Honduran dictatorship, day 428

One more little tidbit on how the US addressed the seizure of power in Honduras fromWikileaks:

On October 6-7, SOUTHCOM Civilian Deputy Commander Ambassador Paul Trivelli visited Costa Rica and met with senior GOCR officials, including President Arias. The consistent theme throughout Amb. Trivelli’s visit was GOCR requests for further security-related assistance via the Merida Initiative, SOUTHCOM, or other funding sources. On Honduras, President Arias told Amb. Trivelli he believed the visa revocations for top de facto government leaders were having an effect and added that even more visa sanctions
might pressure the de factos to sign the San Jose Accord.

The US did nothing to respond to the requests of Arias for more sanctions.

There’s plenty of other stuff going on. Rus posted that Honduras is creating “charter cities” where Honduran law would not apply (Lobo says it would, but that’s pretty doubtful). He questions whether there’s a comparison with Michigan, because Michigan’s law applies to established cities in financial trouble, while in Honduras, membership in the cities would be voluntary (assuming your land wasn’t seized by eminent domain). He’s probably right: Hondurans are freer.

The Economist just posted a delusional article saying things are getting back to normal at almost the same moment that Human Rights Watch issued a report on the systematic intimidation of Leo Valladares Lanza and reminds us of their recent report which documents 47 cases of threats or attacks – including 18 killings – against journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists since the inauguration of President Porfirio Lobo in January 2010. The lack of accountability – and ongoing violence and threats – have had a chilling effect on free speech and political participation in Honduras. And the price of beans, a key staple by which the majority of Hondurans get the bulk of the protein in their diet, have doubled since August of last year, probably largely due to speculation. Let the good times roll, Economist!

But The Economist is no more delusional than the State Department, which has essentially asserted that the only reason there is so much violence in Honduras is that the government is busy fending off demonstrators, who are laying land mines on the Nicaraguan border (these were installed with aid of US taxpayer money during the Contra War of the 1980s). Maybe it’s just poor editing on the part of State, but it certainly looks like an intent to mislead.

One good thing: Engineers Without Borders is helping out. There’s a kind of amusing typo in the piece, though: “there is a continuous water source approximately 1,240 miles from El Chingo and Las Penitas.” That would be the Rio Grande, I guess. I also had to chuckle about the misfortune of people being born in a town called Chingo. Aside from being the first person present of the verb for fornication, it has a variety of other meanings, none particularly lofty.

Also good: The American Anthropological Association adopted a resolution by Adrienne condemning Florida International University for its very un-scholarly association with Southcom in producing “strategic culture” reports to, in my opinion, assist the Pentagon in propagandizing, destabilizing, and manipulating foreign nations.

And Brother John has a nice post on Lent. For the wealthy, it should mean giving up material goods, especially food, to give to the poor. For the poor, he quotes Archbishop Romero, Lent never ends, and so Lent becomes a time to clothe the suffering of want with the cross. In other words, it is a time to understand that the suffering of this life has meaning, a meaning just as profound as Jesus’s self-sacrifice. Indeed, in that suffering we become part of the body of Christ and bear a portion of His suffering for Him. The theology is deep, difficult for a non-Christian to even glimpse.

Marcy Winograd to run again

Here’s the link. Debra Bowen and Janice Hahn, party regulars are also in.

I hope the district thinks long and hard about whether they want another Democratic regular.

The Key To Wisconsin: The Supreme Court Election

David Dayen speaks. You listen:

I hope the attention isn’t removed from that state Supreme Court election on April 5, which would tip the balance of power on the bench to the Democrats. Because these Republicans have shown that their response to the rules is to break them. Already today, rumors are flying about a bill that would change the recall requirements in Wisconsin. Now, I would imagine that would have to come in the form of a constitutional amendment, a process which would take a number of years and votes by successive legislatures and the people in a referendum. So I don’t see how that could affect the current recalls going forward. Nevertheless, there will almost surely be efforts to change the rules mid-stream, and those will have to be adjudicated. And they’ll probably work their way up to the state Supreme Court. And so the race between David Prosser and JoAnn Kloppenburg takes on that much more significance.

You know what to do.

(Crossposted at Renaissance Post.)