Obama Takes a Stand on Israel

The New York Times

Mr. Obama and Israel
Published: March 26, 2010

After taking office last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel privately told many Americans and Europeans that he was committed to and capable of peacemaking, despite the hard-line positions that he had used to get elected for a second time. Trust me, he told them. We were skeptical when we first heard that, and we’re even more skeptical now. All this week, the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with, a way to resolve the poisonous contretemps over Jerusalem and to finally restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It would have been a relief if they had succeeded. Serious negotiations on a two-state solution are in all their interests. And the challenges the United States and Israel face — especially Iran’s nuclear program — are too great for the leaders not to have a close working relationship...link to complete article

Do Insults Lead to Violence? It did on Long Island

The New York Times

Racial Slurs Preceded L.I. Attack, Victim’s Friend Testifies
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: March 24, 2010

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Walking in Patchogue with a friend shortly before midnight on a Saturday in November 2008, Angel Loja saw some young people approaching them. “I noticed that this group that was coming, they didn’t have good intentions,” Mr. Loja said Wednesday in a Long Island courtroom. “They looked furious.”

Mr. Loja had met up with his friend, Marcelo Lucero, about 2 p.m. earlier that day, Nov. 8. They had been childhood friends in Ecuador, and they separately came to America and ended up settling in the same small village of Patchogue, living about eight blocks from each other. Mr. Loja, now 37, worked in construction; Mr. Lucero, 37 at the time, worked in a dry-cleaning store.

They were on their way to a friend’s house when they saw the seven young men approach. Mr. Loja said he took two steps back, and then the insults started. Mr. Loja said the group called him and Mr. Lucero “Mexicans” and “illegals” and used racial and ethnic slurs against blacks and Hispanics...link to complete article

In Shadow of Health Care Vote, Immigrant Advocates Keep Pushing for Change
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: March 20, 2010

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Immigrant advocates, frustrated with President Obama’s lack of progress on legislation to overhaul the immigration system, called one month ago for a march in Washington that they said would display the strength of their numbers and would give the president the push he needed to get the debate rolling in Congress. That was then.

In the space of a few weeks, with the acrimonious health care debate eclipsing other issues in Washington, the results advocates can expect from the scheduled rally of tens of thousands of their supporters on the Mall here on Sunday appear to have diminished. Now the question for advocates, who planned their go-for-broke mobilization as a catalyst to jump-start a bill in Congress, is whether it will at least help to keep a conversation about immigration going in Washington between now and the November elections...link to complete article

Music, Infused With Sorrow and Joy, in Honor of Migrant Dreamers
Johannesburg Journal

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: March 18, 2010

The New York Times

JOHANNESBURG — Hugh Masekela, the legendary trumpeter, blew his horn, sang with bluesy fervor and boogied across the stage on his puffy, 70-year old knees in his “Songs of Migration,” a revival of the music made by those who came from all over southern Africa to dig for gold and search for work here in the continent’s great boom town. And every now and then, in the midst of the performance, he stared hard at the people who filled the seats in front of him at the Market Theater, their faces illuminated in the glow of the stage lights.

Grandmothers with tear-streaked cheeks mouthed the words along with him. Middle-aged women swayed to songs that had been woven into their girlhood games. Teenagers, dragged along by the grownups, were hearing this music of a bygone era for the first time...link to complete article

Budget Cut for Fence on U.S.-Mexico Border
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: March 16, 2010

The New York Times

Citing a plague of “cost overruns and missed deadlines,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that she would cut millions of dollars intended for a high-tech “virtual fence” along the Mexican border that has produced little more than headaches for the federal government.

Ms. Napolitano said her department would divert about $50 million in federal stimulus money intended for the project to other technological needs on the border, including laptops, radios, thermal-imaging devices and cameras requested by border guards.

In addition, she said, no money will be spent on expanding the project beyond two areas in Arizona where it is being tested until the department completes a reassessment she ordered in January...link to complete article

How Privacy Vanishes Online
By STEVE LOHR
Published: March 16, 2010

The New York Times

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?

Probably not.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number...link to complete article

Op-Ed Contributor

Turning Green With Literacy
By THOMAS CAHILL
Published: March 16, 2010

The New York Times

WHY should we celebrate the Irish?

No doubt, several reasons could be proffered. But for me one answer stands out. Long, long ago the Irish pulled off a remarkable feat: They saved the books of the Western world and left them as gifts for all humanity.

