news trip to Bernay's banana republic(s)

Well the Guatemalan elections are just a couple of weeks away and it looks like there is real danger of Otto "ex"-military "Hard Hand of Justice" Perez Molina winning by the skin of his teeth:

"It was all so different five months ago- Alvaro Colom looked like he was going to walk it. Now with less than a month out from the first round of the Guatemalan elections, it's anyone's guess. Although Otto Pérez Molina is predicted to be at least 10 percentage points off the pace in the first round, it all changes with forecasts for a second round run off between Pérez Molina and Colom. The gap narrows to just 2 percentage points- Colom is first with 41.4 per cent, followed by Pérez Molina with 39.3 per cent." (http://gsn.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/18/3166649.html)

There is a serious malnutrition crisis in Zacapa on the front page of Prensa Libre, and while the paper bemoans the sad tight faces, it does not mention what the most recent human rights commission report revealed: that the Constitutional Court recently declared unconstitutional a popular consultation that showed that Zacapa residents oppose a hydroelectric plant on their river; construction is of course set to go forward contrary to the wishes of the people of Zacapa who were asked their opinion through official channels only to be promptly ignored.

It all makes sense when you assume that the people are stupid and that government and media exist to manipulate them to its ends. A little retrospective on Bernays, the originator of PR, in the form of this documentary clip is up on the Guatemala Solidarity Network.

http://gsn.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2006/10/2/2379575.html

a relevant account today I think for the US and Guatemala both that shows how much our histories are linked. . . should remind us how so many people in power think about citizens.

In slightly better news, the case against genocidal ex-dictator Rios Montt got a boost when a court ruled that a set of leaked documents could not be kept from the trial under a state secrets doctrine because the crime had already been committed and the release of the documents would not compromise national security. "The documents detailing Plan Sofia clearly illustrate an explicit chain of command, with Rios Montt at its head, through which orders of mass extermination were communicated at the height of the conflict" said Catherine Norris, an organizer with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) in Washington D.C." (http://gsn.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/17/3164102.html)

Now we have only to wait and see what the US Court of Appeals rules in our own parallel case, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. President Bush, regarding warrantless spying on US islamic charity organizations. Bush's Dept. of Justice guy makes the case that letters which were accidentally sent to these organizations revealing the spying program to its targets (woops) are protected as ultra-classified so that the prosecution on behalf of these groups can not even use the memory of these documents during the trial, hence the groups have no proof they were ever spied on, hence there is no case, case dismissed. Will the Court of Appeals uphold the Bush Administration's apparent right to no-oversight based on the State Secrets Doctrine? unclear.

anxiously awaiting September 9th and November 8th.