Events In Honduras

[Magda Hassan]

There really is nothing to negotiate except how long it will take Micheletti and his little car thief helper to back their suitcase and move to Miami.

The Two Men Didn't Talk to Each Other in Costa Rica Talks

Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti both participated in the beginning of a mediation session in Costa Rica today. The men had separate meetings with Costa Rican president and mediator Oscar Arias where they explained their positions to him. However, the two Honduran leaders did not sit down to talk face-to-face today. Rather, they each left delegations empowered to continue talks.

El Heraldo reports that Zelaya's delegation is composed of Foreign Affairs Minister Patricia Rodas, former Foreign Affairs Minister Milton Jimenez, Congresswoman Sylvia Ayala from the Democratic Unification Party, and Lenca indigenous leader Salvador Zuñiga.

On Micheletti's commission is former Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras, businessman and politician Arturo Corrales from the Democratic Christian party, Liberal Party leader Mauricio Villeda, and former Supreme Court Justice Vilma Morales.

The commissions are not yet complete. El Heraldo reports that each commission will eventually contain eight people. Notwithstanding, the commissions met together today in Arias' home to begin talks.

Upon leaving the talks, none of the presidents spoke about what was discussed that day behind closed doors. However, Micheletti read a statement after his discussion with Arias. In the statement, he said that elections would occur in Honduras. He did not state when they would occur.

Micheletti's government has proposed holding early elections (as opposed to reinstating Zelaya as president) as a possible way to end the conflict. US intellectuals sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today opposing any proposal that would allow the coup government to hold elections. "Elections currently would take place under a coup regime that has suspended civil liberties, and where the conditions for free elections do not exist," the letter, signed by Noam Chomsky and other prominent thinkers, states. "Democracy has to be restored before a legitimate election can take place.... Anything less than the urgent restoration of President Manuel Zelaya to office would be an usurpation of the will of the Honduran people."

The intellectuals' letter also argued that "the U.S. must ensure his prompt restoration by enacting forceful economic sanctions against the regime." Thus far the US State Department has not cut off economic relations with Honduras.

Micheletti and Zelaya have reportedly decided to allow their commissions to make progress in the mediation before potentially sitting down to talk face-to-face. This move will likely free up Zelaya to keep working towards a solution to the crisis, rather than allowing the Micheletti government to drag its feet in talks until elections roll around. Zelaya has approximately six months left in his term.

Upon leaving today's talks, Arias said he thought the talks would not end any time soon. "It's possible that this is going to take more time than we could have imagined," he told the press. This is in part due to the fact that "it is difficult to talk about a successful negotiation if President Manuel Zelaya is not reinstated." Micheletti has stated that he believes talks should "start from the understanding that Zelaya's return is not open to negotiation."

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...-mediation

[Peter Lemkin]

There really is nothing to negotiate except how long it will take Micheletti and his little car thief helper to back their suitcase and move to Miami.

The Two Men Didn't Talk to Each Other in Costa Rica Talks

Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti both participated in the beginning of a mediation session in Costa Rica today. The men had separate meetings with Costa Rican president and mediator Oscar Arias where they explained their positions to him. However, the two Honduran leaders did not sit down to talk face-to-face today. Rather, they each left delegations empowered to continue talks.

El Heraldo reports that Zelaya's delegation is composed of Foreign Affairs Minister Patricia Rodas, former Foreign Affairs Minister Milton Jimenez, Congresswoman Sylvia Ayala from the Democratic Unification Party, and Lenca indigenous leader Salvador Zuñiga.

On Micheletti's commission is former Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras, businessman and politician Arturo Corrales from the Democratic Christian party, Liberal Party leader Mauricio Villeda, and former Supreme Court Justice Vilma Morales.

The commissions are not yet complete. El Heraldo reports that each commission will eventually contain eight people. Notwithstanding, the commissions met together today in Arias' home to begin talks.