True enough, the Irish were unlikely candidates for the job. Upon their entrance into Western history in the fifth century, they were the most barbaric of barbarians, practitioners of human sacrifice, cattle rustlers, traders in human beings (the children they captured along the Atlantic edge of Europe), insane warriors who entered battle stark naked. And yet it was the Irish who were around to pick up the pieces when the Roman Empire collapsed in the West under the increasing assaults of Germanic tribes...link to complete article

Its Now Embarrassing to Say We Are From Texas

The New York Times

Editorial
Rewriting History in Texas
Published: March 15, 2010

The Texas Board of Education, notorious for its past efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools, has now moved to revise the social studies curriculum to portray conservative ideas and movements in a more positive light and emphasize the role of Christianity in the nation’s founding.

It was a disturbing intervention by the board’s Republican majority into educational decisions best left to the teachers and scholars who have toiled for almost a year to produce the new curriculum standards...link to complete article

Jihad is Not Always Considered a Bad Word

The New York Times

Federal Panel Finds Bias in Ouster of Principal

By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: March 12, 2010

A federal commission has determined that New York City’s Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language public school by forcing her to resign in 2007 following a storm of controversy driven by opponents of the school...link to complete article

Texas Textbooks Regress

The New York Times

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: March 12, 2010

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light...link to complete article

West Bank Sealed Off March 11

The New York Times

Israel Seals Off West Bank to Prevent Unrest A.P
Published: March 12, 2010

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel has sealed off the West Bank for 48 hours, preventing Palestinians from entering Israel because of fears of unrest.

There have been clashes after Friday prayers at mosques in Jerusalem and elsewhere in recent weeks, sparked by deadlock in peace talks and Israel's inclusion of two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites.

Several Palestinians have been badly wounded and dozens of protesters and Israeli policemen have suffered light injuries...link to complete article

Obsessed and Deranged about Health Care

The New York Times
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 27, 2010

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter...link to complete article

Lawyers Back Creating New Immigration Courts

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: February 8, 2010
Responding to pleas from immigration judges and lawyers who say the nation’s immigration courts are faltering under a crushing caseload, the American Bar Association called Monday for Congress to scrap the current system and create a new, independent court for immigration cases...link to complete article

The New York Times

A Radical Treasure
By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 29, 2010

I had lunch with Howard Zinn just a few weeks ago, and I’ve seldom had
more fun while talking about so many matters that were unreservedly unpleasant: the sorry state of government and politics in the U.S., the tragic futility of our escalation in Afghanistan, the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful...
Link to complete article

New York Times
Monday, February 1, 2010

Driven to Distraction
With virtually every American owning a
cellphone, distracted driving has become a threat on the nation’s roads. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers. Yet Americans have largely ignored that research. Device makers and auto companies acknowledge the risks, but they aggressively develop and market gadgets that cause distractions. Police in almost half of all states make no attempt to gather data on the problem. The federal government warns against talking on a cellphone while driving, but no state legislature has banned it...

link to complete article

The NYT and the Camayd-Freixas Report

When major immigration issues come up, the NYT* is usually fairly reasonable, especially with it's approach to the DREAM Act. During the past two years the paper has printed a number of supportive editorials. Unfortunately, even the power the NYT has not moved the country enough to do something positive about immigration reform. In fact, ICE raids have intensified and thousands more have been incarcerated.

Today things are different. The Times editorial will help move things along, but the key to all of this is Dr. Camayd-Freixas' essay. At 6:40 p.m. central time, the number of people visiting dreamacttexas has more than doubled, with over 90% of the visits looking for information on Camayd-Freixas' essay. It is interesting how a bit of writing can change things. We should all consider writing comments on newspaper articles and blogs. The impact of the printed (or blogged) only word multiplies over time. You would be surprised how closely people in the Congress watch the movement of the blogs.

Comments supportive of Dr. C-F's essay and the Postville workers can only help. Think about writing a few words...

---

July 13, 2008
Editorial
The Shame of Postville, Iowa
New York Times

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.

for link to NYT editorial click here

*NYT reporter Julia Preston, who authored the article on the essay, has been especially supportive of the DREAM Act.

NYT and Immigrant Detainee Medical Care

The New York Times has published an editorial calling DHS on it's inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants. It reminds me of the McClellan book on the Bush Administration, why did the NYT take so long?



