Events In Honduras

[Magda Hassan]

Probably printed at the same place all those Iranian and Optor posters were. Looks like they have crossed out Chavez's name and address and substituted the Honduran president's details and recycled 2002 products. heep:tupido:

[Peter Presland]

Posted by Kristin Bricker - June 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
on Narcosphere

"The U.S. Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." - Joseph Kennedy

The crisis in Honduras began when the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for the opinion poll in a new Constitution. President Zelaya fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, who refused to step down. The heads of all branches of the Honduran armed forces quit in solidarity with Vasquez. Vasquez, however, refused to step down, bolstered by support in Congress and a Supreme Court ruling that reinstated him. Vasquez remains in control of the armed forces.

Vasquez, along with other military leaders, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). According to a School of the Americas Watch database compiled from information obtained from the US government, Vasquez studied in the SOA at least twice: once in 1976 and again in 1984.

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996. The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis. When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them. Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy has stated, "The U.S. Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world."

The School of the Americas has a long, tortured history in Honduras. According to School of the Americas Watch, "In 1975, SOA Graduate General Juan Melgar Castro became the military dictator of Honduras. From 1980-1982 the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates)."

Honduran Gen. Humberto Regalado Hernandez was inducted into the SOA's Hall of Fame. School of the Americas Watch notes that he was a four-time graduate. As head of the armed forces, he refused to take action against soldiers invovled in the Battalion 3-16 death squad.

School of the Americas Watch points out that this is not the first time the SOA has been involved in Latin American coups. "In April 2002, the democratically elected Chavez government of Venezuela was briefly overthrown, and the School of the Americas-trained [soldiers] Efrain Vasquez Velasco, ex-army commander, and Gen. Ramirez Poveda, were key players in the coup attempt."

According to School of the Americas Watch, "Over its 58 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency techniques, sniper skills, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Colombia, with over 10,000 troops trained at the school, is the SOA's largest customer. Colombia currently has the worst human rights record in Latin America."

[Peter Lemkin]

Posted by Kristin Bricker - June 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
on Narcosphere

"The U.S. Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." - Joseph Kennedy

The crisis in Honduras began when the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for the opinion poll in a new Constitution. President Zelaya fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, who refused to step down. The heads of all branches of the Honduran armed forces quit in solidarity with Vasquez. Vasquez, however, refused to step down, bolstered by support in Congress and a Supreme Court ruling that reinstated him. Vasquez remains in control of the armed forces.

Vasquez, along with other military leaders, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). According to a School of the Americas Watch database compiled from information obtained from the US government, Vasquez studied in the SOA at least twice: once in 1976 and again in 1984.

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996. The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis. When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them. Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy has stated, "The U.S. Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world."

The School of the Americas has a long, tortured history in Honduras. According to School of the Americas Watch, "In 1975, SOA Graduate General Juan Melgar Castro became the military dictator of Honduras. From 1980-1982 the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates)."

Honduran Gen. Humberto Regalado Hernandez was inducted into the SOA's Hall of Fame. School of the Americas Watch notes that he was a four-time graduate. As head of the armed forces, he refused to take action against soldiers invovled in the Battalion 3-16 death squad.

School of the Americas Watch points out that this is not the first time the SOA has been involved in Latin American coups. "In April 2002, the democratically elected Chavez government of Venezuela was briefly overthrown, and the School of the Americas-trained [soldiers] Efrain Vasquez Velasco, ex-army commander, and Gen. Ramirez Poveda, were key players in the coup attempt."

According to School of the Americas Watch, "Over its 58 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency techniques, sniper skills, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Colombia, with over 10,000 troops trained at the school, is the SOA's largest customer. Colombia currently has the worst human rights record in Latin America."

That he's a graduate of SOA says it all!...he's one of our Trojan horses. They should rename it School of the American Coup d'etats, torture and death squads.

[Magda Hassan]

Honduran Military Reportedly Assassinated Leftist Presidential Candidate


Posted by Kristin Bricker - June 28, 2009 at 5:09 pm Congressman Cesar Ham Was a Zelaya Ally and Organizer of the Opinion Poll on a New Constitution

Cesar Ham, presidential candidate and the head of Honduras' only registered leftist political party, the Democratic Unification of Honduras, is dead, reports Notimex. He was killed by a squad of soldiers who arrived at his home this morning to arrest him.

The military has rounded up many of Zelaya's allies within the government. Chancellor Patricia Rodas remains kidnapped.

Honduran police confirmed Ham's death to Notimex. The official version of events, as reported by Notimex, is that Ham confronted the military squad that came to his house with a gun, "and therefore he had to be killed."

Despite being from a different party, Ham was a close ally of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Ham's party, the Democratic Unification of Honduras, is Honduras' only registered leftist party. Zelaya is from the conservative Liberal Party; he became a populist leftist after being elected.

Ham, at the time of his reported assassination, was a member of Congress. He wholeheartedly supported President Zelaya's initiative to form a constitutional convention to write a new Constitution, and he was one of the main organizers of today's thwarted opinion poll that would have gauged public opinion on forming a constitutional convention.

Ham has come under fire this year from fellow members of Congress, with help from Honduras' right-wing media. Gregorio Baca, a dissident member of Ham's party who opposed an alliance with Zelaya, accused Ham of receiving "millions of dollars" from President Zelaya in exchange for his support of a referendum on a new constitutional convention. Right-wing newspaper El Heraldo accused Ham and his deputy Misael Castro of embezzling government money to pay for luxury cars. Neither of the accusations were ever verified by a court of law.

This past March the Democratic Unification party chose him as its presidential candidate by a vote of 104-4. The coup plotters had previously announced that the November 2009 elections would go on as planned. If reports that Ham has been assasinated are true, it means that the only leftist candidate in the upcoming elections is now dead.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...ntial-cand

[Peter Lemkin]

Honduran Military Reportedly Assassinated Leftist Presidential Candidate


Posted by Kristin Bricker - June 28, 2009 at 5:09 pm Congressman Cesar Ham Was a Zelaya Ally and Organizer of the Opinion Poll on a New Constitution

Cesar Ham, presidential candidate and the head of Honduras' only registered leftist political party, the Democratic Unification of Honduras, is dead, reports Notimex. He was killed by a squad of soldiers who arrived at his home this morning to arrest him.

The military has rounded up many of Zelaya's allies within the government. Chancellor Patricia Rodas remains kidnapped.

Honduran police confirmed Ham's death to Notimex. The official version of events, as reported by Notimex, is that Ham confronted the military squad that came to his house with a gun, "and therefore he had to be killed."

Despite being from a different party, Ham was a close ally of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Ham's party, the Democratic Unification of Honduras, is Honduras' only registered leftist party. Zelaya is from the conservative Liberal Party; he became a populist leftist after being elected.

Ham, at the time of his reported assassination, was a member of Congress. He wholeheartedly supported President Zelaya's initiative to form a constitutional convention to write a new Constitution, and he was one of the main organizers of today's thwarted opinion poll that would have gauged public opinion on forming a constitutional convention.

Ham has come under fire this year from fellow members of Congress, with help from Honduras' right-wing media. Gregorio Baca, a dissident member of Ham's party who opposed an alliance with Zelaya, accused Ham of receiving "millions of dollars" from President Zelaya in exchange for his support of a referendum on a new constitutional convention. Right-wing newspaper El Heraldo accused Ham and his deputy Misael Castro of embezzling government money to pay for luxury cars. Neither of the accusations were ever verified by a court of law.

This past March the Democratic Unification party chose him as its presidential candidate by a vote of 104-4. The coup plotters had previously announced that the November 2009 elections would go on as planned. If reports that Ham has been assasinated are true, it means that the only leftist candidate in the upcoming elections is now dead.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...ntial-cand

That he was on the left is NO accident. Get ready for a US-run rightwing dictatorship!......and then another and another....and all on Obama's 'watch'.....Change you can't count on! Is it 1954 Again?

In 1954 , the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala for the sole purpose of securing land after powerful lobbying efforts by United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Banana)

(via Wikipedia)

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d’etat was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzm’an, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala. Arbenz’s government put forth a number of new policies that the U.S. intelligence community deemed Communist in nature and, suspecting Soviet influence, fueled a fear of Guatemala becoming what Allen Dulles described as a “Soviet beachhead in the western hemisphere”.

Dulles’ concern reverberated within the CIA and the Eisenhower administration, in the context of the anti-Communist fears of the McCarthyist era. Arbenz instigated sweeping land reform acts that antagonized the U.S.-based multinational company United Fruit Company, which had large stakes in the old order of Guatemala and lobbied various levels of U.S. to take action against Arbenz.

The operation, which lasted from late 1953 to 1954, planned to arm and train an ad-hoc “Liberation Army” of about 400 fighters under the command of a then-exiled Guatemalan army officer, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, and to use them in conjunction with a complex and largely experimental diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaign.

The operation was preceded by a plan, never fully implemented, as early as 1951, to supply anti-Arbenz forces with weapons, supplies, and funding, Operation PBFORTUNE. Afterwards there was an operation, Operation PBHISTORY, whose objective was to gather and analyze documents from the Arbenz government that would incriminate Arbenz as a Communist puppet.

Naming

The operation name, PBSUCCESS, is a cryptonym, otherwise known as a codename. Each CIA cryptonym contains a two character prefix called a digraph, which designates a geographical or functional area. In this case, PB stands for “Presidential Board” and with the words that followed, SUCCESS and FORTUNE, simply being indicative of the general optimism and confidence amongst its planners at the CIA at the time. This varied from the normal CIA practice of choosing arbitrary or deliberately misleading words to complete a cryptonym.

Background

Under the regime of General Jorge Ubico, and Ubico’s predecessor Manuel Jos’e Estrada Cabrera, Guatemala was widely opened up to foreign investment, with special favors being made from Ubico to the United Fruit Company (UFC) in particular. The UFC responded by pouring investment capital into the country, buying controlling shares of the railroad, electric utility, and telegraph, while also winning control over the majority of the country’s best land and de facto control over its only Atlantic port facilities. As a result, the Guatemalan government was often subservient to the UFC’s interests.

In the “October Revolution” of 1944 General Jorge Ubico was overthrown. Juan Jos’e Ar’evalo Bermejo was elected. A new constitution allowed for the possibility of expropriating land. This, as well as Ar’evalo philosophy of “spiritual socialism”, alarmed Guatemala’s landed elite who began to accuse Ar’evalo of supporting Communism. In 1947 he signed a labor protection law that implicitly targeted the UFC. The American Embassy in Guatemala sent alarming messages that Ar’evalo was allowing Communists to organize and had reputedly provided known Communists with support. Ar’evalo supported the Caribbean Legion, a group of ostensibly reformist Latin Americans who plotted to overthrow dictatorships in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. A 1949 CIA analysis described it as a “destabilizing force.”

Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who as an army Captain had played an important role in the “October Revolution” of 1944, won 65% of the vote in the 1950 election.

In the U.S. McCarthyism caused intense anti-Communist suspicions.

Land redistribution

Arbenz advocated social and political reforms, unionization, and land reform. For the latter, Arbenz secretly met with members of the Communist Guatemalan Labor Party (known by its Spanish acronym ‘PGT’) in order to establish an effective land reform program. Such a program was proposed by Arbenz as a means of remedying the extremely unequal land distribution within the country: in 1945, it was estimated that 2.2% of the country’s population controlled 70% of all arable land, but with only 12% of it being utilized.

