In light of the Honduran elections, Obama's representative decided that might be a good time to ridicule all the Latin American democracies.
The deal to reinstate Honduran President Manuel Zelaya unraveled this week, leaving the U.S. as the only government in the western hemisphere willing to let the recent military coup there stand.
The Obama team brokered the accord in Honduras, and got a commitment from the coup leaders. If they go back on it, how much will the Obama administration's word be worth on anything else?
Due to the current military state of affairs since June, the World Bank has now completely "paused its lending" to Honduras. This means that numerous humanitarian programs aimed at helping women and children have been completely stopped.
There are the real wars to win in Latin America. Against poverty and tyranny, against ecological depredation and the marginalization of the indigenous peoples and their wisdom.
Rumors are swirling. Some say that all that remains is for negotiators to agree on the date of Zelaya's return. Others say that both sides have agreed to renounce the presidency.
I suspect that Rep. Schock is going down to check out what is real and what is not in the mess of the Honduras coup and its aftermath -- but Jim DeMint is going down to "meddle."
I hear shrieks of Obama being surrounded by 'radical leftists' and 'Marxists' -- the very same propaganda codewords used by the military industrial complex when paving the way for a coup in Latin America.
In the current Honduran stand-off, Roberto Micheletti and Manuel Zelaya have shown themselves to be political novices without the maturity and intellect to guide this country out of this crisis.
Here we are in Havana with Bertha Caceras Flores in the Forum on Emancipatory Paradigms, speaking about the tactics and repression of those behind the coup d'etat in Honduras.
The United States has been the only major country to maintain an ambassador in Honduras throughout the dictatorship, and has also maintained a deafening silence about the repression there.
Manuel Zelaya, the ousted leader of Honduras who was overthrown in a right-wing military coup in June, has made an incredible political gamble.
As it has throughout the crisis, the U.S. media is largely burying the news from Honduras. Now is the time for Americans to speak up.
Zelaya traveled over the Nicaraguan border and followed back roads with a small security force until reaching the Brazilian embassy in Teguchigalpa, undetected all the way by the coup government.
The democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, has returned to Tegucigalpa, entering the country in secret, traveling overland with a small group of advisers.
The pro-Micheletti event, despite its title, amounted to little more than a military parade. In the stadium, people cheered enthusiastically as planes passed overhead and soldiers marched.
Supporters argue that the IMF has changed. But after depositing a large amount of money in Honduras -- the site of a recent coup -- it's looking more and more like the same old IMF on steroids.
In December 2008, just months before Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power by the Honduran military, he wrote Barack Obama and complained of U.S. "interventionism."
The region now wishes to send a strong message that military intervention in domestic politics in this part of the world will never be legitimate.
The State Department is poised to declare what was obvious to most of the world: on June 28, Honduras experienced a military coup. Complain away, right-wing coup-lovers.
The new US authorities understand that the United States no longer has the means to exert quick control in such countries as Honduras, and that trying to do so could undermine more promising multilateral avenues for achieving US objectives.
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