The Dream Antilles

On Gratitude

2009-11-24T15:55:00.000-05:00

A ritual and a practice (and a Dream Antilles annual feature).

At our house, when we have Thanksgiving dinner, we like to stop eating and talking to go around the table clockwise so that each person present can say what s/he is thankful for. When we first decided to do this, some of our guests felt this was awkward, perhaps embarrassing. But we don't start with the guests, so they can get an impression of what expressing gratitude and hearing others express it feels like. Those in our immediate family understood this and were comfortable enough with it. After all, at birthdays, we like to go around the table to tell the person celebrating the birthday our many appreciations of him/her. So on Thanksgiving, it's a natural enough question, "What are you thankful for this year?" The answers aren't always surprising. We're thankful for being here another year, for our health however it might then be, for family and friends, for the lives of those now departed, for whatever abundance we may have received, for creativity, for our pets, for our relationships, for our businesses, for our politics, for our dreams and aspirations and hopes, and so on. We're thankful for all kinds of things. You get it, you can probably feel it even reading about doing this. It's a Thanksgiving ritual we love. Feel free to try it out.

I always loved Thanksgiving because, however it was intended or begun, it seemed to be about gratitude. For years I've had a practice I've done. Sometimes I do it every day. Sometimes I do it once a month. Sometimes I don't do it for a long time. It depends. What do I do? I make a list of the things I am thankful for. I number them as I write them down, and I feel my gratitude for each item as I write it before going on to the next. So, I write, "1. my good health, 2. the life of Dr. King, 3. compassion for my seeming enemies, 4. the novels of Cesar Aira." And so on. Until I reach 50. I do this, writing and feeling, until I have a list of 50 items or more that I have enjoyed and felt my thanks for. When I am feeling pinched, stressed, exhausted, depressed, or any other "negative" emotion, it seems to take me a very long time to find items, to write them down and really to feel them. When I am feeling expansive, relaxed, rested, optimistic, or any other "positive" emotion, it takes me virtually no time to write and enjoy the list. Why do this exercise? Because it's almost magical. And it lights me up. Feel free to try it out.

Was it Meister Eckhart who wrote, "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice?" I agree.

May all of you have a happy Thanksgiving.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water

2009-11-21T09:04:00.003-05:00

A Lionfish

Some bad news from underwater in the Caribbean. Indo-Pacific Lionfish have apparently been spotted on the Mayan Riviera, the stretch of coast from Cancun in the north to Tulum in the south, of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and throughout much of the rest of the Caribbean. These fish don't belong there. It's not their natural habitat, and they're predators to most other reef species. They are voracious. And to top it off, their spines are also toxic to humans.

A Lionfish is any of several species of venomous marine fish in the genera Pterois, Parapterois, Brachypterois, Ebosia or Dendrochirus, of the family Scorpaenidae. The lionfish is also known as the Turkey Fish, Dragon Fish, Scorpion or Fire Fish. They are notable for their extremely long and separated spines, and have a generally striped appearance, red, green, navy green, brown, orange, yellow, black, maroon, or white. Wiki.

Where do these fish come from?

The lionfish is not native to the tropical region of the world, but various species can be found worldwide.... the lionfish has been spotted in the warmer coral regions of the eastern Atlantic Ocean around the Azores and extending into the Mediterranean Sea, and also in the Caribbean Sea. It has been speculated that this introduction may well have been caused when Hurricane Andrew destroyed an aquarium in southern Florida. DNA from captured lionfish in this region shows that they all originated from the same six or seven fish

NPR traces the spread of lionfish from Florida throughout the Bahamas:

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed an aquarium tank in Florida. About a half-dozen spiny, venomous lionfish washed into the Atlantic Ocean, spawning an invasion that could kill off local industry along with the native fish....

"In 2005, the first lionfish showed up [in the Bahamas], and we didn't pay much attention to it," says Oregon State University zoology professor Mark Hixon, who has studied reef fish here for almost two decades. "The next year, we saw a few more. Then in 2007 there was a population explosion. There were so many lionfish around that they were eating the fish we were studying, and we had to start studying the lionfish. There was nothing else to do."

... The Bahamas have been hit the hardest.

Last year, Hixon co-authored a study with Mark Albins that showed a lionfish can kill three-quarters of a reef's fish population in just five weeks.

"This year we're going to see if that's gotten worse — because the number of lionfish has definitely increased in the intervening year," Hixon says.

These fish are voracious predators. That means that other, native reef fish are their prey. And that an increase in the lionfish population of reefs will lead inexorably to a decrease in the numbers of other species. This is apparently well underway in the Bahamas. And may be beginning on the coast of Mexico.

Meanwhile, NOAA has issued a warning to divers:

NOAA encourages everyone (divers and fishers) to be extremely cautious and avoid contact with the venomous spikes of the lionfish. Usually, lionfish are not aggressive toward humans and will almost always keep their distance when given the opportunity, so they pose a relatively low risk. In addition, their stings are not deadly, but they are very painful.

Is there a solution to this invasion? So far, no. CBS in August reported a contest in the Bahamas to capture and remove the fish from the reef. And that's the tactic that is best for small bays in the Mayan Riviera, especially those with a lot of snorkeling or diving. The fish need to be captured and removed. Of course, that's not practical throughout the Caribbean, but intensive capture and removal are the only way to preserve reef fish until a better solution arises.

The only good news: apparently lionfish are tasty. Maybe humans can overfish them the way they've overfished other species.

A Hemingway Treasure Trove

2009-10-30T20:07:00.002-04:00

The Times says that Hemingway's correspondence and other possession are coming to Boston:

Though the Cuban government did not exactly get along with John F. Kennedy, it has come to an arrangement with the Boston library named for the 35th president to give it copies of thousands of papers from Ernest Hemingway. The Boston Globe reported that Cuba’s Ministry of Culture had given the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum copies of 3,000 letters and documents Hemingway amassed during his years in Cuba, from 1939 to 1960. Among the documents are corrected proofs of “The Old Man and the Sea’’ and an alternate ending to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (The Globe report did not say what that ending was), as well as correspondence with Robert Capa, Marlene Dietrich, Sinclair Lewis, Lillian Ross, Ingrid Bergman and various members of his family. The library is already home to the Hemingway Archive and the Hemingway Room, which was dedicated in 1980, and includes relics like a lion-skin throw rug, journals of his fishing trips and shrapnel from wounds he suffered during World War I.

This should be fun to read, if you can get permission to leaf through it. If not, you can at least be happy that it's being preserved nearby.

Celia Cruz, The Times, The Macabre

2009-10-27T16:06:00.004-04:00

I know el dia de los Muertos is coming soon, but holy smoke, this has to be the most macabre posting in the NY Times is a while. It begins with a picture of Celia Cruz's tomb in Queens:

And then there's this bizarre text by David Gonzalez:

Celia Cruz’s mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx looks downright homey. Colorful plants flank a modest walkway, and clear side windows let visitors peer inside, where family photos, a rosary and a Cuban flag rest atop the singer’s tomb, along with a framed magazine clipping about “The 10 Unbelievable Wigs of Celia Cruz.”

While titans of industry and government spend eternity hidden behind thick granite walls, there’s a reason her final resting place is so inviting.

The Queen of Salsa is still holding court.

“It was specifically designed so the fans can look in,” said Susan Olsen, the historian for the cemetery. “Someone comes in on a regular basis, cleans it out and changes the photos so there’s always something for the fans to see. It was totally thought out.”

And then there's this riff on royalty, Cruz being the Queen of Salsa and all:

There is enough jazz royalty buried near the Queen of Salsa to form an impressive backup band: King Oliver, Duke Ellington and Sir Miles Davis (the title was bestowed on the trumpeter by the Knights of Malta) among them. And the commoners are not too shabby either: Illinois Jacquet, Max Roach, Coleman Hawkins and W. C. Handy.