While impoverished peasants welcomed Arbenz’s Agrarian Reform Act of 1952, known as Decree 900, the landowning upper-classes and factions of the military accused him of bowing to Communist influence. Tension resulted in civil unrest in the country and fueled the indignation of the UFC. In March 1953 uncultivated lands owned by UFC were to be expropriated with a proposed compensation plan, whereby the Guatemalan government would pay the United Fruit roughly US$600,000 based on the company’s declared taxes, in essence offering the company what it publicly said the land was worth as compensation. In the following October 1953 and in February 1954, the Guatemalan government took another 150,000 acres (600 km^2) of uncultivated land from the United Fruit Company, bringing the total amount of appropriations to almost 400,000 acres (1,600 km^2). In April 1954 the U.S. State Department delivered a note to the Arbenz government demanding that Guatemala pay $15,854,849[citation needed] for the UFC properties expropriated on the Pacific Coast alone. Guatemala denied this overture, charging violation of its sovereignty.

After the expropriations began in 1953 the UFC began lobbying the U.S. government in an attempt to draw them into their confrontation with Arbenz. The U.S. State Department responded by, amongst other things, successfully seeking approved cuts in economic aid and cuts in trade, with devastating effect to Guatemala, since “85% of Guatemala’s exports are sold in the country and 85% of their imports come from the U.S.” Internal U.S. State Department documents stated that the cutoff would have to be done “quietly” because this was “a violation of the Non-intervention agreement, to which we are party… If it became obvious that we were in violation of this agreement, other Latin American governments would rally to the support of Guatemala.”

A U.S. State Department report released in 2003 states that social unrest within Guatemala and Arbenz’s alleged Communist ties were the reason the CIA first drew up a contingency plan to oust Arbenz, entitled Operation PBFORTUNE (later changed to Operation PBSUCCESS.) The plan was drafted in 1951, before the United Fruit Company’s landholdings had been expropriated. “In the Agency’s view, Arbenz’s toleration for known Communists made him at best a ‘fellow traveler,’ and at worst a Communist himself. The social unrest that accompanied the passage and implementation of the Agrarian Reform Law supplied critics in Guatemala and Washington with confirmation that a Communist beachhead had been established in the Americas. Agrarian reform was not the issue–communism was.”

Richard Bissell, a former Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, has stated that there “is absolutely no reason to believe” the desire to help United Fruit played “any significant role” in reaching the decision.

CIA agent Howard Hunt, who was involved with the coup, has suggested to the contrary that United Fruit’s lobbying campaign was a contributive factor in making policy; although Hunt suggests that the action was justified by security concerns, he believes that United Fruit’s political clout was nonetheless a key factor.

Operation PBFORTUNE

As early as 1951, before the agrarian reform law had been written or passed, CIA apprehension about a Communist takeover caused the agency to seriously explore options for Arbenz’s overthrow. Arbenz’s toleration for known Communists made him at best a “fellow traveler,” and at worst a Communist himself.

The most viable option being considered was the covert backing of rebel groups and dissidents already active in Guatemala and the then CIA Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Walter B. Smith sent an agent to Guatemala City to investigate potential candidate individuals or organizations. At the time the state of the opposition to Arbenz was inert, divided, and increasingly fractious. The agent returned empty handed. Fortunately for the CIA, this roughly coincided with the first state visit of the President of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza. He informed them of Castillo Armas’s small rebel group and stated that, with the CIA’s support, he and Armas could unseat Arbenz. They also could expect financial backing from Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and, as Armas later claimed, from internal elements within the Guatemalan army. DCI Smith urged his subordinates to follow up on this and to establish contacts with Armas, which they did in June of the same year. At the CIA’s request, Armas then relayed to them a plan for invasion, which was to launch from El Salvador, Mexico, and Honduras (from UFC land) and would be coordinated with simultaneous uprisings within Guatemala. Armas requested arms, money, aircraft, and boats and informed them that he would launch the invasion as planned regardless of the CIA’s support if need be. In July the CIA secured arms, transport, and $225,000 (US) for Armas, and furnished a few WWII-era airplanes. In September the CIA secured State Department approval and Operation PBFORTUNE was set.

One of two major setbacks occurred shortly afterwards when, while preparing for the arms shipment, the operation had to be called off. Somoza had been speaking of the invasion plan with other Central American leaders and the operation’s cover, which was very important due to the fragile diplomatic situation the United States had with the region, was blown. While Operation PBFORTUNE was officially terminated, the operation led a twilight existence with the arm shipment prepared prior still kept in waiting and with Armas being kept on a $3,000 a week retainer, which allowed him to hang on to his small troupe of rebels.

The Coup

With the departure of President Harry S. Truman and the arrival of Dwight D. Eisenhower, hopes were again raised within the CIA about the possibility of reviving the invasion. Eisenhower expressed favor toward covert operations as a means of cheaply and covertly combating the Soviet Union. While working toward getting this support, anxiety within the Agency about the possibility of a premature coup attempt being enacted by overeager rebel groups began to rise and was justified in early 1953 when a futile and poorly planned invasion was attempted by a rebel group marginally associated with Armas. The invasion precipitated exactly the reaction feared within the Agency: the Guatemalan government was provided with a justification for severely clamping down on anticommunist elements within their country — jailing many — and was supported by a popular backlash against the anti-communists amongst the people. With almost all of their local assets destroyed, the CIA was forced to rely solely on the much more fragmented exile groups.

After all but abandoning the project in mid-1953, the U.S. National Security Council revived the project in August of that year after a review of the situation in light of the success of the recent CIA-organized coup against Mossadegh in Iran. CIA officers involved included Tracy Barnes, the CIA officer in charge, David Atlee Phillips, Jacob ‘Jack’ Esterline, E. Howard Hunt, David Sanchez Morales.

Upon establishing operation headquarters in Florida in December 1953, the Agency started recruiting pilots, oversaw the training of rebels, set up a radio station to use for propaganda purposes, and stepped up the diplomatic pressure on Guatemala. Although they couldn’t halt the exports of coffee, a major industry in Guatemala at the time, they succeeded in foiling two deals to buy arms and ammunition from Canada and Germany. Faced with dwindling military supply and witnessing the buildup of armaments in neighboring countries, Arbenz started to seriously take into account the possibility of an invasion, which had been rumored for months and finally confirmed when a defector from the Agency’s stable of rebels informed the Arbenz regime of PBSUCCESS and its details, and began looking for potential sellers of crucial supplies. This brought Arbenz to conclude a deal, announced in the newspaper El Imparcial, with Czechoslovakia for arms; apparently Czechoslovakia had kept tons of captured German arms in storage since the end of World War II, a decade before. While the cash-and-carry deal was made with a Soviet Bloc country, not with the Soviet Union, when the arms shipment arrived, the CIA took their opportunity and promoted the transaction as proof of the Soviet hand pulling the strings. The American public was told only that Guatemala was undergoing a “revolution.”

After the revelation of the Czech arms shipment and the domestic support it whipped up, the US drastically stepped up both its covert and overt campaigns. On May 20, 1954 the US Navy began air-sea patrols under the twin pretexts of arms interdiction and protection of Honduras from Guatemalan invasion.[8] On June 7, a “contingency evacuation” force, consisting of five amphibious assault ships plus an “anti-submarine warfare” (ASW) aircraft carrier was dispatched to the area. Embarked was a US Marine Battalion Landing Team; meanwhile the only utility of the ASW carrier in the situation could have been for helicopter assault (then under development by the US Marines).

These forces were used to implement a comprehensive sea blockade of Guatemala by the American Navy. Known as Operation HARDROCK BAKER, it also included the deployment of submarines again, ostensibly to stop and inspect all incoming ships for arms (though submarines are not at all suited for this role). The de facto aggressive configuration of this naval force, and the disingenuous representations of its true purpose, had a decisive psychological impact within Guatemala, extinguishing the remaining hope of international law coming to the assistance of Guatemala and raising the very credible prospect of an American invasion.

Propaganda

Psychological warfare was prominent in the operation. The CIA planned to make heavy use of rumor, pamphleteering, poster campaigns, and, most of all, radio, which had turned the tide at the critical moment in the Iran operation. Although relatively few Guatemalans personally owned a radio, the radio was considered to be an authoritative source, and the CIA hoped that word of mouth would assist in the dissemination of their propaganda to an audience greatly exceeding those with radios. The radio station, La Voz de la Liberacion (The voice of liberation), was set up in Miami but claimed to be operating from “deep in the jungle” and broadcast a mix of popular music, humor, and anti-government propaganda. While the broadcasts were overtly tailored to the general populace, they were specifically and subversively targeted at “men of action”, particularly the officers in the Guatemalan military, whose complicity was essential to the success of the operation. The Guatemalan army, made up of around 5,000 well trained and armed soldiers, was more than a match militarily for Armas’s 400 undisciplined rebels. Depending on a strictly military success was not an option, and winning the officer class over, mostly through intimidation, was pivotal to the success of the operation. Immediately preceding the invasion propaganda efforts were intensified with Armas sending warplanes to fly low over the capital, buzzing the presidential palace, and drop leaflets urging the military to disavow their Communist government.

Internal propaganda activities were taken up mostly by student groups under direct instruction of CIA experts stationed at the Florida headquarters. Employing many advanced ideas and techniques, they met with immediate success. They started a weekly pamphlet and plastered the number “32″ — for Article 32 in the constitution that prohibited international political parties — on buses and walls across the whole country, garnering much local media attention. Encouraged by this initial success the group began using an increasingly wide variety of ideas and approaches. One scheme was to put stickers saying “A communist lives here” on the homes of Arbenz’s supporters. Another was to send out fake death notices for Arbenz or other leading members of his cabinet to local newspapers. These activities reached such a height that Arbenz found it necessary to take harsh measures to stymie them, arresting many members of the student groups, limiting freedom of assembly, and intimidating newspapers into ignoring their activities. These severe clampdowns essentially turned Guatemala into the repressive regime that the Agency was trying to portray it, which only succeeded in giving ammunition to Agency claims and hastening Arbenz’s downfall.

Invasion

At 8:00 p.m. on June 18 Castillo Armas’s forces crossed the border. Divided into four groups, his roughly 480 strong party invaded at five key points along the Guatemalan-Honduran and the Guatemalan-Salvadorian border. This was done to give the impression of a massive forces invading along a wide front, and also to disperse the men so as to minimize the chance of the entire force being routed in a single unfavorable engagement. In addition to these regular troops, ten trained saboteurs slipped in ahead and were given the task of blowing up key bridges and cutting telegraph lines. All of the invading forces were instructed to minimize actual encounters with the Guatemalan army, for many reasons but most of all to avoid giving reason for the uniting of the army against the invaders. The entire course of the invasion was specifically designed to sow panic and to give the impression of insurmountable odds in order to bring the populace and the military over to its side, rather than defeat them. During the invasion, radio propaganda also assisted towards this end, transmitting false reports of huge forces joining the local populace in a popular revolution.

Almost immediately, Armas’s forces met with decisive failure. Invading on foot and hampered by heavy equipment, it was in some cases days before the rebels reached their objectives. This weakened the psychological impact of the initial invasion, as local Guatemalans realized they were in no immediate danger. One of the first groups to reach its objective, the group of 122 rebels whose task it was to capture the city of Zacapa, were severely crushed by a small contingent of 30 Guatemalan army soldiers, leaving only 28 rebels who had escaped death or capture. An even larger defeat was handed to the group of 170 rebels who undertook the task of capturing the heavily guarded port city of Puerto Barrios. After the police chief spotted the invading force, he quickly armed local dock workers and assigned them defensive roles. In a matter of hours the vast majority of the rebels were killed or captured, with the remaining men fleeing back into Honduras. Within three days, two of Armas’s four prongs were out of commission. Attempting to recover momentum, Armas ordered an air attack on the capital the following day. This too failed, as a single slow flying plane managed to bomb a small oil tank, creating a minor fire that was doused in 20 minutes.

