Events In Honduras

[Magda Hassan]

One journalist killed and another wounded by hired assassins in Honduras

• Confirmed by Andrés Pavón by phone link to YVKE Mundial • Murdered journalist is Gabriel Ciro Noriega, from San Juan Pueblo municipality

Luigino Bracci and Patricia Rivas

GABRIEL Ciro Noriega, a journalist from San Juan Pueblo, was killed on Friday night after leaving a television program, according to Andrés Pavón Murillo, president of the Human Rights Defense Committee in Honduras.
He added that thugs strafed the Radio Sonaguera broadcasting station in La Ceiba, Solaya municipality, Colón department, with machine guns and that another journalist, whose last name is Montero, received serious bullet wounds. When he was taken to hospital the hired killers followed to try and finish him off, but he was removed elsewhere in time for his protection. His state of health is unknown.
Pavón also detailed the human rights situation in the country since President Manuel Zelaya was deposed on June 28. He said that more than 400 people had been detained, some have been released and others held and charged with sedition and material damage.

Since the coup was executed, five people have been killed including the murdered journalist: a labor leader run over by a military vehicle on Sunday and a person who died of a heart attack brought on by teargas. In addition, two people with heavy bruising were taken to the morgue: one was killed in one place and then left in a barrel, with severe injuries but no gunshot wounds, and the other one – according to witnesses – was dumped by a police patrol in a place known as La Montañita on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, and then brought to the morgue in a similar condition.

He stated that the civilian coup perpetrators are controlling Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, but the rest of the country is under the exclusive control of the military, who have usurped mayors, judges and are taking direct decisions: “they have control of all the rural areas, where they are recruiting young people” for military service, in violation of Honduran legislation.
Translated by Granma International

[Magda Hassan]

The Role of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in the Honduran Coup

The International Republican Institute talks of “coup” in Honduras, months before
By Eva Golinger

The International Republican Institute (IRI), considered the international branch of the U.S. Republican Party, and one of the four “core groups” of the congressionally created and funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), apparently knew of the coup d’etat in Honduras against President Zelaya well in advance. IRI is well known for its role in the April 2002 coup d’etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and its funding and strategic advising of the principal organizations involved in the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004. In both cases, IRI funded and/or trained and advised political parties and groups that were implicated in the violent, undemocratic overthrow of democratically elected presidents.

After the 2002 coup d’etat occured in Venezuela, IRI president at the time, George Folsom, sent out a celebratory press release claiming, “The Institute has served as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future…” Hours later, after the coup failed and the people of Venezuelan rescued their president, who had been kidnapped and imprisoned on a military base, and reinstalled constitutional order, IRI regretted its premature, public applause for the coup. One of its principal funders, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was furious that IRI had publicly revealed the U.S. government had provided funding and support for the coup leaders. NED President Carl Gershman was so irritated with IRI’s blunder, that he sent out a memo to Folsom, chastising him: “By welcoming [the coup] – indeed, without any apparent reservations – you unnecessarily interjected IRI into the sensitive internal politics o Venezuela”. Gershman would have much prefered that NED and IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the coup against President Chávez have remained a secret.

IRI, chaired by Senator John McCain, was created in 1983 as part of the National Endowment for Democracy’s mission to “promote democracy around the world”, a mandate from President Ronald Reagan. In reality, one of NED’s founders, Allen Weinstein, put it this way in a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." IRI’s own history, according to its website (www.iri.org) also explains that its original work was in Latin America, at a time when the Reagan administration was under heavy scrutiny and pressure from the U.S. Congress for funding paramilitary groups, dictatorships and death squads in Central and South America to install U.S.-friendly regimes and supress leftist movements. “Congress responded to President Reagan’s call in 1983 when it created the National Endowment for Democracy to support aspiring democrats worldwide. Four nonprofit, nonpartisan democracy institutes were formed to carry out this work – IRI, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS).”“In its infancy, IRI focused on planting the seeds of democracy in Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, IRI has broadened its reach to support democracy and freedom around the globe. IRI has conducted programs in more than 100 countries.”

In its initial days, IRI, along with the other coup groups of the NED, funded organizations in Nicaragua to foment the destabilization of the Sandinista government. Journalist Jeremy Bigwood explained part of this role in his article, “No Strings Attached?”, "’When the rhetoric of democracy is put aside, NED is a specialized tool for penetrating civil society in other countries down to the grassroots level’ to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals, writes University of California-Santa Barbara professor William Robinson in his book, A Faustian Bargain. Robinson was in Nicaragua during the late ‘80s and watched NED work with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan opposition to remove the leftist Sandinistas from power during the 1990 elections.”

The evidence of IRI’s role in the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela has been well documented and investigated. Proof of such involvement, which is still ongoing in terms of IRI’s work, funding, strategic advising and training of opposition political parties in Venezuela, is available through documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act posted here: , and also available in my book, The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela (Olive Branch Press 2006). None of the claims or evidence regarding IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the April 2002 in Venezuela and its ongoing support of the Venezuelan opposition has ever been disclaimed by the institution, primarily because all evidence cited comes from IRI and NED’s own internal documentation obtained under FOIA.
Hence, when the recent coup d’etat occured in Honduras, against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, there was little doubt of U.S. fingerprints. IRI’s name appeared as a recipient of a $700,000 Latin American Regional Grant in 2008-2009 from NED to promote “good governance” programs in countries including Honduras. An additional grant of $550,000 to work with “think tanks” and “pressure groups” in Honduras to influence political parties was also given by the NED to IRI in 2008-2009, specifically stating, IRI will support initiatives to implement [political] positions into the 2009 campaigns. IRI will place special emphasis on Honduras, which has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2009.” That is clear direct intervention in internal politics in Honduras.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also provides approximately $49 million annually to Honduras, a large part of which is directed towards “democracy promotion” programs. The majority of the recipients of this aid in Honduras, which comes in the form of funding, training, resources, strategic advice, communications counseling, political party strengthening and leadership training, are organizations directly linked to the recent coup d’etat, such as the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (COHEP), the Council of University Deans, the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH), the National Convergence Forum, the Chamber of Commerce (FEDECAMARA), the Association of Private Media (AMC), the Group Paz y Democracia and the student group Generación X Cambio. These organizations form part of a coalition self-titled “Unión Cívica Democrática de Honduras” (Civil Democratic Union of Honduras) that has publicly backed the coup against President Zelaya.

IRI’s press secretary, Lisa Gates, responded to claims that IRI funded or aided (which also involves non-monetary aid, such as training, advising and providing resources) groups involved in the Honduran coup as “false reports”. However, there are several interesting links between the republican organization and the violent coup d’etat against President Zelaya that do indicate the institute’s involvement, as well as to the above mentioned funding that exceeds $1 million during just this year. In addition to its presence on the ground in Honduras as part of its “good governance” and “political influence” programs, IRI Regional Program Director, Latin America and the Carribean, Alex Sutton, has recently been closely involved with many of the organizations in the region that have backed the Honduran coup. Sutton was a featured speaker at a recent 3-day conference held in Venezuela by the U.S.-funded ultraconservative Venezuelan organization CEDICE (Centro para la Divulgación de Conocimiento Económico). CEDICE’s director, Rocío Guijarra, was one of the principal executors of the 2002 coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez, and Guijarra personally signed a decree installing a dictatorship in the country, which led to the coup’s overthrow by the people and loyal armed forces of Venezuela. The conference Sutton participated in, held from May 28-29 in Venezuela was attended by leaders of Latin America’s ultra-conservative movement, ranging from Bolivian ex president Jorge Quiroga, who has called for President Evo Morales of Bolivia’s overthrow on several occasions, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Alvaro, both of whom have publicly expressed support for the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras, and numerous leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, the majority of whom are well known for their involvement in the April 2002 coup and subsequent destabilization attempts. The majority of those present at the CEDICE conference in May 2009, have publicly expressed support for the recent coup against President Zelaya.

