January 2010 archive

It’s not every day that I get a welcoming forum to discuss the death penalty and why state killing should be abolished.  So I was particularly delighted to appear today on WBAI’s “Law and Disorder.”  Want to hear what I had to say?  Click this to play the interview.

A special thanks to Michael Smith, Michael Ratner and Heidi Bogosian for inviting me and to WBAI in New York for broadcasting this show both on the radio and the Internet.

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cross-poster at The Dream Antilles

Seriously, dude.  Go out and buy that pack of cigarettes already.

via The Agonist:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up to Wednesday’s State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up to Wednesday’s State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

Mr. President, wouldn’t it be kinder to ritually disembowel yourself with a sword?  To honorably throw yourself upon the country’s funeral pyre?  Perhaps an over-dose of sodium pentobarbital would provide a gentler exit?

And get the reasoning behind this:

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama’s $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits – and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate election …

Obama’s latest political stunts aimed at “quelling the populist backlash” are not only the ridiculous make-up and clown shoes of political burlesque, but sheer insanity.  The blow out in 2010 will be spectacular.   Bush and the Republicans were a hard act to follow, but Democrats and especially Mr. President, you’ve outdone yourselves.  Chases, collisions, pratfalls, and boisterous comedy.  Bring out the slapsticks.

Now, watch me pull a rabbit out of the hat!

Brilliant.  Booman cites this reprehensible call to victim-hood, with apparent approval.  The diary, entitled “We’re too busy criticizing ourselves to counter our critics,” is essentially a call to improve Democratic propaganda by accepting your proper role as the sap who will take the syrup on shit and call it pancakes, a disgusting exercise in reflexive blame.  The call to lackey-dom reverberates of prior admissions of internalized guilt by the voting stooges: Isn’t it really our own fault that Barack Obama is a total sell-out?   Sadly, well, it sort of is!

  Thus spake Booman:

It seems to me that the progressive blogosphere is useful to the Democratic Party and liberal interest groups because it is a free source of media counterinformation to the crap the corporate media spews out on a 24-hour basis. But, the progressive blogosphere is actually more concerned with amplifying critiques of the Democrats because the Democrats are unwilling and unable to feed and tend to their base. So, we’re now more a part of the problem than we are part of the solution. Some people have a degree of self-awareness about this situation, but the majority do not. Yeah, it would be great if the Democrats were more willing and able to do the types of things we advocate, since most (but by no means all) of the advice we provide is solid. But since [Democrats are] not doing it, we’re just piling on and helping to demoralize the troops.

It’s not something I’m eager to associate myself with.

Because the Democrats suck shit out of an elephant’s ass, the resulting bad narrative surrounding them is our own damn fault!

Suckers: There’s one born every minute.

Or perhaps these aren’t your average flunkies: maybe they’re cognitive infiltrators.  Fhtagn!

You know.  The one where agents of Roberto Micheletti seized duly elected President Manual Zelaya at gun point, put him on a plane in his pajamas, and flew him out of the country in June, 2009?  Remember that?  Remember how most countries, except the US, refused to accept the November, 2009 Honduran presidential election because the coup remained in power and Zelaya hadn’t been restored to his office on election day?  Remember how after the election the US Government told us that was no big deal, that it would recognize the new Porfirio Lobo government anyway, and we should all move on, there was nothing to see?  Have we forgotten all of that?  Have we forgotten that Manual Zelaya found refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa in September, 2009, and that he’s still there, still confined in the embassy?

Porfirio Lobo is supposed to be sworn in as President of Honduras on Wednesday, January 27.  And today’s news, which you probably wouldn’t otherwise have heard about, is about the failure of democracy in Honduras:

Ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has accepted a deal to go to the Dominican Republic this week when his four-year term ends and his predecessor is sworn in, his top political adviser said.

Zelaya said that he will return “when there is a process of reconciliation”.

The ousted president said he can leave as an ordinary citizen on the 27th, leaving the Brazilian embassy where he has been in refuge since last September when he returned to Honduras….snip

Except for the United States, most of the other nations refuse to recognize the November elections as legitimate because the balloting took place under the regime of the puchistas, coup d’etat government.

Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias, …said he would not attend the Lobo swearing in ceremony on the 27th.

source.

So it’s over.  The golpe goes unavenged.  Democracy in this hemisphere is at its most perilous because a coup might not be fought.  And, of course, the right wing in the US continues to scream that despite the US’s complete betrayal of Manual Zelaya, the US is being too cozy with Hugo Chavez and events in Honduras somehow prove it.

If there was a “teachable moment” before or after the Honduras golpe de estado, about democracy in this hemisphere and the U.S.’s relationship to it, we’ve apparently forgotten what it might have been.  2010 in Honduras is looking a lot like 1910.

Updated: 1/26/10, 9:39 am ET: An answer to questions about who will attend the inauguration of Lobo:

Though Lobo, of the National Party, won the elections by a wide margin over the Liberal Party’s Elvin Santos, several countries refused to recognize the election results. Argentina, Brazil, and Spain opposed the vote, although Spain indicated it may recognize Lobo in the near-term. None of ALBA member countries – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines-has recognized Lobo’s election, culminating in Honduras’s withdrawal from the trade bloc last week.

The United States, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and Taiwan were among the countries that recognized the election results. But, as The Economist points out, only the Panamanian and Taiwanese presidents will attend Lobo’s inauguration. Washington plans to send an envoy as well. Though Costa Rica recognized the election results, President Óscar Arias-who served as a central mediator in the political crisis-announced he will not attend the inauguration, stating that Micheletti’s refusal to resign before the power transfer constitutes a breach of power.

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles