Month: October 2009

Written by Laura Carlsen

Source: Americas MexicoBlog

The good news is that Washington has finally begun to take stronger actions on Honduras .

The bad news is that the actions completely contradict each other, resulting in ambiguity, paralysis and infighting as the Honduran crisis explodes.

For many months, the news out of the U.S. capital focused on contradictions between multilateral resolutions to condemn the coup, the scarce but firm remarks from President Obama and fudging from the State Department. At the same time, the Pentagon kept true to its image of the strong-but-silent-type, not responding to confirm or deny accusations that its base at Palmerola played a role in the abduction of President Zelaya, that it invited the Armed Forces of the coup regime to participate in PANAMAX exercises last month, or that its military presence in Honduras was tacitly supporting the coup.

All these contradictions still exist. But now members of the U.S. Congress and private sector have made coherent policy even more unlikely by openly working to oppose the U.S. official position.

Congress Faces Off

A small minority group in the U.S. House and Senate is determined to support the Honduran coup regime despite official government policy to oppose it. In a showdown that reveals the depths of the division in Congress, conservative Senator Jim DeMint announced a plan to travel to Honduras with three fellow Republicans ( U.S. Representatives Aaron Schock R-Illinois, Peter Roskam R-Illinois and Doug Lamborn R-Colorado). DeMint has been outspoken in saying that the military coup in Honduras is legal and constitutional, outright rejecting the UN and Organization of American States resolutions that the Obama administration voted to approve.

Head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry, refused to approve Committee financing for the trip. DeMint credits Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell for getting around Kerry’s refusal to fund his coup-tour by obtaining a plane from the Defense Department. He does not define this as a “fact-finding trip” as much of the press has falsely re-dubbed it. Instead, he explicitly announces the political bias of his publicly funded Honduran jaunt, writing on Twitter, “Leading delegation to Honduras tomorrow to support Nov. 29 elections. Hondurans should be able to choose their own future.”

The U.S. government, along with other governments in the hemisphere, has announced that it will not recognize the Nov. 29 Honduran elections if they are held under the military coup.

DeMint lashed out at Kerry’s move, calling it “bullying.” Kerry shot back that DeMint was blocking development of government Latin America policy.

But Kerry’s office wasn’t referring to DeMint’s anti-democratic stance on Honduras . He was referring to the DeMint-led veto on key Obama diplomatic appointments to Latin America . Under Senate law, if a single senator objects to a nomination, the Senate must muster 60 votes to overcome the objection. The Democrats currently have only 59, counting independents. This means that DeMint can apparaently indefinitely block Obama’s appointments to major posts in Latin American diplomacy. The region is the only one that still does not have a new under-secretary of state to coordinate policy, since the nominee, Arturo Valenzuela, has not been approved.

The second Congressional practitioner of renegade diplomacy is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Florida Congresswoman is planning to visit Honduras in the coming weeks. It’s pretty clear why Ros-Lehtinen goes out on a limb to defend the Honduran coup. Of Cuban descent, she’s virulently anti-Castro and jumps on any opportunity to attack center-left governments in Latin America , particularly ones with ties to Venezuela .

Ros-Lehtinen describes her presumably public-funded trip with a bias that’s inexplicit about its opposition to the official policy of the country she ostensibly represents: “I am traveling to Honduras to conduct my own assessment of the situation on the ground and the state of U.S. interests in light of the U.S. ‘s misguided Zelaya-focused approach,” she stated.

The Congresswoman plans to meet with Micheletti, business leaders, the US Embassy and other members of the coup. She had a meeting scheduled with Honduran businessman Alfredo Facusse in Miami last week but Facusse, a supporter of the coup, had his visa revoked under the U.S. State Department measure to sanction the coup.

This would be but a last gasp of the fading ultra-conservative Florida Cuban group were it not for the fact that Ros-Lehtinen has power in Congress. Due to her seniority—she has been a member since 1989—she is currently a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

UDW

Some moderate conservatives see danger in the vociferous right, especially among broadcast pot-stirrers. They want to advance the GOP by changing the tone.

By Brad Knickerbocker

“I am not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously quipped. “I am a Democrat.” Then there were those old jokes about Democrats forming “circular firing squads.”

But these days, it seems like Republicans are the ones duking it out with each other … or at least examining where they are and where they should be headed after recent electoral drubbings.

Mainstream Republicans are looking at the loudest of the conservative voices — Sarah Palin and the most prominent of the talk-show types (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al) — and concluding that the GOP needs to do something different if it’s to succeed.

Steve Schmidt, former campaign strategist for John McCain, said Friday that nominating former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for president in 2012 would be “catastrophic” for the party.

