The Tea Partiers held a Tax Day demo at the Wisconsin state capital today. The local organizers said the crowd totaled 12,000. Seemed like a stretch. Much closer to 3000.

Tommy Thompson took the stage late in the rally. His face was as red as his tie. He was so fired up, I was worried he’d have a heart attack and we would see “ObamaCare” in action.

Rumors have been flying about the possibility of Tommy running against Russ Feingold this year. Much to the dismay of the people who chanted “Run, Tommy, Run,” he has decided not to. Like just about everyone else who spoke, he had a very pro-God ending.

I did speak to Terrence Wall, a local Madison developer, who is running against Feingold. He criticized Feingold, saying he’s been in office since 1982 and is now a career politician. “He hasn’t accomplished anything,” said Wall.

Wall said that his top priority is to get jobs started and rebuild confidence in the state, and “get government out of the way.”

I asked him, given what he said about the government being in the way, where he came down on civil liberties. Would he have voted for the Patriot Act? (Feingold was the only Senator to vote against it.)

Wall said he would have voted for the Patriot Act. It’s about “striking a balance” between security and rights. “I’m for civil liberties,” he said. “And they’re going after terrorists; they aren’t going after you and me.”

Well what about the No Fly Lists? “I had a friend who was on one of the those by mistake.”

Wall should be an easy target for Dems. Wall says he’s against taxes, and oh, is he ever. According to the Capital Times, “Wall has not paid personal state income taxes in nine of the past 10 years, according to the state Department of Revenue. That’s quite remarkable, as Wall is a son of privilege who has always enjoyed great wealth and whose real estate empire has, according to his own campaign spokesman, incurred tens of millions of dollars in tax obligations over the past five years.”

The Capital Times continues: “Let’s consider Feingold’s record. According to Department of Revenue figures, the senator paid net taxes between $6,000 and $9,400 each year from 1999 to 2008. So how come Russ Feingold pays more net taxes than Terrence Wall? That’s easy. Feingold’s one of the great mass of Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and try to abide by the rules. Wall’s one of the elite few who think that their money and position give them the privilege to write a special set of rules for themselves. Feingold thinks everyone should pay their fair share. Wall thinks that working Americans should pay their fair share — and his.”

Top Ten Signs at the Mad Tea Party:

“One Nation Under God, not Obama”
“Your dog has birth papers Do You Mr. President”
“First they ignore you . . . Then they laugh at you . . .then they try to fight you . . . then you win. –Gandhi”
“Cap your income and Trade your freedom”
“Chris Matthews needs a diaper change”
“Teach a man to fish and you lose a Democrat voter”
“On the eighth day, God created capitalism”
“Free markets not Free loaders”
“I will not grab my ankles”
“Social Justice sucks if you work hard”

There were some non-Tea Party people around too. A group of young women with glasses and short hair had signs that read “Giving tea a bad name.”

But the most ironic moment was hearing the organizers blaring Rage Against the Machine. Huh?

During Obama’s first year in office, the number of people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased to 388,000, the most in U.S. history. Why?

One main reason is that the Obama Administration has maintained an emphasis on enforcement programs. And like its predecessors, the Obama Administration says it’s going after the serious criminal offenders.

But the very programs it’s pushing are not catching major criminals.

Exhibit A: the 287(g) program.

The 287(g) program, which deputizes local police officers to enforce federal immigration law, grew dramatically during the Bush Administration. The program was part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which President Clinton signed in 1996. Tough enforcement policies were seen as a way to get Republican support for the 1996 immigration bill. That law also made almost any conviction, even for minor infractions, a deportable offense.

The Department of Homeland Security touts the success of this federal-local partnership between law enforcement agencies. However, a report by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security released last week tells a different story.

The report raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the 287(g) program. The report says that the
program is poorly managed and supervised by ICE. The 287(g) program lacks clear guidelines, so it’s being carried out differently in various places. The program isn’t developing data to track itself. And ICE is not going after local police agencies that clearly violate the agreement.

One thing that the 287(g) program is doing well is turning people into ICE, regardless of whether or not they are criminals.

