NewsTaco

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

Before speaking to this issue I need to discuss my relationship with guns.  Full disclosure and all that, you know.  I love guns.  I deer hunt when I’m invited.  I am a Vietnam combat veteran so have been intimately acquainted with rifles and guns for years.  I’ve been shooting since I was a child having spent time on a farm.  When I was growing up one of my responsibilities on the farm was “varmint control” and I got pretty good at it.  Varmint control is shooting rats, coyotes and other animals that feed off farm animals.  Rural counties used to pay bounties for certain varmints so I made extra cash this way beginning at age nine.

Now that I have that out of the way, I need to emphatically state that I am appalled at the state of gun control in the United States.  The other day in the San Antonio Express News I saw where a young Latino, he is 21, was sentenced to life in prison for shooting a man after a road rage incident.  His rap sheet indicated that he had been in trouble since a very young age having been arrested 15 times as a juvenile and was deemed a hazard to public safety by the courts.  In the same issue of the newspaper I saw where a member of the infamous Mexican narco gang, the Zetas, has been arrested and facing life in federal prison for attempting to run guns, many automatic weapons, from the United State to gangs in Mexico.

Nationally, we’ve had a young man walk into Taft High School in California and gun down a student, wounding two others in the process and then it turns out this person had a “hit list” he was working off of.  We had the heart rending mass murder of all those children in Newtown, Connecticut, the theater shooting in Aurora and I don’t even know how many other “wanna be’s” have been stopped from either shooting folks in theaters or schools.  We have had individuals sniping from freeway overpasses, shooting up shopping malls, and the list goes on.

And, how do you think the country responds to all of this mass murder.  Holding vigils, calling for gun control at all levels, and then silence until more violence occurs.

I’m with retired General McCrystal, you know the commanding general of our troops in Afghanistan who was fired by President Obama for losing face in a Rolling Stones article, that we need some sort of logical and practical gun control in this society.  As it currently stands all we have are somewhat superficial back ground checks on hand gun purchases.  Most of the gun runners use proxies, who can pass background checks, to buy guns for them.  There are also a large number of individuals throughout the United States who can sell you a gun “off the books” that are not registered.  How do you think guns get into the hands of violent criminals?

So, what is being done to change this chaotic policy area?  Nothing!  ¡Nada!  Nothing at all other than politicians at different levels wring their hands, send condolences, and participate in prayer services appearing somber.

Why is there so little going on to address this extraordinary loss of life?  Because gun enthusiasts and their spokespersons, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), have a major role in gun control policy.

The NRA makes major campaign contributions to politicians and expects a quid pro quo in return.  The NRA employs a sophisticated and well-funded lobbying operation at all levels of government.  The NRA has played a major role in creating a gun culture in our society.  The NRA threatens politicians with their demise if these brave individuals dare go against guns.

The president has treaded lightly in this area appointing Vice President Biden to oversee policy in this area.  VP Biden has met with the gun lobby and various policy makers to try and come to some consensus surrounding government action in this area.  However, gun politicians and the NRA are not going quietly.  For instance, the governor of Texas, Rick Perry also popularly known as “Governor Good Hair,” has asked the legislature, popularly known as “useless pieces of furniture,” to pass legislation arming marshals for the state’s schools.  One Texas State Senator has also filed a bill allowing licensed individuals to carry concealed weapons on public university campuses.

¡No me digas!  The answer to gun control and prevention of public violence is more guns!?!  You have to be kidding me!  That’s all we need a bunch of gun happy, trigger happy, wanna be soldiers, cops and security folks walking around getting ready to gun play at the drop of a hat.  You don’t think any young children or innocent bystanders could be accidentally wounded or killed in a good old fashion Texas shoot out?  Do you?