Upon leaving the talks, none of the presidents spoke about what was discussed that day behind closed doors. However, Micheletti read a statement after his discussion with Arias. In the statement, he said that elections would occur in Honduras. He did not state when they would occur.

Micheletti's government has proposed holding early elections (as opposed to reinstating Zelaya as president) as a possible way to end the conflict. US intellectuals sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today opposing any proposal that would allow the coup government to hold elections. "Elections currently would take place under a coup regime that has suspended civil liberties, and where the conditions for free elections do not exist," the letter, signed by Noam Chomsky and other prominent thinkers, states. "Democracy has to be restored before a legitimate election can take place.... Anything less than the urgent restoration of President Manuel Zelaya to office would be an usurpation of the will of the Honduran people."

The intellectuals' letter also argued that "the U.S. must ensure his prompt restoration by enacting forceful economic sanctions against the regime." Thus far the US State Department has not cut off economic relations with Honduras.

Micheletti and Zelaya have reportedly decided to allow their commissions to make progress in the mediation before potentially sitting down to talk face-to-face. This move will likely free up Zelaya to keep working towards a solution to the crisis, rather than allowing the Micheletti government to drag its feet in talks until elections roll around. Zelaya has approximately six months left in his term.

Upon leaving today's talks, Arias said he thought the talks would not end any time soon. "It's possible that this is going to take more time than we could have imagined," he told the press. This is in part due to the fact that "it is difficult to talk about a successful negotiation if President Manuel Zelaya is not reinstated." Micheletti has stated that he believes talks should "start from the understanding that Zelaya's return is not open to negotiation."

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...-mediation

For the coup leaders their tactic IMO is to just drag this out until Zelaya's term is over and all is moot. Again the USA is doing nothing. One phone call saying all trade was to be shut off [more than half of all GDP is US-based] would get a response in a day...but this is not to be forthcoming, I fear....meaning silent support of the coup by the US. We haven't even had our Ambassador there speak to the coup leaders and express displeasure or cut-off of trade, etc. Pathetic and doesn't bode well for the other countries of the Americas......

[Magda Hassan]

For the coup leaders their tactic IMO is to just drag this out until Zelaya's term is over and all is moot. Again the USA is doing nothing. One phone call saying all trade was to be shut off [more than half of all GDP is US-based] would get a response in a day...but this is not to be forthcoming, I fear....meaning silent support of the coup by the US. We haven't even had our Ambassador there speak to the coup leaders and express displeasure or cut-off of trade, etc. Pathetic and doesn't bode well for the other countries of the Americas......

Yes Peter. That is my thought that they want to drag this out. Micheletti's people have also raised the possibility of holding 'early elections' as if the have a right to do so. Chomsky and others have signed a protest letter about this saying that there should be no early election. If the US was serious about 'democracy' they would demand Zelays's return, offer a US plane to return him, withdraw their ambassador and military, cut military and other funding and not fund any NGO's like the NED etc. It's quite simple. Obama is watered down water. Eva Golinger says that the ALBA countries should be taking a more direct role in the restoration of Zelaya as it sure ain't going to come from the US.

[Magda Hassan]

The racist Enrique Ortez has already been replaced as foreign minister. Maybe because of these little diplomatic gems:

"I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States."

and

In a TV interview, Ortez said Obama "is a little black man who doesn't know where Tegucigalpa is located."

The new person designated to make coup pig shit taste nice for foreign consumption is Robert Flores Bermudez.

[Magda Hassan]

Micheletti Tried to Change the Honduran Constitution 1985

Posted by Kristin Bricker - July 10, 2009 at 9:02 pm He Wanted to Extend President Roberto Suazo Córdoba's Term

by TeleSUR
translated by Kristin Bricker

In the rallies that were held this Friday in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, a fact rarely discussed in national and international press--but well-known throughout the Honduran population--was made public: Roberto Micheletti's attempt to modify this Central American country's Constitution in 1985.

Popular organizations, teachers union members, union leaders, and the general public, in addition to demanding the reinstatement of Honduras' legitimate and constitutional president, Manual Zelaya, vocalized coup leader Roberto Micheletti's public attempt [to change the Constitution].