But a more damning piece of evidence linking IRI to the Honduran coup, is a video clip posted on the institute’s website at http://www.iri.org/multimedia.asp. The clip or podcast, features a slideshow presentation given by Susan Zelaya-Fenner, assistant program officer at IRI, on March 20, 2009, discussing the “good governance” program in Honduras. Curiously, at the beginning of the presentation, Zelaya-Fenner explains what she considers “a couple of interesting facts about Honduras.” These include, “Honduras is a very overlooked country in a small region. Honduras has had more military coups than years of independence, it has been said. However, parodoxically, more recently it has been called a pillar of stability in the region, even being called the U.S.S. Honduras, as it avoided all of the crisis that its neighbors went through during the civil wars in the 1980s.”

Important to note is that what Zelaya-Fenner refers to as “U.S.S. Honduras” and “avoid[ing] all of the crisis that its neighbords went through during the civil wars in the 1980s” was because the U.S. government, CIA and Pentagon utilized Honduras as the launching pad for the attacks on Honduras’ neighbors. U.S. Ambassador at the time, John Negroponte, and Colonel Oliver North, trained, funded and planned the paramilitary missions of the death squads that were used to assassinate, torture, persecute, disappear and neutralize tens of thousands of farmers and “suspected” leftists in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Zelaya-Fenner continues, “Thus, Honduras has been more recently stable, and it’s always been poor, which means that it’s below the radar, and gets little attention. The current president, Manuel Zelaya and his buddies, the leftists in the Latin American region have caused a lot of political destabilization recently in the country. He is a would-be emulator of Hugo Chavez and Hugo Chavez' social revolution. He has spent the better part of this administration trying to convince the Honduran people, who tend to be very practical and very 'center' that the Venezuelan route is the way to go. Zelaya's leftist leanings further exarcerbate an already troubled state. Corruption is rampant, crime is at all time highs. Drug trafficking and related violence have begun to spill over from Mexico. And there's a very real sense that the country is being purposefully destabilized from within, which is very new in recent Honduran history. Coups are thought to be so three decades ago until now (laughs, audience laughs), again.”

Did she really say that? Yes, you can hear it yourself on the podcast. Is it merely a coincidence that the coup against President Zelaya occured just three months after this presentation? State Department officials have admitted that they knew the coup was in the works for the past few months. Sub-secretary of State Thomas Shannon was in Honduras the week before the coup, apparently trying to broker some kind of deal with the coup planners to find another “solution” to the “problem”. Nevertheless, they continued funding via NED and USAID to those very same groups and military sectors involved in the coup. It is not a hidden fact that Washington was unhappy with President Zelaya’s alliances in the region, principally with countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. It is also public knowledge that President Zelaya was in the process of removing the U.S. military presence from the Soto Cano airbase, using a fund from the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, St. Kitts, Antigua & Barbados and Venezuela) to convert the strategically important Pentagon base into a commercial airport.

IRI’s Zelaya-Fenner explains the strategic importance of Honduras in her presentation, "Why does Honduras matter? A lot of people ask this question, even Honduran historians and experts. Some might argue that it doesn't and globally it might be hard to counter. However, the country is strategic to regional stability and this is an election year in Honduras. It's a strategic time to help democrats with a small “d”, at a time when democracy is increasingly coming under attack in the region.”
There is no doubt that the coup against President Zelaya is an effort to undermine regional governments implementing alternative models to capitalism that challenge U.S. concepts of representative democracy as “the best model”. Countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, are building successful models based on participatory democracy that ensure economic and social justice, and prioritize collective social prosperity and human needs over market economics. These are the countries, together now with Honduras, that have been victims of NED, USAID, IRI and other agencies’ interventions to subvert their prospering democracies.
http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/07/role-o...lican.html

[Magda Hassan]

COUP LEADERS IN WASHINGTON TO GIVE PRESS CONFERENCE AT NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, TUESDAY JULY 7 AT 3PM

FOR THOSE OF YOU IN WASHINGTON, D.C., TRY YOUR BEST TO PROTEST AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD AGAINST THE COUP IN HONDURAS!!