“ICE’s primary performance measure for the 287(g) program is the number of aliens encountered by 287(g) officers,” the inspector general report states. “However, with performance measures that do not focus on aliens who pose a threat to public safety or are a danger to the community, there is a reduced assurance that the goal of the 287(g) program is being met.”

Furthermore, this report goes on to say that results do not show that “287(g) resources have been focused on aliens who pose the greatest risk to the public.”

Hopefully, Secretary Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security will give this new report a hard look, and end this costly program that doesn’t work.

On his second day on the job, President Barack Obama promised to shut down Guantánamo by January 22, 2010. As we near the deadline, the U.S. detention center remains open, and nearly 200 detainees are still being held at the prison, including dozens already cleared for release.

To mark the ninth year of detaining prisoners without charge or trial, human rights activists are protesting in Washington, D.C.

On Monday, January 11, Witness Against Torture and the Center for Constitutional Rights collaborated on a vigil in front of the White House and a briefing at the National Press Club, where two former detainees at Gitmo addressed the audience via phone and video link.

“Nothing’s changed inside the prison,” said Omar Deghayes, a former inmate who now lives in the UK. “People are still being tortured, still being beaten, psychologically harmed.”

Former detainee Lakhdar Boumediene was finally released in May after seven years at Guantánamo, including two and a half years on hunger strike. “I try but I can’t forget,” said Boumediene, who called from his home in France. “When I wash my hand, I see the mark of the shackles.”

Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in the 2008 Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush. The court affirmed that Guantánamo detainees have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts.

January 11 was also the start of an eleven-day “Fast for Justice” demanding that Guantánamo close and torture end.

One of the reasons some Witness Against Torture activists have decided to fast is to be in solidarity with hunger strikers in the prison. “This isn’t a well known story, but there are a number of men in Guantánamo who have not eaten of their own volition since 2005, who are on hunger strike,” says Frida Berrigan, a national committee member of the War Resisters League who has been organizing with Witness Against Torture since its inception.

“They are being kept alive by force feeding twice a day. This is their act of resistance, of non-compliance, non-cooperation with their illegal detention,” she says. “So for some of us, this fast is our way of putting ourselves in relationship in some small way with the men who remain on hunger strike in Guantánamo.” Fifty people in the D.C. area are fasting, along with 150 nationwide.

Berrigan says that last year, the group decided to not do direct action because candidate Obama pledged to close the controversial facility.

“We were so excited and happy on January 22, 2009, when President Barack Obama, forty-eight hours after taking the oath of office, signed the executive order, and said very clearly, I’m going to shut down Guantanamo and I’m going to do it within a year,” Berrigan says.

“The hope that we felt and that excitement has been replaced by outrage, indignation, and frustration as we’ve seen the Obama Administration create more problems instead of solving the problem left to him by the Bush Administration,” she adds.

So this year, the group has descended upon Washington, D.C., to do direct action and talk to legislative aides. “Some of us did a silent prisoner walk, a very slow walk, through the Hart Building of the Senate, wearing orange jump suits, with a little banner on the back with the name of a man at Guantánamo who has been cleared for release, but remains at Guantánamo,” says Berrigan.

The foiled Christmas day attack only strengthened Berrigan’s commitment. “We’re facing a more hardened public, a public that is afraid, a public that is awash in hateful rhetoric, for the last three weeks,” she says. “At the same time, the failed terrorist attack proves our point. Where is that young Nigerian man being held? He’s being held in Michigan. He stood before a judge a week ago and pled not guilty. He’s going to have a trial and he will be sentenced if he is found guilty. Our criminal justice system, in this way, works.”

“All of the institutions that are supposed ensure that justice is followed and laws are followed have failed the men at Guantánamo and at Bagram,” says Berrigan. “People are detained throughout the world in the name of security in the War on Terror. So it’s up to us as people to not fail, to do something, to urge these institutions to not fail.”

But not at Guantánamo or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at secret prisons elsewhere.

Civil liberties took a back seat to national security threats during the Bush Administration. It’s time for Obama to keep his promises to close Guantánamo and end torture.

