EcoLogics

This blog has been very critical of the Obama administration. The signs are that the administration, if not the man himself, is a Clinton Mk II. As such, it will eventually pave the way for another Bush-like figure; to be sure, it’s already engaging in some rather Bush-like actions itself.

Political realists will no doubt argue that Obama faces a formidable opposition, and that he has to make concessions. This blogger believes that it’s actually a rerun of what happened when New Labour came to power in the UK: the new government was so scared of the Tories (or of their press) that it tried to be more Tory than the Tories. In the end, they succeeded. (Actually, New Labour were Tories from the start, but that’s another story.)

That said, there is at least one thing that Obama has done which does show political courage: he’s come out and condemned the actions of the police that wrongly arrested Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates. Obama could have kept quiet, but he didn’t—three cheers for his willingness to denounce this episode, and not just ‘racism in general’. For anyone who thinks that the election of Obama signals the end of institutional racism, the events in Cambridge, MA are a grim reminder that it remains a reality in the U.S., as in the U.K.

Updated July 23, 2009

Despite everything that’s happened, I don’t think many people grasp just how raw, how explicit, the corruption of our institutions has become — Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times

You have to hand it to New Labour. Its professional liars, commonly known as spin doctors, are the best in the business. They have not only acquired all of the skills of their Conservative tutors, but have developed lying into such a high art that it is now necessary to distinguish between New Labour’s plain lies, e.g. the reasons given for going to war in Iraq, and what might be described as the party’s ‘meta-lies’. Meta-lies are lies about lies, or lies on the back of lies; to paraphrase the old joke about turtles and the universe, with New Labour it’s lies all the way down.

Yesterday and today we have been treated to a good example of the second type of New Labour lying. The EcoLogics lie detector went off at approximately one minute past midnight on Saturday, when the Guardian’s website published an article by Alan Milburn rather lengthily titled ‘The UK is an unequal society in which class background too often determines life chances’ (the article appeared in the Observer as well).

To a naïve reader (if there is such a thing these days), Alan Milburn was representing the depressing facts of the UK’s class divide: ‘in the decades since the second world war’, social mobility ‘has slowed’, and that it is now necessary to do more to improve people’s ‘life chances’. Enter, stage left, the man who was once the former trade unionist-cum-working class leader-in-waiting, proclaiming the legacy of the Labour Party:  ‘The postwar Labour government’s towering achievements – full employment, universal education and a new welfare state – helped millions of people, me included, to realise the new opportunities brought by social and economic change’.

To a critical reader, or a reader not suffering from news amnesia, it’s difficult to decide what is more astonishing: Milburn’s efforts to pass the buck for the disastrous consequences of New Labour’s policies to a hazy process that has supposedly taken place ‘over the decades’; or Milburn’s truly chamaeleonic ability to change political colours at will. In the aforementioned article, he is so beguilingly full of praise for state intervention that one is almost persuaded that one of New Labour’s most manipulatively rightwing politicians has finally exorcised the Hydra of neoliberalism from his body.

We will come to the substance of Milburn’s higher education lie in the second part of this post. First, let us remember who Alan Milburn is. In an article recently published in the Guardian, Seumas Milne named names in the revolving public-private door that is a New Labour cabinet post. The relevant bit is worth quoting in some length:

…former health ministers have done particularly well. The ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt earns more than £100,000 as a consultant for Alliance Boots and Cinven, a private equity group that bought 25 private hospitals from Bupa. After leaving the department, her predecessor, Alan Milburn, worked for Bridgepoint Capital, which successfully bid for NHS contracts, and now boasts a striking portfolio of jobs with private health companies. When I rang Milburn yesterday to ask whether he saw any conflict of interest in his directorships, he swore and hung up, but later emailed to say he had “always followed the proper processes laid down for former ministers”.

Other articles in the press have noted that Milburn has five paid roles in addition to his parliamentary work, including posts with PepsiCo and Lloyds Pharmacy. The ‘They Vote For You’ website—what an ironic title that has become—suggests that Milburn has certainly been loyal to his masters in the private healthcare business: he is listed as having voted ‘very strongly’ in favour of Foundation Hospitals, the same hospitals that Unison, the leading trade union for the sector, has described as leading ‘to increased inequalities between NHS services and the extension of charging’. Aside from the betrayal of the trade union (something that Milburn might actually treat as a kind of badge of honour), EcoLogics wonders how Milburn would square his undermining of the NHS with the statement quoted earlier: ‘The postwar Labour government’s towering achievements – full employment, universal education and a new welfare state – helped millions of people, me included…’ Alas, when one rereads the statement, one realises that a major ‘old’ Labour achievement that Milburn hasn’t singled for praise is the NHS.

EcoLogics can imagine Milburn jumping up to argue that he includes the NHS within the welfare state; but a similar omission occurs in a piece that Milburn wrote in May for the Independent. On the eve of the leadership jousting that preceded New Labour’s electoral disaster in early June, Milburn apparently felt compelled to beat his chest vigorously, shouting as he did that New Labour had better not betray Blairism. In one passage that betrayed Milburn’s enthusiasm for neoliberalism, Milburn snarled that ‘those licking their lips at the prospect of an end to market capitalism…risk gorging prematurely on a beast that has life still in it.’ ‘Government intervention to stabilise and stimulate the global economy must not become the foundation for a wider creeping programme of nationalisation in which the state assumes responsibilities that properly belong either to markets or to citizens.’

The careful omission of the NHS occurred in a passage in which Milburn nonetheless changed his colours from the deepest blue to a very pale pink:  ‘…when it comes to social change it is inconceivable that disadvantage can be overcome without the state or politics playing its part. Poor people are hardly able to spend their way out of poverty. If Britain is to become truly socially mobile they need help with education, housing, training, childcare and employment.’ Either Milburn doesn’t believe that being healthy is an integral part of one’s ‘life chances’, or our chamaeleonic politician decided not to change his colours completely; it may well be that he felt it would be wise not to upset Bridgepoint Capital et al. The news in the wake of the MP’s expenses scandal that Milburn is set to stand down at the next election (will he really go?) would appear to confirm where Milburn’s allegiances—and vulnerabilities—lie.

Seumas Milne noted that it was perfectly true that Milburn had indeed ‘followed the proper processes laid down for former ministers’. EcoLogics believes that there is now actual corruption on an unprecedented scale in the very highest levels of New Labour (how paradoxical that New Labour has decided to reinstate direct rule in the Turks and Caicos Islands, on the grounds of corruption). That said, practices such as Milburn’s probably belong to the category of what this blog describes as ‘virtual corruption’: practices which are legal, or have been made legal, or form part of that fuzzy logic commonly described as ‘not illegal’. The genius of New Labour’s lying machine, and of Milburn’s changing hues, is that both have served to conceal until recently the sheer extent to which the party’s politics are driven by money—the money of corporations such as Bridgepoint Capital and PepsiCo. While New Labour’s corruption bears comparison with that of Saramago’s ‘Berlusconi Thing’, this is still not evident to many, perhaps even most people in the UK. It is easy to forget that the man who lied for Berlusconi is no less than the husband of New Labour’s own Tessa Jowell. We might say, in this sense, that the epigraph by Krugman applies as much to the U.S. as it does the U.K.: people do not appear to have realised the extent of what Milne aptly described as the ‘culture of corruption’. While the MPs’ expenses scandal may have dented public confidence, it came nowhere near uncovering the extent of the corruption that was first revealed, and so aptly symbolised from a social health and politics perspective, by the Ecclestone Affair.