IT'S UNACCEPTABLE THAT THE STATE DEPARTMENT ALLOWED COUP LEADERS AND PARTICIPANTS TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES AND ENGAGE IN POLITICAL ACTIVITIES, CONSIDERING THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ALLEGEDLY CONDEMNS THE COUP...

"Contact: Tom O'Neill, The Cormac Group, +1-202-467-4700, cormacinfo@thecormacgroup.com, for Honduran National Congress

WASHINGTON, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leading members of the Honduran National Congress and private sector and former members of the Honduran Judiciary will hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., to speak on recent events in Honduras. The press conference will be held Tuesday, July 7, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in the Murrow Room of the National Press Club (529 14th Street, NW).

The delegation will be traveling to Washington for several days of meetings with United States policymakers to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras' constitutional process and to discuss next steps to ensure the preservation of the country's democratic institutions.

Contact: Tom O'Neill
The Cormac Group
Phone: (202) 467-4700
cormacinfo@thecormacgroup.com

SOURCE Honduran National Congress"

[Peter Lemkin]

COUP LEADERS IN WASHINGTON TO GIVE PRESS CONFERENCE AT NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, TUESDAY JULY 7 AT 3PM

FOR THOSE OF YOU IN WASHINGTON, D.C., TRY YOUR BEST TO PROTEST AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD AGAINST THE COUP IN HONDURAS!!

IT'S UNACCEPTABLE THAT THE STATE DEPARTMENT ALLOWED COUP LEADERS AND PARTICIPANTS TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES AND ENGAGE IN POLITICAL ACTIVITIES, CONSIDERING THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ALLEGEDLY CONDEMNS THE COUP...

"Contact: Tom O'Neill, The Cormac Group, +1-202-467-4700, cormacinfo@thecormacgroup.com, for Honduran National Congress

WASHINGTON, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leading members of the Honduran National Congress and private sector and former members of the Honduran Judiciary will hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., to speak on recent events in Honduras. The press conference will be held Tuesday, July 7, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in the Murrow Room of the National Press Club (529 14th Street, NW).

The delegation will be traveling to Washington for several days of meetings with United States policymakers to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras' constitutional process and to discuss next steps to ensure the preservation of the country's democratic institutions.

Contact: Tom O'Neill
The Cormac Group
Phone: (202) 467-4700
cormacinfo@thecormacgroup.com

SOURCE Honduran National Congress"

Surreal and sick! Has the feel of the 1950s to it...maybe Chicita Brands will change its name back to United Fruit. Shame on the the US to even let them in; more so to meet with them. They should be deported, not welcomed. I guess that's the proof it is really a coup with out blessings. Obama really was a Trojan Horse - can't believe more don't see it. Sigh.

[Magda Hassan]

But Peter, they need to come to the leader of the 'Free World' TM to have their press conference because they have shut down all the media in their own thiefdom. No one is there to listen to them explain why all this is Chavez fault and as a result forced them to install Democracy TM in Honduras and why it is the legal responsibility of the military to enforce Democracy TM on all Hondurans through death and imprisonment and disappearance and curfews and media blackout and control and terrorism and slavery so they can be free.

[Magda Hassan]

Micheletti Blinks: Zelaya's Return Not Barred from Costa Rica Mediation


Posted by Kristin Bricker - July 7, 2009 at 11:21 pm

Micheletti Backed Down from Previous Statements that Zelaya's Return is "Not Negotiable"

All eyes were on Washington on Tuesday as dueling Honduran commissions vied for the international community's support. On one side, ousted President Manuel Zelaya met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the other side, Honduran businessmen and politicians who support the coup government--but did not "officially" represent it--attempted to "clean up Honduras' image at the international level." They got nowhere.