Looking back and looking forward  . . . to Copenhagen

November 30 marks the tenth year anniversary of the Battle in Seattle, a proud moment in activist history when protesters shut down the free trade talks of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Thousands of people—unionists, students, environmental activists, farmers–took to the streets and joined a nonviolent direct action blockade which circled the Kingdome, where the WTO talks were held.

Police responded in a violent way and tossed tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray at demonstrators, and made around 600 arrests. The city declared a state of emergency and suspended basic civil rights in the downtown area.

David Solnit was living in a Seattle at the time and organizing with the Direct Action Network, one of the main groups behind the Seattle demonstrations.

He, along with his sister, author Rebecca Solnit, offer their takes on what happened, and tackle the myths surrounding the uprising in their new book, The Battle of the Story of the Battle in Seattle (AK Press, 2009).

David Solnit describes the activist myths, such as Seattle was a spontaneous uprising. Solnit points out the massive organizing, alliance building. and strategy that allowed thousands of people to participate. What made the Seattle protests effective, Solnit writes, was “a common strategic framework and massive grassroots education, organizing, alliance building, and mobilizing.”

Solnit also addresses the myth of activist violence in Seattle. Some members of the “black bloc” broke windows of businesses, against the agreement to not engage in property destruction. Solnit notes that authorities have attempted to criminalize protests since Seattle by propagating myths such as “protesters throwing urine,” and fabricated references to overturned police and emergency vehicles. These kinds of fables are used “to create greater public acceptance of the curtailing of civil liberties and the use of violence and repression against protests and participants,” Solnit writes.

While Solnit spends an inordinate amount of time talking about the Hollywood movie by Stuart Townsend, The Battle in Seattle, he does offer an insightful analysis about lessons learned from successfully shutting down the WTO.

Rebecca Solnit, too, challenges the myth of the savage activist. She even takes on The New York Times for perpetuating the stereotype of the riot-prone protester. “The significant violence in Seattle was police violence,” she asserts in a letter to the paper.

The correction The New York Times printed gave Solnit no solace. She writes:

“What remains relevant is why the myth of activist violence persists. My belief is that those who characterize us as violent correctly perceive us as a threat. But to acknowledge us as a threat to the status quo is to acknowledge many dangerous things: that there is a states, rather than a natural order, that it is vulnerable, and that actions in the streets can chance it.”

This book is a great read for any activist. It also includes a day-by-day “view from the ground” by Chris Dixon, a participant in the demonstrations.

A few pages later Dixon writes, “As the day [November 30] drew on, confrontation between police and protesters intensified once again. Thos of us near major blockades became more and more used to the burning sensation of tear gas, and a few angry protesters began throwing the canisters back. Like many others, I was hit with rubber bullets while retreating from an intersection.”

Looking back at Seattle ten years later is extremely valuable in and of itself. (The book reprints the original information published in the Direct Action Network broadsheet.)

But now we are days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held in Copenhagen December 7-18. Activists are planning public protests in Copenhagen to push governments to demand action on climate change.

And the environmental group 350.org is advising people to have events and vigils in their hometowns.

With little doubt, activists will once again be portrayed as violent. But we’ll have to wait and see what comes out of the COP15 talks. Civil society has been busy making preparations, and hopefully taking the lessons of the Battle of Seattle to heart.

The new documentary, Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos, examines the disappearance of 30,000 people during Argentina’s military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Though Argentina’s history differs from ours, we can still take away a valuable lesson: those who participated in state-sponsored torture must be held accountable.

This moving film was written and directed by Juan Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum fled Argentina in 1977 to escape the growing repression in his country. He returns thirty years later after an accidental discovery. Through a Google search, Mandelbaum learned that Patricia Dixon, a college girlfriend, was one of the “disappeared.”

Patricia Dixon

Mandelbaum returns to Argentina to see what happened to Dixon and to others who had also disappeared. He weaves the national narrative—Peron’s return to power and the military junta’s deliberate attempt to destroy the left—with personal ones. We hear from the mothers, fathers, siblings, and even the children of the disappeared. The pain in people’s faces when talking about their missing loved ones is heartbreaking.