[Photo by phoosh]

By Jackeline Stewart

Dear Geraldo,

A three-piece suit and a tie would not have saved Trayvon Martin’s life.  Urging black and Latino parents to “not let their children go out wearing hoodies” and saying that the 17 year-old’s hoodie holds as much culpability as the murderer who snuffed out his life is a dangerous line of thought. Trayvon’s hoodie did not end his life — George Zimmerman did. Wearing a hoodie is not a crime, shooting an innocent person is.

Trayvon Martin is dead, George Zimmerman walks.

Refusing to call racism by its rightful name allows it to continue unchecked. Let’s call this what it is. Trayvon was killed because George Zimmerman thought his skin color made him “suspicious” — not his hoodie.  Saying that Trayvon was murdered because of his wardrobe choice is akin to saying that he is responsible for George Zimmerman’s decision to aim a gun at Trayvon’s chest and pull the trigger. Trayvon’s attire did not identify them as a threat, or a criminal.

Frankly, I’m not surprised at your comments. I’ve met your kind before.  Growing up, my parents taught me that being black meant it was not good enough to just be “good enough.” I had to be exceptional, overcompensate with intelligence, charm, and a pleasant appearance to combat society’s preconceived notions of people of color. I excelled academically, honed my interpersonal skills, and dressed professionally at every turn to defy the gross stereotypes that would prove to still cloud others’ view of me.  Despite all of this, to people who abide by the false constructs of racism and its byproducts, I was still unworthy of the values this country boasts, whether I wore a suit or sweats.

See, Geraldo, it’s not the clothes that matter; it’s the skin that lies underneath that has inherited hundreds of years of legalized discrimination that makes me an object of hate in this country.  It’s the same skin that allows you to excuse the murder of an innocent teenager because of he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt. It’s the same skin that makes every person of color a possible threat to society. It’s the same skin that apparently makes some children’s lives worth less than others.

Signed,

Jackeline Stewart, A Hoodie-Wearing Black Latina

Jackeline Stewart is a freelancer based in Washington, DC and co-founder of LookAcute.com.

[Photo By Damoses]

America for the most part has been cringing and shaking it’s head at the state of Arizona’s absurd behavior in recent years. Aside from the few advocating that we should make Arizona’s immigration policy (SB 1070) a national policy, most of the nation is appalled at the actions of this embarrassing desert with a name. That said, Arizona is at it again: a new bill aims to place an “armed militia“ on the national border between Arizona and Mexico.

As I read this article, part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of this whole situation; it seems like something that would be in a satirical story. A state deports unwated people, the economy there dies as a result, and then they take even more extreme actions to the point of attempting to put an armed militia on the border? It’s almost too absurd to believe. Another part of me wants to cringe, and all of me wonders, “What’s going on in Arizona?!”

At this point it’s obvious that Arizona’s aiming it’s legislation at Latino immigrants due to an insane fear of them “taking our jobs.” These, of course, being the same jobs that people who are born here don’t want. What’s even worse, though, is the fact that the politicians pimping out this obviously racist, economically damaging legislation are not taking the time to look at the repercussions of their previous bills. Instead, they push more of this garbage, wasting taxpayer time and humiliating their state and the rest of America, making our country look like a bunch of xenophobic idiots who are deathly afraid of brown people robbing the country of the socially and politically powerful jobs of picking tomatoes and scrubbing kitchens — and let’s not forget lawn manicuring.

To solve “illegal” immigration, we can put up all of the walls and fences we want. We can put up Jurassic Park-style fencing, we can put up a “militia” which will take extensive time and money to train and prepare before we even have these guys on patrol.

Or, we can look to dealing with the causes of immigration. We seem to be attempting to curb the symptoms, using progressively radical methods in vain. We need to look at the issues in immigrants’ home countries that are making these people flee to America; this is the actual condition. If we can find and address the things causing immigrants to flee their nations in droves, we might be able to stop this madness. Or we can continue up the road of ridiculous solutions and waste taxpayer money.

If we want to go the Arizona route, can we put up a border patrol on the Arizona’s borders with other states and keep these insane politicians from getting to the rest of us?