The reality is that the New Labour Party’s political, economic and moral corruption have gone so far that they almost guarantee that anything that a New Labour politician says about almost any subject is an untruth, even if only by dint of omission or lived contradiction. So it is that we have Alan Milburn saying very earnestly one moment how much he venerates the welfare state, even as at another moment he swears at a journalist who dares to suggest that Milburn is, as he most certainly is, a part of the culture of corruption that is gradually chipping away at what is left of that same welfare state.

*   *   *

To conclude this post, let us now return to the subject of higher education. In 2005, a study published by Sutton Trust/LSE researchers found that social mobility in the UK and the US was the lowest of any of ‘advanced’ [sic] countries. But whereas it was ‘stable’ in the US’s case, in the UK it was worsening. According to the researchers’ website, ‘Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain’s low, and declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong and increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment’ (emphasis added). I challenge any reader to provide evidence that this has nothing to do with the neoliberalism of both societies.

This study begins to show, on the one hand, just how misleading it is to represent, as Milburn has, the problem of social mobility as one that is ‘decades old’. No doubt it is a long term problem and process; but what is at issue is whether things are getting worse under New Labour, and the LSE/Sutton Trust quote certainly suggests that they are. On the other hand, even though  this study may have provided particularly good evidence of the link, it has long been known that education and social mobility go together. Despite this, New Labour, with Alan Milburn voting enthusiastically, have been happy to introduce tuition fees, and most recently to privatise the student loan system. Worse, at some point, companies like the failed Carter & Carter realised that there was money to be made in higher education, and a process of backdoor privatisation began, with the help of New Labour ministers and its acolytes in some of the universities. Some of the private firms running further education colleges—again, with New Labour backdoor assistance—have also wanted to cash in on the symbolic capital associated with higher degrees. This process has, and almost certainly will continue to contradict any New Labour politician’s claim that the party stands for greater access to higher education.

This blog has offered several critiques of this process, and so won’t repeat the analyses here (see for example, the three-part Lord Leitch’s Levers, or the posts about Howard Newby). It suffices to say that privatisation is the big lie in Milburn’s sudden enthusiasm for higher education, and so-called ’soft skills’; given New Labour’s policy history, and indeed its on-going practice of subordinating higher education to the interests of big business, it is extraordinarily cynical to come out now, as Milburn has, in defence of higher education as a way of solving Britain’s ossifying class divides.

That said, it does seem that there is a rethink underway, and indeed some might even argue that there is reason to celebrate, rather than criticise. EcoLogics is, and will remain, deeply sceptical; no sooner had Gordon Brown claimed that neoliberalism was dead than he installed Peter Mandelson at the heart of government. We have every reason to believe that Mandelson, the Secretary of Secretaries, is now calling the shots, and one has to ask what his role will be in a project that flatly contradicts what is, by his own account, his ‘intensely relaxed’ relation with the ‘filthy rich’.

EcoLogics notes in this sense that the apparent policy u-turn has been announced at the same time that Mandelson has admitted that there will be no more money to cover university teaching costs for a further 10,000 places whose tuition fees and grants will be funded by New Labour. Though welcome, 10,000 new places are not as much as they might appear to be when it is calculated that the actual increase in demand thanks to the economic depression is likely to be closer, by some accounts, to 50,000. It also raises the question about New Labour’s much vaunted intervention in the economy to help us out of the economic depression; if there was any single measure that could have been planned for, and paid for, it was this one. To be sure, part of the money for the extra places will come at the expense of the loan holiday period given to students after they graduate. Moreover, the places will be in the maths and sciences—again, welcome, but hardly the ’softest’ of skills. So what New Labour appears to be giving with one hand, it is taking with the other.

Here is, however, one slightly hopeful thought: there may yet be another way in which the Chamaeleon metaphor may be appropriate: as the elections approach, members of New Labour nomenclatura will have their separately mobile eyes roving this way and that, attempting to discern the wishes of the different electoral groups, and will doubtless be changing their colours from dark blue to pink, and back again to woo the voters. Perhaps someone has finally figured out that without the vote of liberals and the ‘soft’ left, New Labour is as good as dead.

If this is what’s happening, it’s a case of far too little, far too late. Beware, though, of being zapped by the elastic tongue of Milburn and his New Liberals.

Update July 23, 2009: Does this post’s reference to the ‘art’ of New Labour lying seem unfair? Have a look at what’s going on with Miliband’s claims about bucking the energy market in this article about the sit-in at the Vesta wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight.

Actualizado el 16 de julio

Nota del traductor: este blog es una traducción del original en inglés, ‘The Honduran Roman Catholic Church’s True Colours: Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga‘, publicado por EcoLogics el 5 de julio del 2009. EcoLogics agradece a lectores latinoamericanos la sugerencia de una traducción de dicho texto, y su colaboración con la producción de la traducción.

Según los medios de comunicación, el jerarca de la iglesia Católica en Honduras, el Cardenal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, se opone al regreso del Presidente Manuel Zelaya, quien fue víctima de un golpe de estado perpetuado por un grupo de empresarios en dicho país. El diario El País en España informa que el gobierno instituído por el golpe transmitió el siguiente mensaje de Rodríguez Maradiaga por todas las cadenas de televisión: “[Dirigiéndose a Zelaya] Yo sé que usted ama la vida”, dijo el prelado, “sé que usted respeta la vida, y hasta el día de hoy no ha muerto ningún hondureño. Pero su regreso al país en este momento podría desatar un baño de sangre. Por favor, medite. Porque después sería demasiado tarde”(1).

Se trata de un mensaje extraordinario. Por una parte, incluso el Presidente Obama, cuyo gobierno fue criticado en un principio por apoyar implícitamente a los golpistas, terminó por admitir que Zelaya aún es el presidente de Honduras. De otra parte, el discurso empleado por Rodríguez Maradiaga culpa por adelantado a Zelaya por un baño de sangre que, de producirse, sería el resultado de las acciones de los golpistas liderados por Roberto Micheletti. En efecto, Rodríguez Maradiaga intenta impedir el regreso de Zelaya mediante una distorsión del verdadero órden político: Zelaya es víctima de las acciones de Micheletti y del grupo que este último lidera, pero el mensaje de Rodríguez Maradiaga procura transformar al presidente en agresor. Con razón que el gobierno ilegal de Honduras interrumpió las programaciones habituales y obligó a todos los canales a transmitir la intervención de Rodríguez.

Hecho que genera la siguiente pregunta: ¿quién es Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, y por qué se ha aliado con la oligarquía hondureña que apoya al golpe?

Cualquier persona que se informa sobre la trayectoria del cardenal bien podría llevarse la impresión de que Rodríguez Maradiaga es un lider religioso ‘progre’. Por ejemplo, si el lector se basa en la primera parte del artículo sobre el cardenal en Wikipedia [nota del traductor: se trata de la versión en inglés, ver notas a pie de página], ciertamente parece ser una figura en pos del bien: según Wikipedia, ‘Su campaña a favor de los derechos humanos y de los pobres se ha ganado la admiración de muchas personas. El Cardenal Rodríguez también es admirado como un sacerdote dinámico que ha forjado acuerdos de paz con grupos rebeldes y ha liderado esfuerzos por la reconstrucción luego de un desastre natural. No esconde su opinión que se debe cancelar la deuda del Tercer Mundo’(2).

También parece tener un intelecto formidable: según el mismo artículo en Wikipedia, el cardenal tiene un doctorado en filosofía, y además del castellano, habla inglés, francés, italiano, alemán y portugués. Como si eso no fuera poco, Rodríguez tiene un diploma en psicología clínica y en psicoterapia, ha enseñado química y física, e inclusive ha tomado cursos en piano clásico. En efecto, tiene el tipo de educación que tan solo las personas más privilegiadas en Latinoamérica podrían obtener.