In 1985, he tried to turn the Honduran National Congress into a National Constitutional Assembly in order to reform the same Magna Carta that the coup leaders are now defending as their transcendental symbol during the current political crisis.

Members of Congress and politicians accuse Manuel Zelaya of trying to extend his term and change the Honduran Constitution, but what he tried to do was hold a non-binding opinion poll. Micheletti, on the other hand, did want to [extend the president's term and change the Constitution] 24 years ago.

Zelaya's proposal is far from what happened in 1985 when then-congressman Roberto Micheletti (who has been a member of Congress for 28 years) called a Constitutional Assembly to extend the mandate of the president of that era, Roberto Suazo Córdoba.

On October 24, 1985, two years after the current Constitution was approved, various members of Congress, lead by Micheletti, tried to introduce a proposal calling for a National Constitutional Assembly.

The legislators requested the suspension of various constitutional articles, the same ones that, ironically, are now used by the coup authorities to legitimize Zelaya's ouster. Those articles are 373, 374, and 375, which refer to the mechanisms for reforming and defending the Constitution.

As the Bolivarian News Agency's special correspondent in Tegucigalpa, Antonio Nuñez Aldazoro, describes, in that era the proposal caused a commotion and was suspended, due to the fact that at that time Micheletti's actions were considered treason, and opposition legislators from the Nationalist Party knew that the Constitutional Assembly's only goal was to extend Liberal President Suazo Cordoba's presidency.

It's worth noting that 24 years ago the effects of the low-intensity war were still being felt, as well as the so-called "Contra" scandal and US President Ronald Reagan's security doctrine. At that time Honduras was still considered to be the United States' base of operations in Central America.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...utoin-1985

[Magda Hassan]

Oh, the irony just keeps on coming!




Honduras Newspaper Impressed that Daughter of Pinochet Backs Coup

Posted by Al Giordano - July 10, 2009 at 9:08 am


Here in the newsroom, we wondered if the website of the daily El Heraldo in Honduras (part of the same newspaper chain as La Prensa, which now enjoys the infamy of having photoshopped the blood out of the iconic photo of assassinated teenager Isis Obed Murillo) had been hacked by creative coup opponents.
But, apparently not: the newspaper (part of the Inter American Press Association) published a story yesterday titled: Pinochet's Daughter: "Zelaya Attempted a Coup."
I don't know what is weirder: that a pro-coup newspaper would think that quoting the daughter of the Chilean military general, Augusto Pinochet, somehow adds to its already bombastic portrayal of a military coup as a legal or "constitutional" action, or that Ms. Lucia Pinochet Hiriart (in the photo, above) has a constituency among the coup-defenders to the extent that she would be making public statements in praise of it, and those statements would somehow be newsworthy.
It was her father, the disgraced General Pinochet, who fomented the bloody 1973 military coup against the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, which launched a dark era of similar authoritarian coups in countries throughout Latin America.
But there she is, Ms. Pinochet, instructing the Honduran people:

"The one that wanted to cause a coup was (elected Honduran President Manuel) Zelaya... Right now, he's the victim, but he is no victim...."

No, it's not parody. Rather, it's instructive of the state of mind of the coup defenders. (You can see it in repeated online comments on Twitter and elsewhere attacking Organization of American States chairman Jose Miguel Insulza because he was part of the elected Allende government before Allende was assassinated by Pinochet's forces.) They see the Pinochet coup of 36 years ago as a heroic act, and long for the bad old days when they could simply stamp out democratic will by rounding all dissenters into a stadium and assassinating more than 3,000 in a single week, which is what happened after September 11, 1973 in Santiago de Chile.
It is another proof positive that they are trying to start that ball rolling all over again throughout the hemisphere. And it demonstrates exactly why not a single government in América or in the entire world recognizes their illegitimate regime.
Update: And so it not be forgotten...
The 1973 coup d'etat in Chile, just like today in Honduras, was "justified" through a series of legaloid arguments that it was "constitutional" and such. Here's a typical piece of right-wing revisionist history with that spin.
Of course, what the world saw after that coup was successful was the Pinochet military coup regime proceed to violate every single one of the laws that its supporters had accused Allende of breaking, only more violently and on a much more massive scale than even what they had alleged (but not proved). And the same is occurring today.


http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefiel...backs-coup

[Peter Lemkin]

Oh, the irony just keeps on coming!




