Was new Honduran script always up US sleeve?

 4 November 2009: I don't know. Today's Al Jazeera report of a Clinton spokesperson's denial of any US determination to restore the ousted President Manuel Zelaya to office as part of the re-stabilizing of Honduras DOES seem to contradict yesterday's understanding of the deal, but whose understanding was it? It's interesting that Zelaya didn't accuse his usurpers of treachery today; he wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton begging her to assure him he hadn't understood HER wrong.
        This means he knows who's boss. And apparently so does interim President Roberto Micheletti, since his just issued resignation announcement, especially the part about him stepping aside to clear the way for "a government of national reconciliation" (not for Zelaya) didn't necessarily contradict anything Washington has said before and the implication that Micheletti and Zelaya are equally in the way fits perfectly into the comic book story of the US as the virtuously neutral peacemaker, a story that American news consumers, certainly including pseudo progressive Obama supporters, will eagerly swallow. Last week's many implications that the US would put Zelaya back into the presidency can be easily blurred over and forgotten in the US. US media specialize in that kind of stuff, and international media will probably cooperate, too. Al Jazeera is already doing it.
        Zelaya's reported request that Clinton "clarify to the Honduran people if the [US] position condemning the coup d'etat has been changed or modified" seems well calculated to embarrass her and Obama, but it might not. In my July 7 posting, I imagined Clinton only assuring Zelaya that she'd get his usurpers to let him come home with a clean slate, and I still think I imagined right, because, while the rest of the world was clearly enough appalled by the coup makers who barbarously yanked Zelaya out of bed and exiled him in the middle of the night, Obama's first reaction on June 28 had been just as clearly directed at "ALL actors" in the Honduran tiff, as if he were less concerned by the coup than by the disagreement that led to it.
        Al Jazeera, which is not as sharp as a tack on Latin American affairs, quotes a Cato Institute source's doubt that "the Honduran congress (will) bend to US pressure on Zelaya's planned return to power," and the same source's disingenuous assertion that If Zelaya isn't reinstated, "it certainly will be a diplomatic embarrassment for the United States since they pressured so much for his reinstatement and even threatened to not recognize the election results." The point of that absurdity is to con Americans that the US isn't telling the Honduras Congress what to do.
        But they certainly are. The final negotiations, regardless of how long they were dramatically dragged out, began with a night time meeting at the US Embassy (this WAS reported, folks) where the coupsters got their marching orders. The four member panel that contrived the deal was stacked, certainly by the US State Department, 3-1 against Zelaya, consisting of his rep, the usurpers' rep, a US cabinet minister, and a Chilean conservative.
        As for the elections (which, IF they're rigged, are ALREADY rigged), international observation of the voting procedure will satisfy most critics that they're fine (it always does), Micheletti's resignation will be enough to assure a world eager to be assured that NOT being held under his regime (sort of) will serve just as well as BEING held under a Zelaya regime to purify them; and Zelaya's return to private life (not jailed after all) will seem to counter Hugo Chavez' supposed attempt to subvert another Latin American country, which is the most important US objective.
        Couldn't the Honduran people get so angry at this swindle (it was already a swindle) that they really revolt big time? Yeah. That could happen. But I don't think it will.

Honduras story posted Oct. 8 still works

 2 November 2009: You COULD just re-read the October 8 story posted below. If things go as expected (as intended by Washington all along), maybe this week, maybe the next or the next, leaving out Hillary Clinton's blather and your favorite embedded newspaper's claim that the US has finally restored democracy in Honduras, the ousted president Zelaya's days of dangling out in the cold will be done, his chief nemesis Micheletti will (a) stop stalling or (b) end his assigned charade, and all will be as before, with this month's elections somehow magically purified.
    In fact,if the elections have already been rigged, they're rigged.If all the candidates were already US approved puppets, they're all still US approved puppets. But the official story is that if it happens after an obediently smiling Zelaya is back in office (even if sans balls), the elections are OK.
       Remember how a just elected and immediately ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristides was kept dangling in exile for 4 years until the US put him back in office and restored democracy in Haiti just before the next election of a more familiar and manageable former prime minister. This has been a capsule version of the same comedy.
        The point is that Honduras goes on as before, US dominance has been reasserted, Hugo Chavez has been foiled (your favorite newspaper will imply), the new leftist revolution in Latin America will have apparently stumbled, and, if Fidel is right (which he usually is}, more such regressive coups will have been encouraged.
       However, off your severely censored screen, the new leftist ruling party of Uruguay has just won a second term without lifting term limits, and Daniel Ortega has just won the right to run again in Nicaragua. Keep tuned in here and through this website's links.
       Now read the October 8 story below, pretend it was posted today, and you'll be right up to date.

Peace exactly as usual may be close in Honduras

  9 October 2009: I'm in accord with Le Duc Tho on the Nobel Peace Prize (which he declined because there was no peace), except that if they offered it to me, since I've been as effective as Barack Obama in my efforts to civilize the world, I'd take it, rename it the Juan Almeida Civilization Prize and pass it on to Hugo Chavez for his truly constructive leadership of the "free" world away from the capitalist jungle toward civilized socialism.
    As for Obama, he should take the Ringer Prize. He didn't end the Cuban embargo. He didn't close Guantanamo. He's not going to end the war; he's started his own new war in Pakistan. And he's about to deploy his military might to Colombia from where he may very well be planning to launch a fourth war on Latin America. He's not going to give us health care; he's going to subsidize insurance companies. He didn't bail out homebuyers; he went on bailing out mortgagers. He won't end torture; he excused it. He didn't change Bush's snarling foreign policy; he just took away the snarl and continued the same policy with a smirk. He's not going to protect us from religious laws against lifestyles and abortion; he's going to be neutral. He won't oppose regression; he'll compromise with Republicans. He's not an environmentalist; he'll protect business first. He didn't even give us the word hope, which I take it is the sole basis for his taking the prize; it was already in the dictionary, where you can still find it. He's a ringer.
-Glen Roberts

