Ortega writes: "A renovation of the political class is crucial. It is now clear that the current political establishment is only interested in short-term fixes and very few members are interested in a long-term plan for the country."
A demonstrator holds a sign calling for the resignation of Guatemalan President. (photo: Fabricio Alonzo/Reuters)
Guatemala Is on the Verge of a Major Crisis
By Alfredo Ortega Franco, Al Jazeera
06 September 17
Guatemala's war on corruption just escalated as the presidency and a UN-backed anti-graft body faced off.
uatemala, as most of Central America, is known for deep-rooted corruption in its governmental institutions. Yet in 2015, the country made global headlines for its efforts to change this.
It came after massive protests unfolded in response to a variety of high-level corruption scandals, which resulted in the resignation and indictment of former President Otto Perez Molina and his Vice President Roxana Baldetti. These major happenings opened an unparalleled opportunity for the Central American country to transform the political system and eliminate deep-rooted corruption.
At present, however, the political establishment is divided. As further anti-graft efforts have led to more than a hundred former cabinet members facing trial, entire sectors of the elite now oppose meaningful change, including current President Jimmy Morales. In a stunning move, during the early morning hours of August 25, the second anniversary of the national strike, he announced his decision to expel the head of the UN-backed international commission against impunity (CICIG).
Such an extreme measure was considered by many analysts an outright political suicide. The reasons that led the president go through the unthinkable have been building up over the past year.
2015: The campaign against the criminal elites
The year 2015 was a watershed moment in Guatemala's contemporary political history. The massive protests that unfolded that year were sparked by a series of exposes that revealed an intricate corruption scheme that involved the sitting president, vice president and a cadre of high-level cabinet officials.
The work of local prosecutors in cooperation with the CICIG bore fruit, and an anti-corruption movement was born. Civil society demanded results from the judicial processes and helped push for the removal of members of the corrupt political establishment from office.
That same year, general elections took place and Jimmy Morales, a former comedian, was elected to the highest public office. He campaigned on being an outsider and not part of the corrupt political class. Although many thought that was true, it was clearly not the case for members of his political party, Frente de Convergencia Nacional (the National Convergence Front - FCN).
The FCN was founded by former military officials that were allegedly involved in gross human rights violations during Guatemala's decades-long civil war. From early on, the party has sought the expulsion of the CICIG, as they saw it as a threat to the country's "sovereignty". This might explain why, after the election, the FCN was quick to ally itself in Congress with members of the corrupt political establishment allegedly tied to organised crime and the criminal networks that engulf all branches of government.
Throughout 2016, the anti-corruption movement led by the general prosecutor, in cooperation with the CICIG, continued to pursue a series of investigations against Guatemala's corrupt elite. It persisted even in the face of failed attempts to introduce reforms to strengthen the judicial system, sabotaged by the supporters and beneficiaries of the status quo with the government and Congress.
In June 2016, a massive illegal party financing scheme was revealed. It involved over 50 high-profile politicians, bankers, and business owners. This rocked the foundations of not only Guatemala's political class, but also its close links with the business elite, which until then had thought itself beyond the reach of the law.
Now, the anti-corruption probes have reached President Morales himself and his family. His brother and son have been accused of alleged fraud and embezzlement and are facing trial. Furthermore, the CICIG requested Mr Morales's immunity to be lifted on the grounds of alleged illegal campaign financing. Two days later, Mr Morales declared the commissioner persona non grata on Twitter and ordered him to leave the country immediately. His decision was overruled by the Constitutional Court, but the political crisis is set to continue in the following weeks.
The importance of the rule of law
The unexpected has happened and there is little room for certainty. The situation is constantly changing and there are credible reports that the president is seriously considering disobeying the Constitutional Court ruling. This will plunge Guatemala into a deeper constitutional crisis and the end result of such a scenario is anybody's guess. The national and international media, civil society, and the international community have decried Mr Morales's actions. The president's political allies are, for the most part, members of the corrupt political establishment that seek "stability", i.e. impunity.
Leaders of the private sector, on the other hand, are divided. They are worried that the anti-corruption efforts are creating an environment of uncertainty that would discourage possible investors and slow down economic growth. However, business elites must bear in mind that uncertainty and distrust to the country is created by widespread corruption and the corrupt political class. Without rule of law, there is no stability for anyone, let alone investors.
On the other hand, parts of civil society are still falling into the trap of equating every single political opponent to the corrupt establishment. Failing to recognise the nuances between factions of the private sector only plays into the rhetoric of the defenders of the status quo.
