Too Cute by Half on Honduras, Mr. President

The president of the country, whose seal is emblazoned on your correspondent's passport, took some heat from the right during his 2008 presidential campaign when his bride, Michelle Obama, said, "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

The statement was far from a spontaneous gaffe: It was very smart politics and from the moment it happened I marveled at the genius of David Axelrod, the Obama adviser who I suspected had orchestrated it. Michelle's admission was a clarion call to tens of millions of U.S. citizens who knew their government had betrayed its founding principles more often than not in recent decades and who had generally stayed away from the ballot box over the past 28 years. If there's anything the United States of America has fostered in so many of its citizens, it is a healthy ambivalence about a "democracy" that hasn't usually walked its talk.

The higher voter turnout that allowed Barack Obama to overwhelm the Clinton machine in the primaries and achieve a punishing victory last November was largely the result of citizens that do not regularly vote -- young people, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, community organizers and others that know what I'm talkin' about here -- turning out and doing so because Obama presented the possibility that we might be able to be proud again.

Many of the causes of that long national ambivalence by a significant swathe of the U.S. population could be found in Washington's historic behavior in this hemisphere: from the 1955 U.S.-backed coup d'etat in Guatemala to the 2002 U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela (turned back in three days by the Venezuelan people), the global power of the North -- the first land to lead the hemisphere in a wave of insurrectionist rebellions against European colonialism -- had become the hemisphere's colonizing empire, and utilized shamefully brutal and violent methods to do so.

In that context, President Obama ought to think twice before bandying about the word "hypocrisy" again in the way he did last weekend while in Mexico. Asked about the widespread perception in Latin America that Washington hadn't backed its words against the Honduran coup d'etat with deeds, the President said:

"The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can't have it both ways."

"If these critics think that it's appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their -- their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations that -- that certainly is not going to guide my administration's policies."

As with all falsehood, there is a kernel of truth in what the president said: It would be hypocritical to repeat the dastardly deeds of the past. Counting only the actions since Barack Obama was born, the list is long and shameful enough: The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the 1965 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic, the 1966 Green Beret intervention against rebels in Guatemala, the 1973 US-backed coup d'etat in Chile, the 1975 U.S.- launched Operation Condor to install and back military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, the dirty wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s (which included well-documented official U.S. cocaine-trafficking to pay for it), the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, the 1987 US military "drug war" intervention in Bolivia, the 1988 U.S.-backed electoral fraud in Mexico, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, the multi-billion dollar U.S. intervention of Plan Colombia launched in 2000 (which continues through the present), the 2002 U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela, the 2004 U.S.-backed coup in Haiti, the 2006 U.S.-backed electoral fraud in Mexico, and the 2008 U.S. launch of Plan Mexico among them.

As you can see from the above (and partial) list, this is not a matter of ancient history. Some of this crap continues through to the present day.

When in April of this year the U.S. president went to the Summit of the Americas and promised a new beginning in U.S.-Latin American relations, his counterparts to the South took him seriously and gave him much benefit of the doubt. That the U.S. voted with the rest of the Organization of American States (OAS) to lift the ban on Cuba's membership, while its Justice Department finally indicted ex-Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and Washington took its first baby steps to ease the embargo on the island, contributed to what could have been that new hemispheric order based on mutual respect that Obama waxed so poetically about.
U.S. policy toward its closest neighbors had begun to turn the corner from dysfunctional to functional.

But suddenly, less than seven months into the Obama administration, all that promise of progress is now at risk because of its ham-handed response to the June 28 military coup in Honduras.

I worry not for Latin America. As Narco News has documented for nine years, while the U.S. suffered under a tinhorn tyrant named Bush, the people of this hemisphere have been untying the colonial knot just fine even as Washington opposed them. And as I documented last week from distinct regions of Honduras, the civil resistance there will triumph sooner or later and topple the coup d'etat and its illegitimate regime with or without support or opposition from the United States.

What the U.S. will get from its betrayal of its initial good statements against the Honduras coup will be a civil revolution that erases the institutions -- executive, legislative and judicial -- that existed until June 28 in Honduras and that replaces them with a more Latin American kind of democracy. I really don't worry about Latin America. I've listened and learned too much to think that it needs Washington's hand to do for itself what its majorities desire.

No, I worry for the United States of America.