 8 October 2009: It's hard to tell if embedded media have the final word now from their favorite insiders or if they're just conjuring an outcome in Honduras that they, as good Republicans, want. I'm reading between the lines. But today's embedded press reports have coup president Roberto Micheletti "softening" his stance and ousted President Manuel Zelaya probably already signed onto the final deal - that is, he gets to be first for peace (and maybe president) rather than right. To the media and their gullible audience all conflict is generic conflict and peace talks leading to peace are the only conceivably desirable end.
    So, if today's reports are right, peace may soon be restored to Honduras, between three and four months after the coup, probably before the elections there in November, under the exact terms set forth by Barack Obama on June 28.
    Terms of agreement reportedly anticipated today make it clear (to me) that an end to "repression of the people" (meaning only that the cops will stop beating up anti-coup demonstrators) will take the place of any concern for the historic plight of the poor; Zelaya's support of US compromise terms will take the place of his supposed former intentions to move Honduras to the left; Micheletti, after a suitable delay, will obey US embassy orders and accept the original Arias/Obama/Clinton plan; media will report peace and reconciliation; and Latin American history will go on as before in Honduras UNDER the familiar US thumb and "FREE" of any pesky influence by Hugo Chavez.
    On June 28 (see July 2 below), after being PUBLICLY surprised by the coup and claiming to be "deeply concerned," Obama called on "ALL (my caps) political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms (by which he meant business as usual), the rule of law and the tenets of the inter-American Democratic Charter" and to take care of their own problems "through dialogue free from any outside interference (by which he meant Hugo Chavez)."
    This was typical wormy Obamaesque which meant what I told you it meant on July 2 and which, in fact, the LA Times, also on July 2, told you it meant in a buried paragraph which, even if it had been printed in red, probably couldn't have gotten past the politically correct denial bump of the pseudo-progressive Obama supporters.

              US officials said they would not take action on a threatened aid cutoff until after
    the OAS secretary-general reported to the organization on his attempt to negotiate a
    settlement. The United States expects Zelaya to change his approach enough for him
    to work with the political opposition that threw him out, a senior Obama administration
    official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity
    of the issue.

    The subsequent desperate certainty of US pseudo-progressives that it was Hillary Clinton in peace broker's costume who then betrayed her boss by manipulating the situation to block Honduran participation in the recent Latin American movement to the left is pure denial based on no evidence except their mystic rapport with the Obama myth they still think they elected.
    The embedded media won't even touch the question, but if I'm right, and I probably am and will be eventually in any case, I will be left mystified as to why Brazil let its embassy be used to promote the swindle.

As Honduran flap dies, media revise their lies

 3 September 2009: Western media reported today that the US had just announced its decision to suspend non-humanitarian aid to Honduras. But did any live reporter on hand ask, or did any editor receiving the press release call up and ask, "What about military aid?"
   Do you think you've read this story before? You have - though not quite. The insiders in the government and media who play with your mind often repeat themselves in order to redefine history so you won't be rebelliously confused about things. But if you're not too confused to remember things you're not supposed to remember without official help, you're right. The first time around on this merry-go-round, Obama did indeed declare that Honduran Military aid would be cut off. Obviously, that was nonsense then (as I explained on this website at the time) and nonsense it would remain if ever mentioned again. This doesn't necessarily mean the media have forgotten the issue. The US military connection with Honduras has always been and still is of critical importance. And they can't shoot a reporter if he or she asks about it. But the embedded media play the game their way, not your way. Always.
     And the game today was not to let you know what's up. Very little is apparently up, except for those who think the end-all and be-all of social history is for "the" people to rise up and shout slogans together. You can find out what's up in that vein (even if the mainstream media doesn't tell you) by reading the Narco News every day - which I link to even though I don't share that site's excitement about the current protest activity in Honduras. And by reading Narco News and Chavezcode.com and Fidel's columns in Granma (all linked at the bottom of the front page) for the last two months, you can find out a lot your regular embedded news source hasn't been telling you about the Honduras situation.
     But the truth is that the Honduras situation has bogged down. Hope that Honduras would rise up and go "Castro's way" is just about dead. Exiled President Zelaya's continued flocking together with Hillary Clinton type birds indicates he isn't another Hugo Chavez and strongly suggests he does not really believe his people would follow him if he tried to lead a serious revolution. I think I agree with him on that, because I don't think the people in the Honduran streets right now constitute a resolute majority. And the fact that actually (hopefully really) progressive Latin American leaders are focusing on US meddling in Colombia instead now suggests they may agree, too. Their insistence that the Honduran elections coming up in November not be recognized unless Zelaya is returned to office (which will only be BY the US for US purposes, after all) is uninspired (which is why the US has co-opted the position). What if somebody THEY (the Latin American leaders) like is elected?
    Anyway, the US is certainly not breaking ties with Honduras, especially not military ties, and today's news was only part of a game being played by the Obama administration, which looks exactly like the Latin American game played by all his regressive predecessors to protect US business and profits at ANY cost. The media's job is to prepare YOU for any new "Operation Condor" (or even military action) your misleaders come up with. They'll keep doing their job and the American people will keep falling for their big lies again and again and again.

Hollywood Honduras solution scenario m-a-a-ay work - maybe

 23 July 2009: When I posted my own Honduran solution three days ago (20 July, see below), I hadn't thought of the kind of plan reported today by Narco News (see link at the bottom of my front page) for enough Hondurans (many thousands) to meet exiled President Zelaya at the border tomorrow (or the next day or the next) to pacify the police and army just by their presence and then escort him to the capital with such a show of moral force that the fascists will back down. It's a long walk from the border to Tegucigalpa, and walk they must, to maximize the drama, gather marchers, and let the enemy sweat. It sounds like a movie, but it could work without bloodshed, and I hope it does.

To resolve Honduras crisis, Latin American leaders
must cut US and OAS out of the deal

