Departing LAPD Chief Bill Bratton joined what may be a growing number of chiefs around the country who think local police have no business in enforcing federal immigration law. Bratton, who leaves office at the end of this week to persue a dubious private sector security job back East, outlined his logic in the LA Times Opinion column today, writing that he will encourage his soon-to-be-named successor to do the same.

It seems Dallas cops have been handing tickets out to individuals for being “non-English speaking drivers”. Ernestina Mondragon was pulled over by rookie cop Gary Bromley after making an illegal U-turn, and cited for a law that doesn’t even exist! Although Bromley was in training at the time, whoever was supervising him saw nothing wrong with ticketing a mother for not speaking English. What’s more, Dallas Municipal Courts even lists the fine for the (technically non-existent) infraction to the tune of $204. In a press conference, Police Chief David Kunkle has apologized for the incident, and says that at least 39 people have been ticketed by six officers for not speaking English. Seeing as a fine is already on the courthouse books, I would be surprised if it’s not a lot more. Officer Bromley, meanwhile, is still in training.

Surprised? We shouldn’t be. Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl November 16, 2008 at a hospital in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Because Baltazar, an indigenous immigrant from Oaxaca, primarily speaks Chatino, hospital staff called the Department of Human Services, which deemed that Baltazar was a danger to her daughter because she didn’t speak English, and because she was undocumented. Her daughter, Rubí, was taken away from her just two days after Baltazar gave birth. NNIRR is demanding Rubí be returned to her mother, and you can hear an excellent interview with Baltazar on Radio Bilingüe, which details her horrible ordeal. Baltazar faces a hearing in the case next month — one year after her daughter was taken away and given to an adoptive family.

I think back on my arrival to the U.S., and to my own struggle around various language cops. I imagine most immigrants that grow up speaking a language other than English do too, once they arrive here. Yet I can think of few human rights as fundamental as speaking one’s language, regardless of which one it is. I look back and realize that different languages (and even different accents) can sometimes only be heard as verbal threats, and perceived as a danger to hegemony. Speaking English does not make one a better driver, and it certainly isn’t a skill that would qualify one to be a mother. It’s simply challenges an already precarious U.S. American identity.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky’s Interventions, published by City Lights, has been banned from the Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ library. In a very brief interview, I spoke with Chomsky a few days ago about the ban, about the bait of “hope and change”, and a bit about why right-wing ideologues are so effective are animating a disgruntled public.

You can hear the interview on FSRN.

Juan Sebastián Verón and The Beautiful Game

As I make the decision to re-commit myself to blogging after a rather long hiatus, I am blasting a song fom Bersuit Vergarabat titled “La argentinidad al palo”, which roughly translates into something that… I can’t even translate.

The song highlights countless Argentine claims, icons and contradictions, ranging from the invention of the bus to the ironic suicide of historian and surgeon Dr. René Favaloro, who created the coronary bypass surgery technique. Through no fault of his own, Favaloro’s foundation was in deep debt by 2000, during an already crippling national economic crisis. He was dismayed at recent layoffs and at the possibility of having to slow down his research. After he was repeatedly ignored by a degenerate government, the doctor shot himself in the heart, but not before writing a scathing suicide note, calling government officials a group of corrupt politicians who live at the cost of the workers and steal public funds.

The song, “La argentinidad al palo”, is replete with references to fútbol, and even makes mention of the the bloody coup that was ruling during Argentina’s at-home World Coup victory in 1978. Millions of dollars were stolen, borrowed and spent to rehabilitate stadiums and erect luxury hotels and hospitality centers. There was plenty of dirty money behind the scenes as well: during the semis, Argentina had to beat Peru by at least four goals in order to make it to the finals. The final score favored Argentina 6-0. Thirty years later, the son of a powerful Colombian drug lord would claim that his family helped fix the game through tens of millions of dollars supplied by the military junta.