“In the year since the election has ended, she has done nothing to expand her appeal beyond the base,” Schmidt said at a forum sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and web site.

“The independent vote is going to be up for grabs in 2012,” he said. “That middle of the electorate is going to be determinative of the outcome of the elections. I just don’t see that if you look at the things she has done over the year … that she is going to expand that base in the middle.”

Meanwhile, Schmidt’s old boss “is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image,” reports politico.com. That means recruiting candidates, raising money, and campaigning on their behalf.

“Those familiar with McCain’s thinking say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”

Speaking at the same two-day Atlantic event as Schmidt, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina said party leaders need to call out “birthers” and other conspiracy theorists on the right. “Say, ‘You’re crazy.’ In a respectful way.”

CSM

David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring

The comparative study of death penalty policy is a relatively new and unpracticed discipline, and few of the existing studies concentrate on regional rather than global comparisons.¹ This article makes the case for a regional approach by summarizing some of the most important findings from our book about capital punishment in Asia.² That book is based on five major case studies of capital punishment in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and China (chapters 3-7), and seven shorter case studies of capital punishment in North Korea, Hong Kong and Macao, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and India (appendices A-F).

Part one of this article summarizes death penalty policy and practice in the region that accounts for 60 percent of the world’s population and more than 90 percent of the world’s executions. The lessons from Asia are then organized into three parts. Part two describes features of death penalty policy in Asia that are consistent with the experiences recorded in Europe and with the theories developed to explain Western changes. Part three identifies some of the most significant diversities within the Asian region – in rates of execution, trends over time, and patterns of change – that contrast with the recent history of capital punishment in non-Asian locations and therefore challenge conventional interpretations of death penalty policy and change. Part four discusses three ways that the politics of capital punishment in Asia are distinctive: the limited role of international standards and transnational influences in most Asian jurisdictions; the presence of single-party domination in several Asian political systems; and the persistence of communist versions of capital punishment in the Asia region.

Overall, the study of death penalty policy in Asia confirms many of the major themes that have emerged from studies of the post-war European and Commonwealth experiences. Most notably, there have been declines in executions as a tool of crime control and in the political reputation of state execution in the region. Economic development and political democracy are both correlated with declining executions and with the abolition of capital punishment, but neither prosperity nor democracy is a sufficient condition for ending the death penalty. Concerns about the concentration of state power and its misuse are as prominent a theme in anti-death penalty rhetoric in Asia as they are in the West, and the most important feature of Asian nations that predicts their level of execution is not culture or crime rate but rather the nature of the political regime. Only authoritarian governments execute with any frequency in Asia , and most of the hard line authoritarian states in Asia where high rates of execution continue to occur are communist. Thus, while the political circumstances of Asia are different from those found in other parts of the world, the influence of political characteristics on death penalty policy are similar.

JF

The most practical and just solution in Palestine is not two states but democracy and equal rights, writes John Whitbeck

The desperate and desultory New York “summit” of Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas and the evident capitulation of Obama to Israeli defiance of even his minimalist effort to achieve mere maintenance of the status quo have left most observers who genuinely seek peace with some measure of justice in an understandable state of despair.

However, there is an alternative to despair — breaking free from the partition straitjacket and runaround and demanding democracy and equal rights for all in the unitary state which, de facto, has already existed for the past 42 years.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ever to be solved, peace-seekers must dare to speak openly and honestly of the “Zionism problem”, and then to draw the moral, ethical and practical conclusions which follow.

When South Africa was under a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime, the world recognised that the problem was the ideology and political system of the state.

The world also recognised that the solution to that problem could not be found either in “separation” ( apartheid in Afrikaans) and scattered native reservations (called “independent states” by the South African regime and “Bantustans” by the rest of the world) or in driving the settler-colonial group in power into the sea. Rather, the solution had to be found — and, to almost universal satisfaction and relief, was found — in democracy in white South Africans growing out of their racial-supremacist ideology and political system and accepting that their interests and their children’s futures would be best served in a democratic, non-racist state with equal rights for all who live there.

The solution for the land that, until it was literally wiped off the map in 1948, was called Palestine is the same. It can only be democracy.

The ever-receding “political horizon” for a decent “two- state solution”, which on the ground becomes less practical with each passing year of expanding settlements, bypass roads and walls, is weighed down by a multitude of excruciatingly difficult “final status” issues that Israeli governments have consistently refused to discuss seriously, preferring to postpone them to the end of a road that is never reached, and which, almost certainly, is intended never to be reached.