Emerging political leaders, the private sector, civil society, and popular movements must recognise that a common agenda benefits everyone except those involved in corruption. Powerful sectors of the elite which, for now, have remained on the sidelines of this process need to unequivocally support the anti-corruption efforts and a minimum set of reforms. This includes the overhaul of the judiciary and the electoral system.
A renovation of the political class is crucial. It is now clear that the current political establishment is only interested in short-term fixes and very few members are interested in a long-term plan for the country.
Yet, these efforts will be fruitless unless local leaders and members of the Guatemalan elite acknowledge that mutual concessions are necessary to consolidate a democratic rule of law.
The success of the fight against corruption depends on it.
Obama Cruelly Taunted Trump in Letter Riddled With Multisyllabic Words
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
Tuesday, 05 September 2017 14:07
Borowitz writes: "Barack Obama used the occasion of Donald Trump's Inauguration to viciously taunt the incoming President by writing him a letter riddled with multisyllabic words, sources revealed on Sunday."
The Trumps and the Obamas. (photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Obama Cruelly Taunted Trump in Letter Riddled With Multisyllabic Words
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
05 September 17
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
arack Obama used the occasion of Donald Trump’s Inauguration to viciously taunt the incoming President by writing him a letter riddled with multisyllabic words, sources revealed on Sunday.
According to those familiar with the letter, Obama packed it with intentionally challenging words such as “reflections,” “adventure,” and “ladders,” in order to bewilder and infuriate Trump.
Sources said Trump attempted to read the first line of the letter but, realizing that he was the victim of Obama’s cruel prank, crumpled and discarded it in a rage.
Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the President, said that the letter episode revealed a “very ugly side of Barack Obama.”
“The media is obsessed with the feud between these two men, but Obama totally started it by using words like ‘international,’ ” she said.
The Nashville Statement Is the Religious Right's Death Rattle
Tuesday, 05 September 2017 13:52
Jones writes: "American Evangelicals should feel as though they have inherited the earth. By helping put Donald Trump in the White House, they are in a position to implement the agenda of their dreams."
Christians protesting in Boston. (photo: Michael Springer/Getty Images)
The Nashville Statement Is the Religious Right's Death Rattle
By Sarah Jones, New Republic
05 September 17
Beneath an unequivocal stance against queer sexual orientation lies a deep insecurity about the Christian right's position in American politics.
merican Evangelicals should feel as though they have inherited the earth. By helping put Donald Trump in the White House, they are in a position to implement the agenda of their dreams. In May, Trump signed an executive order “promoting free speech and religious liberty” that critics say will further erode the wall between church and state. With Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, there is a good chance that Roe v. Wade will finally be struck down. Evangelicals have packed Congress and state legislatures and the courts with Christian conservatives, and have a champion in the executive branch in the form of Vice President Mike Pence.
But there are complications even in paradise, and in a different light the evangelical political movement has never looked weaker. By supporting Trump—who has been accused numerous times of sexual assault, regularly traffics in racism and bigotry, takes evident pleasure in bullying the weakest among us, and can’t name a book of the Bible without tripping over his own ignorance—it has forsaken whatever moral high ground it claims to possess. Trump himself is deeply unpopular, and so too are the political tenets of conservative evangelicalism. According to Gallup, 79 percent of Americans overall say abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. Meanwhile, younger evangelicals continue to drift from their elders: 47 percent of evangelicals under age 53 say they support marriage equality. Gerrymandering wins elections, but it doesn’t win culture wars.
The Nashville Statement, then, sounds like the death rattle of a movement that has disgraced itself. Released on August 30 by the Tennessee-based Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), the statement declares, unequivocally, that queer sexual orientations are sins to God. The statement was signed by 187 prominent evangelicals, constituting something like a last stand as gay marriage continues its march to mainstream acceptability. But what is telling about the Nashville Statement is not its homophobia; CBMW, after all, has been opposed to LGBT rights since its founding in 1987. It is that, after decades of giving up ground to the left, and after hitching its star to a president with zero Christian feeling, the religious right is revealing just how much of its philosophy boils down to plain prejudice.
This is evident in CBMW’s roots. Founded by systematic theologian Wayne Grudem, the organization was established to promote the doctrine of “complementarianism.” Complementarians are Biblical literalists, and according to their interpretation of the Scriptures, women and men are to have distinct roles at home and in church. In essence and in practice, women are to submit to men, who are to be spiritual leaders.