Granted, Ms. Cruz might have been royalty only to her legions of fans. But there are a good number of countesses and princesses at Woodlawn.

“During the Gilded Age you had many of these women who had parents with great money,” Ms. Olsen said. “They did the tour of Europe, and of course they wanted to get a title. The American bride brought the money to the table, and the royalty, a bit worn out, brought the title. Then they end up coming home and being buried with the parents.”

Good luck finding them.

Maybe it's just me, but there is something really off putting, really weird about this. I just cannot imagine the same article being written, for example, about a departed poet laureate of England, or a deceased French imperssionist painter, or a famous Italian soprano. It's the tone. Is the dissonance because Celia Cruz was Cuban? Or is it because she was a salsa star? Or is it because her fans tend to speak two languages?

Honduras: A Sign That The Coup Has Won

2009-10-24T20:20:00.002-04:00

I know, I know. I'm hypersensitive, I've lost my sense of humor, I'm out of touch with common reality. I'm making mountains out of mole hills. And I sound angry.

All of that about me might be so, but today's Washington Post article about Honduras seems to me to be a sign that the coup has won, as far as the Trad Media are concerned, and that deserves at least brief mention here. Put another way, I don't think you're going to read more about Honduras in the Trad Media until the end of November when the presidential election is held there.

The point of the article in the Washington Post, if I may distill it for you, is that in Banana Republics, roughly defined as all countries in Central America, including Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, where Spanish is spoken, people would rather talk about futbol than politics. And that's how it is, the article tells us. So even if politics at the moment means living with the jackbooted foot of the oligarchy and its US armed military standing truculently on your neck, you still smile and you talk instead about futbol. As bad as things might be in Honduras, as undemocratic and repressive as things might be, as poor as the people are, as oppressive as the golpe de estado is, well, things just can't be all that bad. And why so? Because just like in normal circumstances, Hondurans can still be happy about futbol. Let's let them continue to be happy.

Bring on the stereotypes. Bring on old clips of the Frito Bandito. Bring on anecdotes of laziness. Bring on the claim that the people of Honduras are happy and that they don't really care that their democratic government has been overthrown by a coup d'etat. After all, isn't their national team going to the World Cup?

This is offensive. Especially because the coup continues in full force. And shows no signs of ending. And because nobody, that's right, nobody has a clue about how to end the coup.

On October 14, Honduras made the World Cup finals in South Africa, when its team beat El Salvador and the US beat Costa Rica. This is Honduras's first World Cup finals since 1982, so it's a big deal if you care about futbol. And, of course, the golpistas, who are in charge of the country and its military, have tried to use this event to their advantage, to capitalize on it. They even declared a national holiday.

A bus carrying the triumphant team to visit Honduras' patron saint at Tegucigalpa's cathedral after the win made an abrupt detour to the presidential palace where [interim president and chief golpista Roberto] Micheletti has set up his government. They were paraded on a state-controlled television channel and Micheletti declared a national holiday.

"We had no idea the bus was going to the presidential palace, we thought it was headed to the church," [midfielder Elvis] Turcios said.

The head of the national team selection committee, Jose Ferrari, said he did not make the decision to take the players to Micheletti but that it was practical not political because crowds overwhelmed the church waiting for their arrival.

But Ferrari is the owner of the largest media outlets in Honduras and a Micheletti-backer, and some suspect it was a deliberate political play.

"Some suspect?" Yeah, that would be me. I suspect it. I consider the non-denial from Ferrari utterly laughable, especially because the TV cameras were at the palace waiting for the event and the videos were then run on whose TV station?

Meanwhile, the mother of the team's captain made an opposing gesture of support for the rightfully elected, deposed president Manual Zelaya, who remains in asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa:

"All of the team's directors are part of the coup, they wanted to use it for their own benefit," said Flor Guevara, a devout Zelaya supporter and the mother of team captain Amado.

Guevara asked her son to autograph a team shirt for Zelaya, which made it past soldiers into the embassy where the toppled leader held it up for photos. And Zelaya's team is keen to portray players as political as well as sporting heroes.

"I know there are players resisting the coup ... many couldn't speak out," his daughter told local newspapers.

Guevara said her gift to Zelaya was personal and not meant to reflect the political views of her son.

All of this was dutifully reported by the Washington Post.

What conclusion do I draw from this reportage? I think the Trad Media in the US are now finished with that Banana Republic Honduras and its 21st century coup. I think that they now realize that the problem of restoring democracy is intractable, that the golpistas are utterly intransigent, and that Manual Zelaya, the rightfully elected president, has no discernible route to being reinstated in his presidency. More important, none of the governments and international organizations who made Zelaya's reinstatement the first priority in restoring democracy to Honduras has a clue of how to accomplish this first step. So, faced with a standoff, the Trad Media are done. Finished. There's nothing else for them to say. Except that things aren't so bad in Honduras because there's futbol. And the World Cup.

The story is now going to die, and in November we'll be told that the election has been held, that there's a new, democratically elected president, who was not put in place by the coup, and that the election was fair enough even though it was conducted by the golpistas during their coup. And eventually, after that election, the controversy will fade in our memory, and the US, and everybody else, will recognize the elected president of Honduras. And we'll all go on. After all, it's just a Banana Republic, and it doesn't really matter to us.

Honduras: The Golpistas Raise Their Middle Finger

2009-10-23T16:52:00.002-04:00

The news of an impending resolution to Honduras's coup was hopeful, but apparently too good to be true. Today it's clear that nothing has been decided, that rightful, democratically elected President Manual Zelaya is still stuck in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and that the negotiations to resolve the crises are now totally dead. This should not be a big surprise to anyone.

The New York Times reports:

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya pulled out of talks with the country's post-coup de facto leaders on Friday, throwing efforts to resolve a months-long political crisis back to square one.

Zelaya pulled his representatives out of meetings with envoys of de facto leader Roberto Micheletti that were the latest in a series of attempts to resolve the political deadlock sparked by a June 28 military coup.

"As of now we see this phase as finished," Zelaya envoy Mayra Mejia said shortly after midnight (7 a.m. British time) at the hotel where both sides have been negotiating for three weeks.

All attempts to reach a deal have snagged over whether Zelaya can return to power for the last few months of his term, which ends in January.

"Post-coup de facto leaders" is an interesting turn of phrase. I prefer "golpistas." Or if you prefer, "leaders of the coup d'etat." But the bottom line is that no matter what you call Roberto Micheletti and his friends in the oligarchy, their coup continues despite virtually universal condemnation. And it only has to continue, as far as the golpistas are concerned, until November 29, 2009, the present date for elections of a new president. That date is right around the corner. The golpistas have no intention, none whatsoever of restoring Manual Zelaya to his rightful presidency. That is the one, single thing they will not permit. And, unfortunately, that's the one single step the rest of the world believes is an essential first step to end the crisis.

This is what is called a deadlock.

The rest of the world may insist on restoration of Manual Zelaya to the presidency as an initial step, and it may insist as well that the coup's running the national election in November undermines the legitimacy of the "democratic election." But the golpistas don't see it that way. At all. To them, surviving all the diplomatic initiatives and the sternly worded verbal condemnations and the impounding of funds until there's an election is the goal. They'll happily argue about the legitimacy of the election after its been held. And nothing is going to budge them from their present stranglehold on Honduras's government or move them to restore Manual Zelaya to the presidency.

The golpistas would rather clamp down on the demonstrators than move their position toward a possible resolution. This is what one should expect of them. The burden of the unrest, and especially the present damage to the Honduras economy fall on the poorest people in Honduras. These are not the golpistas. They are quite powerless to resist the military government and the US equipped and trained army.