After these rebel failures, Arbenz ordered his military commander to allow Armas’s forces to advance deep into the country. Arbenz and his chief commander didn’t fear Armas’s ragtag army, but there was a concern that, were the rebels to be too severely crushed, it would provide a pretext for open American military intervention. This fear spread widely amongst the officer class, with no one wanting to engage and defeat Armas’s increasingly decimated force. Rumors spread - fueled greatly by the presence of the American amphibious assault force - that a Honduran landing by US Marines was in progress; preparatory to an invasion of Guatemala. Arbenz feared that the officers would be cowed into striking a deal with Armas. Confirmation of Arbenz’ fear came when an entire army garrison surrendered to Armas a few days later in the town of Chiquimula. Arbenz summoned his cabinet to explain that the army was in revolt, and on June 27 Arbenz announced his resignation.

Aftermath

In the 11 days after Arbenz’s resignation five successive juntas occupied the presidential palace, each more amenable to American demands than the last, with Armas himself finally taking office at the end. He proved to be embarrassingly inept and his corrupt and repressive policies renewed civil conflict unseen in the country since before the revolution of 1944.

The coup was reviled by the international press. Le Monde and The Times both attacked America’s “modern form of economic colonialism.” There was a widespread and long-lasting protest of the coup in Latin America, with Guatemala becoming a symbol of resistance to American designs for the region. United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskj”old accused the US’s actions of being at odds with the UN Charter and even West German papers, usually gentle to America, were condemning the coup.

According to Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Project of National Security Archives and a regular contributor to Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, most historians now agree that the military coup in 1954 was the definitive blow to Guatemala’s young democracy. Over the next four decades, the succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare, destabilizing Guatemalan society. The violence caused the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans, and some human rights activists put the death toll as high as 250,000. At the later stages of this conflict the CIA tried with some success to lessen the human rights violations and in 1993 stopped a coup and helped restore the democratic government.

Following closely on the heels of the successful CIA-orchestrated coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to allow the Shah to rule autocratically in 1953 (see Operation Ajax), some argue that it employed ideas and methods that were relatively new at the time and, due to the ostensible success of the operation, led to Operation PBSUCCESS becoming the de facto model for the overthrow or destabilization of a defiant government for some time to come, including the abortive coup in Cuba in the early 1960s and Chile in the 70s.

Operation PBHISTORY

After the campaign, the CIA sent a handful of agents to Guatemala in order to gather and analyze government documents that would, amongst other things, find evidence that would support the CIA’s belief that Guatemala was a rising Soviet puppet state, in an operation that was known as Operation PBHISTORY. Despite amassing well over 150,000 pages, they found very little to substantiate the key premise of the invasion. The socialism that gained influence under Arbenz’s presidency in fact had no ties to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, some private sector leaders and the military began to believe that Arbenz represented a Communist threat and supported his overthrow despite most Guatemalans’ attachment to the original ideals of the 1944 uprising.

[Magda Hassan]

US Govt. Confirms It Knew Coup Was Coming
by Eva Golinger A New York Times article has just confirmed that the US Government has been "working for several days" with the coup planners in Honduras to halt the illegal overthrow of President Zelaya. While this may indicate nobility on behalf of the Obama Administration, had they merely told the coupsters that the US Government would CUT OFF all economic aid and blockade Honduras in the event of a coup, it's almost a 100% guarantee that the military and right wing parties and business groups involved in the coup would not have gone through with it.
So, while many make excuses for the Obama Administration's "calculated" statements, had they been more firm with the coup leaders, instead of "negotiating", the coup may never have happened. Also, the State Department says they believed "dialogue" was the best way to resolve the situation, but their lack of clarity and firm position has caused multiple human rights violations to occur in Honduras and a lot of tension to take place in the region.
And during the April 2002 coup against Chávez in Venezuela, the State Department also claimed it knew of the coup and tried to "stop" it. Later, in my investigations, it was discovered through documents from State and CIA declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that CIA, State and other US agencies, funded, supported, advised and armed the coup leaders. . . .
Here is the NY Times article posted a few hours ago.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/golinger290609.html

[Peter Lemkin]

US Govt. Confirms It Knew Coup Was Coming
by Eva Golinger A New York Times article has just confirmed that the US Government has been "working for several days" with the coup planners in Honduras to halt the illegal overthrow of President Zelaya. While this may indicate nobility on behalf of the Obama Administration, had they merely told the coupsters that the US Government would CUT OFF all economic aid and blockade Honduras in the event of a coup, it's almost a 100% guarantee that the military and right wing parties and business groups involved in the coup would not have gone through with it.
So, while many make excuses for the Obama Administration's "calculated" statements, had they been more firm with the coup leaders, instead of "negotiating", the coup may never have happened. Also, the State Department says they believed "dialogue" was the best way to resolve the situation, but their lack of clarity and firm position has caused multiple human rights violations to occur in Honduras and a lot of tension to take place in the region.
And during the April 2002 coup against Chávez in Venezuela, the State Department also claimed it knew of the coup and tried to "stop" it. Later, in my investigations, it was discovered through documents from State and CIA declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that CIA, State and other US agencies, funded, supported, advised and armed the coup leaders. . . .
Here is the NY Times article posted a few hours ago.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/golinger290609.html

LIHOP or MIHOP?
Much of the show today of http://www.democracynow.org is about Honduras, with intelligent analysis and calls from Honduras.

AMY GOODMAN: In the first military coup in Central America in a quarter of a century, the Honduran military has ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Former Parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti, who was sworn in as Zelaya’s replacement Sunday, has imposed a two-day nationwide curfew. But hundreds of Zelaya supporters remain on the streets. Shots were fired at protesters near the presidential palace early Monday morning.

The ousted president was forced from the presidential palace by armed soldiers early Sunday morning and flown to Costa Rica after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office. Micheletti says Zelaya was not ousted through a coup but by a legal process. But speaking at a press conference in Costa Rica, Zelaya called it a kidnapping and vowed to return to his country as president. He explained a small group of elites and military officers were behind the coup.

PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] I think it is a group of military men, and it’s not the entire army or all the armed forces. There are good soldiers who are good and capable people who are not blinded with ambition or greed. There are some who have not been blinded by the voracity of a small elite, which, through politics and the economy, have provoked this terrible event.


AMY GOODMAN: The military coup in Honduras and the reported arrests of the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan ambassadors to Honduras have been roundly condemned by the Organization of American States that held an emergency session Sunday. The Honduran representative compared the coup to what happened in Chile in 1973. The Venezuelan representative accused former Bush administration undersecretary of state Otto Reich of complicity in the coup. Earlier in the day, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez warned his armed forces were on alert.

President Obama, meanwhile, issued a declaration Sunday morning saying he was, quote, “deeply concerned” by reports from Honduras. In a statement later in the day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the action against the ousted Honduran President should be, quote, “condemned by all.” The US ambassador to Honduras reaffirmed the United States only recognizes Manuel Zelaya as the President of Honduras.

Well, for the latest from Honduras, we go there to Dr. Juan Almendares. He joins us on the line from the capital, Tegucigalpa. We’re also joined here in our firehouse studio by New York University professor of Latin American history, Greg Grandin.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Dr. Almendares. Can you describe what is happening right now in Tegucigalpa?

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Well, what we are having here is a military coup d’etat who has been persecuting and repressive action against some member of the legitimate government of President Zelaya and also popular leaders. We have almost a national strike for workers, people, students and intellectuals, and they are organized in a popular resistance-run pacific movement against this violation of the democracy. So we want a democracy now. We want people from all over the world to [inaudible] service, make contacts, because what we are looking right now is a really—hello? Hello? Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we can hear you fine. We can hear you fine, Dr. Almendares.

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Oh, yes, alright, alright. So what we are looking now is, we are going back to repressive situation. Some of the advisers of the government have been perpetrators, torture perpetrators, of the 1980s. We have a very, very strong, conservative way of looking things. However, we are not only strong for—not only for President Zelaya; we are also strong for the rights of the people, because in this movement is not only persons from one side of political sector. There are many sectors involved in this movement trying to restitute the constitutional rights, the human rights. We are really worried for the human rights.

Some of these people think like Pinochet, and they are comparing Zelaya with Salvador Allende. And we have here in Honduras a different situation. We have a government who were doing not a referendum; they were doing just a survey, a simple survey, to ask people whether they want to have a constitutional reform. But we have an alliance between the very powerful class in this country with the military.

And we want really actions from the Organization of States of America, from the European community, not only declarations. We want actions to contribute to the democratic beginning, because we don’t really have a true democracy in this country. We have just a beginning to have some democratic principles. That’s why the people are struggling. This is a very, very poor country. We are still occupied by the United States of America. We want really important solution. Of course, we want self-determinancy, sovereignty, but also we want to have respect of human rights of the people.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of information are you getting, Dr. Almendares, from television? I understand TV channel 8 was shut down, radio stations closed, CNN and Telesur not allowed to air news on cable.

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: That’s true. I mean, in the beginning, they were all—cancel out all the TV channels, the radio information, who are against the video situation in Honduras. And we don’t have really freedom of press. We don’t have access to the people who are opposing to the video situation. So there is no—not really access to information, no freedom of the press. And we are really having almost a terror situation for our popular leaders. We have people concentrating in front of the presidential house and [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “a terror situation,” Dr. Almendares, for popular leaders?

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Well, because they are—they are calling—they are having, all the time, militaries coming against people demonstration. And also, they are persecuting some leaders. They have to be out of the country. And also, they captured the minister of foreign relationship, Patricia Rodas. We don’t know what happened with her. So, we don’t have so much information, and also there is no freedom of communication. We have also a curfew, because after 9:00 you can be shot if you are on the streets. So we have a curfew from 9:00 to 6:00 a.m.

AMY GOODMAN: You can be shot, you said? You can be shot, you said?

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Well, I mean—well, yes, because [inaudible] we have a—I don’t know if you understand; maybe I don’t explain very well—a curfew. So, if you go on the street after 9:00, I mean, they are not responsible if they shoot you, because they say this is for, they say, like prevention of any situation. So they are threatening. They’re threatening the human rights of the people. And human rights activists are really—we consider that there is a new situation on respect of human rights in Honduras.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Juan Almendares, we have to break, but we’re going to come back. I want to ask you more about who you believe is behind this coup and also talk to Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history, author of Empire’s Workshop.

This is Democracy Now! Then a national broadcast exclusive with the President of Ecuador. By the way, he’s in Nicaragua today, along with the President of Venezuela and, of course, Nicaragua, meeting with Zelaya, the ousted president of Honduras. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Coup in Honduras, that’s what we’re talking about right now with Dr. Juan Almendares, who is a Honduran medical doctor, award-winning human rights activist, president of the Honduran Peace Committee, and Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at NYU, New York University. His latest book is called Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.

Who is behind this, Greg?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, I think it’s fairly clearly, who is behind it is the military, sectors of the military, if not the whole military, and sectors of the old political establishment, who see the changes in South America, and they’re doing their best to make sure they don’t arrive in Central America.

AMY GOODMAN: And the connection to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, a number of the leaders of the Honduran military were trained in the School of the Americas, both during the Cold War and after, at the end of the Cold War.

AMY GOODMAN: Like who?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, Romeo Vasquez, the head of the armed forces, who Zelaya removed from office just a few days ago, because he refused to support the referendum, non-binding referendum. He’s obviously behind it, as well as the head of the navy and other high-ranking officials.

The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government. Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it’s Honduras. Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the US is opposed to this coup going forward, it won’t go forward. Zelaya will return, if the United States—if Obama and Hillary Clinton are sincere in their statements about returning Zelaya to power.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think about their responses. There was concern when it first happened, the ouster, that the language wasn’t strong enough.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, at first the language is very tepid. Obama expressed concern for events, and Clinton also issued a statement that was a little bit better, but not very strong. This is another example of the United States following the lead of South America and Latin America as a whole. Latin America came out very strongly against this coup, all of the leaders. I mean, you hear in the mainstream media Chavez and Fidel Castro condemning it, but what you don’t hear is that Lula in Brazil, Bachelet in Chile, every—almost every Latin American leader and government condemn this coup in an uncertain terms. And the United States is playing catch-up aligning itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting today, President Obama, who met with Bachelet last week, of Chile, in Washington, is meeting today with Alvaro Uribe of Colombia in Washington. Dr. Juan Almendares, do you agree with Professor Grandin’s assessment of who is behind this coup?

