Ask Eric Holder to block Arizona's racist law | Change.org

The state of Arizona has enacted a law that is the greatest threat to civil rights in America in a generation.

Even though it's 2010 and not 1963, federal action is necessary once again to protect civil rights in a state where the governor and legislature are writing racial discrimination into the law.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable government search and seizure. But Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed into law SB 1070, legislation that that effectively mandates racial profiling and police harassment of Latinos.

Not only does SB 1070 require the police to investigate and detain anyone who could reasonably be suspected of being an undocumented immigrant, it actually makes it a crime not to have papers providing your immigration status.

Policia arresta padre que llevaba comida a hijo en porton UPR-RP.MPG

Un brutalidad que no debio haber pasado.

POTOSI’S SILVER TEARS

The city that once made Europe rich is dying. The impoverished miners who live there are struggling to survive amid the ruins of its bygone splendour.

“It’s so poor, it makes you want to weep,” says Bolivian historian Valentin Abecia. He’s not exaggerating. A visit to Potosi, which helped to maintain the splendour of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries, is today a spine-chilling experience.
Around two billion ounces of silver were extracted from the city’s Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) during the Spanish colonial era. Cerro Rico silver paved Potosi’s streets, fuelled the European Renaissance and helped fund the “Invincible Armada”, the Spanish fleet that sailed against Elizabethan England in 1588.
But today Potosi is dying. “When a mine closes, all that’s left is a ghost town,” says the city’s mayor, René Joaquino. Something of Potosi ebbs away whenever a seam of metal is exhausted or world mineral prices drop. Most of the mines closed down after a crisis in 1985 and many people left for good. Two years later, when the Bolivian government introduced new incentives to mining, unemployed miners began to trickle back and set up 50 co-operatives.

Streets paved with silver

Most of the city’s population of around 120,000 are Quechua Indians, who live by scratching at what is left in the old mines. They have no access to modern technology and no social security protection. There is practically no middle class in Potosi. “I don’t know any rich people who live in this city,” says Abecia. “Some have made money here but then they left to live elsewhere. The old houses are falling into ruins, and their furniture and fittings have been removed. The few things that have been preserved are in the Casa de la Moneda (the Royal Mint).” Abecia is the curator of the museum funded by Bolivia’s Central Bank which is housed in this historic building.
In 1572, in colonial times, Spanish Viceroy Francisco de Toledo created a system of forced labour called “la mita”. Every seven years, for a period of four months, all males between 18 and 50 were ordered to work in the mines. They were paid a pittance and rarely saw the light of day. Eighty per cent of the male population of the 16 provinces of the viceroyalty of Peru died in these conditions. “Every peso coin minted in Potosi has cost the life of 10 Indians who have died in the depths of the mines,” wrote Fray Antonio de la Calancha in 1638.
Mining methods have changed little over the years. The miners still toil from dawn till dusk. Generators pump air into the tunnels so they can breathe. Children still wriggle into tiny places where adults cannot go. Working sometimes for 10 hours or more a day in extreme temperatures, the miners keep going by chewing coca leaves. Two-thirds of the population have respiratory ailments.
“Barely 20 per cent of the mine-workers are actually members of the co-operatives,” says Joaquino. “The other 80 per cent are casual labourers who earn next to nothing. They are peasant migrants from the north, the poorest part of the department of which Potosi is the capital.”
The historic centre of Potosi, where the Spanish settlers once lived, is today home to a small middle class. It is ringed by a poverty belt inhabited by miners who work in the co-operatives. Both these areas are surrounded by a wider poverty belt filled with those who have fled the hunger of the countryside to hire themselves out as unskilled labourers in the mines.
Peasant women from the north come to the city to beg. They sleep on the ground in the markets, numb with cold, cradling in their arms the babies they have brought with them. Bernardina Soles has had 10 children. Five of them have died–a grim reminder of an infant mortality rate of 135 per 1,000. Her dream is to take some of her children away from her home village, where they could only have two years of primary schooling. The illiteracy rate in the department of Potosi is 30.8 per cent.