Below are previous dreamacttexas posts on this issue:

June 5, 2008 "You Are Not Supposed to Kill People in Custody"
May 12, 2008 "Immigrants and Medical Neglect, Part II"
May 11, 2008 "Immigrants and Medical Neglect, Part I"
May 5, 2008 "People Dying While in ICE Custody"
March 24, 2008 "It Doesn't Just Happen to Latinos"
December 24, 2007 "ICE Incompetence"
-----

June 11, 2008

Editorial
New York Times

Dying in Detention

The government has a duty to provide decent, effective, timely medical care to people in its custody. That should be beyond debate, but not when the government in question is the Bush administration and the people in custody are illegal immigrants.

Recent news reports from The Times, The Washington Post and CBS News have shone a harsh light on the immigration detention system, finding alarming evidence of shoddy care, inadequate staffing, lax standards, secrecy and chronic ineptitude.

Not many Americans know the names of detained immigrants like Boubacar Bah of Guinea and Francisco Castaneda of El Salvador. Mr. Bah died after falling and fracturing his skull; his injuries went untreated for more than 14 hours. Mr. Castaneda died because the diagnosis and treatment of his cancer was tragically delayed. They, and dozens of others, should be memorialized as victims of a system scarred by malign neglect.

The government should be rushing to improve the oversight and care in its sprawling detention system to protect all detainees. Instead, the official reaction has been slow and defensive, promised improvements are piecemeal, and criticism of the system is making immigration hard-liners indignant.

At a House subcommittee hearing last week, Representative Peter King, the committee’s ranking Republican, complained: “Why should the American people be responsible for paying for Rolls-Royce medical care for illegal aliens?” Representative Zoe Lofgren, the subcommittee’s chairwoman, is valiantly pushing back. She realizes that with the administration busily expanding immigration detention and failing far too often to meet its own minimal standards for medical care, it is up to Congress to insist on better.

She and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey have sponsored the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act, which would go far to provide the basic protections that failed Mr. Bah and Mr. Castaneda. The bill would impose more rigorous standards on the network of more than 300 publicly and privately run prisons that make up the federal system — current rules are voluntary, not legally enforceable and not uniformly followed. And it would require that all deaths be reported to the Justice Department and Congress.

Congress should swiftly pass the bill, putting aside the poisoned debate over illegal immigration, which has no relevance here. Whether immigrants are legal or illegal has nothing to do with their right to humane care. As Ms. Lofgren bluntly put it: “You are not supposed to kill people who are in custody.”

for link to NYT editorial click here

Panicking for what?

A DREAM ACT Texas article on the current anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. from May 29, 2008 titled "About Immigration: From the Words of the Wall Street Journal," stated that the Republican Party had spent a great deal of money on a public relations campaign against immigrants. If this is true then much of the panic could be coming from a planned attack meant to stir things up so people would want more stringent immigration laws -- which means voting Republican.

According to the WSJ article: The GOP spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads that portrayed Latino immigrants as dangerous criminals...

I ran across a movie a few months ago on Emile Zola. Zola was receiving much criticism for his supposed radical publications. In one scene he is walking through a square; nearby is a man standing on a small platform screaming to everyone that Zola is ruining the city. There is a large crowd surrounding the man speaking. After a few minutes the crowd sees Zola nearby and comes after him; they start beating him, but miraculously he is able to escape.

-----

June 3, 2008

The Great Immigration Panic

Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.

An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. After the largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in Iowa — hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison. Civil-rights lawyers complained, futilely, that workers had been steamrolled into giving up their rights, treated more as a presumptive criminal gang than as potentially exploited workers who deserved a fair hearing. The company that harnessed their desperation, like so many others, has faced no charges.

Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to impose standards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts as prosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight of blameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up to three new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers, empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.

This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.

There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism. Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but his Senate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to be in hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever he mentions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. Barack Obama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of a new politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so. The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed in poll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courage and a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should be forceful and unflinching.

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

Stopping S.A.V.E. will help the national budget

At last the New York Times acknowledged there is a problem with the S.A.V.E. Act -- and actually named the title of the bill.

The paper is concerned with the high price for this enforcement the very inefficient and inaccurate e-verify system.

Also, NYT says in this editorial: "Sleazy employers who already hire under the table" - I wonder if they are aware or are consciously ignoring that many upstanding, middle class (white) U.S. citizens hire people off the books -- to mow laws, baby-sit, clean house or build a porch. Just as we are demanding from Obama that he be more careful with his words - the NYT and other newspapers need to do the same.