Right now, the cadre of foreign policy bureaucrats to whom President Obama unwisely delegated hemispheric relations while he pursues lofty priorities like national health care have wrought their own special kind of coup d'etat in Washington. In the end, he can't escape ultimate responsibility because he put them there. The buck stops at his desk. There's no ultimate way for my fellow community organizer to wiggle around it. He's the one that will stand for reelection in 2012 and perhaps be left wondering why folks like Michelle Obama, who want to feel proud of their country, may end up sitting on our hands and go back to our non-voting ways.

At the center of that coup in the United States is the Clinton machine that in some kind of macabre power sharing agreement has taken U.S. policy in this hemisphere hostage and off the track of what the president promised when running against Secretary Clinton for president in 2008.

Not only have we now got Clinton attorney Lanny Davis lobbying on behalf of the Honduran dictatorship before an administration whose central promise was that it would end the undue influence of lobbyists, but as journalist Bill Conroy documented this past weekend for Narco News, the U.S.-funded Millenium Challenge Corp. -- whose board of directors includes Secretary Clinton -- poured $17 million into Honduras oligarch interests between April and July of this year.

While DC apparatchiks told us they had cut almost $20 million (about ten percent) of U.S. aid to Honduras and put the rest on pause, Clinton's Millenium Challenge Corp. (MCC) has been quietly replenishing those funds through the back door.

A Narco News review of deposits to the Honduran Central Bank reveals that since the June 28 coup d'etat -- in a little over a month -- MCC has subsidized the coup forces in Honduras with $6.5 million dollars.

Those payments arrived on these dates and in these amounts:

July 9: $0.9 million

July 16: $0.3 million

July 23: $3.7 million

July 30: $1.6 million

While it's possible that the U.S. president doesn't know about this sabotage of his stated policy -- a small Central American nation with a population smaller than that of New York City might not exactly be front and center of his attention -- his Secretary of State is on the frickin' board of directors of the entity that, we now know, has been quietly funding the coup even after it was consummated.

So while I wholeheartedly agree with part of what the president said in Guadalajara this weekend -- that it would be "hypocrisy" for the US to respond to the Honduras coup with military invasion, assassination, traditional covert black ops, electoral fraud, and the rest of the bag of tricks that have defined U.S.-Latin American relations for all of Obama's 48 years -- the real hypocrisy at work comes, rather, when Washington tells us it has put funding for the coup regime "on pause" when it is now demonstrably true that it has not.

Last week, Obama told reporters that he couldn't "push a button" and make the coup regime go away. That was also too cute by half, because there are buttons left unused through which it could do what it falsely claims it has already done: stop the flow of U.S. dollars to the Honduran oligarchy and its coup regime.

At very least, his Secretary of State could make a motion on the board upon which she sits to stop that meddlesome anti-democracy funding.

The fact remains that giving that money to the regime or the private sector interests behind it are themselves the kind of U.S. intervention that Latin American peoples have long struggled against.

Shutting down that money flow to the criminal enterprise that is the coup regime and its private-sector sponsors is not the kind of "Yankee intervention" that the region opposes: it is the continuance of that dollar spigot that constitutes the dirty intervention.

And that's why the president's statements -- on hypocrisy and previously on the lack of a button to push -- are too cute by half.

Again, I don't worry or weep for Latin America or Honduras. The people united will never be defeated, and our authentic journalists, myself included, will be there alongside them reporting their every step in community organizing and civil resistance to win back what basic democratic principles establish is rightfully theirs. It really doesn't matter how much money or oxygen Washington gives to the Honduras coup regime: that baby is going down, and will go down hard, at the hands of an organized people.

But I'm looking at the faded gold ink on my 2001-issued U.S. Passport and flipping through the pages right now: Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, the United States, multiple indentations and earmarks for most of them... I recently had to go to a U.S. embassy to get additional pages woven into its book because the Brazilian consulate had demanded two blank pages to graffiti and the original ones had overflowed with entry and exit stamps. And I'm feeling sorry not for Honduras but for us, the pro-democracy citizens of conscience of the United States who, like Michelle Obama, want to be able to be "proud of our country for the first time in our adult lives," but who see that dream slipping away once more.

© 2009 Al Giordano, Narco News, and The Field

Follow Al Giordano on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AlGiordano

Comments

[Butterfly8]

Cheers to Obama for FINALLY saying the H word. Lots of hypocrisy and double standards going on in Latin America, especially by those that cry "basic democratic principles" and do exactly the opposite, those that cry for human rights and limit our liberties and freedom. America has not been responsible for all the bad things that have occurred in LA, but the "caudillos" have needed and need an enemy to keep themselves in power. Anti-americanism has grown out of plenty of make-belief.