Just as marriage is vastly less complicated than divorce, democracy is vastly less complicated than partition. A democratic post-Zionist solution would not require any borders to be agreed, any division of Jerusalem, anyone to move from his current home, or any assets to be evaluated and apportioned. Full rights of citizenship would simply be extended to all the surviving natives still living in the country, as happened in the United States in the early 20th century and in South Africa in the late 20th century.

The obstacle to such a simple and morally unimpeachable solution is, of course, intellectual and psychological. Traumatised by the Holocaust and perceived insecurity as a Jewish island in an Arab sea, Israelis have immense psychological problems in coming to grips with the practical impossibility of sustaining eternally what most of mankind, composed as it is of peoples who have themselves been victims of colonialism and racism, view as an abomination: a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime founded upon the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population.

Perhaps this New York “summit” will be the last gasp of the fruitless pursuit of a separatist solution for those who live, and will continue to live, in the “Holy Land”. Perhaps those who care about justice and peace and believe in democracy can then find ways to stimulate Israelis to move beyond Zionist ideology and attitudes towards a more humanistic, humane, hopeful and democratic view of present realities and future possibilities.

WA

Written by Alvaro Huerta, Source: The Progressive Magazine

The American government, in my opinion, contributed to the deaths of my parents by not providing universal health care.

In every other advanced industrial nation, they would have received quality health care as a right.

Here they did not.

My father first came to this country as an agricultural worker from Mexico during the Bracero Program, and he and my mother settled in the United States legally, with work permits, in the late 1960s.

He later worked dead-end jobs in different factories while my mother labored as a domestic worker — cleaning the homes of countless middle-class Americans — for more than 40 years.

Neither of them accumulated enough wealth to afford a home of their own for my siblings and me, much less afford private health care.

My father died in 1996 after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer. My mother died earlier this year after a major stroke left her bedridden for many months.

If only my father and mother had access to government-supported health care before the symptoms of prostate cancer and heart problems reached a critical stage, they might have lived many years longer.

Most doctors will tell a patient, for example, that with regular checkups, proper diet, medications and exercise, severe medical conditions such as prostate cancer and heart complications can be treatable. But they couldn’t afford the regular checkups that could have extended their lives.

We need universal health care in this country, or at the very least a public option that will cover the 47 million Americans without coverage today.

Isn’t it hypocritical that the conservatives in Congress who ferociously attack the public option themselves benefit from a public option. As taxpayers, we not only pay their salaries but we also provide them with a health care insurance plan they can access. And if they are seniors or veterans, they’re already covered by a public option that works well: Medicare or Veterans Affairs.

It makes no sense for President Obama and Democrats in Congress to reach a bipartisan agreement with a conservative party that is beholden to special interests — the existing private health care industry — and that is diametrically opposed to domestic government programs that benefit the public.

At the end of the day, any bill that excludes a public option would represent just another case of corporate power prevailing over the public interest, of Wall Street conquering Main Street.

Once again, the less fortunate would lose out to people of privilege, who could afford the skyrocketing costs of premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

It was just these costs that my parents couldn’t cover — and they paid with their lives.

Now, my 10-year-old son, Joaquin, has no paternal grandparents. He misses them. So does my wife, Antonia. And so do I.

***

Alvaro Huerta is a Ph.D. student in the department of city and regional planning at the University of California — Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.orgThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it.

PROG

via

TF

Comrade Gaurav has recently been made one of the secretaries in the new Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN[M]) leadership structure. WPRM (Britain and Ireland) activists met him at the party office in Paris Dand  (Hill), Kathmandu, where we tried to get deeper into the issue of democracy, specifically the UCPN(M) concept of 21^st century democracy, of holding elections under New Democracy, and how this relates to the theory and practice of Cultural Revolution. Following is the transcript of this interview:

WPRM: In the current situation when the UCPN(M) has its sights set on New Democratic Revolution, it seems more important than ever to understand the party’s idea of 21^st century democracy, competitive elections under New Democracy and socialism, can you explain this concept to us?
Comrade Gaurav: Yes we are now in the stage of completing the New Democratic Revolution. The New Democratic system is not a socialist system. It is a bourgeois democratic system. The difference is that the revolution is made under the leadership of the proletariat. The old type of bourgeois democratic revolution took place under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, but the New Democratic Revolution will take place under the leadership of the proletariat. When it is led by the proletariat it will lead towards socialism and communism. On the other hand, if the bourgeois democratic revolution is being led by the capitalist class, it will either consolidate capitalism or, if it develops at all, it will develop towards imperialism. That is the difference. So New Democratic Revolution in this sense is not a socialist revolution, it is a bourgeois democratic revolution but it is led by the proletariat. And, when the proletariat leads this revolution and the revolution is completed, then immediately it will move towards socialism. It will not consolidate bourgeois democracy, it will move towards socialism. This debate was seriously carried out during 1956 in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). People like Deng Xiaoping said that since it is a bourgeois democratic revolution, it is the time to consolidate capitalism. But, Mao said that it should not be consolidated, it should go forward to socialism. This is the basic division between New Democracy and socialism. And, the question of which class is leading is the fundamental question.

