I've started following the blog of John Carlos Frey on Huffington Post lately and I'm surprised that even there on HuffPo there are some rather conservative people who are anti-immigrant and who are not very deep thinkers.  And there's the same kind of tired old arguments that fail to address the real reasons for things.  Even Frey's writing seems to miss  (or avoid?) the big elephants in the room.  After writing a long comment to his latest post and realizing there was a word limit that I went past, I decided to put my thoughts in full here. Read more>>>

I heard about the National Geographic Channel's new series "Border Wars" a couple weeks ago and upon looking at its webpage knew that it would be complete crap - basically another "Cops" but focused exclusively on latinos in the southwest.  It comes at a surprise that it would be on this channel, but after Fox launched its own fear-mongering "Border Patrol" program last year it seems logical that other networks would want to get in on the act, considering the depth of xenophobia in the U.S. audience.

John Carlos Frey writes a seething review of "Border Wars", and the most important point, in my view, that he raises is this one: Read more>>>

Last week a film critic in the Arizona Daily Star wrote about me for his weekly series of profiles on Tucson filmmakers. It was a nice little article, even though it contained many minor factual errors and creatively constructed "quotes" - this is normal for journalism, so I'm not upset about that, since none of the inaccuracies were serious or slanderous.

I've received several compliments and positive new contacts are being made as a result, but one unfortunate, though amusing, side-effect is a trickle of the usual, fanatically hateful anti-immigrant people who always explode into fits of spitting rage whenever anything about the border appears in the news and doesn't match their level of prejudiced right-wing fervor. Here're a few samples, cut-and-pasted verbatim for you amusement:

From: netscw@q.com
Subject: Tell the other side!
Date: August 10, 2009 12:01:57 AM CDT

THE ILLEGALS MAKING 300+ NEW PATHS THROUGH OUR BEAUTIFUL DESERT, TRAMPING DOWN THE FLORA, INSECTS, KILLING THE WILDLIFE, POLLUTING THE ENVIRONMENT WITH THEIR GARBAGE, FECES; COWS & OTHER ANIMALS EATING THE PLASTIC AND DYING HORRIBLE DEATHS, DEFECATING OUTSIDE AND ALL THE POLLUTION, DISEASE THAT BRINGS, NOT TO MENTION THE DISEASES THEY THEMSELVES CARRY, OR THE TERRORISTS THEY ALLOW TO SNEAK IN AMONGST THEM OR THE VIOLENT CRIMINALS AND CHILD MOLESTERS THAT ATTACK AMERICANS & OUR CHILDREN. ILLEGALS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO CUT OFF A LIVE CALF'S LEG AND EAT IT WHILE THE BABY BLEEDS TO DEATH, THEY CAUSE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF DAMAGE TO RANCHERS' TROUGHS, PIPES, ETC. YOU MAY WISH TO TELL HIM THAT THEY CAUSE MORE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ANY DAY THAN THE BP - WHO ARE TRYING TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION!

The amazing thing is that these wackos take the time to somehow find an email address online for me but they can't take the time to properly use their Caps Lock key on their keyboard. Here's another that at least doesn't "yell" as much:

From: laura427@cox.net
Subject: FOR STEEV HISE: About your article on some movie you are making about The Wall on our border!
Date: August 9, 2009 2:18:17 AM CDT

I live about an hour from the border. People in my state are being murdered every day by illegals. The rate of child molestation is unreal! Phoenix is now the kidnapping center of the country and AZ the car theft capitol of the world! All because of illegal aliens!And tons of illegals are involved in drugs and drug smuggling!

Your movie appears to be lop-sided. Perhaps you would like to interview my two friends whose children were murdered by illegal aliens from Mexico and tell them how you consider it more important for illegals to be able to sneak into our country and we should not be protecting ourselves. I worked for several years with illegal aliens and met murderers, rapists, child molesters (at least 16% to 80% sneaking through now were violent criminals before ever coming here). Perhaps you would like to speak to some mothers of children who were molested by illegals. Have you ever seen a cow die from eating plastic left by these illegals (and by the way, don't call them "immigrants" - my parents were immigrants and it is an insult to every person who has ever come here legally to use this respected word which has just ONE meaning in immigration law and that is for people who come legally - otherwise the correct immigration term is "illegal alien". Every person who is not an American citizen is an "alien" and you will never ever hear a legal ALIEN complain about being called one. Only those who wish to intimidate you into using the respected word so they can manipulate one's mind will try to change the conversation and the words one uses.
An immigrant waits on line for years, complying with the necessary things they go through (background checks, health checks) to protect Americans and themselves). The word must never be used for people who spit on our laws. They have trampled down hundreds of new paths, killing flora and small animals/insects in their way. I have heard it will take thousands of years for the desert to come back if ever. Also, a rancher friend of mine told me illegals will slaughter his cattle live to cut off a leg and eat it while the animals (usually a baby calf) will lie there bleeding to death. You are another misguided soul.Every time you hear of another illegal murdering, raping, molesting, robbing an American - know you have helped do this. You should be ashamed of yourself! The media is supposed to show an unbiased view, but then you don't seem to know what that means.

