From time to time I get thinking about the villains of cinema or literature - and recently there are a few more top-dawg contenders...Anton Chigurth (Bardem) in No Country for Old Men, and of course Daniel Painvew (Lewis) in There Will Be Blood.  Chistopher Walken gave a command performance years ago as Brad Whitewood Sr. in At Close Range.  Very believable ex-con habitual criminal with no scruples whatsoever. 

But if I had to choose the greatest (which has to translate to "my favorite") villain of all time it would be Captain Ronald Merrick, played by Tim Pigott-Smith, in the PBS mini-series "The Jewel in the Crown." (1984).  I don't want to go into too much detail becuase Paul Scott's novel, on which the miniseries is based, used Merrick as the fulcrum of his critique of the British Raj, and too much character info would be a spoiler.  You can rent the mini series on DVD - its quite long but as I missed a few episodes when it was aired on PBS, the 15 hour/4 disk set was a god send.  The character is complex - very believable - pitiful and repullsive at once. 

So who's your favorite villain?

There were great hopes in Latin America when President Obama was elected. U.S. standing in the region had reached a low point under George W. Bush, and all of the left governments expressed optimism that Obama would take Washington's policy in a new direction.

These hopes have been dashed. President Obama has continued the Bush policies and in some cases has done worse.

So sayeth Mark Weisbrot in his op-ed in today's NYT.

It was an unfortunate choice of word...even childish:

"The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can't have it both ways."

"If these critics think that it's appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their -- their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations that -- that certainly is not going to guide my administration's policies."

What these "critics" see is something else - certainly not hypocrisy.  With each waffle and softening of US policy against the coup in Honduras, the "critics" see a hardening of confidence among the coup leaders, which results in the escalation repressive action against the majority of Hondurans who oppose the coup.  We are talking about more killings, more beatings, more kidnappings and disappearances, more assassinations, more arrests , more death threats and on down the line. 

The perception exists among much of the Latin American intelligensia, liberal professional class, and workin class that the US could exercise more stringent sanctions, such as freezing coup leader's assets in US banks, further visa revokations (including tourist visas) and more economic sanctions, that the coup could be brought to its needs quickly and a constitutional government be restored in Honduras. 

I've defended the Obama administration recently over the matter of State's letter to Sen. Lugar. But now I am having serious doubts due to Obama's comments.  I'm imagining what he could have said that would have been less alienating to the "critics."  For example "My administration is committed to the multilateral efforts of the OAS and we believe any unilateral action would work against a collective response to the coup in Honduras."  Something like that.  But to call critics "hypocrits" is way over the top.  The Latin American criticism of US intervention address overthrowing governments, training soldiers to invade Cuba, orchestrating military coups and things like that.  US intervention to stop the illegal takeover by coup of a constitutional republic isn't even on the same page.

A delegation of Hondurans representing various grass roots social movement are now touring the US.  On Thursday August 6 they spoke to (only) 60 people at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University.  The delegation members were Dr. Juan Almedares, "Oscar Chacón of the Chicago-based National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, Abencio Fernandez Pineda of the Center for the Investigation and Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, former police officer and Democratic Union Party candidate for the Honduran Congress Maria Luisa Jimenez, Dr. Luther Castillo of the Luaga Hatuadi Waduhenu Foundation, and journalist Gerardo Torres of the National Front Against the Coup d'Etat in Honduras."

Open Media Boston has an excellent write-up on the colloquium.  Some key points in the Honduras are addressed.  To the extent that these individuals represent grass-roots, the perspective is rather unique.

Term Limit Extension

Remarkably this meme is still alive and kicking. The coup leaders themselves are still claiming that Zelaya wanted to change the constitution so that he could run for president for another term, just about every news source in the US and Britain are also makink that claim, and lobbyists in the U.S. representing Honduran business organizations are using the meme as a key talking point.  How does it measure up on a veracity chart?

True:
1.  Documentary evicence....zero
2.  Inference....Like begets like: Chavez, Morales, Correa all seek new terms, and Ortega has expressed interest in a new term.  All are presidents of nations signed on to ALBA, therefore....

False:
1. Zelaya couldn't have benefited  from a term limit change, except in some time in the future he could seek reelection.
2.  Given the character of the Honduran government, the likelyhood of the fourth ballot box in November is very thin, even if the poll had indicated that people wanted it.
3. There is no documentary or anecdotal evidence that Zelaya was seeking a second term.
4.  The move towards a constituent assembly was not Zelaya's idea.

