Author: XicanoPwr

The quickest way to either build your career or destroy it is through controversy and Sen. Joseph Biden, of Delaware, something he should have already known. Soon after Biden announced his intentions to run for the presidency, in an interview with the New York Observer, Biden described Sen. Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

However, Biden is no stranger to foot-in-mouth controversy, which tells you, he should have known better. He should have known that his biggest enemy has repeatedly been his own mouth. We often hear that “those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.” In his first Presidential bid back in 1988, Biden was also surrounded by controversy. In my opinion, the whole plagiarism scandal is a bit questionable. There was a lot of funny business going on at that time. However, when it comes to Freudian slips, he definitely has not learned from his past mistakes. Last summer, in explaining the demographic shift in Delaware, Biden said, “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” Later that year, on “Fox News Sunday,” he bragged about his potential appeal to Southern voters by noting “You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country.”

Words are needed to construct language and language is needed to express thoughts. It is funny how words often fail to meet the expectations we put on them. That is so true for Joe Biden, soon after he made that remark about Obama, he tried to explain his comment,

Earlier in the day, the Delaware Democrat said during a conference call his comments reflected his mother’s expression: “Clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack,” he said. Four hours later, he issued a statement saying, “I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Senator Obama.”

What was supposed to be his be coming out party as he announced his candidacy for President, he probably felt more like he was drowning in a vat of acid as he spent the rest of the explaining himself.
It really is not that hard to figure out precisely what he was alluding to by using racially coded language, such as “clean,” “mainstream,” “articulate and bright,” and “nice-looking” to describe Obama. Most white mainstream pundits on the right and left have primarily focused on the word “clean,” because they are acting as if they are concerned on how super-sensitive Blackfolk will take it. Basically, it is a facade to cover their real motives, a warped sense of congratulatory adulation for Bidin and how they wish they could skillfully do what many white corporate journalist do not have the courage to admit to: that they consider that Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson are everything Obama is not, your sterotypical uppty black man.

The fact is while many accept that while Biden’s use of “clean” was questionable, it is other elements of his statement that make it far worse than the possible jab at non-Obama Black leaders. A major problem with words is their perceived emotional connotations. Connotation in language involves the semantic or deep-structure of words, expressions and texts and is, therefore, strongly related to culture. The fact is, we live in a binary system of opposites which does reflect the archetypal dualism in man’s consciousness.

Here in the United States, we do divide people in the world into the categories of “Clean” and “Dirty” and historically, the use of the word “clean” has come to be synonymous with “whiteness.” In the late 1950s, the word “clean” was used to justify segregation. However, the rules separating dirty from clean are not clear or principled. For example, in Dearborn, MI, Orville Hubbard, Dearborn’s mayor, was blunt and unrelenting in his pursuit to “keep Dearborn clean,” which intended white people only. Our society and culture (especially in elite circles) have racist and classist legacies, which have yet to be fully reconciled or addressed. Former- Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration and President of Harvard University, Laurence Summers, while working for the World Bank in 1991, wrote a memo about “dirty industries,” which was eventually leaked:

‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the [Less Developed Countries] LDCs I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

This type of word use is not limited to African Americans. In book Understanding Words that Wound, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic address the immediate danger of hate speech to Latinos and other historically disempowered groups. Hate speech does not just apply to overt charge words used by folks like the KKK, it further reflects the socially accepted stereotypes. Understanding Words that Wound agues that unpunished hate speech harm individuals and society because it diminishes targeted group members and advocates their different treatment. Walter Lippmann, who coined the term “stereotype,” explained that people make generalize about other people based on fixed views and because of that, our moral system rests on the “accepted version of the facts.”

Widespread belief in the disparagement of historically shunned groups is perpetuated through controversial statements about them. The acute attitudes that stereotypes can prompt in both speakers and victims indicate the extent that those who are affected by prejudices can range from the personal and to group identities. The term “dirty Mexican” is liberally attributed to the Latino community to which Latinos are viewed as being dangerous, lazy, hyper-sexual, intellectual inferior, and intemperance.

Destructive messages can catalyze crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust, American slavery, and Native American removal. There are plenty of historical examples where this has occurred. In a landmark study that was conducted after World War II, The Authoritarian Personality, it was revealed how it was possible for great masses of supposedly enlightened, Christian people were willingly to tolerate the systematic oppression and extermination of their fellow citizens who just happen to be Jewish, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black, mentally and physically-impaired people, and political dissenters. The goal of the study was to use scientific method in understanding what was “it” that caused an individual to act prejudicial to their fellow person, and to use those findings to help seek a solution to inter-group prejudice and hatred. The report revealed that authoritarian tendencies in an individual’s personality make him receptive to anti-democratic propaganda and policies that target out-groups for discrimination and destruction.  

The personality tendencies of the authoritarian-disposed individual were found to include:

“Cultural narrowness”  seen in rigid acceptance of the conventional middle-class values of “the culturally ‘alike'” and the tendency to reject and punish “the culturally ‘unlike’ . . . who violate conventional values.” (Ibid, pp 102, 228);

–Negative stereotyped perceptions of the members of “unlike” out-groups (Ibid, pp 228, 235, 236), rather than seeing them as individuals who also laugh and cry and love and hate, or who, in the words of Joseph Berger, “lived, laughed, cursed, fought, who did the things human beings do” (“At Holocaust Museum, Turning a Number into a Name,” The New York Times, Nov. 21, 2004);

–Anti-introspection, i.e. resistance to self-understanding, to soul- searching, to cause-and-effect analysis of individual and group behavior, unable to tolerate ambiguity, belief in mystical, unexplainable phenomenon, disparaging intellectual attempts to perceive life’s nuances and complexities (Ibid, pp 236, 235); and

–Aggression, involving “the ethnocentric need for an out-group” who represents “the intrinsic evil (aggressiveness, laziness, power-seeking, etc.) of human nature . . . [that] is unchangeable [and] must be attacked, stamped out, or segregated, wherever it is found, lest it contaminate the good.” (Ibid, pages 232-234, 148).

The urge to oversimplify dilemmas and find designated scapegoats for complex predicaments underlies the popularity of stereotypes. Approaching adversities from a biased perspective gives simplistic though meaningful answers to inexplicable predicaments. Latinos are often blamed for losses in jobs and the reduction in wages.

Continued uses of code words like “articulate,” “mainstream,” and “nice looking” are only manifested substitutions for the “oh you are not like them” messages. Repeating misethnic slurs only perpetuates institutionalized discrimination, which is only meant to detract from a person’s humanity, dignity, self-respect, standing, and potential. After a while, epithets become the norm and a frame of reference not only to individuals but also to the person’s entire cultural group. Biden’s the message implied that he saw black people in America as different from the “norm” – unfamiliar and not quite equal.

The message is a painful reminder, not only to African Americans, but also to all people of color of the extent of white society’s commitment to white supremacy. Biden’s, as a white man and representing this country’s power elite, message implied, if we strongly hope to achieve the “American Dream” we must become like Obama who is capable of using the proper subject/verb agreement, not look and act so “ghetto” so “barrio” or “rancho” – all forms of internal colonialism. As stereotypes are communicated repeatedly in diverse social contexts, in time, less information is require to evoke a whole series of negative connotations. The fact that Biden remarked that Obama was the first “mainstream” African American implied that Shirley Chisholm, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun & Rev. Al Sharpton were more uppity and did not know their place in society, so they did not count. The underlining question is, are people of color who seek leadership roles held to higher standards? The answer is yes.

For African Americans, it has been found that there are fewer black members of corporate boards or black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and those with a “black-sounding” names are less likely to be interviewed or hired than a person named John or Jenny. As for Latinos, studies have documented the challenges encountered by Latino applicants for presidencies and provostships at American colleges and universities. The studies found that “key decision makers in the selection process for presidents and provosts expected higher standards of qualifications and experience for Latino men and women than for members of other ethnic and racial groups.” Even though this article, The Dearth of Latinos in Campus Administration, by Roberto Haro focuses on Latinos, the patterns Dr. Haro found in researching the “type” of person sought for a leadership experience are the same patterns among other people of color I have found through my own personal conversations other people.