Según El País, Rodríguez Maradiaga fue un mediador clave durante la pugna entre Zelaya, el presidente democráticamente elegido, y el sector que apoya a Micheletti: ‘Hay un hombre que influye mucho en Honduras y que hasta ahora había permanecido en silencio. Ese hombre asistió a todas las reuniones secretas que se celebraron en la Embajada de Estados Unidos para intentar evitar el golpe de Estado. En esos conciliábulos, el cardenal Óscar Rodríguez se mantenía siempre en una exquisita equidistancia’(3).

Ahora resulta que el buen cardenal no solo ha abandonado dicha ‘equidistancia’, sino que como se lo explicó antes, ha asumido una posición que lo vuelve cómplice de los líderes del golpe.

Y eso es precisamente lo que es Rodríguez: el cómplice de Micheletti. Un hombre con un doctorado en filosofía, y con un diploma en psicología clínica bien podría haber elegido cualquiera de varias formas de proseguir en su labor como mediador. En vez, escogió lo que puede considerarse como la manera más maquiavélica de impedir el retorno de Zelaya a Honduras: atribuyéndole por adelantado la responsabilidad por cualquier muerte que pudiera resultar de sus esfuerzos por volver a la presidencia. Por lo mismo, nos debemos preguntar una vez mas, ¿quién es Rodríguez Maradiaga, y por qué ha asumido dicha actitud?

Si se investiga con más cuidado la trayectoria de Rodríguez Maradiaga, se puede encontrar pistas que indican que Rodríguez Maradiaga no es tan ‘humanista’ como se le representa.

Primero, el cardenal ha asumido una postura manipulativa en lo que se refiere a los juicios a los sacerdotes católicos que han cometido actos de pedofilia en los Estados Unidos. Según el artículo de Wikipedia antes citado [nota del traductor, se trata un vez más de la versión en inglés], en una entrevista concedida en mayo del 2002 a la revista italiana-católica 30 Giorni, Rodríguez Maradiaga alegó que los ‘judíos’ habían manipulado a los medios, aprovechando la controversia sobre el abuso sexual por parte del clérigo para distraer a la opinión pública durante la crísis entre palestinos e israelíes. Sin duda que el estado israelí (a diferencia de ‘los judíos’ en general) es capaz de todo tipo de actos tramposos. Pero es ridículo intentar echarle la culpa a ‘los judíos’ por los informes en los medios sobre los escándalos de la pedofilia entre el clérigo católico. Parece más bien un esfuerzo pícaro por parte del cardenal por disimular los problemas de fondo que afronta la Iglesia Católica.

Segundo, la revista francesa Golias informó que, en lo que se refiere al tema del SIDA y el uso de preservativos, el cardenal supuestamente progresivo ‘es mas papista que el Papa’: ‘El Arzobispo Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga dijo [en la revista mensual Comboni] que estaba convencido que los preservativos no son eficaces en la campaña contra el virus del SIDA. ‘La batalla contra el SIDA no debería enfocarse en el uso de preservativos (…) El uso de los preservativos no previene toda transmisión del SIDA’(4). Puede ser que esta última frase es correcta si se la interpreta fuera del contexto mas ámplio del debate sobre el uso de preservativos. Pero en dicho debate, Benedicto XVI (y por lo visto el mismo Rodríguez) ha adoptado una postura totalmente ideológica. Es una postura que con toda seguridad contribuirá a más contagios, y por lo mismo, a más muertes por SIDA—muertes que, por lo visto, preocupan menos a Rodríguez que las que supuestamente causaría Zelaya si vuelve a Honduras.

Tercero, luego de ofrecer una perspectiva en la revista Time que muchos interpretaron como liberal en lo que se refiere a la excomunión de políticos a favor de legalizar el aborto, Rodríguez Maradiaga repentínamente cambió de parecer: como lo notó en su momento la Agencia de Noticias Católica,

…en declaraciones a Carlos Polo, reproducidas exclusivamente por la Agencia de Noticias Católicas, el Cardenal Maradiaga [sic], quien está en Aparecida participando en la V Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano, dijo que sus comentarios en la revista Time deberían de ser reformulados “a la luz de lo que enseña la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe en su documento, ‘Dignidad para recibir la sagrada comunión.’” Según el Cardenal, “Un político que apoya de manera pública el aborto, se excomulga a sí mismo. No es cuestión de recibir la sagrada comunión o no; él ya le ha hecho un daño serio a la comunión de la fe de la Iglesia, a la comunión de la vida moral, y por lo mismo la persona misma comete un acto que contradice lo que dice creer”(5).

Para quienes no conocen los intríngulis del Vaticano, la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe es el nombre moderno de lo que solía conocerse como el Santo Oficio, es decir, la Santa Inquisición. Bajo la prefectura de Joseph Ratzinger (el Papa actual, Benedicto XVI), la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe se volvió famosa por su persecución a lo largo y ancho del mundo de los católicos adherentes a la teología liberal, y más aún, a la teología de la liberación. Así es que la vuelta en U de Rodríguez Maradiaga respecto al tema del aborto se puede interpretar como un reconocimiento de que la línea dura de Ratzinger continúa imperando.

Una interpretación benevolente de la intervención de Rodríguez Maradiaga a favor de Micheletti es precisamente que el Papa le ha ordenado que asuma dicha postura. Sin embargo, el papel que desempeñó Rodríguez Maradiaga como presidente del CELAM (el Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano) sugiere que Rodríguez Maradiaga no es una ‘víctima del Vaticano’. En su momento el CELAM apoyó a sacerdotes progresivos que iniciaron un movimiento conocido como ‘teología de la liberación’. Los sacerdotes establecieron ‘Comunidades Eclesiásticas de Base’ con una orientación crítica, la cual exploró nuevas maneras de ayudar a los pobres a superar la explotación por los siglos de los siglos de grupos como el que promovió el golpe en Honduras. Los sacerdotes arguyeron que la Iglesia había defraudado a los pobres, y que hacía falta un replanteamiento radical en torno a las políticas de la Iglesia.

En un principio, el Vaticano toleró el reto de la teología de la liberación. Sin embargo, bajo el Papa Paulo VI, y luego bajo el archi-conservador Juan Pablo II, el Vaticano se opuso al movimiento y buscó eliminarlo mediate la imposición de presidentes conservadores en el CELAM. En dicho proceso, Ratzinger (ahora Benedicto XVI) emergió como la eminencia gris de la derecha católica. Desde 1995 hasta 1999, Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga fue uno de dichos presidentes; como lo notó el diario el Washington Post en su momento, ‘aunque ha criticado a las políticas a favor de mercados libres y defensa de los millones que viven en la pobreza absoluta en Centroamérica, Rodríguez Maradiaga se opone a la ‘teología de la liberación’ que en su momento apoyó a las guerrillas de izquierda y buscó modificar las reglas de la ortodoxia católica para acercar a la Iglesia a los grupos indígenas, y a los pobres’(6).

En el 2001, Juan Pablo II reconoció la lealtad de Rodríguez al nombrarlo el primer cardenal de Honduras, y en el 2005, Rodríguez se postuló como candidato para ser el nuevo Papa cuando Juan Pablo II murió. El artículo en la revista Golias se preguntaba si la postura de Rodríguez frente al uso de preservativos sería parte de una estrategia cuyo fin sería ganar el apoyo de la todo-poderosa derecha en el Vaticano. La actitud de Rodríguez frente a Zelaya suscita preguntas similares: será que Rodríguez desea ser el sucesor de Ratzinger, y que para ello está dispuesto a sacrificar a los grupos marginalizados en Honduras para fortalecer sus credenciales?