 20 July 2009: Now that Oscar Arias and Hillary Clinton have failed at their supposed goals for Honduras but may be poised to deliver a coup de grâce, that will include both sides surrendering to US stage management, while another Latin American country's leftward movement is stymied, a coalition of ALBA members still seeking justice for Honduras should cut the US out of the loop, take over the project and proceed in a manner more in keeping with the 21st century Latin American socialist revolution.
     Zelaya should encourage his supporters to continue peacefully protesting and growing but give up his wild plan to return to Honduras as a real-life Victor Laszlo and bring his family to Managua. At the same time, all ALBA and potential ALBA countries should cut diplomatic ties with Honduras but encourage the US to continue aid to the pariah nation, while a task force headed by Zelaya but backed by Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Alvaro Colom of Guatemala work together in an internationally legal way to find a Fidel Castro among the protest leaders in Honduras to run for president there in October in the company of enough other protesters running to re-align the legislature.
     But re-read my July 2 commentary on Honduras and Hondurans. Right now, nobody really knows if the Honduran majority are ready for a civilized revolution, and if they're not, a wrong move by Zelaya could provoke a lot of bloodshed for LESS than nothing, since it would be a black mark on the credibility of a continent-wide revolution that is doing very well peacefully.
     Skipping the bloody theatrics, however, with an internationally observed election in the air, other Hondurans not now in the streets, who want to join, can be aroused by Hondurans abroad, by world wide publicity, and by the candidacy of an open Zelaya compañero not yet vulnerable to arrest, and then if he is elected, he can immediately tell Barack Obama (vainly I'm sure) to end the Cuban embargo, suspend all plotting against Venezuela and Bolivia, and seriously support the Latin American movement toward social and economic equality for everyone or get out of the way.
     And then in January, as the legal and peaceful head of a de facto counter coup (if the US marines haven't taken over by then), he can appoint Zelaya as his vice president; sternly pardon all the June 2008 traitors; unequivocally cut military ties with the US and immediately eject all US military personnel, along with all CIA agents, from the country; and offer the people another chance to approve a revision of the constitution.
     Maybe, probably, that's an impossible dream, but it's critically important that the US be cut out of at least the Latin American part of the loop, because right now, here's what's on tap. The Honduran usurpers have offered to accept other terms but to let Zelaya return only as a prisoner facing jail. Next, Arias (Clinton) will say, well then, to avoid angering the whole world any further (which can't help any Honduran government), why not let him return NOT as president but (to save your own face) with a full pardon - as an ordinary citizen with the same rights as other citizens? And if everyone including Zelaya accepts that deal or anything like it the US will have won the chess game and Fidel's prediction will have come true - that other right wing insurgencies in Latin America will have a green light to proceed.
    There may be no way to avoid that result but it certainly shouldn't be allowed to happen. A civil war isn't the answer. It almost never is. But US (AND OAS) involvement should be dramatically and pointedly condemned all over Latin America, the world, and even inside the US ignorance bubble. Instead of letting this Honduran fiasco become a stumbling block, turn it into a spotlighted exposé of US meddling for the purpose of stopping the advance of civilization away from the primitive (profitable) jungle of capitalism.

US wants to rescue Zelaya with conditions
that will discourage Latin American reform

 14 July 2009: I don't read unsigned editorials, but, since I fell for the headline, I'll alert you that one sentence in today's LA Times Honduras editorial,"Zelaya should give up on his proposed referendum to tamper with the constitution and on the idea of extending presidential term limits," is THE pill. The rest is sugar coating. The writer even refrained from demonizing Hugo Chavez to smooth the pill's way down for California readers whose own idea of term limits is irrelevant to Latin American realities.
    Usurpers of the government in Honduras are now talking to US congressmen through lobbyists suspected of being fellow usurpers,which is OK with Congress, since they and their president regularly usurp Latin American governments, and since most congressmen are bound to sympathize with usurpers sympathetic to US business, anyway, and will see nothing wrong with the conditions the usurpers want to impose on exiled President Zelaya.
     Anyway, their conditions for Zelaya's return, as reported yesterday (July 13) by Eva Golinger, framed by an American ideologue and, according to Golinger, approved by Hillary Clinton, DO EXACTLY CORRELATE WITH AND PROBABLY CONFIRM all my analyses and predictions since the coup came off.
    The "5 main terms" of the reported conditions (my source is Golinger) are that: 1. Zelaya can return to the presidency, but not to power; 2. Zelaya must not pursue any plans to reform the Constitution; 3. Zelaya must distance himself substantially from President Chávez; 4. Zelaya must share governance with the Congress and those in the coup regime; 5. Zelaya must give amnesty to all those involved in the coup.
    OK. Remember that the grounds for the coup were supposedly Zelaya's ILLEGAL intention to stage a public vote for a review and possible overhaul of the Honduran constitution, a supposedly ILLEGAL act because the Honduran legislature and top court had nixed it, and also supposedly because THEY feared that for unmentionable egomaniacal reasons he wanted to change the LAW so he could be reelected for more than one term. Comparing him to Hugo Chavez didn't shore up any supposed legal case in Honduras, but Chavez' name come up I think obviously because Washington and the US business community feared he meant to lift presidential term limits for the same very good but unmentionable reasons Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales did that.

    NOW COMPARE the list of conditions above to my July 12 explanation of Obama's initial reaction to the obviously barbaric, illegal and unacceptable coup when Obama only very lamely said - "that he was 'deeply concerned' and called on 'ALL political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the inter-American Democratic Charter' and to take care of their own problems 'through dialogue free from any outside interference.'" (I pointed out that) "this was AFTER the violent kidnapping of the president and yet easily translated to any Latin American news watcher not imitating a sleeping stump only as 'I sincerely hope the coup masters will let the president come back and that he will agree to stop defying the legislature and the court and hereafter ignore the influence of Hugo Chavez.'"

    COMPARE to my July 9 explanation of virtually certain US motives for the coup: "the motive and opportunity belonged to the US - to Obama and Clinton and the insiders they represent. It doesn't matter how straight Arias plays it (and I have no faith in him), in the media this will become a clash between an 'emerging free enterprise democracy' and a president who wanted to 'go Castro's way.' Zelaya, by foolishly going to Washington and turning himself over to Hillary Clinton, put the issue firmly into US and OAS (a US front) hands, and that's the way the US, which desperately wants to stop Hugo Chavez and his allies from 'destabilizing' Latin America, wants it."

    COMPARE to my July 7 fanciful speculations on what Hillary would tell Zelaya that day: "with an obviously phony smile (trying but failing to imitate her much slicker boss): 'Jose, we really want to help, because we are against all badness and anti freedomanddemocracyness, and we're going to try our best to get you back home, but, of course, it's got to be give and take and we've got to consider the Honduran army's feelings, too. Oh, we'll somehow work it out with them, because we all want to be friends, so don't worry, 'cause I'm sure we can persuade them to let you come back and even run for election again - or something like that - we'll see - maybe four years down the line, hmmm? But we have to give them a little something, too, like a promise that you're going to stop talking to that awful Hugo Chavez. Gee, wouldn't that fill the bill?'"

    COMPARE to my July 2 analysis of Obama's attitude toward the Honduran coup when, after initially shrugging his shoulders: "under pressure from the world (and I hope from his naive pseudo progressive constituency), he (then) relatively lamely dissed the coup, but an underplayed graph deep down in the LA Times story today (July 2) went 'Click!' for any reader paying attention."

