Pretzel logic in Honduras
The Micheletti regime, about 4 am this morning, violently dislodged the protesters outside the Brazilian embassy with tear gas, pepper spray and water canons. Radio Globo reports THEY SUSPENDED THE CONSTITUTION and declared a state of emergency. Among the rights suspended are the right of free circulation and assembly.
So much for the argument that the “de facto government” was merely upholding the country’s hastily written 1982 Constitution.
Hermano Juancito was able to post at his usual time (about 7:30 in the evening his time):
Earlier today a military convoy sent to shut down the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso in Yoro but people came and defended the station nonviolently.
There are some other nonviolent efforts. I heard on Radio Globo (operating for a while on generators) that a few legislators opposed to the coup may be initiating a hunger strike on the grounds of the Congress building.
I pray and hope that this continues to be nonviolent. I believe that the Resistance is now committed to nonviolence but what about the military and police?
The military (or at least their leaders) have not yet heard from Brother Juanito and the Jesuits friend in high places:
Honduras Coup’s early morning post adds:
There are many people hurt, and reports of at leaast one death as a result. Update: Adrienne Pine, reporting that police are surrounding the hospital where the wounded were brought, says there were “17 critically injured patients (3 already dead)”. Vos el Soberano reports that the police have surrounded the hospital with the injured and are removing them to an unknown location.
A friend who lives a couple of kilometers from the Brazilian embassy wrote at 4:30 this morning to report hearing gunshots:
We can hear gun shots and more from our house, about 2km from the Brazilian Embassy. There are hundreds injured. We can hear many gunshots.
This as Martha Lorena Alvarado, of the de facto regime, denies that any shots were fired.
[Military head] Romeo Vasquez Velasquez said “we will maintain the order no matter what the cost. “
The military has occupied the Boulevard de los Proceres closing it, and surrounds the Brazilian embassy. They have stationed a military truck with loudspeakers outside the Brazilian embassy and are broadcasting the National Anthem at full volume. They’ve stationed sharpshooters on top of the buildings around the Brazilian embassy.
Jornada published this photo of the police outside the Embassy:
The plant lady from La Ceiba (whose prior to the coup had not, as she claimed, posted regularly on news and culture… unless you count a couple of posts on her servant problems as political news) — but is mentioned as a “reliable source” by several right wing U.S. sites, is asking her English-speaking readers to skew opinion polls at Spanish language sites like Univision.
Radio Globo is still on the air (though it doesn’t have power throughout the country, and the internet connection is off and on), calling for non-violent resistance.
Quotha.net has updates on the violent crackdown:
What began yesterday with a popular surprise party, following the unexpected arrival of President Zelaya to national territory, has become a savage persecution extending throughout the city against the women and men of the resistance.
Stupidity — one white man’s burden
Josh Trevino, (not Treviño), one of the founders of the far-right wing U.S. website “Red State” proves twits “twitter”:
So, I guess Mexico City born telenovela actress Adela Amalia Noriega Méndez
… is secretly a gringa. I wonder if Trevino would let blonds “pass”…
It’s only rock-n-roll (and salsa and reggeton and hip-hop and…) but I like it, yes I do
If you weren’t one of the somewhere between several hundred thousand and 1.15 million who managed to get into Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion last Sunday for the “Paz Sin Fronteras” concert, Erwin at Our Latin America has posted a rebroadcast from Yahoo en Español.
Alex Alvarez at Guanabee tries to read some political message into the whole thing (or at least into the wish for a “Cuba libre” … which doesn’t mean one run by old geezers from Miami). Alex wasn’t the only one searching for great meaning:
Sunday’s “peace concert” headlined by Colombian singer Juanes in Havana elicited death threats to the Latin Grammy-award winner, Miami rallies where protesters smashed his CDs, international arguments over politics and music in Cuba, and even a comment from President Obama.
Geeze, it was a concert, and a long one at that… about six hours. Lots of good acts and the whole point was to get Latin Americas to get along with each other… which they did mostly.
If you want political, you should have been listening to Radio Globo in Tegucigalpa. Somebody has been working overtime in the studio… I don’t think I’d ever heard a reggaton version of “Marcha con esparanza Zelaya” before… or any other version… until now. Nothing like a revolution you can dance to.