Whether or not the junta attended a meeting a in Peru bribe the team into losing, what remains certain is that  (Nobel-Prize Winning) Henry Kissinger was in Argentina during the 1978 World Coup, bolstering strong US support for a dictatorship that would claim the lives of some 30,000 mostly young women and men. As the country won the World Cup, millions of Argentines waved flags and somewhat unwittingly aided the junta in fomenting nationalism through popular sentiment. This sense of nationalism protected a murderous regime: political prisoners held at ESMA in Buenos Aires City say they remember not only the screams inside from their fellow prisoners who were being tortured, but also the screams outside from Argentina’s fans during and after the final game against Holland. Fútbol, like torture, it seems, permeates everything in Argentina. And although I am not old enough to remember the 1978 World Coup, I did grow up during the dictatorship that followed, and had family members on what was then the losing side of resistance, who faced their own terrifying consequences as a result of their convictions.

Yet every four years, I become a fanatical proxy nationalist. I choose to ignore the way a right-wing fascist dictatorship used an international sporting event as part of their campaign to disappear loved ones, I write off that the ‘78 game may have been fixed, and I forget the fact that my family comes from Paraguay and Brazil, or that each branch of government is just as nasty and corrupt as it was in  1978 or in 2000, when Favaloro killed himself. More than anything else, I suspend my suspicion of nationalism so much, that I embrace it and hold it tight. As I mentioned to an Irish ex-pat friend in a correspondence yesterday, I lose sleep, make agreements with a higher power, and even catch myself humming parts of the national anthem. In the past few weeks, I felt even more  motivated towards my team, since Argentina faced the possibility of not making it to the World Cup this year. Although, considering our briberous past, it’s likely a corporate sponsor would have muscled a way in for Argentina to participate: FIFA’s main sponsor is Adidas, the result of a contract secured by FIFA’s Senior Vice President Julio Grondona — who just happens to be the President of the Argentine Fútbol Association as well. Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s best player and certainly Adidas’s most valuable contract player, plays on Argentina’s national team. Between Grondona, FIFA, and Adidias, I find it highly unlikely that Argentina would not have somehow made it to the World Cup.

I am currently in Phoenix, a place where I have yet to meet anyone from South America, much less from Argentina. Because I haven’t found a sports bar that has aired any of Argentina’s qualifying matches, I’ve found myself watching them online by myself. I’ve cried by myself through games with Brazil and Paraguay in September. I was thrilled and celebrated our recent victory against Peru by jumping up and down, alone, on this seat at a desk. Yet yesterday’s game against Uruguay was the most significant, because the win automatically (and legitimately) qualified us for a spot in South Africa. The game was considered so important that local residents in Gualeguaychú, Argentina, who have shut down the international bridge that connects to Uruguay in protest of the World Bank-funded, Finnish-owned and highly-polluting Botnia paper pulp mill, decided to open the route for the first time in two years to allow some 2,500 fans to cross for the game. World Cup games, and in this case, qualifiers, change everything. As midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón (seen above) claimed, this wasn’t a celebration, it was a relief.

Because I watch the games online, the feed is sometimes dropped due to a copyright violation, so I find myself watching feeds not from my own country, but hateful feeds with venomous announcers — particularly from Brazil and England, who find any reason to desecrate Argentina. It makes my isolation here even more isolating. The defensiveness heightens my sense of being Argentine, and adds additional specks of ultra-nationalism. I cried when I saw coach Diego Maradona cry, and in that instant realized how much I want to be back home again.

In the hours that followed after the win, I turned to my favorite Argentine paper to try to share in the joy I felt so far away from. I read that Buenos Aires became a naked city as residents hovered around television sets, and that even Congress came to a halt. I wanted to be in that naked city, or anywhere in Argentina, and stop this feeling of detachment in an empty room. I wanted to embrace the contradictions of what it means to come from a land that is both enchanted and haunted, from a place that knows how to dream underground as a form of immunity from real nightmares. I wanted to be back home in the country that, despite our numerous losses, still knows how to win.

[PLEASE NOTE: I am quite disappointed... none of you have told me where they got these Palin people from.]

