Portrait of Alex, an organizer from Media Democracy Day, made by chingcua with the use of markers.

Pencil sketch of a Jose supporter by C. gloriosa superba.

tireless activist, jose figueroa, fighting for the rights of his own life but also for his children and wife’s rights, and for the rights of all those refugees and immigrants dealing with unjust deportation

download/listen to the free radio broadcast interview here: http://www.coopradio.org/content/politics-re-spun-30

Jose, son and other activists @ Day of Action for Refugees Health Dec 15th 2012.

A digital portrait of Sylvia Richardson, radio host of Latin Waves, drawn by Marvin Caynap on his Samsung phone. Apparently it took him only 30 minutes. I’m calling him Guru Marvin from now on.

Pencil sketch of one of Jose’s daughters by C. gloriosa superba. She’s a Canadian citizen, and she doesn’t want her family to get deported for no reason.

Pencil sketch of Victoria by C. gloriosa superba.

What do you guys think of this blog post from The Economist?

The GTI uses four indicators to measure the impact of terrorism: the number of terrorist incidents, the number of deaths, the number of casualties and the level of property damage. These indicators are used to create a weighted five year average for each country, which takes into account the lasting effects of terrorism.

The score given to each country therefore indicates the impact of a terrorist attack on a society in terms of the fear and subsequent security response.“

They define terrorism as a violent act by a non-state actor. They’re not counting violence by state actors. Am I the only one that sees this is as problematic? So an effective violent dictatorship is terrorist-free territory, yeah? Look at how squeaky-clean North Korea is on this map.

I think that this problematic definition of terrorism is partly responsible for the unjust deportation order on Jose Figueroa today. Jose was a student organizer for the FMLN, which was back then, a non-state actor that resisted a repressive dictatorship that used death squads on the populace. But I don’t think that student organizers are terrorists, nor is it wrong to stand up against a violent dictatorship.

(I say partly responsible, because the rest of the responsibility lies on the hands of immigration policymakers and that ignorant Canadian Border Services Agency officer who couldn’t bother to look up "FMLN” on Wikipedia.)