[Billy Hell]

You ignore history when you say "Anti-Americanism has grown out of plenty of make-belief".

This long list of US direct involvement in bringing about regime change in South American nations is make-belief?

http://www.geocities.com/ciameddling/

[sticksnstones]

" Anti-americanism has grown out of plenty of make-belie­f."

Since a comment like this reflects a woeful lack of knowledge and, forgive me for saying so, willful ignorance, let me steer you to a couple of books that directly contradict your contention.

1) Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Author: Stephen Kinzer

2) War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Author: Norman Soloman

I encourage you to read these books. Who knows, you may evolve from a pro-coup d'etat sycophant into an informed commenter about political issues in the Western Hemisphere.

[ModernTimes1]

28 Jun 2009
Telegraph. Great Britain:
"Mr Chavez, with more than a decade in power, began his reforms in Venezuela by holding a Constituent Assembly and changing the constitution. Mr Zelaya had stated that he wished to do the same and that the referendum was supposed to be the first step. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/honduras/5677026/Honduras-supreme-court-ordered-army-coup.html

BBC

"Mr Zelaya, elected for a non-renewable four-year term in 2006, had wanted a vote to extend his time in office. His arrest came just before the start of a referendum ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and opposed by Congress. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8123126.stm

[Billy Hell]

Modern Times? Pffft! You're on the wrong side of history funny little man. What you stand for and what you attempt to justify will be defeated by the forces of true democracy. You can go on expounding what growing numbers are realizing are lies and an attack on the people of Honduras, as long as you like but they remain lies and an attack on the people of Honduras.

The short sighted money grubbing nature of your ilk and the coup instigators will be quashed by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) who signed the Quito Declaration on Monday. The document reaffirms the commitment to democracy as the only system to face the current challenges and giving more hope and opportunities to our peoples.

There is nothing democratic about anything you have to say, for the simple reason that you have no respect for it.

[ModernTimes1]

"There is nothing democratic about anything you have to say,"
Ahhh....
I posted legitimate new items from BBC and Telegraph.
.. Or maybe instead of BBC we trust opinions anonymous internet poster named Billy....
Gee, difficult choice.

[JoseCarias]

Modern Times, you sound like Lanny Davis, let's talk about facts. By the way, the white shirts that march in favor of the coup and their new heroes, Roberto Micheletti and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez (who was accused of being a member of band of thugs stealing cars in 1993, see link http://ellibertador.hn/Nacional/3137.html ), are all paid by the National Party Mayor of Tegucigalpa, who is widely known as one of the most corrupt politicians in the country.
Also it is important to note that Roberto Micheletti is a serial constitution killer, please visit the following link http://migenteinforma.org/honduras-micheletti-intento-cambiar-la-constitucion-hondurena-en-1985//)
These are the wonderful heroes of the so called white shirts.

[ModernTimes1]

Ad hominem is characterized by desperate attempt to attack personal characteristics of the person making the argument. Due to inability to produce meaningful evidence against said argument.
Hmm, where have we all seen this before: Bush, Pinochet, Mussolini, Stalin the list is long.....

[MemoryAlpha]

Highly Amused Observation:
You accuse someone else of ad hominem and then turn around and make an attack twice as vicious yourself? One notes that you address /none/ of the points JoseCarias brings up. No answers from you, then?

[JoseCarias]

Modern Times, you sound like Lanny Davis, let's talk about facts. By the way, the white shirts that march in favor of the coup and their new heroes, Roberto Micheletti and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez (who was accused of being a member of band of thugs stealing cars in 1993, see link http://ellibertador.hn/Nacional/3137.html ), are all paid by the National Party Mayor of Tegucigalpa, who is widely known as one of the most corrupt politicians in the country.
Also it is important to note that Roberto Micheletti is a serial constitution killer, please visit the following link http://migenteinforma.org/honduras-micheletti-intento-cambiar-la-constitucion-hondurena-en-1985//)
These are the wonderful heroes of the so called white shirts. There is a term that applies to them, that is VENDE PATRIA!

[JoseCarias]

So you know Mr. Giordano, yesterday the Central Bank announced that it is retiring from the banking system 10 Billion Honduran Lempiras for excess liquidity in the system. This is a measure that President Zelaya refused to take for several reasons, one of them is that by doing so you have to pay the bankers 6% interest on the money taken out of the system.
The banks, who are part of the coup, will get paid 600 million lempiras for this measure ($1=Lps.19­).
Please help us denounce what all the Golpistas are doing without considering that their actions are moving the country to the edge of a social conflict that could end up in a civil war (poor vrs rich).