Both Zelaya and coup-imposed President Roberto Micheletti have agreed to mediations led by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez. The mediation will begin on Thursday in President Arias' house in Costa Rica. Zelaya will arrive in Costa Rica on Wednesday night, and Micheletti is scheduled to arrive on Thursday morning. One crucial sticking point is on the table: Zelaya's return to power--something that prior to now was "not negotiable" according to Micheletti.

In One Corner: Zelaya

Before entering a closed-door meeting with Clinton, Zelaya told reporters, "Have no doubt, I will return to Honduras. But I won't say how, because otherwise they will wait for me in any town or state."

The LA Times reports that Zelaya cabinet member Luis Roland Valenzuela hinted that Zelaya's next attempt to enter Honduras would be over land: "This time he won't fly into the lion's mouth." Valenzuela told the LA Times that Zelaya would make a second attempt to re-enter Honduras as early as this Wednesday. Zelaya did not give an exact date for his return in speaking with the press. However, Zelaya's return date appears to have been postponed pending the outcome of Thursday's mediation, which he agreed to after meeting with Clinton on Tuesday.

Zelaya has already postponed one attempt to return to Tegucigalpa to allow diplomatic processes to play out. He had originally scheduled his first return attempt for last Thursday, July 2, but postponed it to this past Sunday in order to let the Organization of American States (OAS) 72-hour ultimatum to the Micheletti government expire.

Neither Clinton nor Zelaya have released any details about what they discussed during their meeting. However, the AP reports:

A senior U.S. official said one option being considered would be to forge a compromise under which Zelaya would be allowed to return and serve out his remaining six months in office with limited powers.

Zelaya, in return, would pledge to drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomatic exchanges.

The second paragraph quoted above is ambiguous due to widespread misunderstanding that surrounded the opinion poll Zelaya wished to carry out on June 28. It has been widely reported that Zelaya was pushing for a new Constitution so that he could run for a second term in office. Honduras' Constitution currently prohibits presidents from running for a second term. However, as Narco News reported on June 27, it was Zelaya opponents, not Zelaya himself, who raised the issue of re-election in a new Constitution. Zelaya has never said that he would seek re-election; on the contrary, he has repeatedly stated that his term ends on January 27, 2010, when his current term expires.

Given this widespread confusion regarding Zelaya's true intentions in the June 28 opinion poll, the AP's report that the State Department might want Zelaya to agree to "drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term" can be read two ways:

• That he may have to add a clause to any future attempt to re-write the Constitution prohibiting changes to the current Constitution's article that bars presidents from running for re-election. Or
  
• That he may have to completely drop his campaign to re-write the Constitution.
  

It is important to note that the State Department official's statements represent one of several options reportedly floated by his or her department. Regardless of what possible solutions the State Department might have proposed, the US government will not participate in the Costa Rica mediation.

Zelaya, for his part, insists that Thursday's mediation is by no means a "negotiation." He told a press conference following his meeting with Clinton, "We are not holding a negotiation. There are things that are non-negotiable—the restitution of constitutional order in Honduras," meaning his return to power.

Zelaya sent a direct message to his supporters to keep up the protests as he goes into mediation with Micheletti, "You have to keep up the struggle so that your opinion is respected, [because] we've always won our civil rights through struggle." Even though he does not consider the mediation to be negotiation, sustained protests and direct action will give him considerably more power to assure that the will of the people is respected and that his powers as President aren't limited upon his return.

In the Other Corner: The Golpistas

Whereas Zelaya hasn't publicly agreed to any conditions going into the mediation, the Micheletti regime has found itself eating a big serving of humble pie. Up until now, Micheletti's government had insisted that Zelaya's return "is not negotiable."

The Christian Science Monitor reports that all possible solutions to the crisis floated by the US State Department include Zelaya's return to power. US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told the press that the United States is urging a "peaceful, constitutional, and lasting solution to the serious divisions in that country through dialogue.... In the most immediate instance it means the return of the democratically elected president to Tegucigalpa."