Lejos, entonces, de ser una víctima del Vaticano, hay buenas razones para pensar que Rodríguez Maradiaga es el tipo de lider católico que ha plagado a las sociedades latinoamericanas por siglos: un cardenal que, cuando le ha convenido a la Iglesia, ha criticado la avaricia de las élites; pero también un lider que, llegado el momento, ha comprendido muy bien que los intereses ideológicos del Vaticano están muy cerca de los intereses de las oligarquías que la misma Iglesia ha atacado de cuando en cuando. El hecho de que Rodríguez ha abandonado súbitamente una postura mediadora, y de que lo ha hecho de la manera antes descrita, nos sugiere que la Iglesia Católica hondureña vuelve a repetir una triste historia latinoamericana.

Actualización 6 de julio

Nos llegan noticias de que el gobierno ‘de facto’ en Honduras no solo ha prohibido el retorno de Zelaya, sino que ha matado a un hombre y ha herido a varios más en hechos que parecen ‘comprobar’ la lógica maquiavélica de Rodríguez Maradiaga. (Para actualizarse con la evolución de la noticias, ver el Latin America News Review.) EcoLogics le pide a los lectores que consideren lo siguiente: si Obama le hubiese dado un ultimatum a los empresarios hondureños, ¿se habría producido el golpe? Habría vuelto Zelaya al poder?

Actualización 10 de julio

Segun el diario Guardian de Inglaterra, la tercera encíclica de Joseph Ratzinger (Benedicto XVI) aparentemente sugiere que ‘La convicción de que la economía debe ser autónoma, y que debe protegerse de las ‘influencias’ de caracter moral, han llevado al hombre a abusar del proceso económico de una manera completamente destructiva’. ‘A largo plazo, estas convicciones han resultado en sistemas económicos, sociales y políticos que pisotean la libertad personal y social, y que por lo mismo son incapaces de promover la justicia que prometen’. EcoLogics estudiará la encíclica y publicará un artículo sobre el tema. Sin embargo, todo indica que la postura de la encíclica se parece mucho a la de Rodríguez Maradiaga: el Papa ciertamente maneja un discurso de condenación moral, pero cuando uno se fija en su historia, queda claro que Benedicto XVI buscó destruir a los sacerdotes que no solo plantearon los mismos problemas, sino que además buscaron hacer algo al respecto hace décadas en el contexto de la teología de la liberación.

Actualización 16 de julio

Varios artículos aparecidos en los últimos días confirman el análisis que ofrece este blog.

1) En un artículo en el diario argentino El Clarín, Rodríguez Maradiaga intenta negar su apoyo por Micheletti y el resto de los golpistas. Dice que no es un ‘cardenal golpista’, pero a la misma vez, no critica a Micheletti. EcoLogics sugiere que ‘quien calla otorga…’

2) El website de Radio Mundial—EcoLogics asume que se trata de una estación Chavista—publica un artículo aparecido en 1982 en el diario Tiempo, en el que un sacerdote que tuvo que huir de Honduras acusó a Rodríguez Maradiaga de ser cómplice de la represión militar. El siguiente texto es parte de lo publicado por Radio Mundial:

En sus declaraciones al momento de exiliarse, Milla denunció al coronel Oscar Armando Mejía Peralta, jefe del XII Batallón de Santa Rosa, como el principal responsable “de la represión desatada contra mi persona, así como contra otros agentes de la pastoral de la Iglesia”. Milla también denunció la complicidad con el ejército del actual cardenal Rodríguez Madariaga, que por entonces era obispo de la Diócesis de Copán: fue “cómplice de todo lo que los militares nos hacen”, afirmó. [...] El sacerdote exiliado acusó a Rodríguez de haber desmantelado toda la estructura de apoyo pastoral a los pobres y de lucha contra la represión que había favorecido su predecesor en el cargo, monseñor Jose Carranza. “Mi obispo más parece un coronel sin charretera, que un pastor”, sentenció, para luego concluir con una dura acusación: “Lo que uno no se explica es que nuestros jerarcas superiores, que firmaron documentos como el de Puebla, vengan a ponerse al lado de quienes ese documento de la iglesia condena por ser los interesados en mantener el régimen de la seguridad nacional que significa inseguridad para toda la población y solo seguridad para los dineros que ellos acumulan.

Aunque Radio Mundial incluye una foto del artículo original, EcoLogics no tiene manera de verificar estas acusaciones, las cuales ciertamente confirmarían lo argumentado en este blog respecto al rol de Rodríguez Maradiaga frente a la teología de la liberación. Por lo mismo agradeceremos la colaboración de cualquier lector que nos pueda enviar más información al respecto.

3) EcoLogics advierte a los lectores del blog que el artículo en Wikipedia (en inglés) sobre Rodríguez Maradiaga ha sido manipulado por Rodríguez (o por sus seguidores), luego de aparecer este blog—es posible, inclusive probable que lo mismo ha sucedido con la versión en español. Es la gran desventaja de Wikipedia, que a pesar de ser un excelente medio informativo, puede ser objeto de todo tipo de manipulaciones por partes interesadas.

Referencias

1) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, acceso el 5 de julio de 2009.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Andr%C3%A9s_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Maradiaga, acceso el 5 de julio de 2009. Nota del traductor: el Wiki sobre Rodríguez en Inglés es mucho más crítico que el Wiki en español. Sería bueno que alguien actualizara la versión en castellano.

3) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, acceso el 5 de julio de 2009.

4) ‘L’enquête Caritas : Maradiaga déçoit’ in Golias, http://www.golias.fr/spip.php?article2853, acceso el 6 de julio de 2009.

5) Catholic News Agency, ‘Honduran cardinal clarifies interview on Communion and pro-abortion politicians’, May 18, 2007. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9402, acceso el 5 de julio de 2009.

6) ‘Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, Honduras’, Washington Post, April 16, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57842-2005Apr15.html, acceso el 5 de julio de 2009.

Why has Honduras’ supposedly progressive cardinal become an accomplice of Micheletti and the rest of those behind the Honduran coup d’etat?

Versión en español de este artículo: La Postura Política de la Iglesia Católica en Honduras: Cardenal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga

Updated November 26, 2009 (please scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the updates if you have already read the first part of the article)

News emerging from Honduras suggest that the country’s leading Roman Catholic, Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, opposes the return of President Manuel Zelaya, the victim of a coup by Honduras’ military. According to Spain’s El País, the new government instituted by the coup forced all of the Honduran TV channels to carry a broadcast by Rodríguez Maradiaga. In it the cardinal told Zelaya  ‘I know that you love life…I know that you respect life, and until today not a single Honduran has died. But your return to the country at this point in time could lead to a blood bath. Please, meditate. Because afterward it would be too late’ (1).

This is an extraordinary statement. On the one hand, even President Obama, whose administration was criticised for effectively condoning the coup, belatedly acknowledged that Zelaya is still the rightful president of Honduras.  Zelaya has every right to go back to his country and reclaim his constitutional mandate to lead Honduras as its democratically elected president. On the other hand, the nature of the discourse employed by Rodríguez Maradiaga is such that it blames Zelaya in advance for a bloodbath that could only be the result of the actions of the golpistas led by de facto leader Roberto Micheletti. In effect, Rodríguez Maradiaga is trying to prevent Zelaya from returning to Honduras by inverting the order of politics: Zelaya is the victim of Micheletti & Co’s actions, but in Rodríguez Maradiaga’s statement, Zelaya has been transformed into the would-be aggressor. Little wonder that the illegal Honduran government interrupted normal broadcasts to show Rodríguez’s intervention on television.