The director doesn’t shy away from the violence perpetrated by leftist armed radicals. “But the film leaves no doubt that there was no equivalency between the actions of the left and the repression by the military,” Mandelbaum writes in his director’s statement. “The military represented the State of Argentina, and were obligated to follow the law.”

Instead, people were kidnapped, tortured, and held in secret detention centers. Mandelbaum visits the infamous Navy Mechanics School, which housed a detention center and five torture rooms. It was here that pregnant women were kept alive until the birth of their children, who were then adopted by military and police families. It was here that Mandelbaum’s ex-girlfriend was probably taken.

In an interview on the PBS website, Mandelbaum recounts the this experience:

“Filming at the Navy Mechanics School, where up to 5,000 people were detained, tortured and later thrown alive into the river from airplanes, and where Patricia was almost surely taken, was really tough. There was a moment when I was on the central staircase. I was climbing the stairs and realized that the detainees like Patricia, shackled and blindfolded, would have held the same rail. A small thing like that hit me really hard.”

Mandelbaum incorporates homemade movies, black and white photos, and archival footage into his film. There’s damning footage of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1977 endorsing the military’s president, saying that he hoped they got their terrorist problem under control as soon as possible.

Blanket amnesty laws for those who tortured were passed in the 1980s. In 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court revoked the amnesty laws.

At a time when President Obama keeps repeating that he wants “to look forward and not backward” regarding human rights abuses committed during interrogations, Mandelbaum’s film offers a different take.

“Without opening up the past and facing the truth, there can be no healing,” says Juan Mandelbaum. “Terror will have won.”

Our Disappeared airs this week on PBS.

Opponents of abortion are backing legislation across the country that would give legal rights to embryos from the instant of conception.

These efforts might be wrapped up in the rhetoric of dignity, but make no mistake: “Personhood” laws would weaken women’s rights.

This week, anti-abortion activists in Missouri launched their campaign for “personhood” for fertilized eggs. The Missouri campaign follows on the heels of efforts to create a “personhood’ amendment in Colorado and Florida.

These proposals would ban abortion in all cases, including incest and rape, and criminalize some forms of contraception.

The state legislatures of Montana and North Dakota have already rejected proposed “personhood” laws this year. Petition drives are also under way in Mississippi, Montana, and Nevada.

Personhood USA says it’s working to get “personhood” measures on 2010 ballots or in front of state legislatures in 29 states, according to AP.

Given the Supreme Court’s new makeup, it’s unlikely that Roe v. Wade will be overturned during the Obama Administration. But that doesn’t mean anti-abortion activists are quitting. In 2008 alone, state legislatures nationwide considered about 400 measures to restrict abortion.

Last year in Colorado, a “personhood” amendment made the ballot, but it was overwhelmingly defeated by 73% of voters. Yet the backers of these  “personhood” initiatives  aren’t discouraged. They are intent on raising and re-raising the issue.

Their goal is clear: it’s about limiting the rights of women, especially pregnant women.

We can’t let them win.

On the anniversary of 9/11, Attorney General Eric Holder should scrutinize our counter-terrorism policies. The seemingly endless revelations of detainee abuse, which began shortly after 9/11, demand no less.

It’s reasonable to believe that the torture and abuse of detainees have “made us less safe,” says Elizabeth Goitein, director of the Liberty and National Security Project at  the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU law school. The center has been calling for an independent commission of inquiry to examine recent counter-terrorism policies that may have violated the rule of law.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview with Goitein. (She was interviewed on the Wednesday Eight O’clock Buzz, a show I co-produce on WORT-FM.)

Q: Just a couple of weeks ago the CIA re-released a 2004 report on detainee treatment. Can you talk about that?

Goitein: What it showed was that the abuses that happened under the interrogation program went far beyond what people believed and outside of practices the Justice Department had authorized, such as water boarding. Specifically, what the report showed, was there were mock executions, detainees were threatened with power drills and loaded firearms. Their families were threatened. Some really shocking things like that.