In the screening process used to select senior campus leaders, some questionable patterns surfaced. Four deserve mention: the “type” of person sought; the desired experience; the “style” of the candidate; and interview performance. What is meant by type? A particular image emerges that includes words like tall, distinguished-looking, well-dressed, and impeccably groomed. A trustee at a selective liberal-arts college I interviewed said, “Look at the pictures of our previous presidents. Now that’s what we want for this college.” As I looked at the photographs, they were all white males. In a nutshell, most of the institutions wanted a distinguished-looking, gray-haired, white man, standing about six feet tall and dressed in an expensive designer suit. A few might settle for a white woman with similar characteristics. Some white male candidates could get away with being shabbily dressed; they were simply viewed as tweedy intellectuals or athletics boosters in their sport coats, but Latino candidates who dressed down found that it was held against them.

The matter of “style” was difficult, but possible, to categorize. Decision makers wanted candidates of a particular culture, polished speakers, those at ease in any setting, attentive listeners, and stable personalities, the ideal Rotary Club leader. A white female vice president at a research university said she had voted against a Latino presidential candidate because he “did not appreciate the Western European tradition and literature.” This was surprising given that the Latino candidate had a strong reputation for translating some of the Great Books of European writers into Spanish. The head of a search committee at a selective liberal-arts college rejected a Latino candidate because he “spoke with an accent,” and used a “terminology and pronunciation in his vernacular that did not sound like good English.” The candidate had a soft Southern drawl and used terms he had learned during extensive study in England and France.

A trustee at a two-year college was displeased by the earrings a Latina applicant was wearing and said they appeared “cheap and distracting, reflecting poor taste.” They were modest family heirlooms handed down through three generations. At a different two-year college, a trustee voted against a Latina candidate because the woman “was overweight, and her blouse was too tight;” the college ultimately hired a white woman who was overweight. These are but a few of the subjective comments that revealed biases against Latino candidates.

It is that kind of thought process that is the root cause for the disparity we currently are having in this country between whites and people of color. It is why every year white students at prestigious universities – Clemson University (2007); the University of Texas at Austin (2006); the University of Chicago (2005); Cornell (2004); and MIT (2003) – feel they can mock the appearance and behavior of the black and brown people of the “ghetto” and “barrio” by throwing a “ghetto themed party” – 40-ounce cans of malt liquor, fried chicken, fake guns, “ethnic” names, do-rags, jeweled grills on their front teeth, and loud jewelry were all part of their party.

Hate is addictive because it yields a sense of power but like all addictions it is a deception. We are very clever at trying to deceive our fellow people into unquestioning loyalty. Loyalty is where social power really is. It is rationalized by selectively picking out the evidence until there is sufficient evidence to justify their point. This fraudulent way of gathering evidence is a common trait of bigots and extremists.

Historically, charismatic bigots can galvanize dangerous social movements by manipulating widespread prejudices. Racial stereotypes of Latinos have already been exploited to gain support for federal statutes that curb the rights of legal and illegal immigrants. News is even further tainted when it becomes a platform for hate dressed in the cloak of respectability. Adolf Hitler used the indiscretions of some Jews as evidence of all Jews being “collectively guilty” to justify his plans for persecuting them in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, years before he became Chancellor of Germany. The KKK looks for incidents of black crime to justify their own hate crimes. Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1829, in part, because of his vocal support for Indian removal, and he continued that aim during his term in office.

The essential need for the contextual analysis is of particular importance in avoiding the destructive psychological effects to children and adults. Prejudices are often learned early in life, before children are wary enough to question their validity. Culture imprints beliefs and practices in children that are easily manipulated by the advocacy of violent, antisocial behavior against a historically disempowered group. The depictions of Latinos as criminals or drunkards on television perpetuate racism by giving these false representations a de facto stamp of popular approval.

Jeanne Guana writes:

After the Mexican American War ended in 1848, people of Mexican origin faced lynchings, land theft and virulent racism. Later, in times of economic depression, people of Mexican origin–citizens and non-citizens alike–were deported en masse . . . . As a result, many Mexican-origin people internalized the racism and learned to despise all things Mexican.

Unfortunately, internalized oppression runs high within the Latino community because it is deep-rooted within us. We have been conditioned at many levels and for many centuries to believe that lighter skin is more desirable. Despising all things native to ourselves causes unhealthy behavior, including self-loathing and participation in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes. Latinos may be conditioned to believe that other Latinos – particularly recent immigrants – are also taking away jobs or are unfairly taking advantage of the social services they are not qualified to receive.

Additionally, we may avoid from using Spanish in professional settings because it will betray our heritage, or we may believe that Whiter is better. In fact, our own self-loathing curtails our own empowerment efforts because we have been conditioned at many levels and for many centuries to believe that lighter skin is more desirable. So it is not surprising when Latinos have stopped drinking the “kool aid,” likeother oppressed people in this society, we should question the reasons when someone is able to twist reality in such a way that conforms to contemporary socio-political “norms.”

In light of the recent State of the Union speech, it is important we bring this subject up again. Last night, Bush stated he will ask “Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000.” This will be done by establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. What is frightening, this is very similar to a previous post I wrote, The Green Card Draft and how there have been mumblings on about the a military draft – CO Republican candidate Rick O’Donnell called for a national service corp. draft for men and Edward Bernard Glick also recently wrote an op-ed article in the Christian Science Monitor, advocating for the reinstatement of the military draft.

And last night, Bush stated he is proposing a plan that would allow the military to “hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad … in the defining struggle of our time.”
The US Military has a long history of targeting people who happen to come from working class families and areas with a large amount of minorities, both urban and rural – otherwise known as a “poverty draft.” What makes today’s “poverty draft” more devious, given our current immigration issue, the proposed Civilian Reserve Corps is one way “to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals” and it would “resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country — without animosity and without amnesty.”

The truth is without a draft that will impacted young white men and women, there will be no mass resistance among los gringos like it was in the 60s.

In other words, these pour souls will become the few, the proud – the military’s cannon fodder for the current war. In the document “Strategic Partnership Plan for 2002-2007” written by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the architects of what we might call “niche recruiting” stated:

“The Hispanic population is the fastest growing demographic in the United States and is projected to become 25% of the U.S. population by the year 2025.” The Plan goes on to explain: “Priority areas [for recruitment] are designated primarily as the cross section of weak labor opportunities and college-age population as determined by both [the] general and Hispanic population.” Not surprisingly, the top two recruiting batallion areas according to the Plan are Los Angeles and San Antonio.

With the promises of employment and visions of success and prosperity, it will not be surprising if we many Latinos and African Americans be willing to join the new Civilian Reserve Corps.

In hopes of escaping their economic prison, many will come to realize they will be bamboozled with empty words and false images – war really means death and suffering, not some X-box video game they thought it was.

The rest of this post is a re-post of the Green Card Daft because much of what I wrote has not changed.

As the military began preparing the invasion of Iraq, they already realized they were lacking the manpower needed for their invasion. There is no doubt the military’s Recruiting Command did not overlook the use of non-citizens to play a major role in their plan.

In July 2002, President Bush issued an executive order that would grant any non-naturalized soldiers serving honorably in the “war on terrorism” to speed up their process to citizenship once they have enlisted. Within 6 months, citizenship could be granted and they are once naturalized they can apply to have immediate families naturalized also.

According to Betsy Streisand, of the U.S. News & World Report, citizenship applications have gone up from 300 a month before Bush’s order to 1,300 a month in 2003. In short, the only reason Hispanics enlist in the military, really has nothing to do with defending our national security or “honor”, it is solely to increase their access to a decent education and a better life.

In a 2005 report by the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA Inc), a federally funded research organization for the US Navy, analysts found immigrants were half as likely as their US-born counterparts to wash out before completing their enlistment. Based on their finding and recognizing the need to “help fill current gaps and meet future needs,” they made several recommendations to tap into the “roughly 1.5 million potential non-citizen recruits”

To facilitate recruitment and retention of non-citizens in the military, the Department of Defense should:

• Provide military recruiters with more information for non-citizen recruits by developing materials for applicants and new recruits that explain eligibility for expedited citizenship, the advantages of filing for citizenship while in the military, and the benefits of attaining citizenship.
• Consider more structured, installation-based assistance that would help non-citizen service members and their dependents with the citizenship process.
• Investigate, through the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whether more uniform treatment of noncitizens across the military services is needed.

As Congress debates to tighten immigration controls, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are serving in the armed forces. What is not generally known is that the Bush Junta, like the business community, has also been exploiting them. Some have even gone even further, Council on Foreign Relations neoconservative senior fellow Max Boot, and have proposed that the military, enlist and actively recruit foreigners from other countries.

