Gracias Corta ~ I suspect there were be more gov't gremlins as time
goes by. Can the Internet crash?!? ~Peta
HONDURAS: Arias and Insulza Send in "The Cleaner"
NOTE: This article originally appeared on the HONDURAS OYE! blog, but the editor function on the blog is not working (perhaps, gov't. gremlins are?) preventing me from doing hotlinks and other really important editing tasks. Here, the article with hotlinks.
Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://twitter.com/Peta51
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From: Cort Greene <cort.greene@gmail.com>
To: Venezuela_Today <Venezuela_Today@yahoogroups.com>; NetworkAztlan_News <NetworkAztlan_News@yahoogroups.com>; Left-wing <Left-wing@yahoogroups.com>; Activism_USA <Activism_USA@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: stormingheaven <stormingheaven@yahoogroups.com>; socialism <socialism@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, November 27, 2009 5:11:11 PM
Subject: [NetworkAztlan_News] 4 important articles from * Honduras Oye *
Haiti-Cuba-Venezuel a Analysis at http://hcvanalysis. wordpress. com. Its a great resource!
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Andrés Pavón, president of the Honduran Human Rights Commission (CODEH), a few weeks ago. The attack perpetrated with military arms against the politician and business man from Olancho, Ulises Sarmiento, was just the beginning.Today is the burial of the body of the teacher Luis Gradis Espinal, a teacher from the resistance of the south of the country. His body was found yesterday, tied and executed, after having been reported disappeared by his family. Witnesses are sure that he was detained by the police and military in one of the many search operations taking place around the whole country.
In the city El Progreso, the police are carrying out intense operations in the homes of the leaders of the Resistance, and they claim to have found a small arsenal of arms in the house of a teacher, arresting even a German citizen. Among the arms they report several founds of nails that according to the police spokesperson would be used to make traps to puncture the tires of cars and stop the trucks carrying electoral material. In the same zone, the communities Tacamiche and Silím report that they are surrounded by hundreds of military soldiers.
In the city Danlí, several young people were kidnapped by the army causing terror among the population who fears for their lives. According to the denunciation from the family members, they have been recruited forcefully for military service. At the same time, in the same city, a human rights investigator was placed under arrest for hindering the work of the justice operatives.
Today at night Milton Jimenes Puerto, the close collaborator, ex-minister and friend of President Zelaya who had been underground since the 28th of June was arrested. The arrest of Jimenez is the carrying out of the first arrest order issued for a political prisoner linked to the inner-circle of the Zelaya government and serves as a reminder of what could happen if Mel dares to leave his diplomatic refuge.
The police this week imported a huge arsenal of arms including 10,000 tear gas grenades, 5,000 rubber bullets and a new anti-riot tank worth $12 million dollars. According to the report by the secretary of security, the objective of acquiring it is to defend the right of the people to elect their authorities.
Nonetheless, it is hard to believe that all of these actions are being carried out with the goal of securing the elections. The Honduran elections are far from being recognized by the majority of the countries of Latin America and though the United States, Perú, Colombia and Panamá (the ultra-right arm of the continent) have said they will recognize the new president, what is certain is that this will bring tension amongst the different governments that are already extremely divided.
But who comes out the most damaged from the Honduras effect is the Obama administration, who has sacrificed the possibilities of a more egalitarian foreign policy, of cooperation amongst nations, for an imperial realpolitik that has always separated the United States from the subcontinent. Lula da Silva has already stated his disillusion with the turn to the right in the foreign policy of the U.S. president and reminds him of his promise made just six months ago and broken now because of Honduras, of constructing a new relationship between the United States and Latin America.
And although there aren't real international observers for the elections, (the regime is pleased with the arrival of the insignificant Concerned Women of America who are coming, together with the "State" of 
Taiwan, as observers and witnesses to the transparency of the Honduran electoral process). What is true is that the eyes of the world will be on Honduras this weekend.
