Sat, May 14, 11 am (tomorrow)

Stop the Attacks on Immigrants! Full Rights for All!

Baldwin Park Metrolink station (corner of Ramona Blvd & Downing Ave). Parking available.

Or meet at the ANSWER office at 9:30 am to carpool - 1800 Argyle Ave, #410 , LA 90028

From ANSWER LA

Tomorrow, Saturday, May 14, a grassroots coalition of Latino immigrant rights organizations is mobilizing a counter demonstration against the racist, anti-immigrant group Save Our State. The SOS group–right-wingers linked directly to the Minutemen–is going to protest a community monument honoring Mexico ’s proud history at the Baldwin Park Metrolink commuter rail station. The group seeks to criminalize and our Latino sisters and brothers and dishonor their heritage.

No doubt, the Minutemen, Save Our State and others have been emboldened by the recent neo-fascist comments by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger encouraging people to “rise up” and take action against immigrants and undocumented workers.

The ANSWER Coalition fully supports this counter demonstration and is calling on all progressive organizations and individuals to participate in this important activity. The counter demonstration is fully permitted and will include a stage and sound system. Please join us as we protest against the right-wingers this Saturday.

The people united will never be defeated! El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!

Stop the Attacks on Immigrants!
Full Rights for All Immigrants!
Stop Schwarzenegger’s Racist, Anti-Immigrant Policies!

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A U.S. sailor was sentenced to three months of hard labor Thursday for refusing to ship out for the Persian Gulf in a protest against the war in     Iraq.

The 23-year-old New Yorker said he refused to support a war he believed was illegal and immoral, and he has since become an outspoken anti-war activist.

“If there is anything I could be guilty of, it is my beliefs,” he said in a statement before the sentence was imposed. “I am guilty of believing the war is illegal.”

From Democracy Now

Paredes was convicted in a court-martial on Wednesday. However a judge decided Thursday not to sentence him to jail - instead he will face three months of hard labor.

His lawyers call it a victory for war resisters around the country.

His t-shirt, which he wore when turning himself in, says, “Like a cabinet member, I resign.”

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A brazen conspiracy among U.S. law enforcement officers and soldiers to smuggle cocaine from Mexico was disclosed Thursday by the Justice Department, adding to concerns that public corruption along the border is growing.

Wearing uniforms and even driving U.S. military vehicles, 16 suspects were caught in a sting run by an FBI-led task force. Eleven entered guilty pleas Thursday in Tucson, Ariz.; the other five have agreed to do so soon.

One federal inspector waved trucks he believed were carrying drugs across the border from Mexico to the United States, according to the FBI. In another case, a group of the defendants used Army National Guard Humvees to transport 60 kilograms of cocaine from a desert landing strip to a resort hotel in Phoenix, where they received cash from an undercover FBI agent.

Justice Department officials describe the case as a “widespread bribery and extortion conspiracy” and it is one of the largest public corruption cases along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years

If you think this is somehow an isolated case, well, what better way to get drugs across the border than in US military vehicles. The border police in Mexico are widely accused of corruption,  yet here it is, widespread, in the US too. Plus, those those large sums of cash have to be eventually going into U.S. banks too.

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U.S. officer blames superior over Abu Ghraib abuse

The former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq blamed a ranking officer for introducing the use of human pyramids and dog leashes in the abuse of detainees and said in an interview on Thursday that abuse may be continuing there.

Col. Janis Karpinski, a former one-star Army Reserve general who was punished in the scandal, blamed Gen. Geoffrey Miller for the methods that were used to humiliate detainees.

Miller headed the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and was sent to Iraq to recommend improvements in intelligence gathering and detention operations there.

“I believe that Gen. Miller gave them the ideas, gave them the instruction on what techniques to use,” she said in an interview on the ABC News “Nightline” program.

 Asked if she was referring to the positioning of prisoners in human pyramids and putting dog leashes on detainees, Karpinski said, “I can tell you with certainty that the MPs (military police) certainly did not design those techniques, they certainly did not come to Abu Ghraib or to Iraq with dog collars and dog leashes.”

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