Q: And for the purpose of what?

Goitein: That is an excellent question. There is a default assumption that the purpose was to prevent another 9/11 by getting very valuable intelligence from the detainees. There is still, after all of this debate, no evidence that any valuable information was gained from these detainees relating to an imminent terrorist attack. And there’s certainly no evidence that any of the information that was gained could not have been gained through legal techniques.

Beyond that, there is some evidence from a Senate Armed Services Committee report that was released back in 2007 that one of the main purposes of this interrogation program was to try to get detainees to say there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in order to justify the war in Iraq. To the extent that there’s some evidence of that is really quite shameful.

Part of the problem with practices like torture and some of the unlawful conduct that happened after 9/11 is that there is really a lot of reason to believe that it has made us less safe. It’s provided a recruiting tool for terrorists. It’s alienated our allies. There are instances when allies have refused to cooperate with us because of our practices. And I think to some degree it’s put our own troops at greater risk. Because when the United States plays fast and loose with the Geneva Conventions, it takes away our ability to insist on other countries respecting those Conventions. So that when American soldiers are captured I think they are at greater risk today.

There is no evidence that these practices have made us more safe. But there is evidence that they have made us less safe. It’s not just about civil liberties; it’s about our national security and the best way to preserve that security going forward.

It’s time for us as a nation to take a serious look at what went wrong and what went right so we can have the systems in place to ensure that our policies are smart, effective, and respectful of basic human rights and civil liberties.

Unfortunately, when you had a history of the kind of widespread government-sanctioned abuses that we saw, that’s an indicator that something has gone wrong at a systemic level. It’s not as simple as some rogue actors disobeying the law. It’s more a case of institutional safeguards that are supposed to prevent that sort of thing from happening having failed. So in order to make sure that we don’t find ourselves in that situation again, it’s very important to figure out what went wrong and how we need to reform our system to put those safeguards back in place.

Q: What about Attorney General Holder’s naming a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses?

Goitein:  One important point to be made is that the Attorney General has said he’s asking the prosecutor to only focus on conduct that went beyond what the Justice Department authorized.  I think that’s a real mistake. It doesn’t really serve anyone well to focus on the so-called bad apples and to ignore the fact that government policy itself crossed the line. So to make sure that going forward we have respect for the rule of law, it’s important to look at the government-sanctioned abuses that happened. It’s my view that the most comprehensive way to do that is through an independent commission of inquiry.

Q: What about the Obama Administration’s assertion of state’s secrets privilege?

Goitein: That’s been a real disappointment. One of the most troubling abuses of the Bush Administration was its misuse of the state’s secrets privilege, which is a privilege that enables the government to shield certain evidence that could harm national security of released. But instead of using that in a narrow way, the Bush Administration would use it as a way to shut down cases at the very outset before the evidence had even been identified. They would say this case is so sensitive that we can’t even find out what the evidence is, not even behind closed doors, with the highest security precautions. And not coincidentally, these were all cases where very serious government misconduct had been alleged.

There was real hope that the Obama Administration would take a different position and a more narrow view of the privilege. So far in every case, the Obama Administration has taken exactly the same position as the Bush Administration in terms of the state’s secrets privilege and asserting that it can’t allow cases to go forward.

In one particular case, the plaintiff’s attorneys had already seen a document and the Obama Administration argued that if the court allowed the plaintiff’s attorneys to see the document again, the government would actually come to the court and take the  document away from the judge essentially rather than allow that to happen. So it’s a very extreme form of the privilege. It’s unfortunate that the [Obama] Administration has continued it.

The President has this mantra about wanting to look forward and not back. It’s unfortunate that he takes that view because it’s a false choice, much like the false choice between our safety and our values that he talked about in his Inaugural address. You can’t responsibly look forward without understanding what happened in the past.

Q&A with Jessica Valenti, founder and executive editor of Feministing.com.

Jessica Valenti takes on the politics of purity in her most recent book The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. “Virginity and chastity are reemerging as a trend in pop culture, in our schools, in the media, and even in legislation,” she writes. The book gives a close look at what she calls the “virginity movement.”