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. (Emphases mine)

As extreme as that might sound, when it comes to military service, many immigrates are willing to put their life on the line as a way to prove their loyalty to the US in hopes of obtaining the American Dream, equal treatment and acceptance in their new country. Realities the military and neo-cons like Max Boot are well aware of and are willing to exploit.

During the 2004 Presidential race, many people were talking about the possibility of reinstating the draft. But want many people don’t realize, once America went to war and after Bush’s executive order, the military, Congress and Citizenship and Immigration Services were already in the process of fast-tracking applications and making it easier for immigrants to become citizens.

When reports were coming in about the military recruitment was at a 30-year low, the military already started targeting Latinos to meet their targeted numbers. One of the Pentagon goals is to double the amount of Hispanic enlistment through aggressive marketing.

Another tool aiding the military in recruiting Latinos into the armed services is through the little known Hispanic Access Initiative Act (HAIA) of 1996, which allows ROTC recruiters to target Latino students at high school and Hispanic Serving Institutions, colleges with a large Hispanic student body. Recruiters are given access to high school students’ addresses and phone numbers and are free to contact them at home, unless parents object. In 2004, the Army has added $10 million to its recruitment budget to advertise directly aimed at Hispanic audiences.

So how effective are their advertisement efforts in the recruiting process? As of Sept 9, 2006, everything is going as planned:

The Pentagon announced Friday that the Army met its recruiting goal for August, which a senior Army official said makes it virtually certain that the service will achieve its aim of signing up 80,000 new soldiers for the full recruiting year, which ends Sept. 30. Last year the Army fell short for the first time since 1999.

And recently, Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced there are more than 40,000 immigrants currently serving in the military and more than 26,000 have already been naturalized since Sept. 11, 2001.

Their pipeline for a brighter future – a chance to become the next teachers, doctors, scientist, and other professionals – is soon to becoming nothing more but a pipe dream of empty hopes and promises. For them, there is no American Dream, only an American Nightmare.

The sadistic irony in all of this, as many immigrants risk life and limb entering this country for a better life, they are now being asked to risk life and limb to be played as pawns in a geopolitical chess game – all for the most “precious commodity” – US citizenship.

We are now in the middle of the Democrats 100-hour agenda led by the new Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said when new Congressional begins, Democrats will be focusing on key domestic issues promised in last year’s electoral campaigns: Medicare, the minimum wage, college education and energy policy.

Today, Democrats are putting forward specific steps to expand prosperity, to provide all Americans with the opportunity to succeed, to live a secure and comfortable life including good jobs here at home, affordable health care, a growing economy with stable prices, investments in new technologies, and fiscal responsibility in government.

However, she has yet to she mention anything about reversing the legalization of torture or restoring habeas corpus; nothing about reversing the Patriot Act, and nothing about averting war in Iran.

Even though a wide majority of people is in favor of impeaching the president, it was Nancy Pelosi who declared that impeachment was “off the table.” The reasoning is that Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are concerned they would be “endangering” any chances of winning the White House in 2008 with a move, like impeachment. The fear is that a move like would appear “radical” to swing voters.
The reality is that America’s political processes is so fundamentally corrupt that the only way we get new leaders in Congress are not because of their persuasive powers, lofty and encompassing vision or mastery of the details of governance, but who can out whore themselves to the wealthy individuals and corporations than their fellow lawmakers. And that’s the problem when the government stops being a government for the people but legislative guardians for the “institutionalized system” that are meant to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The point is, if there isn’t any profit to be made, the rich and powerful will continue to confirm a current social structure and will staunchly resist any real effort to change it.

In the end, it will be the Democratic elites and Republican will stand together against any political or economic approach that aims to provide true opportunity and genuine dignity to all people. Using the evidence Len provided on the top executives from Corrections Corp of America who generously donated to Republican politicians, a closer look further demonstrate how they too have contributed generously to conservative Democrats. (Cite: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5)

Such a system of rank obscenity could only exist in a world that is motivated by greed, where profit margin out weighs human dignity. Those who claim “today’s working poor are doing better than any Third World country!” are hypocrites of the first order. They would send a drowning man a rope, but refuse to pull him to shore and later brag how the rope of hope is better than a rock of despair. Rather than raising the people to true dignity, they systematically eliminate competition, by institutionally minimizing true opportunity, and collectively control the flow on who is allowed into their special inner circle. All one has to do is compare the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in the political parties and national legislatures of the US. The fact remains the powerful use of the political right to take part in politics is stratified in a way that carefully corresponds to lines of social stratification such as gender, income, or education. Although we may see and hear them, the sad truth, they are a cog of the systematic inequalities in political participation. And their role only continues the vicious cycle where political and social inequalities reinforces each other.

So the conspiracy continues. And for capitalist elites it is not a conspiracy of action, but a conspiracy of silence – a conspiracy that is based primarily on nationality, color, culture and gender. It is this form of hypocrisy that continues to affect the character of a nation as it seeps its way into the hearts and minds of the individuals that make up the system and only to become ingrained in many. It is this deception that makes it impossible to “forget” the brutality, contempt and racism that many people of color have suffered.

What is more insidious, is how the extreme right wing have soften their linguistic approach to forward their concepts of the white, capitalist and Christian superiority that was once used to justify the lynching and burning of Black people, enslaving millions of Chinese laborers to build this nations transcontinental railroad, and forcing Native Americans and Mexicans off their lands. What is happening in Amerikkka is a perfect illustration of La Fontaine’s fable of the wolf picking a quarrel with the lamb solely for an excuse to devour him.

Over the years, the extreme right has had an irrational fear that America is facing an “existential crisis” that threatens the dominate white culture.

“Was not Western civilization vastly superior to the indigenous civilizations it encountered and crushed, from the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas to the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist civilizations from Africa to the Far East?”

“Since Americans of European descent — unlike Germans — are not into sackcloth-and-ashes, but take immense pride in their ancestor’s achievements and bridle at reverse discrimination, it is hard to see a happy future of peace and reconciliation [if white guilt continues].”

“This idea of America as a creedal nation bound together not by ‘blood or birth or soil’ but by ‘ideals’ that must be taught and learned … is demonstrably false.”

“America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built.”

It is not a coincidence that last year the US became a battleground against immigrants and that Congress provide the ammo that war – issuing laws that criminalize immigrants and allow the expansion of the border wall that would prevent them from entering this country.

The corporate media also took part in this campaign by demonizing immigrants and condemning them for taking away jobs that should go to citizens, who, for that reason, genuinely believe that their living standards have dropped in recent years. The conspiracy of silence has been raging on for a long time and consequently, has come to be expected whenever the US is hit with economic hard times. Some groups adamantly refuse to accept that what is happening today is not due to some immigration phenomenon but government policies that aids the rich in over the “have nots.”

The circumstances that were brought on by a neo-liberal model that eliminated foreign competition and marginalized a region are the cause for the systematic and perennial flight from Latin Americans and Caribbeans to seek the “American dream.” In order to reach it, they either have endangered their lives by being victims of trafficking, or entered through a visa and once it expires are now known to be in “legal limbo.” All because they emigrated from their native land and are now in no man’s land, and subjected to the violation of their human rights.

The Bush administration is chalk full of double standards when it comes to handling immigration. Currently, he has sent “la migra dogs of war” to enforce the laws that has broken families up and detaining innocent children in detention camps, while the owners of Swift & Co, the second-largest beef processor and largest pork processor in the world, have not been troubled, much less punished for employing undocumented immigrants.

This is the Conspiracy of Silence that is happening here in the Land of Free.

Back in April, Texas became home of Americas concentration camp when Williamson County’s T. Don Hutto Correctional Residential Center, a private detention facility in Taylor, Texas, became the newest facility for Homeland Security that would house “immigrants not from Mexico, but caught in Texas.” It was reported that around Christmas time, that T. Don Hutto Residential Center was housing 400 immigrants, and out those, 200 of them are children.

Fellow Houstonian and documentarian, Jesse Salmeron, has provided the a video on YouTube of Jay J. Johnson-Castro’s Christmas Eve vigil outside the Texas’ Williamson County’s T. Don Hutto Correctional…ummm….Residential Center…..Concentration Camp. (hat tip to Latina Lista, video at the bottom of diary)
According to Latina Lista also posted that Jay who did a protest walk from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the building of the Border Wall is planning to do another walk. However, this will be a historical event. There have been marches organized going from one city to city, but the march is planning to do, to my knowledge and research, has never never been done. Jay plans to do a historic 5,000 mile march in mid-February from San Diego, CA to the Hutto facility in Taylor, TX. He is also calling volunteers to join to protest the travesty that is occurring here in the Land of Free.

(1) opposed to the border wall, (2) if you are interested in putting and end to incarcerating women and children in prison camps on American soil?(3) if you?re interested in preventing the death toll that is as a result of failed immigration policies in this country?(4) some of, or (5) all of the above.

I will try to get in contact with Jay and post any information about this important and historic march.

Greg Moses of the Texas Civil Rights Review posted an email he received a couple of days ago on the current conditions at Hutto.

Many of you have probably heard that since the protests held in December, the Williamson County Commissioners toured the T. Don Hutto Facility and certified as humane and decent. What you probably haven’t heard is that, probably as a result of the protests and related media attention, the conditions in the facility have changed. We know that the education, in particular, has received a major overhaul, and children are now receiving four hours of education a day, instead of just one hour. We also know that at least some of the detainees are reporting that the food has improved, at least a little bit.

The facility is planning a media tour in the not so distant future. If you have any media contacts who would be interested in this information, please make sure they inquire. We can anticipate the facility putting its best foot forward for the visit and it’s unlikely any of the reporters will be permitted to talk to detainees during their tour.

It just seems the far right conservatives can’t even muster up any type of human empathy to even be burdened with the cruelty many immigrants must endure by Homeland Security and ICE. That is the part that makes me sad. There are even days, I ask myself why even bother to write about here or continue my blog because lately my heart has been aching in ways that are beyond words when I see the plight of our own who are easily targeted by our relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled society.

We must not let Jay’s march be forgotten and have it fall into America’s memory hole. It is people like Jay who have the dedication, the heart, and the desire to make things happen.

As we look ahead, we need to examine ourselves. How can we just sit back and wash our hands of any personal responsibility for the conditions which oppress the masses – the working poor and the unemployed – and favors the rich and powerful.

What has happened to the right of all people to live in minimally decent surroundings, with enough food to keep from starving, enough clothing to stay warm?

What has happened to the right of people everywhere to have adequate health care-the right not to have to suffer or die from relatively minor care which those with money overcome with the snap of a finger?

Let’s make history together. Let’s join Jay in his historical march to end this nightmare.

One of the greatest threats to democracy is an uninformed electorate. Unfortunately, this disturbing state can clearly characterize the US public. In order to manipulate the public to go along with any policy that clearly goes against its own self-interest is through a combination of state-induced fear, distraction, and consumerism. George Orwell’s literally classic, 1984, reminds us that history is a vital part of our human existence; sadly, we often forget this very fact. Orwell wrote, “Those who control the past control the future; those who control the future, control the present; those who control the present control the past.” The genius part of all of this, you would barely know which part of American history has been manipulated and which part is historical fact. The consequence of this historical manipulation is a distorted view of who really had power and who were subjected to domination, and a concealment of issues and events that lead to the conflict.

Here in the US, we are living evidence on how the past, present, and future is as changeable as human opinions and beliefs. We, as Americans, have taken for granted the story of the United States, we have bought into this story that the US is an unstoppable advance of liberal democracy. What is often omitted from our school’s basic social studies/history curriculum are key facts on how this is achieved – the birth and growth of the United States was created by military conquest and that the conquered groups were viewed as being incapable of self-rule because of the uncivilized nature of their cultures.
We are taught that the United States began when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, followed by how the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and ending on how the 13 English Colonies won its independence from England through the American Revolution. We are also taught that the driving force for our westward expansion was based on manifest destiny which explains why this country became the enormous, rich country we see today. And depending in which state you live, you might learn the state’s history, such as in Texas.

The primary reason for concealing the history and experiences of a “colonized” people by the “colonizers” is to dominate the hearts and minds of conquered and wipe out the memories of our histories and histories of our forebears. As a result, there are only two options we are given – perish in isolation for strongly opposing the new system (disobedience has consequences) or accept the oppressors value system, being content to remain in “our place” by denouncing our past and heritage to survive. By embracing the rewritten history, we eventually buy into the manufactured story on how this nation was founded. By doing this, we are left with a “colonized mentality.”

From the cradle to grave we are constantly bombard with the notion that the American Revolution was about liberty when in fact, it was about securing new markets by conquering the land occupied by the Native American in order for the American Empire to grow even bigger, more powerful and, more profitable. And part of the mental process of colonization is that things are always about knowing or being put in your place.

In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon recognized the way in which colonizers usurp the history of the colonized. He writes:

[C]olonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying their native’s brain of all forms of content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.

Prior of the American Revolution, many Native Americans feared that the colonists would drive them from their lands; in fact, some Native Americans had allied with the British as their only hope of protecting their homelands from future encroachments by American colonists and land speculators. Unfortunately, as history shows, they were correct.

Since there will never be a history book that will ever mention that the US was founded on the ideals of empire building, historians have reinforced the nations conscious image by producing its own history at the expense of manufacturing half-truths and lies. This country’s strategy of selective memory is what has shaped the United States’ identity. As this country started, it selectively “forgot” that without the help of the indigenous people during the first two centuries of America’s exploration, many Europeans would have died from malnutrition and diseases. And in showing America’s gratitude, the indigenous people were seen as impeding on the nation’s progress to raise an empire, therefore, elimination was needed.

Part of empire building is conquering other nations. According to A. Kent MacDougall, this was the ultimate goal of every Founding Father, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson.

George Washington called the nascent nation “a rising empire.” John Adams said it was “destined” to overspread all North America. And Thomas Jefferson viewed it as “the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.”

In order to feel a sense of belonging, the newly minted federal government created a distinctive “American” identity, in an effort to unify the country’s population. In doing so, the Founding Fathers strategically misrepresented “the Indian” in a way that promoted the belief that the indigenous people were all racially, intellectually, and culturally inferior. And in drafting the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson made sure that future generations would feel no remorse about dispossessing and expelling these “merciless Indian Savages” by falsely accusing a whole population of assisting the Crown in the American Revolution.

[King George III] has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.

As a result, the indigenous people are viewed as “uncivilized” and “primitive,” everything the upper class Euro-Americans are not, therefore; justifying their eradication by any means necessary.

Rarely ever mentioned is the military invasion of Spanish Florida by the US on North American soil. According to William Loren Katz, the first US foreign invasion occurred in 1816 when General Andrew Jackson ordered the military to invade Florida (a tip of the hat to Marisacat for pointing this out).

In July 1816, General Andrew Jackson, Commander of the U.S. Southern District, ordered Army, Navy and Marine units to invade Florida, then under the flag of Spain. Jackson acted, probably on orders from President James Madison, without a Congressional declaration of war. Neither Spain nor its colonial outpost posed a threat to the U.S. or its citizens. Rather, the President and the General–both prominent slaveholders–had concluded that the slave economy and its human “property” were threatened by the several thousand Native Americans and African Americans, including escaped slaves, who had united in the Seminole Nation on Florida soil.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, believing in “Indian removal, slavery, and the use of military force without congressional approval,” and that it was “better to err on the side of vigor than on the side of weakness,” defended the invasion, as well as Jackson’s brutal search and destroy operations. In presenting that defense, writes [Historian William Weeks], “he consciously distorted, dissembled, and lied about the goals and conduct of American foreign policy to both Congress and the public” — an effort, Weeks believes, that “stands as a monumental distortion of the causes and conduct of Jackson’s conquest of Florida, reminding historians not to search for truth in official explanations of events.”

Florida, like Texas, the Southwest and Puerto Rico is often marginalized in American history. Because the foundations of our political institutions come from the tradition that was established through the English colonies, American historians tend to leave out how the US has been influence from other colonial powers. By doing this, it creates a false idea that the US frontier was a vastly uninhabited and when other states entered the Union, it was done effortlessly.

Respectively, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans were brought into the US in 1836-48 and 1898. The homelands of Mexicans (fractions of) and Puerto Ricans were conquered, and this conquest was followed by their emigration into a new country. This meant that while the connection of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with the United States was comparable, it was not exactly the same as that of European immigrants. And in a lot of ways, colonialism is similar to the term stated by the African Americans, “slave mentality,” whereas cultures and memories of histories have also been wiped out.