              US officials said they would not take action on a threatened aid cutoff until after
    the OAS secretary-general reported to the organization on his attempt to negotiate a
    settlement. The United States expects Zelaya to change his approach enough for him
    to work with the political opposition that threw him out, a senior Obama administration
    official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity
    of the issue.

    "Clearly Obama, as worried as any Republican about the move toward civilized equality in Latin America, has decided to draw a line in the sand in the handiest place, an already thoroughly compromised banana republic with a docile population and a possibly shady president whose ouster may be justified."

    OK. I'm duly noting (right here, right now) that there are some determined Obama fans who are appalled by people like me who are pointing the finger at their president. But this isn't a conspiracy theory. The case for certain US complicity in the Honduran coup was laid out mathematically in my July 12 posting, based on well known general truths just as hard as any more specific facts.
    Even without any new anonymous quotes or intercepted State Department memos, it's a general but very hard fact that the move to stop Hugo Chavez and ALBA, a hemispheric phenomenon, is a US mission, and Barack Obama, who has not demonstrated ANY comprehension of Latin American issues (of Cuba for instance), with every opportunity to demonstrate a really "changed" stance, has instead shown Latin America and the world only the same old US anti-communist attitude that always mandates such missions. There couldn't be anything more lock-brain Republican than his declaration that he won't lift the Cuban embargo "until the Cuban people are free." That's the very Miami gusano babble that George Bush embraced.
    To his determined supporters who think his supposed cut off of Honduran aid and cut off of military ties proves his honesty, HEY! Honduran aid is only in a pause mode (according to the LA Times today) and US/Honduran military ties have NOT been cut and won't be, and you can put THAT in the bank.

Announced Honduran sanctions aren't the bottom line

 12 July 2009: At the end of his very quickly published denial of responsibility for the Honduran coup, in an essay well written enough to have been waiting in a drawer, Otto Reich, a hard-wired US right-hand man whose name is, as far as I can tell, only a miraculously appropriate coincidence, assures us that IF he'd instigated it, A, B, and C would have ensued and then acknowledges that A, B, and C did, indeed, ensue. Hmmm.
     I can't turn that into a confession, but the Cuban news agency accusation he was denying is certainly credible, because (a) he was also credibly accused of involvement on behalf of the US in the 2002 Venezuelan coup, (b) he was certainly in position and in the mood for involvement in both coups, and (c) the US has a history of using fanatically bitter X-Cubans like Reich, "Brothers to the Rescue," and the Alpha-66 mini-Gestapo to do dirty deeds even the CIA is (sometimes) too fastidious to touch.
     Though any proof of such complicity by a former deputy Secretary of State (under Bush) who is still an agent or associate of very relevant Washington subsidiaries in Venezuela and Honduras would amount to a US smoking gun, I don't think it's necessary. I expect a paper trail to show up sooner or later leading from US officialdom through somebody like Reich to the coup. But that some or all US agencies and entities in Honduras at the time were at least virtual accessories before the fact is certain anyway. They had to be.
     Obama's Obamaesque announcement that he's cutting military "ties" with Honduras (now, or rather right away - after the fact) is like promises to pull out of Iraq, convincing proof of his innocence and sincerity only to his eager-to-hope groupies. Right now it's only words. Obama is getting famous for words that aren't executed. His verbal cutting of Honduran military ties and other aid can't be instantaneous, and as soon as a US engineered compromise between exiled Honduran President Zelaya and the Honduran junta achieves US aims, all the press conference blather can be forgotten while the military ties and aid go on uninterrupted. You can SAY he can't take the chance Zelaya won't double cross him by refusing to compromise, but he IS taking that chance. Embedded American media, after all, can be counted on to blur everything over later or bury it under another celebrity death or something.
    All this is eyewash anyway, because the US embassy (always in contact and collusion with their bureaucratic Honduran protegés), US business interests (always chummy and influential with their rich insider Honduran business friends and associates), the CIA (which you surely know does and keeps doing what it does), and US military personnel (who are deeply integrated with Honduran military IN AN ADVISORY CAPACITY) ARE there and were there before and during the coup, which was gestating and known by insiders (including outsider insiders) to be gestating for some time, during which Obama's office certainly received reports (which I can accurately call progress reports) from all and sundry, including Republican congressmen with Honduran connections. Even US aid is conditional (something Obama is making a show of now but it was conditional while coup plans were being hatched and reported to him, too). And the goal of the coup, NOT to punish an Honduran politician for manipulating the law (come on dammit!), but to stop or "foil" Hugo Chavez and ALBA (to preserve international usury*), and (as Fidel wrote yesterday**) to encourage other such coups in Latin America, was and is a US goal, not a Honduran goal.
     All such actors who knew what was happening and what was going to happen, whether they said, "Wow!" or "Right on!" or "OK - you're following my instructions perfectly," sure as hell didn't rush in or ring up and shout, "Stop!" or it would have stopped. So they had guilty knowledge and didn't call the cops in time, which legally translates to complicity. They were all, including Obama, accessories to a major international crime.
     I knew all that, and you should have, as soon I read Obama's PUBLIC initial response, that he was "deeply concerned" and called on "ALL (my emphasis) political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the inter-American Democratic Charter" and to take care of their own problems "through dialogue free from any outside interference." This was AFTER the violent kidnapping of the president and yet easily translated to any Latin American news watcher not imitating a sleeping stump only as "I sincerely hope the coup masters will let the president come back and that he will agree to stop defying the legislature and the court and hereafter ignore the influence of Hugo Chavez." In other words, compared to the response of the rest of the world, his greeting card verse was worse than just self incriminating. It was wormy, i.e. typically Obamaesque.