[ModernTimes1]

The author of the blog is engaging in a number of logical fallacies in the article. I 'll note just the most glaring: argumentum verbosium ( proof by verbosity) and red herring fallacy.
Both used liberally ( pun intended) to come to faulty conclusion. And inability to refute the charge of reversal of non-intervention so dear to U.S.libera­lism and inability to refute constitutional validity of Zelaya's removal from power.

[HectorCorrales]

Yep, logical fallacies indeed.

By the way, this is my third attempt to reply to Giordano but my posts have been deleted in the pending comments queue. I think it's because I posted pictures of what he calls the minority in Honduras

http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com/2009/07/honduras-july-22-march-ill-bet-you.html

[joelwiens]

The author of this comment is engaging in not saying anything. You have failed your 23 fans today, sir/madam.

[MemoryAlpha]

Observation:
His "fans" are not interested in substance, if comment history is to be observed.

[ModernTimes1]

1.Ouster of a politician on orders Supreme Court supported by full elected congress and Attorney General cannot be legitimately described as military coup.
Try a basic political science primer.

[av2ts]

MT, where did you get the idea that the Supreme Court ordered Zelaya's ouster? They most certainly did not. In fact, they flatly rejected this idea requested by the public prosecutor. What the Court did order was Zelaya's detention, for the President to stand under a special tribunal (essentially, their impeachment process). This was to be the trial that never was. Instead, the military took it upon themselves (supposedly) to roust the President and ship him off to Costa Rica. This was an against the Constitution, which expressly prohibits forced exile. The actual transfer of power was done by part of Congress (not full as you said) based on the production of a supposed resignation letter, that we know today to have been forged. So that action has no legal basis either. This was a coup pure and simple. The whole thing was set up in advance. Justifications talking about Article 239 were made up after the fact and do not appear in the Court documents.

[ModernTimes1]

Supreme Court
"In a perfect world former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya would be in jail in his own country right now, awaiting trial. The Honduran attorney general has charged him with deliberately violating Honduran law and the Supreme Court ordered his arrest in Tegucigalpa on June 28.

Zelaya camp as the president illegally pushed for a plebiscite on rewriting the constitution. Since the executive branch is not permitted to call for such a vote, the attorney general had announced that he intended to enforce the law against Mr. Zelaya."

[JoseCarias]

Hector Corrales, are you related to Arturo Carrales Padilla?, hope not, because if you are, you should be ashamed of posting comments here.
Interpol has offices in each country and they are managed by the local police (NCB). The arrest warrant that you mention will not be accepted in any country because it is coming from an institution of a de facto government.
Yesterday, a contingent of Honduran soldiers that were going to lebanon were sent back by spain, because they do not recognize the de facto regime, not one country in the world does.
Today, there is a huge protest rally in tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, but the maintream media has not reported anything.
That is the reason why idiots like Corrales, get fanatical about the coup. They only see what they like and when they see or read something they do not like, they simple try to trash perfectly intelligent arguments just for the sake of it.

[HectorCorrales]

Jose Carias, are you by any chance related to Tiburcio Carias, the dictator who on his second term was president for 16 years? Didn't think so.

Regarding the Interpol warrant, read your news man. This was released today and is independent of any warrant issued by the Honduran Public Ministry. The warrant is for fraud and has an international red alert. They refused to carry previous ones out because they were related to political crimes. Apparently Interpol doesn't consider fraud a political crime.

Good for Spain, the most socialist administration to hit Europe in decades.

No Coverage of the protests by mainstream media? Here's the most pro-'coup' paper in Honduras covering it:

http://bit.ly/iBtZM

[JoseCarias]

No, I am not and thank God I am not either a cachureco golpista (National Party follower), which I am sure you are.
I would like for Mr Giordano to see the link that Arturo Corrales is mentioning, see the picture attached, and how they describe the rallies, with a touch of irony and half truths. This is how the local mainstream media has "empowered" people like Corrales with arguments in favor of the coup, it is really sad that these people do not understand the whole they are digging for themselves.
There is no government in the world that will arrest a Zelaya minister because the accusations comes from a illegitimate and spurious regime, the police is part of the Security Ministry of the de facto government. They even announced some days ago that Interpol has an arrest warrant for Zelaya, imagine the nerve!
If anybody will be in prision soon is your hero, Micheletti himself.