The experiences for Mexicans can be broken down into two phases; the first occurred two-thirds of the 19th century the other phase developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the invasion of Texas and the Southwest, Mexicans were considered very much like the indigenous population because “White immigrants actually assigned Mexicans an intermediate location in the new society they imposed in the region” according to Tomas Almaguer. It was after the 1880’s the US began the realization process, categorizing people by race and ethnicity. One of the problems with Chicano history is that it begins with the Mexican American War, leaving out the invasion that transpired in Texas and Florida.

The struggle throughout the southwest started out as resistance through insurrections against the Euro-American encroachment and domination. These were insurrections were led by men such as Juan Nepomuceno Cortina and Gregorio Cortez in Texas, the Gorras Blancas in New Mexico, and the acts of social bandits such as Juan Flores and Joaquin Murietta in California It was not until the 1890, the Mexican American population was pigeonholed into its new racial identity. Victor Rodriguez writes:

The “Mexican Problem” ideology was constructed on the basis of writings of travelers, Protestant missionaries, journalists, academics, businessmen, and engineers who went to Mexico during the late 19th and early 20th century. The writings shaped a popular understanding of Mexicans, who were seen as a group that had to be colonized and racialized both in Mexico and within the United States. The U.S. had a putative civilizing mission; Mexicans, domestically and abroad, were to be the subjects of these efforts. (The racialization of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans: 1890s-1930s by Victor Rodriguez)

But as long as society is socially controlled through the dominant corporate media and their public relations partners, every sight and sound we encounter through advertising, literature, history, and the entertainment media will continue to create powerful images of other people and we can expect further resistance from those who refuse to accept the facts of America’s history of imperial ambitions. Because of this denial, this clearly explains why we see gringos (like the Pat Buchanans and Lou Dobbs of the world) so ambivalent towards the civil disobedience being practiced by the “colonized” and their sympathetic allies.

We must fight the “colonized mentality” that is woven into our very hearts and minds because knowing our own history is a necessity to our sense of identity. The ability of recalling and identifying with our own past gives our existence meaning, purpose, and value. We have bought in to the “colonized mentality” and as a result we lost the value of community, we have replaced it with  the American value of individualism, it is this kind of “me first” narcissism that fragments community.

Like any good Americans, we are constantly on the move to satisfy our materialist need – wanting the car, the house, the clothes, the jewels, the gear, not realizing we are chasing an illusion under the guise of the American Dream. This value has perpetuated a sense of need for immediate gratification and a sense of entitlement – “I’ve got mine.” One promise I have always made to myself is that I never wanted to one of these persons who either sit in judgment of the poor, or worse, forget them cause “I’ve got mine.” But recently my heart aches in ways that are beyond words when I see the plight of our own who are easily forgotten, and the loss of hope I see in the eyes of our young. As we look ahead, we need to examine ourselves and remember the past. We have a responsibility to our community, to not forget where we’ve been, to not write off our brothers and sisters once we “made it.” It is vital that we give back by helping others along.

If we are to believe in the American myth, then it bespeaks a certain arrogance when we unfairly judge and demand other countries to be accountable for their historical atrocities when we refuse to be accountable for our own atrocities. Those who are not colonized must come to grips that it is the capitalist elites who created a façade around American independence. Although the colonists had genuine grievances against a tyrannical imperious monarchy; the truth is, the primary motivate was to establish our own imperial empire and compete for global domination.

I am not condemning all of the aspirations of the colonists, but I will not discount its consequences either. The revolution with its grand democratic justification did inspire liberation struggles throughout the world. In fact, the American revolution did inspire Mexico to do the same. The fact is, we must acknowledge the consequences that has played out – it created a dynamic of violence and oppression and a relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled society that rewards the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. One might question the point of a moral argument about events in the distant past; and true these facts are not recent historical revelations. However, many have not found it necessary to rationalize these terrible costs of the war and it is this moral calculus that many Americans are able to justify the atrocities in Iraq. It is evident how profoundly racism and sexism deforms our moral framework.

Even though it may appear futile to go against the all-powerful western imperialist hegemony, in reality it is not. We have many allies who share a mutual history of colonization brought on by America’s imperial arrogance and it will be this history that will unite us all, but it is vital that we discover the hidden truths that are willfully kept from us. Once decolonization occurs, it will be our collective will that lay siege to this mighty Empire. ¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

As part of the effort to tighten border security, the US government is now requiring all Americans who plan to travel within the Western Hemisphere – Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda (Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, or other territories are excluded) – to have a passport. This includes infants and children. The new passport rules will definitely affect millions of travelers. And to ensure people are “going across” for business and/or vacation, Big Brother will be able to monitor you because the new passport will be embedded with a “smart” chip. The new passport rule is being phased in, those who are required to have a passport are US citizens who are returning by air, and beginning in 2008, all American citizens who enter the country by land or sea are required to have one.

The argument can be made that most people ought to have a passport because they are considered to be useful other than being used for traveling, such as an alternative for proof of identity. However, this is not just a simple requirement; this is just one more efforts by the Bush Administration to politicize the so-called war on terror and another attempt to erode our civil liberties.

For years, Canadian and US citizens unfairly have crossed the northern border using documents such as driver’s licenses or birth certificates or in some cases without showing any documentation. And in the southern, only US citizens are allowed to re-enter the US from Mexico the same way, while Mexican citizens are required to present a valid visa and passport for admission to the US.
The new requirements will only affect US citizens entering or re-entering the US but, according to the State Department, “certain foreign nationals who currently are not required to present a passport to travel to the United States, namely most citizens of Canada and Bermuda.” Then question should be asked, if we are protecting our borders from foreign nationals from entering our relaxed borders, then how are our borders being protected if Americans not permitted from re-entering if we spontaneously decided to make a last-minute weekend trip to Canada or Mexico. Why are we required to show our papers to enter. Even Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff cynically acknowledged that passports still can be forged.

“Could James Bond and Q come up with a fake passport?” Chertoff asked, referring to the fictional British spy and his espionage agency’s technical genius. Of course, he replied, because “nothing is completely perfect.”

The truth is, forging IDs is so easy today that there is not much that can be done. This is not a topic that is being discussed in the back allies, this happening in our schools. If not, why is alcoholism high among teenagers? All a computer savvy person has to do is type “fake ID” in Google, they will not only find sites that state they will provide them with one for a nominal fee, but Google will also list sites that will show you how to do it.

And if Chertoff thinks their new little RFID “smart” chip will deter ID thieves, that is a joke. The US will spend billions of taxpayers dollars on expensive RFID reader hardware and hard-to-use software to make people safe at night, knowing those chips are hackable.

When such tools become widely available, hackers and those with less pure motives could use a handheld device and the software to mark expensive goods as cheaper items and walk out through self checkout. Underage hackers could attempt to bypass age restrictions on alcoholic drinks and adult movies, and pranksters could create confusion by randomly swapping tags, requiring that a store do manual inventory.

Nevertheless, if one were to look at this in the global picture, it will be the border towns who will suffer. So, who needs to build a physical border wall, when an economic wall is being built? And looking closer, it will be Mexico and Canada who will suffer the most.

When it comes to passports, less than a quarter of Americans have one, and those who do are rich or their job requires they have one. And if you are not rich or saved up to vacation outside the Western Hemisphere, border crossings have become a commonplace. There will be an economic due to a major hit on the tourism industry at both borders. Because Mexican citizens already have to jump through hoops to come to the US, the northern border will be hit severely considering Canadians are not require to have a visa to enter the US, nor carry a passport. In 2005, it is estimated that 13 million US citizens have crossed the northern border and the number of US citizens crosses the southern border is ten fold.

In the nation’s pursuit of a sealed border, the Southern border is already feeling the economic impacts. Border cities such as San Diego and El Paso and Laredo, TX, already have lost millions. Most Americans don’t realize money in the borderlands is fluid. In the Southern borders, Mexicans come to the US to purchase items ranging from groceries to high-end fashions. According to J. Michael Patrick, director of the Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development at Texas A&M International University, has stated now that the US-VISIT program has been fully implemented if the US experiences a 10 percent decline in northbound crossings, retail sales along the border cities would decline 2.2 percent. As for Americans, they are also contributing to the Mexican economy in other ways other than your college Spring Break “Girls Gone Wild” tequilafest. Many head south to purchase items ranging from medicine to souvenirs.

Canadian officials and some members of Congress from the Northern border states have expressed concern that the changes could interfere with travel and commerce. What are the chances that some of the congressional members where the same ones who had no problem building a wall on the Rio Grande. Yet, Congress refuses to punish corporate America who has made it clear that they will continue to hire immigrants, legally arrived or not.

