Majikthise

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U.S. locks up asylum-seeking Mexican journo

Border journalist Charles Bowden has a gripping story in Mother Jones about a small town reporter who is forced to flee Mexico and seek asylum in the U.S. because his coverage offends the soldiers who are occupying his town as part of the president's war on the drug cartels.

The military is the biggest cartel in town, which is partly why the local general is so touchy about media coverage.

When the reporter, Emilio, arrives at the border with all his documents in order and his 15-year-old son in tow, he is immediately incarcerated in a private immigration prison:

What he gets is this: He is immediately jailed, as is his son. They are separated. He is taken to El Paso and placed in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by Deco, Inc. He is deloused, given a blue jumpsuit, and set to work scrubbing floors for a dollar a day. He is denied bond, and no hearing is scheduled. Had he entered the United States illegally and then asked for asylum, he would be eligible for bond. But since he entered legally and asked for asylum at the port of entry he is kept in prison because the Department of Homeland Security declares that Emilio has failed to prove that he "would not pose a danger to the community.

Emilio eventually gets out, thanks to a crusading attorney, but only after an unnecessary ordeal.

Think how much it cost taxpayers to incarcerate this fully documented, law-abiding asylum-seeker and his young son.

Read "We Bring Fear".

Honduran Chancellor: Obama is a little black man who knows nothing

Inka Kola News, normally a business blog about Latin America, has become an invaluable source of news on the Honduran coup.

Today, IKN translates part a story in the Salvadoran daily LaPagina which quotes Honduras' new Chancellor, Enrique Ortez Colindres, describing Barack Obama as "a little black man who knows nothing."

Obama has been critical of the military coup that brought Ortez Colindres and his comrades to power about a week ago.

The Chancellor is basically Honduras' foreign minister, so Ortez Colindres is off to a great start.

Elsewhere in the coup-o-sphere, BoRev notes that newly appointed president Roberto Micheletti is still trying to get the hang of press conferences. Granted, it's tough to have a really satisfying press conference when you lock up the press.

Kidnapping the president is a crime, admits Honduran military lawyer

The top legal adviser to the Honduran military admitted that, yes, it was a crime to kidnap the pajama-clad President Zelaya and force him onto a plane bound for Costa Rica:

'We know there was a crime there,'' said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. "In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.'' [McClatchy]

Fans of the rule of law will be heartened to learn that the military has plans to exonerate the military for any crimes the military committed in the course of the recent Glorious Patriotic Struggle to Prevent a Public Opinion Poll.

It's one thing to overlook the violation of a simple kidnapping statute. It's quite another to disregard the constitution itself--especially since the whole justification for the coup was that Zelaya was disregarding the constitution.

Since the military are big fans of the constitution, they probably know that Section 2 of the constitution stipulates that usurping popular sovereignty is "treason against the fatherland." If they're going to exempt themselves from treason charges, they're going to have to rewrite the constitution. Ironic, eh?

More on Honduras

Apologists for the coup in Honduras stress that the ousted president wanted to hold an illegal referendum. What they don't explain is that the referendum was legal when president Zelaya called it.

Only after the vote was already scheduled did the Honduran Congress pass a law banning referendums within so many days of an election:

The Honduran Congress passed a new law on Tuesday, after an unusual late-night legislative session. The measure, called the Ley Especial que Regula el Referéndum y el Plebiscito, establishes specific restrictions on the power of the executive to call for national referendums by prohibiting plebiscites and referendums 180 days before or after a national election.

Prior to Tuesday’s development, President Zelaya had scheduled a vote for June 28 on whether to convene a constituent assembly to re-write the Honduran Constitution. Plans for the referendum provoked widespread criticism throughout Honduras, and were declared illegal by the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and the Human Rights Ombudsman, but President Zelaya vowed to press forward with the vote. [Americas Quarterly]

As you might expect, this kind of post hoc meddling by Congress sparked legal controversy--but the Honduran supreme court upheld the law and Zelaya refused to call off the vote. 

In so doing, he probably overstepped his authority--though that's impossible to say without reading the legal arguments of both sides. I've yet to hear the administration's justification. We shouldn't just assume that the separation of powers in the Honduran system is directly analogous to our own.

Besides which, it was a non-binding referendum. Even if the military had allowed the referendum to proceed, the vote would have had all the legal weight of a public opinion poll.