Lost splendour

“Potosi society is rotten with ostentation and extravagance,” says Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, “but the memory of its past splendours still lingers and it still has the ruins of its churches and palaces.” Unesco is backing restoration projects for about 2,000 colonial buildings and is monitoring the conservation of the Cerro Rico, where the mining installations dating from colonial times are historic monuments. They include tunnels, equipment, mills, furnaces and a network of 22 artificial pools built by Viceroy Toledo to help power the equipment.
“I remember that when I was a boy the Cerro was a perfect cone, a beautiful red mountain just south of the city,” says Abecia. “But over the past 50 years, it has aged, been hacked about and fallen apart. The co-operatives have extracted so much rock from it that it doesn’t look the same any more.” UNESCO’s main goal is to convince the Bolivian authorities to take steps to preserve as World Heritage a site which Spanish chroniclers regarded as a “perfect and enduring wonder of the world”.

Transocean hires U.S. lobby firm to work Congress

By David Morgan David Morgan – Thu May 13, 5:44 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Transocean Ltd, one of the companies under fire over the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has hired a new lobby firm to represent its interests in Congress, according to public records.
Capitol Hill Consulting Group, chaired by former Representative Bill Brewster of Oklahoma, registered as a lobbyist for Transocean on May 10, a day before the Swiss-based company began appearing before the Senate and House of Representatives oversight committees to answer for the leaking BP Plc well.
The disaster threatens to engulf oil giant BP, Transocean and other companies involved in the offshore drilling industry in a new era of government scrutiny and regulation.
Capitol Hill Consulting declined to comment on its new role. Transocean officials were not immediately available for comment.
Transocean is the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana last month, setting off a huge oil leak that is still spewing crude from 5,000 feet beneath the ocean surface.
Congressional investigators concluded this week that a rig device designed to cut off the flow of oil after an explosion was faulty.
Executives for BP and subcontractor Halliburton Co. appeared alongside Transocean President Steven Newman this week at hearings on Capitol Hill.
The lobbying firm's registration document names Brewster as one of three who will actively represent Transocean on environmental, natural resources and energy issues.
The former Democratic lawmaker served in Congress from 1991 through 1997. In 1994, Brewster formed a caucus of lawmakers from oil-producing states called the Congressional Oil and Gas Forum, and served as its first chairman. He also was a founding member of the Blue Dog Coalition, an influential group of pro-business congressional Democrats.

AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals - Yahoo! News

"By MARTHA MENDOZA, Associated Press Writer Martha Mendoza, Associated Press Writer – Thu May 13, 5:24 pm ET

MEXICO CITY – After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

'In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,' Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. 'Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.'

This week President Obama promised to 'reduce drug use and the great damage it causes' with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Haiti prosecutors urge prison for US missionary - Yahoo! News

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer – 56 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A U.S. missionary should spend six months in prison for her failed attempt to remove 33 children from Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, a prosecutor said Thursday on the first day of her trial.

Prosecutor Sonel Jean-Francois told the court that Laura Silsby knew she was breaking the law by trying to take the children without proper documents to an orphanage she was starting in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

"Laura recognized she violated the law," Jean-Francois said as lawyers and a small group of spectators crowded into a a stiflingly hot tent in the parking lot of the quake-damaged courthouse.

He spoke after the Idaho woman testified. Silsby, who was leader of a group of Baptists detained by authorities, was the only person to testify on the first day of the trial. She spent much of the rest of the session reading the Bible.

The 40-year-old businesswoman told the court she thought the children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake. An Associated Press investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.

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Congress approves referendum on Puerto Rico future - 4/30/10 - New York News and Tri-State News - 7online.com

WASHINGTON -- The House on Thursday approved legislation that could set in motion changes in Puerto Rico's 112-year relationship with the United States, including a transition to statehood or independence.

The House bill would give the 4 million residents of the island commonwealth a two-step path to expressing how they envision their political future. It passed 223-169 and now must be considered by the Senate.

Initially, eligible voters, including those born in Puerto Rico but residing in the United States, would vote on whether they wish to keep their current political status or opt for a different direction.

If a majority are in favor of changing the current situation, the Puerto Rican government would be authorized to conduct a second vote and people would choose among four options: statehood, independence, the current commonwealth status or sovereignty in association with the United States. Congress would have to vote on whether Puerto Rico becomes a state.

Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's nonvoting delegate to the House, said that while the island has had votes on similar issues in the past, Congress has never authorized a process where Puerto Ricans state whether they should remain a U.S. territory or seek a nonterritorial status.

"The American way is to allow people to vote, to express themselves and to tell their elected officials how they feel about their political arrangements," said Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno at a news conference with Pierluisi. "For 112 years, we haven't had the chance ... to fully participate in one way or another in the decisions that affect our daily lives."

Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory at the end of the Spanish-American War. Those born on the island were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917 and Puerto Rico gained commonwealth status in 1952.