This raises the question: who is Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, and why has he allied himself with the Honduran oligarchy behind the coup?

Anyone who does superficial research on the cardinal’s background could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that Rodríguez Maradiaga is a progressive religious leader. If one goes, for example, by the first part of the Wikipedia entry on the cardinal, he certainly does seem to be a force for good: according to the Wiki, ‘His campaign for human rights and the poor have won widespread praise. Cardinal Rodríguez is further admired as a dynamic pastor who brokered peace accords with rebels and led rebuilding efforts after a natural disaster. He is an outspoken proponent of the cancellation of Third World debt’(2).

He also seems to have a formidable intellect: according to the same Wiki, the cardinal has a doctorate in philosophy, and, in addition to his native Spanish, speaks English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. As if this weren’t impressive enough, Rodríguez has a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy, has taught chemistry and physics, and has even trained in classical piano. He has, in effect, the kind of education that only the most privileged in Latin America could ever hope to obtain.

According to the media, Rodríguez Maradiaga was a key mediator during the stand-off between the democratically elected president Zelaya and the Honduran oligarchy. El País went so far as to say that ‘There is a man who has much influence in Honduras and who has, until now, remained in silence. This man went to all of the secret meetings that took place in the U.S. Embassy to try to avert the coup d’etat. In those meetings, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez always remained in a position of exquisite equidistance’(3).

Alas, the good cardinal has now not only abandoned that ‘equidistance’, but as noted earlier, has effectively adopted a stance that renders him an accomplice of the Honduran coup leaders.

And an accomplice he certainly now is: a man with a doctorate in philosophy, and with a diploma in clinical psychology might have chosen any number of ways to continue his work of mediation. Instead he has chosen what is arguably the most Machiavellian way of trying to stop Zelaya from returning to Honduras: by making him responsible for any deaths resulting from his efforts to restore the duly-elected presidency. We must thus ask once again, who is Rodríguez Maradiaga, and why would he adopt such a stance?

Clues that Rodríguez Maradiaga is not quite as progressive as he seems to be may be found if one reads beyond the headline accounts of his apparent moderation.

First, the cardinal has taken an extraordinarily hard line when it comes to the trials in the U.S. of Catholic priest paedophiles. According to the Wiki cited earlier, in a May 2002 interview with the Italian-Catholic publication 30 Giorni, Rodríguez Maradiaga claimed that ‘Jews’ had influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. No doubt the Israeli state (as distinct from the category of ‘Jews’ in general) is capable of all kinds of deviousness. But for Rodríguez Maradiaga to try to blame ‘Jews’ for media reporting on the outrages of priestly paedophillia is simply ridiculous. It smacks of a devious and divisive effort to divert attention from the real issues.

Second, the French magazine Golias noted that when it came to AIDS and condoms, the supposedly progressive cardinal is ‘more papist than the pope’: ‘Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga said [in the monthly journal Comboni that] he was indeed convinced that condoms are not useful for combating the AIDS virus. “The fight AIDS should not focus on condoms (…) The use of condoms does not prevent all transmission of AIDS”‘(4). It may be that this last sentence is valid, when taken in isolation of the bigger issue. However, anyone who focusses on this detail misses the bigger picture: that Benedict XVI, and apparently Rodríguez himself, have adopted an utterly ideological stance vis-a-vis the matter of condoms. It is a stance that may endear them to the men who prefer not to use condoms, but it is also one that will result in needless, some would say criminal deaths. Apparently Rodríguez is not particularly concerned about those deaths (as opposed to the ones that might be caused by Micheletti if Zelaya returns).

Third, after making what many interpreted as relatively liberal comments regarding communion with pro-choice politicians in Time Magazine, Rodríguez Maradiaga engaged in a remarkable volte face: as noted by the Catholic News Agency,

…in statements to Carlos Polo, reproduced exclusively by the Catholic News Agency, Cardinal Maradiaga [sic], who is in Aparecida participating in the V General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council, said his comments to Time magazine should be reformulated “in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches in its document, ‘Worthiness to Receive Communion’.”“A politician who publicly supports abortion, he excommunicates himself.  It’s not question of receiving Communion or not; he has already done serious harm to the communion of faith of the Church, to the communion of moral life, and therefore that person himself is doing an act that is inconsistent with what he says he believes,” the cardinal said.(5)

For those unfamiliar with the workings of the Vatican, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith is the modern name for what used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Under the prefect-ship of the current pope, Joseph Ratzinger now Benedict XVI, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith became notorious for its world-wide persecution of liberal and liberation theology Catholics (more on this, below). From this point of view, Rodríguez Maradiaga’s u-turn may be seen as a recognition that Ratzinger’s hard line continues to dominate doctrinal matters.

One benevolent interpretation of Rodríguez Maradiaga’s intervention in favour of the Honduran oligarchy is precisely that Rome has ordered him to tow the hard line. This ‘Vatican-victim’ status is, however, flatly contradicted by the role that Rodríguez Maradiaga played while he was general secretary of CELAM, the Spanish-language acronym for the Latin American Episcopal Conference. CELAM was once a Catholic institution dominated by progressive Latin American clergy. The more radical members of the clergy initiated a movement known as ‘liberation theology’, and established what became known as ‘Ecclesiastical Base Communities’ throughout the continent. Such communities had a critical orientation that explored ways of helping the poor to overcome centuries-old exploitation by groups such as the ones that have carried out the coup in Honduras. The principle was that traditional Church calls for Christian generousity had clearly failed, and so what was needed was a radical redefinition of the Church’s policies and priorities in defence of the poor.

The Vatican initially tolerated the initiative. However, first under Pope Paul VI, and then again under the arch-conservative Pope John Paul II, the liberation theology movement was opposed, and then effectively disbanded by conservative CELAM general secretaries imposed by the Vatican, with Ratzinger as the Catholic Right’s éminence grise. Towards the bitter end of this process, from 1995 to 1999, Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga was one such secretary; as noted by the Washington Post, ‘although he has spoken out against free-market policies and in defense of millions living in abject poverty in Central America, Rodríguez Maradiaga is an opponent of the “liberation theology” that once supported leftist rebellions and sought to bend the rules of orthodoxy to bring the Church closer to Indian groups and the poor’(6). In 2001, John Paul II rewarded Rodríguez for his loyalty by making him the first cardinal of Honduras, and a few years later Rodríguez threw his hat into the ring of candidates to replace John Paul II when he died in 2005. The Golias article quoted earlier wondered if Rodríguez’s stance vis-a-vis condomns was part of a strategy designed to endear him to the Vatican’s all-powerful Right. The cardinal’s most recent actions raise similar questions: could it be that Rodríguez now has ambitions to replace Ratzinger and is willing to sacrifice the poor in Honduras in order to improve his chances of becoming the next pope?

Far, then, from being a victim of the Vatican, there is good reason to regard Rodríguez Maradiaga as the kind of Catholic leader that has haunted Latin American societies for centuries: a leader who, when it suited the Church, criticised the ruling elite for their greed; but also a leader who, when push came to shove, knew full well that the Vatican’s ideological interests were intimately aligned with those of the very oligarchies occasionally berated for their avarice. The Honduran cardinal’s sudden abandonment of a mediating role, and the extraordinary nature of his attack on Zelaya appear to be a sad example of just such a push, and just such a shove. The actions suggest that, at least where the Roman Catholic Church’s political interventions are concerned, Latin American history is being repeated.

