palashcbiswas,
gostokanan, sodepur, kolkata-700110 phone:033-25659551
From: Cort Greene <cort.greene@gmail.com>
To: no_iraq_war_az@yahoogroups.com; mecawi@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, 18 July, 2009 23:20:51
Subject: [no_iraq_war_az] Zero hour in Honduras
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/zero-hour-in-honduras/
Zero hour in Honduras<http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/zero-hour-in-honduras/>
July 18, 2009 ·
The gifted anthropologist and linguist, Adrienne Pine, has translated
the latest
dispatch <http://quotha.net/node/131> from the Honduran Minister of Culture,
Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle. Pine has been doing a lot of fine translations
lately on events in Honduras, but her blog has many other interesting items
too – check it out here <http://quotha.net/>.
[image: timonhd]
*The U.S. and the Coup: A Real Change of Course or a Just a Farce?*
**
Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle
*Translation by Adrienne Pine*
**
Kudos to the European Union, whom history will recognize for its consistent
posture in suspending aid since the second day. We are moved by the
solidarity of Mexico and of course that of all Latin America and the UN.
Never before in history have all the nations of the world supported an
overthrown government. Nonetheless, it escapes no one that the possible
solution or the degeneration of the current predicament in Honduras depends
on the policy of the United States, the only power with the material
instruments to overcome the stubborn madness of the usurpers, if they wanted
to use them. It would seem that a certain ambivalence is at play.
Despite the fact that the embassy in Honduras without a doubt advised the
coup leaders against that course of action, it did not manage to convince
them, and perhaps it also lacks sufficient arguments to persuade them to
entertain the only solution being considered by the community of nations and
which favors the majority of Hondurans. Perhaps the U.S. tried to find a way
to deescalate the conflict. But it has an objective record of the facts. The
embassy in Tegucigalpa has to know things that perhaps are not understood
there in the Capitol (that the resignation letter was illegitimate, as was
the famous arrest warrant for the president), but there is not an
unequivocal position in Washington which is, of course, a politically
complex world. And although it has skillfully played with the idea of
aligning itself with the OAS and the UN, U.S. policy has lacked force and
specificity. As a U.S. editorial today states, the Latin American Office of
the State Department is staffed by enemies of the overthrown government,
inherited from Bush. A couple of the members of the committee that received
President Zelaya in Washington have declared in the past that the fourth
ballot box was a "form of distraction" and would have little reason to want
to defend him.
The first official statement after the coup did not condemn what had
happened. Afterward, undoubtedly Latin American solidarity tilted the
balance to make necessary a series of statements of greater clarity, deeming
what had happened a coup d'etat, and the U.S. voted in accord with the
unanimous resolutions in the OAS and UN and signed international resolutions
confirming that this has been a coup d'etat and they adopted a consistent
position: demanding the return of the constitutional president of the
country, yet still leaving it to be seen whether this return could be
subject to negotiations and a series of conditions.
And then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, several of whose
ex-collaborators have been closely tied to the coup leaders and the
right-wing conspiracy behind them, asked President Zelaya to "cooperate"
with the mediation process presided over by the Nobel Prize winner Arias,
even though this is an insult and she knows it. But this ambivalence has
been maintained, and while Mr. L. Davis carries out a dirty and public
lobbying campaign on behalf of CEAL [The Business Council of Latin America]
in the U.S., using documents originating from the bureaucracy of a
government the U.S. doesn't recognize, distorting positions, and
manipulating the facts, the U.S. backs down on its official statements.
In recent conversations with delegations of Honduran members of civil
society, Christopher Warren, a State Department representative, insisted
that "although Obama may have said that this was a coup, this is a technical
determination that has not been officially declared" and a supposed
"spokesperson" publicly joked yesterday at the White House about the U.S.
president's lack of knowledge of Honduran law, dodging the issue and making
the coup in Honduras into a joke, while we confront systematic violations of
human rights and the harsh prospect of a civil war; and they don't realize
or they don't care about being accused of making an experiment. Recently,
representatives of the embassy in Honduras have responded to U.S. citizens
who propose applying pressure, stating that the mission is not ready to
recommend sanctions.
The U.S. right wing has been perfectly consistent. It has organized, using
its formidable power, rallying powerful senators on various committees
together with traffickers in false information creating perverse distortions
of what is going on. The media aligned with the right-wing conspiracy in the
U.S. libel us with impunity, reprinting the baseless accusations of the coup
supporters. Other articles in influential media outlets have insisted on
continuing with the more or less absurd theme of the hidden agenda of the
president on the one hand to remain in power and on the other, given that
there the theme of reelection is not looked down upon, with the idea that
the intent was to create a communist dictatorship allied with H. Chavez.
