Hillary, Honduras, and the Murder of My Friend Berta

by Porfirio Quintano

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/30/hillary-honduras-and-my-late-friend-berta/

Just one year ago, I had a joyous reunion in San Francisco with a high school classmate from my native Honduras. Social justice campaigner Berta Caceres came to the Bay Area to receive the prestigious Golden Environmental Prize for her leadership among indigenous people opposed to mining and the construction of hydro-electric dams that would destroy their communities.

Unfortunately, in a time when Honduras has grown ever more violent and repressive since its 2009 military coup, Berta’s continued activism and global recognition put a bullseye on her back. On March 3 of this year, she was killed by gunmen in her hometown of La Esperanza, not far from where I grew up before I emigrated to the United States two decades ago.

This tragedy added Berta’s name to the long list of recent Honduran political martyrs—students, teachers, journalists, lawyers, LGBT community members, labor and peasant organizers, and even top civilian investigators of drug trafficking and corruption. More than 100 environmental campaigners have been killed in the last five years. This carnage, along with escalating gang violence, has led many Hondurans to flee the country, often arriving in the United States as unaccompanied minors or mothers with small children.

The world learned recently that four people have been arrested and charged with Berta’s assassination. The suspects include a retired military officer, an army major, and two men with close ties to Desarrollos Energeticos S.A. (DESA), the controversial dam builder. As The New York Times reported, Berta’s family and friends “questioned whether the investigation would ultimately lead to those who planned and ordered the killing.”

Flush with tens of millions of our tax dollars for “security assistance,” the Honduran army and national police have acted with impunity since U.S.-trained generals overthrew Manuel Zelaya, the elected president of Honduras, seven years ago. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton toed the

White House line that this wasn’t really a “military coup” worthy of near unanimous condemnation by the Organization of American States. The United States was more concerned about maintaining its own military presence in Honduras than objecting to local human rights abuses that have increased ever since.

Today, candidate Clinton cites her foreign policy experience and describes her run for the presidency as a “campaign for human rights.” Yet, unlike her rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton believes that youthful refugees from violence in Honduras “should be sent back” rather than welcomed and assisted on this side of the border. Today, many still face deportation while languishing in U.S. detention facilities under poor conditions and without proper legal representation (which even Clinton agrees they should have).

As Democrats in California begin to cast their primary ballot now and on June 7, it’s particularly important that voters of Central American descent consider such differences between the candidates. We have no indication yet that Clinton favors suspending U.S. funding of the Honduran military and police until the Caceres case and other human rights abuses are addressed—a position urged by the San Francisco Labor Council and many other groups.

Instead, Clinton has remained silent on this subject, just as she failed to speak out and condemn the military take-over in 2009 that set in motion the cycle of resistance and repression that claimed the life of my friend Berta and so many others.

As our labor council noted in March, “[Berta’s] murder was a tremendous loss for Honduras, the region, and all those working for a more just and sustainable world.” Justice for Hondurans, trapped in or attempting to flee the most violent country in the world without a civil war, requires national leaders in the United States whose human rights rhetoric is matched by their actions.

Instead, Hillary Clinton has simply defended her stance on regime change in Honduras, claiming that she “managed a very difficult situation” in a way that was “better for the Honduran people.” My friend Berta did not agree, nor do the many courageous Hondurans following in her footsteps who need all the solidarity they can get from the good people of my adopted country.

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Porfirio Quintano works at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and is a member of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, whose member–leaders voted to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. A version of this article appeared originally in the San Francisco Examiner.

Establishment Democrats Courting Disaster

By John Atcheson

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/30/establishment-democrats-courting-disaster

In the 1964 film classic, Dr. Strangelove, Slim Pickens is seen riding a nuclear bomb down to his certain death – and perhaps to the end of us all – while he calmly inventories his survival equipment. 

The Democratic Party Establishment’s commitment to Hillary Clinton is a lot like that.

As Hillary falls behind Trump, the Establishment is doing all it can to to continue to discredit Sanders  -- who beats Trump handily -- and chase him out of the race.  Meanwhile, they comfort themselves with self-deluding lies to justify backing the only candidate Trump could beat.

Here’s some of the myths they’re spinning:

Myth #1: Sanders can’t win and his supporters can’t “do the math.” In an attempt to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, the entire Establishment is declaring the race to be over. A typical slant used by pundits, the Party elite, the corporate media and the rest of the confederacy of dunces that has opposed Sanders from the start is that Sanders supporters “can’t do the math.”  To hear them tell it, he’s been mathematically eliminated, or he has “no pathway to victory” and holding on is just hurting Hillary’s attempts to beat Trump.

Here’s the reality: Sanders needs 885 delegates to get the nomination; Hillary needs 613; there are 930 delegates remaining to be won and it is unlikely that either candidate can clinch the nomination without the aid of superdelegates. Meanwhile, Sanders is surging, while Hillary is self-destructing, so many of those superdelegates may be rethinking their commitment to Hillary. And if they aren’t, they ought to be.

Sanders has pulled even in California, and by the end of June 7, there’s a good chance he may go into the Democratic Convention having won 19 of the last 25 primaries, and certainly he will have won the majority of states in the second half. Try doing that math.