CNN and Miguel Bose said there were over a million people here... but Metro Havana is only 2.7 million. Still, a lot more than turned out for the Teabagging party in Washington. Better entertainment.
Hey, how'd those Mexicans get in there?
Honduras, Guanajuato updates
There are wholesale defections (including much of Micheletti and Mel Zelay’s own Liberal Party) to the resistance. The de facto government attempted at 3:33 in the afternoon to slap a 4 PM curfew on the country, but it appears “curfew will not ring tonight”. Al Giordino’s live-blogging (The Field) mentions several attempts to cut electricity and communications around the Brazilian Embassy, which have failed so far… electricians in the resistance showed up with generators. (By 8:30 Radio Globo was reporting that the streets around the Embassy had been blocked by taxis, pickup trucks, buses, etc. to prevent military units from moving into the area).
Radio Globo seems to be on the air, though (at 8:10 my time) there was an official announcement from the de facto government reminding people that the curfew was still in effect… which the announcers are now making fun of. Globo is reporting that thousands have surrounded the Brazilian Embassy (where the Zelaya government has set up headquarters) but there have been mass arrests.
From what I’ve caught of TeleSURtv it also looks as if the police have joined the resistance.
IN ANOTHER VICTORY IN THE CONTINUING BATTLE FOR COMMON SENSE... the State of Guanajuato has been forced to withdraw their sex miseducation books and will be using the national curriculum for 7th grade biology and health classes.
A good day, all around.
Honduras: Zelaya back? And does it matter?
Telesur, as well as Mexican and Venezuelan news sources are reporting that Manuel Zelaya is back in Tegucigalpa, while the Associated Press, quoting the “de facto government” spokesperson René Zepeda says “you lie!” (AFP via Jornada, W Radio).
AFP quotes Brazilian diplomats in Honduras confirming the story (but I haven’t seen the article myself, and only got it second-hand). BoRev, who is live-blogging the Return of Melvis, adds what the press has been reporting, that Zelaya is in the Brazilian Embassy, speaking to supporters.
With only 68 days until the Presidential elections, and with candidates selected under the coup regime, it’s somewhat disappointing (although not unexpected) to hear Barack Obama again claiming that the “compromise” worked out by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias could — if implemented — legitimize these elections. Obama was interviewed on Univision’s Sunday news program, Al Punto. That’s a bit of a stretch, but the United States is finally starting to react towards the coup, closing the Honduran Consulate in Los Angeles over the weekend.
As it is, Zeleya is, at this point, probably irrelevant except as a symbolic figure. The predictable Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal spins a Congressional Research Service report on Honduras to repeat the line that a coup is not a coup when there is a legalistic interpretation of one law that would legitimately allowed for Zelaya’s removal from office, conveniently ignoring the fact that forcing his removal by military force was a coup. But, the point is that the candidates allowed to stand for office are not candidates for “change”… which is what the opposition is hoping for.
Real News interviews film-maker Oscar Estrada, who reports that Zeleya’s political future isn’t all that important, but that, as a result of overthrowing the theoretical chance of reform in Honduras, the coup leaders have created a coalition of campesinos, the urban poor, the Garifuna minority (Afro-Indigenous Hondurans), urban intellectuals, leftists, gays, students and clerics which are increasingly demanding genuine structural changes in the country.
Al Giordino (The Field) has also been live-blogging, but took the time to add some context to his post:
The return of Zelaya has all the markings of a very well coordinated operation by the Honduran civil resistance and the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS). The choice of Brazil’s embassy – the Latin American country with the largest Air Force – pretty much guarantees that the coup regime can’t possibly think it can violate the sovereignty of that space. That the US State Department confirmed, this morning, that Zelaya is in Honduras while the coup regime denied it strongly suggests it had advance knowledge that this would happen today (if not active participation).
This is a textbook example of what we’ve referred to before as “dilemma actions.” It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country’s own people – which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) – or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history.
French-language blogger killed on Islas Mujeres
Renée Wathelet, a 60-year old Belgian born Canadian, and part-time resident of Islas Mujeres, was murdered Thursday.
Wathelet, who had worked as a Montreal financial adviser, was developing a following for her sailing blog, “”Profession: nomade” and her Isla Mujares travel blog, En direct des iles“. Her last post, for the latter of these two sites, was time-stamped about an hour before she was stabbed during what was either a robbery, or a domestic dispute.
The presumed killer, 24-year-old José Joaquin Palacios Garaza, was apprehended at the scene. Palacios appears to have a severe mental illness, complicating any simple story line. Some news items say he is a resident of Monterrey (a very long way from Islas Mujares) while others suggest a sentimental relationship. The English-language Montreal Gazette writes:
On [En direct des iles] Wathelet speaks of a boatman named Jose, with whom she had enjoyed “walks on the beach and one (or several) cold beers”. The blog item, dated Sept. 7, includes a photo of a young man on the beach, from the back. The blog item does not identify the man’s family name.
Wathelet wrote of “Jose’s” kindness and humour, as he answered her numerous questions about local history, landmarks and politics. She called him a “veritable encyclopedia” and even suggested she would begin a special blog feature where she would share his stories, titled Jose Tells Me.
The National Post, true to form, lists every violent death of a Canadian in Mexico over the last several years, mixing in those killed by falls with gangland rubouts (yup, even Canada has gangsters) with robberies … a disservice to this tragedy.
What’s the matter with Guanajuato?
A couple of years ago, a single mom friend of mine was tied up one afternoon, and asked me to help her 11-year old with his school project. For his Biology class, he had to do a show and tell, which required using a condom. It wasn’t so much the creepy idea of going with an 11-year old kid to the farmacia for condoms that surprised me, as buying them for a class at a Catholic school. OK, the nun teaching biology was French, but then again, this was Mexico City, which is relatively enlightened and normal.
Mexico has good sex education, and has been held up as a model to other countries, so this shocks me. Translated from El Universal, via Debate de Sinaloa:
The Guanajuato Department of Education (SEG, for its initials in Spanish) has removed the images of sexual organs and has added moral precepts to the state’s seventh grade biology text.
According to the new text, “abstinence and faithfulness” have an effect of reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortion. “For many people, virginity is a treasure we want to deliver to the most important person in his life,” the text states.
“The only 100% guaranteed method to avoid AIDS and other STDs is to wait until marriage”, the book, published in July, says about sexually transmitted diseases.
SEG eliminated the illustrations and texts dealing with the human reproductive system. These are issues requiring “technical knowledge and moral judgments,” said state Secretary of Education, Alberto Diosdado.
The publication attempts to inhibit the use of contraceptive methods, promotes natural methods of birth control and lists its negative effects on women.
Procreation can only have a framework within marriage. “Masturbation is limited to providing individual pleasure: a selfish joy without the participation of another person”; “the emergency contraceptive pill can give you cancer of the womb” are some concepts included in the section on sexuality and health.
When asked why they eliminated explicit images of male and female sexual organs of the book, the official argued that it was for didactic and pedagogical reasons and and to strengthen a more humanistic approach to education.
Diosdado asserts that state autonomy allows the SEG to consider the needs of Guanajuato, without seeking approval from the Federal Department of Public Education (SEP).
“All state Departments of Education are free to make adjustments according to the characteristics of states. What we did is appropriate according to the needs and concerns that others have already raised during previous textbook reviews,” said Diosdado.
He said that adjustments were made to the text to make it easier to teach sex education, a topic that requires technical knowledge.
The state official further justified the changes by adding that “this [the biology text] only adds to the important contribution of parents, who are absolutely responsible for sex education, and we, the educational authorities, are only instruments in this process.¨”
The official said that state education in this area is “only in addition to the parents, who make the most important contribution, and have absolute responsibility, for sexual education. As educational authority, we only participate in this process.”
However, Juan Carlos Moreno, Director of General Services for SEP [which is responsible for printing and distributing educational material to students and schools nationally] said that state textbooks must meet the federal standards approved by SEP.
“Texts are reviewed by us based on the comprehensive reforms in basic education. In this case, Guanajuato´s Biological Sciences text — as far as sex education is concerned — should conform to the reformed federal standards.
“Of course, being already in the classrooms, we assumed it had been approved.”
Jose Manuel Velasco, President of the Confederación Nacional de Escuelas Particularesm [the Mexican branch of an inter-Latin American Catholic School organization] welcomed the changes to the Biology text.
“Fortunately Guanajuato is one of the healthiest states from the moral standpoint of the country. We do not need to fall into the “perversions” — to use the correct term — you find elsewhere,” he said.
Besides removing images of human sexuality and reproduction in the state biology textbooks, there is mention of a local constitutional change, adopted this May, which guarantees the right to life beginning at conception.
Patrick Corcoran, at Gancho, scooped me on this (though I had bookmarked it to translate before I saw his post. Honest!). Like I do he notes that Guanajuato sometimes resembles some of the wackier regions of the United States — not just in sexual matters (we’re talking about the State where the largest city’s administration tried to outlaw public displays of affection, after all) — but, if you re-read what the State Education Secretary is saying, in emulating the “states’ rights” movement up north.
Guanajuato has been a hotbed (if that’s the right word) of the piety wing of PAN, but I’m still wondering if San Miguel de Allende didn’t get an influx of Texans… or the perversions associated with gringos in Mexico didn’t drive their neighbors to this extreme (and frankly bizarre) reaction.
OH?
Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents.
A report, released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), also says $6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.
The US Border Patrol, for its part, agrees with some findings but says several conclusions are unknowable because building the wall has no precedent…
Money laundering in the spin cycle
Of course, USA Today headlines it “Mexico asks for help…”. Nah, Mexico wants to know where their citizens — including those in the (ahem) Andean agricultural transport industry — are hiding their assets:
… Mexico is seeking financial data from foreign banks where its citizens are suspected of hiding assets.
But the accounts being targeted aren’t in Switzerland or other historic tax havens. They’re in the U.S.
Mexico Secretary of Finance Agustin Carstens outlined the strategy in a Feb. 9 letter seeking help for the tax crackdown from U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He wrote that some Mexicans have stashed funds in U.S. banks, knowing the assets won’t be disclosed back home.
Carstens. .. wrote, “We simply are allowing both the tax avoiders and the criminals to move their money untaxed and benefit from it.”
He asked Geithner to authorize data exchanges on interest banks in one country pay to residents of the other — a system the U.S. and Mexico have with Canada.
Such a mechanism would “provide us with a powerful tool to detect, prevent and combat tax evasion, money laundering, terrorist financing, drug trafficking and organized crime,” Carstens wrote.
The Treasury Department said it had answered the request but wouldn’t provide details…
In a related note, Inca Kola picked up on something that looks shadier and shadier, fallout from an already shady operation:
A security director for the shuttered Stanford Financial Group, and a deputy, were indicted for their alleged role in obstructing the probe of group’s alleged $7 billion fraud, court documents unsealed on Thursday showed.
That´s not the interesting part. The security director in question is Tom Raffanello:
… who before joining Stanford was chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office, was taken into a Fort Lauderdale federal courtroom in shackles on Friday to face charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and destroying records.
Raffanello served as the global security chief for Stanford Financial Group (SFG), the Texas-based banking company accused in an alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme that bilked investors who bought certificates of deposit from Stanford’s Caribbean bank.
Stanford is widely assumed “on the street” (in biz-speak) to have been laundering money for the narcotics industry, and Raffanello is the second high-level D.E.A. former official indicted in Florida on felony charges this week.
Stay tuned.
Pedro who?
The Reverend Peter Marshall, as one of three co-authors of The Light and the Glory for Children: Discovering God’s Plan for America from Christopher Columbus to George Washington is — according to the lights of Texas governor Rick Perry — qualified to be one of six “experts” selected by the Texas Board of Education to revise the state’s social studies curriculum.
The Rev. objects to including teaching Texas school children about César Chavez (1927 -1993), whose birthday (31 March) is a Texas state holiday, and proposes as an alternative “hispanic” role model, Pedro Flores (1915 -1979).