Update July 6, 2009

News today that the Honduran coup leaders have not only turned back Zelaya, but have killed one and maimed several others to ‘prove’ the cardinal’s point. (For updates on the rapidly evolving situation, see the Latin America News Review.) EcoLogics asks readers to consider: would the Honduran businessmen behind the coup have engaged in any of these actions if Obama had presented them with an ultimatum to cease and desist their actions immediately?

Update July 10, 2009

According to news in Britain’s Guardian, Joseph Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI) third encyclical reportedly suggests that ‘The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way’.'In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.’  EcoLogics will study the encyclical and will publish a post on the matter. However, on the face of it, it sounds eerily like Rodríguez Maradiaga’s own stance: the pope can certainly talk the talk of moral condemnation, but when one looks at his history, it becomes apparent that he has walked the path of destroying the very people who raised these selfsame concerns and tried to do something about them decades ago in the context of liberation theology.

Update July 16, 2009

Various news items have appeared that shed additional light on the points made in this post.

1) Rodríguez Maradiaga tries to row back. In an interview published in Argentina’s Clarín, the Cardinal has attempted to row back on his support for the coup leaders. He claims not to be a ‘Cardenal golpista’ (literally, a ‘coup-ist’ cardinal), and claims that he’s waiting for an explanation as to why Zelaya was deported in a flagrantly unconstitutional manner. But he fails to say anything negative about Micheletti… EcoLogics understands that there is a saying in Spanish, ‘El que calla otorga’, i.e. ‘He who remains silent agrees with…’ Rodríguez has not only failed to criticise Micheletti, but as noted in this post, has come out with ideological guns blazing against Zelaya… Are we really expected to believe the good Cardinal when he claims that he is not actually supporting the coup?

2) Rodríguez Maradiaga’s complicity with the military confirmed? The website of what appears to be a pro-Chávez radio station in Venezuela (YVKE), is both quoting, and showing the actual copy of a newspaper with an article published in January 1982 about a Catholic priest, Fausto Milla, who claimed at the time that the Honduran military forced him to leave Honduras after he denounced a massacre of Salvadoran refugees by Honduran and Salvadoran military in 1980. (This was at the beginning of the Salvadoran civil war; the Honduran military supported the U.S.-led Salvadoran military.)  The priest says he was threatened and nearly kidnapped by the Honduran military. More glaringly from the point of view of Rodríguez Maradiaga’s complicity with the current coup, Milla also claims that Rodríguez, who was then a newly appointed bishop in Father Milla’s province, supported the military. The following quote, translated from a part of the article provided by the website, is quite damning, and refers to the kind of anti-liberation theology politics mentioned in this post:

‘I [Fausto Milla] am also disappointed by those who were supposed to provide me with support and solace, but whose attitude suggests instead an alliance with those who persecute us, and this simply because we are doing the Church’s work.’ ‘The Presbyterian Council of Santa Rosa de Copán has been dismantled by the new bishop [Rodríguez Maradiaga, who was named Auxiliarby Bishop of Tegucigalpa in 1978]. The changes in the ecclesiastical personnel have been so abrupt that it’s as if Monseñor Rodríguez were playing a game of chess, dismantling the entire organisation that the now deceased Monseñor José Carranza y Chévez created’. ‘One cannot understand how it is that our superiors, who sign documents like the one in Puebla [the famous Puebla Declaration, in which leaders of the Latin American Catholic Church declared that the Church should support the poor], now take the side of those whom that document condemns for seeking to maintain the national security doctrine, which actually leads to insecurity for the whole population and only security for the money that they [the supporters of the national security doctrine] accumulate’.

EcoLogics has no way of vouching for the authenticity of the article, but it certainly fits with what we know about the cardinal’s politics. Any information that critical readers may provide confirming (or indeed disproving) the account of this article would be gratefully received.

3) A warning to readers that, after the publication of this post, Cardinal Rodríguez, or his supporters, have been at work on the English language version of the Wikipedia article, promoting the view that the cardinal was only trying to ‘avert a bloodbath’ in Honduras. Wikipedia is great, but it does have the limitation that it is open to manipulation from all sides.

Update on August 11, 2009: For a reply to Obama’s latest comments about the hypocrisy of his Latin American critics, see Obama: yes you can have it both ways.

Update on September 24, 2009: Great news that Zelaya is back in Honduras. Remarkable to note that Micheletti’s response was to once again to suggest that any deaths would be the responsibility of Zelaya. It is as if Micheletti and Rodríguez Maradiaga are singing from the same hymnal. If you would like confirmation that Rome supports the Micheletti regime and Rodríguez’s anti-democratic stance, have a look at the article in the Roman Catholic propaganda news site, Zenith, in which it describes Zelaya as being ‘holed up’ in the Brazilian embassy.

Update October 5, 2009

See the new post about Pope Benedict XVI, titled ‘Talk about “Toxic Spiritual Rubbish”‘

Update October 13, 2009

This week Micheletti and his fellow golpistas published a decree that ostensibly made it legal for them to engage in the censorship of any media not towing the putschist line. The official decree—aimed at the pro-Zelaya Channel 36 and Globo Radio—was coaxed in laughable language: ‘Se podrán cancelar las frecuencias de emisoras o televisoras que emitan mensajes que inciten al odio nacional, (y a la) destrucción de bienes públicos‘. A rough translation: ‘It will be possible to cancel the frequencies of radio or TV channels that broadcast messages that incite a national hatred, (and/or) the destruction of public property’. A national hatred? Is that a hatred of the nation, or a national hatred of Micheletti et al? Zelaya’s lawyers should have field day with the ambiguity of the expression, which would presumably allow the government to close down not just the offending media, but any channel broadcasting messages such as those of Rodríguez Maradiaga. After all, how would you define legally, a ‘national hatred’?

In case you didn’t read this post, you may wish to read the related Obama’s Big Stick and Alvaro Uribe’s ‘Entreguismo’

Update October 17, 2009

The latest news from Honduras appear to confirm what many of us suspected—that Micheletti and his cronies have learned how to employ what might be described as the Israeli model of ‘diplomacy’: pretend to negotiate, even as you brutally impose your own preferred modus operandi by way of physical force, i.e. by sending in the troops, and closing down any space for dissent. It also seems unambiguously clear now that the U.S. is backing the dictatorship, if only by allowing Micheletti to play the ‘Israeli’ game. In Honduras’ case that game involves delaying the negotiations to the point that the real president’s elected term comes to an end, so as to allow the junta to claim that an all-new scenario has emerged, in which ‘democratic’ elections can and must ‘now’ take place. It is so transparent—and so cynical. But the damage has been done; the Honduran oligarchy, which had managed to keep its corrupt dealings in the shade for the better part of a century, is now well and truly outed. So is the Clinton-Obama presidency, which in this context as in so many others, has revealed that the so-called Democratic Party is little better than the one it replaced when it comes to foreign affairs. Indeed, a case can be made that with Bush you knew exactly where you stood; with the Clinton-Obamas, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The only question now is, will the people supporting Zelaya rebel?

Update November 26, 2009

This blog has kept silent about the recent twists and turns in Honduran diplomacy; it seemed clear that, as noted in the previous update, the Honduran dictatorship was playing a game, with no real intention of giving up power. At one point Micheletti & Co. actually seemed to prove this blogger wrong, but alas, events have in the end adhered to the script outlined in earlier posts.

