La postal de Cheno.

¿Cual de los dos es el chupacabras y cual es el alcalde?

Esto es inaudito!

JOSE ANTONIO LOPEZ plays "Un sueño en la floresta"

Lamento Borincano - Facundo Cabral

La postal navideña de Santini

Bella la foto familiar de Santini.

Discurso de Danny Glover en Occupy Oakland (15 de octubre de 2011)

Drug violence at America’s other southern border

Last Friday night, a married couple entering their home in the town of Hatillo, Puerto Rico, was startled by two armed burglars. The husband was fatally shot, becoming the 1,000th murder victim of 2011. This was Puerto Rico’s highest annual homicide toll — until the record was surpassed the next day.

On average, someone is murdered every 7 1 / 2 hours in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory populated by 3.7 million American citizens. At least half of these murders involve drug trafficking organizations, whose growing presence has bred a culture of violence that emboldens criminals and threatens the lives of innocent people. The homicide and unemployment rates in Puerto Rico are higher than those of any U.S. state.

Much has been said about the Mexican drug wars that have left 40,000 dead since 2006. Yet proportionally, the level of violence in Puerto Rico is higher than in Mexico. Last year there were 26 homicides for every 100,000 Puerto Ricans vs. 18 for every 100,000 Mexicans, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Puerto Rican police are clearly overwhelmed.

One would think the federal government would see its obligation to intervene. Controlling the flow of drugs, dirty money and illegal weapons is a national priority. Yet Washington has been slow to react.

Violent crime was not always a concern in Puerto Rico. Throughout the 1970s, safety in the San Juan metropolitan area was comparable to that in similar-size cities in the continental United States. This changed in the 1980s, when Colombian cartels flooded the island with drugs. Criminal activity, no longer confined to drug hot spots, quickly spread throughout the San Juan metro area.

In time, a fragile truce was brokered. Walls went up around neighborhoods, not just the affluent ones, and security guards were hired. Puerto Rican governors periodically activated the National Guard to back up police on drug raids. It was a shocking display of force, but residents got used to it.

The recent outburst of violence, however, is more intense. It has been fueled by the recession and, indirectly, by Mexico’s aggressive drug interdiction campaign.

The recession devastated the Puerto Rican economy. From 2006 to 2010, gross national product and employment there contracted at a rate three times higher than that of the United States overall, according to the Center for the New Economy. This economic downturn coincided with crackdowns on drug cartels by the Mexican and U.S. governments, which caused some drug traffic to shift to Caribbean routes. Puerto Rico’s unimpeded access to the mainland made it an ideal entry point to the U.S. drug market. The Drug Enforcement Administration has reported a marked increase in drug seizures in the past two or three years. When drug traffic increased during this period, plenty of impoverished young men were willing to move it along for an easy buck.

Puerto Rico’s police force has approximately 17,000 officers — making it the second-largest U.S. force — but is still ill-equipped to combat this crisis. In a September report, the Justice Department accused the police department of constitutional violations, corruption and statistical manipulations.

For more than a year, the Puerto Rican government has sought help from the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Attracting and retaining federal agents in Puerto Rico is difficult. The local offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the DEA; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are severely understaffed. Puerto Rican officials have also complained that the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection lack equipment to intercept drug shipments.

Since 2008, Puerto Rico has received about $260 million in direct federal support for crime prevention and forensic science, judicial systems, police and corrections, crime victims and rehabilitation of substance abusers. During the same period, Washington has allocated $1.6 billion for the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-Mexico partnership to combat drug production and traffic in the region.

The U.S. response to the Mexican drug war is appropriate. Mexican drug smuggling and spillover violence are a national security threat. Puerto Rico deserves an equivalent response. It is the main drug pipeline in the Caribbean, and the safety of almost 4 million Americans is threatened by the presence of drug organizations.

Drug violence has spilled over the U.S. border — just not the border most Americans think of. If drug cartels set up shop along our southern border states and their murder rates increased fivefold, to the level found in Puerto Rico, the federal response would be immediate. As American citizens, Puerto Ricans deserve the same reaction.

Drug violence at America’s other southern border
By Gretchen Sierra-Zorita, Published: November 24

Ana María Martínez soprano puertorriqueña.

Ana María Martínez soprano puertorriqueña. Se le considera “la voz más bella de Latinoamérica.”

Se ha presentado en el Metropolitan Opera de New York, Staatsorper de Viena, Royal Opera House-Covent Garden de Londres, Deutsche Opera Berlin, entre otros.