But this is to be expected in the banana republic that refuses to support its own infrastructure and a nation that simultaneously rails against immigration.

Yes it is Christmas time again, and usually I would be cheerful, but it is hard not to feel in a bah humbug mood knowing, we are about to send more troops to Iraq and in the name of national security, there is a war on minorities.

It is interesting that a country dubs itself “land of the free” has locked up 2+ million men, women, boys, and girls – most of them people of color. For the most part, a large majority of these people are simply prisoners in limbo because of this nation’s broken immigration policies. The only requirement for being a prisoner was to be unlucky enough to be picked up and imprisoned for being brown and looking for the American dream.

As we spend this time with our family, please take the time to enjoy the moment, because outside our safe surrounding there will be no smiles in the eyes of these children who are locked up, no sounds of joy echoing through the living room, no nothing.

The song that comes to mind is the song done in 1984 (if that isn’t weird enough, in an Orwellian way) by Band Aid, Do they know it’s Christmas. Although the song was written specifically to raise awareness of the famine that had hit the people of Ethiopia; unfortunately, 22 years later, humanity for the poor and people of color has plummeted. What is worse, no matter how many are locked up or killed by the organized leveling of a country, or the terrorizing of it’s own citizens, the Republican Party, the conservative fringe of the Democratic Party, and the US press will bat an eyelash. The song still powerful, even after 22 years. Do the huddled mass know it’s Christmastime?

Do they know it’s Christmas?

It’s Christmastime,
there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmastime,
we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty
we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
at Christmastime

But say a prayer,
pray for the other ones
At Christmastime it’s hard,
but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window,
and it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them
instead of you

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life(Oooh)
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

Here’s to you raise a glass for everyone
Here’s to them underneath that burning sun
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again

Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again

¡Feliz Navidad amigos!

In any society, there will be tensions between order and liberty – this is inevitable. But all too often, the United States government pushes this tension far beyond the limits imposed by our Constitution, laws, and traditions. Last week, federal agents raided six meatpacking facilities and arrested more than 1,200 workers. Immigration officials stated that the purpose of the raids were a culmination of a year-long investigation into an organized crime ring that involved massive identity-theft that has “victimized large numbers of US citizens and lawful US residents.” Dubbed “Operation Wagon Train,” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the campaign took place on six meat-processing plants owned by Swift & Co. in Greeley, CO; Grand Island, NE; Cactus, TX; Hyrum, UT; Marshalltown, IA; and Worthington, MN.

The rhetoric used by ICE intends to convince us that that the workers who were detained had used the stolen identities of US citizens and lawful residents to get their jobs. ICE chose their dark words wisely – “identity theft,” “stealing identities” “deportees” – and with the goal of terrorizing us all into believing that a million illegal border crossers are using stolen Social Security number to apply for credit cards and charge expensive stereos, trips, or a boat and a couple motorcycles. The timing of the raid is also no accident. By singling these immigrants out and persecuting them in the name of identity theft (an egregiously unusual tactic, as more than one site pointed out at the time), ICE is able to heighten the concerns of many tinsel-fringed gringos already maxing out their credit cards this holiday season.
Yet, of all of the 1,282 workers who were apprehended, only 65 of the undocumented workers have been “charged with criminal violations related to identity theft or other violations, such as re-entry after deportation,” according to an ICE press release. So…if only a small fraction were “charged” on ID theft violations, then why were there so many arrested? This is obviously another failed operation bearing the trademark stamp of the much-vaunted Department of Homeland Security.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this wasteful and harmful operation is what reportedly transpired during and after the raids. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Latinos were subjected to racial profiling. ICE agents separated workers by their skin color – those who were considered gringo looking were considered civilians, while those who failed the darker-than-a-grocery bag test were the “illegals.” Latinos were subjected to racial profiling. ICE agents separated workers by their skin color – those who leaned toward a gringo-esque appearance were considered civilians, while those who failed the darker-than-a-grocery bag test were the “illegals.” What is the lesson to the larger community?

[Maria] thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant … but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets.

The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were “cleared” or arrested by “la migra,” the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said.

“She [the agent] told me, ‘Do you think it’s going to be cold in Mexico?'” Maria said, holding back tears. “I’ve never seen people get treated como animales.”

Once again, the “round them all up, ask questions later” policy swept up another US citizen. It is time we start asking, how many US-born Latinos are being arrested by bigoted federal agents because they fit their xenophobic profile of an “illegal.”

There is no doubt that the argument behind the latest round immigration raids is questionable, but what is most disturbing is the fate of the detainees in the wake of it all. According to Narco News, many of undocumented workers were loaded on buses like cattle and transferred to “undisclosed locations.” One such location was Camp Dodge. Why they were moved is anybody’s guess.

“I heard ICE is shipping them [the detained Swift workers] all over the country,” Joseph says. “Two bus loads [from Colorado] were sent to facilities in El Paso to hold people.”

There is also another danger; ICE could possibly trick these people into signing away their rights by agreeing to voluntarily deportation.

[Jeff Joseph, a Denver lawyer and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association] said the officials tell the detainees that they do not qualify for relief, and that they will spend the next few weeks in jail for weeks without seeing their families, so they might as well sign a stipulated order of removal.

“That’s just not true because many of them may be entitled to stay here,” he said.

If ICE could only muster up 65 people with ID theft (and if there really are any), with the fallout splitting up and terrorizing thousands of workers and their families, then why did ICE have to raid the plants in such a way?

Some have already come up with possible reasons that led to these raids. Duke1676, at Migra Matters suspects that one of the main reasons for the raids had to do with union busting.

The Administration appears to be using these raids to send a powerful message to those unions that favor comprehensive reform but have not signed on to Bush’s guest worker program that they better get behind plan. For unions like the AFL-CIO, LIUNA (Laborers International Union), and particularly the United Food and Commercial Workers UFCW the message is clear.

In fact, there is a long history of immigrant workers facing heavy odds when it comes to union organizing. In case after case, organizing efforts among immigrant workers have consistently come up against the same problem – the use of immigration laws to purposely prevent them from organizing. And union-busting just happens to be a favorite weapon of conservatives, used to drive down wages.

During the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan reduced enforcement efforts of the Sherman Anti-Trust and similar acts, it resulted with the Labor Department becoming hostile to labor and producing an environment that made it easy for businesses to exploit undocumented immigrants. In fact, before Reagan came into office in 1981, there was no demand for a fence to keep out the brown horde, or a demand to enforce the laws against undocumented immigrants. During that time, more people were joining unions at a high rate, and this served as a barrier to such things. What Republicans won’t acknowledge is that it was their corporate greed that opened a Pandora’s box. After all, where does all the money come from that “spills over” to the CEOs and stockholder dividends? This money does not exist until the cost of labor goes down.

Sure, they beat their chests and waxed grandly about building fences, but that was done just to exploit the fears many Americans have, all the while stabbing them in the back to maintain the status quo. This is why none of the bills introduced this year addressed the fundamental truth of the situation: Conservatives and the businesses they represent need to maintain a large, illegal or marginally legal workforce to keep down the price of labor and help them to destroy the union movement.

Still, why did ICE have to spin this as a crackdown on identity theft? One possible explanation is that it was done so ICE could divert nosy people from looking into their repeated failures when it comes to similar major work-site crackdowns. In 1999, ICE’s predecessor, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched “Operation Vanguard,” a program aimed to root out undocumented workers by a comprehensive investigation of the employment eligibility records of all meatpacking employees in Nebraska. Vanguard smacked the state of Nebraska with a reality 2 x 4 when they realized the integral role that immigrants play in the economy. All it took was the INS raiding a Nebraskan meatpacking plant. The aftermath of a similar work-site crackdown in December of 2000 resulted with the deportation of more than 200 workers — who happened to be vital to the local pre-Christmas economy.

The economic impact of Operation Vanguard on the state was so profound that Gov. Mike Johanns appointed a task force to study its statewide effects. In October 2000 the task force recommended against a resumption of the program and for endorsing amendments easing restrictions on permanent residency and citizenship and considering an amnesty.

The Bush administration claims it is learning from past failures, yet it is obvious that they are not a quick study. The lessons of Operation Vanguard have gone unlearned, and in fact seem to be completely disregarded in favor of aggressive escalation of the same faulty thinking that led to Vanguard. Note the comments made by ICE chief Julie Myers, trumpeting the raids as a victory in the “war against illegal immigration.”