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. United States senators like J.
Kerry who should, because of their responsibilities, be better informed,
have insisted that President Zelaya tried to turn around and torpedo the
Congress (and this is not true Mr. Kerry, you should be better informed),
while others carry on with the same old story without taking into account
the original crime, which was instrumentalizing the judiciary for political
ends. Neither does it make sense to argue that proposing changes to the
constitution is a crime, since those who have formally done so are the
National Party candidates and members of Congress, while all we proposed was
to carry out a poll.
Those of us in the deposed government do not have the same type of resources
to counteract this damage. The U.S. should not intervene unilaterally; it
should align itself as President Obama has said in the past he would do,
with the will of the majority (and here I can say with the unanimity) of the
international community, including all his friends and allies. The policy
espoused by Obama (that of renouncing unilateralism) will become a joke if
the US avoids the risks of being consistent.
Fortunately we are not alone in the U.S. The progressive sectors sympathize
with our cause and know that our sin was to try to democratize our country
and take it out of the hands of a criminal group. I was not always in
agreement with the ex-ambassador Ford, but I agreed with him when, in
private, he expressed his belief that our land, Honduras, is a country held
hostage to a caste of politricksters. Because they're not politicians;
they're disguised delinquents. Democracy cannot have caveats. It is
democracy or it isn't. And this isn't, even less so after the coup. The
United States contingent of a conference of experts on Latin America which
met recently demanded to their authorities that they be consistent in their
positions on democracy. Furthermore many other independent academics and
critics have expressed to us their support, reaching out to their networks
as well as to the State Department, providing at least correct and truthful
information with which we can begin to counteract the tricks of the lobby.
A resolution of the security council of the UN would have to override a U.S.
veto, which would be costly. The U.S. cannot turn its back again on its
noble tradition of respecting freedom of expression, for due process in a
State of Law, for the separation of powers of the state and for human
rights. It cannot back down from its political stance without suffering a
blow to its international prestige, which it needs to protect for strategic
reasons. It cannot betray this prestige, returning to the old politics of
protecting its "bastard children" without consequences.
Behind the curtain a cynical attitude prevails (expressing itself, for
example, in jokes about Honduran legislation), trying to pass itself off as
realpolitik and go back on the earlier statements of Obama and the votes of
the OAS and UN. If effective pressure is not applied toward the restoration
of the government, after lamenting this tragedy, we are going to laugh at
the hilarious farce of the U.S.'s supposedly new policy…Soon enough. Today,
Saturday, as the negotiations wrap up, we will know what the true politics
of the U.S. are.
---------------
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday: Hondurans mobilize against coup
regime<http://dianabarahona.blogspot.com/2009/07/friday-hondurans-mobilize-against-coup.html>
From Radio Mundial <http://cantv.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/index.php>:
*Honduras sends back new VTV team because 'your president is a troublemaker'
*
**
Journalist Aquiles González and his team were sent back from
Tegucigalpa to Caracas
by customs officials, who told them: "we're not going to let you enter
because you Venezuelans, what you're coming for is to make a mockery here,
and your president is a troublemaker. And we don't want you Venezuelans
here."
*Chávez: Putschists will be swept out by the people and by history*
**
Before returning to Venezuela from Bolivia, where he attended the country's
bicentennial independence celebrations, Chávez said, "I don't know where
Zelaya is. I don't know if he is already in Honduras; I don't know if he's
going to appear with the people at the head of a march." He said the
Honduran president has shown that he is a valiant man, and added that
"Zelaya told me that he was going to Honduras; he said to me: 'I don't know
if we will be able to talk again. I don't know if they will kill me, but if
that's the way it is, continue forward.' That is why we ask God for his
life."
From Diario Colatino<http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20090717/portada/69296/>
Friday, 17 July 2009
*Popular mobilizations shut down highways*
**
This morning two highways that cross the border between Honduras and El
Salvador, El Poy and El Amatillo, were shut down by supporters of the
restoration of President Manuel Zelaya.
According to the Salvadoran Migration office, the closure began at 10am by a
group of 40 people who peacefully protested. Nevertheless, police were
present to control vehicle and pedestrian traffic, calculating that the
situation would be normal by this afternoon.
At the same time, social organizations and popular movements are preparing
for a large rally this Friday in Tegucigalpa to demand the exit of the de
facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, and the return of
constitutional President Manuel Zelaya, in the midst of a strong security
operatio that seeks to limit the resistance in the streets that enters day
20.
Social leaders united in the National Front Against the Coup agree that the
protests will continue and grow until the deadline given by Zelaya for the
exit of the coup regime and his restoration as president.
Labor leader Juan Barahona said the "people are motivated. We are going to
be in this struggle, we don't know until when, but we will continue."
He said that by this Friday in Honduras activities are planned that are
similar to those that took place this Thursday, when thousands of protesters
blockaded important highways as an expression of their repudiation of the
coup.
Yesterday, supporters of Zelaya closed down the highways that connect the
capital with the borders of Nicaragua and El Salvador, as well as the route
to the coastal region of the Caribbean, as a response to the call by the
president to begin an insurrection against the de facto government, which
responded to the mobilization of opponents by reinstituting the night
curfew.
The blockades affected commercial transportation from Puerto Cortes, the
main maritime customs station of the country, as well as the economic
capital of Honduras, San Pedro Sula. There were also traffic stoppages in
Comayagua and Olancho, 200 kilometers south of the capital.
The routes that link Tegucigalpa with the north and south of the country
were closed this Thursday for several hours.
In the city of Choloma, close to San Pedro Sula, thousands carried out a
long sit-in on the freeway leading to Puerto Cortés, the most important one
in the country, on the Caribbean coast. According to Regina Osiosio,
correspondent for TeleSUR in Honduras, this Friday the highways that connect
Tegucigalpa with the principal cities will be shut down again. After
Micheletti proposed stepping down only if Zelaya does not return to the
country, the social movements were clear that they would accept his
resignation, but only to make way for the immediate restoration of Zelaya.
----------
July 18, 2009
HONDURAS: Sheep Guarded by Wolf, Hens Protected by Fox, and Mediation
Entrusted to Oscar
Arias<http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/honduras-sheep-guarded-by-wolf-hens-protected-by-fox-and-mediation-entrusted-to-oscar-arias/>
*The sheep guarded by the wolf, the hens protected by the fox, **and the
Honduran mediation entrusted to Oscar Arias*
*
*
Roberto Regelado – Havana[image: HondResistancia]
A CubaNews translation by Greg McDonald.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
When an event is repeated, so the saying goes, the first time it happens as
tragedy and the second time as farce. The big farce of the moment is that of
Oscar Arias, who for the second time is acting as "mediator" in a
"Central-American conflict". In this case, we have a dialogue (negotiation?)
to end the seizure of the government of the Republic of Honduras in a coup
d'etat. Such a scenario was customary in Latin America prior to 1990, but it
now threatens the foundation of bourgeois democratic institutions, which
have been constructed since that time as an action and reaction effect
between the neoliberal hegemony imposed by the dominant classes, and the
political space wrenched from them on the part of the traditionally
dominated social sectors.
*Could anyone have thought of a worse mediator? Yes, in Otto Reich and other
disciples of the deceased United States senator Jesse Helms, but they are
all occupied giving advice and support to the coup plotters.20Also, the
"Honduran mediation" is a "role play" in which a "bad cop" is needed–to
adopt an intransigent posture (as Micheletti is doing, Reich's protege)– and
a "good cop"–who treats the aggressor and aggrieved parties "as equals", and
in which "both sides have to give up something" (as Arias is doing). *
**
Oscar Arias, who was president of Costa Rica between 1986 and 1990, and who
presently occupies that post in the term between 2006 and 2010, received the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his part in the negotiated settlement
resulting in the Esquipulas II Accords, signed in August of the same year.
In that role he gave his name to something which should have been called
"Reagan Plan ", but to conceal the authorship of one of the most retrograde
and bellicose administrations of the United States, it was publicly referred
to as the "Arias Plan ".
Though undeserved, the Nobel Prize given to Arias recalls the one Henry
Kissinger accepted in 1973 for leading the United States delegation that
negotiated the Paris Accords, and which put an end to the Vietnam war, an
occasion in which the chancellor of North Vietnam, Led Duc Tho, refused in a
dignified manner to "share" that "prize" with the Secretary of State of the
power which for years committed a brutal genocide against his people.