Martinez cuenta con más de veinte producciones.

Ana María Martínez es egresada de Juiliard Schooll de New York con Bachillerato y Maestría en música.

La fiebre de Victoria’s Secret.

Hacer fila desde las 4:00 AM para comprar ropa interior de mujer en Victoria’s Secret. Como es posible!








Foto de Mariel Mejía/El Nuevo Día.

Libertad de expresión

Policía de Nueva York




Foto:

Robert Stolarik, The New York Times

Utopía por Eduardo Galeano

Occupy Wall Street EXPLODES! Bankers Fund Arrests...

"We Are the 99%": Voices From the Occupy Wall Street March

Puerto Rico Prodded to Get Tough on Police

The discrepancies in the Puerto Rico police logs were hard to miss. Burglaries, including stolen plasma televisions and jewelry, were coded as mere breaking and entering. Large-scale thefts of telephone company cables were labeled property damage.

After months spent investigating, it was clear to Norman O. Torrens, an internal affairs agent for the Puerto Rico Police Department, that scores of felony crimes in Vega Alta, in the north, were being intentionally recorded as misdemeanors. The result was that these crimes were not counted in statistics released by the Police Department to support its claim that while the murder rate was higher than ever, other felonies were declining.

“They are lying to the people of Puerto Rico by telling them that crime statistics are going down,” said Officer Torrens, 37, who was abruptly demoted this summer after presenting his findings, first to his supervisor and then to officials in Puerto Rico’s Justice Department. “The bosses are the ones who push this to happen. The culture here is if you don’t produce, you get nowhere.”

The manipulation of statistics, long suspected by Puerto Ricans, is just one of the systemic failures that the Police Department must reverse after a blistering report last month from the United States Department of Justice outlined widespread dysfunction and civil rights violations.

For decades, the Police Department has operated without much oversight and officers have maneuvered with little supervision, training or accountability. The failings, detailed not only in the Justice Department report but also by the governor’s own monitor, are glaring:

Until recently, not one police precinct had instructions for handling domestic violence; civilian complaints piled up by the thousands, unaddressed; hate crimes went unrecognized; continuing training for police officers was unheard of; officers went unpaid for long stretches; and the Police Department was not connected to the national crime database, which meant that criminals from the 50 states could easily slip through the cracks here.

Gov. Luis G. Fortuño, a Republican, said in an interview that he was well aware of the department’s turbulent history and that the problems were worse than anticipated when he took office in 2009.

“Most of the problems occurred before my time,” Mr. Fortuño said. “I accept responsibility. My mandate is to change that. But this will take time. It was years in the making, and it will take years to fix.”

Rooted in the dictate of “la mano dura” — the Puerto Rican version of “get tough on crime” — the department operated for decades under a system that rewarded arrests much more than community policing, criminologists say. The result, they say, is that most Puerto Ricans do not trust or respect the police, including claims that most violent crime is down.

“This was all predicted 15 years ago, this problem,” said Dora Nevares-Muñiz, a criminologist and law professor at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico who sat on a commission that evaluated the Police Department in 2008. “The vision of the police is not a vision of prevention. The vision is a vision of control, of intervention after the crime is committed. And even at that they are not efficient. And then every time the government changes here, they want to reinvent the wheel.”

Ms. Nevares-Muñiz said the public’s views about the police force had further deteriorated under Mr. Fortuño, whose New Progressive Party won supermajorities in the 2008 election. There is a sense, Ms. Nevares-Muñiz said, that the governor further politicized the Police Department — already an established tradition — and installed people who were overly eager to please.

This was one reason that ill-trained police officers used too much force on demonstrators last year in front of the Capitol, she said. The demonstrators were protesting government layoffs and college fee increases. The other reason is that Puerto Rico lacked an explicit policy on when and how to use force. The governor was widely criticized for his handling of the protest.

Favoritism in the department, Ms. Nevares-Muñiz said, had reached the point that many supervisors no longer relied on exams to promote officers.

This is why, in part, Officer Torrens chose to speak publicly. Rather than being promoted for his diligence — he had been assigned the task of investigating the department’s statistics in the Bayamón District — he was returned to patrol duty in the precinct he had investigated, a tricky turn of events for an internal affairs officer. He is suing the Police Department for what he said was his wrongful transfer.

