links for 2011-04-15

"'My family goes back many generations—16 in fact—here in the U.S., and at least eight generations in what we now know as California and Los Angeles, but still today people will ask me or my children where did you come from? When did your parents get here from Mexico? They assume that most Mexicans, Mexican Americans are fairly recent arrivals. That bothers me. It’s as if we have nothing to do with this place or its history,' Sanchez said. 'Here we are in Los Angeles, where more than half the population is Latino, and people don’t have a real understanding of what Mexicans have contributed to this city. That’s why I think the opening of LA Plaza is so important, to finally have a place where our rich history and culture will be shared,' he said."

Kemitech's shorter version: "The 2012 campaign starts with another Black-people-are-the-Borg identification.–AJP "And African Americans, one of us wrote earlier this week, happen to be one of the few voting blocs with a solid net-positive view of the real estate mogul. According to a February NBC/WSJ poll, 27 percent of black respondents have a favorable opinion of Trump, while 22 percent take a negative view. (Compare that to 26% positive/ 29% negative overall.)

"That may be true, but today on the Fred Dicker radio show, Trump boasted of his relationship with the black community in a particularly, well, blunt way.

"'I have a great relationship with the blacks,' Trump said. 'I've always had a great relationship with the blacks.'”

"Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it."

"The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced in 2009, only a month after a seminar with American ministers about 'curing' homosexuality and the dangers of 'the gay movement.' Last year, an evangelical Christian from Missouri, Lou Engle, held an event in Uganda at which the bill was promoted (though after he left to travel home, he says). But Uganda, a poor and heavily Christian nation of 35 million with a large American missionary community, has long held its own conservative views on sexuality. Mr. Ssempa says his movement is about African culture, and while the United States has continued to debate its own societal values, similar conversations are happening here."

"The guard's response is part of a civil rights complaint filed Wednesday on behalf of Cortez-Reyna and 12 others. It alleges systemic abuse and neglect of gay and transgender immigrants while in custody at facilities owned or contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chicago-based Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center filed the action with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Inspector General's Office.

"Alliance leaders said the allegations go beyond mistreatment by a few guards. They include blanket policies against the immigrants such as the rule at Theo Lacey that keeps all gay and transgender immigrants confined to their cells for 22 hours and the practice at a Santa Ana, Calif., jail that denies hormone treatments to transgender immigrants."