The Resistance knows that the elections are an important recourse to save the dictatorship by transferring the authority to a front person who with a certain degree of legality will conclude the political project of the coup d'etat. It also knows that because they are so important the dictatorship will seek to defend them with all the necessary force. And that is the trap, because if the despotic Micheletti regime, with or without him in from of the government, carries out an unprecedented action of repression to guarantee the elections on the same day that the eyes of the world will be carefully watching his actions, he runs the great risk, not just of the elections not being recognized, but of them being contested by the international community.
So what then does the dictatorship seek with its terror campaign?
The government that wins in these elections will inherit an extremely difficult country to govern. If we combine a debt of close to 10,000 million Lempiras with the private bank of a country with an index of 10% annual interest, the lack of real possibilities of external financing to cushion the crisis, a decrease of close to 4% of the national economy, plus the devaluation of the currency up to 50%, an increase in taxes 
and a lack of cash to pay salaries, in addition to an unhappy and organized popular sector, we get a government lacking internal and external legitimacy, extremely weak, only sustained by the armed forces and the police.
The oligarchy needs to eliminate the political opposition to consolidate its new project of domination, that elimination can only ocurr through terror, killing and genocide. Nonetheless, they once again commit the same error that they committed on the eve of the 28th of June. They under-estimate the creative capacity, the transformational capacity of the struggle, the combativeness of a people that has identified its enemy and understands, this time even more clearly, that a path towards national liberation, towards the re-founding of Honduras, has begun.
from → Honduras
Washington endorses gunpoint election in Honduras
By Bill Van Auken
27 November 2009
The Obama administration has declared its support for elections being held this Sunday in Honduras, under conditions in which the regime that came to power in a coup last June has refused to cede power and is preparing intense repression against those who oppose it.
The action has placed Washington at odds with virtually all of Latin America, whose governments have refused to recognize the elections as legitimate.
The US endorsement of the elections represents the culmination of a policy that has lent political support to the coup regime headed by the Liberal Party leader of the national legislature, Roberto Micheletti, and the Honduran military, even as Washington has given lip service to the principle of restoring the country's elected president, Manuel Zelaya, to power.
Zelaya was dragged from the presidential palace by hooded and heavily armed soldiers in the early morning hours of June 28, bundled onto an airplane and flown into exile. Since his clandestine return to the country two months ago, he has been forced to remain holed up in the Brazilian embassy.
In advance of a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington Monday, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, sent a letter defending Washington's position, insisting that Sunday's elections "are not something invented by the de facto government as a way out or to whitewash the coup."
The holding of the vote, Valenzuela said, is "consistent with the constitutional mandate to elect the president and congress."
Valenzuela was only recently confirmed to his position as the senior State Department official responsible for Latin America. Senate Republicans, led by Jim DeMint of South Carolina, had held up his nomination over the Obama administration's stated support for the return of Zelaya to office. After the administration made it clear it would back the election whether the ousted president was reinstated or not, DeMint and his fellow Republicans dropped their opposition.
Backing the Republicans' support for the coup regime was a team of high-powered political lobbyists funded by Honduran business interests. This effort was led by President Bill Clinton's White House counsel, Lanny Davis, a close political associate of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he served as a chief political fundraiser during her 2008 presidential bid.
Valenzuela also announced that the US will send observers to monitor the election. Organizing this mission for Washington will be the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), organizations set up by the two major US political parties.
Both are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, an agency established in 1983 to carry out the kind of political operations that previously had been staged by the Central Intelligence Agency. The NED was a leading backer of the Venezuelan coup of 2002 and has been involved in the so-called "color revolutions" carried out in several former Soviet republics. Sitting on the board of the NDI are a number of veteran Democratic politicians as well as the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten.
The OAS, from which Honduras has been suspended since the coup, Spain and various Latin American governments have refused to send observer teams on the grounds that it is impossible to hold democratic elections under an unelected dictatorship. The only government in Latin America to openly back the elections is that of Panama.
In Honduras, a significant number of candidates have announced their withdrawal from the election. In all, 55 candidates for deputy and 110 for mayor have said they will not participate. Those refusing to run include a candidate for vice president in the Liberal Party, in which both Zelaya and Micheletti are leading members, and the party's candidate for mayor in San Pedro Sula, the country's largest city.