“It is a movement indeed–with conservatives and evangelical Christians at the helm, and our government, school systems, and social institutions taking orders,” Valenti writes. “It’s a targeted and well-funded backlash that is rolling back women’s rights using revamped and modernized definitions of purity, morality, and sexuality.”

The larger agenda, she points out, is “to roll back all women’s rights.”

Her examination of abstinence funding is especially eye opening: abstinence-only education programs have received more than $1.3 billion dollars since 1996. Meanwhile, a 2004 report from representative Henry Waxman indicated that more than 80 percent of federally funded abstinence programs contain false or misleading information about sex and reproductive health.

Q: President Obama’s FY 2010 budget cuts funding for Community-Based Abstinence education Program (CBAE). What do you think of that? Do you think there is any chance funding could be restored?

Valenti: I think the budget cuts are a step in the right direction, absolutely. I have heard some talk in the comprehensive sex education community that the language concerning the money for teen prevention programs however, is vague enough that it could be used for abstinence-only education. So we should keep an eye on that. What I think is even more important though, is that we start talking about how we reverse the damage that’s been done to a generation of teens who have received misinformation.
I think President Obama’s decision to cut funding for abstinence-only education is great—but 25 percent of the money that is marked for teen pregnancy prevention could also go to abstinence programs; so I think we need to be vigilant and make sure we’re paying attention to where this money goes.

Q: How do you think the abstinence-only movement will adapt to the Obama Administration in general?

Valenti: The abstinence movement is in the process of rebranding themselves. They know that their reputation is less than desirable these days, so they’re now trying to present themselves as science-based and concerned about young people’s health. In fact, they’re even appropriating a lot of the language of comprehensive sex education like “healthy choices,” etc. They’re far from going away; in fact they’re re-organizing.

Q: Do you think there is intra-party tension around sex in GOP? For example, Meghan McCain said on a visit to The Colbert Report, “It [GOP] can be a party for a twenty-four-year-old pro-sex woman. We have people that are in this party that are hijacking it and trying to make it even more extreme.” Then there’s Bristol Palin, on the cover of People in June, saying, “If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody.”

Valenti: I think what’s sad is that we’re SO incredibly focused on young women and their sexuality. Why are these women making news simply by talking about sex (or having us talk about their sexuality)? There’s nothing American culture loves more than young women talking about sex—whether it’s pro or anti. But really this tension within the conservative movement surrounding sex is nothing new—it’s interesting because they’re constantly talking about how Dems or liberals or feminists are sex crazed, but no one discusses sex (or has more sex scandals!) than they do.

Q: Which states are worth paying attention to re: anti-choice legislation for the coming year?

Valenti: All of them! There’s a lot going on, so it’s hard to say that one state is more important than another. I can say that there’s a particularly disturbing bill in Ohio that, if passed, would require women to get written permission from the father of the fetus before obtaining an abortion. And if a woman didn’t know the father’s identity, she wouldn’t be “allowed” an abortion. That has purity-enforcement and paternalism written all over it!

Q: Promoting healthy sexuality for teens is pretty far down the list on the agenda of progressives. Should this change and why?

Valenti: Sadly, it should be on the forefront of our minds. Thanks to a decade of abstinence-only education, teens are having the same amount of sex, using contraception less, and getting pregnant more. The CDC even released a report saying that for the first time in years, teen sexual health has gone down. So while cutting funding for abstinence-only education is a start, we also need to focus on how to undo the damage that’s been done to a generation of teens. This is about more than politics—it’s about the health of young people across the country.

The general at the center of the military coup in Honduras has a connection to the U.S. military—General Romeo Vasquez attended the School of the Americas (SOA).

(photo: REUTERS/Edgard Garrido)

The School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. General Vasquez attended trainings at least twice–in 1976 and 1984, according to the watchdog group School of Americas Watch.

Graduates of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have a long history of repression and anti-democratic actions. The School has produced at least 11 Latin American dictators, including SOA grad General Juan Megler Castro who became military dictator of Honduras in 1975.