And what of the US and it's recently announced "better relations" with Latin America?

The deadlock in Honduras is proving a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama after he vowed better relations with Latin America. Washington suspended the visas of more figures in the de facto government this week to pressure a settlement.

"The two sides need to seal this deal now. Time is running out," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Friday. "We have not given up on a deal yet ... We are focussed on these guys sitting down and agreeing," he said.

This is nice. There is no deal to seal. There is no agreement. And now there are no talks. Put another way, US insistence on an agreement is and continues to be an utter non starter. Similarly, negotiations brokered by Oscar Arias. Similarly, the impounding of non-essential US aid to Honduras. The golpistas have raised their middle finger and most observers are making believe it's to tell which way the wind is blowing.

Soupy Sales, RIP

2009-10-23T12:57:00.002-04:00

The New York Times reports:

Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died Thursday night. He was 83...

Cavorting with his puppet sidekicks White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie the Lion and Hobart and Reba, the heads in the pot-bellied stove, transforming himself into the private detective Philo Kvetch, and playing host to the ever-present “nut at the door,” Soupy Sales became a television favorite of youngsters and an anarchic comedy hero for teenagers and college students.

Clad in a top hat, sweater and bow tie, shuffling through his Mouse dance, he reached his slapstick heyday in the mid-1960s on “The Soupy Sales Show,” a widely syndicated program based at WNEW-TV in New York.

Some 20,000 pies were hurled at Soupy Sales or at visitors to his TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, by his own count. The victims included Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, all of whom turned up just for the honor of being creamed.

I know Soupy denied these shows were written, but he said he thought out these shows before he went on. I'm not so sure about that. But it's still endearing:

On An Ethnic Slur

2009-10-19T17:34:00.002-04:00

When it comes to cluelessness, a characteristic demonstrated repeatedly in rightwing politics, the world record always seems to be harder to reach, always seems to be harder to match. The goal posts just seem to move further and further away. And now we have two South Carolina GOP County Chairman entering the South Carolina division of the clueless sweeps to defend Jim DeMint (R-SC) by invoking an antisemitic stereotype in print, in an guest editorial.

How's that for stepping up to the competition? A breathtaking feat.

Writing a guest editorial for the South Carolina Times and Democrat, Edwin O. Merwin Jr., Chairman, Bamberg County Republican Party, and James S. Ulmer Jr., Chairman, Orangeburg County Republican Party, give us these pithy bon mots:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

Nice. Real nice. No, they are not saying Jim DeMint is a Jew. That's not their point.

And I don't know who might be taking credit for being the source of this "saying," or who might have said it when he wasn't wearing white sheets and a pointed hood and standing before a flaming cross.

But you do have to admit that this writing shows a remarkable degree of cluelessness. These guys actually wrote this down, and then they had it printed in a newspaper with their names on it.

Predictably, this flourish of profound cluelessness was lambasted in the editorial of the conservative Palmetto Scoop:

Umm… who in mainstream America thinks it’s a good idea to write something like that in a guest editorial? Especially in light of the racially-motivated attention garnered by South Carolina Republican activists over the past few months.

It’s people like Ulmer and Merwin that make many folks fear for the future of the once Grand Ole Party.

Lest you forgot, the "racially-motivated attention," referred to, had to do with the remarks of one Rusty Depass that an escaped gorilla was an ancestor of Michele Obama.

That, I thought, had set the previous South Carolina mark for cluelessness. And I expected that remark to keep the title for decades. What an error on my part. Evidently Ulmer and Merwin want to contest the record.

Can we expect the powers that be in the GOP to condemn this remark? More when I stop laughing.

Miguel Angel Asturias

2009-10-19T15:22:00.003-04:00

Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974)

Today's Writer's Almanac tells his life story:

It's the birthday of the man who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature, Miguel Ángel Asturias, born in Guatemala City (1899), one of the forerunners of Latin America modernism and the style of magical realism. He's best-known for his novels Men of Maize (1949) and El Señor Presidente (1946). He finished El Señor Presidente in 1933, while living in exile in Paris. But the book was not published for more than a decade after its completion because of censorship policies under Guatemala's dictatorship. El Señor Presidente is a fictional account of a real dictator: its model is Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who ruled Guatemala for the first two decades of the 20th century — during Asturias's childhood and young adulthood.

Miguel Ángel Asturias spent much of his life in exile, and a large part of his exile in Paris. He first went there to be a student at the Sorbonne, and there he wrote poems and stories and translated into Spanish the sacred text of the Mayan people, the Popol Vuh. He put together a collection of indigenous Guatemalan myths and legends and established a magazine in Paris called Tiempos Nuevos.

He returned to Guatemala and began a diplomatic career, during which he was posted all around Latin America. But when there was a change of government, Asturias was expelled from his homeland, and the new dictator took away his Guatemalan citizenship. In 1966, a new president was democratically elected. He welcomed Asturias back to Guatemala, reinstated his citizenship, and appointed him ambassador to France, where Asturias spent most of the rest of his life.

For a more detailed biography, there's this from the Nobel Prizes.

Remembering The Monk

2009-10-16T09:56:00.002-04:00

In a book review of Robin D.G. Kelley's new "Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times Of An American Original," August Kleinzahler gets Monk's music just right:

It’s an angular, splintered sound, percussive in attack and asymmetrical, music that always manages to swing hard and respect the melody. Monk was big on melody. Thelonious Monk’s body of work, as composer and player (the jazz critic Whitney Balliett called Monk’s compositions “frozen . . . improvisations” and his improvisations “molten . . . compositions”), sits as comfortably beside Bartok’s Hungarian folk-influenced compositions for solo piano as it does beside the music of jazz giants like James P. Johnson, Teddy Wilson and Duke Ellington, some of the more obvious influences on Monk. It’s unclear how much of Bartok he listened to. Monk did know well and play Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Chopin (especially Chopin). Stravinsky was also a favorite.

Precisely right. And the book itself, according to the review, sounds wonderful.

Honduras: Is There A Deal To End The Coup?

2009-10-14T16:53:00.004-04:00

Maybe. Today the BBC is reporting there's a deal of sorts but it's not giving any details:

The political crisis in Honduras appears to be closer to a resolution after negotiators reached a deal.

However few details are known of the deal which has yet to be approved by ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti....snip

Mr Zelaya's lead negotiator Victor Meza said the two sides had "agreed on one unified text that will be discussed and analysed by President Zelaya and Mr Micheletti."

"I wouldn't talk of an end to the political crisis, but an exit, yes," he was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

Mr Zelaya has set a deadline of Thursday for agreement to be reached.

Reuters has the same story with some additional comments but no additional details:

The central issue being discussed was the return of Zelaya to power, but neither side was prepared to give details of the agreement and Micheletti's negotiators did not immediately comment.

Still, army chief Romeo Vasquez, a key figure in the coup, also said a deal appeared close. "I know that we have advanced significantly, we are almost at the end of this crisis," he told local radio HRN.

So maybe after all of this time there is an end to the golpe de estado in sight. If the deadline is tomorrow, we should know tomorrow what, if anything, has been agreed to.

Honduras: Finally Talking About Talking

2009-10-04T09:49:00.004-04:00

Today is Sunday. Democratically elected, legal President Manual Zelaya of Honduras remains in sanctuary in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. And the military golpistas remain in control of the Government. But today there is the tentative news of a beginning of negotiations finally to end the coup. The end of the crisis and the restoration of normalcy can't come soon enough for the people of Honduras.

AP reports that talks between the two sides have actually begun:

Interim President Roberto Micheletti told reporters that a dialogue is "beginning" between his supporters and those of President Manuel Zelaya...