“This investigation has uncovered a disturbing front in the war against illegal immigration. We believe that the genuine identities of possibly hundreds of U.S. citizens are being stolen or hijacked by criminal organizations and sold to illegal aliens in order to gain unlawful employment in this country. Combating this burgeoning problem is one of ICE’s highest priorities,” said Assistant Secretary Myers.

Was this a Freudian slip? When was there a call for a “war” on immigration?

Unrestrained behavior in the name of protecting security is not new in our nation’s history. During the 20th century, hundreds of American citizens were prosecuted for anti-war statements during World War I, and thousands of “radical” immigrants were seized for deportation during the 1920 Palmer Raids. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese-Americans were apprehended and imprisoned in detention camps, right here in the Land of the Free.

After 9/11, we have frequently seen our Government adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy and reminiscent of former President Reagan’s national security initiatives. With the unending “war on terror,” the current Administration has been consistent in allowing programs to vacuum up intelligence about lawful activities of American citizens. In 1940, Attorney General Robert Jackson recognized the inherent dangers of using broad labels like “national security” or “subversion” because there was “no definite standards to determine what constitutes a subversive activity, such as we have for murder or larceny.” Jackson added:

Activities which seem benevolent or helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as ‘subversive’ by those whose property interests might be burdened thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as ‘subversive’ the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term ‘Republican’ and the term ‘Democrat’ were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were ‘subversive’ of the order of things then dominant.

It is clear Jackson’s warning was not heeded.

The sad reality is that there is no political consideration of historical analysis; of class analysis; of fascism itself, or even of real democracy — except to vilify the scapegoat du jour and calling for their removal as a means to restore this “security.” And in doing so, history repeats itself.

What is being avoided is a clear understanding of clandestine and covert acts conducted by our government. The various techniques used to gain control of the population will never be publicly disclosed and if so, those who do expose the truth will be vilified or mysteriously found dead. Racism, prejudices and fears of changing the status quo are so deeply embedded into our ruling class that there is a silent and tacit agreement to protect it at all costs.

Although the recent raids may be regarded as a way to bust unions, the truth is that under the auspices of “National security,” we see now a continuance of the long-running open warfare against Chicanos, African-Americans and Native Americans.

On Jan. 24, 2006, a Halliburton subsidiary received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” The contract, announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR, calls for preparing for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies, such as “a natural disaster.” The release offered no details about where Halliburton will build these facilities, or when.

A Homeland Security spokesperson has responded that this is a “contingency contract” and that conceivably no centers might be built. To this day, the American people still know little or nothing about covert acts that have been used against us – the American public – because there are successful attempts to keep unclassified data out of the hands of the that public. This could, perhaps, be explained by an article in OMNI Magazine article (May 1987), which reported that former Assistant Defense Secretary and NSA deputy chief Donald C. Latham, under Regan, was the architect of National Security Decision Directive 145 (NSDD 145) which controlled the type of material that is permitted to be published to the public.

Under the approving gaze of the Reagan administration, Department of Defense (DoD) officials have quietly implemented a number of policies, decisions, and orders that give the military unprecedented control over both the content and public use of data and communications.

**The Pentagon has created a new category of “sensitive” but unclassified information that allows it to keep from public access huge quantities of data that were once widely accessible.
**Defense Department officials have attempted to rewrite key laws that spell out when the president can and cannot appropriate private communications facilities.
**The Pentagon has installed a system that enables it to seize control of the nation’s entire communications network – the phone system, data transmissions, and satellite transmissions of all kinds – in the event of what it deems a “national emergency.” As yet there is no single, universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes such a state. Usually such an emergency is restricted to times of natural disaster, war, or when national security is specifically threatened. Now the military has attempted to redefine emergency.

Now, under a plan called Endgame, jackbooted thugs of America’s ruthless new Special Forces Gestapo are aggressively hunting down and hauling off 400,000 Latinos “absconders” to detention camps.

… the National Council of La Raza and other civil and immigrant rights groups sued the Justice Department for adding the names of absconders to the National Crime Information Center database. Many police officers routinely access the database when running background checks on suspects and on people stopped for traffic violations.

The addition of absconders to the national criminal database was one of the first steps taken to toughen immigration laws after Sept. 11, 2001.

The plan is very reminiscent of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” in 1984. The plan called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detains 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.

Ordering martial law under the guise of National Emergency is no problem for the White House. On July 5, 1987, an article written by Alfonzo Chardy in the Miami Herald revealed that in 1982, former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff, and Oliver North had drafted an executive order for continuity of government (COG). The order called for “suspension of the Constitution” and “declaration of martial law.” The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Mr. Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.

The plan was said to be similar to one Mr Giuffrida had developed earlier to combat “a national uprising by black militants”. It provided for the detention “of at least 21 million American Negroes” in “assembly centres or relocation camps”

Brinkerhoff is now with the Anser Institute for Homeland Security and, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he provided Bush and the Pentagon talking points for the constitutionality of applying martial law and suspending the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law that is supposed to forbid use of troops for domestic law enforcement.

In 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one of a series of directives that authorized continued planning for COG by a private parallel government. There is only one problem. It is unclear what Reagan’s exact plans are, because according to Congressman Jim McDermott (WA), Bush took the “unusual step of sealing the Reagan Presidential papers.”

What is clear is there are over 600 prison camps in the US and that they are operational and presently ready to receive detainees. It has been said that the camps are to be operated by FEMA should Martial Law ever be implemented in the US, but will it be FEMA who runs these camps, or our Leader’s dear Homeland Security?

In September 2005, NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. It was reported that “Granite Shadow” is a top secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations inside the United States without civilian supervision or control.

Hitler had his brownshirts – his Gestapo – that scoured the country, rubbing out dissenters. And now, we have ours – and all under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency.”

Update [2006-12-15 8:46:0 by XicanoPwr]

Hey what is going on here, it seems the day after  Ciro Rodriguez was elected; Homeland Security’s Gestapo went on another raid. (hat tip to Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican). I guess we have forgotten “our place” and how we should thank our master’s for allowing us to lick their boots. Not really, this is just one more example of the Republican party under the Bushies’ facade of their “optimistic,” “color blind” society crap on how they work it behind the scenes and, even more importantly, how they work it in the two pounds of damp GOP meat between their ears. Maybe, in the immortal words of Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency on the Dixiecrat ticket, we would have avoided all these problems.

Dudya must have been slapped with a dose of reality – brown folk really do not to vote Republican, now that his only Mexican American Republican was shown the door. Guess he found out that we have been saying disparaging things about Republicans, such as, their shallow, indefensible, America-hating reason that Republicans do jack shit for us. As they do for anyone failing both the liquid asset and darker-than-a-grocery bag test.

Remember, as far as this administration is concerned, you are either with them, or against them, even if being with them would be against your own best interests to the point of pathological self-loathing.
The citizenship of people who happen to be brown, therefore, to protect their civil, Constitutional and human rights apparently carries very little weight with the Bush White House and his mindless followers with that little parenthetical “R” after their names.

“The illegal immigrants are using intimidation saying, and the media are as guilty as they are of saying this, that their civil rights are being violated,” McGill said. “If you are breaking the law and you are not a citizen of the United States, you are not eligible for any rights. They committed a crime when they walked across that border.”

You know how it is: Republicans are real Americans and then there are those whose ancestors either were brought here in chains or colonized. These are the ones who broke their backs for the ancestors of the real Americans who populate the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Any person who really thinks they are free while their neighbor is not should, at best, consider their freedom temporary because in a whim it can be easily revoked; and, at worst, their freedom is just a mere illusion. Think of it this way: Blacks and Latinos are targets by xenophobic racists, along with homosexuals and women, for no other reason than those doing the oppressing are still figuring out a way to cull the working class whites from the herd. Unfortunately, the sort of people who are better off don’t have Jim Crow laws, lynching, voting disenfranchisement, miscegenation laws and other forms of institutional racism that were common in America for most of the 20th Century as part of their living memory.

The sort of people who lived through this openly racist period in American history aren’t found in history books, they are the older ones still among us. And, it seems, if the Republicans have it their way, there will be a new generation of Americans who can say the same thing. Oh wait, I can hear them shrill how the undocumented are not Americans. The awful truth they are so happy to deny is that these are Americans because no matter what country of origin they are from, it is part of the Americas.