The one new element is that the U.S. cannot now deny that it has conspired with Micheletti and the rest of the Honduran oligarchy to depose a democratically elected president, and has done so in a style that is little different from the one employed for the better part of 150 years by historic U.S. governments. The cynism of the Obama-Clinton administration has not only been confirmed, but does extraordinary damage to the interests of the United States in Latin America, and elsewhere. Obama actually managed to persuade us for a time that the United States represented by Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the Republican mafia was something of an aberration, even in a country that has historically been inclined to do as it pleases with those whom it dominates. His ‘Yes we can’ seemed to be a breath of fresh air, even to those inclined to be deeply suspicious about the empire’s designs. Alas, we now have irrefutable evidence that the Bush modus operandi lives on, albeit in a somewhat more discrete, and astute manner. By accepting the outcome of the elections engineered by Micheletti et al, Obama-Clinton have in effect confirmed the legitimacy of the coup d’etat. The question, once again, is what the poor and those displaced politically by Micheletti (and Obama) will do now. Will they rise up in arms to defend their rights? They can at least take comfort from the fact that in Brazil’s Lula they still have a stalwart supporter.

Notes

1) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, accessed July 5, 2009.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Andr%C3%A9s_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Maradiaga, accessed July 5, 2009.

3) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, accessed July 5, 2009.

4) ‘L’enquête Caritas : Maradiaga déçoit’ in Golias, http://www.golias.fr/spip.php?article2853, accessed July 6, 2009.

5) Catholic News Agency, ‘Honduran cardinal clarifies interview on Communion and pro-abortion politicians’, May 18, 2007. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9402, accessed July 5, 2009.

6) ‘Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, Honduras’, Washington Post, April 16, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57842-2005Apr15.html, accessed July 5, 2009.

Post updated at 13.50 BST

According to a Guardian article published today,

The Formula One commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, has stoked up controversy by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a man who “was able to get things done”, that democracy has not worked out for Britain and that his colleague Max Mosley would make a good Prime Minister. Ecclestone had previously stirred outrage when he suggested in 2008 that racist comments on a website about the British driver Lewis Hamilton had “started as just a joke”.

Here is, courtesy of the not-exactly-progressive Sunday Telegraph, an aide-memoire for those who have only dim memories of the significance of Bernie Ecclestone to New Labour, and to Tony Blair in particular:

The Ecclestone Affair was New Labour’s first major scandal and a test of Mr Blair’s leadership and his claim to be cleaning up British politics after John Major’s government. As the affair deepened with the revelation that Mr Ecclestone had donated £1 million to the Labour Party just months before the tobacco advertising climbdown Mr Blair faced calls to resign. The Prime Minister appeared on the BBC’s On The Record Programme to defend the exemption and to insist he was “a pretty straight sort of guy.” At the time the Government insisted that the decision to exempt Formula One was not decided by Mr Blair following his meeting with Mr Ecclestone on 16 October 1997. They insisted it was a joint decision made with the Department of Health at a later date. However, the newly released documents prove conclusively that Mr Blair ordered his Government to prepare for the policy change immediately following his meeting with Mr Ecclestone – a fact which was not revealed at the time of the scandal.

As this blog and countless other political commentators have noted over the years, Tony Blair is quite far to the right. It now turns out that the person with whom he engaged in what was to be the first of several major acts of political corruption is a Nazi sympathizer. We all thought it was bad enough that Blair was corrupt; now we know that when fascists came knocking at his door, Blair was only too happy to swing it wide open.

Blair and his acolytes will argue that he had no way of knowing that he was welcoming a Nazi sympathizer into 10 Downing Street. But Ecclestone did not go alone to Downing Street; he went accompanied by the president of FIA, Max Mosley, who was a member of his father’s Fascist party in his youth. Any suggestion that this was no more than a ‘youthful error’ is made somewhat suspect by the recent revelation that Mosley enjoys, shall we say, authoritarian sex. The Wikipedia entry on Mosley suggests that he played a significant role in the lobbying that led up to the Ecclestone scandal:

… Mosley was attempting to delay European legislation banning tobacco advertising. At this time all leading Formula One teams carried significant branding from tobacco brands such as Rothmans, West, Marlboro and Mild Seven. The Labour party had pledged to ban tobacco advertising in its manifesto ahead of its 1997 General Election vicitory,  supporting a proposed European Union Directive. The Labour Party’s stance on banning tobacco advertising was reinforced following the election by forceful statements from the Health Secretary Frank Dobson and Minister for Public Health Tessa Jowell. Ecclestone appealed “over Jowell’s head” to Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, who arranged a meeting with Blair. Ecclestone and Mosley, both Labour Party donors, met Blair on 16 October 1997.

Presumably anyone invited to 10 Downing Street is very carefully vetted by the prime minister’s political minders, if not by the British security services. Are we really expected to believe that Blair’s 10 Downing Street didn’t know full well what kind of characters it was allowing into the inner sanctum of the British government?

By way of a postscript: is a former prime minister who is happy to take money from Nazi sympathizers really the kind of president that the European Union wants?

A number of commentators have noted over the past months that Obama’s political practice now flatly contradicts the hopeful rhetoric of his campaign speeches. It seems that the Bush-Cheney skulduggery has been replaced by a rather more astute modus operandi, one that involves a continued use of lofty Obama oratory even as Obama allows his lieutenants to engage in policies that are more and more difficult to distinguish from those of the Bush administration.

So it is, for example, that the Wall Street finance barons are once again getting their way thanks to the intervention of Timothy F. Geithner; that Steven Chu has performed extraordinary u-turns vis-à-vis coal-fired power stations and hydrogen cars; and that there is still no guarantee that the Guantánamo prison will actually be closed down. While political realists will claim that there have been pragmatic reasons for each of the mentioned volte faces, the fact is that the Obama administration has shown a remarkable willingness to accommodate many of the very policies that it denounced during the election.

As if the mentioned policy u-turns were not enough, this week the Obama administration has shown that is it even willing to return to the bad old days of ‘banana republic’ diplomacy in Latin America.  In June, the Honduran oligarchy decided that the democratically elected, and increasingly left-wing President Manuel Zelaya had gone too far in the direction of addressing the country’s age old inequalities. In the manner of a García-Márquez novel, they whisked him out of the country whilst he was still in pyjamas, and instituted one of their own as interim president.

As noted by Mark Weisbrot in The Guardian, it is extraordinary that Obama administration’s first statement did no more than call for ‘all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter’. When the strength of the response of other nations became clear, Hillary Clinton issued a somewhat stronger statement that stopped short of calling the coup a coup, and didn’t say anything about Zelaya returning to the presidency. It was only on Monday afternoon that Obama finally said ‘We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.’ Even so, during a press conference later that day, Clinton herself still refused to confirm that ‘restoring the constitutional order’ in Honduras meant returning Zelaya.

What critical observers on this side of the Atlantic failed to comment on was that Obama made his statement in the course of a press conference with Alvaro Uribe, Colombia’s arch neo-liberal, and far-right wing president. Anyone who wants to find out what Uribe has been up to over the last decade or so should read the letter that Human Rights Watch sent to President Obama on the eve of his meeting with Uribe. In one particularly telling paragraph, the HRW letter says that

In recent years Uribe has said trade unionists are “a bunch of criminals dressed up as trade unionists.”  He has railed against his country’s own Supreme Court, which has spearheaded ground-breaking investigations of paramilitary infiltration in the Colombian government (the “parapolitics” investigations), accusing its members of representing “terrorism.”  He has claimed that opposition politicians are “terrorists in business suits.”  And he has accused assistant Supreme Court justice Ivan Velásquez, who is in charge of coordinating the “parapolitics” investigations, of trying to frame him for murder by offering illegal or inappropriate benefits to an imprisoned paramilitary to testify against Uribe (an investigation by the Attorney General’s office later found that, in fact, Velásquez was the one who the paramilitary and others were framing).  After Velásquez was cleared, last year, Semana magazine revealed that senior Uribe advisors held a meeting in the Presidential Palace with another paramilitary leader to discuss supposed evidence against Velásquez (which also turned out to be false).

