October 30th, 1950; Puerto Rico's Nationalist uprising

Text from Nothing to Be Gained Here:

"On October 30th of 1950 a Puerto Rican woman by the name of Blanca Canales led an uprising in the mountain town of Jayuya. Under her leadership the Nationalists took Jayuya and Blanca Canales declared Puerto Rico a free republic. At the same time in the town of Utado Nationalists were fighting the US National Guard and other Nationalists were attacking “La Forteleza” the governors mansion in San Juan and the Federal Court House in Old San Juan.

Blanca Canales and the Nationalists were successful in holding Jayuya for three days until the US military bombed them from the air and sent in ground troops

[...]

The Nationalists may have failed to free Puerto Rico but they succeeded in keeping the US from hiding it’s colonial possession with semantic Orwellian double speak like “Free Associated State”… The Nationalists succeeded in making it be known all over the world that Puerto Rico wanted to be free and was willing to fight to do so"

(image of National Guard invading Jayuya)

"Just Gathering Statistics," Alabama's Kristallnacht for the Undocumented

I grabbed this story from Tex(t)Mex blog,which points to a similar logic behind the recent changes to Alabama's racist new citizenship laws. The response by many undocumented families in the region was to flee:

"Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home this week, afraid that sending the kids to school would draw attention from authorities."

 While panicked administrators have "distributed to schools sample letters that can be sent to parents of new students informing them of the law's requirements for either citizenship documents or sworn statements by parents.

In an attempt to ease suspicions that the law may lead to arrests, the letter tells parents immigration information will be used only to gather statistics."

Mass deportation is not a new story when it comes to undocumented laborers in the United States. It is a standard means of producing labor control even if the move is garnered by grossly nativist sentiments (see "Operation Wetback" for example). At the same time, their rate is accelerating and expanding, additionally seeding a set of subcontracted companies of incarceration and control that are exorbitantly profitable.

Never Forget...

Of all of the 9/11 memorialization hysteria, Vladimir Lenin would remind us, cui prodest?:

"In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures.

For instance, “Europe”, the states that call themselves “civilised”, are now engaged in a mad armaments hurdle-race. In thousands of ways, in thousands of newspapers, from thousands of pulpits, they shout and clamour about patriotism, culture, native land, peace, and progress—and all in order to justify new expenditures of tens and hundreds of millions of rubles for all manner of weapons of destruction—for guns, dreadnoughts, etc."

Let's remember, in the case of Iraq:

"There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with al-Qaida or with the September 11 attacks.

Wall Street Journal, right after 9/11: “Few U.S. officials believe that any real alliance between Iraq and al-Qaida ever emerged… The two groups share few aims and have very different motivations.”(Sept. 19, 2001)

BBC, Feb. 5, 2003: “There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaida network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News.”

New York Times (Oct. 11, 2001) reported that intelligence officials from Jordan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia do not believe there is any serious Hussein-bin Laden connection.

On Sept. 11 itself, top government officials decided to use the airliner attacks to justify war with Iraq. “CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq–even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.” (Sept. 4, 2002)

In October 2002, the New York Times reported that Rumsfeld created a Pentagon operation “to search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists”–despite CIA reports saying there were none.

Shortly afterward, Rumsfeld announced that he had “solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaida members” (Seymour Hersh, May 28, 2003). Soon other officials of the U.S. government were presenting what he said as “evidence.”

When examined, these U.S. government claims have no basis in fact. Their “evidence” relies on a bogus McCarthyite method of linkology– If A is linked to B, and B is linked to C, then D must be backing terrorists, and anyone who questions that is probably also linked to terrorists."

And also, there is always the fact that the Taliban seems to be making some gains.

Obama Seeks More Deportations than His Predecessor

From ImmigrationImpact.com:


"According to the report, Latinos (both native-born and foreign-born) accounted for half (50 percent) of all individuals sent to federal prison during the first nine months of Fiscal Year 2011. Of these 28,468 Latinos, 16,964 (or 60 percent) were sentenced for immigration violations. Non-U.S. citizens (of any ethnicity or race) accounted for just under half (48 percent) of people sent to federal prison. Of these 28,648 non-citizens, 20,303 (or 71 percent) were sentenced for immigration violations. Overall, immigration offenses accounted for one third (33 percent) of all sentences handed down."