[Photo By vectorportal]

Daniel Hernandez Jr., the Congressional intern who saved Rep. Gabby Gifford’s life on Jan. 8 last year, still declines to call himself a “hero.”

A mentally-ill man fired on Giffords and her constituents, killing six people and and wounding 13, including the popular liberal Democratic representative.

Only on the job five days, Hernandez, a student intern who had accompanied the congressmember to the Tucson shopping center for a voter registration event, rushed to her side when he heard gunshots and held her bleeding head and comforted her until paramedics took over her care.

In a TV interview, Hernandez still declines the “hero” label. Presidential candidate wannabe AK Half-Governor Sarah Palin was also singled out for scrutiny at the time because of an ad on her website that put gunsite cross hairs on Gifford’s congressional district.

Hernandez was just elected to the Tucson school board.

Palin has never been elected to anything since.

[Photo By Lalo Alcaraz]

Gabriel Zavala Diaz was test engineer for NASA. His lifeless body was found on February 26, 2005. His family feels time pass, but their cry for justice becomes ever stronger and loud. There are no clues or suspects and their names are added to the long list of unsolved murders committed in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California.

Gabriel was 29 and his death left two children fatherless and a whole family plunged into the anguish and frustration. The police report states that received a clear shot in the head. Still no arrests, no witnesses or responsible for the murder these years later, so the authorities maintain a $ 100,000 reward for anyone who provides information concerning the case.

“Time passes and we know nothing. All we want is justice,” said Teresa, Gabriel’s mother. “We are frustrated, desperate. During the early days of the crime happened detectives spoke with us, as co-workers, but now it seems that all is forgotten. There is so much indifference. ”

To Explore Space

From an early age, Gabriel dreamed of becoming an engineer. His efforts and dedication led him joining in 2001 various projects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), becoming one of the privileged few Latinos who worked on the Discovery space shuttle — which he lost the opportunity to see take off after his life was taken from him.

Gabriel worked at the NASA Ames Research Center in the Silicon Valley, in northern California, with a team of scientists and engineers who conduct research and technological development. This center supports NASA missions. Gabriel’s enthusiasm and abilities led him to join the team of X-37 test, the Mars Science Laboratory. Gabriel participated in four projects, including the development of the shuttle and a probe entered the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Gabriel was honored in a ceremony that paid him all the honors in the facilities of the NASA Ames. There the family was given a plaque of appreciation for their cooperation and work. Later he received a plaque with the signatures of more scientists and colleagues who worked with him on the Discovery project.

Memories of Gabriel

His mother Teresa remembers the night of Friday, February 25, 2005 when Gabriel called her to ask him a recipe to make a special dinner for his girlfriend and mother of his two sons, whom he would marry in a few days. He then went to visit his grandmother and, after making some calls on his cell phone, said he would be returning home. His girlfriend waited for him to come all night.

His body was found Saturday morning inside his car near the house of his grandmother. “I do not know many details because I did not identify the body and because I have not wanted to ask a lot. I’m not ready, I feel guilty for not being there to defend him and take care of him. I should have been there that night at that time,” insists Teresa, falling into uncontrollable weeping.

Following the Clues

Police in San Francisco have offered a reward of $ 100,000, while Gabriel’s family makes a desperate call to the community to get justice by alerting the authorities of those responsible for the crime. The available clues are strictly kept authorities. “It’s a very difficult case, we should be very careful, because if we have no clear forensic evidence to blame a someone, then we have nothing,” said Detective Antonio Rojo of San Francisco Police Department Homicide.

“We can not reveal anything about our investigation. We understand the pain of the family, but still can not share anything with them. We do not have suspects or witnesses. In fact, the only witness so far is just the same suspect who does not know anything. ” Detective Fields says one this is for sure, the person who killed Gabriel was not someone just passing by and chose him at random. Inside the car there were no signs of a fight. “It was probably someone who had planned it, or acquaintance of the victim. But we are still investigating and we should be very cautious. ”

“There was a suspect in that Gabriel was making deals on buying a car. Following that, it seems that this man had threatened to kill him, because he had talked to a friend. He was the only suspect, but there is no evidence against him and he is now free,” said Gabriel’s cousin, Daniel Correa.