In this context, all credit goes to the pre-election Obama for criticizing Colombia’s appalling human rights record. In a speech given to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2nd, 2008, Obama said that he would ‘oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements’.

Alas, now it appears that this stance is also set for an Obama u-turn thanks to a remarkable new development in the region. This year, the U.S.’s agreement with Ecuador to use the military base in Manta expires. The base is located on the Pacific coast just south of Colombia, and is nominally used by U.S. AWACS E-3 and P3 Orions for the purpose of cocaine trade interdiction. Critics of the growing American military presence in the region suspect that the base has also been used to spy on governments in the area and to help Colombia with its anti-guerilla operations.

The Manta base acquired a new notoriety after March 1, 2008, when Alvaro Uribe launched, some say at the very least with U.S. logistical support, an attack on a FARC guerrilla camp across the border in Ecuador. Some commentators at the time went further and suggested that some or all of the planes were actually flown by U.S. pilots who took off from the Manta base. Whatever the case, Uribe’s attack was such a flagrant violation of international law that it drew condemnation from everyone except the Bush government. Correa called back his ambassador in Bogotá and relations between the two countries reached their lowest point in living memory. The conflict rumbles on; an Ecuadorian judge has just issued an international arrest warrant for the former Colombian Defence Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, one of Uribe’s key lieutenants and political allies, and a member of one of Colombia’s most powerful families.

Unsurprisingly, the Correa government vowed ‘never again to repeat a policy of entreguismo [literally ‘giving-up-ism’], of giving up part of the national territory’. There will be no renewal of the Manta agreement with the U.S., and the U.S. has accepted that its last flight from the base in Manta will be in July. Where, then, will the U.S. spy planes and ships be relocated? No prizes for guessing the answer. The Colombian magazine Cambio has reported that a deal has been hammered out that will allow the U.S. to establish bases in no less than five Colombian sites: most probably the Palanquero airbase near Bogotá, but also the Alberto Pouwels airbase on the Caribbean coast; the Apiay base in the country’s eastern plains near the Venezuelan border; and two naval ports in Bahía Málaga and in Cartagena, on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts respectively. So instead of having one relatively isolated base in Ecuador, the U.S. will now perhaps have five quite sizable bases scattered strategically across all of Colombia. Not bad for a president who got himself elected by promising to bring to an end the Bush-Cheney administration’s war-mongering.

We do not know yet what quid pro quo Uribe has extracted for this deal, which is unlikely to be supported by a majority of Colombians.  There is, however, already evidence that a deal is in the offing: in his remarks after the meeting with Uribe, Obama was quoted as saying

We discussed, most prominently, the interests of both countries in moving forward on a free trade agreement. This is something that has been discussed for quite some time. I have instructed Ambassador Kirk, our United States Trade Representative, to begin working closely with President Uribe’s team on how we can proceed on a free trade agreement. There are obvious difficulties involved in the process and there remains work to do, but I’m confident that ultimately we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States. […] I commended President Uribe on the progress that has been made in human rights in Colombia and dealing with the killings of labor leaders there, and obviously we’ve seen a downward trajectory in the deaths of labor unions and we’ve seen improvements when it comes to prosecution of those who are carrying out these blatant human rights offenses.

The sudden improvement suggested by Obama flies in the face of the letter sent to him by Human Rights Watch. But then again, similar contradictions are now routinely appearing in Obama’s public statements, which conjure one reality even as Obama aides act on another.

Obama may also maintain or even increase the vast amounts of aid that the U.S. already gives to Colombia’s military. All of this officially, of course, in the name of interrupting the flow of drugs from Latin America to the U.S. In fact, the key U.S. priority has been, and under Obama seems likely to continue to be to wage something akin to a post-cold war by proxy. And not just by proxy: the new bases will make it even easier for Obama to wield a new big stick against the U.S.’s most vocal critics in the region: Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. The location of the bases will mean that U.S. combat aircraft could be minutes away from key civilian and military targets in each of the mentioned countries. Even if the U.S. never sends its bombers, there can be little doubt that the U.S. military will be quite happy to lend a logistical hand in the way that they appear to have done during the attack on the guerrilla base in Ecuador.

The military and political advisers behind any deal with Colombia probably hope that the American military presence in Colombia will counteract the resurgence of left-wing politics in the region. In fact, it is more likely that the policy will revive lingering anti-U.S. sentiment by showing that U.S. policy in the region remains unchanged, despite all the Obama promises. It will also trigger a new regional arms race as the threatened countries scramble to update their air defence systems. Hugo Chávez has already spent vast sums updating Venezuela’s U.S.-made military hardware, and the new bases will be a boon to the Russian and European arms makers that have replaced Boeing and other U.S. merchants of death.

Years after the U.S. finally removed the notorious ‘School of the Americas’ from the Panama Canal, it does not seem unlikely that the bases may yet even serve as training sites for the coups that may be organised by the U.S., or which the U.S. will ‘actively condone’ by way of statements of the kind issued by Hillary Clinton vis-á-vis the coup in Honduras. When it comes to Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary appear to have the full backing of even the most democratic of U.S. presidents.

Given these developments, Obama’s famous slogan  of ‘Yes we can…’ now seems like both a distant, and an extraordinarily ironic memory.

British media are reporting today that David Cameron has embarked in what is being described as another major step in the modernisation of the Conservative Party. This time he is offering a public apology for section 28, the notorious legislation which banned the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in British schools. Cameron has apparently condemened section 28 as ‘offensive to gay people’ (EcoLogics would add that it is not just offensive to ‘gay people’) and apparently is even predicting that a Conservative could become Britain’s first openly gay prime minister.

The problem is that this grand prediction, and the mea culpa that goes with it, fly in the face (well, one of the faces) of what Cameron has recently done on the European stage. As noted by EcoLogics in another post, Cameron snuk off to Poland a few weeks ago, where he met with the Kaczyński twins, the leaders of the hard-right Polish Law and Justice Party. Amongst other things, the Law and Justice Party—with which Cameron’s ‘new’ Conservatives are now officially allied—oppose same-sex marriages or any other form of legal recognition of homosexual couples. According to Wikipedia, Jarosław Kaczyński has even been quoted as saying that homosexuals should not be teachers, but also, and somewhat disingenuously, that homosexuals should not be persecuted. He has also stated that “The affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization. We can’t agree to it”. How does that sit with Cameron’s mea culpa? Will Jarosław Kaczyński offer a similar apology?

In this as in so many other cases, EcoLogics wonders which way the Janus-faced Cameron actually intends to go. Is he trying to sweeten up New Labour voters, who are hard to the right on economic issues but more liberal when it comes to a variety of social issues? That would certainly explain why he made sure that there were no Tory media to provide extensive coverage of the weekend during which he spent some quality time with the Kaczyński twins…

In future posts, EcoLogics will use a smaller version of the above photograph as a kind of Janus ‘logo’ to signal a post about the many faces of David Cameron. He may well become the next prime minister, but if this blog has its way it may get a bit more difficult for Cameron to be the ally of hard-right wing parties one day, and a liberal the next.