"We are having talks with different sectors officially, with people from Mr. Zelaya's side and with others," Micheletti said Friday outside the presidential palace, hours after meeting with a delegation of four Republican members of the U.S. Congress.

Jim DeMint (Golpista S.C.) is spinning the possible start of talks as if it were the result of his controversial visit to Micheletti in Tegucigalpa.

And BBC is reporting that

Aides to Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti will reportedly meet next week.

The talks would precede a visit by the Organisation of American States aimed at brokering a deal, the OAS says.

There have been unsuccessful efforts to have talks since the June coup. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was to mediate them. The two sides never met; the proposed mediation collapsed.

In the meanwhile, the decree suspending civil liberties remains in effect, although Micheletti says it will be lifted "within days." Zelaya supporters remain skeptical about this. And Radio Globo is still off the air, the golpistas having seized its transmitters, though it is still broadcasting via the Internet.

There remain many reasons to end the coup quickly. First, the disruption of Honduras's economy has been disastrous. Poor people in Honduras have been unable to work because of curfews. And businesses generally have been disrupted. The impact of the curfew and the inability to work has been felt most by poor people, who have to work daily to feed themselves.

Second, the Presidential Election in Honduras is set for November 29. And the OAS and others, including the USM, have made it clear that the results of the election will not be accepted if the coup remains in power on the date of the election.

Third, the World Cup qualifying match between Honduras and the United States is scheduled for San Pedro Sula on October 10. There was a question whether FIFA, futbol's governing body, would permit the game to be played amid civil unrest in Honduras, but the game is not going to be moved unless the situation deteriorates. Moving the game will enrage both sides of the controversy in Honduras.

Both sides are finally talking about talking. There is little the US, the OAS, the UN, Honduras's neighbors can do that they have not already done to speed the removal of the golpistas and the restoration of Zelaya to the presidency. The terms under which this will be carried out are going to be important, and they'll be a measure of the degree to which pro-democracy nations stick to their expressed demands that the coup must leave and that Zelaya must be restored.

Starting Over: Pontifications From A Nobody

2009-10-03T18:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I put up a diary at GOS decrying how our writing had become so completely predictable, so formulaic, so prosaic. It was derivative, and it was funny. But it was also extremely sad. In many ways it was a commentary on the powerlessness of progressive bloggers: we can yell louder, we can scream, we can write explosive rants. But you know what? It isn't changing anything. And frankly, I'm tired of our dogged, persistent pursuit of something that's not working. And, I suspect, isn't going to work.

Maybe you're lucky and can write face blistering essays on this site and you can have readers tell you how right on you are. How smart, how important, how clear. But if you're poor and without a job, or if you're sick and you don't have insurance, or if you're running out of unemployment benefits and the next job isn't in sight, or if your kids are in trouble and you don't know how to help them out, or if you are overdue to retire and you don't have the funds and have to work, or your wage slave pay isn't going to bail you out unless you win Megamillions and you're not too big to fail, or your kids are in the military, these essays aren't going to help you. Not at all. They're just going to highlight how you have somebody's boot on your neck. And you cannot get it off. And they're bound to inform you, if you don't know it already, about how very weak you are and how very powerless we as a group (I'm talking about progressives) remain.

Look. I'm just a writer. I'm mostly anonymous (though I have a web presence). I have my opinions. I have some ideas. I have my private life. I have my work. I wish, I really do wish, we could all be free from suffering and illness and hatred. I wish progressives had some real power. I wish we had influence. I wish we'd all wake up tomorrow morning and be covered by Medicare. I wish the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan would be over. I wish unemployment would be extended until the economy turns around. I wish foreclosures would be stayed. I wish we'd all have enough to eat, adequate shelter, first rate health care, decent education, a whole shopping basket of safety net programs. I wish we would have something that resembled a moderate, socialist European government. But we don't. And despite the electoral win this past November, we're not going to get those things. Ever.

We may have thought, in our desperation and gullibility, that our lives would change. But here we are, October, 2009, and if your life is better than it was in October, 2008, I'll be amazed. In other words, it's the same old same old and it's now time to see it for what it really is. It's the same if not worse than it was a year ago. The fantasy of structural, fundamental change was just that, a fantasy. The illusion that the Government would help is was just that, an illusion. There are still homeless people. Sick people without insurance. Unemployed people in foreclosure. And the prospect of a change for them, a change they can believe in, well, it just doesn't exist. It's not happening this year. Or next year. It's probably just not happening.

Strange as it may seem, I'm not discouraged. To me all of this means that I was making a mistake in what I thought was happening, so now I need to revise my thinking. I'm a writer. I revise all the time. I'm good at editing. I'm good at rewriting. I've spent far more time at that than writing first drafts. So I suggest to my friends who are writers, blogger@s, that we forget about starting to write chapter 2 and go back immediately to rewrite chapter 1. Put another way, we need to rethink all of our expectations, our hopes, our dreams, our demands. We need to remember that the change we can believe in was something we could be believe in, but, alas, it was just another dream. It was not real. And when we woke up, poof!, it was gone.

So I suggest that we retrench slightly, that we retreat, that we pull back. Only for a few moments. I suggest that we stop acting like the Government gives a hoot about what we think or say or write. It clearly doesn't. And I suggest that we go back to basic, modest, local things we can actually improve. That we stop being all puffed up and making believe we're powerful, and recognize that all of that, that dream, that illusion, that hope, wasn't real. No, it wasn't. We need to recognize that the struggle for a progressive America is still ahead of us in the future.

For me this means no more money to politicians or political parties. None. Nada. Zilch. I'm giving the money to local programs that help people who need help (the local co-op, the food bank, e.g.). I'm going to try directly to help people whose suffering is not being addressed.

For me this means no more acting like the national Government is influenced by what I say as opposed to those people who can and have written fat checks to the incumbents and the PACs and the political interest groups. Just look at the health care debate. I want a single payer plan. And I have insurance and in a few years I'll have medicare. It's not my personal battle, as if I would battle for a 5% "public option" anyway. I want all of us to be safe and to have appropriate care. But this debate isn't even about health care any more. Now the Administration refers to it as "Health Insurance Reform." Jeebus. But I digress.

For me this means no more acting like people read what I write on blogs and just by reading it, it changes their views. Only the trolls disagree with what I write, and we all know they suck. The rest of us, those who agree with me, are great and wonderful people. But I'm just preaching to my own choir. I like the choir, really I do. But our singing doesn't matter. Here's an example. I've been writing about Honduras. People who are for democracy agree with me. Golpistas and Republicans don't. There are lots of "Democrats" who don't understand and are so anti-Chavez that they support the golpistas. Who are these people and why are they tormenting me in the comments? If they're not being paid by the Golpe de Estado or Republicans to troll what I write, they need to get a life. And by the way, so do I. Another digression.

For me, what I'm saying means that it is time to get down to basics. Does our writing change anything? I suspect it might if we were talking about something modest, something smaller. If we had good ideas. If we had action steps that were simple. If we had a real plan. If we had command of what was wrong and what had to be done, and it didn't involve enormous, structural changes of the national legislature.

Does what we write have an effect on national or international stories? I doubt it.

What about our fame as writers? Certainly, it's not about the money (which for me has been nonexistent). What about our being recommended, making the recc lists, being "up" for days on end, being famous, being named as famous, being cited? Yeah, that's all really, really nice. And maybe some of us are in it for that, but to be frank, I'm not. I like all of that, don't get me wrong, but that's not what it's about. It's about something else. It's about being heard and having that make some changes in thinking and actions. Does that happen? I doubt it.

For me this means I'm now going to get back to basics. I've taken down the hit counters on my blog. I'm going to stop posting at Naranja. I'll continue here and at my blog and at the other small blogs that I like.