So far as elections are concerned, under a New Democratic system there will be a broad  anti-feudal and anti-imperialist alliance. This will be the class character of New Democratic Revolution. It is certainly true that not all anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces are communists. But there should be a broad alliance of the UCPN(M) with different political forces who are anti-feudal and anti-imperialist. We have to recognise the existence of these other political forces, because they are the ally of the proletariat during New Democratic Revolution. Therefore, we have to guarantee their political freedom, and the political freedom of those parties has already been carried out in China also. In China, except for the CCP there were nine other political parties, all of which were anti-feudal and anti-imperialist. They competed and participated in elections with the CCP and some of them became ministers in the government. In our case also we have to recognise those forces. They are not communists but they are the allies of anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces, and they should be guaranteed political freedom.

When our party talks about multiparty competition or democracy, we are talking about our concept of ‘21^st Century Democracy’. The difference here however is that in China there was a condition, all anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces had to cooperate with the CCP. This was the precondition. But now our party is talking about allowing those political parties to compete even with the UCPN(M). In China there was a precondition, they were not allowed to compete but had to cooperate. In elections they made some sort of compromise or negotiation and they fixed candidates by consensus. In some constituencies the other parties put forward their candidate and the CCP did not. And in most other seats they did not have a candidate but supported the candidate of the CCP. But here in Nepal today we are talking about competition. All those political parties will be allowed to compete with the UCPN(M). We can have direct elections with those parties and the Maoists. That is the difference. We are formulating this kind of thing because the imperialists and the capitalists, who are the enemies of socialism and communism, accuse communist parties of not allowing other parties to compete. They say there is no competition, there is no democracy. And in fact, in the old way there was scope for those political parties to confuse the masses. For example, there is an election but there is only one candidate, and if everybody has to vote for the same candidate what is the meaning of this? It is something like selection. But we will make it clear that people can vote for their own candidates and that there will be more than two candidates for people to choose between.

Furthermore, we should give the people the right of recall. If the candidate elected by them is not competent, or is taking an anti-people road, the people’s right of recall will be assured. This is the type of thing we have to introduce in an electoral system. Only then can we assure the masses that they can vote for the candidate they like and it is a real election where there are many candidates. The election will have a definite meaning. If there is only one candidate then voting is meaningless. This is what we mean by ‘21^st Century Democracy’.

WPRM: How will this democracy and use of elections develop as New Democratic Revolution develops into the stage of socialism. Will there be more than one communist party at this time?

WPRMB

By Carlo Strenger

Professor Carlo Strenger was born in Basel, Switzerland, trained in philosophy and psychology and received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He currently teaches at the psychology department of Tel Aviv University, a member of the Institute of Existential Psychoanalysis, Zurich and of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists.

Sometimes it seems to me that the State of Israel is condemned to re- enact much of European history. One of processes that Israel has not completed is secularization; and we are forced to go through this process that took Europe centuries, in a few decades. I will argue that full secularization of the state is in the interest of religious Jews no less than it is desired by non-believers, and I call upon religious Jews to join the process of secularization.

Israel’s history, like that of Europe, has been determined in many ways by the tension between two conceptions of authority, revealed truth and critical inquiry. The conception of revealed truth has dominated most of human history: truth and values are based on a source that lies in the past, and whose validity is absolute. This is the basic structure of traditional religions that derive their authority from a presumed revelation in a mythical past.

The conception of critical inquiry has emerged in a series of enlightenment movements starting in India in the 6th century BCE and ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE, and gained historical prominence in Europe from the 17th century onwards. It denies that there are authorities that must be followed blindly. Instead it puts its trust in the combined effort of human beings to gradually inch closer to truth and justice.

========

Strenger’s research focuses on the topics of the development of individuality and the impact of Globalization on personal identity and he frequently lectures and conducts seminars in Europe and the U.S. on his topics of expertise. He has published five books including Individuality, the Impossible Project and The Designed Self, and numerous scientific articles.

In recent years, Strenger has felt compelled to take a more active stance on issues that matter to him, primarily the defense of individual liberty, the intellectual level of public discourse, and the striving for a sane solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He regularly voices his views through op-ed contributions in Haaretz and Britain‘s The Guardian.