Washington's backing of the election is the culmination of a protracted process that began with the coup itself. Given the overwhelming US domination of the Honduran economy as well as the political life of the country, it is difficult to believe that the overthrow of the country's president would have taken place without a green light from US officials.
The Honduran military that executed the coup is largely trained and armed by the Pentagon, and the American military maintains its largest military facility in the region on Honduran soil. This is the Soto Cano Air Base, where the plane carrying the ousted and abducted Zelaya landed before continuing to transport him to Costa Rica and exile.
Following the coup, the Obama administration issued a tepid condemnation of the action and a call for the restoration of constitutional order, while the State Department refused in the initial months to explicitly demand Zelaya's return to the presidency.
Washington promoted a mediation effort by its longtime ally in the region, Costa Rican President Oscar Aria, which led to the so-called San Jose Accord, calling for Zelaya to be restored to office, but only as a figurehead president in a so-called "government of national unity and reconciliation" controlled by the military and civilian officials who overthrew him.
The deal also included a renunciation on Zelaya's part of any bid to amend the country's reactionary constitution, a document dictated by the outgoing Honduran military dictatorship and the US Embassy in 1983. It was Zelaya's attempt to hold a consultative plebiscite asking Hondurans whether they favored a vote on calling a constituent assembly to consider constitutional revisions that provoked his ouster.
Afterwards, his right-wing opponents, parroted by the bulk of the US media, floated the charge that this was an attempt on Zelaya's part to grab another, illegitimate term in office. As the vote on whether to hold a constituent assembly, which theoretically could overturn the constitution's term limits, would be held concurrently with the presidential ballot choosing Zelaya's successor, this charge was patently absurd.
Zelaya and his backers accepted the San Jose Accord, while Micheletti's so-called de facto government rejected it, raising repeated objections and managing to drag out the process for months, even as it unleashed a wave of violent repression against the mass protests against the coup regime. Opposition sources say that this repression has claimed the lives of 27 people, while thousands more have been illegally detained, many of them suffering beatings and torture.
Finally, at the end of October, a US delegation headed by Thomas Shannon, Valenzuela's predecessor at the State Department, brokered an agreement signed by both parties, the so-called Guaymuras accord. The terms of this deal were even more reactionary than those drawn up by Arias. In addition to the government of "national unity" and the renunciation of any attempt to alter the 1983 constitution, it conditioned Zelaya's return to office on a vote by the same Honduran congress that had endorsed his overthrow. Moreover, as subsequently became clear, it included no timetable for the coup regime to step down.
In the wake of the signing, Micheletti announced the formation of a "national unity" government with himself at its head and including not a single Zelaya supporter. Meanwhile, the Congress announced that it would not even meet to consider Zelaya's restoration until December 2, three days after the election.
First Shannon and then the number-two State Department official on Latin America, Craig Kelly, made it clear that Washington would not condition its support for the election on Zelaya's return to office, essentially handing the organizers of the coup everything they had sought.
Speaking in Tegucigalpa last week, Kelly declared, "Nobody has the right to take from the Honduran people the right to vote, to elect their leaders." In a transparent threat to the mass movement that has opposed the coup regime and has called for a boycott of any election held under its rule, Kelly admonished all Hondurans to "avoid provocations, calls to violence."
Zelaya has facilitated this entire process, seeking to subordinate the movement of the Honduran workers, peasants and students against the regime to these negotiations. From the beginning, he has placed his faith in the Obama administration to rescue him. As late as last Friday, he issued a letter to other Latin American heads of state warning against the "ambiguous and imprecise" positions of the Obama administration and expressing his surprise at Washington's support for the election.
This process degenerated further into farce last week with the announcement by Micheletti that he would take a "leave of absence" from the presidency from November 25 until December 2 in order to "concentrate all the attention of the Honduran people on the electoral process and not on the political crisis."
The State Department "welcomed" the move, proclaiming that it would give the Honduran people "breathing space" and allow them to "focus on the election."
Micheletti named no one to succeed him, and the State Department's spokesman acknowledged that he did not know who was running the country. The obvious answer is the same people who have run it since the June coup, the military command and the ruling oligarchy.