“An officer knows he can get a special job if the boss is able to say that crime is going down,” said Officer Torrens, who has a record of positive evaluations. “So with traffic cops, you give tickets. With drug busts, you make arrests, whether the person has drugs or not. If you don’t arrest, you’re out.”

The governor said he was already working to change the culture of the Police Department along with its operational nuts and bolts long before the Justice Department report. Last month, he announced that the police and prosecutors would now work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on armed robberies, carjackings and other crimes in five regions. Those cases will be handled in federal court, and the regions have been assigned six special prosecutors to expedite the cases.

Mr. Fortuño said he recognized that the department needed outside assistance last year, so he contracted Robert Warshaw, a career police chief who specializes in overhauling police departments. The same year, Puerto Rico finally looped into the national crime database.

Mr. Fortuño said he and his aides also had sought out experts in New York City. One day after the June 30, 2010, demonstration in front of the Capitol, during which the police struck protesters with truncheons and used pepper spray, the governor called to ask Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly for help, he said. The city complied.

The governor began in internal investigation of his own last September, when he appointed an independent monitor to investigate the scope of the failures, a precursor to the Justice Department report. The conclusion: the department was in disarray.

Four months ago, Mr. Fortuño replaced the police chief and began phasing in some of the changes, including better training — 2,000 officers so far have received it — and a detailed “use of force” policy. The tactical squad, which was often at the center of abuse accusations, has been cut by half. And promotions are reverting back to an exams-based system.

Other changes will follow in the next year, including the retraining of all supervisors and police officers and new software to track statistics and complaints.

But a few things are not likely to change soon. While police officers finally received the pay they were due, their salaries — the lowest in the United States — are not likely to rise with the economy still struggling. The median salary for a police officer in Puerto Rico is $31,000; in Orlando, Fla., for example, starting salaries are nearly $42,000. Still, police jobs are coveted on an island where college graduation rates are low and unemployment is high.

The governor’s critics say they wonder whether the flurry of changes will amount to anything lasting. After all, they say, the findings did not come as a surprise.

“There had to be pressure from outside for this to change,” said Osvaldo Toledo Martinez, the president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association and a vocal critic of Mr. Fortuño. “So it will change because he is now obligated to comply. We have to believe that people will trust in the police again. But they have to see positive action right away. If that happens, they will have confidence.”


October 4, 2011
Puerto Rico Prodded to Get Tough on Police
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
nytimes.com

Ibrahim Zaza, el niño de Gaza que los periódicos ignoraron

“Ibrahim tenía los dos brazos arrancados, un agujero en el pulmón, parte de sus piernas habían desaparecido y el hígado en muy mala situación… Necesitamos que la gente nos apoye”. Estas fueron las palabras de un hombre exhausto mientras describía la situación de su hijo moribundo en una entrevista con The Real News, una fuente alternativa de información.

Ibrahim Zaza no era más que un niño de doce años. Él y su primo Mohamed, de 14, fueron alcanzados por un misil israelí en Gaza, un misil disparado desde un avión no tripulado cuando se encontraban jugando delante de su hogar.

La historia empezó el 18 de agosto. Al día siguiente, el Telegraph británico informaba: “Israel toma represalias tras un ataque de militantes en la frontera egipcia”. El encubrimiento de los recientes ataques israelíes contra la asediada Gaza le hace a uno preguntarse si acaso todos los periodistas utilizaron las explicaciones del ejército israelí cuando trasmitieron la historia. Se castiga a los palestinos por un ataque contra los israelíes que al parecer se produjo cerca de la frontera israelí con Egipto. No existen pruebas que vinculen Gaza con el ataque y las autoridades egipcias están también ahora cuestionándose el relato israelí de los hechos.

“Al menos seis palestinos murieron en la primera oleada de bombardeos. Israel dijo que pertenecían, incluido un líder, al grupo militante conocido como Comités Populares de la Resistencia, acusándoles de la responsabilidad de los ataques”, escribieron Phoebe Greenwood y Richard Spencer (The Telegraph, 19 de agosto).

Los Comités Populares de la Resistencia se habían desvinculado del ataque, al igual que Hamas y todas las facciones palestinas. Pero eso no fue suficiente para perdonar las vidas de los inocentes hombres y mujeres de Gaza que bastante tienen ya con soportar una situación de inenarrable dureza. Entre los muertos de esa oleada de ataques sobre “militantes” había dos niños, uno de tres años y otro de trece.