I'm going to try to break out of the formulaic box. I'm going to try to find ways we can actually make a difference. I do hope you'll all join me in that. Our present way of "doing business" is a road to persistent irrelevance.

If it's true that the keyboard is mightier than the sword, and sometimes I have my doubts about that, we need to use it for what it can do rather than as a paperweight.

Why No Web Counters? Why'd You Remove Them?

2009-10-03T16:59:00.004-04:00

I took all of the web counters and anything that resembled one out of the right margin of this blog. Why? Because I'm not competing with anybody, and I'm apparently going to continue writing this blog whether or not documented, huge masses of people read it (there's evidence that many, many people read this).

I don't have a hidden counter somewhere. This feels good to me: I'm not imitating the capitalist bloggers, I have no intention of figuring out how this blog can make money, I am not going to have advertising, I'm not selling anything to or for anyone. To me this feels like a recognition of just what this blog is. Nothing more. No aspirations. Just what it is: decent writing about eclectic topics. Something to be enjoyed.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it.

Inspiration: Activism From Where You Are

2009-09-30T17:27:00.004-04:00

Years ago, when I was training for and running marathons, I learned that the best way to perfect form, to have economy of movement, and a smooth, fluid style, was to watch others who ran beautifully and just imitate what they were doing. It was basic, monkey see; monkey do. Similarly, when I see somebody who has seized the moment to make the world better, I wonder about what I could do that would imitate what s/he did. I'm inspired when I see people nourish their activism.

Here's today's example from the New York Times:

Playwrights and producers have used scathing commentary, heartbreaking drama and sharp satire to score political points about war, torture, presidents, AIDS, race relations and women’s rights with New York theater audiences. Now the Broadway musical “Hair” is expanding the concept of stage activism by taking to the streets and urging audiences to follow. The producers canceled a Sunday matinee so that the cast and crew could attend and perform at a march for gay rights in Washington on Oct. 11.

That unusual — and expensive — decision to skip a popular weekend performance at the beginning of the theater season originated with the show’s star, Gavin Creel.

“I said, ‘My God, we have to go, we have to go,’ ” Mr. Creel recalled when he first heard about the rally late last spring.

Although Mr. Creel, 33, stars in a show that is associated with ’60s-style activism and sexual liberation, he personally wasn’t much interested in politics before Barack Obama ran for president. On Election Day last November, he said, he was ecstatic that his candidate won, but was crushed by the victory of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. So he decided to help create the activist organization Broadway Impact to mobilize the theater community.

Then in May Mr. Creel met Cleve Jones, creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, when he came to see “Hair” with Dustin Lance Black, author of the Oscar-winning screenplay for “Milk.” At a party afterward for the release of the cast recording, they all talked about the Oct. 11 National Equality March that Mr. Jones was helping to organize. The rally’s organizers say they are seeking “equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states” for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

And so, to make a longer, interesting story more concise, Gavin Creel and the tribe, the cast of "Hair", are going to DC for the Equality March. And they're closing a Broadway Sunday matinee to do so. With the full support of the producers of the show. Because, and this is the important part, because Gavin Creel thought it was a good idea and he decided to try to make it happen.

I just love this story. It's inspiring.

It's a reminder, a beautiful reminder that even seemingly impossible ideas can be brought into reality, and that you and I and everybody else who is passionate about something can make a difference. It's surprisingly simple. When we have a good idea, we can decide to try to make it happen.

Here's to Gavin Creel with thanks for being a great example. One I happily will copy. Please join me in that.

1,800 Lose Their Jobs At American Apparel

2009-09-29T22:24:00.001-04:00

Does this make any sense? I don't think so. But then again, I'm sympathetic to workers, whether or not they have the right papers.

The New York Times reports:

A clothing maker with a vast garment factory in downtown Los Angeles is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees in the coming days — more than a quarter of its work force — after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents the workers presented when they were hired.

Join me in LA.

The firings at the company, American Apparel, have become a showcase for the Obama administration’s effort to reduce illegal immigration by forcing employers to dismiss unauthorized workers rather than by using workplace raids. The firings, however, have divided opinion in California over the effects of the new approach, especially at a time of high joblessness in the state and with a major, well-regarded employer as a target.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, called the dismissals “devastating,” and his office has insisted that the federal government should focus on employers that exploit their workers. American Apparel has been lauded by city officials and business leaders for paying well above the garment industry standard, offering health benefits and not long ago giving $18 million in stock to its workers.

But opponents of illegal immigration, including Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a Republican from San Diego who is chairman of a House caucus that opposes efforts to extend legal status to illegal immigrants, back the enforcement effort. They say American Apparel is typical of many companies that, in Mr. Bilbray’s words, have “become addicted to illegal labor.”

If this is the Obama Administration's plan, it's going to devastate thousands of workers and their families. And it's going to devastate an already stuggling economy.

Is the idea of the policy to make existence in this country so difficult for immigrants that they leave? Is the idea to have all 15 million immigrants suffer until they pull up roots, if they can, and leave? What a heartless policy.

Honduras In State Of Siege While US Blathers That Zelaya's "Foolish"

2009-09-28T19:01:00.001-04:00

Lest anyone think that the US had suddenly reversed centuries of supporting and/or creating rightwing, military coups all across Latin America and was going to stand firm in support of restoring democracy in Honduras, today the US sent unmistakable signs that it wasn't changing anything. It was sticking with historical tradition. The US today lashed out at Manual Zelaya for returning to the country of which he is the legitimate president.

Join me in Tegucigalpa.

Reuters reports:

The United States blasted ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya for his "irresponsible and foolish" return from exile before a settlement was reached in the Central American country's political crisis.

At an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States to discuss the Honduran face-off, Lewis Anselem, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, also criticized Honduras' de facto government for its "deplorable" action in barring entry of an OAS mission and declaring a state of siege on Sunday.

Anselem also criticized Zelaya for fueling violence by slipping back into Honduras last week and holing up in the Brazilian Embassy, from where he has called on his supporters to take to the streets.

"The return of Zelaya absent an agreement is irresponsible and foolish ... He should cease and desist from making wild allegations and from acting as though he were starring in an old movie," Anselm said.

What a joke. Oscar Arrias has been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate Zelaya's return to the country of which he is the legitimate president for months. Those attempts to talk have met only with golpista resistance, running out the clock, posturing, and intense repression against those who support democracy in Honduras. There is no "settlement," and there is none in sight. And waiting until there is a settlement might mean waiting forever.

In an effort to appear evenhanded Washington's mouthpiece at the OAS, of course, denounced the golpista's refusal to let an OAS mission enter the country and the golpistas' harassment of the Brazilian embassy, where President Zelaya has found refuge, and the golpistas' declaration of a state of siege.

What? A state of siege? Did you miss that in your local newspaper? Oh yes, a state of siege. The BBC reports:

Two Honduran media organisations that have been critical of the country's interim government have been closed.

Troops raided Radio Globo and Cholusat Sur TV hours after authorities issued a state of emergency suspending key civil liberties for 45 days. ...snip

The raid on Radio Globo early on Monday was the second on the station since Mr Zelaya was ousted in June.

The interim government's decree - broadcast on national television - allows unauthorised public meetings to be banned and news media to be temporarily closed down.

"Troops assaulted the radio (station)... and took it off the air," said Radio Globo director David Romero.

A Radio Globo journalist, Carlos Lopez, said soldiers had "confiscated everything", including cameras and the keys to vehicles.

Al Giordano has the decree declaring the state of siege. It's brief, and it should be printed here in full:

Decree:

Article 1. For a period of 45 days beginning with this decree’s publication, the Constitutional rights of Articles 69, 72, 81 and 84, are suspended.

Article 2. The Armed Forces will support, together or separately with the National Police, when the situation requires, to execute the necessary plans to maintain the order and security of the Republic.