HZ

How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to pop the champagne.  Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, has announced a second printing of the second edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and the noted civil libertarian and defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate, has just published a book covering many of the same legal cases and vetting our conclusion that in the United States every American is in grave danger from unscrupulous prosecutors who target the innocent.

For two decades I have been attempting to make Americans aware that the danger to their liberty comes not from foreign adversaries, terrorists, or criminals,  but from prosecutors, who have destroyed law as a shield of the innocent and turned law into a weapon against the innocent. The Tyranny of Good Intentions (the publisher’s title) documents how the legal principles that protect our civil liberties were eroded by prosecutors even before the Bush regime obliterated what remained of the Bill of Rights.

The struggle has been uphill, because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing is emotionally content with the facts that Stratton and I present. Conservatives tend to see civil liberties as liberal coddling devices for criminals and, today, for terrorists.  Predisposed to “law and order,” conservatives align with police and prosecutors.  They object to accounts of police misbehavior and prosecutorial abuse as propaganda in behalf of the criminal class.

The left-wing tends to see law as a tool of oppression that “the rich” use to control the lower classes, and liberals fret that “the rich” get off by hiring good lawyers, while the poor and minorities are ground under.

Consequently, leftists object to the demonstration that even the very rich, such as Michael Milken, Martha Stewart, and Leona Helmsley, and even law and accounting firms, are victims of wrongful prosecution.  Confusing wealth with villainy, leftists cannot free themselves from the emotional predilection that a convicted rich person must have been so guilty that not even the best lawyers could get them off.

The Tyranny of Good Intentions had a second printing of a second edition because of word of mouth, not because of reviews. Neither the right nor the left objects to wrongful prosecution as long as the victim is a bete noir. Sir Thomas More’s question (A Man For All Seasons)–what will happen to the innocent if we cut down the law in pursuit of devils?–rings no warning among right or left.

CP

*Opeyemi Soyombo, in this two–part discouse, points out contradictions contained in the judgement of Justice Niki Tobi (JSC) on the 2007 Presidential Election petition. Soyombo concludes that in order to avoid another miscarriage of justice in 2011, Section 146(1) of the Electoral Act, 2006 must be amended by the National Assembly without further delay.

No doubt, Justice Niki Tobi, a respected judge of the Supreme Court, is a master of literary construction. But he also indulges in verbiage and superfluity at the expense, unfortunately, of clarity of his judgement. It is difficult for me to say at this time whether or not this was deliberate. In my humble opinion, a judged should exercise utmost caution and discipline in the use of words. This is important, professionally, in order not to blur the distinction between the ratio decidendi and obiter dictum of a verdict. That is, the line between the principle on which a court based its decision and the (persuasive) judicial comments made in the judgement should, as much as possible, be thick enough, in order to aid the application of the same principle (stare decisis) by the lower courts or the same court in the future.

Another reason why unwarranted ornateness should be avoided in a judgement is that the verdict will subsequently be subjected to further analysis – objective and subjective – by citizens who have interest in the suit. What is more, in an election p in Nigeria, it is my humble view that economy of words ought to be the rule and not the exception. A judge is necessarily judged by his own judgement!

Reading the detailed verdict delivered by Justice Tobi (JSC) on Friday, December 12th, 2008 on the 2007 presidential election case between Muhammadu Buhari of ANPP and Umaru Yar’Adua of PDP, I inescapably came to the above conclusions.

INGOL

Two market traders encapsulate the sorry history of Afghanistan

By Martin Fletcher

I was last in Kabul in 1979, shortly before the Soviet invasion. In those days the Afghan capital was a favourite stopping-off point for long-haired Western hippies driving to India in their battered VW vans on the “Kathmandu trail”. Kabul’s high-walled British cemetery, the green and tranquil resting place of Kipling’s 19th-century soldiers, contains the graves of several such travellers killed by their own excesses or Afghanistan’s lethal roads.

Chicken Street was the biggest magnet, a short, narrow thoroughfare where traders hawked Afghan coats, silver ankle bracelets and plentiful pot. To my astonishment — despite 30 years of invasions, civil war, Mujahidin rockets and the Taleban’s reign of terror — it still exists, and still sells Afghan coats, onyx chess boards, brass dishes and faux-antique daggers.

To my even greater astonishment two shopkeepers, Mohammed Rafiq and Mohammed Fahim have been there all that time. “It’s a miracle we’re still here,” said Mr Rafiq, who sells rugs and colourful sequined dresses, and that’s no exaggeration.

TOL