See dreamacttexas post "Illinois stalls e-verify" from September 25, 2007

____

New York Times
Editorial
Immigration, Off the Books
Published: April 17, 2008

Immigration bills seek to take small, badly flawed “no-work” lists and explode them rapidly to a national scale. With an error rate of about 4 percent, millions of citizens could be flagged as ineligible to work, too.

That’s only part of the price. The Congressional Budget Office says the SAVE Act would cost $40 billion over 10 years, adding up lost tax revenue and spending on things like thousands of immigration judges. It is likely to overwhelm the Social Security Administration, which already is swamped with disability benefits and retiring baby boomers. It won’t do much for small businesses that would have to pay to comply.

The problem is not with employment verification itself. Illegal immigrants should not be allowed to work, and any system that is rational and lawful needs to be backed up with a hiring database. The trouble with these bills is that they don’t fix the database errors first, and they are strict enforcement-only measures, uncoupled from any path to legalization for undocumented workers.

Imagine that we end up with an airtight workplace verification system built on a perfect database — but without a path to legalization. In that world, an honest company that learns it has undocumented workers has the unhappy choice of firing them or taking them off the books. How many would choose option B?

Sleazy employers who already hire under the table would be encouraged, since the millions of workers stranded in the shadows would have nowhere else to go. (They will not deport themselves en masse, no matter what the Minutemen say.) American workers would then be more vulnerable to competition from illegal labor, not less.

Some employers, meanwhile, would readily abuse the system, prescreening job applicants, avoiding or discriminating against non-natives, not letting workers know their rights, firing them at will.

Remind us, again, why we wanted this so badly?

Oh, to protect American workers.

Doing that means, at the very least, fixing the employment database before beginning a huge, untested worker-verification experiment and imposing it only as part of a broader reform that allows the eight million undocumented workers to become legal. Otherwise, we would be giving countless employers and workers the incentive to go off the books, which would be exactly where we started, billions of dollars and countless lost jobs ago.

A seldom considered consequence of immigration

In memory of Mario Sotelo


How many Oreos can you eat?

The New York Times published an article "Does this goo make you groan" on July 2, 2006 in which it quotes a Harvard scientist:
''There's no substantial evidence to support the idea that high-fructose corn syrup is somehow responsible for obesity,'' said Dr. Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health"

maybe the title of the NYT article should be "Does this misinformation make you groan?"


We often think of how our lives (those of us who are not immigrants) have changed because of immigration. Yes, our cities and schools have changed. There are bilingual signs everywhere. Salsa is now more popular than catsup.

Even so, we rarely think of what happens to people who immigrate to the United States. While we were at the funeral of yet another Latino who died of complications of diabetes - Juli mentioned to me that she never heard of diabetes when she lived in Mexico.


Diabetes is an AMERICAN disease. It seems strikingly perverse when health professionals point out that Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately diagnosed with diabetes. They say this without explanation. Is it fair for to be labeled with an illness that is actually more white American than apple pie?

There is a term thrown around by health researches called the "Hispanic Paradox" -- I don't know why people would be surprised that when people from Mexico first immigrate here they are healthier (yes, in better shape) than our middle class white American. Just the fact that it is called a "paradox" explains that immigrants who lived in poverty in their home country could actually be healthier. How is this possible without Centrum, meat everyday, nutritionally balanced diets, and the best health care service in the world?

The answer is simple: when immigrants still lived in Mexico, they rarely, if ever ate at a McDonalds (I recommend the film "Super-Sized Me" for those who doubt) or a Burger King, or a Jack in the Box. The beans and tortillas they made at home did not have high fructose corn syrup, one of the big culprits in the development of diabetes.

While Latino immigrants surprise researchers with their health and great physical condition, they again surprise them when long term studies are done, and it is found that immigrants quickly take on the eating habits and therefore diseases of our average American.

It is the food. This wonderful country that offers everything, where a person (if documented) can go from rags to riches, get a great education, and complain about the president without going to jail - is killing us with food, specifically American food - hamburgers, fries, box cereals, 100% fruit juice full of high fructose corn syrup, Jack in the Box Tacos, Dominoes Pizza, Oreo cookies, Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Fanta Orange, and many more of the wonderful things we eat everyday.

Diabetes is ravaging the Latino community in the United States.


photo: http://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/blog/uploaded_images/highfructosecornsyrup-740920.jpg