Daily Archives: April 22, 2009

Angie Zapata Case Goes to Jury as a Hate Crime

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | April 22, 2009 - 4:21 pm |
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The trial of transgender murder victim Angie Zapata goes to the jury today in Colorado, and marks the first time the state will try a case in which gender identity — recognized as a protected class by Colorado and 11 other states — gets hate crime status.

The killer, one Allen Andrade, claims he lost control upon learning Angie’s gender but prosecutors say the killing — by blunt force trauma with a fire extinguisher — was premeditated:

But prosecutor Brandi Nieto argued that Andrade learned the truth about Zapata’s gender 36 hours before he killed her. Andrade had accompanied Zapata to traffic court, where clerks called her Justin Zapata, Nieto said.

“This was not a snap decision,” she said.

Last month, a judge threw out Andrade’s confession to police, saying it came after the suspect told them he was through answering questions. Prosecutors say they intend to use statements he made to others, including, “It’s not like I . . . killed a straight, law-abiding citizen.”

Wow, what a heartless individual.

The L.A. Times reports that controversy has erupted in the courtroom as the defense attorney insisted on referring to Angie as “Justin” or “he”, while the prosecution referred to her as “she”.

The video above shows coverage of the trial from earlier this week. The question that remains is what Andrade will be charged with. Since his defense concedes he is guilty, it’s now up to jurors to decide whether he will be charged with 1st degree murder — which will mean life in prison without parole — or a lesser charge.

Via / L.A. Times

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Miss California Says She “will be praying for Perez Hilton”

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | April 22, 2009 - 3:55 pm |
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There seems to be no end to the continuing saga of Miss California vs. blogger Perez Hilton. In less than 48 hours, la Miss appears to have turned herself into a bible thumping representative of the religious right and Hilton appears to getting angrier rather than cooling off.

In the above clip, watch Miss California give her side of the story, and MSNBC manipulate the facts.

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Trouble in Cuba?

  By la Macha | April 22, 2009 - 12:43 pm |
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Oh, dear. Seems that President Obama’s Spanish speaking skills may not be as good as we thought they were. Seems that Cuba is not as ready to talk about “everything” as we thought it *said* it was:

From CBS News:

Fidel Castro said Tuesday that President Obama “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s sentiments toward the United States and bristled at any suggestion Cuba should free political prisoners or reduce official fees on money sent to the island from the U.S.

Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind of speculation that the U.S. and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw in nearly a half-century of chilly relations last week, when he said Cuban leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners on the island.

I can’t help it, I must say that it amuses me to think of the trouble that Raul must be in right now. How badly did he screw that whole thing up? We can blame it on “misinterpretation,” but you know Fidel is threatening to keep him hidden in an attic room somewhere now.

I don’t think anybody really knows what to do with Obama’s extended hand rhetoric. Chavez is shaking hands with Obama, Raul is offering to talk, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is talking to resident flake, George Stephanopoulos… Obama is making world leaders look like total assholes if they don’t also extend a hand–but hell, who really wants to extend a hand when you can be a macho anti-U.S. crusader?

It will be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming years when the newness of Obama rhetoric wears off.

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Torturing Detainees

  By la Macha | April 22, 2009 - 11:49 am |
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guantanamoI just finished reading this Newsweek article about how detainees are being treated while being held in U.S. custody. Controlled drowning, forcing detainees to wear dog collars and perform like animals, “invasion of personal space by a female,” imprisoning in small boxes, and identifying phobias of prisoners and using those phobias against them were all named as techniques used against prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.

The ironic and horrible thing is, the people who were being asked to do this crap are also the people who had qualms with doing it:

While the basic outlines of these interrogations were previously known, the report provides new details and will likely add fresh momentum to calls for a “truth commission” or similar Justice Department investigation of U.S. interrogation practices—both of which President Obama suggested for the first time Tuesday that he was willing to support.

The report, an advanced copy of which was provided to several news organizations, draws on newly declassified documents that Levin says bolsters his principal message: That the abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo were not caused by “a few bad apples,” as Bush administration officials repeatedly asserted. Instead, Levin said in a statement Tuesday, it was the product of high-level White House decisions to utilize a controversial series of “enhanced” and coercive interrogation techniques despite vociferous warnings by U.S. military lawyers and FBI officials that they could subject U.S. officials to prosecutions for torture and war crimes.

I don’t even know what to think about this mess anymore. I’m just so sickened and disgusted. Yes, I understand that whoever the hell we’re torturing is “evil” and all that, I really do. But will our torture kill an idea? Because isn’t resistance against U.S. (for whatever reason) based on an *idea*? Whether it’s the belief in freedom from the U.S. or a belief in martyrs and virgins (or whatever)–how does our torture kill those ideas?

Can it?

Also see this photographic history of torture. It’s ugly and brutal and makes you lose all hope in humanity. Just so you know.

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White Privilege in Latin America : Ricans, Race and Passing

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | April 22, 2009 - 10:10 am |
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poster1992I wanted to link to this post from Afro-Netizen as a direct response to a comment on the post about the Puerto Rican quarter. It’s actually an issue that has come up a few times, especially, it seems, when there is a post related to Puerto Rican identity.

Race.

Latin America has a long history of white privilege and white supremecy, including: is colored with white privilege, from its political roots: U.S. implementation of Jim Crow in the Panama Canal, brutal Dominican dictatorship that erased African presence from its history and its culture, the massacre of hundreds of thousands indigenous Mayans in Guatemala, and blancismento (whitetification) in Argentina (South America) in which governments actively recruited Europeans to emigrate to their nations in order to “whiten” the society of its heavily indigenous and African populations.

Latinidad is not a race. It’s not even a sole ethnic group. The way I have consistantly used it is related to a shared history of colonization coming from the Iberian Peninsula. In using this definition I include indigenous populations, African slaves and their descendants and yes the colonizers and their descendants. While being Latino isn’t a single race or ethnic group, colonizers in the region from the Europeans to the U.S. have lumped all Latino together, makes it easier to oppress I guess. Currently this is easily witnessed in the racialization of the immigration issue that equates immigrants with Latinos, regardless of legal status.

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