Clinton, for her part, said "It is our hope that through this dialogue mechanism overseen by President Arias that there can be a restoration of democratic, constitutional order, a peaceful resolution of this matter that will enable the Honduran people to see the restoration of democracy and a more peaceful future going forward."

These statements mean that Micheletti, whose government has made it clear that it will not negotiate Zelaya's return to power, is now entering into a mediation where Zelaya's return is most certainly on the table.

The big question going into the mediations, then, is whether Micheletti will take advantage of an opportunity to negotiate a way out of his current predicament--being the leader of the one of the most universally unpopular coups ever--or whether he'll continue to hold on for dear life to his "coup and me against the world" stance, as Narco News' Al Giordano so eloquently put it.

Micheletti's hand is looking increasingly weaker. In a move that was severely over-hyped in Honduras' pro-coup press, a delegation of pro-coup Honduran businessmen and politicians went to Washington on Monday in an attempt to "clean up Honduras' image." Their goal: get US press with international reach to cover their version of the Honduran crisis. So far they've been very unsuccessful, judging from the deafening silence in the media regarding their presence in the US.

Their other goal is to meet with representatives of the OAS. A similar delegation sent by the coup government last week came back empty-handed. Even the pro-coup Honduran press had to admit that "it is speculated that the OAS didn't receive them due to the fact that that organism does not recognize Roberto Micheletti's government." As much as the pro-coup press tried to soften the blow of rejection, OAS Secretary General made it very clear that the delegation's rejection wasn't simple speculation; he told the press that he had no intentions of meeting with the coup's delegation.

The new pro-coup commission that arrived on Monday claims that OAS representatives have agreed to dialogue with them. Given the OAS' outright rejection of the coup and its refusal to recognize the coup government, if the coup commission's claims of an OAS dialogue are true, it's not likely it will be very fruitful.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...-mediation

[Magda Hassan]

Honduras: Enter Oscar Arias

Posted by Al Giordano - July 7, 2009 at 10:39 pm By Al Giordano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaL-INcX6...r_embedded

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, 69, will mediate the first (it could well end up being the only) face-to-face encounter since the June 28 coup d’etat between Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the gorilla coup "president" Roberto Micheletti on Wednesday in San José. Costa Rica.
Arias is best known for his 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in mediating negotiations to end civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Central American left and right both have ambivalent feelings toward him, a social democrat turned neoliberal capitalist but one with very strong tendencies regarding democracy and human rights, tendencies that have built-in conflicts with each other. The paradox is that it is the fact that neither ideological pole completely trusts him that makes him strangely palatable as mediator to both. That’s what happened in the 1980s and it will be attempted again tomorrow in San José.
Last weekend, Arias broadcast the above five-and-a-quarter-minutes message to Costa Ricans on national TV. If his voice sounds a little bit funny, it may be because, last year, he was diagnosed with cyst on his vocal chords.
In that video he said (I'll translate these key passages):

In the dawn of Sunday June 28 President Jose Manuel Zelaya was taken by force and expelled from Honduras by soldiers of the army. From any point of view, that is unjustifiable. What happened before it loses all relevance in light of this coup d’etat.

And then at 58 seconds into his talk, ominous music begins to play under his voice, as the broadcast shows images of the military coups in Latin America in the 60s and 70s. Arias continued:

For those that don’t remember, there was an era in Latin America when the armies decided who was president, how, and until when. It was the darkest era of our history.
Thousands died or were tortured. Millions had to flee from their country. Force was more important than the law. Fear more powerful than the popular will. Our people were never more unhappy and less free than when the capacity to govern was in the hands of the military…
It is unacceptable that in the 21st century some celebrate a coup d’etat… To topple him by violent means it was Honduran democracy and not him who suffer from a mortal coup…
We have called to reestablish the Coinstitutional order and restore the elected president…
The whole world, without exception, has repudiated this coup d’etat…