[HectorCorrales]

Interesting article for sure. However, it's a bit sad how you've misconstrued the funding to Honduras issue as a back-door conspiracy to fund the oligarchy in Honduras to carry out the coup. For clarification purposes, the Millennium Challenge Account, governed by the MCC, gives no budgetary assistance to the government of Honduras and is specifically destined for development programs.

You mentioned that the funds enter into the Central Bank; but I fail to see how that means that they're being wired to the oligarchy to stage a coup. They're funneled to the Central Bank because it is the organization responsible for all currency exchanges and disbursements.

And since we're talking about the Central Bank, why not mention how the Minister of Presidency (Zelaya’s) ordered (abusing his authority) that $2.7 million be withdrawn from the Central Bank vaults 2 days before Zelaya’s removal...­and subsequently the serial number in those bills were matched to about $13,000 found in a hotel that bordered Nicaragua, abandoned there by the Director for the ENEE (our Energy Department­)...who, by the way, has an international arrest warrant in her name, issued by Interpol Headquarters in France.

[Al Giordano - Huffpost Blogger]

Excuse me, but who do you think these construction funds are going to other than construction companies owned by the owning class of Honduras that backs this coup?

Construction companies in Honduras - as a commenter below notes - are owned by people like Liberal Party presidential candidate Elvin Santos, who received $21 million (dollars!) recently from the coup regime for construction projects.

If members of the Zelaya administration committed corruption, they should be prosecuted for it. But no democracy removes, by force, the elected president over allegations of corruption by members of his administration, and you know darn well that wasn't the pretext anyway.

What you fail to grasp is that many people who may or may not like Zelaya still oppose the coup d'etat. You can argue about your dislike of Zelaya 'til you're blue in the face, but that's not a convincing defense of the coup. The people elected him. A small minority doesn't make those decisions in a democracy.

[av2ts]

Thank you. These lines by Obama on "hypocrisy" and "push a button" just made my stomach turn. It might be the last straw in terms of any hope Latin America (and myself) had for Obama and regarding a sane Latin American policy. It is so cheap, so untrue. It seems designed only to placate the rabid anti-Chavez right-wing.

Obama is smart enough to know this "hypocrisy" line is complete BS and he spouts it anyways. He must realize there is a profound difference between the history of unilateral US intervention in the region and what the region is beggin him to do now. In the past, the US acted alone, against the cause of democracy and justice. Today, the US is sitting on its hands, when it holds all the cards to save democracy. No one is asking the US to "intervene" - only support the unanimous regional will. Simply following our own laws on military coups would probably suffice (ending our AID to an illegal government). Instead we send out a letter that telegraphs that our tepid (non-serious) support for Zelaya and says point-blank that cuts in aid or sanctions are not even on the table to be considered. Latin America is paying attention and will no longer be so deferential to Obama (as they were allowing this Oscar Arias "negotiation" ploy to waste time and run out the clock).

[RobertNaiman]

Grijalva's office has posted their letter - signed by 16 Democratic Members of the House - calling on the Obama Administration to cancel visas and freeze bank accounts of officials of the coup regime in Honduras.

http://grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=13&sectiontree=5,13&itemid=413

[JoseCarias]

Excellent news Robert, this kind of effort is key so that the U.S. executive acts right. The other day two U.S. Congressmen came to Honduras (Connie Mack (R-Fl) and Brian Bilbray (R-Calif), they met with the de facto government and supports it, even though they now it is an illegal government, just because they think that by supporting this coup, they are acting against Chavez.
Think about it, this means that to them anything illegal has to be supported as long as it achieves their objective, does this sound like George Bush?

[JoseCarias]

Excuse me CHANGEHN, I am Honduran and I am not a Golpista like you, I have decency, principles and convictions. Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped and sent into exile, all his constitutional rights were violated.
Please do not claim something on my behalf, I am Honduran and I am against the cup, Micheletti and his thugs.
Mr. Giordano congratulations on your excellent article, do not mind these idiots, as you know most of the poor people of the country are with Zelaya, they do not have internet access or speak english, so do not expect a flood of messages from Honduras in favor of your position.
Please read an article about the oligarchs of Honduras that finance the coup and paid Lanny Davis at the following link http://ellibertador.hn/Nacional/3143.html , it would be nice if these people get their U.S. visas revoked, that would hurt them more than anything else in the world.
For your information Elvin Santos, the Golpista Liberal Party Candidate, was awarded by Congress, a week ago, a 70 kilometer highway contract for his construction company for $21 million dollars (20% higher per kilometer than any company would charge) without a tender/bid. This is a classical example of the benefits and rewards the oligarchs are worried about losing.