Women cannot preach or hold any kind of spiritual authority over men. Men exercise “headship” over their wives, establishing a hierarchy whose basic mechanics differ from denomination to denomination. Complementarians say the doctrine is not misogynistic—indeed, the Nashville Statement claims in its third article that signers do not believe the differences between men and women “render them unequal in dignity or worth.” But the unavoidable truth is that complementarians believe men should lead the church, and women should follow them. This naturally creates a hierarchy, with men at the top. CBMW is patriarchy in its most cartoonish iteration, which is useful in that it clarifies what so many evangelists try to hide.
Queer sexual orientations and gender fluidity, like feminism, represent a threat to that patriarchy. So the Nashville Statement goes to great lengths to put LGBT life outside the borders of Christendom. For example, it tries to resolve the quandary intersex people present to its version of Biblical literalism; after all, these people must have been created by God and therefore God himself does not always create firm distinctions between men and women. The CBMW basically shouts over that argument—over science, too—asserting that queer sexualities and gender fluidity are affronts to God: “WE DENY that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female.”
Most controversially, it states definitively that if you disagree with its precepts, you are not a Christian. Here is Article 10 of the Nashville Statement, in its entirety:
WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.
WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.
This is a direct attack on LGBT Christians, and on LGBT-affirming Christians of all orientations. Evangelicals obey no canon law; each denomination is responsible for itself, an outgrowth of the Protestant belief in the individual priesthood of every believer. There is no evangelical magisterium, dictating the terms of excommunication and apostasy. Yet in the Nashville Statement, the CBMW casts itself in exactly this role while simultaneously absolving itself of any destruction it might inflict.
But beneath this bold, aggressive stance lurks deep insecurity. If gender is fluid, these would-be patriarchs lose authority. They cannot admit the truth about intersex and transgender people because doing so undermines their most cherished assertions about the headship of men and the submission of women. They don’t all couch this sentiment in the same terms. Some say that they reject patriarchy and value women. They proffer the old canards about loving sinners and hating sin. Finally, they shrug, and tell you they can’t help it, because this is what it means to be a Christian.
Roughly 80 percent of all white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. But the media has often made it seem as if there are deep fissures in the community. Prominent Trump critics like Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention publicly decried Trump’s impiety and racism, thus earning plaudits from the liberal commentariat. Moore, however, signed the Nashville Statement, alongside many pro-Trump evangelicals. In support of the statement, Mohler wrote in The Washington Post: “For the sake of same-sex attracted people and others, we did not believe we could remain silent—or unclear—and be faithful.”
Again, this a statement that puts LGBT people and their friends and family beyond the pale. The religious right remains essentially unified, and the Nashville Statement shows that what these political evangelicals all share is prejudice—specifically, prejudice toward women and LGBT people.
One signatory, John Piper, once said abused women need to submit to their husbands: “If it’s not requiring her to sin but simply hurting her, then I think she endures verbal abuse for a season, and she endures perhaps being smacked one night, and then she seeks help from the church.” Another signatory, James Dobson, wrote in 1983’s Love Must Be Tough: “I have seen marital relationships where the woman deliberately ‘baited’ her husband until he hit her.” Dobson added that he doesn’t think this is true in “most” domestic violence situations, but this caveat doesn’t soften the rest of the passage. Dobson’s hypothetical evil wife baits to get what she wants: a divorce. “She can show her wounds to her friends who gasp at the viciousness of that man. She can press charges against him in some cases and have him thrown in jail. She can embarrass him at his work or in the church,” he complained. God forbid.
A third signatory, Paige Patterson, has opined: “She will find her greatest contribution and impact through the children she bears.” We women are good for breeding, it seems, and not for much else. I have heard variations of this rhetoric hundreds of times in fundamentalist churches (Patterson sits on my alma mater’s board of trustees) and even as I write these criticisms I know that the men who need to read them the most will not care. My body made me useful, for a while. My mind is just a hindrance.
The Nashville Statement’s transparent misogyny also infects the evangelical movement’s great contribution to American politics: the anti-abortion movement. It is no surprise that the signatories of this statement are some of the country’s greatest opponents of abortion. But what is interesting is that they signed onto a document that so directly questions the underlying motives for their anti-abortion position. It is almost as if all the rhetoric about saving the lives of unborn children is a cover for their real goal, which is to control the bodies and lives of women.