I find it amusing that wingnuts only recognize the perils of executive power when other world leaders try to fashion themselves as Unitary Executives.

Washington Post's pay-to-play flyer leaked

The Washington Post tried to sell access to its health care reporting staff, senior managers and even Obama administration officials.

The scheme was so brazen that it shocked the conscience of a health care lobbyist (!), prompting said lobbyist to leak a promotional flier to Politico. (The series was canceled after the story broke.)

Officially, the Post was offering lobbyists and CEOs a chance to sponsor an off-the-record dinner "salons" where they could interact with the aforementioned bigwigs in an a non-confrontational environment:

The flier says: “Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. … 

“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. ... [Politico]

The post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, claimed to be appalled and the flier:

"As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this. We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate." 

In his e-mail to the newsroom, labeled "Newsroom Independence," Brauchli wrote: "Colleagues, A flyer was distributed this week offering an 'underwriting opportunity' for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate. The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation. [Politico]

The Post is spinning this story as a case of an overzealous marketing team promising things they should have known the paper would never deliver.

But Brauchli said that the newsroom wouldn't participate because of how the event was described in the flier, not because he's opposed to the paper pimping our his reporters to lobbyists in general.

Sadly, there's nothing unusual about lobbyists buying access to decision-makers and reporters by underwriting events under the auspices of news organizations.

In fact, it's such an entrenched racket that an entire think tank/industrial complex has sprung up to facilitate this kind of elite schmoozing disguised as journalism or scholarship.

Investigative journalist Ken Silverstein went undercover to expose the seediest aspects of international lobbying in his book Turkmeniscam. He shopped for lobbyists in DC posing as an agent of Turkmenistan, a particularly nasty Stalinist dictatorship in central Asia. For an extra dose of sketchiness, he also implied that he mixed up with mobsters. Lobbyists promised Ken they could custom-craft a Turkmenistan-friendly panel and get it sponsored by a respected publication, for a price.

No wonder the Post canned Dan Froomkin, champion of accountability journalism.

It's ironic that publications like the Washington Independent have been denied press passes on Capitol Hill on the grounds that they are non-profit news outlets. The official line is that non-profit news outlets aren't eligible because they might be secretly subsidized by lobbyists. Whereas, if you make a half-assed effort to turn a profit by selling access, you're a legitimate news organization. God bless America!

Anti-semitism in Venuzuela?

Commenter Norm Costa points to an interesting discussion at 3Quarks about that Boston Review article accusing Hugo Chavez's regime of state-sponsored anti-semitism.

Morning Coffee - 1 July 2009

Cores e Sabores, originally uploaded by Dani Romanesi.

Hot off the French press, your Morning Coffee. Today's highlights include accusations by Amnesty International that Shell is blaming phantom "saboteurs" for massive accidental oil spills in the Niger Delta, the UN General Assembly's unanimous condemnation of the coup in Honduras, and explosive charges of state-sponsored antisemitism in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Speaking of Honduras, I find it absurd that anyone would balk at calling the ouster of the democratically elected president a coup. The military claims it frogmarched the pajama-clad president to the airport and put him on a plane to Costa Rica because he wanted to hold a non-binding referendum on whether to investigate the possibility of modifying term limits.

Does anyone know enough about Honduran constitutional law to say whether the president was really acting improperly when he ordered the vote? The people who say he was defying the Supreme Court seem to be the architects of the coup, and I haven't seen any independent legal analysis of those claims.

A coup in response to a possibly illegal non-binding referendum is truly destroying the village to save it. Critics of the president point out that in many Latin American countries, strict term limits are an important check on the powers of a very strong executive branch.

The United States does the same thing Our presidents are limited to two four-year terms. Term limits are anti-democratic insofar as the people's most preferred candidate might be excluded simply because s/he has served before.

On the other hand, if compound interest is the most powerful force in the world, surely incumbency is a close second and presidential term limits may help democracy overall by preventing a single person from becoming to entrenched.

Mexican presidents are limited to one six-year term.

Honduran president is limited to a single four-year term, which strikes me as an unreasonably short in this day and age. Four years seems like scarcely enough time to enact any kind of agenda. Obviously, if the president wants to reform term limits he should be pursuing that change by constitutional means. However, if the military were entitled to intervene every time the Executive flouted the constitution, the U.S. would probably be under military rule by now.