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Well, I will say that we have really—we have an army who have been really repressive and torturers since the 1980s, and most of this military have been trained by the School of America. I agree with that, and I think that is terrible, because they have been guardians of the multinational business from the United States or from other countries. And this is [inaudible] to be all the school of the army in Honduras who wants to—who have links with very powerful people, very rich, wealthy people who keep the poverty in the country, who keep the lack of freedom of speech. And I think that this is very important.

But that’s what I say, to have a concrete action. They usually—they usually have been, in history, obeying to the US policy. But now they have the [inaudible] statement against this coup d’etat by the ambassador of the United States in Honduras, by President Obama. And we think that it’s important that we—we want a concrete action. We usually obey the orders of US policy. So, behind this actually are the—really the old line of military who are really with the mind of torturers, perpetration of the violation of human rights of the Honduran people.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting, when looking at past coups and the parallel being made to 1973, the September 11th, ’73, coup against Allende, when President Obama met with Michelle Bachelet, a reporter asked if he wanted to apologize for CIA involvement in the Chilean elections. Obama said last week, “I’m interested in going forward, not looking back. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world. I think there have been times where we’ve made mistakes. But I think that what is important is looking at what our policies are today and what my administration intends to do in cooperating with the region.” So he refused to outright apologize, Professor Grandin.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, and he has an opportunity to look forward. He could do all—he could bring the full power of the United States to the restoration of Zelaya to Honduras. And the reference—I think it’s obviously important to remember all of the series of coups during the Cold War, but there was a more recent coup that I think that this actually bears striking similarity to, and that’s the kidnapping of Aristide, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in Haiti in 2004. And this in many ways parallels that. And the question is, will Obama actually use the US to restore Zelaya?

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, Dr. Juan Almendares, same language used. President Aristide said he was kidnapped, and then the opposition forces, the coup leaders, said he had signed a resignation letter, the same thing they’re saying about Zelaya, which he is contesting.

DR. JUAN ALMENDARES: Well, I think this is a lie. I hear the voice of the administer of presidency and also the voice of President Zelaya in Costa Rica, who say that he didn’t sign that. I mean, this is a told statement. And that’s the why we don’t believe it. Nobody believes in this country; particularly thousands of people don’t believe that. And also we have been terrified, so what we are doing is [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will continue to follow this story. I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Juan Almendares, speaking to us from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where a coup has just occurred, the ouster of the democratically elected President Zelaya, who is now in Nicaragua meeting with other Latin American leaders. Thank you for being with us, head of the Honduran Peace Commission, and Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University.

[Peter Lemkin]

President Zelaya of Honduras has just been kidnapped

[Note: As of 11:15am, Caracas time, President Zelaya is speaking live on Telesur from San Jose, Costa Rica. He has verified the soldiers entered his residence in the early morning hours, firing guns and threatening to kill him and his family if he resisted the coup. He was forced to go with the soldiers who took him to the air base and flew him to Costa Rica. He has requested the U.S. Government make a public statement condemning the coup, otherwise, it will indicate their compliance.]

Caracas, Venezuela - The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read “Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d’etat underway in Honduras, spread the word.” It’s a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversary is today’s scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.

Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration’s dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people. Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the platform of Honduras’ Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results, a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless, today’s scheduled poll was not binding by law.

In fact, several days before the poll was to occur, Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled it illegal, upon request by the Congress, both of which are led by anti-Zelaya majorities and members of the ultra-conservative party, National Party of Honduras (PNH). This move led to massive protests in the streets in favor of President Zelaya. On June 24, the president fired the head of the high military command, General Romeo Vásquez, after he refused to allow the military to distribute the electoral material for Sunday’s elections. General Romeo Vásquez held the material under tight military control, refusing to release it even to the president’s followers, stating that the scheduled referendum had been determined illegal by the Supreme Court and therefore he could not comply with the president’s order. As in the Unted States, the president of Honduras is Commander in Chief and has the final say on the military’s actions, and so he ordered the General’s removal. The Minister of Defense, Angel Edmundo Orellana, also resigned in response to this increasingly tense situation.

But the following day, Honduras’ Supreme Court reinstated General Romeo Vásquez to the high military command, ruling his firing as “unconstitutional’. Thousands poured into the streets of Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa, showing support for President Zelaya and evidencing their determination to ensure Sunday’s non-binding referendum would take place. On Friday, the president and a group of hundreds of supporters, marched to the nearby air base to collect the electoral material that had been previously held by the military. That evening, Zelaya gave a national press conference along with a group of politicians from different political parties and social movements, calling for unity and peace in the country.

As of Saturday, the situation in Honduras was reported as calm. But early Sunday morning, a group of approximately 60 armed soldiers entered the presidential residence and took Zelaya hostage. After several hours of confusion, reports surfaced claiming the president had been taken to a nearby air force base and flown to neighboring Costa Rica. No images have been seen of the president so far and it is unknown whether or not his life is still endangered.

President Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, speaking live on Telesur at approximately 10:00am Caracas time, denounced that in early hours of Sunday morning, the soldiers stormed their residence, firing shots throughout the house, beating and then taking the president. “It was an act of cowardness”, said the first lady, referring to the illegal kidnapping occuring during a time when no one would know or react until it was all over. Casto de Zelaya also called for the “preservation” of her husband’s life, indicating that she herself is unaware of his whereabouts. She claimed their lives are all still in “serious danger” and made a call for the international community to denounce this illegal coup d’etat and to act rapidly to reinstate constitutional order in the country, which includes the rescue and return of the democratically elected Zelaya.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela have both made public statements on Sunday morning condeming the coup d’etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated. Last Wednesday, June 24, an extraordinary meeting of the member nations of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), of which Honduras is a member, was convened in Venezuela to welcome Ecuador, Antigua & Barbados and St. Vincent to its ranks. During the meeting, which was attended by Honduras’ Foreign Minister, Patricia Rodas, a statement was read supporting President Zelaya and condenming any attempts to undermine his mandate and Honduras’ democratic processes.