“When there is poison in the blood, no one knows on what part of the body it will break out,” William Jennings Bryan said at the close of the Scopes Trial in 1925. “But we can be sure that it will continue to break out until the blood is purified.” Bryan spoke then of the theory of evolution, and of the need to contain its pernicious influence. His words persuaded a Tennessee court to convict John Scopes of breaking state law by teaching evolution to his biology students.
Bryan won the case, but lost the war. Most Americans now regard the Scopes verdict as an unhappy relic of a less enlightened nation. It is now illegal to teach creationism as scientific fact in public schools; this reflects both scientific consensus and the popular understanding that creationism is a religious doctrine rather than a scientific theory. Thirty-eight percent of Americans still believe in the creationist account of our origins, but that is a historical low. According to Gallup, most Americans now believe that God either guided the evolutionary process, or that the process occurred entirely independent of any deity.
Bryan thought he had preserved Christian America—that he had kept it pure. In fact, he helped expose the myths that had shored it up. His ideological descendants seem to think they’ve accomplished a similar feat. But like Bryan, they have only ensured their own infamy.
Galindez writes: "I agree with Bernie on almost everything, and I believe he will be a prominent fixture in history books for generations to come. Imagine where we would be now if people had listened to Bernie and begun transforming the country 30 years ago. Everyone would have health care, a living wage, debt free college, expanded retirement benefits, clean water and air, and so much more."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Bernie Releases Blueprint for GOP Demise
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supporter News
05 September 17
“If there was ever a time in history for a generation to be bold and to think big, to stand up and to fight back, now is that time.”
– Bernie Sanders
hat statement is on the inside cover of Bernie Sanders’ new book, “Guide to a Political Revolution.” Bernie dedicates the book to the younger generation:
You are in many ways the most progressive generation in the history of our country. You have opposed racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and oligarchy. You understand that greed and the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we experience are not what the United States is supposed to be about. You know that climate change is real, and we have a moral responsibility to take on the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
What this book is about is converting that idealism and generosity of spirit into political activity. And when you do that, I have no doubt but that you and others like you will create a lot better world than the one my generation left you.
That is what I call vision and leadership. You can agree or disagree with the senator from Vermont, but one thing you can’t deny is he is a leader with a vision for what he thinks America should become, and he is passionately trying to create that world.
I agree with Bernie on almost everything, and I believe he will be a prominent fixture in history books for generations to come. Imagine where we would be now if people had listened to Bernie and begun transforming the country 30 years ago. Everyone would have health care, a living wage, debt free college, expanded retirement benefits, clean water and air, and so much more.
These are the things that people want; they just don’t believe they will ever be the priorities of our politicians. All of this stuff exists in other countries, so it is possible. It’s all about priorities. Bernie is optimistic that younger generations have these priorities and will make them a reality.
The target audience of the book is teenagers, but Bernie says that includes the young at heart. Bernie is included in that group – despite his age, he is still an optimistic dreamer who, unlike most people, is fighting to make his dreams for our world come true.
This is the book that political science professors will have their students read to define progressive politics in our generation. No president has had more success furthering the liberal cause since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I guess a case can be made for LBJ’s war on poverty, but was that really his initiative?
Bernie Sanders lays out what he believes on the issues in this book in simple language. It is not a literary masterpiece, but it is a political masterpiece.
The GOP will not be happy when this book hits the Times bestseller list. It is truly a blueprint for their demise.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott moved to Des Moines in 2015 to cover the Iowa Caucus.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36478"><span class="small">John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Tuesday, 05 September 2017 10:38
Kiriakou writes: "The FBI will never apologize for
ruining the lives of so many innocent people over so many decades."
John Kiriakou. (photo: The Washington Post)
The FBI’s Spy and Whistleblower Shell Game
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
05 September 17
subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. I know, I know. It’s the official publication of the banksters. It’s an apologist rag for the Trump administration. Certainly the editorial page is over the top in its support for a president whose policies even the Journal’s editors struggle to explain and justify to readers. But I have a great friend who is a conservative, and he’s always asking me if I have read this or that Journal article. And besides, it’s important to know what the other side is thinking.
I actually enjoy the Friday and Saturday issues. There’s a great real estate section on Friday, and on Saturday there are always several pages devoted to books and to the latest luxury cars. It was to the book section that I turned on Saturday, only to be enraged enough that I am now considering canceling my subscription.