Well, I hope I don't have to wait "on line for years" downloading this kind of ludicrously inaccurate bull.

(Oh, and speaking of bull - maybe, if it were true about all the cattle dying because of undocumented migrants, this would be a great solution to the problem of ranching, which has been destroying the environment of the West for over a century. Can we get more of those evil, hungry "illegals" to come and eat the legs off our cows? Please? )

:-)

This week I posted a third segment in the video series I started in January about the borderlands and the hopes and dreams of people living in communities affected by border militarization.

This latest installment is an interview with Mono Mono, an artist who makes electronic pop music that frequently addresses issues of the border and cross-culturalism. I first met him at the No Borders Camp in 2007 and then at a show he did here in Tucson. I visited him at his home in San Diego when I was out there in January, 2 days before the inauguration of Barrack Obama.

The New York Times opinion page ran a great piece about Nativists, the extremist anti-immigrant right-wingers and why they are racists.

It's an encouraging sight to see this sort of open analysis and decryal of the racism that still permeates our society. Hopefully this is just the beginning of even more to come.. Obama's rise to the presidency is not a sign that we are in "post-racial" times, but perhaps it is rather a harbinger of times in which racists are no longer allowed to hide in the darkness but are brought into the light, exposed, and stamped out.

It's been a while since I've blogged here but I've been more active over on my new border news website/blog, http://newsontheline.tv - this was created, as I explained a couple posts ago, for a new border project, which I call "Transition in the Borderlands" - the idea was to travel along the border during the week before and after Inauguration Day, and talk to people about how they think their communities are effected by the border wall and border militarization, and whether they think things will change and how, now that Chertoff and Bush are out, and Obama is in.

Now I'm done with the trip and busy catching up on other things and going over my footage. I'll be editing together several little vignettes, in addition to the 2 that I've already done:

I drove all the way to San Diego yesterday. I'm starting a new project to visit some spots along the U.S./Mexico border, communities impacted by the wall and other militarization, in the final days of Bush and the first days of Obama.
I'll be blogging in detail as I go at a new site, http://newsontheline.tv/.

Here's a story from the Sierra Vista, AZ paper reporting that Glenn Spencer, local xenophobe wackadoo, is complaining that the Border Patrol is inflating their figures of how much new fence is finished out of the required amount that Congress mandated be done by the end of this year.

Of course this in common knowledge. But I think it's funny that they're getting attacked from both sides - the racists griping that the fence isn't getting put up fast enough enough, or secure enough, and more sane and humane people who say it shouldn't be put up at all.

The story also mentions and links to the Sierra Club video that I made. An interesting comment thread follows the story, including an admittedly good point made by one of the pro-wall nutjobs: Sierra Club shouldn't be calling it a documentary. If I've ever called it that I apologize now. It's not a documentary, in the sense that a documentary is at least nominally objective - this film is an advocacy piece that takes a clear position, and I was hired to take that position and deliver a very clear and specific political message. It's not impartial reportage, it's a polemic. Guilty as charged.

Anyway, I'm glad it's getting more and more exposure.

Reports are out today that Homeland Security is a little overbudget on the new border fence construction and they need Congress to hand out another $400 million so they can finish what they were asked to do by the end of this year.

"If we run out of money, unfortunately the construction will have to stop," Ahern said. He said it is not known exactly how much extra it will cost to build each mile of the fence, because the costs differ due to varying terrain and environmental issues.

In the big scheme of our massive federal budget, this is chump change, and it seems likely that Congress will just reach in their pocket without thinking much about it - but in this election year maybe if enough people make a stink about it, it won't happen. Write your representative and senators today and tell them not to authorize this further insult to injury. Stop the wall!

I'm proud to finally post online the short version of the film I made for the Sierra Club concerning the border wall and its effects on the environment. This project started in January, finished (late) in August, and will be premiering theatrically later this month at an event here in Tucson with our local congressman Raul Grijalva.

The full version of the film is about 20 minutes long, but you won't see that one online for a little while longer. The Sierra Club local group is trying to use it to raise money for a new border job they're hiring for. They've pressed a few hundred DVDs of both versions and will be sending it around the country to Sierra Club chapters and other interested parties.

Anyway, it's a relief that this is finally done and out there, and I'm hoping it will do some good in helping to get the word out about the gigantic folly that is our increasingly militarised and draconian border infrastructure and the frightening loss of our constitutional rights as a nation.