seems to be normal, recently Agent Nicholas Corbett was charged with first-degree murder of Francisco Dominguez-Rivera, of Puebla, Mexico, who was unarmed at the border in January. Corbett was also charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide. His excuse – he claimed he “feared for his life,” however, Corbett’s account didn’t match witness testimony or forensic evidence.

The present racial crisis in this country carries within it powerful destructive ingredients that may soon erupt into an uncontrollable explosion.

Update:
The autopsy report that was released today revealed that Acosta died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. According to recent reports, the incident occurred when Border Patrol encounter a group of individuals who allegedly began attacking them with rocks. I use the term a “group of individuals” because there is conflicting reports in the media on what actually occurred. According to Greg Gross of Union-Tribune:

The incident occurred during a violent encounter between agents and illegal border-crossers, about a mile west of the Calexico border crossing.

However, local NBC affiliate KYMA-TV reported:

Agents say a group of suspected smugglers began attacking them with large rocks.

Agents believe Gamez Acosta was one of the smugglers.

The Mexican government called for an investigation after Pablo Arnaud, Mexican consulate in Calexico, saw the full version of the incident on the Internet. According to Border Patrol supervisor David Kim, the FBI will investigate the shooting.

On the video, it doesn’t appear to show that the Border Patrol agent is being attacked, however you do see Acosta cock his arm back, which at that time the agent fired at him. Even more disturbing, after Acosta was gunned down, it seems somebody in the Calexico station moved abruptly moved the surveillance camera to the left. Was this done on purpose? There many question that need to be answered.

This post is cross-posted over at Scholars & Rogues, a new group blog I participate in.

Immigration officials have already detained over 200,000 individuals annually. Men, women, children, and sometimes even entire families are held in prison-like conditions, often awaiting decisions that will play a critical role in determining their futures. Unfortunately, some of those who are held in detention are sexually victimized. The events taking place in America’s privately run “immigration prisons” are getting worse. Corporate media refuses to discuss the seriousness of the concentration camps we have here in the US. For the past month, Greg Moses, editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review, has been reporting on the article of 20-year-old [tag]Suzi Hazahza[/tag] and the [tag]Hazahza[/tag] family who are detained in another privately run “[tag]immigration prison[/tag]” [tag]Rolling Plains Detention Facility[/tag] in [tag]Haskell, TX[/tag], which is managed by the [tag]Emerald Companies[/tag] of LA.

On Nov. 2, during a late-night armed raid conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, men armed with machine guns came to the Hazahza home in Richardson and seized the entire family at gunpoint. The mother and her 11-year old son were taken to a prison in Taylor, near Austin. The other five were sent to Haskell.

According to Moses, both Suzi and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat have been subjected to repeated humiliating full body-cavity searches at the hands of prison guards.

Suzi and Mirvat spent the first 48 hours at Haskell sleeping on the concrete floor of a drunk tank, because no beds were available. They both ran high fevers for two weeks after that, and were also denied requests to see a doctor.

The sisters were “strip searched” each time they met with an outside visitor, including humiliating inspections that took place in full view of male guards “on multiple occasions.” When taken to the recreation area, they were made to “walk the gauntlet” in front of male prisoners who [tag]sexually harassed[/tag] them with techniques that included exhibition and public masturbation while guards laughed.

This is not an isolated case, where a couple of women being sexually assaulted, under the guise of conducting “full body-cavity search,” each time they have received a visitor. In June 2003, Amnesty International’s (AI) report, Why Am I Here? Children in Immigration Detention, stated that 61 percent of the secure detention facilities that were surveyed for the report used strip-searches on the children in their care. AI also documented allegations of excessive use of force, administered in a way that may form cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, to an extent that reflects major regulatory deficiencies as well as personal misconduct.

Children and advocates told AI that at Berks County Youth Center’s Secure Unit in Pennsylvania, physical abuse might be used as a punitive and disciplinary method. Staff reportedly kick children, throw them to the floor and knock their heads into walls for infractions such as looking the wrong way, saying “can I use the bathroom” instead of “may I,” or not being able to count properly.

Immigration officials have raped detainees and have abused their authority by exchanging goods and privileges for sex. Threats of violence and deportation have been used by immigration staff to coerce detainees into performing sex acts. Staff members have watched female detainees when they are dressing, showering, or using the bathroom, and some regularly engage in verbal degradation and harassment of detainees. Detainees have further reported groping and other sexual abuse by staff during pat frisks and searches.

Despite the increasing push to detain and deport non-citizens, individuals who are detained by the ICE are not without legal protections – particularly when it comes to sexual abuse. Despite the increasing push to detain and deport non-citizens, individuals who are detained by the ICE are not without legal protections – particularly when it comes to sexual abuse. The right to protection from rape and sexual violence is guaranteed by other international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the US has ratified. Rape in detention violates the ICCPR’s protection of the right to security of person, the right to be free from cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment, the right of those deprived of liberty to be valued with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and, in extreme cases, the right to life. The federal government cannot legitimately claim that its national interest is advanced by the cruel treatment of detainees.

This not something made up, listen to the stories from those who were victimized by the American prison juggernaut:
Christina Madrazo – a Mexican national and a preoperative transsexual, was raped twice by a guard at Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida. The officer who attacked her, Lemar Smith, was the same man responsible for bringing her meals and watching over her cellblock.

“My fear was incredible,” Madrazo recalls. “I didn’t know if anybody would help me or protect me. Nobody had given me simple human treatment since they took me there.”

“I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t,” Madrazo recalled. “He told me if I say anything, I’m gonna pay. I felt so angry, so impotent. He called me a bitch and said I deserved it, like he was glad.”

Aminata – was Senegalese national who was detained at Washington Dulles Airport in November 2003 on the way to visit her husband. Though she had a valid visa, immigration officials decided that she looked like a male terrorist dressed as a woman.

Aminata was forced to submit to a strip search. Her breasts and genitals were groped by female detention officers in what was characterized as an attempt to determine her gender.

Fadjar – a gay Indonesian male, was sexually harassed and singled out because of his sexuality while being detained at the El Paso Service Processing Center in El Paso, TX, where he was awaiting a decision on his application for asylum.

Fadjar was told by officers at the processing center to “walk straight” because “this is not a beauty salon, but a jail.” Officers on multiple occasions called Fadjar “puto,” a pejorative Spanish slang term.

He was also sexually badgered by an officer. The officer, Pedro Rodriguez, spoke to Fadjar as Fadjar was walking from the cafeteria to his barracks, saying “Hey Puto, how much for a blow job?

Bernadette – a Haitian immigrant who lived in the US since she was a child. After a criminal conviction, she was scheduled to be deported to Haiti and was being held at Krome Detention Center in Miami, FL.

At the detention center, an officer pressured Bernadette for sex. At first, Bernadette said she would cooperate with the officer, but she later changed her mind and resisted his advances. The officer, angered by her resistance, grabbed Bernadette by the throat and shoved her against a wall.

After this, the officer began to call Bernadette derogatory names, including “whore.” Another officer, who had also unsuccessfully pressured Bernadette for sex, repeatedly called her “lollipop,” a term intended to suggest that Bernadette was a lesbian.

The abuse culminated with an incident in a bathroom at the center, where a male officer ordered Bernadette to take off her shirt and bra, fondled her, and masturbated in front of her and another detainee. The officer also forced the second detainee to perform a lap dance, giving money to both women. “The whole thing made me feel dirty,” Bernadette recalled. “I had to see this guy every day.”

Yudaya Nanyonga – a Ugandan national, was sent to Pennsylvania’s York County Prison when she came to the US seeking asylum to escape the rape and violence she had been subjected to by individuals affiliated with the Ugandan government.

At the York County Prison, Nanyonga was transferred to the maximum security wing, where violent prisoners were kept. The 20-year old woman, still coping with the trauma she experienced in Uganda, broke down after the transfer, according to Amnesty International, and “grieved inconsolably.”

Officers responded to Nanyonga’s sorrow with a “Quick Response Team,” which included four men, three of whom wore riot gear. The officers stripped Nanyonga, tied her naked and spread-eagled to a cot and injected her with sedatives. She remained shackled to the cot for two days.

Fauziya Kassindja – at the age of 17, hoping to escape Togo’s female genital mutilation practices, she sought political asylum in the US, but only be sent to the Esmor detention facility.

At Esmor, Kassindja was subjected to a laundry list of abuses, including being beaten and shackled; being denied sanitary napkins; being forced to stand naked for long periods of time; and being arbitrarily strip and cavity searched.

After a riot at Esmor, Kassindja was transferred to York County Prison in York, PA. There, the strip searches and degradation continued. Kassindja also endured sexual pressure from York prison inmates. She recalls that a York inmate walked into her cell as she was eating an apple. “You either give me the apple or you sleep with me,” the inmate said. “Which is it?”

“Sleep with her?” Kassindja remembers wondering. “What was she talking about? Sleep in her cell? Sleep in her – and then it clicked. Sleep with her. She meant to have sex. I’d heard that expression on TV at Esmor. I’d heard it applied to women at Esmor too. Once some of the Ghanaian women in N dorm were gossiping about one of the female guards ’sleeping with’ one of the female refugees. I hadn’t heard of such a thing. I’d heard of men being with men, but I’d never heard of women being with women.”

The current situation that is occurring at the so-called “detention centers” reflects the current situation that is occurring the US prison system, which is a horrific national monument to racism revealing the US the foremost Land of the Un-Free, Home of the Locked-Down.

Yes, Cointelpro is back, but this time with a vengeance. This time around, it’s to firmly establish the groundworks for a centralized police-state regime that can respond swiftly and massively to the domestic turmoil that must inevitably accompany a New World Order that George Bush the elder had hoped would have been achieved by now.

If America is to survive as a nation built upon bedrock principles, if it is to avoid the hurricanes of fear, prejudice and hysteria, then it is time to be less forgiving of those, like Bush and his minions who exploit such fears for their own ambitions, their own aggrandizement. It is time to be more forgiving to the victims who are unjustly scapegoated, persecuted and abused in this milieu of hatred and hypocrisy. But most of all, it is time to be more pressing that fundamental morality be part of the political process at the inception of any proposed idea, policy or legislation, not simply a “I’m sorry” afterthought.

It is time to be the voice for the voiceless. It is time to help Suzi Hazahza and her family. Please help free her and the rest of her family from one of America’s concentration camps. Joshua Bardavid, Hazahza’s attorney, encourages to be part of a letter writing campaign to free Suzi. Here is a sample letter that Bardavid provides as a template to help write your own:

John P. TORRES
US-ICE Headquarters
Post-Order Detention Unit
801 I Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20536

RE: Radi HAZAHZA, A95-219-510
Mirvat HAZAHZA, A95-219-508
Hisham HAZAHZA, A95-219-507
Suzan HAZAHZA, A95-219-506
Ahmad HAZAHZA, A95-219-505

Dear Mr. Torres,

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Radi Hazahza and his four children held in prison at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility.

I strongly believe that the Hazahza family should be released immediately from the detention center, so they can be reunited with Nazmieh Juma (wife to Radi and mother of the children) as well as Mohammad Hazahza, the eleven year old child that ICE already released from prison.

The Hazahza family has been awaiting deportation since being ordered removed in 2002, yet there is no possibility of removal since both Jordan and the Palestinian Authorities have confirmed that travel documents will not be issued for them.

The Hazahzas are asylum seekers who sought freedom and safety in the United States. They have provided the government proof of employment offers, as well as extensive ties to the United States including Mirvat Hazahza’s U.S. citizen husband and Suzan Hazahza’s U.S. citizen fiancé.

In addition, several sponsors have stepped forward to ensure the Hazahza’s appearance upon demand by the government and to ensure that they obey any terms of supervised release.

The Hazahza’s continued detention costs taxpayers over $600.00 per day, as estimated by the government. That means that, to date, at least $60,000 in government funds have been turned over to the Emerald Corporation, the private company that owns the jail in Haskell. This amount does not include the money spent on litigation and other expenses related to the continued detention.

This detention is a waste of taxpayer money, particularly since the Hazahzas present no danger to society, have provided suitable alternatives to detention, and there is no purpose in continued detention as there is no likelihood of obtaining travel documents.

Please release Mr. Hazahza and his family from the Rolling Plains prison.

Sincerely,

cc: U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement
Attn: Officer Kelvin Meridith
8101 North Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, Texas 75247

Oftentimes we hear the phrase “think globally, act locally,” however, acting locally well only fall on deaf ears, therefore, we need to think outside the box. I suggest not only cc your letter to every media agency, and but cc that letter to every foreign news media and every alternative media you know. Let the world know of the atrocities and the immoralities we must endure while living under the tyranny of the Bush dictatorship. The immoralities that allow those in power to place ethical standards on other people and nations that they callously ignore themselves. The immorality of hiding behind religion to conceal greed, selfishness, hatred, and hypocrisy.

Think the Minutemen are just netting people, better think again. They are out for blood, they do not value human life, so lets call them what they really are, anti-humanist.

PLEASE SHARE! The World needs to know what is happening on our borders.