Article 3. The following is prohibited:

First: Freedom of transit, which will be restricted according to the parameters established by press releases broadcast on all radio and TV stations by the President of the Republic, which will be in effect in all national territory and during curfews, with the exception of cargo transport, ambulances, and urban traffic in the cities excluded in said communiqués, and medical personell and nurses that in those cities work during curfew hours.

Second: All public meetings not authorized by police or military authorities.

Third: Publication in any media, spoken, written or televised, of information that offends human dignity, public officials, or criticizes the law and the government resolutions, or any style of attack against the public order and peace. CONATEL (the Honduran communications commission), through the National Police and the Armed Forces, is authorized to suspend any radio station, television channel or cable system that does not adjust its programming to the present decree.

Article 4. It is ordered:

First: Detain all persons who are found outside of the established orders of circulation, or that in any manner are suspected by police and military authorities of damaging people or property, those that associate with the goal of committing criminal acts or that place their own lives in danger. All detainees will be read their rights, and at the same time must be brought to be booked in a police station of the country, identifying all persons detained, their motives, the hour of arrest and release from the police station, recording the physical condition of the detainee, to avoid future accusations of supposed crimes of torture.

Second: All persons detained must remain confined in the legally established detention centers.

Third: All public offices, national, state and municipal, that have been occupied by demonstrators or have persons inside of them engaging in illegal activities will be cleared.

Fourth: All Secretaries of State, decentralized institutions, municipalities and other state organisms must place themselves at the orders of the National Police and Armed Forces without any equivocation, along with all means at their disposal, for the development of these operations.

Article 5. The present Decree becomes law immediately, being duly published in the Official Daily “La Gaceta” and will be sent to the National Congress to be made law.

Ordered from the Presidential Palace in the City of Tegucigalpa, municipality of the Central District, on the 22nd of September of 2009.

ROBERTO MICHELETTI BAIN

CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

Four articles of the Hondruan Constitution, those providing the most basic liberties, have been suspended by the Order. Al Giordano quotes them.

And so the other foot has now dropped in Honduras. The golpistas have declared a second, more forceful coup, one that suspends democracy for 45 days. And what's the magic of 45 days? Well, the election in November is in 45 days. And the golpistas evidently are going to argue that Honduras can have a "fair" election while there's a state of siege in effect, or that no election can be held because of civil unrest.

This makes the situation in Honduras all the more dangerous and unstable. And it makes the US's criticism of Zelaya all the more disgraceful. There is no earthly reason why Zelaya should help the coup run out the clock on his presidency. And there is no reason why he and Hondurans and Latin Americans in general should be satisfied with the half-hearted diplomatic process that was Zelaya's only alternative to returning and confronting the golpistas.

Honduras: A Stand Off

2009-09-27T15:06:00.001-04:00

You will recall that the legitimate president of Honduras Manual Zelaya evaded the golpistas who wanted to arrest him and secretly returned to Honduras, where he found refuge in the Brazilian embassy. First, there was this essay; then this. Zelaya's still there. And this is an update on the present stand off.

Usurper and golpista Roberto Micheletti has apparently, international law be damned, given the Brazilians an ultimatum. According to CNN:

Honduras is accusing Brazil's government of instigating an insurrection within its borders, and gave the Brazilian Embassy 10 days to decide the status of ousted Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya, who has taken refuge there.

"Since the clandestine arrival to Honduras by ex-president Zelaya, the Brazil embassy has been used to instigate violence and insurrection against the Honduran people and the constitutional government," the secretary of foreign affairs for Honduras' de facto government said in a statement late Saturday night.

The statement said Honduras would be forced to take measures against Brazil if Brazil did not define its position on Zelaya. It did not specify what those measures would be.

"No country is able to tolerate that a foreign embassy is used as a command base to generate violence and break tranquility like Mr. Zelaya has been doing in our country since his arrival," the statement said.

It's not clear what the golpistas mean when they give ten days "to decide" Zelaya's fate." Does that mean to turn him over to the golpistas? To render him for arrest? To remove him from the country? It's a threat, but the "or else" is clear, but the action demanded is opaque.

Brazil has now responded to the golpistas with a raised middle digit:

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday his nation would not comply with a demand from Honduras' de facto government to decide the status of ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 10 days.

Lula, speaking to reporters during a summit in Venezuela, said international law protects Brazil's embassy, where Zelaya has been staying since returning to Honduras earlier this month. He demanded an apology from Honduras' de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti.

These threatening exchanges come on the heals of charges by Zelaya that the Golpistas have attacked the Brazilian embassy with "neurotoxins:"

Ousted Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya said he and supporters holed up at the Brazilian Embassy were victims of a "neurotoxic" gas attack Friday morning that caused many people to have nose bleeds and breathing difficulties.

An official with Brazil's Foreign Ministry told CNN there was some type of gas used in the area but could not confirm it was a nerve agent. Some embassy employees felt minor symptoms, said the official, who did not want his name used because that is foreign ministry protocol.

The charge of a gas attack was leveled after the United Nations Security Council "condemn[ed] acts of intimidation against the Brazilian Embassy and call[ed] upon the de facto government of Honduras to cease harassing the Brazilian Embassy." This admonition to the golpe de estado came after the golpistas violated the sovereignty of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where Zelaya had found refuge:

The Brazilian foreign minister told the Security Council on Friday that "since the day it has sheltered President Zelaya at its premises, the Brazilian Embassy has been virtually under siege."

"It has been submitted to acts of harassment and intimidation by the de facto authorities," the minister said. "Electricity, water supply and phone connections were cut off. Cell phone communications were blocked or interfered with. Disruptive sound equipment was installed in front of the embassy."

"Access to food was severely restricted. The circulation of official vehicles of the Brazilian Embassy was curtailed," the foreign minister added. "The charged affairs of Brazil has been in practice prevented from moving from the Chancellery to the Residence, since the police informed that anyone who would leave the embassy premises would not be allowed back."

Following the Security Council action, US Ambassador Susan Rice stated:

"We condemn acts of intimidation against the Brazilian embassy and call upon the de facto government of Honduras to cease harassing the Brazilian embassy.”

That's unequivocal, and clear enough. But today there appears to be little or no movement toward restoring Manual Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras, or toward removing the golpistas from power. The stand off continues.

Honduras: The Crisis Continues

2009-09-23T22:34:00.002-04:00

Manual Zelaya In The Brazilian Embassy, Tegucigalpa

The two sides aren't talking to each other in Honduras, even though they are just miles from each other. The golpistas use the military to repress the people on the streets and to continue the curfews. The real president of Honduras has asylum in the Brazilian embassy.

Join me in Tegucigalpa.

The New York Times reports:

the two men who claim to be the president of Honduras passed another day without meeting on Wednesday as residents of this capital city used a break in a curfew to store up supplies and hunker down for what could be an extended political standoff.

“We need to sit down face to face,” Manuel Zelaya, the deposed leader, said in a telephone interview from the Brazilian Embassy, where he has been holed up since slipping back into the country from exile on Monday. He complained of harassment of his supporters by the security forces, a dwindling food supply inside the compound where he and ever fewer backers are staying and the acrid aroma of tear gas from earlier clashes outside.

But the government did restore water, electricity and telephone service to the building, which it had cut off on Tuesday.

Conditions in Tegucigalpa today evidence continuing strife as demonstrators defy the curfew and confront the military, which is trying to push supporters of Zelaya off of the streets:

The streets, littered with rubble and tear gas canisters, summed up the acrimony. Angry demonstrators had uprooted trees, looted stores and burned tires on Tuesday to protest the de facto government’s refusal to reinstate Mr. Zelaya. Security forces in riot gear had fired tear gas to move protesters away from the embassy.