En los medios, las víctimas palestinas solo ocupan un lugar cuando alcanzan una cifra considerable. E incluso entonces, se les sitúa en un contexto que priva a esas víctimas de cualquier simpatía, o peor aún, se culpa a los militantes palestinos de responsabilidad indirecta (que empujan a Israel a echar mano de la violencia para defender su seguridad). De hecho, el término “seguridad palestina” es prácticamente inexistente, aunque miles de gazatíes hayan muerto asesinados solo en los tres últimos años.

Incluso la noticia de los niños palestinos asesinados en los ataques de agosto se dio a conocer de forma vaga y dudosa. Las redes de información restaron importancia al hecho de que la mayoría de las víctimas palestinas eran civiles. The Telegraph informaba así: “Hamas, que gobierna Gaza, declaró que también habían muerto dos niños en los ataques aéreos…” Citar a Hamas y no a fuentes hospitalarias ni a grupos por los derechos humanos, no es algo que sorprenda cuando el periodista tiene su sede en Tel Aviv o Jerusalén.

Tampoco fue una sorpresa que el niño, Ibrahim Zaza, muriera. Su corazón era el único órgano que continuó funcionando durante casi treinta días tras el ataque con aviones no tripulados. Al padre, a quien se permitió acompañar a Ibrahim y Mohamed hasta un hospital israelí, se le impedía abandonar el hospital porque constituía una amenaza para la seguridad. Se quedó allí dando vueltas alrededor del frágil cuerpo de su hijo, esperando y rezando. Hizo un llamamiento a la gente para que apoyara a su familia, subrayando su falta de medios para comprar una silla de ruedas, que pensaba que Ibrahim iba a necesitar una vez que consiguiera despertarse de nuevo.

Ya no hay necesidad alguna de una silla de ruedas. Y el implacable dolor de Mohamed continúa. Sus piernas han perdido toda la piel. La zona de su estómago está completamente expuesta. Sus gritos son estremecedores.

Parece que la muerte de Ibrahim obligó un poco, en algún caso, a la cobertura de los medios. No hubo artículos en el New York Times, tampoco ninguna foto en la revista Time de la desconsolada madre y la devastada comunidad. La existencia de Ibrahim en este mundo ha sido breve. Su muerte no supuso acontecimiento alguno fuera del pequeño círculo de quienes le amaban entrañablemente.

No habrá debates sobre la utilización de Israel de ataques aéreos que asesinan civiles ni ninguna reunión urgente en las Naciones Unidas para tratar las incesantes muertes causadas por los aviones no tripulados israelíes, que en sí mismos constituyen una industria muy rentable. Sus clientes no tienen dudas acerca de la eficacia, por ejemplo, de los Elbit Systems Hermes 900 UAV, sólo necesitan contemplar los videos de la Fuerza Aérea Israelí con los teledirigidos cerniéndose suavemente sobre Gaza. Según UAS News, “llegan a alcanzar una altitud superior a los 9.000 metros… y pueden rápida y fácilmente transformarse ajustándose a las necesidades del operador, sin tener que cambiar la infraestructura de funcionamiento en cada misión” (6 junio 2011).

Israel lleva años probando sus teledirigidos con los palestinos. En Gaza, esos buitres se pueden observar a simple vista. Cada vez que el planeador se acerca, la gente corre a protegerse. Pero fue necesario un informe de WikiLeaks para verificar que Israel utiliza los aviones no tripulados con propósito de matar. Según un documento recientemente filtrado, el fiscal general del ejército de Israel, el general de división Avichai Mandelblit, había informado, en febrero de 2010, al anterior embajador de EEUU en Israel, James Cunnigham, del uso de Israel de aviones armados no tripulados para matar a militantes sospechosos.

En el informe del video de The Real News, Lia Tarachansky habla con el teniente coronel Avital Leibowitz, un portavoz del ejército israelí, para intentar entender por qué Ibrahim y su primo se habían convertido en un blanco.

Lia Tarachansky: “Según los testigos, solo hubo un disparo de misil y cayó sobre dos niños, de 12 y 14 años de edad, que estaban sentados fuera de su casa”.

Avital Leibowitz: “La lógica es que cuando alguien está intentando lanzarte un cohete, entonces la lógica es que… mejor es darle a esa persona antes de que ella nos dé a nosotros”.

La única foto que he podido recuperar de Ibrahim Zaza le mostraba posando tímidamente para la cámara, con el pelo peinado hacia delante. El corazón se me rompe cuando pienso en él y en todas las demás víctimas de la “lógica” de Israel.

