Chart of the day is....

....the number of times Honduras has been a subject of an IKN post since the blog began back in March 2008.

Well, including this post it's now 20 this week. Sad, innit? One minute I ignore the place, the next I'm a-rantin' and a-ravin'. But the thing is, what's going on right now is really, really important for the future of Latin America and I just have to follow the story. We're at a moment where we can choose between the ways of the past or the future. Succumb to this classic aggression and the whole region's growth will be stunted. But stand up to this bullying and by God my master it will be defeated and the region will grow and mature.

There are fools, real fools, who hide their apologies of this blatant aggression behind fearmongering, using the name Hugo Chávez as their battlecry. "We can't let Chávez win one!!" is the idea, the fear. Look people, this isn't about Chávez, in fact it's not really about Zelaya any more, either. I honestly don't care a damn about Zelaya the person. He may have deserved his low polls he was reaping before the coup went down, he may not have, but this is a secondary issue right now. Regular reader Arturo made a good point yesterday in a comment; Why didn't the Zelaya opposition move to impeach the president? The mechanisms exist, and the man was running low 20% approval ratings until last week. The opposition had the channels and may well have had the support if they'd gone about their task in legal manner. Damn straight Arturo...why didn't they impeach Zelaya?

This is the crux of the issue:

• We cannot and must not let usurping of power via illegal methods. Not any longer.

• We cannot allow an army to present a patently false resignation letter to its congress, get their lapdog approval and depose a president. Not any longer.

• We cannot sit idly by while the people of an entire country are stripped of the freedoms granted to them by their constitution. Not any longer.

• We cannot watch as media channels are turned off in Stroessner/Pinochet style and a whole country is left in the dark watching cartoons and softsoap news shows. Not any longer. The revolution may not be televised but it's going to be realtime online, suckaz.

• We cannot allow the total and universal condemnation from the international community to bow to a bunch of wingnuts who think this is a left vs. right battle. It isn't. This is about the freedom to choose, not the imposition of ideologies.

Once Zelaya is back where he belongs, as President of his country, and once the usurpers are where they belong, in jail, then we can debate on whether Zelaya was right or wrong in trying to push through his non-binding survey. They can hold elections in Honduras that are not overseen by an oppressive military and let the people that really matter decide. We can debate whether the Obama/Clinton view of pre-coup Honduras is correct, or the Chávez version, or the Honduras oligarchy version, but before then we have a much more important task at hand.

We must make a stand and rid Latin America of this outbreak of retro-tyranny. A military coup and ensuing crackdown on freedoms and liberties just cannot happen again here. No more. Please. LatAm has suffered enough from this shit in the course of my lifetime and it's time to make a stand. I have two kids, five and nearly three years old. When they're 21 and 18 I'm going to have enough trouble on my hands worrying about boys and drugs and getting them into universities and making sure they get there unpregnant and all the rest. I really don't need to worry whether they're going to take a bullet in the chest if they decide to protest the government of the day. Or maybe just disappear.

I repeat; this isn't about left and right. We've left the world of political games and we can debate the social niceties of the shade of your personal politics another day. How many disappeared people do you need before you wake up and see what's going on? Another 100,000 to match the harvest of the 1970's, would that be enough for you?

Those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it. (George Santayana)

If you know your history, then you will know where you're coming from. (Bob Marley)

Stupid is as stupid does. (Forrest Gump)