8:48 pm By la Macha · Uncategorized · Comments Off
24 Aug 2009In all the reporting about the CIA documents that prove abuse, torture and other types of violence on the part of the CIA against “terror suspects,” the one thing I would really like to point out is how women’s bodies were used (and presumably are still being used) in the “war on terror.”
The declassified document released by the justice department said that one agent told key terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that “we’re going to kill your children” if there were further attacks on the US.
Another agent allegedly told Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. The agent has denied the allegation.
In other incidents involving Mr Nashiri, he was allegedly threatened with an unloaded gun and had a power drill held near him which was repeatedly turned on and off.
Another incident involved an agent pinching an artery in a detainee’s neck. As the man was passing out, the agent shook him awake, then repeated the action twice.
I read this and thought–hm, aren’t these U.S. interrogators acting in the name of the same nation/state that said the reason we had to invade Iraq and Afghanistan is because women were treated like shit in Muslim nations?
On a side note, I also want to ask, if this is how women are being used in the war on terror, how are they being used AND TREATED in immigration detention centers? Or just regular old prison/jail?
8:17 pm By la Macha · Arts|Entertainment|Health|race · 1 Comment
24 Aug 2009
In truly sad news, it is looking like Michael Jackson’s death didn’t have to happen. The L.A. corner has released preliminary findings which say the cause of death was an overdose of overdose of propofol, a powerful sedative Jackson was using to sleep.
The 32-page warrant said Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s personal physician, told a detective that he had been treating Jackson for insomnia for six weeks. Murray said each night he gave Jackson 50 mg of propofol, also known as Diprivan, diluted with the anesthetic lidocaine via an intravenous drip.
Worried that Jackson may have been becoming addicted to the drug, the Houston cardiologist said he attempted to wean him from it, putting together combinations of other drugs that succeeded in helping Jackson sleep during the two nights prior to his death.
But on June 25, other drugs failed to do the job, as he recounted to detectives in an hour-by-hour account that was detailed by detective Orlando Martinez of the Los Angeles Police Department:
This is just so sad. The irony in the fact that Jackson “made it” after starting off in desperate poverty–and he still wound up meeting the fate so many of us in the ghetto do–a drug related death. His drugs may have cost more than anything you or I have ever gotten, but they’re still drugs. And presumably, Jackson was taking those drugs for the same reason so many of us are: over work, isolation, depression, and past abuse.
Jackson’s death either shows that you can’t outrun your past–or that racism is a lot more pervasive than we think. And that it is our *culture* and *physical surroundings* that are as sick as we are. That we are living in an unsustainable world.
Or maybe it’s a little of all of it.
7:47 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · history|New York City|Politics|Puerto Rico · 3 Comments
24 Aug 2009Yesterday was the 40th Anniversary celebration of the Young Lords Party here in NYC. As amiga Bianca wrote, some peeps, myself included, couldn’t be there. It really bummed me out that I couldn’t be there because if it weren’t for the Young Lords, Mamita Mala wouldn’t exist. And I don’t mean that in some abstract homage to movement forepapis and foremamis kind of way. I mean it in a real physical, tangible way.
I have a worn out black tee shirt from when Iris Morales was still finishing her film, Pa’lante Siempre Pa’lante and the quote on the back says something about each generation moving the struggle forward and I was fortunate enough to see this in action even after there was no more YLP thanks to federally sponsored flame fanning of normal internal organizational conflicts.
I wasn’t even alive when the YLP was formed pero when I was just a teenager myself, their legacy and lesson marked me forever and opened the path on which I walk.
Read more…
6:27 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Cuba|Ecuador · Comments Off
24 Aug 2009
Apparently Fidel Castro met with the President of Ecuador, Rafeal Correa last Friday and if I may say, he looks pretty good.
Via / Inca Kola News
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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