Yoani Sanchez I don't believe a thing you write

More of the Yoani Sanchez drama. Now the Cuban blogger -praised by right wing Miami Cubans- is accusing the government of Cuba of sending thugs to beat her up, to prevent her from attending a rally. Hmmm...

Yoani Sanchez in the comfortable apartment she received from the Cuban government for free. Photos by OpinionNoticias

It sounds bad, but Sanchez hasn't even posted a photo of her injuries or any other proofs of the attack, more importantly how can she know her attackers were members of the Cuban government?

Sanchez has posted a summary of what she said happened to her, this is the way she ends the post:

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, “What has happened?”… “A kidnapping,” I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Does this description sound reliable to you? Not to me. It's hard to trust someone who only complains about the failures of the Cuban government system -what society is perfect anyways- but remains totally silent about the abuses of the U.S. blockade which forces Cuban people into extreme poverty. Yoani doesn't protest about the Cuban unfairly imprisoned in the U.S., or the extreme poverty that thousands of Cuban exiles suffer in cities of the U.S. and other countries of the Americas, and other important issues.

Cuba is not a perfect society but it has some good things, including the completely free educational system that has benefited Yoani Sanchez. It's obvious to me that all the awards and sponsorship she gets are coming from Miami and Madrid, especially from anti-Castro groups.

You see, Yoani Sanchez likes to victimize herself as a martyr suffering from a cruel persecution. She has created an image that allows her to get about 500,000 hits a day (?) and supporters call her "the voice of Cuban dissidents". She's been praised by many receiving awards, money, and all kind of favorable propaganda.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that all types of violence must be protested, and no one should be intimidated by their ideas or opinions or what they write in their blog. But I just wonder why would the Cuban government send thugs to beat up a group of biased bloggers? Who wins from this? This makes no sense, unless this is just another publicity scheme to benefit the image of Yoani Sanchez. It's working only for those who refuse to see all sides of her stories.



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Disgusting Racism in Mexican TV: mockery of African Student and Native Woman presented as Comedy - Watch VIDEO

This video is from a television "comedy" show produced in Mexico, and it shows the deep racism that exists in Mexican society. Please be aware, this video is terribly offensive so feel free to stop watching. However I'm posting it to bring up the issue of racism in the Hispanic media against our Black and Brown peoples.



Keep in mind that almost all TV in Mexico and Latin America is produced by companies owned by racist white Hispanics or Latinos. Therefore, white supremacist mentality is to blame for this kind of media garbage. Even when most of our peoples from Mexico to Chile are Natives and Blacks communities.

TV shows like the one in this video portray Black and Native peoples (African and Indigenous) in very demeaning, offensive ways. In this case, they show a African student as a monkey and they make fun of his skin color and facial features.

Notice the teacher dressed as a Native woman, she is the 'bad character' in the sitcom, the old angry woman. While the students are mostly white -or pretend to be- and are supposed to be rich students. This TV program is also shown in the U.S. by Galavision and Univision:

This disgusting show is called "La Escuelita VIP" or 'the little school VIP' and it's produced by Galavision, a subsidiary of Televisa, the media giant that controls most of Mexican television, and is the biggest provider of programs to U.S. TV channels Univision and Telemundo.

La Escuelita VIP is produced and directed by racist Mexican actor Jorge Ortiz de Pinedo, a white man of Hispanic heritage who is renowned as one of the most popular theater and film actors and directors in Mexico. According to the his biography at Televisa's website, Jorge Ortiz de Pinedo was honored in 1999 the U.S. by president Bill Clinton. This asshole is the tall student with a mustache and a hat on.

Photo by Galavision

Let's remember again that Mexican media doesn't represent all Mexican people, that is important to clarify. Like I said, Televisa and other Mexican media outlets are owned by whites, mostly Hispanics and other European and Arab descendants. Also let's point out that not all whites in Mexico are this racist, but racism is so deep in Latin America that many people in Mexico don't see anything wrong with this kind of crap.

The worst part is that our Spanish speaking children in the U.S. also watch this show thanks to Univision and Galavision. So our children are learning that is Ok. to discriminate our own peoples, thus they are distroying our peoples self esteem.

Regarding this, I wonder what are all the "Hispanic" civil rights organizations in the U.S. saying about this brutal show of racism? Nothing that I am aware of. Just imagine that some U.S. white-owned TV station would present Blacks and Brown people in this offensive way. Would this be allowed?

Wait. Televisa, Globovision, Univision, Telemundo and all the Spanish-speaking TV channels with licenses in the U.S. are owned by white people. Is this why no one stepping up to stop them?

Now you can understand why I hate it when the U.S. government calls us Hispanics, when we are Native and Black peoples who speak Spanish. We don't need to support the same racist people who deny our own existence and then they make fun of our peoples with their racist media. Pendejos.


