I picked up Luis Alberto Urrea's "The Devil's Highway: A True Story" in a used bookstore yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. Twice, I've been to the outskirts of the fierce Sonoran desert that the story follows of the 26, mostly Veracruzano, men; and the men who perished in the desert known as the Yuma 14 in the American media blitz aftermath.

On El Camino del Diablo, like the author mentions, twenty miles look like ten. Perfectly triangular mountains of rock and cobble, of varying shades of reddish brown, point into the blue of a cloudless sky. The sun is white with heat. The aridity alone, sucks the moisture out of your skin. There is no shade and only brittle scrub and cacti spot the plain floor.

Like any good journalist, Urrea digs deep into their individual stories which places them at the crossroads of U.S.border policy on the grander stage of immigration phenomena. Someone needed to put a face to the 500+ people who die annually in the vicious, vacuous landscape trying to get to the land of milk and honey.



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Exodus
The ominous push and pull of the U.S.–Mexico border
by Marc Cooper, The Atlantic

May 2006

“You’re looking at the biggest story of our lives,” Bowden told me over dinner. “This is the largest cross-border human migration in history.” Though rarely, if ever, posed in those terms, the staggering numbers tend to bolster Bowden’s sweeping vision. Something like 15 million to 20 million migrants have crossed into the United States over the last two decades. An equal number are expected to do so in the next twenty years. “People aren’t coming here as much as they are leaving a cratered economy,” Bowden said. “The only way you’ll stop Mexicans coming to the U.S. is if you lower American wages to the same level as Vietnam. Someone worth maybe $100 a month in Mexico who comes to the U.S. becomes a human ATM machine. McCain-Kennedy, Kyl-Cornyn?” he said, referring to the hodge-podge of current immigration-reform proposals. “It’s all bullshit. What we’re seeing is something right out of the Bible. This is an exodus.”

dear cornell hillel,

silent protests over lives lost in gaza from the recent illegal campaign that even got the u.n.'s panties in a bunch do not constitute "anti-israel" protests. i've just put you on my spamblocker.

yours,
me

from Rolling Stone [Issue 1072 — February 19, 2009]

2002

January 11 First detainees arrive, hooded.

February 7 Bush: Geneva Conventions do not apply; administration can make up its own rules.

October 11 Staff attorney: Jack Bauer of 24 "gave people lots of ideas" for interrogations.

December 2 Donald Rumsfeld approves use of dogs, sexual humiliation. Calls for harsher stress positions: "I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"

2003

March 14 Justice Dept.: War Crimes Act doesn't apply to Gitmo interrogations.

April 16 Rumsfeld OKs constant sleep deprivation and exposure to heat.

April 25 Joint Chiefs chair says it's OK to hold children at Gitmo: "They're not on a Little League team . . . they're on a terrorist team."

August 15 Pentagon: Thirty suicide attempts.

October 9 Red Cross blasts detainee health.

2004

June 28 Supreme Court rules detainees can challenge detention in federal court.

July 7 Administration approves using coerced evidence to list detainees as "enemy combatants."

August 2 Detainees found chained to floor in fetal position, covered in feces, subject to extreme heat, left for 24 hours with no food or water.

August 30 First civilian lawyer meets with detainees.

October 20 Judge orders Pentagon to stop eavesdropping on detainee conversations with lawyers.

2005

May 25 Amnesty International calls for shuttering of Gitmo.

June 23 Rumsfeld calls Gitmo "a model detention facility."

September 13 Pentagon acknowledges it is force-feeding 18 hunger-striking detainees.

November 10 Senate passes "Graham amendment," stripping detainees of habeas-corpus rights.

2006

February 8 Government documents: Half of detainees hadn't committed a hostile act against the U.S.

June 10 Three detainees hang themselves; administration calls suicides a "PR move."

June 15 Administration bars media from the prison; calls Gitmo "the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare."

June 29 Supreme Court rules that Geneva Conventions cover detainees; violations would be "war crimes."

2007

May 16 Mitt Romney: "We ought to double Guantánamo."

May 30 Detainee commits suicide.

June 13 Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) praises prison's "lemon chicken," insists that detainees have "never been more comfortable in their lives."

December 21 Mike Huckabee: "If anything, it's too nice."

2008

January 16 Canada puts U.S. on torture-watch list over Guantánamo.

June 17 Former Navy counsel: Gitmo helps recruit insurgents, ranks second only to Abu Ghraib as "causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq."

Aug. 6 After six years, first detainee convicted.

Sept. 9 Military prosecutor quits in protest over government deception in case against a teenage combatant.

December 15 Dick Cheney's final analysis: Gitmo "has been very well run."

may day may day may day may

http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?artist=1123&vid=229632

nothing like coming into the office after some crazy ass shit, planning-on-the-fly, unbelievable letters from the fates and whatnot to see that this arrived for me straight from jerusalem.

the glass didn't make it but i don't give a flying fuck. the painting, matting, and frame survived and it's unbelievably beautiful -- my first work of art that i bought, too.

support your artists, people. this one's from moomin13.

it says "freedom."

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