It also seems whenever Latinos get pissed off hearing about these Gestapo type raids, the automatic response from people who still buy into the idea of a functional democracy rather than a thin cardboard veneer of democratic-sounding bullshit pasted over feudal business and class dealings is, well, that’s just too fucking bad.

Unfortunately, the real information about these raids is what keeps slipping through the cracks of the great American “free” press whose net for this sort of thing couldn’t be used to strain bowling balls. Its not that the American press is incompetent, it’s just that after making a pact with the GOP devil in exchange for tax cuts and federal deregulation of media ownership, they are as corrupt as all hell. This is exactly the way they want to be if you are merely a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

You’ll notice that the press is basing the purpose of these raid as a crackdown on identity theft and not the constant terrorizing of thousands of people and their families based on race. In this raid, ICE detained 1,282 and of those detained “5% resulted in identity-theft charges. Let’s do a little math, jejeje those cabrones forget math is in our blood. Out of all those people they arrested 64 resulted in id-theft charges. So what does that mean, Michael Chertoff had to release 1,218 because they were legal. Remember this is based on intelligence they gathered; so not only was the CIA’s information faulty, so, the same thing can be said about Homeland (In)Security. Why doesn’t Chertoff and the goon squad Homeland (In)Security go after the real ID thieves, like the hacker who hacked into the UCLA database and stole personal records which included social security numbers, of 800,000 students, faculty and administrators. If journalism is the first draft of history, then the story told about the illegal wire tapings, corrupt theft of elections by disenfranchising minorities, and terrorizing families, gives one an idea what the the final draft of history will look like.

Today’s Know Nothings are not just driven by ignorance but also by fear, religious bigotry and xenophobia. Their sheer ignorance is a wonderful tonic for them because it allows them to carry out a crusade against people of color with pleas for domestic internments, because they don’t know, or don’t care what happens to them once they are shipped of in buses to nowhere.

The paper confirms that the federal agents took an undisclosed number of people away in buses away to an undisclosed location.

But these actions just go to show that no matter how we Americans exalt that we believe in high-minded principles, when you get right down to it, most people in the US don’t have a huge problem with this these actions taken by their own government. This is especially true consider the torture and humiliation that is practiced in Abu Graib, at least not enough of a problem to hold George W Bush accountable for it, or raise hell about it when the architect of those abuses is elevated to the position of Attorney General.

Most Americans, unless they have the intelligence and force of character to think otherwise, are constrained to think of morality in more or less religious terms, and never expanding that moral judgment to question practices. At the same time, they so willingly give the red, white and blue stamp of approval for good intentions and noble aims of American policy regardless of who has to suffer and die for it.

Because of that, we have finally reached a point where everyone’s enemy is less than human. As a consequence Latinos and especially the undocumented have been easily relegated to a subspecies like “spics”, “beaners” and “wetbacks” or simply as faceless and statistical as the Iraqi civilian casualties that barely register on the conscience of most Americans, befitting a needless war justified with lies and carried out with self-serving political motives and mindless nationalism by the emerging American one-party state of corporate interests, inadequate white males and corrupted Christianity.

And those responsible for the present atrocities won’t even be phased by its weight. It’s not in their make-up to do so; although when the situation demands it, they, like so many sociopaths, can simulate actual human emotion. No, the ones terrorizing minorities and the working class  and killing thousands of Iraqis will get promotions and presidential libraries, write books and go on the lucrative book circuit. And those Americans who are taking pleasure in the suffering of others will just continue going to their churches as fat and smug and irredeemably stupid as they ever were. One thing is for certain, they certainly won’t be ones who are up at night wondering they if will be eating the next day or worrying about that knock at the door.

That’s a curse left for those with a conscience who can still feel.

UPDATE: EBW at Wampum reported that the workers who were detained from the Iowa and Nebraska plant were taken to Camp Dodge.

These went up on the gates of Camp Dodge. The Des Moines Register reported that workers arrested at Swift & Co. packing plants in Iowa and Nebraska were being held at Camp Dodge. 90 workers from the Swift plant in Marshalltown, and most of the 261 workers from the Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.(Source: Mike Marty with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union)

Here is a prefect example of the new bill that was passed not to long ago, Military Commission’s Act, about losing habeas corpus and our due process.

After millions of immigrants stood united for their rights, the government had decided it was time to put an end to their protest by conducting raids throughout the country.  Throughout this year, I have said it countless of times, as long as there is a “round them all up, ask questions later” policy – it is open season on all Hispanics.

Time and time again, having this view, I was told “oh, you’re being too paranoid.” Tell that to the US born Latinos who are suing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

Last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPL) filed a lawsuit against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), – La Migra – for one of their Gestapo-like raids gone wrong. The lawsuit accuses that the Migra illegally detained, searched and harassed her, her US-born mother and other Latinos solely because they looked “illegal” during one of Fatherland Homeland Security’s mass deportation campaign to rid this country from people with brown skin.
On September 1, La Migra went on a series of witch-hunts across several towns in at least three GA counties that lasted for several weeks, which the tiny town of Stillmore, GA has practically become a ghost town as a result of those raids. ICE officials are quick to claim that agents were only going after undocumented immigrants who worked at a poultry plant.

The police-state tactics used by ICE agents in Stillmore were so brutal, it even shocked the town’s mayor, Marilyn Slater who told reporters “This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up.” Associated Press wrote:

Trailer parks lie abandoned. … The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago…More than 120 illegal immigrants have been loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta, 189 miles away. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. Residents say many scattered into the woods, camping out for days. They worry some are still hiding without food.

Now people are seeking justice by taking ICE to court. The plaintiffs are five Xican@s (Mexican Americans) – Marie Justeen Mancha (girl in the photo), Maria Christina Martinez; Ranulfo Perez; Maria Margarita Morales; Gladis Alicia Espitia, and the landlord, David Robinson, who suffered damage to his rental properties when ICE agents broke into numerous trailers that were rented by Latinos. The defendants are the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement branch of the US Department of Homeland Security; Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; six administrators of ICE, Julie L. Myers, Marcy Forman, Kenneth A. Smith, Gregory Wiest, John P. Torres and John Mata; and up to 30, unnamed ICE agents who participated in the operation.

According to Atlanta’s local news station, WXIA, Justeen, a 15-year-old who was born in Texas and lives in Reidsville, GA, told reporters they enter her home which knocking while she was still her bedroom getting dressed for school. She also said there were five men, one with his hand on his gun holster in here living room. Moreover, her mother, Maria Christina Martinez, was not even at home at the time when two dozen agents surrounded the house that morning. She said that after eventually convinced Michael Chertoff’s goon squad that she is an US citizen; agents interrogated her about her mother “legal” status.

“And one was holding a gun,” Justeen said. “And that really scared me. And they were screaming, ‘Illegals,’ and ‘Mexicans,’ and stuff like that. And they asked me if I was illegal, and I said, ‘No.'”

According to the suit filed in federal court in Atlanta, agents stopped one plaintiff, Maria Margarita Morales, as she was driving home, repeatedly called her “Mexican,” grabbed her arm and ordered her to get out of her vehicle. Agents also surrounded another plaintiff, Ranulfo Perez, outside his home, the suit stated, grabbing him by the shirt, pressing a gun into his side and throwing him against his truck. Another plaintiff, Gladis Alicia Espitia, claims agents broke down her front door and threatened to throw gas into her home if her family did not come out of a bedroom.

The complaint also mentions how agents stopped pulling Maria Margarita Morales over as she was driving home, and at that time the migra repeatedly called her “Mexican,” grabbed her arm and ordered her to get out of her vehicle. It also describes how agents surrounded Ranulfo Perez outside his home and grabbed him by his shirt as they pressed a gun into his side and throwing him against his truck. Gladis Alicia Espitia reported that agents broke down her front door and threatened to throw gas into her home if her family did not come out of a bedroom.

Not surprisingly, ICE’s response to what occurred in Stillmore. Responding to ICE’s no-warrant invasion of Justeen’s home, spokesman for ICE, Marc Raimondi, has asserted that everything was done in accordance with the law and that the operation was “carefully planned,” and that the addresses they obtained was “based on specific information” that came from months of investigation and “extensive research.”

These are dark days for American democracy. These Gestapo-type raids are only meant to undermine the rights of all workers. If not, then how did this happen? There is only one simple answer, “NO MESIKANS ALLOWED!” While juxtaposition to Gestapo tactics may sound far fetched, it is hard to deny that the raids are unquestionably occurring in an atmosphere zealously charged with intense nationalism and violent xenophobia.