“I really wanted to know if the police are really investigating. If they have any questions that we could help answer. If there are clues, if there is hope. Maybe I know something that can help them. But no one called, no one says anything,” Daniel insists.”I know that here in San Francisco there are many similar cases and certainly that of my cousin is not so important to them,” he said.

“We are all trying to get down the road, but the path of life is done step by step until you reach your goal.” This phrase was Gabriel himself wrote one of his two sisters, who decided to share this thought in memory of this young man whose death expect not be forgotten.

If you have information that could lead to the capture of the murderer of Gabriel Zavala Díaz contact the Police Department San Francisco or you may do so anonymously by contactingExpendiente Rojo.

Michele Bachmann’s head literally explodes when asked about undocumented gay fetuses’ right to carry concealed weapons. She hates:

• Gays. (She hates them so much that she married one just to keep a closer eye on their sinister ways — that’s commitment!) Also, she wants voters to know that marriage is and will always be rigidly defined as a union between a woman and a very gay man.

• The undocumented.

• Welfare and government handouts. (That’s socialism she’ll have you know, and that’s unAmerican. The $251,973 in federal farm subsidies that she received between 1995 and 2006 doesn’t count, she’d like to clarify, because it didn’t go to the poor or minorities.)

• Gun control. Bachmann knows that guns don’t kill people — bullets piercing vital organs do.

• Abortion. Under any and all circumstances (She’s relatively certain that some of the world’s greatest people were once fetuses.)

Given these views, at a recent press conference she was asked how she felt about undocumented gay fetuses’ right to carry a concealed weapon. After sputtering for a while, her eyes rolled back into her head like a slot machine and she staggered around the stage muttering “Does not compute” until her head exploded on the group gathered before her.

Here is exclusive footage from the aforementioned news conference. We have yet to clarify why she was disguised as an Asian man, why a young Kurt Russell was in attendance, and who cleaned up the bits and pieces of gray matter.

In any event, El Guapo suspects Bachmann II , the cyborg-Bachmann that will be constructed from the left-over bits and pieces, will be superior to the original. Bachmann 2012.

Your handsome and humble servant —

El Guapo

El Guapo writes the blog The Daily Refried, and is, without question, the foremost authority on all things sinvergüenza. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter @TheDailyRefried.

[Video By StupidCrappyVideos; Photo By MicheleBachmann.com]

Gary Thomas Kelley, 51, of Phoenix, Arizona was sentenced to 20 years in prison after shooting his neighbor Juan Varela in the neck after telling him to “go back to Mexico” in the heated post-SB 1070 environment. This goes back to something we’ve harped on often here at News Taco: these supposed “anti-immigrant” bills are actually anti-Latino bills and enable violence and harassment of all Latinos.

The two had been neighbors for eight years, at first, investigators wanted to call this a drunken dispute. Unfortunately, the facts intervened:

Varela had been watering a tree in his front yard on May 6, 2010, when Kelley confronted him, pointed a snub-nosed revolver in Varela’s face and fatally wounded him with a single shot to the neck, Phoenix police said.

Investigators said Kelley, who was arrested immediately after the shooting, repeated a racial slur several times and told Varela to “go back to Mexico” or he would die.

Now that Kelley is facing time, he told the family he’s neither a racist, nor does he hate Mexicans. I guess we can blame the beer? Of course I don’t have to tell you that Varela was a U.S. citizen, born here, so he had nowhere to go back to.

So, again, the point of SB 1070 and Georgia’s anti-immigrant laws, and those of every other state, is that it’s not about immigrants, it’s about all Latinos.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD

[Photo Courtesy MCSO]

The weapons industry in the U.S. is backed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which gave citizens the right to bear arms. Elsewhere in the world there are few countries that recognize the possession of arms as a constitutional right.

