Friday! Soupy Norman

The heartwarming & bizarre tale of insane Irish folk complicated by the fact the show is actually a Polish soap opera redubbed/remixed by Irish comedians. Complete run playlist is here ya feckin’ culchies!

Would Obama Have Supported Pinochet?

Honduras, from the Quixote Center (ht2 Otto)-

In Tegucigalpa, the Teachers University resembles a military base. Large numbers of people remain detained and missing. The use of 1980’s torture centers as detention sites raises concerns that people are being tortured. COMAL and COPINH report that members of their organizations are missing and fear they may be disappeared.

There is more detailed witness testimony from the assault on the university here. Predictably the regime are claiming to have found a bomb making facility, ie. they are establishing the rationale for targeting any and all opposition, (Old School?)

the police are now claiming that the National Pedagogical University stored, and the UNAH produced, bombs, producing rows of devices lined up for photo opportunities as “evidence”. The highly-respected sociologist, Julieta Castellanos, rector of UNAH, denies this in an article published in La Tribuna. Ironically, her main argument that the charges of bomb-making were inaccurate comes from the fact that the laboratories are unusable, never having been repaired after an explosion during the course of use. As anyone who has visited UNAH knows, it suffers from an entirely unmaintained set of facilities. Now they also have to contend with police rumor-mongering which, in the present atmosphere, could set up conditions for militarization as has already taken place in the Pedagogica, which trains the teachers who work in Honduras’ under-funded, challenged schools.

The most disturbing stories, besides the violent beatings which were commonplace yesterday, were the reports that many people are being taken to places like the Cuartel General de Las Cabañas, an infamous torture center from the 70’s and 80’s.  It leaves the feeling that the military is stuck 25 years back in history; that they believe that they can continue to act with the same kind of impunity that they enjoyed back when.  Others were allegedly taken to another death squad outpost in the Colonia 21 de Octubre.  We were told by a credible source that the person in charge of that house of horrors, Commissioner Madrid, as a way of threatening his own mother, had a casket delivered to her house.   Even members of the Honduran Congress were not exempted from the violence.  Marvin Ponce, a Congressman from the left wing UD party was brutally beaten in front of the Congress, is in the hospital with multiple injuries, and reportedly will have surgery today on his arm which was broken by state forces.

please call the U.S. State Department (202-647-4000) and Ambassador Llorens 011-504-236-9320 ext. # 4268 and demand that the U.S:

• Publically denounce the extreme and widespread violations of human rights on the part of the coup government.
• Publically state that it will not recognize elections sponsored by the coup regime.
• Revoke U.S. tourist visas and freeze bank accounts of those involved in the coup.
• Cut off all U.S. economic assistance for the coup regime in Honduras.

The situation is deteriorating, powerful people with close relationships to the current Whitehouse are acting on behalf of the coup government in Washington. Citizens of the United States can make their government end their tolerance/support of the coup regime.

Send a message to your representative by clicking here.

It’s Obama’s Back Yard Now

(IPS) – The head of Colombia’s biggest association of indigenous people is concerned that allowing U.S. troops to use military bases in his country will signal a regression to former times when the United States exercised control over Latin America, while a native activist warned of an increase in the number of cases of sexual abuse of young indigenous women by foreign soldiers.

A recent agreement between Bogotá and Washington for the U.S. to use seven military bases in Colombia, which has caused concern across Latin America, was ignored in discussions about Colombia’s record on racial discrimination, held this week in Geneva.

At sessions of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the effects of militarisation in Colombia, which has been torn by civil war by nearly half a century, were examined, but the controversial issue of the bases was not raised, said Karmen Ramírez Boscán, a leader of the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC).

“This issue is a focus of broad debate at the national level, and of course it should have been dealt with here at this U.N. agency,” said Ramírez Boscán, a Wayuu indigenous woman.

The fact that it was not discussed is because “we all know that a very sensitive situation is developing,” she said.

The agreement between the two countries provides greater access to Colombian territory for the U.S. military, which will operate small stations known as Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) or Cooperative Security Locations (CSLs).

This will create changed circumstances and greater difficulties for Colombian, especially indigenous, women. “I think that, directly or indirectly, this generates violence, and obviously its most immediate effects are on Colombian women,” said Ramírez Boscán.

And of course Obama’s AG Eric Holder made a great deal of money representing Chiquita as they negotiated the derisory penalty for being found guilty of supporting terrorists who killed hundreds of Colombian workers. And the soft approach to the Honduras coup perhaps betrays old imperial ways do not Change.