[changehn]

I highly doubt that if you had any principles or decency that you would support people like Zelaya or by association Chavez.
Please respond by addressing the following points not by calling people idiots or golpistas. I am sure that if you could throw a rock online or spray paint the walls of Huff post you would be doing so right now.
1. Explain to us all what happened to the $2.1 million Enrique Flores took out of the Central Bank two days before Zelaya's deposition
2. Why did Zelaya refuse to present a national budget?
3. What is Zelaya's involvement in the Latinnode bribery scandal? Chimirri is one person, he is Zelaya's nephew, who else is involved?
4. What did the dozens of airplanes that crashed and burned in Honduras carry? Drugs, money, "cuarta urna" ballots??
5. Explain Raul Valladares. This guy was worth around $50,000 when he entered Zelaya's government and today he is worth over $20 million.

I have many more questions in case you manage to correctly address these issues.

[Al Giordano - Huffpost Blogger]

None of the five topics of your questions were among the stated reasons for a coup d'etat.

It's as if you know in your heart that the bogus legaloid reasons given for the coup no longer hold water, so you need to retroactively go back and invent new ones - NONE of which anyway would legally allow the removal of a president without due process.

You want to make arguments that Zelaya is a bad president? Go for it. But your "questions" no matter what the answers may be do not justify a coup d'etat or the illegal regime that it set up.

[RexOzone]

Good to hear from those inside who are prepared to state the reality. Good luck and know there is support for your perspective among some in the US beyond just the PR.
Your country happens to be the litmus test, unfortunately, for the strength of democratic governments who speak for their population. Please continue, if it's safe enough, to provide us with more info as it occurs...e­specially the complicity of corporate malfeasance and neo-colonial practices.

[guatemalatimes]

Dear Al

You say that you do not worry about Latin America and South America, well, we who actually live here do worry. We have been the objects of interventionist US foreign policies forever.

About Honduras: two words: Chiquita Banana.

You need to come back and see.......

[Ira7]

Hey, Al--this was a good one:

"...to the 2002 U.S.-backe­d coup attempt in Venezuela (turned back in three days by the Venezuelan people)...­"

What hat did you pull that one out of?

Not only did the military rebellion against him take place with no U.S. help or encouragement (it sure wasn't needed at the time), but it was the military again that put him back in power. Yes, there were people protesting the coup, but if you went by the numbers, just as many of them, if not more, supported the coup. Bush's endorsement of this is irrelevant. You make it sound like the U.S. orchestrated it, which is simply a lie.

Funny how you encourage U.S. involvement in the Honduras crisis, but have no problem where vast injustices are REALLY taking place, like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Ecuador and Bolivia are getting there, but thank God, Honduras isn't.

[Al Giordano - Huffpost Blogger]

I pulled that one out of what you might know as "news reporting," reporting I did in those very days.

Here's a recap of those three days I published on April 15, 2002:

http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html

And here's a recount I gave this past June 15 of 2009, before the Honduran coup, in the context of events in Iran, of how people power really did turn back that coup (the switch of some military brigades came only after an unarmed citizenry took back Public TV Channel 8 and announced to the people that their president had not "resigned" but had been kidnapped. Millions poured into the streets.

You can see video of how the coup plotters ran from the Miraflores Presidential Palace before a single soldier got there:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/venezuela-2002-pioneered-events-iran-2009

Your ideological axe grinding blinds you. If you were going to mention "vast injustices" in Latin America and don't put Mexico and Colombia atop the list, I really wonder about your judgment (and, yes, we also report from all those countries you mention).

[werehawk]

Al:

Case of Pot to Kettle black if anyone asks me...

In any case I'll observe that you are also indulging in grinding your own ideological axes in this case. In this case the let's blame the U.S. for all of Latin America's ills.

I'm not about to defend the Honduran coup which I from a Latin American perspective was atypical as it came more from the legislativ­e/Judicial end of things than the military. And I speak of this after having observed the real thing in Guatemala quite a few times since the late 70s.

I'll also note that you are making assumption based on flimsy evidence as to the U.S. having instigated the Honduran coup. Or for the matter explicitly backing it.

--Break---

[apduncan1]

Is the Millenium Challenge Corp. the new Project for a New American Century?