My friend and student Beth Geglia has written the following list of rules for grad school. I think it should apply to everyone in academia.

Rules For Myself in Grad School

1. School is never more important than militancy and participation in the world. Never let school render you useless to your community or to the movement for justice.
2. Education is about learning and learning should be emancipatory and joyous. If it is not joyous, you’re doing it wrong. Readjust.
   

This is happening now:

Features (along with a couple less reprehensible figures) all our favorite right-wing pundits with drug war, death squad and AU ties:

CHDS Presents Hemispheric Forum on Violence in Central America

MEDIA ADVISORY
March 19, 2013

WORLD BANK MUST END SUPPORT FOR HONDURAN PALM OIL COMPANY IMPLICATED IN DOZENS OF MURDERS

WASHINGTON (DC), MARCH 19 2013 -- Today several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) condemned a statement by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, IFC [1] which defends the record of a Honduran palm oil company, Grupo Dinant, implicated in dozens of murders as well as other human rights abuses. The IFC statement explicitly admits to supporting training for the company’s armed security guards.

The NGOs are: Friends of the Earth International, Global Forest Coalition, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Urgewald, Rights Action, Rettet den Regenwald/Rainforest Rescue, Global Justice Ecology Project, and Biofuelwatch.

From Brigitte of SOAW:

Today the Walk for Dignity and Sovereignty Step by Step will arrive at the Honduran Supreme Court for a planton to demand immediate freedom for Chavelo Morales, a campesino leader from Guadalupe Carney in the Bajo Aguan who has been held prisoner for over 4 years without evidence of committing a crime. In a trial full of irregularities in which he wasn't even able to defend himself, Chavelo was sentenced to 20 more years. His case is now at the level of the Supreme Court but pressure is needed to urge the Supreme Court to take up his case.

Below the jump (on purpose) is a photo of a murder that (apparently) just happened an hour ago at Pizza Hut in San Pedro Sula in Barrio Las Palmas. It is gruesome and disturbing, and also the kind of picture Hondurans see in the news every day. As my friend Ana noted upon reposting this to Facebook, if you search for the news in El Heraldo and La Prensa you probably won't find it, since the owner of Pizza Hut, KFC, La Prensa and El Herald is Jorge Canahuati Larach. This would be bad publicity for his brand, so unlike more typical death porn photos that tell a story of unsafe places and people that fit a neoliberal security narrative in which the poor are to blame for their own victimization, it probably won't run in mainstream media—at least not Canahuati's. A year ago in a post, I wrote about how photos of the unimaginably tragic scenes at the Comayagua prison fire were also circulated with counterhegemonic aims (the post linked here doesn't have that discussion, but I wrote about it right around that time—pictures like that one were being circulated with the aim of generating outrage and mobilizing people; not of furthering complacency and helplessness). I should note that counterhegemonic aims don't always or necessarily correspond with counterhegemonic effects, when the hegemony is so strong.

Click title for original in CounterPunch

February 26, 2013
The Latest Drug War Success Story
Honduras: the Killings Continue
by NICK ALEXANDROV

Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield succumbed to a fit of honesty earlier this month: “When the drug war turns bloody, he said, the strategy is working,” journalist Martha Mendoza reported. By Brownfield’s standards, the strategy has been an enormous success.

During the Micheletti period, AU legitimated Micheletti's "ambassador" Roberto Flores Bermúdez as its "ambassador in residence." Now, AU's Center for Latin American and Latino Studies is providing a celebration of banker and avid golpista, Lobo's Washington ambassador Hernández Alcerro:

"It is our opportunity as college students to raise awareness and seek solutions for a country in need."

Wow.

Check out this very important article from Keane Bhatt (now available free on NACLA's website), whom you can hear talking about it here on CBC. Click title for original with photo and proper formatting:
Reporting on Romer’s Charter Cities: How the Media Sanitize Honduras’s Brutal Regime
Feb 19 2013

I am not sure if I've already written about these two issues here, but in preparing for a paper I needed to write this week, I had to get this out. I'm not including it there, as it turns out, so I'll put it here instead.

In early 2012 I had a conversation with my friend Marcela, a midwife who had come to visit me for a checkup and massage during my pregnancy the previous year. I asked her why so many poor Honduran women used disposable diapers, when they were so fabulously expensive—even for me, a gringa on a U.S. professor's salary.

HSN Honduras Solidarity Network, USA
honsolnetwork@google.com
https://sites.google.com/site/hondurassolidaritynetwork

February 20, 2013
Statement of the Honduran Solidarity Network (HSN) in the United States

The Problem in Honduras is not the Human Rights Defenders

On February 18, 2013, Infantry Colonel German Antonio Alfaro Escalante, the Commander of the Joint Task Force Xatruch III, which is the ongoing military-police operation in the Aguán Valley of Honduras, convened an unusual press conference. The Colonel, in a verbal and written statement, accused international and Honduran human rights defenders and advocates for social justice movements in Honduras of intimidation and harassment because he received numerous calls regarding the detention of a campesino leader, Juan Chinchilla on February 10, 2013. He listed the names and websites of Honduran human rights defenders and the phone numbers for some of the messages he received from international callers. He stated that the publication of urgent calls for action on human rights is part of “a well conceived disinformation campaign” that “deteriorates the image of Honduras”.