The fourth point in the false column is dificult.  I have read several accounts that suggest that changing the constitution was a popular cause in Honduras, but nothing concrete.  Until now, that is - contained in Luther Castillo's remarks at the Boston event cited above:

However, according to Castillo, the oil deal with Venezuela emboldened popular democratic movements to try to change the much-criticized 1982 Honduran Constitution, written on behalf of the country's elites at the height of the U.S.'s "dirty war" against popular left-wing insurgencies in Central America, "But not only did the Honduran people begin to get a better deal in terms of gas coming from the south, but we also get 100 tractors to support the small farmers to be able to improve their productive capacity. But then the idea came up that maybe it would be wise to ask every Honduran what kind of government they would want to have. So, 600,000 of us Hondurans with name, last name and national ID number, decided to sign letters, we sent them to the President, asking the President to indeed come out with a consultation to ask Hondurans if we were interested in having - next November - a fourth ballot where we would ask Hondurans if they would be interested in the possibility of putting together a Constitutional Assembly of the people."

The campaign for placing a non-binding resolution on the November 2009 election ballot came to be hinged on the results of a poll that Zelaya agreed to hold - over the protests of the national political establishment - on June 28 - the same day he was ultimately forced out of the country.

600,000 signatures in a population of 7.5 million is pretty hefty - compare that to California's Prop 8 iniative, which represented a constitutional change - in which one million signatures in a population of 38 million got the initiative on the ballot.  I think this is a very strong indication that President Zelaya was not seeking a second term.

The rest of the article is very informative, touching on issues of oil, coups and the subject of Zelaya's popularity among the people.  Appreciated but certainly not a political superstar.

HufPo publshed a pretty heart breaking story a few days ago - the Golpistas in Honduras will seize the Garifuna community little hospital and fire its staff.

Dr. Luther Castillo, who was named "Honduran Doctor of the Year" in 2007 by Rotary International, has just sent out an alert through the non-profit group MEDICC, that he and his staff at the Indigenous Garifuna Community Hospital have received an order from the de facto Honduran government to leave the Hospital and discontinue their work there. The government has announced that it is downgrading the standing of the hospital and will be taking over with "new management."

As Dr. Luther Castillo explained to MEDICC, "We will not abandon our people. These are the poorest of the poor, the invisible poor. They are the real victims of the coup." The coup government has made Dr. Castillo's ability to continue his work on behalf of the poor particularly difficult, putting out a warrant for his arrest and capture right after the coup. Yet, Dr. Castillo perseveres.

Castillo is now on the run in Honduras, avoiding arrest.  The Global Health Council reports on him on July 17th:

Dr. Castillo asked us to thank all of you for defending the lives of Hondurans threatened by the coup. He is spending some hours most nights attending to wounded or to families housed in temporary shelters throughout Tegucigalpa. He moves around, doesn't sleep in one place. The streets after dark, he says, are "completely militarized".

The backgrounder, with pixs, for the hospital is here.

Golpistas endear themselves to international community

This should probably be the headliner, but I thought the hospital story was more important. Reps of the coup government have rejected the OAS task force that was scheduled to come to Honduras this week to try to convince the idiots that they should agree to the San Jose Accord.  Did I say "idiots?"  The reason:

"The intransigence of the secretary general in insisting he be part of the mission ... has made it impossible that the visit go ahead," Honduras' foreign ministry said in a statement.

During a visit to Honduras days after soldiers forced President Manuel Zelaya out of the country, Insulza called for the president to be reinstated and did not meet directly with de facto leader Roberto Micheletti.

To think, the world has  been misled into believing that Michelleti was the intransigent one.  Nice to have that one straightened out.  But arrogance has no bounds: the Golpistas stated they would be happy to reschedule the meeting if Sr. Insulza is kicked off the roster.

Las Cincos Generales:  They Have Saved Us

That's right,  folks. 

Honduras: generals plead case on TV; deadly repression grows

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 19:04.

The five generals who lead the Honduran armed forces made a rare appearance on national television Aug. 4 to explain their role in the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. They repeated that they did not act to take sides in the political fight that had polarized the country, but out of obedience to the law, and that history would judge them as patriots. They denied that they acted in the interests of an "oligarchy." They said that Zelaya was acting on behalf of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and had become a threat to democracy throughout the hemisphere. Said Gen. Miguel Ángel Garcia Padget: "Central America was not the objective of this communism disguised as democracy. This socialism, communism, chávismo, we could call it, was headed to the heart of the United States."

I feel safer now.

Chiquita and Dole Engineered the Coup

From downunder, a new conspiracy theory.  The gist - Honduras and Haiti are the trend setters for dirt poor wages in Latin America.  If they get a raise, the everybody will want one. That means President Mel's crime was raising the minimum wage.  By the way, I've seen several news sources, left and right, link the wage increase with the Honduran maquilas.  The fact of the matter is that the so-called "maquila zones" were exempt from the wage increase - these quasi-soverign entities have their own little IMF governments, it seems.  So not to worry, your jockey shorts won't cost more.  However, Chiquita and Dole certainly are affected, as are the Canadian mines in Honduras.

Who's On Strike?

It's hard to get a comprehensive, and I think the resistance is calling temporary strikes also - on again, off again.  The most current source I can find is Morning Star, UK:

Airports are closed after Airport Workers joined Air Traffic Controllers strike.  Teachers have been of strike for quite a while.  Electricity workers.  Health-care workers and hospitals are striking. 

OK, I'm done.