Reports coming out of Honduras have informed that the public television channel, Canal 8, has been shut down by the coup forces. Just minutes ago, Telesur announced that the military in Honduras is shutting down all electricity throughout the country. Those television and radio stations still transmitting are not reporting the coup d’etat or the kidnapping of President Zelaya, according to Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas. “Telephones and electricity are being cut off”, confirmed Rodas just minutes ago via Telesur. “The media are showing cartoons and soap operas and are not informing the people of Honduras about what is happening”. The situation is eerily reminiscent of the April 2002 coup d’etat against President Chávez in Venezuela, when the media played a key role by first manipulating information to support the coup and then later blacking out all information when the people began protesting and eventually overcame and defeated the coup forces, rescuing Chávez (who had also been kidnapped by the military) and restoring constitutional order.

Honduras is a nation that has been the victim of dictatorships and massive U.S. intervention during the past century, including several military invasions. The last major U.S. government intervention in Honduras occured during the 1980s, when the Reagain Administration funded death squads and paramilitaries to eliminate any potential “communist threats” in Central America. At the time, John Negroponte, was the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras and was responsible for directly funding and training Honduran death squads that were responsable for thousands of disappeared and assassinated throughout the region.

On Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS), convened a special meeting to discuss the crisis in Honduras, later issuing a statement condeming the threats to democracy and authorizing a convoy of representatives to travel to OAS to investigate further. Nevertheless, on Friday, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, Phillip J. Crowley, refused to clarify the U.S. government’s position in reference to the potential coup against President Zelaya, and instead issued a more ambiguous statement that implied Washington’s support for the opposition to the Honduran president. While most other Latin American governments had clearly indicated their adamant condemnation of the coup plans underway in Honduras and their solid support for Honduras’ constitutionally elected president, Manual Zelaya, the U.S. spokesman stated the following, “We are concerned about the breakdown in the political dialogue among Honduran politicians over the proposed June 28 poll on constitutional reform. We urge all sides to seek a consensual democratic resolution in the current political impasse that adheres to the Honduran constitution and to Honduran laws consistent with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

As of 10:30am, Sunday morning, no further statements have been issued by the Washington concerning the military coup in Honduras. The Central American nation is highly dependent on the U.S. economy, which ensures one of its top sources of income, the monies sent from Hondurans working in the U.S. under the “temporary protected status” program that was implemented during Washington’s dirty war in the 1980s as a result of massive immigration to U.S. territory to escape the war zone. Another major source of funding in Honduras is USAID, providing over US$ 50 millon annually for “democracy promotion” programs, which generally supports NGOs and political parties favorable to U.S. interests, as has been the case in Venezuela, Bolivia and other nations in the region. The Pentagon also maintains a military base in Honduras in Soto Cano, equipped with approximately 500 troops and numerous air force combat planes and helicopters.

Foreign Minister Rodas has stated that she has repeatedly tried to make contact with the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, who has not responded to any of her calls thus far. The modus operandi of the coup makes clear that Washington is involved. Neither the Honduran military, which is majority trained by U.S. forces, nor the political and economic elite, would act to oust a democratically elected president without the backing and support of the U.S. government. President Zelaya has increasingly come under attack by the conservative forces in Honduras for his growing relationship with the ALBA countries, and particularly Venezuela and President Chávez. Many believe the coup has been executed as a method of ensuring Honduras does not continue to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in Latin America.

evagolinger@hotmail.com or evagolinger@gmail.com)

[Jan Klimkowski]

Mr Inka Kola succinctly articulates the situation:

It's difficult to believe how much crap I've waded through this morning, written in English about Honduras and actually debating whether what's been going on is a coup or not. Let's be clear:

* When a country's president is woken up at 1am by soldiers firing shots into his house, it's a coup.

* When that president is bundled into a waiting aircraft and flown out of the country against his will, it's a coup.

* When the army closes down TV and radio stations, shuts off power supply and orders an immediate 48 hour curfew across the nation, it's a coup.

* When a fake letter of resignation is used in parliament to justify the transfer of power, it's a coup.

* When the first thing said by the abused president to the press is "I've have not resigned and this is a coup", it's a coup.

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/06...-from.html

The only somewhat mysterious element is (alleged Prez) Obama's comments:

President Obama:
"I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

What do we reckon, boys and girls?

Is Obama simply lying?

Or has he been played by the deep black structures in a test of who's really running things?

[Peter Lemkin]

mr inka kola succinctly articulates the situation:

it's difficult to believe how much crap i've waded through this morning, written in english about honduras and actually debating whether what's been going on is a coup or not. Let's be clear:

* when a country's president is woken up at 1am by soldiers firing shots into his house, it's a coup.

* when that president is bundled into a waiting aircraft and flown out of the country against his will, it's a coup.

* when the army closes down tv and radio stations, shuts off power supply and orders an immediate 48 hour curfew across the nation, it's a coup.

* when a fake letter of resignation is used in parliament to justify the transfer of power, it's a coup.

* when the first thing said by the abused president to the press is "i've have not resigned and this is a coup", it's a coup.

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/06...-from.html

the only somewhat mysterious element is (alleged prez) obama's comments:

president obama:
"i am deeply concerned by reports coming out of honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of president mel zelaya. As the organization of american states did on friday, i call on all political and social actors in honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the inter-american democratic charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

what do we reckon, boys and girls?

Is obama simply lying?

in part

or has he been played by the deep black structures in a test of who's really running things?

in part