• It is estimated that the U.S. is the country with the largest number of guns in private hands in the world, with about 60 million people who have a combined arsenal of over 200 million guns.
• Currently, 38 of the 50 states in the U.S. allow citizens to carry guns for self-defense.
• In the U.S. alone an average of 25,000 people are killed by guns every year. According to the Small Arms Survey, small arms kill 200,000 people a year worldwide.
• During the 2009-10 fiscal year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized more than $ 282 million, more than three million kilos of drugs, and more than 6,800 weapons from operations along the border with Mexico.
• In the State of California alone, 30,841 firearms were seized, including pistols, revolvers, semiautomatic rifles and other weapons. Los Angeles is the city with the most weapons seized, 5,383 in total.
• Keeping track of how these weapons were used we find that 767 were part of homicides, 762 for robberies and more than 2,200 were used in drug-related cases. More than a thousand of these had connections in Puerto Rico, Guam, Colombia and Thailand.

References:

UN Protocol on Firearms, Small Arms Survey, Geneva, Switzerland

Expediente Rojo Project (Code Red), is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the Latino community with information about crime in their communities. Visit Expediente Rojo’s website, follow them on Facebook or on Twitter @Expediente_Rojo.

[Photo By Albeiro Rodas]

Presente.org has created a poster to try to bring attention to the Brisenia Flores trial, currently being deliberated by a jury. We have written about the trial previously, and are anxiously awaiting the verdict. Here’s a message from Presente.org:

Nine-year-old Brisenia Flores was murdered in her home in Arivaca, Arizona in May 2009.  She pleaded, “Please don’t shoot me,”  right before she was shot — point blank, in the face — by a member of the Minutemen American Defense Corps (MAD).

Brisenia’s story has been largely ignored in the mainstream media, but her life has galvanized people around the country to speak out against hate violence towards Latinos. We at Presente designed a poster to honor Brisenia’s memory, and to send a statement that we want justice.

Help us share this her story by downloading it, spreading her image far and wide, and taking a stand against hate crimes toward Latinos.

You can see and download the poster at the organization’s website.

Narco News has been reporting on the flow of U.S. military fire power into Mexico and into the hands of the drug cartels. Recently they posted a story that gleans from WikiLeaks cables information that sheds more light on this situation:

Rather, we reported at the time, “the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.”

Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives.

The State Department cables released recently by WikiLeaks support Narco News’ reporting and also confirm that our government is very aware of the fact that U.S military munitions are finding their way into Mexico, and into the hands of narco-trafficking organizations, via a multi-billion dollar stream of private-sector and Pentagon arms exports.

Tosh Plumlee, a former CIA asset who still has deep connections in the covert world, told Narco News recently that a special-operations task force under Pentagon command, which has provided training to Mexican troops south of the border, has previously “… found [in Mexico] hundreds of [U.S.-made] M-67s [grenades] as well as thousands of rounds of machine gun-type ammo, .50 [and] .30 [caliber] and the famous [U.S.-made] M-16 — most later confirmed as being shipped from Guatemala into Mexico as well as from USA vendors. …”

The story brings a whole new spin to the drug wars, however, the mainstream media hasn’t been heavily reporting this story.

[Photo By Expertinfantry]

Somewhere between President George W. Bush announcing in 2007 that the U.S. would give México $1.4 billion dollars to fight drug cartels (Mérida Initiative) and now, just $362 million in equipment and aid have made it to Mexico. Red tape and bureaucracy are to blame, apparently, and border lawmakers are going to start investigating why.

Some of the stuff promised to México under this agreement: seven UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, training for police, judicial and law enforcement reforms, gamma ray scanners to see drugs and money in vehicles, and probably bribes, too, but that’s just my opinion.