*see capitalism
**see www.chavezcode.com linked at the bottom of my front page

US president bows to high priest

  10 July 2009: If I were a president visiting Rome, I'd try to meet Sophia Loren. It wouldn't even occur to me to visit the pope. At least, unlike Nancy Pelosi, Obama didn't have his picture taken today kissing the pope's ring. And truthfully, the story of the president at the Vatican didn't offend me as much as the inauguration day story in January of Obama starting his term by going to church to pray, because that came first, so I no longer expect anything better of him.
       But, come on! I haven't even forgiven Fidel for talking to the pope, though, in his case, I knew it was just protocol. It's not a matter of putting the pope in his place. Popes and Dalai Lamas and other imams and high priests of mysticism, denial and regressive and disruptive pseudo morality have no place in a civilized world. Neither do the kind of presidents who don't realize that. And that this is not yet a civilized world is proven by a lot of things, of course, but among them the fact that a philosophically realistic human could not run for and win a presidential office in most countries.
   And that's not just a flow to go with. We live in a real world that needs our attention, which it's not getting precisely because philosophically unrealistic humans are led by philosophically unrealistic politicians, whose blunders are chronicled by philosophically unrealistic editors and historians, and there's no appeal process apparent.
-Glen Roberts

Negotiation farce lets US interpret Honduras crisis

 9 July 2009: The cross-town "meeting" of Honduran crisis principals and Oscar Arias in Costa Rica today shouldn't be happening. It is a media event faked by Washington to legitimize a US puppet police state by treating its coup-appointed leader and the exiled president as equals. And there's another more obvious purpose which WILL be served and which, by being so obvious, as predictable media coverage will certainly demonstrate, should both reveal itself as the real issue and reveal who instigated the coup.
    The motive and opportunity belonged to the US - to Obama and Clinton and the insiders they represent. It doesn't matter how straight Arias plays it (and I have no faith in him), in the media this will become a clash between an "emerging free enterprise democracy" and a president who wanted to "go Castro's way." Zelaya, by foolishly going to Washington and turning himself over to Hillary Clinton, put the issue firmly into US and OAS (a US front) hands, and that's the way the US, which desperately wants to stop Hugo Chavez and his allies from "destabilizing" Latin America, wants it.
     In US foreign policy lingo, a stable country is a country from which most of the important resources and most of the profits flow away smoothly to somebody somewhere else who runs the world, the people stay desperately poor enough to accept whatever wages are offered without complaint, and any labor or rebel organizers who try to disturb that pleasant arrangement are promptly neutralized. That's what stable means.
    Almost all Latin America used to be "stable," and the beneficiaries were US insiders, who have long hated Fidel Castro and are now infuriated with Hugo Chavez for trying to take a continent and a half out of their clutches. So, however innocently Jose Manuel Zelaya may have stumbled into his predicament, he provided the US a perfect chance to strike back because the US virtually owns Honduras - which is still "stable," by the way. Ma-a-aybe the US puppet Honduran army's contribution was not made in the USA, but US/Honduras history tells me that it was.
    In any case, the US quickly took advantage of the situation, with Obama making slippery statements aimed at morally neutralizing the conflict and then Clinton taking over stage management of negotiations in a way that also obscures the reasons a president would go left and want to change the constitution to help him do that. In whatever newspaper or whatever TV news show you watch now, in connection with the Honduran situation, watch for a lot of flag waving for democracy and the opportune demonization of Hugo Chavez and ALBA, but don't expect any clear explanation of ALBA's purposes.
     Zelaya erred by going to Clinton and falling into her trap. Arias is wrong to participate. ALBA presidents are wrong to continue cooperating with the OAS, which they should be rushing to replace with ALBA. They should have persuaded Zelaya to stay in Managua and used his situation as a platform to promote and explain their progressive revolution to the world (including poor Hondurans) and to encourage the slower leftist presidents in the region to join, making enough noise about it to collaterally (without any actual subversion) encourage progressives in Honduras to keep protesting and the peoples of other countries to elect progressive presidents.

Exiled Honduran president is going to the dog owners in Washington

 7 July 2009: Why is Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Washington (see front page link to www.chavezcode.com)? Daniel Ortega's 80's explanation that, if the neighbor's dog is a problem you talk to the neighbor not the dog, was fine for Daniel, because Reagan wasn't GOING to talk to him, and his point was well made and is still worth quoting. But Obama's not Reagan. Reagan was a straight backward regressive. Obama's the "change" guy - remember?
       Zelaya, like Obama's naive constituents, needs to get it straight that the little smile Obama wears is a smirk. He's a velvet gloved/iron fisted, say-this/mean-that, smirking hypocrite. Instead of plausible denial, he has other equally transparent gimmicks: like smilingly telling Iran or Venezuela or Cuba the outright lie that he's going to actually "listen" to them - SO THAT, having been charmed by the promise they'll then shut up and do what they're told. Since he says almost those very words (both parts) every time, nobody has been fooled yet except his hopeless constituency. Though the trick is even less convincing when it's turned by his stooges, Republican Joe Biden and know-nothing Hillary Clinton, maybe because he's leery of Latin America, he's now left town to peddle his smile elsewhere, leaving Zelaya nobody to talk to but Hillary, and, for some reason, the fool seems to be falling for it.
       Here's what she'll tell him, with an obviously phony smile (trying but failing to imitate her much slicker boss): "Jose, we really want to help, because we are against all badness and anti freedomanddemocracyness, and we're going to try our best to get you back home, but, of course, it's got to be give and take and we've got to consider the Honduran army's feelings, too. Oh, we'll somehow work it out with them, because we all want to be friends, so don't worry, 'cause I'm sure we can persuade them to let you come back and even run for election again - or something like that - we'll see - maybe four years down the line, hmmm? But we have to give them a little something, too, like a promise that you're going to stop talking to that awful Hugo Chavez. Gee, wouldn't that fill the bill?"
        I suspect, since I can't figure out why else Zelaya is IN Washington, that it MIGHT fill HIS little bill, if all he really wants is to be president. I wouldn't want the job. What if the next time the armado who jerked him out of bed jerks him out of bed he shoots? Then we'll be reading Joe Biden's explanation that "we" don't tell sovereign nations what to do. If they want to bomb Iran just in case it might bomb them some day or shoot their presidents when they have good reason to suspect the rats are "going Castro"s way," that's up to them.

Continuing Honduran crisis calls for finesse, not high noon confrontations

 2 July 2009: Once in Santa Rosa de Copan, a group of laughing soldiers asked me to take their picture in front of their fort. Why not? Then they told me I was in trouble because the picture I'd snapped was forbidden. While I protested with all the good humor I could muster, one ran to the fort and brought back an officer. The officer told me to open my camera and surrender the film or they'd take me inside and break my arms. Since then, I've never trusted the Honduran army.
    I remembered this as President Zelaya circled the Tegucigalpa airport an hour ago urging the soldiers below to let him land and protect his plane. And I also thought, even if some of them seriously tried to do that, one sniper could turn triumph into disaster.
    I'm gratified to see the huge crowd of Zelaya supporters in Narco News photos from the scene (scroll way down on the front page and link Narco News), but I'm glad the mission was aborted today without a tragedy. ALBA is in the right. One thinks they must somehow prevail. But surely they could think of better ways to pressure the Honduran usurpers than by provoking a high noon type showdown.
    Of course, Obama had easier options, and if there had been a catastrophe today (and maybe there still will be - even two dead demonstrators is unacceptable), it has to be laid at Obama's feet. He could have sent a US Marine guard in with Zelaya, telephoned the head presidential hi-jacker, and ordered up some cooperation. I have no doubt of that.
    But that would constitute a victory for the wrong side of the apparent but not (in my opinion) real triangle. Much better if the Latin American "axis of good," as Chavez once aptly called them, handle the situation themselves. Seal the... STOP!

    I just erased the rest of what I'd posted because, on second thought, I don't think Honduras should be sealed off. Sanctions never seem to work and they hurt too many bystanders. I'm not even sure Honduras should have been expelled from the OAS, at least not in alliance with ALBA. The action legitimizes the OAS, which ISN'T legitimate, and it will appear to legitimize the compromises Obama will impose in coming negotiations.
    What's called for, under the aegis of ALBA (which all progressive Latin American countries should promptly and ostentatiously join) is a lot of conversation, no matter how long it takes - stern dialogue, with no sympathy or compromise offered, about president Zelaya's case AND about the case for universal dignity and economic and social equality throughout Latin America, always with overt diplomatic support for the Honduran poor, but, at the same time to promote ALBA - a long and public conversation about Latin American (and Earth) reality vigorously promoting ALBA and civilization (some day) everywhere south of the Rio Bravo, including Honduras. But, in contrast to the American and proxy American way (exemplified by Obama's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, probably Honduras and maybe soon North Korea and Iran), this should be ostentatiously done with less bluster and more finesse.

Media fail to provide context for Honduran crisis

 2 July 2009: You can't elect the truth. You can't determine whether there's a god or whether Barack Obama is a hero or a worm by asking for a show of hands in a coffee house or a barber shop. You can't get at the truth in Iran or Honduras today by counting protesters. There's more to it than that.
    The media who report thousands of pro-coup demonstrators in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula facing only hundreds of pro-Zelaya demonstrators are leaving out the hard fact that the Hondurans openly for Zelaya KNOW they are also against the army and the cops. This isn't like when you (maybe) and I marched in LA and San Francisco against Ronald Reagan. We faced only a slim chance of being clubbed by an over-zealous right-wing cop, NOT the very different risk of disappearance, torture, and death. Honduran labor unions, oppressed indians, and would-be socialists know what they're up against, because what's happening in Honduras isn't new. The army has even thrown out presidents before.
    To understand what's going on in Honduras today, there are contextual matters you need to know of that go beyond arithmetic. The media are telling you daily (actually very energetically teaching you talking points) that Honduras is "divided - polarized" but not that the split is between a small upper-lower to upper class minority in bed with Washington and a very poor majority - among the poorest people in the world - who have suffered for generations from US exploitation.
    Some stories, more in Al Jazeera than in the LA Times, have noted, deep down in the gray copy and without elaboration, that there is a long-time connection between the Honduran army and US military. Besides leaving out the US embassy, the CIA, and huge US businesses there, all of which regularly tell Honduran officials when to breathe (I stole that from Fidel's column yesterday), that's putting it mildly, since the force that arrested and exiled President Zelaya WAS the always US proxy and puppet Honduran army.
    Maybe you've forgotten (or were always oblivious) that in the 80's, while surrounded by rebellion against a red-white-and-blue system that's never worked for anyone but the insiders, Honduran officialdom stayed doggedly loyal to Washington and were richly rewarded for their dog-like treachery to the region.
     I remember buying a proud Honduran post card back then that showed a squadron of new jet fighters Reagan had just given them. In spite of their poverty, most US aid to Honduras went to their military, because the Honduran army was helping corporate America fight Nicaragua, the FMLN in Salvador, and the (in their opinion) greedy poor. Since 1990 when, following the neutralization of Nicaragua, US media disappeared Central America from the news, you may have forgotten Honduras existed. But the multifaceted US team on the spot didn't, and the Honduran military, like the South Korean military, has always been maintained as a puppet "bulwark against communism."
     That's why it's hard to believe that last week's army coup against President Zelaya, after he broke a cardinal rule of that army's sponsor by apparently joining Latin America's vigorous new move toward socialism, wasn't instigated by Washington. Of course it was. And it wasn't done behind Barack Obama's back. Obama made it clear in Trinidad (see 21 April below)that he has a capitalist insider's view of Latin America, and after the US-backed Honduran army's brutal predawn ouster of Zelaya, the wording of his initial expressions of "concern" were about BOTH the coup AND the political disagreement that prompted it, just as if the acceptability of a president being yanked out of bed at the point of a gun might be negotiable if Zelaya could relieve some of Obama's "concern" by conceding a degree of legitimacy to the armados who yanked him out of bed. Since then, under pressure from the world (and I hope from his naive pseudo progressive constituency), he has relatively lamely dissed the coup, but an underplayed graph deep down in the LA Times story today (July 2) went "Click!" for any reader paying attention.

     US officials said they would not take action on a threatened aid cutoff until after the OAS secretary-general reported to the organization on his attempt to negotiate a settlement. The United States expects Zelaya to agree to change his approach enough for him to work with the political opposition that threw him out, a senior Obama administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

     Clearly Obama, as worried as any Republican about the move toward civilized equality in Latin America, has decided to draw a line in the sand in the handiest place, an already thoroughly compromised banana republic with a docile population and a possibly shady president whose ouster may be justified.
     I almost hate to go on (I've been through Honduras many times and have a lot of my own resources and this could become a book), but I have to tell even those readers who think they're agreeing with me that the context is deep in some other ways. I'm sure Hugo Chavez, who immediately shamed the OAS into stepping in, is also drawing a line on principal, both about sovereignty AND about the legitimate need of Latin American leaders to eliminate term limits to achieve the continuity of leadership that made Cuba's success possible. But Honduras and President Jose Manuel Zelaya are at least questionable chess pieces for his side.
     I was up late last night (almost until Wimbledon) re-reading Medea Benjamin's 1987 book (that you should read), "Don't Be Afraid, Gringo," about the depth of poverty and official brutality in Honduras, and I came to an anecdote about Jose Manuel Zelaya - not the current president, his father of the same name - and his at least reputed involvement in the torture murder of several union leaders in 1975. Sons sometimes rebel against their fathers, but follow-up research on the internet (you can do it, too) verified that Mr. Zelaya entered the presidency as a conservative, has been convincingly accused of profiteering and worse, and may be illegitimately now riding the coattails of honest leftist presidents in hopes of redemption. Of course, his very recent left turn may be real, too.
     Also, excuse me but I have to say it (I know pseudo progressives hate this kind of thing), the Honduran people are questionable. Popular belief that all "peoples" are equal is nonsense. Traveling repeatedly through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua in the 80's and 90's, I found each nationality distinctive, but I found the Hondurans starkly different. The absence of any insurgency there, while surrounded by revolution, was partly because they had a tradition of trade union activity instead. But the Hondurans are simply not like the Nicaraguans or the Maya or the independently thinking Mexicans.
     For one thing, there's a much larger and poorer (and thus more resentfully and even sometimes belligerently ignorant) poor majority there. The middle class is tiny and the upper LOWER class tend to look down on the really poor. Being in the huge army is about the best deal the poor can get, and Honduran soldiers I've unhappily met are particularly eager to lord it over their less fortunate country men - and any tourists who unfortunately meet them. It's as though Hondurans with any kind of power feel compelled to take out their inferiority complexes on anyone they can. All bureaucratic encounters in Honduras are absurdly oppressive. Getting arbitrarily stopped by cops who invent a reason to extort a bribe is common, and border crossing experiences are the worst I've encountered anywhere.
     As for ordinary Hondurans, frankly, I've always found most of them not very likeable, but unlike the poetic and talkative Nicas, the irrepressibly talkative Cubans, or the humorously cynical Mexicans, probably because they take more guff from their officialdom than I do, Hondurans are reticent, evasive and suspicious, and when I've gotten anyone to apparently trust me enough to speak, I then wondered if they were just going along with me. At least since 1980, the seeds of anti-communist propaganda have certainly been energetically planted and grown spectacularly there. It's ironic that anti-communist propaganda always works better than it should among the poor (including in America), but it works best of all in Honduras, where too many otherwise ordinary people have either swallowed it whole or consider it safer to pretend they have or just find that it suits them. The result is an air of fascism that is bound to be to some extent self fulfilling.
     My point is that, though it seems wrong, the majority in Honduras might really BE (or think they are) in favor of the army coup. If so, the situation could work well for Obama and backfire on Chavez. On the other hand, the army's rush to carry out the coup before the people could vote on a review of the Honduran constitution which would probably have led to suspension of presidential term limits may mean Obama and the Honduran army give the Hondurans more credit than I do.
     But what I'm really worried about, and this worry may be quickly extinguished on Saturday (I hope so), is the plan of several Latin American presidents (on July 2) to accompany Zelaya overland from Nicaragua back into Honduras. I've been across that very uncivilized border many times, and I REALLY fear what the soldiers manning it might do. I'll be glad to be wrong about that. But I hope they change their minds.
     But, to return to the beginning. Neither the success or failure of Obama's or Chavez immediate strategies, nor the legitimacy of President Zelaya, nor the crowd counts or vote counts in Honduras can change this: that Honduras needs to join Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and the rest of Latin America in their move away from US colonialism and the barbarism of capitalism toward civilized socialist equality. ¥ou can't count that truth up. You've got to understand it.

Like Bush Like Obama on North Korea

  16 June 2009: Obama's claim that "a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a "grave threat' to the world" is insidious, since it's basically a lie and comes from another US president who is himself clearly a threat to the world. In stark contrast to the US, not just under George Bush but always and still under Obama, North Korea has no recent history of "threatening its neighbors" except in defensive rhetoric. Obama is fast adding his own warring history to a long and bloody US record, and he's the one who seems to be provoking and literally baiting North Korea. The UN should step in and Obama should shut up.
    This story reminds me of the lies told by Colin Powell and George Bush before the attack on Iraq. Why do the media always help beat the war drums? Besides quoting US hawks, honest reporters can surely find experts on North Korea as sober as Al Bareidi was on Iraq to quote. Once again, the US is usurping the UN, literally baiting North Korea, and there must be experts who can be quoted on that. Shallow news coverage helps promote shallow and bloody history.
-Glen Roberts

And the wars go on

  12 June 2009: Clearly, the US is fighting ANOTHER war in Pakistan. US and US-friendly media may hide this fact behind jargon, but it's a fact. Obama continues to mirror George Bush as a double talker, in his mishandling of US foreign policy, and as a war president.
-Glen Roberts

Delayed civil court trial can't excuse Guantanamo

  9 June 2009: Monday's news that one Guantanamo detainee will finally be tried in a real court in New York is OK, but I think he was chosen because he's uniquely suspected of a real crime (a blown up building) and his trial will distract readers from the fact that most inmates still in Guantanamo (never having been charged) are technically innocent and may BE innocent victims kidnapped by a rogue US state and stuck in a dungeon for years for no reason that will stand the light of a public trial.
   The still delayed closure of Guantanamo shouldn't license the American people to forget that. The US Attorney General's boast, when he announced the trial, that "the Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case," is, given the circumstances, embarrassing.
-Glen Roberts

Americans 'spying' for Cuba get long prison sentences

  5 June 2009: Naturally, a BBC story of a Washington couple arrested for spying for Cuba quotes nobody who questions why they should be in trouble. Yet I'm sure most rational people often wonder why any state has secret information about other peaceful states or ANY secrets from its own citizens.
    In this case, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, who face 20 years in prison, are accused of uncovering US spy reports on Cuba (or secret US plans AGAINST Cuba) - of being spies spying on spies. But, while it does make sense for any honest human to think Cuba has the right to know if the US, which is NOT a peaceful country and has no business spying on Cuba, is secretlyplotting against Cuba, US spying on clearly peaceful Cuba is unjustifiable, dishonorable, and expensive wheel spinning deserving exposure, since (1) Cuba's only military secrets have to be defensive; (2) Cuba's only threat to the US, its leadership in the forging of a new hemispheric economic order less vulnerable to US looting, is just peaceful competition and isn't secret; and (3) US spying apparently does no good, anyway, since, even with all that "intelligence" at their disposal, Obama's, Clinton's, and Biden's speeches prove that those unworthies still know almost nothing about Cuba and understand less.
    What makes sense is for Washington to tell all of us what the "200 sensitive or classified intelligence reports on the subject of Cuba" that the Myers supposedly leaked are about. It's certainly Cuba's business and the American taxpayers' business to know, because collecting Miami lies, which undoubtedly make up the bulk of the material, is a waste of time and space and money which can't possibly lead to anything good, and many of the government's Cuba related secrets are probably about what the US is doing or is thinking about doing that it shouldn't be doing.

Reports of Hugo Chavez threatening banks need some shading

    3 June 2009: Hugo Chavez is in the news for threatening Venezuelan banks with "sanctions.' Of course, that's as deep as the story goes. American media are satisfied if their well brain washed readers just get the impression that Chavez is perversely harassing the poor banks.
     In fact, the privately owned Venezuelan banks are reluctant to cooperate with Chavez' plans to spread the wealth. The best solution would be to go ahead and nationalize them, but the Venezuelan president doesn't want to do that yet. Chavez is a courageous, intelligent, capable man with the best civilized intentions, but he's not quite an irresistible force and, besides being unavoidably up against some (not at all immovable but) certainly very stubbornly entrenched old guard and economic and social infrastructure, he is also handicapped by a real need to accommodate his allies - an admirable group of new Latin American presidents with a mandate and a huge poor majority behind them but (in some cases) with less courage and will than he has.
     So Chavez thinks he must transition somewhat gradually away from the capitalist jungle toward civilization. The goal he shares with Fidel and other leftist presidents is surely a fully civilized state with a communist economic sector (see Civil State and Communism under Definitions), but he thinks that for now he must speak only of socialism, a transitional phase which, as long as it persists, is always vulnerable to lingering regressive capitalist institutions. In fact, given the regressive character of Venezuela's still intact wealthy minority, potentially disastrous subversion may be unavoidable without speeding up the transition.
     I'm sure anyone qualified to be reading this website can think of dangers that could arise from speeding up the transition. But I hope it's also apparent that a long history of procrastination hasn't done the world much good, either.

  27 May 2009: NORTH KOREA'S RETURN TO ARMS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED if the Obama administration had kept its promise to "change" the US stance toward the world. But only Obama's and Clinton's facial expressions changed as they went on menacing North Korea and Iran in Bush's own words. Everyone knows that kind of bluster led to the invasion of Iraq. So why wouldn't North Korea want to share Pakistan's and China's immunity from attack?
       They say they only want a deterrent and whatever Obama thinks, it would be a lot smarter to ASSUME that's true, to start "listening" as he promised he would, and to convince North Korea (and the disbelieving world) that the new "changed" US wants to join the UN and help its neighbors achieve total world nuclear disarmament, and NOT to scare anyone into starting a new arms race through continued belligerent confrontation.
        The tribal American media keep on playing this story as part of the comic book saga they've always pushed and which Obama has unfortunately fallen for. But by mistaking himself for Flash Gordon, "the leader of the free world," precisely because the world had hoped for better things from him, Obama is doing more now than George Bush did to split the world between the US and its uneasy allies on one side and a world sick and tired of US bullying on the other.

California Supreme Court Surrenders Its Credibility

  26 May 2009: Wrongly believing they were deciding who can marry, which is none of their business, the California Supreme Court this morning foolishly upheld a breach of the integrity of the Constitution they are supposed to be guarding, letting stand a lumpen inspired law that obviously violates logic and intelligent legal precedent in two ways: it carves a religious commandment into a secular constitution, and it sets one more dangerous precedent (unfortunately there are already others) by approving a law that is NOT intelligently grounded in the social and economic contract that should underlie any civilized secular state. If you don't understand that, go back to the home page and read my explanation and definition of a Civil State.
       As usual, the regressive judges were aided and abetted (and undoubtedly confused and pressured) by California media which continually characterized the controversy as a circus confrontation between the judges as moderators and the public as a Jerry Springer show type audience deciding through a volume detector which couples they liked the best. In fact, the judges should not have even considered the anti-gay mob purpose of the phrase they were being asked to OK for the Constitution. They should only have considered the legitimacy of the phrase as an unacceptable intrusion into a secular constitution. Just in case it helps promote more intelligent dialogue next time, read the article (below) which I posted yesterday.

  25 May 2009: Through daily editorial telepathy, the media have been trying hard to conjure up a wrong state constitutional decision tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26) and, considering that they and the men and women who'll render the judgement belong to the same godly race, I can't hope to out-conjure them. But sometimes humans at least know the rules of their own jobs, so if the logic that's supposed to underlie both California and American law prevails, the Supreme Court will disappoint the majority tomorrow and erase the latest of many religious stains that mar their constitution.
        When I was told by an angry Christian that we had to "keep queers from getting married," I told him there's no way it hurts me, so it's none of my business. A guy who'd been arguing with him asked me, "Are you religious?" I told him I'm not, and the relevance was obvious even to the Christian. He was angry as a Christian, not as a participating member of a secular civil state.
        The purpose of law in a secular civil state is not to serve anyone's god. It's not to serve the state as a foolishly exalted deputy deity, either. It's to serve the members of the state, of course, but ONLY as participants in a social/economic contract which defines and upholds the purposes NOT of irrational and irrelevant religion but of a hopefully very rational secular civil state focused on secular civil matters.
        Librarians don't shush priests in church and orating priests don't disturb the peace in libraries. Religions are for separately superstitious subgroups crossing state lines. States are mechanisms for unified community members trying to take care of real-world civil matters together that they can't easily deal with separately. State law therefore should only regulate participation in the economic contract underlying the state and enforce the social contract that underlies the state. Economic contract matters are confused in America, but the social contract is as old as civilization and perfectly clear. I will not hurt you if you will not hurt me and therefore we will live in peace together as equal members of a civilized state. Any law that exceeds that purpose is invalid, even if it has been foolishly inserted into the state's constitution by a confused majority.
        If the Supreme Court does not tell Californians exactly that tomorrow, then the court will have failed as a mechanism of the state, just as the majority failed as members of the state when they passed Proposition 8 and inserted a primitive religious commandment into their supposedly secular constitution.
        A particular church may marry anyone it wishes but no church has the right to tell other churches or the state who to marry. Religion that doesn't violate the economic and social contract underlying the state is not the state's business, but NO state law or procedure can be tainted by religion. If the court does not tell California exactly that, then the validity and further viability of the state itself as a civilized institution will be in doubt.

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