You’ve likely already seen the part where Sarah Palin can’t name one newspaper she reads in an interview with Katie Couric. But which conservative doesn’t have a handful of Supreme Court cases they disagree with, just ready to pull out of their hat? Let me guess: Palin!

By the way, it was certainly not my intent to bash Palin all the time on this blog. In fact, I am doing very little bashing, and just letting this severely under-qualified candidate speak for herself. And for those of you who have pointed out that she is just too stressed out to be doing interviews like this, I’d like to remind you that it’s part of the job. If you don’t know how to talk to the press, if you stumble over your words, and if you cannot remember things like the name of a newspaper or the fact that you already publicly stated your opposition to the high court’s ruling on the Exxon Valdez spill, then keep you day job, Governor – we certainly don’t need you running for VP on any ticket.

[AGAIN: If anyone can tell me where these get these Palin people from, please contact me immediately. Seriously.]

Remember Jeremiah Wright? Barack Obama’s (former) Reverend that had the audacity to use the presidential election to talk about race and failed domestic and foreign policies? Of course you do! The networks couldn’t get enough of him, when videos of his sermons illustrated that he preached (among other things) that the U.S. government placed crack in black communities as a way to insure the future of the prison industrial complex. I’m still not sure what the big fuss was all about - and the last time I checked, the United States has the biggest population in the world (yes, in the world; yes, more than China), and the highest number of prisoners in proportion to its population (about one in every 100) – mostly due to this ghetto fabulous War on Drugs. Oh, and about 12 percent of black men in their 20s and 30s are in the system, compared to less than one percent of white men in the same age group. Like I said, I don’t get the big fuss.

So anyway, it seems Sarah Palin has an interesting Pastor of her own. His name is Thomas Muthee, and below is a video of him praying to protect Palin from witches. Yes, witches… Not to be confused with the part where he asks God to help finance her campaign:

So one candidate has to drop his Reverend for making truthful comments, while another gets a pass from the networks after video surfaces that he is a complete basket case. Hallelujah!

Just making my way back to the RNC from the what has been a crazy night on the outside full of concussion grenades, tear gas and other oppressive tactics… Whew. I saw Sharif get hauled away, along with many other members of the press and legal observers. Some minors have been taken as well.

That’s what the outside of the Ramsey County Jail looks like here in Saint Paul - Sheriff Fletcher is in the blue along with a blonde-haired aide (not to mention the intense amount of fencing and hundreds of riot-clad officers on patrol). What isn’t in the picture of hunderds of supporters just a few yards away; I did not photograph them as many are just being released from jail themselves and may not feel comfortable being included in cyber-space. I spent a few hours outside the jail earlier today, talking to different people, including the Sheriff who agreed to speak with me briefly. Bail has been reduced from anywhere between $2,000 to $10,000, but the very serious charges still stand – terrorism charges for planning protests (can anyone say Chicago 8?). Tune in tonight to Pacifica’s coverage for more updates, and make sure to listen to FSRN tomorrow for the full story.

Just got off the phone with Bruce Nestor from the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild: eight alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged with very serious terrorism charges, and face about 10 years each behind bars. They are Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald and Max Spector – their group was infiltrated by paid informants.  I am heading down to the jail, and will try to return by evening to blog some more.

Among the many career politicians roaming the halls at the Republican National Convention is John Bolton. My colleague Mitch Jeserich caught up with him first, in-between scheduled interviews. Mitch got a couple of minutes in before his handler shut down questioning. I began waiting for Bolton a while later, mic in hand, because I wanted to ask him additional questions regarding Georgia and Israel. The same handler walks over to me and asks who I am with and proceeds to tell me that since Mitch talked to him for a couple of minutes, I cannot. He adds that since two other reporters are already walking with him, there was no way he could allow me to do the same. He’s also staring at me as if I am somehow less than him… Baby, please: you handle a warmonger.

Thank you to Nicole Sawaya for the fitting title suggestion.