Micheletti added that faced with any disruption of "order and security that threatens the peace of the nation and the tranquility of the Honduran people," he would return to the presidency and organize "with vigor and firmness the measures that are necessary to guarantee order."
Opponents of the regime point out that such measures are already being implemented in preparation for the disputed elections. The regime has imposed a state of emergency and ordered Honduran troops to impose a "general disarmament" beginning this week, with the search for and seizure of weapons. Roadblocks have been set up in various parts of the capital and on national highways, with people subjected to searches and detentions.
In addition to 16,000 troops and 14,000 police agents, the regime has mobilized 5,000 members of the military reserves to be deployed for the election.
The country's mayors have reportedly been ordered by the armed forces to draw up lists of people considered to be opponents of the elections for possible detention.
Micheletti has threatened that the government will criminally prosecute anyone in the media who advocates a boycott of the November 29 vote. And last Friday, the regime once again forced Canal 36, the sole television outlet that has opposed the coup, off the air.
The Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), one of the country's principal human rights organizations, issued a warning Sunday that in the run-up to the election, the coup regime is launching a "new wave of death threats, political persecution, illegal detentions, torture [and] militarization of some sectors in the main cities."
It pointed to "the incursion of cars bearing no license plates and with tinted windows, driven by heavily armed subjects, with their faces covered in ski masks in the neighborhoods identified with resistance to the coup."
The group also called attention to an order issued by the Ministry of Public Health, instructing health facilities to prepare for mass casualties, postpone elective surgeries and to remain open 24 hours a day during the election period."
from → Honduras
Honduras, Colombia, Cuba: US Sticking with Monroe Doctrine (Interview with Arnold August)
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Honduras, Colombia, Cuba: the United States are Sticking with the Monroe Doctrine By Karine Walsh Global Research, November 27, 2009 |
Interview with Arnold August at Le monde cette semaine (The World this Week), a francophone radio program hosted by André Pesant, aired on CIBL Radio-Montréal on November 22, 2009 While the U.S. government is amplifying its hostile interventions in the south, André Pesant recalled the ideological origins of U.S. foreign policy in a radio episode entitled Honduras, Colombia, Cuba – the United States is Pursuing the Monroe Doctrine: All of America to the North-Americans. It is during a speech to Europeans delivered on December 2, 1823, that the Republican U.S. President James Monroe would set guidelines to be adopted by United States diplomacy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the same vein, Pesant evoked the concept of an African proverb used by Roosevelt in 1901: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Roosevelt used this expression for the first time at the Minnesota State Fair, on September 2, 1901, twelve days before the assassination of President William McKinley which propelled him into the presidency of United States. This "big stick" policy led the United States to assume a role of international police, protecting its interests in Latin America, mainly in the Caribbean region, through the use of military reprisals if deemed necessary. The radio host considered that a century after this statement, the same « big stick » policy still seems to be enforced, a week away from the presidential election boycotted by the vast majority in Honduras: "While U.S. imperialism was suggesting an excessively publicised no-win deal to President Zelaya, it also took military control of Colombia." Contrasting with the complicit silence of the mainstream media linked to the so-called international community, Pesant mentioned "the very lively voice of Fidel Castro", referring to his recent reflections on the matter, published in several websites: "The Annexation of Colombia to the United States» on November 6 and "The Bolivarian Revolution and Peace "on November 18. Pesant's guest on this radio show was Arnold August, a journalist, lecturer, author of several articles on the coup in Honduras published in some prestigious alternative websites, and specialist in participatory democracy in Cuba. In his view, it is still the same aggressive U.S. policy towards Latin America that has prevailed for two centuries: "This policy of domination over Latin America began immediately after the United States war of Independence in 1787. Even before the speech by James Monroe in 1823, which would define the principles of the country's foreign policy towards Latin America, in 1807 Thomas Jefferson declared that he saw in Cuba the most interesting acquisition for the United States. This policy of control applies to all of Latin America; the outward appearances and political parties taking power in the White House change from time to time, but the policy has remained the same." Pesant reminded listeners about the harsh reality of American history, the historical inheritance of the US ruling class; a slave-owning class that acquired its wealth through the shameless importation and exploitation of African slaves. "The history of the United States consists of the looting of natural resources both outside and inside the