The November 29th Elections in Honduras are a total fraud of democracy.  Held under a coup government – regardless of if Micheletti stands down for a few days during the election – these elections will only cement the right wing’s hold of Honduras if they are legitamized.

The United States’ government has a sordid history of anti-democratic and anti-socialist military and political involvement in Latin America.  The Obama administration’s continued support of the elections in Honduras are a continuation of the coup-supporting politics that has always been common of every administration.

The National Resistance Front in Honduras has called for a boycott of the elections, and this Front (which is composed of Zelaya liberals, union organizations, campesino organizations and others) can – in my view – accurately be said to represent the broadest layers of the masses and workers at this point.  The National Resistance Front has called on everyone both inside Honduras and out to reject any recognition of these elections as legitimate.  We agree, and cannot support this election process whatsoever, as the right wing desperately tries to maintain its dwindling foothold in Latin America and the hemisphere.

The call for a constituent assembly has been raised by the Front as the only way to set up fair elections.  Elections, as the prime institution of so-called “democracy” in capitalist society, need to be recognized as legitimate or the system falls apart and is revealed more starkly as it truly is:  dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The issue at hand is the legitamacy of these elections, will the right wing win the day and rewrite history so that it was the right-wing heroes who stopped the renegade Chavista President Zelaya from ruining the country and had free and democratic elections… Or will the left win the day and forever let the world know that it was a coup d’etat when paramilitaries ran up in the presidential palace in the middle of the night and kidnapped the president.

How will these deep division in Honduras be settled?  Can they be settled?  A constituent assembly could also be manipulated by the right-wing, there is an entire struggle before the constituent assembly is even formed about how it will be formed.  Will the consituent assembly be just another organization of bourgeois capitalist power and machinations, or will it be one where the Honduran masses have a strong and undismissable voice.

All of the questions in Honduras these days would obviously lead to more favorable conclusions if the masses stay mobilized and organized to the highest degree possible.  When the facade of rotten capitalist democracy falls away, who could blame the Hondurans from stepping away from it?!  Today more than ever they must be supported in their struggle however far they may take it.

The organic leaders of these movements are people that have survived in a society that has always been dominated by the right-wing.  They are seasoned veterans whatever their age.  The capitalists of the world would love to keep Honduran labor at rock-bottom prices, and they don’t care if even their own institution of bourgeois democracy gets in the way.  Go and search on the internet about investment opportunities in Honduras, see for yourself what they offer to be its greatest selling point.  Hence they will not hesitate to aid and abett a coup, an assassination, an imprisonment, whatever it is.

The Honduran people have stood up and said enough is enough, they snatched the President in his sleep and put him on a plane to Costa Rica in the middle of the night.  Its ridiculous, its surreal, its 2009!  But when we see that capitalism itselt is not going to fundementally change, that it will remain opposed to a system of governance that truly represents the majority of society, then it isn’t so unbelievable that this can happen these days.

Please support the Honduras resistance to the coup d’etat as much as you can.  You can hold educational forums and events where you can show video of the protests and have speakers talk about the struggle and history.  You can go to any protests and demonstations that are held.  You can hold fundraisers for Honduran Human Rights organizations.  There are many different ways you can help out, hopefully you will.

Shooting a Crawling, Dying, Unarmed Man in the Head Equals Legal?

Paul Boyd: Shot by Canadian police while on his hands and knees crawling.

Two years after the shooting death of Paul Boyd in the middle of Granville Street in Vancouver and the public finally has a decision about criminal charges against involved officers from the Criminal Justice Branch of B.C..

No charges, no trial, file closed.

This predictable outcome places the epic investigation of Mr. Boyd’s death from eight distinct bullet wounds directly in line with every police involved death ever in the history of British Columbia.

No criminal charges. Ever. Files closed.

Put out of your mind the following facts and you may have a chance of reaching the same conclusion as the CJB that the death of Mr. Boyd should not be put before a trial judge because there is no reasonable prospect of conviction for the involved officer. Note that these facts all come from the CJB summary of the incident provided to the media, not from the secret documents and reports that underlie the decision, many of which we may never see.

• Only one police officer, of the many who were on the scene during the incident, discharged a weapon against Mr. Boyd, and some of the involved officers apparently didn’t even deem Mr. Boyd to be a sufficient threat to require unholstering their guns;

• Police and civilian witnesses described the shooting officer as discharging at least four, but possibly five bullets into Mr. Boyd after Mr. Boyd was completely disarmed of his “bicycle chain” and after a fellow officer had yelled at involved officers to “hold their fire;”

• Police and civilian witnesses agree that the eighth and final bullet that hit Mr. Boyd hit him in the head while he was on hands and knees in the middle of the road;

• The shooting officer, whose version of events was given more than considerable weight by the CJB, gave a statement in which that officer said there were only four bullets fired (actual number: nine) and in which the officer said he or she believed Mr. Boyd was wearing body armour (he wasn’t) and standing almost fully upright when he or she shot Mr. Boyd in the head (not true).

Turn your mind away from all of these distracting facts and surely you’ll find yourself in the same position of the Criminal Justice Branch in finding that there was insufficient evidence to justify taking this police officer to trial. By ignoring these facts, you’ll see the obvious, that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.

Don’t feel badly if you disagree with the CJB on first glance, as their conclusion took them two years of study and the advice of many experts to reach. A member of the public, overreacting to the notion of an unarmed man being gunned down on his hands and knees in the middle of the road at Granville and Broadway does not have the training or the education to be able to see through these confusing facts to the truth that such force is reasonable and not criminal.

To achieve the zen of the CJB about such facts, one must, as a CJB spokesman advised the media, “not focus narrowly on any particular portion of the evidence.”

Good advice, that.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/commentary/2009/11/10/shooting-crawling-dying-unarmed-man-head-equals-legal

“We want better treatment by the authorities” one banner read. “The guards are assassins” said another

(AP) – 1 day ago

TIJUANA, Mexico — Mexican police caught a prison official who spent a year on the run from charges of killing a 19-year-old inmate, whose beating death sparked riots that left nearly two dozen dead, including two American prisoners.

Marco Antonio Ibarra, the chief guard at Tijuana’s La Mesa State Penitentiary, was arrested in the northern city of Culiacan, where he was born and had been hiding for a year, said Martha Almaza, deputy attorney general for Baja California state.

Ibarra was brought to Tijuana on Friday and paraded before reporters. Authorities did not say when he was arrested.

Almaza said Ibarra ordered guards to take 10 prisoners into a storage room and beat them. She said Ibarra was trying to find out who owned drugs, cell phones and other prohibited items that had been discovered in one of the cells.

The abuse, which resulted in the young prisoner’s death, provoked two uprisings over three days in September 2008. At least 23 inmates were killed, including two of the 200 Americans held at the prison at the time.

Ibarra faces homicide and torture charges. Another guard charged in the case is still at large.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gYJaGbKevcTElz6D4FPZIQlamrogD9BQFD300

The Black Is Back Coalition March & Rally Nov. 7th Washington, DC!

Washington, D.C. – A newly-formed Black coalition has announced a Rally and March on the White House to take place November 7, 2009 beginning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Malcolm X Park. The Rally and March are to protest the expanding U.S. wars and other policy initiatives that unfairly taregt African and other oppressed people around the world. Known as the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, the coalition formed on September 12, 2009 during a meeting in Washington, D.C. of more than fifteen activists from various Black organizations, institutions and communities.

The Black is Back Coalition aims to draw upon the support of many of the leading anti-imperialist organizations, journalists, organizers, artists and scholars of the African world. In this age of Obama, Rally and March on November 7, 2009 aims to bring back the tradition of resistance historically associated to with Black communities around the world. Comprised of seasoned veterans of Black political struggle, consisting of members of the African People’s Socialist Party, the NAACP, MOVE, the Green Party, Black Agenda Report and many other grassroots organizations and efforts, this coalition is perfectly situated to do just that.

As the Call to Action states, “Many well-meaning people in this country and around the world are afraid to take more progressive political positions for fear of being seen as anti-Black…We need to remind people of the absolute lack of ‘progress’ since new faces assumed leadership of this nation. Many of the leading concerns of Black people, Latinos and working people in this country remain insufficiently addressed. Black and Brown people continue to suffer the brunt of un/under-employment and predatory loan scandal crises. Military spending under Obama has increased as have the warfare this nation continues to export to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Colombia. Mass incarceration, police brutality and political imprisonment remain rampant and the most negatively impacted by the levee breech in post-Katrina New Orleans continue to be without homes, jobs or health care assistance. And to that point, these are precisely the communities who nationally will be the most negatively effected by yet another myth of health care ‘reform.’”

The political paralysis now being experienced by anti-war and other progressive movements suffer from thelack of a Black-led anti-imperial movement to off-set the traps set by Obama’s so-called “post-racial” politics that perpetuates the same oppressive militarist agenda well known during the Bush regime. Black Is Back is not simply a slogan for the African Diaspora but for all progressive struggles which have historically always benefited fromBlack-led movements. On November 7, 2009 beginning promptly at 10am, all are welcome to participate in Rally and March which will include many speakers and performers of the coalition to stand and demonstrate in political solidarity announcing the return to leadership of the world’s most reliably anti-war and pro-social justice communities. As the coalition says, “To free our people’s hopes and dreams from oblivion, we need a coalition dedicated to the proposition that Black is Back!”