We’ll see what, if anything, happens when Zelaya and Micheletti (they once were political allies) come face to face in the presence of Arias on Wednesday.
I certainly can’t predict what, if anything, will ensue. This is not like an election day with a fixed yes or no outcome on a certain deadline.
This is the path that the legitimate president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, has chosen. If we believe that the Honduran people's choice for president is the only legitimate president no matter what one's opinion about that president may be, as we do, then that therefore extends to the decisions he makes in this process. And so far, we haven’t heard complaint from Insulza or Chávez or any other leader in América about this next step, which is your first indication that Zelaya is pleased with it, and the rest are as curious as we are to see whether anything comes of it.
And so we wait… It could be an adventure in futility... Or it could be the face-saving pretext for the Simian Council behind the coup to give up their illegitimate grasp on the country after their coup-in-clown-shoes in which everything that could go wrong did.
Update: I'll add another well-informed thought to this analysis.
Some are scratching their heads, asking, "how can it be possible that both the United States - and its allies - and Venezuela - and its allies - say they oppose this coup?"
And a related question: "What can the coup plotters be thinking that they can do without US and World Bank and PetroCaribe funds?"
The answer is that there is indeed a powerful network behind this coup. It is an attempt by a certain element of organized crime to resurrect the Batista experiment of Cuba in the 1950s - a safe haven for narco-trafficking, money laundering and right-wing terrorism in the hemisphere, with billions of dollars already in its combined coffers. That is the power behind Micheletti and his Simian Council.
There is a scene from The Godfather Part II that portrays what was attempted in the late 1950s to set up just such a safe haven in Cuba:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYUqxHwYg...r_embedded
Understand that governments are secondary players in this globalized uber-state of capitalism. There are organized crime groups that have far more money at their disposal today than the $3.5 billion dollar annual budget of Honduras. This is not something that is viewed as positive in either Washington, or Caracas, or in any other national capital in this hemisphere (except among some, apparently, in Tegucigalpa). This coup is a play by a twenty-first century mafia to win itself a flag to fly over its banks and business interests, and render them untouchable by any legitimate government. The stakes are, thus, high for all aspiring democracies, not just that in Honduras.


http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefiel...scar-arias

[Magda Hassan]

INTERPOL media release
07 July 2009

INTERPOL will not issue Red Notice for arrest of President Manuel Zelaya
LYON, France – The INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France has refused a request by the Honduran authorities to issue a Red Notice, or international wanted persons notice for President Manuel Zelaya.
Following a review, INTERPOL’s Office of Legal Affairs concluded that the request is in contravention of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution under which it is ‘strictly forbidden for the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.’ This prohibition is taken extremely seriously by INTERPOL.
The charges against President Zelaya of ‘misuse of authority; usurpation of public functions; offences against the system of government; and treason’ were assessed as being of a political nature with no ordinary-law crime element.
In addition, an INTERPOL Red Notice is a request to provisionally arrest a person for the purpose of extradition to the country concerned. According to media reports, a plane carrying President Zelaya was turned away from an airport in Tegucigalpa, where Honduran authorities would have been able to directly serve a national arrest warrant.
If the reports are accurate and the national authorities deliberately failed to carry out the arrest on their own soil, this would also attest to the existence of motives other than the promotion of international police co-operation.
INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Tegucigalpa has been informed of the decision to refuse their Red Notice request for President Zelaya.
http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/Pres...200965.asp

[Judica Bosquesillo]

Yes, their behaviour is at odds with their statements. They made it impossible for Mel to return and answer their charges.

It seems they violate their own Constitution while insisting they are upholding the Constitution.

[Magda Hassan]

Yes, their behaviour is at odds with their statements. They made it impossible for Mel to return and answer their charges.

It seems they violate their own Constitution while insisting they are upholding the Constitution.

Absolutely Judica. They have no regard for the law or for Honduras. Just out for their own interests and that's not going too well.