The aggressive tactics of the police and soldiers drew strong condemnation, especially the firing of tear gas on Monday at the headquarters of a Honduran human rights organization. A large group of people were inside, filing complaints about police and army abuses at the time, according to Amnesty International.

On Wednesday, the two sides continued to test each other. At noon, as Zelaya supporters were massing, a police spokesman announced that the government had just banned meetings of more than 20 people.

But the protest, thousands strong, went on.

A line of riot police officers, backed by water cannon, tried to hold a line a few blocks from the embassy. But the protest organizers persuaded the police to move back as the demonstrators moved forward, chanting, “Yes, we did,” in a reference to Mr. Zelaya’s return.

Put simply, there is an uneasy, dangerous tension in Honduras, and there is no significant progress toward restoring Manual Zelaya to the presidency. Although both sides say they want to talk, there have been no talks. Although Costa Rican president Arias has offered to continue to mediate the crisis, there is no mediation.

It will not do to hold elections for the next presidential term, which begins in January, if the golpistas continue to hold the government. And so the deadlock continues.

Honduras: Zelaya Returns; Micheletti Unleashes Repression

2009-09-22T16:45:00.001-04:00

Deposed, legitimate president Manual Zelaya of Honduras returned to his country and took shelter in the Brazilian Embassy, where he remains. Thousands of Hondurans rushed into the streets to support his return. And now, the golpistas have unleashed the expected repression.

Please join me on the streets of Tegucigalpa.

The New York Times reports:

Police officers used tear gas in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, early Tuesday to disperse thousands of backers of Manuel Zelaya, the deposed leader, outside the Brazilian Embassy, where he was seeking refuge after sneaking back into the country the day before, according to witnesses and news reports.

The de facto government had declared a curfew Monday after learning that Mr. Zelaya, who was expelled three months ago in a dawn coup, had re-entered surreptitiously to rally his supporters and confront the officials who had arranged his removal. After backers of Mr. Zelaya defied the order to stay off the streets, heavily armed riot police officers and soldiers forced them to scatter and took up positions around the embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital.

At least two tear-gas canisters landed inside the embassy compound, Reuters reported, and Mr. Zelaya said in a television interview with Telesur, a Venezuelan broadcaster, that he foresaw “bigger acts of aggression and violence” by the de facto government and possibly even an invasion of the Brazilian Embassy. Tegucigalpa’s main hospital treated 20 people injured in the scuffle, some with broken legs and arms and head wounds but none in serious condition, Reuters reported.

The entire country remains under a curfew.

Apparently, Zelaya's fifteen hour trek through the jungle to Tegucigalpa caught the golpista's by surprise:

His return appeared to have caught the de facto government by surprise. Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Congress, at first denied that Mr. Zelaya had returned, calling the reports “media terrorism.”

But on Monday evening, after imposing a nationwide curfew, he acknowledged Mr. Zelaya’s presence but said it “changes nothing of our reality.” He called on Brazil to hand Mr. Zelaya over for arrest and trial.

“We are waiting for him,” Mr. Micheletti said in a news conference earlier in the day. “A court is ready to proceed against him legally, and a jail is also ready.”

Despite the golpistas posturing, Brazil stands firm in its providing asylum. The European Union has called for calm. Oscar Arias has offered to continue to mediate between the sides, although his previous efforts produced no substantial result. And Hilary Clinton

said Monday evening that the two sides must find a way to talk. “It’s imperative that dialogue begin,” she said. “It’s also imperative that the return of President Zelaya does not lead to any conflict or violence, but instead that everyone act in a peaceful way to try to find some common ground.”

This statement by the US is predictably weak tea. The coup has been ongoing since the end of June. There's been talk, but no real support for Zelaya. Funds for Honduras were cut off pending a decision on whether the golpistas action of seizing the president at gun point, putting him on an airplane while he was still in his pajamas, and flying him out of the country might have been a coup. And despite seeming US support for Zelaya, the International Monetary Fund last week gave $164 million to the coup government.

As Robert Naiman argued earlier today, now's the time to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Enough of the footdragging.

Texecutions: "Skewed Justice"

2009-09-21T15:42:00.007-04:00

Here's a trick question. Is there anything wrong with a death penalty jury trial in which the prosecutor trying the case is having an affair while the case is going on with the judge who is trying the case? I know. It looks pretty unfair. It looks pretty sleazy. There really should be something the matter with this, right? Shouldn't the judge recuse herself? Shouldn't the case be assigned to a different prosecutor, all for the sake of the appearance of fairness?

But in Texas, ground zero for state killing, there's no answer to these questions. At least not today Why? Because the majority of the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas's highest court that considers criminal appeals, is wagging its finger at the defendant's lawyers saying that the affair isn't something that the Court will look at because the defense lawyers waited too long to raise the issue. According to the Court, it's OK to execute Charles D. Hood whether there was an affair or not because the defense waited too long to raise the question. You cannot make this stuff up.

The New York Times reports:

The highest criminal court in Texas ruled Wednesday that a man facing the death penalty for murder could not have a new trial despite a love affair between the prosecutor and the judge who tried his case.

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said the convicted man, Charles D. Hood, should have raised in earlier appeals the argument that the love affair had tainted his trial.

The affair had been rumored for years in Collin County, just north of Dallas, but was confirmed only a year ago when Mr. Hood’s lawyers compelled the judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the prosecutor, Thomas S. O’Connell Jr., to give depositions under oath. Both officials had since retired.

The case has stirred controversy across the country. Several former judges, prosecutors and experts on legal ethics have said that the affair makes it impossible to know if Mr. Hood received a fair trial and that it should be cause for a new proceeding.

In other words, according to 6 of the judges of the highest criminal appeals court in Texas, the accused should have told an appeals court more than a decade ago, "I can't prove that there was an affair between the judge and the prosecutor during my trial, there's no proof of that yet, but there's a really big rumor that they were having an affair and so this Court should vacate my conviction." That's not a likely sentence in any brief I've ever seen. Prudent counsel just don't write unsubstantiated allegations to appeals courts accusing judges and prosecutors of having affairs.

Wednesday’s decision overturned the findings of a district court judge who had found that Mr. Hood should be allowed a hearing on a new trial. The decision did not discuss whether the affair had prejudiced his first trial; instead, the court rejected Mr. Hood’s claim on the ground that he should have raised it when he first appealed his 1990 conviction.

Mr. Hood’s lawyers responded to that finding by saying they had long tried to substantiate rumors of the affair. They also accused the majority of ignoring confirmation of it in the testimony of Ms. Holland and Mr. O’Connell.

But there's more to the story than just the questionable outcome of this appeal. The stench of unfairness permeates more than the just the trial. It taints the appeal as well. The Times puts it this way:

[The trial judge in the case] went on to serve on the Court of Criminal Appeals with all but one of the current members. “This decision by a court where eight of the nine judges once shared the bench with Judge Holland will only add to the perception that justice is skewed in Texas,” said Andrea Keilen, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents Mr. Hood.

To recap, the judge has an affair with the prosecutor, but that's a secret, leading only to numerous rumors. The judge is then promoted to the top appeals court. And she and the prosecutor then retire. When the appeal about the alleged affair finally reaches the appeals court, the appeals judges, all of whom were on the bench with the former trial judge, decide 6-3 that the defense waited too long to raise the issue even though it couldn't be raised sooner.

According to the Times, the defendant in the case, Charles D. Hood was convicted of the 1989 murder and robbery of a couple with whom he had been living in Plano, a Dallas suburb. Though he maintained his innocence, his bloody fingerprints were found at the scene, and he was arrested the next day in Indiana driving the murdered man’s car. It goes without saying that Hood has been on death row in Texas for 20 years and that the unfavorable decision will in all likelihood not be the last in his case.

