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Venezuelan Synagogue Attack an Inside Job and a Sign of Wider Attacks on Latin Am. Left

7:23 am By Maegan La Mala · Latin America| Religion| Venezuela| israel · 5 Comments

6 Sep 2009

I’m often attacked and accused of being anti-Semitic, usually by one person, because I write about Palestine and draw connections among various occupied territories including Puerto Rico. Even when I wrote about the attack on a synagogue in Venezuela early this year, I was accused of not covering the story, or at least not in a way that some agreed with. Turns out that there was more to the story than met the eye. From NACLA:

In the early morning hours of January 31, vandals broke into Tiferet Israel, a Sephardic synagogue in Caracas. They strewed sacred scrolls on the floor and scribbled “Death to the Jews” and other anti-Semitic epithets on the walls, before making off with computer equipment and historical artifacts. Understandably, the incident frightened and upset many in the Venezuelan Jewish community. Right away, U.S. news outlets, including The New York Times and The Miami Herald, linked the incident to Venezuela’s increasingly strained relations with Israel, after the two countries suspended diplomatic relations two weeks earlier over Israel’s bombing of Gaza, then still under way.

A Herald editorial went so far as to describe an “official policy of anti-Semitism” in Venezuela and implied that Chávez’s foreign policy had unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in the country, culminating in the assault on the synagogue.1 Some international NGOs were no more nuanced. Just hours after the break-in, the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was already implicitly comparing the Chávez government to the Nazis, calling the synagogue attack “a modern-day Kristallnacht.”2

But the Caracas police investigation bore out a different story. Authorities quickly realized that the synagogue’s security fence had been cut from the inside, prompting detectives to investigate the break-in as an inside job. Within the week it became clear that the attack had in fact been a robbery disguised as anti-Semitic vandalism, carried out by the synagogue’s privately contracted security team. Eleven men were arrested for their role in the plot, and their statements to the police indicated that the graffiti and desecration were intended to throw off investigators.3

Samuel Rodriguez: Making Latinos Proud World Wide

10:14 pm By la Macha · Politics| Religion · 1 Comment

18 Aug 2009

I’d never heard of Rev. Samuel Rodriguez until I read about him over at Latino Politics Blog. Now that I know him, I wish that I could scrub my ears or drink alcohol or make out with Oprah or something.

The question posed at Latino Politics is: Do we [Hispanics/Latinos interested in organizing for change] need this man?

My answer: This is the kind of Latino Logic that I grew up around. A lot of Latinos who grew up in more progressive or activist communities like in L.A. or in San Antonio are often shocked when I start disparaging old school “Mexican Americans” because to them, old school folks are who got the movement started and who fought fights I could only dream of being brave enough to engage in. But to me, this is what old school Mexican Americans really are. Macho men interested in controlling the evil womenz and the lezbians and the non-godly among us.

I say let this man go. There are truly progressive and radical churches and people of god/spirituality that are about liberation and change rather than dominance and control through a false sense of “community.”

Let him find his own community. Stay out of mine.

Jesus on a Jueves

6:08 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Bizarro| Religion · 1 Comment

30 Jul 2009

jesusgreasss
Porque it’s hot and Mala’s tired, here’s a reminder that Jesus is always with us.

This image of Jesus that appeared in a baking tray after Oliver Bellerby of Yorkshire, England cooked a burger.

Via / Boing Boing

Strange Rape Case Rocks Bolivian Mennonite Community

7 Jul 2009

The Mennonites are a religious group akin to the Amish that was driven out of Europe by persecution over centuries, eventually landing in North and South America, mostly in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. There are thousands of Mennonites all over the Americas, with large communities in Mexico and Bolivia. And it is from Bolivia that comes a strange story that has shocked the country and rocked its Mennonite community to its core. A mass rape of the community’s women, with up to 100 victims. Spain’s El Periódico reports:

The first accounts, which are pending investigation, indicate that at nightfall some men sprinkled a sleep inducing [susbtance] around the homes of the residents and when they were sure that everyone was sleeping, they came in through the windows and raped women and girls. There are suspicions that this had been going on for 9 years, which would make the initial victim count fall short. But what is more terrifying and shameful for the Mennonites is that the rapists are people from their own community. Blood of their blood.

The Mennonites have kept the names and surnames of their ancestors. Their names are Ham Neostater and Cornelio Wal and Abraham Blats and Daniel Martens. Their native language is German and they speak Spanish with an accent. “Here people are afraid, because they say that it was our own friends who committed the sin,” Wal, a farm worker (like almost everyone in Manitoba) told a Bolivian newspaper. 8 community residents were arrested this week, which means that in a community of around 2000 people, most of them are related to the suspects: cousins, nephews, son-in-laws. Ultraconservative Christians, the Mennonites see the suspects as more sinners than criminals. Because to them, sin is much more serious.

The Mennonite community is calling the rapes “an act of the devil” and is ordering the medical examination of teenage girls to confirm which ones are victims. El Periódico reports that the results of these exams could have sinister implications, as the Mennonite community requires that its women remain virgins until marriage in order to retain the respect of their peers.

Via / El Periódico and VideoBolivia

Islam in Mexico

6:31 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Religion| mexico · 1 Comment

30 Jun 2009

From amiga Kameelah comes this video and article about converts to Islam in Chiapas.

