Africa

As your resident latina I feel the need to weigh in on the moniker "Hispanic" as in "Hispanic Heritage Month". Actually, people have been asking me off-blog about the 'hispanic vs. latino' and I just have to weigh in.

If the opening of this post is any indication, and if you are too lazy to peruse our archives, you will see that not once have I used the term hispanic to descibe myself nor my heritage. I detest the word. I loathe the word. I find the word hispanic repulsive and repugnant, to the point of inciting me to acts of violence. Why? Let me give you some reasons :

1. Hispanic assumes that all people in Latin America speak Spanish.
   What about the languages spoken by Haitians (French), Trinidadians(English) or Brazilians (Portuguese)? What about indigenous and creole languages like Aymara, Quechua or Papiamento?

2. Hispanic assumes all people in Latin America have a Spaniard and European ascendancy.
   Along with the fallacy of Spanish-only, even in a place like Puerto Rico (which was a Spanish colony until 1898), Spanish Castillian culture was not the source of most of the Spanish culture in the island.

   Most of the Spaniards that settled in Puerto Rico were not Castillian. These so-called Hispanics were actually non-Spanish speaking Catalanes (Catalunya), Gallegos (Galicia), Mallorquines (Las Mallorcas) and Canarinos (Islas Canarias) with, as per some demographics theories floating around now for more than 30 years, a huge influx of Crypto-Moors and Crypto-Jews from Andalucia and Granada.

   
   

In an attempt to go beyond discussions about the "digital divide", I organized a panel at this year's South by Southwest festival to discussing the exploding market segment of 'minority' technologists and early adopters.

I apologize in advance for my hemming and hawing. I have a lot of work to do with my public speaking skills. But stay until the presentation done by Stephen Wilmarth and his students from The Center for 21st Century Skills. A victim of our anti-immigration policies, this straight A student gives a heartbreaking account of how after being deported with her mother to Brazil, she tried to keep up with her technology program and classmates using Skype and other social media.

This podcast first appears at the South by Southwest website.

A growing number of women of color are seeking alternative mental health services to help cope with stress and other recurrent struggles in their lives more effectively. Many of these women are now utilizing hypnotherapy, breathwork, and reiki as means of effective therapeutic intervention minus psychiatric labels and medications.

One of them is "Maya," a 36 year-old African American woman. Among many things, Maya is a single mom of two pre-teens, and a lawyer. In the past, Maya sought treatment from a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She had been an incest survivor since age 8 and experienced recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks. Maya also had difficulty maintaining relationships with men as a result of her childhood trauma. Years of intensive talk therapy and anti-anxiety medication led Maya to see very little improvement in her recovery, until a friend recommended that she try hypnotherapy.

Maya says, "At first, I was skeptical about hypnosis and what it could do for me. But I was frustrated. I felt like I was hitting a wall with my therapist and that she didn't really understand where I was coming from. This had been the eighth therapist I had been to, and I was beginning to feel like talking about my symptoms and my past was beating a dead horse. When was I going to get over it? I just wanted to feel better and stop the panic attacks. . . "

When Caoily was 10 months old, she came down with rotavirus. If you have children, and you've been through this, then you know how awful this common infection is. Everything you put into your child--in my case, breastmilk and some solids--comes out in a very short time as a watery, noxious, seemingly neverending river of shit that overflows diapers. I would breastfeed her, and she would be shitting simultaneously, covering both of us in it as I tried to get fluids into her to keep her from dehydrating.
Our pediatrician hospitalized her after 12 hours. For three days, she stayed on a simple solution of electrolytes and fluid through an IV in her leg, the only vein the anesthesiologist (I had insisted on an anesthesiologist) could find to puncture.
She was one of the lucky ones.

Interesting campaign from Human Rights First:

Dear blogger,

We thought you might be interested in an online gallery that organizations from all around the world have put together to promote September 17, the global day for Darfur. We’re hoping you’ll encourage your readers to add their faces to the gallery of people wearing a blue beret, the internationally recognized icon of U.N. peacekeeping forces, to send a message to their governments to pressure the U.N. Security Council and the government of Sudan to deploy U.N. troops to protect the people of Darfur. Thousands of people around the globe on September 17 will join in a unified call for an end to the mass slaughter in Darfur at over 40 events being held in at least 20 countries, including a rally and concert in NYC Central Park. People are also being asked to wear a blue hat on the day. To add a photo of oneself to the gallery (one can adjust the blue beret to fit the photo) and for more details on the events in each country, please go to http://www.dayfordarfur.org. These pages are being constantly updated.