The section contained an installment of its weekly article, “Five Best: A Personal Choice.” Five Best is written by a different person every week, about the five best books he or she has read on a certain subject. The most recent article was by Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence agent and the author of “Three Minutes to Doomsday: An Agent, a Traitor, and the Worst Espionage Breach in U.S. History.” It’s an account of Navarro’s case against a minor espionage target in the early 1990s, one in which the author repeatedly calls himself a “hero.”
I have no problem with arrogant people. I live in Washington, the capital of arrogance. (And my wife says that I’m one of the most arrogant people she knows. That’s not a compliment.) In any event, Navarro writes about his five favorite books on “spies and counterspies.” He lists “The Sword and the Shield,” based on a cache of KGB documents; “Merchants of Treason,” about Americans who spied for the Soviet Union in the 1980s; “Traitors Among Us,” an account of espionage in the U.S. military; “Wilderness of Mirrors,” about controversial CIA counterspy James Jesus Angleton; and “The Codebreakers,” about the role of cyphers and codes in the two world wars.
I’ve read several of these books. It isn’t the books, or Navarro’s love of them, that I object to. It’s his description of the second book that really burned me. And it made me realize just how far freedom-loving people still have to go in this country. In his review of “Merchants of Treason,” Navarro begins with these words: “Before there was Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Robert Hansen, there was William Kampiles, Christopher Boyce, and Richard Miller.” Whoa! Navarro is either utterly clueless as to the difference between traitors and whistleblowers or he’s a malignant and malevolent force in the debate on government transparency.
Chelsea Manning clearly revealed evidence of crimes being committed by the U.S. military. Ed Snowden told the American people that NSA was spying on them, in violation of both the law and NSA’s own charter. That’s the very definition of whistleblowing: bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety.
Hansen, though, was one of the most damaging spies in American history. The former FBI agent’s treason was shown on the big screen in the film “Breach.” Kampiles, Boyce, and Miller, like Hansen, were traitors who sold secrets to the Soviets for money. Period. Kampiles threw a top-secret spy satellite manual over the wall of the Soviet Embassy in Washington and offered more classified information if the Soviets wanted it. Boyce, half of the “Falcon and the Snowman” duo, met repeatedly with Soviet agents in Mexico City and provided them with innumerable classified documents. Miller was the first FBI agent ever convicted of spying for the Soviets. You can plainly see that there are literally no similarities between the traitors Navarro cites and the heroic whistleblowers he tries to attach them to.
But this is how the FBI does its business. I’ve written in the past about my own experience with the FBI. They ran an undercover agent against me to try to get me to commit espionage. But I kept reporting the contact – to the FBI! They finally dropped the case. What was clear from this experience was that the FBI doesn’t care about the truth or about justice. It cares only about making a case, even where one doesn’t exist. It does that by tying whistleblowers and other freedom fighters to criminals. That keeps the FBI in the news. It makes it look like the Bureau is accomplishing something. And that’s how the FBI gets budget increases on Capitol Hill and how its agents get promoted.
That’s not justice. That’s not fairness. The FBI will never apologize for ruining the lives of so many innocent people over so many decades. At the very least, though, Joe Navarro should apologize to Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden for besmirching them. And in the meantime, he ought to be ashamed of himself.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism
officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the
Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish
spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to
oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for
this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a
link back to Reader Supported News.
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uatemala, as most of Central America, is known for deep-rooted 
arack Obama used the occasion of Donald Trump’s Inauguration to viciously taunt the incoming President by writing him a letter riddled with multisyllabic words, sources revealed on Sunday.
merican Evangelicals should feel as though they have inherited the earth. By helping put Donald Trump in the White House, they are in a position to implement the agenda of their dreams. In May, Trump signed an executive order “promoting free speech and religious liberty” that critics say will further erode the wall between church and state. With Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, there is a good chance that Roe v. Wade will finally be struck down. Evangelicals have packed Congress and state legislatures and the courts with Christian conservatives, and have a champion in the executive branch in the form of Vice President Mike Pence.
hat statement is on the inside cover of Bernie Sanders’ new book, “Guide to a Political Revolution.” Bernie dedicates the book to the younger generation:
subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. I know, I know. It’s the official publication of the banksters. It’s an apologist rag for the Trump administration. Certainly the editorial page is over the top in its support for a president whose policies even the Journal’s editors struggle to explain and justify to readers. But I have a great friend who is a conservative, and he’s always asking me if I have read this or that Journal article. And besides, it’s important to know what the other side is thinking.