The "Arias Plan" wa s the incarnation of the political two-track approach of
the euphemistically named low-intensity warfare of the Ronald Reagan
administration (1981-1989), executed against Nicaragua during the Popular
Sandinista Revolution. The first track was military aggression by
counterrevolutionary organizations from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica,
combined with the threat of direct intervention by the United States. The
second track was to offer the government of the Sandinista Front for
National Liberation (FSLN) a political solution, "negotiated" in the terms
imposed by the aggressor, that is to say, "to negotiate" the end of external
aggression–an act that by definition was a violation of International Law
and which, therefore, is not negotiable. This would have meant a change
which involved an essential restructuring of the internal political and
judicial order of Nicaragua–which corresponded, uniquely and exclusively, to
the Nicaraguan people. To negotiate that which should not be negotiated to
put an end to an illegal act of force? Does the reader note something
similar to the current Honduran situation?
But if that wasn't enough, in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras
revolutionary movements had used armed struggle against the
counterinsurgency regimes of those countries. The "negotiations", therefore,
needed to be unilateral and asymmetrical. North American imperialism could
not allow the negotiations to take place on the basis of a clean slate for
all t he governments, and the opposite for all the "insurgent forces". In
the case of Nicaragua it needed to impose one "logic" (that was unfavorable
to the FSLN government, and favorable to the "contras"), and an opposite
"logic" (that was favorable to the counterinsurgency governments of El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and unfavorable to the insurgent
movements and forces of the left in those three countries).
The twin track policy of the Reagan administration, incorporated in the
"Arias Plan", was the antithesis of the peace gestures undertaken by the
Contadora Group and the Contadora Support Group, whose members, finally
feeling defeated, abandoned their plan of negotiations and adopted the
"Arias Plan". From that moment on, the eight member countries of those
groups went on to form part of an International Commission of Verification
and Continuation (CIVS), charged with the sad role of convincing
Nicaragua–in a repetitive, incisive and unilateral manner–that it should
fulfill and over-fulfill the agreements that it had been forced to adopt
through the process of negotiation, and like its counterpart, to turn a
blind eye to the total non-compliance of El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras to their part of the agreement.
But there was more to come! What was said up to this point is not the key
issue, namely *the way in which Arias provided cover for the gringos was
what allowed the government of the United States to continue acting in its
part of the "negotiating process" like the big absent presence. In other
words, it allowed the USA to act as a judge in the Central American
conflict, and, at the same time, as the aggressor against Nicaragua, the
vital support to the counterinsurgency regimes of the region, the "external
power" that imposed the rules of negotiation and the supreme power that
determined whether or not the results were acceptable. *
**
The paternity of the second track, which Arias assumed publicly, allowed the
US government to stay "behind the scenes". Thanks to the fact that "the
plan" was "by Arias", and not of their own making, the Reagan administration
managed to impose the terms of a negotiation in which it did not take part.
In this way, the United States government did not find itself compromised
with the Esquipulas I or Esquipulas II Accords, allowing it to continue–as,
in effect, it did — developing a "hidden war" against Nicaragua. This long
after the Sandinista government, in a good faith gesture, not only fulfilled
its obligations but went one step beyond, in a unilateral manner, the letter
and spirit of both accords, implementing a long chain of additional
conditions which it put into place *a posteriori*.
In his comments at the forum "At XX years of Esquipulas II, a history
narrated by its architects", celebrated on August 21, 2007, the foreign
minister of Nicaragua during the FSLN government and the current president *pro
tempore* of the General Assembly of the UN, Miguel d'Escoto, revealed the
role played by the government of Costa Rica, and especially by Oscar Arias,
in the Central American conflict.
Concerning Contadora–says Miguel d'Escoto–a lot has been written. The books
written to date recount how the United States torpedoed the process, through
Costa Rica and Honduras, principally.[...]
In that task, foreign ministers Monge, Fernando Volio and Jose Gutierrez,
all played an important part, but the star foreign minister of the gringos,
the one who best represented their interests and who blocked the peace
accords, was the incomparable Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto, may he rest in peace.
He was, no more or less, the foreign minister of Oscar Arias. This is why
the whole world was surprised when only Arias was garlanded with the Nobel
Peace Prize. This is something I am allowed to say now, because, when
foreign minister Madrigal was still alive he said the same thing in the
presence of the other foreign ministers.
That's enough of this excerpt from father d'Escoto; time to sum up a past
which some people don't know and which others would like to forget.
The history of the Central American conflict and the Esquipulas negotiations
is not too far afield and the testimonies of what happened, like that of
Miguel d'Escoto and many others, are disposed to remember and to denounce
it.
We will not permit a wolf, a fox, or an Arias to fool us with his farce.
http://www.lajiribilla.cu/2009/n425_06/honduras/127.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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