“From 1980-82, the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates),” says SOA Watch.

It’s worth noting that John Negroponte, former ambassador to Iraq under Geoge W. Bush, was ambassador to Honduras 1981-1985. As filmmaker Paul Laverty wrote in the July 2005 issue of The Progressive, “a prizewinning series in the Baltimore Sun in 1995 demonstrated that Negroponte knew about the torture and murders that Honduras’s Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA, was carrying out. He then covered them up by whitewashing reports back to Congress about Honduras’s human rights record.”

The United States used Honduras for years as a staging ground for its proxy war against the Sandinistas. The United States still stations troops at Cano Soto Air Base, near Tegucigalpa, which was used as a base of operations for the U.S.-backed Contras.

And while U.S. assistance to Honduras does not quite match the incredible sums spent during the 1980s, between 2005-2010, military and police aid to Honduras will reach more than $40 million.

FY 2010 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations report, which was released May 2009, states that “U.S. foreign assistance to Honduras focuses on partnering with the Government of Honduras to enhance security, strengthen democracy and rule of law . . .”

Given the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, Obama faces a skeptical audience when he talks about upholding the rule of law. His State Department’s budget request says “Honduras has the lowest level of public support for democracy of the 22 countries surveyed in the Americas.”

Let’s hope that when the story behind the coup emerges, taxpayer dollars, through groups such as USAID, are not found to be supporting the coup plotters, like it did in Venezuela.

President Obama has said he was “deeply concerned” and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Zelaya’s arrest should be condemned.

At least Obama did not endorse this ill-fated coup, unlike the Bush Administration’s immediate diplomatic recognition of coup plotters in Venezuela in 2002. But Obama could do more.

My friend and colleague Roberto Lovato writes, “Beyond immediate calls to continue demanding that Zelaya and democratic order be reinstated, protesters in Honduras, Latin America and across the United States will also pressure the Obama Administration to take a number of tougher measures including: cutting off of U.S. military aid, demanding that Hondurans and others kidnapped, jailed and detained be released and accounted for immediately, bringing Vasquez and coup leaders to justice, investigating what U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, did or didn’t know about the coup.”

In the early 1990s, I spent a few months in Honduras. Most of my time was spent in a Chiquita banana plantation town in the north near San Pedro Sula. Honduras’s utter poverty was overwhelming, even compared to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Chiapas, Mexico. Social movement groups, such a human rights organizations, seemed beaten down.

Now, though, times have changed. The poverty remains but “civil society” seems pretty upset about this coup. Kristin Bricker, a writer for NarcoNews, reports, “It is clear that Hondurans are resisting. People are taking the streets in Honduras despite incredibly hostile conditions created by the military. Radio Es Lo De Menos reports that their colleagues on the ground have been fired at by snipers who are positioned in rooftops around the city. They stress that the gunfire at this point has only been in the form of ‘warning shots’ and no one has been reported injured from gunfire.”

The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) wrote in a communique, “We tell everyone that the Honduran people are carrying out large demonstrations, actions in their communities, in the municipalities; there are occupations of bridges, and a protest in front of the presidential residence, among others. From the lands of Lempira, Morazán and Visitación Padilla, we call on the Honduran people in general to demonstrate in defense of their rights and of real and direct democracy for the people, to the fascists we say that they will NOT silence us, that this cowardly act will turn back on them, with great force.”

Meanwhile, the “kidnapped” Honduran President Zelaya, in an interview with Al Jazeera, is calling for peaceful resistance.

Malalai Joya is one of the bravest people in the world. She’s the outspoken Afghan parliamentarian who was unlawfully suspended from parliament for speaking out for human rights and against the warlords ruling her country. This is her speech at the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression held in Oslo, Norway in June.

Here’s part of her speech:

I am honored that my voice has become the voice my oppressed and unfortunate people. They are supporting me. I announce from your tribune that I will not stop for a moment from telling the truth in the face of death threats and intimidations, as I know achieving our rights requires force and risks. No one will donate to us freedom of expression and other human rights unless we struggle to achieve them. I believe in the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.