White Supremacist Shawna Forde Sentenced To Death For Double Murder In Arizona

Link: "Shawna Forde, whom a jury convicted last week of murdering nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul Flores, was sentenced to death by an Arizona jury on Tuesday. The unanimous jury ruling is binding.

The court found that Forde led a group of anti-immigrant vigilantes in a March 2009 raid on the Flores home, where they posed as immigration agents and pushed their way through the door.
[...]
The case was not designated as a hate crime, despite Forde's long history with anti-immigrant organizations. She once maintained a Tea Party blog, was a member of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and has presented herself as a representative of Federation for American Immigration Reform. (All three have since distanced themselves from her.) After being cast out from the Minuteman group due to erratic behavior, she formed her own vigilante group, called Minutemen American Defense, which also patrolled the United States-Mexico border trying to detect illegal immigration."

Being as I don't believe in the death penalty and being as this is hardly going to change the situation for un/documented Latin@s in this country I have very...mixed...feelings about this. But there it is.

A really cool and useful post: "how to support a revolution"

how to support a revolution « guerrilla mama medicine

what i learned in the past month and past 31 years…

–offer free babysitting for folks who are going to hit the streets or do other kinds of work/revolt that is more difficult with children around

–let people sleep on your couch, bed, mattress, floor. offer crash space.

–if you have internet. share internet w those who dont.

–keep the bar stocked.

–keep cigarettes stocked

–if you have al jazeera english. let folks come over and watch. call folks with the latest news if you know they dont have access.

–keep basic first aid supplied handy

This is just an excerpt, click the link and read it all!

Bieber: Don't Touch Esperanza's Hair!

elonjames:

Dear White People. This is what you shouldn’t do. Ever. Like ever ever. Like—EVER. Ever.

Yes, her hair is awesome. But just admire it from afar. K, Biebs?

EMERGENCY RALLY TOMORROW (Fri., Feb. 11) 5 PM UN PLAZA

Received this not long ago in my inbox:

Please circulate this, and try to come tomorrow. 
Watch for a coming email announcing SF vigil action on Saturday. Busy weekend! Please send me opt-ins or outs of endorsements.
----------------
----------------
Emergency Rally in Solidarity with the Egyptian People
Friday, February 11, 2011
UN Plaza (Market St. between 7th & 8th Sts.), San Francisco
FACEBOOK EVENT
PLEASE COME DRESSED IN RED, BLACK, AND/OR WHITE

Why: After 17 days of nationwide street protests demanding regime change, after 300+ peaceful demonstrators were murdered by state security, on February 10th Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's much-anticipated address to the nation defiantly announced he is staying on and blamed "foreign influences" for the "unrest." The Egyptian liberation movement has declared February 11th a national martyr's day.We will stand with them, hold our hands in prayer, and tell their stories.

 Our primary objective is to support the unified demands of the Egyptian people:
1. Immediate end to Egyptian state violence against civilian protesters, journalists and human rights group; immediate release of political prisoners.
2. Immediate and orderly transition of power from Mubarak to an interim government.
3. Dissolving parliament and forming an interim national unity committee from all spectra.
4. Elect a new parliament as soon as possible through fair and free elections.
5. Revising the Egyptian constitution, primarily to allow for: a) guarantee political freedoms and equity; b) limit number of presidential terms
6. The Egyptian people have the right to choose their own leaders.

Inquiries: Omar Ali,  415.244.4929  415.244.4929; Yasmin Samy,  510.379.8922  510.379.8922

Review: New Spring: The Graphic Novel

New Spring: The Graphic Novel by Robert Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a really decent conversion of New Spring into a graphic novel. For the first seven chapters the artwork is just beautiful, almost making up for years of the crappy TOR cover art of the Wheel of Time, and in general the story was converted with care. I most definitely enjoyed reading this novel.

HOWEVER, I don't know what happened with chapter eight, but suddenly the artwork was shit and the typos in the text went through the roof. I'm being hyperbolic but the decrease in quality really was that noticeable. I don't know if a new artist came on board or what, but whatever went on created a terribly lackluster end to the book. I was too distracted by "is that supposed to be Moiraine? is that supposed to be Suian?" to really enjoy the final chapter.

Though it must be noted that the final chapter might have been kind of ruined anyway since it rushed through the climax of the original book. Now I've seen plenty of comics which have a least one "box" (don't know if this is the correct terminology) that is just a picture between two boxes that have text on them to great a sense of "pause" for dramatic effect. This desperately needed some of those.  Also needed were some boxes which conveyed the shock and drama of the climatic scenes through text.  But there were none of either.

It was a very disappointing ending to an otherwise enjoyable reading experience.


View all my reviews

International Day of Mobilization in Solidarity with the People of Egypt: February 5th (San Francisco, CA information)

I received this in my inbox this morning:

Dear Friends of BAWiB, 

To show our solidarity with freedom- and democracy-loving peoples of the Middle East, BAWiB [Bay Area Women in Black] asks you all to join us in the International Day of Mobilization, Saturday, Feb. 5, at UN Plaza, Market and 8th Sts., in San Francisco.  We will meet at the MacArthur bart station at 11:50 to take the 12:05 train, dressed in our usual black.

[...]We will not conduct our usual vigil tomorrow, as we believe that events in Egypt and other dictatorships propped up by US tax dollars require our full attention at this time. We are also horrified by the many reports of Israel sending weapons, including chemical weapons, to be used against anti-government protestors in Egypt. 

We are also asking you all to call the White House comment line, 202 456-1111 and urge Pres. Obama to withdraw military aid from Egypt. 

Salaam/Shalom,

Steering Committee 

Bay Area Women in Black

Tweeting without the internet?

A friend brought this to my attention: Google, Twitter build Speak to Tweet for Egyptians:

"Google, in combination with Twitter and its recently acquired SayNow engineers, has released a service for tweeting without an Internet connection.

Designed specifically for those on the ground in Egypt unable to communicate via the Internet with the outside world, Speak to Tweet allows anyone with a voice connection to dial three international numbers and have their voice messages sent out as tweets with the #egypt hash tag added to those links. "We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time," wrote Ujjwal Singh, co-founder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, product manager, Middle East & North Africa at Google, in a blog post.

The numbers are +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855 and no Internet connection is required. There are already dozens of messages on the Twitter profile.

The only remaining Internet service provider in Egypt, The Noor Group, was taken offline Monday, according to reports."

Thanks for being cool today Google.