Honduras Newspaper Impressed that Daughter of Pinochet Backs Coup

Posted by Al Giordano - July 10, 2009 at 9:08 am


Here in the newsroom, we wondered if the website of the daily El Heraldo in Honduras (part of the same newspaper chain as La Prensa, which now enjoys the infamy of having photoshopped the blood out of the iconic photo of assassinated teenager Isis Obed Murillo) had been hacked by creative coup opponents.
But, apparently not: the newspaper (part of the Inter American Press Association) published a story yesterday titled: Pinochet's Daughter: "Zelaya Attempted a Coup."
I don't know what is weirder: that a pro-coup newspaper would think that quoting the daughter of the Chilean military general, Augusto Pinochet, somehow adds to its already bombastic portrayal of a military coup as a legal or "constitutional" action, or that Ms. Lucia Pinochet Hiriart (in the photo, above) has a constituency among the coup-defenders to the extent that she would be making public statements in praise of it, and those statements would somehow be newsworthy.
It was her father, the disgraced General Pinochet, who fomented the bloody 1973 military coup against the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, which launched a dark era of similar authoritarian coups in countries throughout Latin America.
But there she is, Ms. Pinochet, instructing the Honduran people:

"The one that wanted to cause a coup was (elected Honduran President Manuel) Zelaya... Right now, he's the victim, but he is no victim...."

No, it's not parody. Rather, it's instructive of the state of mind of the coup defenders. (You can see it in repeated online comments on Twitter and elsewhere attacking Organization of American States chairman Jose Miguel Insulza because he was part of the elected Allende government before Allende was assassinated by Pinochet's forces.) They see the Pinochet coup of 36 years ago as a heroic act, and long for the bad old days when they could simply stamp out democratic will by rounding all dissenters into a stadium and assassinating more than 3,000 in a single week, which is what happened after September 11, 1973 in Santiago de Chile.
It is another proof positive that they are trying to start that ball rolling all over again throughout the hemisphere. And it demonstrates exactly why not a single government in América or in the entire world recognizes their illegitimate regime.
Update: And so it not be forgotten...
The 1973 coup d'etat in Chile, just like today in Honduras, was "justified" through a series of legaloid arguments that it was "constitutional" and such. Here's a typical piece of right-wing revisionist history with that spin.
Of course, what the world saw after that coup was successful was the Pinochet military coup regime proceed to violate every single one of the laws that its supporters had accused Allende of breaking, only more violently and on a much more massive scale than even what they had alleged (but not proved). And the same is occurring today.


http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefiel...backs-coup

Once a fascist, always a fascist. Sick stuff. The foreign minister for the de facto Honduran government, Enrique Ortez Colindres, called President Obama (in true diplomatic style) a "little black man* who knows nothing"...and worse!!!! Nice bunch....and you can tell from the company they keep - like Pinoshit's kith and kin.

*He used the most pejorative term here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_sPLcERER8

"He negociado con maricones, prostitutas, con ñángaras (izquierdistas), negros, blancos. Ese es mi trabajo, yo estudié eso. No tengo prejuicios raciales, me gusta el negrito del batey que está presidiendo los Estados Unidos."
"I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States."

I wonder if he went to the School Of The America's Diplomacy College? :flute: :thefinger:

[Peter Lemkin]

Honduran Coup: Damning Indictment of Capitalism

by Dennis Rahkonen / July 10th, 2009

Since he’s spending his summer vacation at our home, I recently washed my 11-year-old grandson’s dirty clothes.