US, including the extermination of the aboriginal peoples," he pointed out. Concerning Honduras, Pesant placed the issue in the context of the aggressive U.S. policy of domination over the continent enforced during two centuries and also in the light of current events, with on one hand, the negotiation of a bad deal imposed on Zelaya, and on the other hand the installation of 7 U.S. military bases in Colombia. August recalled that one of the factors leading to the military coup on June 28 was Zelaya's decision, with the support of the Honduran people, to join the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA, its Spanish acronym). According to August, this important decision is directly linked to the coup in Honduras and to the recent public announcement of the installation of military bases in Colombia, even though the latter was decided upon a long time ago. "ALBA was established 5 years ago, first by Venezuela and Cuba. This has resulted in the movement's wave effect, other countries becoming members: Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Honduras, and soon possibly Paraguay, which will bring the current membership to 10 countries, something that is not negligible. The fact that Honduras has taken the decision to join ALBA, whose members reject the political, economic and military domination of the United States, was an affront to the United States which they have not accepted. The coup against Zelaya was not only an assault against Honduras, but upon all countries of ALBA and even against all the countries of South America." Pesant asked his guest about the term military which government officials and the press in general have carefully refrained to associate with the June 28 coup. August, who has written several articles on this particular issue, namely one entitled "Honduras: Consistent Positions by both Sides Elevate the Constituent Assembly as the Solution", explains the important significance in avoiding the term military: "There is a law in the United States, specifically Section 7008 of the 2009 Appropriations Act, clearly entitled military coups, which states that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree. By refraining to officially classify the coup as a military one, Washington keeps the door open for the November 29 elections, even if Zelaya had not been returned to power. The White House also gives itself the luxury of cultivating doubts hovering over Zelaya's head regarding the legal framework of his activities that led to the coup. Nevertheless, the electoral process is bound to be a disaster for both the coup perpetrators and the U.S. government." Referring to an article published recently by August, Pesant mentioned a press release dated November 17, issued by Harris Corporation, which confirms that Washington is far from reducing its efforts of control and repression against the Honduran resistance. August said that in fact this international communications and information technology company was awarded the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems operations and maintenance program for Joint Task Force (JTF) Bravo at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras. August concluded the interview by stressing the correlation between recent events in Latin America, including the establishment of Yankee military bases in Colombia: "We must firstly take note of the fact that Colombia shares its border with Venezuela and Ecuador, two countries that are building an alternative social system and that are strongly rejecting neo-liberalism. Rafael Correa, as promised prior to his election, has recently announced the closure of the only U.S. military base on the territory of Ecuador, an initiative that Zelaya also intended for the base in Honduras. Not far away, in Bolivia, Evo Morales is also the advocate of well thought-out and strong views against American domination over the continent. We cannot separate these events: the military coup in Honduras and the establishment of 7 U.S. military bases in Colombia. I learned this morning that yesterday Micheletti clearly said that anyone calling for a boycott of elections in Honduras is likely to end up in jail; the Honduran people are undergoing increasing repression." On the balance sheet of the full account of aggressive acts against other nations, August recalled the upholding of the U.S. blockade against Cuba, which has resulted in over 50 years of suffering for the Cuban people, in spite of its UN condemnation by an overwhelming majority of member-states. The naval base on the island's territory of Guantanamo has been occupied by U.S. forces in complete illegality for over a century at a time when Cuba was on top of the list on US annexation policy. Article in french : http://www.mondiali sation.ca/ index.php? context=va&aid=16278 Karine Walsh is a social justice activist. She hosts a francophone radio program called Dimension Cubaine (hosted by the Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba) at a Montreal Community channel, Radio Centre-Ville. |
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from → Honduras
TELESUR Video Retrospective on Honduras: "Resistencia de un Pueblo"
Telesur has put together a 30 minute video retrospective of the Resistance movement as it marched daily in its struggle against the golpistas and continuously in the face of brutal golpe-sponsored repression. It's a privilege to be able, once again, to watch and revere some of the bravest people I have ever seen.
Obviously, it is in Spanish. But, if you don't speak it — the visual tells the story.
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