Abuse in Irish Catholic Orphanages

9:05 am By la Macha · Controversia| Religion| Violence| children| crime · 1 Comment

21 May 2009

IRELAND CATHOLIC ABUSE The following article about abuse in Irish orphanages followed all too familiar patterns: colonized nation, defenseless kids with no family or little contact with family, Catholic church, sexual and physical violence. But even as we can make generalities about the patterns that inevitably present themselves in cases like this, there is no way to escape the horrible singularity of the pain and trauma survivors deal with on a daily basis:

Buckley, the daughter of an unwed mother, said the orphanage was closed to the outside world and the children inside lived a life of slave labor manufacturing rosaries. She said there was no way to escape the ritual humiliation, beatings and rape regardless of whether the children achieved their quota of producing 60 rosaries per day.

She didn’t track down her parents, an Irish mother and Nigerian father, until her 40s, when she became one of the first to demand justice for her stolen youth.

“I didn’t have a childhood,” said Buckley, who recalled being constantly cold, hungry and thirsty as the nuns denied children water to keep them from wetting their beds. She was severely beaten by a nun for trying to smuggle out a letter detailing the abuse.

The Catholic religious orders that ran 52 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s apologized after the report’s release, speaking of their shame and regret. Abuses also took place at 216 other church-run institutions for children, which included orphanages, hostels, regular schools and schools for the disabled.

Over and over stories of abuse come out–every where in the world it seems–Canada, the U.S., Australia, Europe. The only area where investigations never seem to quite follow through is Latin America. Are we to believe that violence and sexual abuse ran rampant in church run facilities throughout the entire world, with the exception of Latin America?

How is Latin@ history intertwined with church sanctioned sexual abuse?

Clergy Says Same-Sex Marriage Isn’t About Civil Rights

19 May 2009

noahs-arc …apparently because being gay “is a choice”:

“We know what we have gone through as an ethnic group. We feel the terminology, the definition itself, has really been hijacked,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s just another ploy to garner more support from people who may not understand what the civil rights struggle was all about.”

Bishop Michael A. Badger, pastor of Bethesda World Harvest International Church on Main Street, said that he doesn’t doubt there is discrimination against gay people but that it is hardly on the order of what African-Americans have encountered and still face.

“As an African-American, I don’t have a choice in the color of my skin. I have a choice in whether I’m abstinent or not,” Badger said. “I don’t think you can compare the two.”

Actually he said because “abstinence” is “a choice”. Well, that makes even less sense.

Just because the two issues aren’t exactly the same doesn’t mean they aren’t both about civil rights. And sorry, I think we can draw more parallels between the civil rights movement and the fight for gay rights than with the fight against gay marriage. To quote journalist Earl Ofari Hutchison: “Homophobia and racism are frequently two sides of the same coin.”

Let’s be honest. I’d rather get schooled on said parallels and what the civil rights movement was about by Coretta Scott King than from this guy.

Oh, and for those of you who wonder why this issue is even important, read this story from today’s NYT.

What do you think?

Via / Buffalo News

Image via LogoOnline(Noah’s Arc)

Mixing the Bible with an unrighteous war

12:50 pm By la Macha · Iraq War| Religion · 1 Comment

18 May 2009

seenodead As a person of very mixed faith I read the following article with sort of a sick feeling in my stomach. Apparently, Rumsfeld (remember him?) used to send daily updates to President Bush that were plastered with quotes from the bible:

One showed US troops trudging through the desert under a passage from Isaiah: “Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung; their horses’ hoofs seem like flint, their chariot wheels are like a whirlwind.”

Another showed Saddam delivering a speech to camera with these words from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

Draper noted that unlike Bush, Rumsfeld did not wear his faith on his sleeve. And he said the use of the biblical passages was the brainchild of a director for intelligence working under the Pentagon chief.

“Still, the sheer cunning of pairing unsentimental intelligence with religious righteousness bore the signature of one man: Donald Rumsfeld,” Draper’s report said.

“At least one Muslim analyst in the (Pentagon) building had been greatly offended,” it said.

“Others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout — as one Pentagon staffer would later say — ‘would be as bad as Abu Ghraib’.”

Now, really–I don’t think that Rumsfeld technically did anything wrong, at least not compared to the other shit he did (advocating torture, starting wars with little rhyme or reason, etc). But on a purely emotional level, I find this news to be reprehensible. It demonstrates to me on the most base level that the wars the U.S. are in right now were not based on what is best for U.S. citizens–but rather instead were based on and justified on the religious beliefs of a few powerful white men that remain completely disconnected from the people they claim to represent.

Does that sound like anybody else to you?
It does to me.

You can see the images of the folders here at GQ

The Pope Supports Palestinian State

1:15 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Gaza| Politics| Religion| israel · Comments Off

13 May 2009

My posts regarding the Pope normally criticize whatever brand of hate, divisiveness and false morality he happens to be brewing up for us at the moment. But this one won’t, simply because I don’t know what to make of his stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. While the previous Pope spoke about importance of peace in the region, this one is outright supporting Palestine’s right to exist, which seems crazy coming from such a conservative figure. This week on a trip to Israel, Pope Benedict addressed the Palestinian people in Bethlehem:

“In a special way, my heart goes out to the pilgrims from war-torn Gaza. I ask you to bring back to your families and your communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship, and the hardship, and the suffering you have had to endure,” he said.

Israel granted permits to about 100 Christians to leave the Gaza Strip and attend the Mass in Bethlehem.

The enclave is under tight restrictions imposed by Israel and Egypt on the movement of people and goods, by land, air, and sea. The embargo, which Israel says is due to security reasons, has resulted in shortages of supplies, including construction materials needed to rebuild from the recent war.

In his homily, the pope said he is praying for an end to the closure.

“Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted,” he said.

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