 Myth # 2: Sanders’ numbers would drop in the general election: This is one of the Establishments’ favorite lines. According to them, he hasn’t been exposed to the kind of assault he could expect in the general election, and given his history as a “socialist” he’d be easy pickings for the Republican hit machine and Trump. 

There’s two things wrong with this story, however. 

First, Sanders has been under a concerted and systematic assault in the mainstream media and from the Democratic Establishment since he began to threaten Hillary’s “inevitable” candidacy, yet his numbers have continued to skyrocket up in the polls. There’s little more the Republicans could do in this regard.  Which brings us to the Establishment’s second error.

Any political consultant will tell you that the two most important numbers in predicting a candidate’s performance are their unfavorability/favorability ratings and how trustworthy voters perceive the candidate to be.  

Here’s why. 

If a candidate is widely trusted, and if he or she has a net positive favorability rating, it’s harder to gain traction with negative adds.  Sanders has the highest favorability and trust ratings of any candidate, and his freedom from PACs and corporate money, together with more than 30 years of consistently pursuing policies that favor the middle class and the working poor makes him all but bulletproof.  There are no flip-flops, no equivocations, no spins, no claims that can be made upon him by moneyed interests. That’s why Sanders’ numbers keep getting better even though the media is doing it's best to bury him.

Myth #3: Sanders needs to drop out; Hillary will do better when she can focus on Trump.  If Sanders’ numbers make him bulletproof, Hillary’s make her a sitting duck. A wounded sitting duck. She has a high net unfavorable rating, and she’s even more distrusted than Trump in some polls, so political attack ads will land on fertile ground. 

Her unfavorability and distrust issues are not just the result of the decades long assault on her by what she calls the “vast, right-wing conspiracy,” although that’s certainly real enough.  No, Hillary’s problem is that she’s a lousy candidate. In fact, in both 2008 and this year, she got less popular as soon as she began to campaign for the Presidency.  

That’s why Trump has overtaken her in recent polls, and why she’s unlikely to reverse her slide.  And while Trump is equally disliked and nearly as distrusted, he at least generates passion among his supporters.

But Hillary is seen as an over-scripted, cynically calculating, automaton at a time when people are craving authenticity and passion. This both plays into and increases the distrust and likability issue. And even while she continues to masquerade as a progressive, her campaign is contemplating whether and when to move to the center. Talk about tone deaf. As Krystal Ball  put it:

The very fact that her team is so publicly mulling these choices reveals that they have no clue that their biggest problem isn’t making the proper electoral calculations, but rather that their entire campaign is based on electoral calculations.

She’s the consummate insider at a time when people are demanding someone from outside the establishment.  She’s the Party favorite at a time when Parties mean less than they have, perhaps ever.   

Trump can only win if voter turnout is low, and Hillary Clinton all but guarantees a low turnout.

It doesn’t help that she has a history of lying, then doubling down on her lies when caught – something she’s doing again with the IG’s report on the emails.

The closer we get to the Convention, the clearer it is that Sanders is a far better candidate in the general election. 

So why is the elite Establishment clinging to Hillary like Slim Pickens clung to that plummeting nuke? Could it be they are so eager to retain power that they’d rather risk losing than backing someone who is not one of their own?

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John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

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Clinton Scrambles for California as Sanders Challenges for Nation's Biggest Prize

Clinton cancels appearances in New Jersey to try to win back support ahead of California's June 7 primary

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/31/clinton-scrambles-california-sanders-challenges-nations-biggest-prize

As Bernie Sanders launched a campaign blitz in California on Monday ahead of the state's June 7 primary, his presidential rival Hillary Clinton found herself cancelling appearances in New Jersey to catch up with him.

Clinton skipped out on plans to campaign in the Garden State on Wednesday and Thursday in favor of a five-day tour through California, where some recent polls have seen her lead on Sanders shrink to a dead heat—though others have put her a few points ahead.

California will be the nation's biggest primary, where 475 delegates are at stake.

Sanders on Monday held a 20,000-person rally in Oakland—which was briefly disrupted by animal rights activists—where he touched on his central campaign platforms, including universal healthcare and free college tuition, and told the crowd, "If we can win here in California, our largest state, one of our most progressive states, we will go into the Democratic Convention with a great deal of momentum and we will come out with the nomination."

"In virtually every state and national poll, we do much better against Trump than does Secretary Clinton," he added.

In fact, Trump and Clinton ranked nearly even in a new national poll released Tuesday, with Clinton's lead in the hypothetical general matchup dwindling over the past week, while Sanders has maintained a 12-point lead over the presumptive Republican nominee.

Sanders' appearance in Oakland comes on the heels of a series of massive rallies across Southern California, including in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Bakersfield. One supporter told the Los Angeles Times, "Bernie just says what relates to us. He doesn't try to relate to us, he gets us."

No matter what happens in California, where Clinton also secured Governor Jerry Brown's endorsement this week, Sanders reiterated that he would stay in the race until the nominating convention in Philadelphia in July.

Clinton "has received obviously a whole lot of superdelegate support, no question about that," Sanders said. "A lot more than I have. But superdelegates don't vote until they’re on the floor of the Democratic convention. That's when they vote." He said he would focus on reminding superdelegates that he is the most formidable candidate against Trump.

"We're going to go in with momentum and we're going to come out with the Democratic nomination," he said.

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