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Restoring Human Rights and Democracy in Honduras: Resistance leaders Bertha Oliva and Jessica Sanchez will speak at Busboys and Poets in DC

Bertha Olivas. Photo by www.frontlinedefenders.org

This week two Honduran leaders, Bertha Oliva and Jessica Sanchez will pay a special visit to Washington, DC, to expose the human rights crisis of Honduras at the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission, possibly to meet with Congress members and with the Obama administration. Thanks to local non-profits, you can meet them in person and hear their personal testimonies:

Restoring Human Rights and Democracy in Honduras:
An evening with Bertha Oliva and Jessica Sanchez at Busboys & Poets

Thursday November 5, 2009
7:00 PM

Busboys & Poets
Langston Room
2021 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20009

See Map
U Street or Dupont Circle Metro stations

More details about the event and a brief biography of the guests:

The Quixote Center, Center for Economic and Policy Research and Just Associates present:

Restoring human rights and democracy in Honduras: An evening with Bertha Oliva and Jessica Sanchez at Busboys and Poets

Please join us for an evening with two leading voices of the movement of resistance to the coup regime that took power in Honduras on June 28th:

- Bertha Oliva, founder of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Prisoners in Honduras and a key figure in the Latin American human rights movement

- Jessica Sanchez, of the National Alliance of Honduran Feminists in Resistance

Bertha and Oliva will discuss the dramatic human rights situation in Honduras, the broad-based movement of resistance to the June 28 coup and the implications of the tentative settlement reached on October 29.

Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, will introduce the event.

About the speakers:

• Bertha Oliva: her husband, professor Thomas Nativí was "disappeared" in 1981, during the period when the death squads were active under Honduras' military dictatorship. She founded the Committee of Relatives of Missing Prisoners in Honduras (COFADEH) together with other women who lost their loved ones, in order to seek justice and compensation for the families of the hundreds of dissidents that were "disappeared" between 1979 and 1989. Bertha has since become an emblematic presence in the Central American human rights movement and today is one of the leading voices of the resistance to the coup that ousted the elected president of Honduras on June 28th. Bertha will be visiting Washington to give a hearing at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and to present her and to discuss the human rights situation in Honduras with U.S. administration officials and policy makers.

• Jessica Mariela Sanchez, Honduran women's rights advocate and journalist, is in Washington, DC representing the national alliance of Honduran Feminists in Resistance. She served as Director of the Gender and Civil Society Unit in the Access to Justice Project of the Honduran Supreme Court for four years, founded the Honduran network Women of Comitzahual, and currently undertakes legal research for UNIFEM, UNDP and the ILO. In August of this year, Ms Sanchez joined an international women's rights fact-finding mission examining the impact of the coup on women's rights, and now participates in the ongoing Feminist Transformation Watch - a joint effort between the Honduran feminists the Mesoamerican Petateras, JASS and Radio Feminista - spotlighting women's perspectives on the crisis.

The coup in Honduras of June 2009 marks a new age in politics of the southern countries of the Americas, and their relations with the United States.

Although it seems that the U.S. government didn't intervene directly in the planning or execution of this coup, but there are strong connections between U.S. interests groups and the corrupt elites that own most of Honduras' land and resources, and most of whom live comfortably in the United States.

President Omaba has called it a coup, but Secretary Clinton and the State Department haven't done it. Some Republican Congress members are in support of the current illegal government, despite of dozens of people being killed during popular protests. Last week an accord was reached thanks to the U.S. diplomacy pressure on the coup president Micheletti and his government.

In fact the coup was planned, financed and is being executed by a group of business owners, military leaders and right-wing politicians organized to oust elect president Manuel Zelaya. The coup represent somehow another negative interference of U.S. corporations in the rule of a small country that have seeing too much political violence for most of its brief history, due to its natural resources and lack of strong civil institutions.

The people of Honduras are organizing themselves to continue a popular resistance movement to bring democracy back to their country, through the restitution of elect president Manuel Zelaya, and future free elections after he complete his mandate by law.

Please watch this video by Real News, including an interview with Bertha Olivas who says "Coup leaders are reviving despotism of the 80s in bid to crush participatory democracy"

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When will BET stop Promoting Negative Images of Black and Brown Peoples? JasiriX sends a Love Message to BET Chairman Debra Lee

The self loathing images of Black people that are promoted by BET, can be blamed somehow for many of the problems that working class communities in the U.S. have to face.

These demeaning images set a destructive example for youngsters -mostly Blacks- especially in terms of issues like education, crime control, responsible parenting, strong families, children safety and health, child pregnancy, sexist behaviors. They prevent people from wanting a better life, for men to take care of their families and neighborhoods, for neighbors to look out for each other, for women to respect themselves, for young people to respect life period.

I live in DC, a city with a majority of African American population and where preventable problems like youth crime, HIV infection, broken families, unemployment, illegal drugs abuse, and lack of affordable housing, are among the biggest problems for poor people, especially Black and Brown peoples. These are symptoms of a bid disease: broken families and failed societies.

When kids grow up seeing themselves as losers, delinquents, womanizers, sluts, druggies, haters, and lazy, dumb, immature and conformists peoples, they will tend to become one of them. Not all, but some will. As non-White kids see themselves portrayed in such negative roles in society, they are somehow being brainwashed to be that way.

This affects not only Black Americans, but also Africans in all the world -especially in Africa, Europe, Caribbean, and all the Americas- who see the trashy BET alike "culture" as the African American culture they imitate in order to reassure their "blackness" while living in racists, oppressive societies.

JasiriX. Photo by Paradise Gray

BET only cares about the money they make by promoting bad images of our peoples, and we shouldn't allow this anymore. This video made by JasiriX is right on point, I hope BET CEO Debra Lee gets to see it:

Check out JasiriX OneHood Facebook and MySpace

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