N. de la T.:

Véase video de vigilia organizada frente a la embajada de EEUU en Tel Aviv con pancartas donde se expresa: “Necesitamos esperanza, no apoyo militar”

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/vigil-in-memory-of-shaheed-ibrahim-zaza-video/

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) es un columnista que publica sus artículos en diversos medios internacionales. Es editor de PalestineChronicle.com. Su último libro es “My father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, Londres), disponible en Amazon.com.

Fuente: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=424577

Por Ramzy Baroud
Ma’an News
Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Sinfo Fernández

Vito Marcantonio

Lo que Puerto Rico necesita para resolver sus problemas
Es soberanía, plena soberanía.

Vito Marcantonio

Democracia en NY

Libertad de expresión en Nueva York

LARES EN LA ESPERANZA

LARES EN LA ESPERANZA


Algún día vendrá la fuente tan serena
En que dormí las flores

Si acudo al grito ya trenzado
Por el yo tan inquieto
Es por que vi. Tan huérfano
En las dulces colinas
Donde pido la aurora de la madre.

Si me subleva esa piel indecisa
En que vive el tirano
Es por que nací tan libre,
Tan sellado
Por las procelas del Maestro.

Pero quiso subir a Bartolo,
Al esplendor agudo de los montes.
Allí se estatiza
La mano atribulada,
Ese tejer de atmosfera asesina
En que convivo.

La abeja esta ya quieta
Sin militancia en el abismo
De la flor.
Y la flor no la conoce más.

Ahora quiero hablar
Del aire vasto
Que socava mis huesos.

Tal vez la tierra mansa
Me sorprenda en el llanto
De los siglos,
En esas veredas verdes
De la esperanza cumplida.

Francisco Matos Paoli

La Niña Isabel por Danny Rivera

Troy Davis Case in Georgia Rekindles Debate Over Death Penalty

A Grievous Wrong

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for the 1989 killing of a police officer in Savannah, Ga. The Georgia pardon and parole board’s refusal to grant him clemency is appalling in light of developments after his conviction: reports about police misconduct, the recantation of testimony by a string of eyewitnesses and reports from other witnesses that another person had confessed to the crime.

This case has attracted worldwide attention, but it is, in essence, no different from other capital cases. Across the country, the legal process for the death penalty has shown itself to be discriminatory, unjust and incapable of being fixed. Just last week, the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Duane Buck, an African-American, hours before he was to die in Texas because a psychologist testified during his sentencing that Mr. Buck’s race increased the chances of future dangerousness. Case after case adds to the many reasons why the death penalty must be abolished.

The grievous errors in the Davis case were numerous, and many arose out of eyewitness identification. The Savannah police contaminated the memories of four witnesses by re-enacting the crime with them present so that their individual perceptions were turned into a group one. The police showed some of the witnesses Mr. Davis’s photograph even before the lineup. His lineup picture was set apart by a different background. The lineup was also administered by a police officer involved in the investigation, increasing the potential for influencing the witnesses.

In the decades since the Davis trial, science-based research has shown how unreliable and easily manipulated witness identification can be. Studies of the hundreds of felony cases overturned because of DNA evidence have found that misidentifications accounted for between 75 percent and 85 percent of the wrongful convictions. The Davis case offers egregious examples of this kind of error.

Under proper practices, no one should know who the suspect is, including the officer administering a lineup. Each witness should view the lineup separately, and the witnesses should not confer about the crime. A new study has found that even presenting photos sequentially (one by one) to witnesses reduced misidentifications — from 18 percent to 12 percent of the time — compared with lineups where photos were presented all at once, as in this case.

Seven of nine witnesses against Mr. Davis recanted after trial. Six said the police threatened them if they did not identify Mr. Davis. The man who first told the police that Mr. Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime. There are other reasons to doubt Mr. Davis’s guilt: There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime introduced at trial, and new ballistics evidence broke the link between him and a previous shooting that provided the motive for his conviction.

More than 630,000 letters pleading for a stay of execution were delivered to the Georgia board last week. Those asking for clemency included President Jimmy Carter, 51 members of Congress and death penalty supporters, such as William Sessions, a former F.B.I. director. The board’s failure to commute Mr. Davis’s death sentence to life without parole was a tragic miscarriage of justice.

nytimes.com

Tony Bennett, Norah Jones