Arizona born Chavez was an early civil rights leader, who worked in California and the southwest in the 1950s registering Spanish-speaking and Mexican-American voters. In 1962, with Delores Huerta, he co-founded the United Farm Workers’ union, which was responsible for closing down the abusive “bracero” program (spun by the anti-immigration organizations in the United States to suggest he opposed “illegal” immigration), immigration reform and numerous labor, heath and safety reforms in agriculture and food processing. His birthday (31 March) is a state holiday in Texas, and numerous schools, streets and other public facilities are named in his honor. He was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
Flores, a Filipino immigrant, manufactured yo-yos in Santa Barbara, California between 1928 and 1932.
Amnesty for illegals!
The US embassy estimates more than one million Americans are living south of the border, so Mexico has decided amnesty is the best solution.
Some come for the culture, others for the cost. From Mexican border towns to beaches, more and more Americans make their homes in Mexico. Some entered the country with tourist visas and simply overstayed.
That means they’re illegal immigrants. Currently, the Mexican government is offering them the chance to come forward and fix their status without facing a penalty…
Addiction is not a crime, Supremes rule
The string of “executions” (a polite word for mass slaughter) at addictions treatment centers in Juarez highlighted a possible problem with the changes in the drug possession laws. Although the Chihuahua State Prosecutor’s office (often accused of being inept and jejune about criminal investigations) makes a good point when they say that addictions treatment centers are sometimes used as hideouts by gangsters on the lam, there is the more serious problem that the centers that have been attacked were unlicensed facilities and there is no good oversight of private treatment facilities.
What constitutes treatment, and who would be sent to treatment under the “reformed” drug law was not clear. With no definition of what “treatment” was mandated, this could mean anything from attendance at 12-step meetings (which believe their success depends on voluntary mutual assistance, and refuse state sponsorship) to religious centers (as at least two of the Juarez centers were) to for-profit facilities run by the same folks who run them in the United States. In other words, a boondoggle ripe with possibilities for fraud.
A second problem was that identifying an “addict” is largely a matter of police discretion. Ideally, it isn’t worth the officer’s time and trouble to detain users, but there is the danger that an officer might pick on someone, or single out a regular user for “special consideration.”
Finally, the Constitution — in Article I — specifically states that “All discrimination motivated by … health conditions… or anything else that may be against human dignity and have as its object to restrict or reduce the rights and liberties of persons, remains prohibited.
The Supreme Court (or six out of five of them, anyway) agreed that drug addiction is a health condition.
(translated from an 18 September El Universal report by Carlos Avilés Allende):
The Supreme Court has issued a ruling that is intended to ensure that drug addicts are not treated as criminals, but as patients.
In a close six to five decision, the high court declared that Article 199 of the Federal Penal Code, adopted August 19, was unconstitutional in that it requires the prosecution of addicts caught in possession of drugs for personal consumption.
The Court ruling protects an addict who was arrested with a quantity of cocaine for personal use, and faced a series of trials. It ensures that he remains at liberty, and sets aside is criminal record.
With Minister Jose Ramon Cossio casting the deciding vote, the majority of Court Ministers ruled the article was discriminatory and therefore, in violation of the constitution.
The reasoning is that under Article 199, drug addicts in possession of a legally allowable amount of narcotics are held for trial, while those who are drug users, but deny being addicts, are freed without being is is because that article, they explained, allowed the drug addicts they are appropriated and put to trial if they were found with a quantity of drugs for consumption, though eventually they were left at liberty, “while those who were detained in the same conditions, but said they were not addicts, were freed without any record being made of the incident.
Article 199 of the Federal Criminal Code came into force on August 20, as part of a package of drug-smuggling reforms, and included, among other things, the decriminalization of drug possession in quantities considered being for personal consumption.
Under the reform, a prosecutor may not initiate a criminal action if the person holds less than 500 milligrams of cocaine, 500 grams of cannabis or marijuana, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine, 2 grams of opium or 50 milligrams of heroin, among other drugs.
At the same time, while the law stipulates that addiction treatment is the responsiblity of the Secretariat of Health, addicts were subject to prosecution in criminal courts.
The importance of the decision rendered by the Supreme Court lies in practice, as it endorses the reforms, while closing the possibility of any future prosecutions of addicts. In addition, the court ruling will probably end the prosecution of addicts who are being tried for offenses committed under the old law.
mexfiles.net 