All of this kind of fails before it begins because, quite frankly, there have been tens of thousands of deaths in México related to drug cartels since this “groundbreaking” deal was struck. Some Mexican journalists put the figure as high as 50,000 since President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006. And as Calderón helpfully pointed out (while taking the money), there’s no way you can stop the drug war without attacking the U.S.’s proclivity for using drugs and selling guns to the cartels.

So here we are, in the middle of a recession, with untold millions out of work and unemployment benefits, trying to figure out what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars we promised to a country to fix a problem we are a part of but don’t really want to do anything to solve — except throw money at it.

[Photo by CATR]

Guns purchased in Arizona and illegally smuggled into Mexico were among those used to kill a Border Patrol agent in that state in December. This information came as part of a congressional investigation into a lack of action on the part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives to control this type of gun smuggling. Simultaneously, the ATF is trying to convince Congress not to cut its funding so it can continue to monitor U.S. arms smuggling to Mexico. Go figure.

The Los Angeles Times reports that two AK-47s from the U.S. that made their way to Mexico illegally were being tracked by the ATF and were found at the scene of a gun fight that ended in the death of Brian Terry outside Nogales, Arizona. The report continues:

…the agency has been aware of the purchase of assault weapons in the U.S. by buyers suspected of selling across the border, but failed to adequately track them…whistleblowers have complained that Project Gunrunner has focused on gathering intelligence on suspicious weapons sales, but has put less attention on actually stopping those weapons from moving south. Some also have complained that Mexican authorities had been dangerously kept out of the loop.

The short version is that what goes around comes around. You cannot simply allow, or leave uncontrolled, the blatant smuggling of arms to Mexico and then act surprised when those guns are used by bad people to do bad things in the U.S. Unless gun laws are addressed, or the way guns are purchased is changed, you can expect to see more violence perpetrated against people in the U.S. with guns illegally transported to Mexico.

UPDATE: The agent was killed outside Nogales, Ariz.

[Photo By JRSeles]

A little bit of everything in your NewsTaco to go this morning!

Egypt, Egypt, Egypt! Everyone is talking about Egypt, the country’s leader recently announced a new government in response to massive protests. Egypt is one of the U.S.’s key allies in the Middle East.

A Florida judge is set to complicate health care reform law by becoming the second federal judge to declare the new health care law unconstitutional in response to a lawsuit filed by lawmakers in 26 states.

About half of all taxpayers don’t actually pay taxes every year because of deductions, meaning the government loses a lot of money every year.

Bath salts may be banned nationwide after U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, D-NY, proposed a bill to ban them. Even though they’re supposed to be used for relaxing and perfumed baths, people have been snorting, injecting and smoking them for a meth-like high.

Prevention of gun trafficking to Mexico may fall victim to budget cuts this year, according to one report, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is worried their efforts at the border would be “effectively eliminated.”

[Image By Reccardow]

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)’s Office of Field Operations has devised a new strategy, according to NBC News, that will have agents focus on monitoring the activities of gun stores. It’s these gun stories that could hold the key to breaking the cycle of illegal gun sales, especially since some of them are corrupt.

We’ve known for a long time that one of the principal suppliers of weapons to the the Mexican drug cartels were, well, us. U.S. gun laws are much more lax than Mexican laws, as far as I know you can’t just have a gun because you want to in Mexico. Thus, as the drug war escalated in Mexico, the need for more firepower did, too, and that was easily supplied by people in the U.S.

The way it usually works is like this: Person goes to buy a high-powered assault rifle, person can legally do so in Texas, person takes gun and drives across the border and sells the gun to someone else. Finally, U.S. officials are doing something substantive to address this problem.

In all likelihood these types of operations will be shut down by the NRA and its lobby, but the truth is this is the best way to get to the heart of the matter. The guns are coming from gun shops and doing things like analyzing financial and telephone records can help lead to people who are abetting (what I would call) narco-terrorists across the border.

[Photo By Olive-Drab.com]