April 25, 2012

Shocking Video Shows Mexican Immigrant Beaten to Death. Something needs to be done.

More at Democracy Now!
A new PBS documentary exposes the tasing and beating death of a Mexican immigrant by U.S. border agents in California and has renewed scrutiny of what critics call a culture of impunity. In May 2010, 32-year-old Anastasio Hernández-Rojas was caught trying to enter the United States from Mexico near San Diego. He had previously lived in the United States for 25 years and was the father of five U.S.-born children. But instead of deportation, Hernández-Rojas’s detention ended in his death. A number of border officers were seen beating him, before one tasered him at least five times. He died shortly afterward. The agents say they confronted Hernández-Rojas because he became hostile and resisted arrest. But previously undisclosed videos recorded by eyewitnesses on their cell phones show a different story. "All eyewitnesses that we spoke to basically tell the same story of a man hogtied and handcuffed behind his back, not resisting, being beaten repeatedly by batons, by kicks, by punches, by the use of a taser, for almost 30 minutes until he died," says reporter John Carlos Frey, whose exposé aired in a national television special last Friday night as part of a joint investigation by the PBS broadcast, "Need to Know," and the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. We also speak with Hernández-Rojas’s widow, María Puga. "My husband was tortured. He was severely beaten. And they’ve destroyed an entire family," says Puga, speaking through a Spanish-English translator. "All we want is justice. And we need your help to get that justice."

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/24/death_on_the_border_shocking_video

Law enforcement is out of control on numerous levels in our country. Surveillance, unaccountability, brutality and murder. This should not stand in a 'free' society. Any society, for that matter. (I do admit, this video makes it hard to remain objective. It is sickening.)

On Edit: Don't be afraid to demand action from the Justice Department. Or to circulate the video, for that matter.

April 20, 2012

Open letter to Bishop Jenky. Re: Obama, Hitler and Stalin remarks.

Bishop Jenky,

I grew up in a Catholic home, went to a Catholic grade school and for a couple of years was an altar boy. Having been forced to attend church in my younger years, I assumed my children would feel relief at staying home on Sundays. I was wrong. My two oldest would beg me to take them to church, actually saying, “You got to go when you were my age!” So, I explained that the Church – and I emphasized the Church, not the lay Catholics – were backward in their thinking. About birth control, women, gays - and that when priests did awful things, they protected the Church at all costs, and made the wrong things they did, much, much worse.

I also explained that the most conservative, most fanatical in the Church hierarchy were responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, aiding Hitler during the Holocaust and numerous other atrocities throughout history. I told them that even though most of those things were far in the past, some of the fanatics in the Church still interpreted morality though the eyes of reactionaries that are incapable of compassion and logical thought. I did add that there were many in the Church, priests and nuns that helped the poor and hungry, stood up against immoral wars, etc., and that they were a credit to the Church and humanity as a whole. But we still weren’t going, at least until they all acted Christ-like and not ‘Christian.’

My children are now in their early twenties and I showed them what you said the other day about Obama, Hitler and Stalin. Their reaction – “Wow, it’s worse than I thought it was.” I responded with, “Me too.”

This after years of defending the Church, telling people, “No it’s the evangelicals that are nuts, the Catholics don’t think like that.” After the Vatican blaming ‘60’s liberals for the priest’s pedophilia, after the embarrassing reaction to the phony birth control controversy and now your disgusting remarks, I can no longer defend the Church.

At least I know positively, that I did the right thing leaving it.