As I later folded them, small tags told me they were manufactured in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Not one item bore a “Made in USA” label, which is very sad, considering that the unionized needle trades were once a bastion of our country’s labor movement, and that finding attire produced overseas was a rarity just a few decades ago.

All this relates closely to the despicable coup that deposed Honduras’ democratically elected president, Manuel Zaleya.

Although the coup’s initiators say they were motivated by other factors, what really spurred their reactionary ire was Zaleya promoting better pay and conditions for Honduran workers in general, but particularly for the virtual sweatshop slaves whose cruel exploitation by mostly U.S. garment firms has been an utterly obscene profit generator for shameless owners residing in luxury in the North.

It would be extremely naive to think those “foreign” companies, along with others involved in banana and fruit growing, did not facilitate the coup in more than minor ways. It goes without saying, also, that U.S. political conservatives, with operative ties to covert Central American intrigues dating back to the Reagan years, are now malevolently present in Tegucigalpa.

Our nation’s anti-democratic, imperialist role in Central America is nothing new.

Countless religious activists, teachers, clinic workers, union organizers, and ordinary campesinos were brutalized by sordid contras secretly armed and trained by the U.S. under illegal Reagan administration aegis during the ’80s.

Much earlier, however, Yankee pillage of Latin America (as well as other world locales) was already standard operating procedure, as starkly exposed by former Marine Corps Commandant Smedley Butler:

I spent 33 years (in the Marines)…most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City (Bank) boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.

Progressives familiar with people’s history know about the titanic struggle it took to unionize U.S. labor, lifting largely immigrant masses out of deep poverty, winning them the pay, benefits, and conditions that would shape the contours of our storied “good life”.

They know, too, that the most militant unions were purged and broken during the McCarthyite Red Scare, allowing class-collaborationist tendencies to rise, making the decimation of American labor in the aftermath of Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers essentially a cake walk, much to the profitable delight of corporate parasites.

Now our working class — the backbone of society and the creator of all productive wealth — is losing its jobs, homes, health care, pensions, and collective temper on an unprecedented scale.

The savagely exploitative, intensely destructive Walmart labor relations model dominates U.S. life, and everything we buy is produced abroad in oppressive settings where women and children toil long hours for mere pennies. We (and certainly they) are being ground into the dust as a tiny minority of private “entrepreneurs” live high on the hog, via stolen wealth that properly should be used to improve everyone’s living standards.

But capitalism can’t do that.

It’s unable to function in anything but an increasingly rapacious way, shafting majority wage earners ever more painfully, whether through the acute injustice that leaves evicted families on the street in U.S. cities, or Hondurans fearfully facing military repression and a drastic deterioration of their already desperate existence.

As its growing resort to super-exploitation, dictatorial harshness, violence and war clearly proves, capitalism is the intrinsic enemy — not the ballyhooed champion — of fair play, democracy, simple decency, and peace.

Humanity will have no future worth aspiring to if it stays tied to capitalism’s irreparable flaws and fiercely down-pulling restraints.

The rest of this pivotal century clearly must be devoted to building truly democratic, broadly uplifting socialism on a global scale.

It’s the great moral imperative of our era.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Honduras Newspaper Impressed that Daughter of Pinochet Backs Coup

:mad:

[Magda Hassan]

After the kidnapping, after the coup, after the disappearances, after the media shut down the assassinations begin.
http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php
Honduran Militant Assassinated in Sane Pedro Sula


Popular leader and leftist militant Roger Bados was killed by unknown
persons in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, according to sources
within the anti-coup movement.

Initial versions indicate that an unknown number of men entered
Bados' home at 8:00 pm, locatedin the May 6th neighborhood, and shot
him.

Bados was a member of the opposition Party Of Democratic Unification
and the Popular Bloc of San Pedro Sula, located 250 kilometers north
of the capital, and was ex-predident of a cement company in the city.

Honduras has been in the middle of a serious political crisis since
june 28, when a military coup overthrew president Manuel Zelaya.