Zuky

Deaths in ICE Prisons

Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein have posted the first piece of their 4-part series "Careless Detention" about medical neglect and abuse in immigrant prisons. Here's a map showing the locations of 83 deaths which the investigation uncovered:

List of Questionable Deaths in Detention

Name Location of Death	Date of Death	Age	Country of Birth
Luis Dubegel-Paez Rolling Plains Detention Facility (Tex.)	3/14/08	60	Cuba
Francisco Castaneda Home after release from Otay Mesa (Calif.)	2/16/08	36	El Salvador
Juan Alejandro Guevara-Lazaro Thomason Hospital (Tex.)	8/13/07	21	Mexico
Rosa Contreras-Dominquez El Paso Service Processing Center (Tex.)	8/7/07	35	Mexico
Victor Arellano Little Company of Mary San Pedro Hospital (Calif.)	7/20/07	23	Mexico
Boubacar Bah University of Medicine (N.J.)	5/30/07	52	Guinea
Nery Romero Bergen County Jail (N.J.)	2/12/07	22	El Salvador
Jesus Cervantes-Corona Northwest Detention Center (Wash.)	11/18/06	42	Mexico
Antonio Martinez-Rivas Houston Contract Detention Facility (Tex.)	10/4/06	44	Mexico
Carlos Cortez-Raudel Mira Loma Detention Center (Calif.)	10/3/06	22	Mexico
Jose Lopez-Gregorio Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	9/29/06	32	Guatemala
Yusif Osman Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	6/27/06	34	Ghana
Miguel Rodriguez-Gonzalez San Pedro Peninsula Hospital (Calif.)	5/21/06	43	Mexico
Geovanny Garcia-Mejia Newton County Correctional Center (Tex.)	3/18/06	27	Honduras
Felipe Garcia-Sanchez Oakdale Federal Detention Center (La.)	2/10/06	21	Colombia
Juan Salazar-Gomez Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	12/14/05	29	Mexico
Reinaldo Prado-Arencilia Northeast Medical Center (Tex.)	10/3/05	37	Cuba
Walter Alvarez-Esquivel Laredo Medical Center (Tex.)	6/30/05	46	Guatemala
Hassiba Belbachir McHenry County Jail (Ill.)	3/17/05	27	Algeria
Sung Soo Heo Passaic County Jail (N.J.)	2/16/05	51	Korea
Ignacio Sarabia-Vallasenor Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	1/4/05	32	Mexico
Joseph Dantica Jackson Memorial Hospital (Fla.)	11/3/04	81	Haiti
Simon Reyes-Altimirano Mesa Hills Specialty Hospital (Tex.)	10/12/04	25	Hondurus
Ervin Ruiz-Tabares Guaynabo Metropolitan Detention Center (P.R.)	9/25/04	24	Colombia
Sebastian Mejia Vicentes Hampton Roads Regional Jail (Va.)	8/22/04	27	Mexico
Juan Figueredo-Lopez U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners (Mo.)	5/29/04	45	Cuba
Cesar Rioz-Martinez Frio County Jail (Tex.)	2/16/04	25	Mexico
Adetunji Popoola Parkland Memorial Hospital (Tex.)	2/1/04	48	Nigeria
Bill Roy Kurt Marion San Diego Correctional Facility (Calif.)	7/31/03	?	Unknown
Kwan A. Chong San Pedro/UCLA-Harbor Hospital (Calif.)	6/10/03	?	Unknown

Friday Music — Emmanuel Jal, "War Child"

He grew up as a child soldier in the killing fields of the Sudanese civil war. Now he's telling his story through music and film.

Losing a Game, Winning at Life

This is a story about why I love sports. It's a story about the simple nobility and unaffected selflessness of genuine sportsmanship. I've been thinking about this incident from a variety of different angles, discussing it with friends and fellow sports fans, ever since I first heard about it from the amazing Joan Kelly. Here's the coverage from ESPN:

None of us can know what we would do in the same situation; but we do know that what Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace chose to do was heroic in a manner that few sports achievements can touch. Their spontaneous act of profound decency elevated the atmosphere in their own small corner of the world and propelled their names into a rarefied circle of athletes whose will to win is surpassed only by their humanity.

Photo — Blossoming

New Rule: No More Boxing Metaphors

No doubt, boxing metaphors are thoroughly and irreversibly embedded in American pop lingo: "down for the count", "on the ropes", "hitting below the belt", "throw in the towel", "saved by the bell", and so on. Despite my general hostility toward cliches, I've basically come to terms with such parlance because it's a convenient way to make simple points about adversarial situations, and hey at least we're indirectly talking about my favorite sport. However, I must say that I've officially had it with grinning bobblehead pundits attempting to use mangled boxing metaphors to project their vacuous truth-draining narratives onto the latest oozefest in the cesspool of Beltway politics.

My fellow citizens of the world, to see and hear the proud, noble, and sweet science of fisticuffsmanship defiled by a stiff-hairsprayed parade of morons marinating in the slime of DC-speak, who wouldn't know a left feint from a right cross, is too much to bear.

The straw that broke the heavy bag chain came in today's New York Times political blog, The Caucus. I'm taking my time getting to it because I want to be sure to properly prepare you for what you're about to witness. Warning: The butchery of thought and language contained in the analogy that I'm about to post on this page could be potentially traumatizing. But we've come too far to turn back now, so let's just get this over with:

Like a boxer roaming the ring in search of one final roundhouse round, Barack Obama alighted again and again in Indiana in the past few days in hopes of pulling off a surprise in this Midwestern state.

Deep breath. Grease the eyebrows and cheekbones. Water. Look alive.

Now I've been a boxing fan for as long as I can remember and have been involved in martial arts and fight training since I was 12; and I've heard a lot of stupid things said about fighting. But this lede has got to be among the stupidest of them all. First of all, a boxer does not "roam the ring"; a boxer fights an opponent. Fighting means hitting while not getting hit. There's no "roaming" in boxing; there's footwork which is executed against an opponent according to the principles of fighting; there's no downtime for directionless whimsy. Second, what the hell is a "roundhouse round"? Much less "one final roundhouse round"? Does this allude to a roundhouse punch (i.e. a looping rear-hand shot) which results in a knockout or stoppage? Or is it perhaps an attempt to refer to a final round of boxing in which many roundhouse punches are thrown? If so, why is this desirable, seeing that straights, tight hooks, and inside uppercuts are always preferable to looping shots? Third, and most importantly, what does any of this have to do with the utterly predictable banality of a presidential candidate making a flurry of regional campaign stops in the last days before an election?

Since I suspect that these questions are more or less unanswerable, I hereby declare my New Rule for political pundits far and wide, large or small, mainstream or intelligent. If you don't know the difference between a check hook and a liver shot; if you can't distinguish clubbing, slapping, and looping punches; then please do yourself and all of us a literary, political, and philosophical favor: No More Boxing Metaphors. Add this to Lauren's new rule, and you might just give yourself a shot at accidentally making sense in your electoral pontifications.

APA Heritage Month — "Asians Rock"

[ Via Racialicious ]

Monday Music — Mariachi Divas, "El Resbalon"

Photos — May 1 March from Union Square to City Hall

Photos — May 1 Rally in Union Square

May Day

From NY May 1 Coalition:

12 pm: Gather at Union Square, 14th Street & Broadway

4 pm: Rally & March

Growing List of May Day Actions in NYC and Beyond
Resolutions in Solidarity

May Day 2008 is critically important. Will the optimism and hope expressed around the Presidential elections translate into an end of immigrant raids and deportations? Will it bring an end to the foreclosures of homes, the lowering of gas and food prices, or an end to lay-offs?

Whatever the outcome in November, the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights will be marching once again on May Day, International Workers Day to say no to all the attacks against workers here and around the world.

We call on the progressive community, the anti-war movement, the women's & LGBT movement, and especially the labor movement, to come out for May Day 2008. March for solidarity, because an injury to one is an injury to all!

Photo — Asians Against White Supremacy

[ University of Washington student Christine Tran; photo by Nick Feldman; via Angry Asian Man ]

Weekend Music — The Shirelles

Photos — Spring Afternoon

It's a glorious day in southwestern Connecticut, so I snapped these pics of sunlight, grass and flowers, towering trees, stone walls and steps, and of course, a rickety old basketball rim...

Wednesday Music — Tina Turner

[ Live versions of "I don't really want to fight no more" and "Simply the Best" ]

Father Michael Pfleger Takes Fox News To School

[ via Resist Racism ]