Meanwhile, the DA's office has this comment on the case: “We look at it as a significant procedural victory.”

As long as state killing is permitted, and as long as the legislatures and courts try to truncate the appeals process, we're going to see decisions like this one. In fact, this kind of procedural decision is by now typical. It's what one should expect. There was virtually nothing the defense in this case could do to raise the issue before the affair was admitted by the judge and the prosecutor. But that doesn't matter to these appellate judges. They are just cutting off Hood's appeals, they are moving him one step closer to the injection gurney.

Mary Travers, RIP

2009-09-17T08:33:00.002-04:00

The New York Times:

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

Hers was music I grew up with. As the Times, says:

Ms. Travers once told the music magazine Goldmine, “People say to us, ‘Oh, I grew up with your music,’ and we often say, sotto voce, ‘So did we.’ ”

Where Do Stories Come From?

2009-09-12T20:44:00.004-04:00

A Social Flycatcher

One possibility is that I make up stories. I dream them up, I fantasize them up, I just make them up. They come from me, from my brain or my mind or my heart. If that's where the come from, that's ok with me. I'm convinced that dreams, fantasies, stories are really important, often more important than physical objects and things you can see, so if they spontaneously arise from somewhere inside me, and I write them down, that's fine with me.

But there's another possibility. One that's more exciting. I like this other possibility a lot better.

I spent two weeks in Mexico, north of Tulum, Quintana Roo, writing every day. I was trying to finish the first draft of my second novel, working title "Tulum." Where did the ideas in that draft come from? Did they come from me? Or did they come from somewhere else?

When I first arrived at Bahia Soliman, where I was going to write, I noticed a particular kind of bird that was very pretty, very unusual for me. It's unusual for me because it only lives in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. It's called a "social flycatcher." I don't know why it's called that. Its Wiki explains all kinds of things but not its name.

I think it's called "social" because it doesn't immediately fly away when it's near people. Or other birds and animals. That's just what I think. Anyway, I was wondering about this beautiful bird, and whether it might be near me because it was carrying stories for me and wanted to give some of them to me.

Whenever I got to the point in writing when I couldn't sit at the computer any longer, whenever I got stuck, whenever I had to figure something out about what I was writing, whenever I needed new ideas, whenever I needed inspiration or endurance, I'd go out for a walk. And maybe I'd see one of the social flycatchers.

I liked looking at this very pretty bird. Maybe, I thought, it was carrying the information, the story I needed to write down. And sure enough, after I went for my walk, I would find that I was able to continue to write, that I was able to go on with my writing, that I knew what to type.

This process went on for about two weeks. For about 15,000 words (I had a lot of words before I got to Mexico). And then one day, I thought, "Ah hah. That is the finish line, that is the end of this book, that is how it ends. I will finish this up tomorrow or the next day or the day after. I can see the conclusion, the last paragraph. Finally it has appeared. That's where and how this book ends."

After that I didn't see any of these birds again. No more social flycatchers. Not a one.

There are a lot of possibilities here. Maybe it was time for them to move on to another place to feed. Maybe it was time for them to move west or north on their migration. Maybe they ate all of the bugs where I was. Maybe having passed on whatever information they had for me, they decided to go and help somebody else, somebody else who was dreaming something up. Maybe somebody who was writing, or painting, or writing songs, or making something.

I prefer that they went on to help somebody else.

Wherever they might now be, I want to thank them for all of their help. But, I'm sorry to say, I don't know how to thank them except to write about what a wonderful assistance they were to me and to acknowledge their help.

9/11, The Eighth Anniversary

2009-09-11T12:32:00.002-04:00

Let me just repeat what I said a year ago:

This morning in Columbia County, New York the sky was blue. I took the faithful retriever dog for a walk in the fields. The golden rod is in bloom, and there are wild asters. American milkweed is in its cotton phase. It was September 11.

When I walk I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. Today I felt sad. I didn't know why. I was aware of my breathing and my feelings and my thoughts. I remembered where I was and what I did seven years ago. It was September 11.

I remembered watching the film of the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. The people who escaped or survived the fire and the collapse of the building probably are still shocked. And all of us who watched the airplane crashing into the World Trade Center over and over and over and over again. We were shocked. Maybe all of us who watched have post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe we're a nation of people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it. After all, it was September 11.

I remembered sitting in the hot tub with all the lights off. Abundant stars. No airplanes. Silence. A tiny person on a tiny planet sitting in a hot tub listening to the crickets. It was September 11.

I'm walking in high golden rod. Thankfully, there are a few bees. There are some monarch butterflies. There are the usual birds who live in bushes. But as I walk I feel like one of the many children whose parents are getting divorced who assume that the reason the divorce happened has something to do with them, something, they don't know what it is, but it had to have something to do with them, didn't it? But, I think, the attack did have something to do with me didn't it? Some people say it did. Some people say it's the chickens of the empire coming home to roost. And I had something to do with the chickens, didn't I? We're all interconnected, the poultry and me. This connection is so remote, so far away, so ungraspable, so unfathomable. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't make sense to me. Sometimes things just don't make sense. After all, it was September 11.

The dog decided to go for a swim. I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware of my thoughts. The dog and I decided to walk home. I gave her a treat. The sky was perfectly blue. It was just like that day seven years ago. Except there were airplanes in the sky today. But my country continues to suffer from its post traumatic stress disorder or shock or whatever you call it when you're filled with inescapable horror and can't do anything about it.

Today it rained. Otherwise, it's still the same for me. Is it true that when you remember something, your brain doesn't know whether it's a memory or something that is actually then happening?

09/09/09 And A Bird

2009-09-09T12:17:00.006-04:00

Today's an auspicious day. Look first at the date and time. It's all nines.

I've been in Mexico for more than two weeks writing. And, thank you thank you thank you, I have finished the first draft of my novel, Tulum. And I've sent it out to two writer friends to read. I want to be sure that it's worth continuing with. It, of course, will need an agent and/or a publisher and some reworking and editing. All the usual things that turn coal into diamonds. I will get to that after my friends have read it and after I've honed it a little more.

I'm not going to spoil it now: it's about an American expat with a shady past who's been hiding in Tulum, Mexico for a decade and his making friends with a Mayan Curandero who is his neighbor. Their friendship is very playful. The book is set in Tulum, Cuba and the Mayan Riviera of Mexico. That's all I'm telling for now.

When I was in Ireland at the end of April, I received a very strong message from The Hag, The Crone to finish the first draft of this book by mid September. Or else. There would be no excuses, no extensions of time, no dogs eating my homework. The message was that I had to finish this up without further delays. So today, 9/9/09, I have met that deadline. I am relieved. I don't expect I will taste the lash that was implicit in the April message I received. Thank goodness.

I've had a wonderful solitary week of taking very long walks, swimming, and writing. The writing has required me to go on very long walks on the beach in the forest. When things were getting stiff, or sore, or congested, I stopped to walk.

Bahia Soliman, just north of Tulum, where I've been has been virtually deserted. Almost no one else is here. It is extremely quiet, and the weather has been absolutely perfect. Hot and sunny every day. In fact, the area could use some rain. We've had only one brief shower while I've been here. I am delighted to have had this produtive time here.

Throughout the week I've had repeated sightings of a particular kind of bird that keeps showing up to watch me, to hang out with me, to sing. It's called a "social flycatcher." It lives primarily in Mexico and Central America. It's a very beautiful bird:

I assume it's called "social" because it doesn't immediately fly away from people, though it does keep its distance. It has a sweet but simple song. It likes to be near the ocean, but it's also happy in the selva. And it likes to sit on wires and sing.

Since I finished my first draft I haven't seen any of these birds again. I wonder why that is.