UPON TH E KNOWLEDGE ONE IS GOING TO RECEIVE A MASCULINE CHILD

One must Xerox in black powder toner
all the names of the bullies that loved
pummeling sordid molestation totems
in the savage saw grass of their
middle school parking lot.

One must flagellate in India ink
the names of those that have died before their time
victims of a rock to the forehead from a slip in the canal
motoqueros with strawberry-plated ligaments, road-rashed eyelids,
those who were given speed metal traps by their parents
when they turned mere driving age.

One must put those names in a hat,
but not just any hat. It has to be one of the hats
that hung from your wall when your realized anthems
cost a push pin, or that passions lanyard
a coil which makes latter days tolerable.

Once the names are collected,
once the scriptures of the signatures in the names are strata
then you can begin to split the Adam, so that your liege crews nations
of those heart-bent on deriving the mystical integers
of an equation which has more than one inequality sign.

One grapples with the consequences of anonymity
only when sired by the inconsequential. One's parents
before him a despised autumn of solemn hard work, lexicon
of perspiration in your grammar per hour. In many ways,

the arrival of a masculine child is a meteor which brings
with it the only antidote from a nova of murderous cerulean.

NEW M.I.A. VIDEO

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

AMERICAN MILITARY STRATEGY

I just read a great article on how PowerPoint is making military administrators stupid. The article was written by Elisabeth Bumiller and it appeared in the NY Times on April 26, 2010 and is titled, We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.

If you have never read, I suggest you do. Click here.

ARTE PUBLICO HISPANIC HISTORICAL COLLECTION DATABASE BY EBSCO

I don't usually do this but would like to take the time to big up a new database that EBSCO is coming out with. It's called the, Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection. The database draws most of its content from the "Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project”, a massive national project to " preserve and disseminate Hispanic culture of the United States in its written form since colonial times until 1960."

Recently, I helped a college student write a paper on Malcolm X. I probably should not have done this but I logged in to the BCC databases and signed her in to one of the various African American databases it has. They have African American History Online and African American Studies Center, both voluminous resources for biographies, illustrated maps, photographs, and other materials. The best thing about my interaction with this student was that I made them realize that the specialized databases are the best places to consult because all the superfluous material has already been seperated.

The Arte Publico/EBSCO database has "60,000 historical articles, Hundreds of political and religious pamphlets and broadsides, Complete texts of over 1,100 historical books of Hispanic literature, political commentary and culture." Ok, so maybe seeing as I have never used this actual database I should be a little more judicious. But, all I am saying is that if you are a college student and doing some research on Latinos, Hispanics, Ibera-folk, then this database might be a great place to start.

If you would like to read more about it yourself, the url for the database is, http://www.ebscohost.com/thisTopic.php?marketID=1&topicID=1288 and is linked here for your convenience. (here)

SR1070 PASSES IN ARIZONA

So we have all heard the unfortunate news surrounding this piece of legislation, and have been let down by the fact that is passed successfully in the AZ State Senate. Luckily, the state's are allowed to enact laws that are unique to that state, as long as they don't infringe on the rights of the federal government. I think this is good, because if enough people say they want something in one state, then they should have the right to impose that whim on the populace of a state and its inhabitants if they so choose.

I don't understand it from a legal point of view, but is this state law overriding the federal powers granted by the right to not have to submit to illegal searches and seizures? But that is not what is key in this dilemma. What scares people is that SB 1070 will legalize racial profiling. Because AZ is a state that borders Mexico then what an "illegal" looks like is very similar to what a "legal" resident of Arizona of Mexican ancestry looks like. I don't think it is very difficult to see what all the fuss is about.

Maybe the state senators and Governor Brewer are thinking that action must be action, because immigrant laborers are taking jobs from 'mericans in Arizona that want to work but can't find work. But, interesting enough, I was watching the Colbert Report yesterday and Steven Colbert makes some interesting points which aren't really reported when the media reports on this issue.

For example, Colbert reports that rates of illegal immigrants have been in decline for several years, and not just because of the sheriff in Maricopa county. There has been a steady decline in the presence of illegal immigrants for some time now in Arizona specifically because illegal immigrants are present in an area when there is low-skilled and menial labor present. The fact is that in Arizona the rates of illegal immigration have been steadily declining, but SB 1070 makes you believe that it is legislation that is targeting a particular lawlessness.

The only thing that SB 1070 targets is the synaptic receptors of the people who live in Arizona and think their state is being overrun by immigrants (which is a false perception, given the declining rates of illegal immigrants and thus work for them). Could it also be that these measures are being enacted as punishment for the loss of capital and money (according to Colbert the figure was in the millions) that are not collected and used as part of Arizona's state revenue.

The one thing not sufficiently explained by the media and not really known by most Americans is that most people working in this area that are from Mexico have seasonal work passes that grant them the ability to work legally within the U.S. Are there many illegals that don't have seasonal passes. Sure, the estimate by the Pew organization put the number of illegals between 11 and 12 million.

Even if the number is 12 million (the # of illegals in the U.S.), these 12 million make up 3.87% of the population (or 12 million divided by 310 million). This means that there illegals account for way less than 4% of the total population of the U.S.

Can we say that we are truly being overrun? Can we truly say that SB 1070 is going to curb the amount of illegals in Arizona? What are we really talking about when we talk about Americans who want to work but get their jobs taken away by illegals?