Background:

WTF

I watched the film Ashes and Snow today.

I want to lighten up, and enjoy this truly enchanting and fluid film, but I cannot shake the feeling that I was supposed to be seduced into not noticing the racism and exploitation ...

People of color with their eyes and mouths closed and still as stone. Exquisite women of color dancers playing second fiddle to the white swim-dancers who had the first and last scene. Haikus written with the self-important tone of a white man. The white man who has the last word while the third world folks are his "medium." It was set up so that the human beings were objectified. He contributes, imo, to racism in the form of the exoticizing and dehumanizing of women of color. Men and children too for that matter. Then he imposes his poetry on top of their worlds.

At the time I was watching, I thought the narrator was white. I stand corrected Laurence Fishburne is a black man. That helps some, but the fact remains that a white man waltzed around the world and took what he wanted from it.

Hello visitors from The Showbuzz and CBSNews. Thanks for stopping by.

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To enlarge click here.

A day or two ago I published information given to me by anonymous tipsters about a duo who may have been involved in the stealing of a digital camera memory stick with 450 private photographs from the Jolie-Pitt family's time in Namibia.

Well, there have been rumors of some arrests as reported by both The Daily News' Rush & Molloy and TMZ.com. I have yet to confirm any arrest(s), but it seems like the information we provided on our site led to one of the suspects.

Here's the story so far: The camera which held the memory stick is owned by Angelina Jolie's brother, James Haven. A series of unfortunate events happened to Haven and the camera : The camera broke, he sent it for repairs to the store where he bought it but ... oooooops! Haven forgot to take the memory stick out of the camera. The camera got sent from Malibu to a repair center in Connecticut. That's were the illustrious practitioner of extreme vanning, a Mr. Bill Keyes, pops into our story.

Money can't buy you a FIFA Cup.

[via Celebrations in Accra after Ghana beats USA - Google Video]:

Ghana is one of the poorest countries in the world. Here's some stats from Wikipedia's entry on Ghana

Population
- 2005 est. 22,113,0001 (49th)
- Density 88.2/km² (83th)
228.4/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2005 estimate
- Total $51.8 billion (77th)
- Per capita $2,500 (169th)

Here are the same stats for the United States:

Population
- 2006 est. 298,217,215 (3rd)
- 2000
- Density 30/km² (143rd)
83/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2006 estimate
- Total $13.05 trillion (1st)
- Per capita $43,555 (3rd)

Just so you understand the enormity of these numbers, Bill Gates' net worth is US$50 billion; down from an all time high of US$100 billion.

A Tisket, A Tasket

A Condom or A CasketI remember this sing-song back from days waiting tables in Seattle. It was the mid-1980s, most of the men I worked with were gay, and HIV stalked us all. They were frightening times. Rumours flew of who had it, who didn't. And the person who came in for the most agita from the men I worked with was an insufferable new waiter who claimed to be straight, but who, according to those who were out, was definitely a closet case. It was he who they sang the ditty to. I didn't quite understand it at the time, but I get it now. It requires an acknowledgement of one's sexual persona to take precautions--contraceptives or condoms--and my friends had determined that a closeted gay man was dangerous to himself and others. Harsh. But perhaps true.

This all came back to me last night, while watching the second part of the PBS Frontline special, "The Age of AIDS."

Shame kills. And watching the four hours of excellent television, I was reminded of that fact over and over again. If only someone in the Bush administration was willing to learn that lesson.
As part of the series, Frontline interviewed Noerine Kaleeba, whose husband, a Ugandan, died of AIDS. Mobilized by his death, and by the disaster that AIDS was creating in Uganda, Kaleeba founded TASO, an organization that seeks to educate and bring hope to those afflicted.

Uganda created an "ABC" program: Abstain, Be faithful, or Wear a Condom. As Kaleeba explains: