Honduras Coup: Soldiers kidnap VZ, Cuba, Nicaragua envoys

[John Schröder]

http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/07/day-6 ... ds-to.html

Today the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, is traveling to Tegucigalpa to personally inform the coup government, in place since Sunday's military coup d'etat, that if they don't step down by Saturday and allow for President Manuel Zelaya's return to power, then Honduras will be suspended from the most important multilateral organization in the region. The suspension will not just be symbolic, it also includes ceasing all economic aid from the Inter-American Development Bank, which provides millions of dollars in support to the Central American nation, and the imposition of sanctions for human rights violations through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The coup government, led by Roberto Micheletti, has said it will remain in power "with or without" the OAS. We'll see how things develop today.

Meanwhile, the United States is the only remaining country in the Americas still maintaining diplomatic relations with Honduras after Sunday's coup. The US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, remains in Tegucigalpa, apparently "negotiating" with the coup government to find a solution. However, President Zelaya, the constitutional and democratically elected president of Honduras since 2005, has stated he will not "negotiate" his return to power. It's ridiculous to request a president overthrown in an illegal coup negotiate with the criminals who overthrew him in order to reestablish constitutional order.

There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that the US Government is, unfortunately, involved in that will soon be exposed.

Check out how the State Department is finding ways to get out of sanctioning Honduras and pressuring the coup government to step down by now legally classifying what took place as a "military coup d'etat" under US law. Note how instead of referring to the coup in English, the State Dept official does it in Spanish, as though that somehow makes it mean something else (yeah, since it's said in Spanish, it doesn't mean the same under US law):

Excerpt from Wednesday's State Department press briefing:

"QUESTION: And so this is properly classified as a military coup?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I mean, it’s a golpe de estado. The military moved against the president; they removed him from his home and they expelled him from a country, so the military participated in a coup. However, the transfer of leadership was not a military action. The transfer of leadership was done by the Honduran congress, and therefore the coup, while it had a military component, it has a larger – it is a larger event."


The Obama administration is trying desperately to save its image before the world, but not break ranks with its allies in Honduras. It's very pleased with the outcome of the coup, just not the method used to get there. So now they're saying, it was a "golpe de estado", and even though the armed military guards in ski masks kidnapped President Zelaya from his bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and forced him into exile, since it was a leader of Congress, a civilian, and not a military general, who subsequently named himself the de facto president, then it's not a "military coup".

Way to go State!

[John Schröder]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200 ... _the_coup/

The first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century occurred last Sunday in Honduras. Honduran soldiers roused democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and flew him into exile in Costa Rica. The coup, led by the Honduran Gen. Romeo Vasquez, has been condemned by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and all of Honduras’ immediate national neighbors. Mass protests have erupted on the streets of Honduras, with reports that elements in the military loyal to Zelaya are rebelling against the coup.

The United States has a long history of domination in the hemisphere. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can chart a new course, away from the dark days of military dictatorship, repression and murder. Obama indicated such a direction when he spoke in April at the Summit of the Americas: “[A]t times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

Two who know well the history of dictated U.S. terms are Dr. Juan Almendares, a medical doctor and award-winning human rights activist in Honduras, and the American clergyman Father Roy Bourgeois, a priest who for years has fought to close the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Ga. Both men link the coup in Honduras to the SOA.

The SOA, renamed in 2000 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is the U.S. military facility that trains Latin American soldiers. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres.

Almendares, targeted by Honduran death squads and the military, has been the victim of that training. He talked to me from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital: “Most of this military have been trained by the School of America. ... They have been guardians of the multinational business from the United States or from other countries. ... The army in Honduras has links with very powerful people, very rich, wealthy people who keep the poverty in the country. We are occupied by your country.”

Born in Louisiana, Bourgeois became a Catholic priest in 1972. He worked in Bolivia and was forced out by the (SOA-trained) dictator Gen. Hugo Banzer. The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the murders of four Catholic churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980 led him to protest where some of the killers were trained: Fort Benning’s SOA. After six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were murdered in El Salvador in 1989, Bourgeois founded SOA Watch and has built an international movement to close the SOA.

Honduran coup leader Vasquez attended the SOA in 1976 and 1984. Air Force Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, who also participated in the coup, was trained at the SOA in 1996.

Bourgeois’ SOA Watch office is just yards from the Fort Benning gates. He has been frustrated in recent years by increased secrecy at SOA/WHINSEC. He told me: “They are trying to present the school as one of democracy and transparency, but we are not able to get the names of those trained here—for over five years. However, there was a little sign of hope when the U.S. House approved an amendment to the defense authorization bill last week that would force the school to release names and ranks of people who train here.” The amendment still has to make it through the House-Senate conference committee.

Bourgeois speaks with the same urgency that he has for decades. His voice is well known at Fort Benning, where he was first arrested more than 25 years ago when he climbed a tree at night near the barracks of Salvadoran soldiers who were training there at the time.

Bourgeois blasted a recording of the voice of Romero in his last address before he was assassinated. The archbishop was speaking directly to Salvadoran soldiers in his country: “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression.”

Almost 30 years later, in a country bordering Romero’s El Salvador, the U.S. has a chance to change course and support the democratic institutions of Honduras. Undo the coup.

[John Schröder]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/07/c ... ister.html

Canada now (which speaks for the unannounced US foreign policy) defends the Honduran coup: "“The coup was certainly an affront to the region, but there is a context in which these events happened,” said Peter Kent, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, noting that Mr. Zelaya was a highly polarizing figure who clashed with the Supreme Court, Congress and army. “There has to be an appreciation of the events that led up to the coup.""

[John Schröder]

http://www.soaw.org/

[JackRiddler]

.

William Blum on the Honduras coup:

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer71.html

Long live the Cold War

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup June 28 because he was about to conduct a non-binding survey of the population, asking the question: "Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?" One of the issues that Zelaya hoped a new constitution would deal with is the limiting of the presidency to one four-year term. He also expressed the need for other constitutional changes to make it possible for him to carry out policies to improve the life of the poor; in countries like Honduras, the law is not generally crafted for that end.

At this writing it's not clear how matters will turn out in Honduras, but the following should be noted:

The United States, by its own admission, was fully aware for weeks of the Honduran military's plan to overthrow Zelaya. Washington says it tried its best to change the mind of the plotters. It's difficult to believe that this proved impossible. During the Cold War it was said, with much justification, that the United States could discourage a coup in Latin America with "a frown". The Honduran and American military establishments have long been on very fraternal terms. And it must be asked: In what way and to what extent did the United States warn Zelaya of the impending coup? And what protection did it offer him? The response to the coup from the Obama administration can be described with adjectives such as lukewarm, proper but belated, and mixed. It is not unthinkable that the United States gave the military plotters the go-ahead, telling them to keep the traditional "golpe" bloodiness to a minimum. Zelaya was elected to office as the candidate of a conservative party; he then, surprisingly, moved to the left and became a strong critic of a number of Washington policies, and an ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, both of whom the Bush administration tried to overthrow and assassinate.

Following the coup, National Public Radio (NPR) showed once again why progressives refer to it as National Pentagon Radio. The station's leading news anchor, Robert Siegel, interviewed Johanna Mendelson Forman, of the conservative think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Siegel: "There hasn't been a coup in Latin America for quite a while."

Forman: "I think the last one was in 1983"

Siegel did not correct her.14

This is ignorance of considerable degree. There was a coup in Venezuela in 2002 that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, a coup in Haiti in 2004 that permanently overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a coup in Panama in 1989 that permanently overthrew Manuel Noriega. Is it because the US was closely involved in all three coups that they have been thrown down the Orwellian Memory Hole?

Notes
14. NPR, All Things Considered, June 29, 2009 ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

[John Schröder]

http://markcrispinmiller.com/2009/07/ha ... duras.html

A passing reflection: No one in the established media is going to point out that no Honduran soldier, officer or general would dare to act against a US request, ever. The Honduran military get trained at a US base 50 miles from Tegucigalpa. The US furnishes its weapons, its uniforms, lunch and travel perks by inviting every officer to come to the School of the Americas for a bit of brainwashing. But the NYTimes makes much ado about integrity, honesty, fairness, etc.

Today (June 30), the Times ran an op-ed by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a “fellow of the Independent Institute.” That op-ed is a tissue of bald lies.

Now, everyone has the right to be against Honduras President Manuel Zelaya. But not to reveal that Honduras is run by a tight little oligarchy (which includes its parliament and Supreme Court) which kills labor organizers just for pleasure is to be genuinely dishonest. When I visited the farm of such an oligarch, while reseaching my book The Great Fear in Latin America, I asked him why he paid his peons so little. “They’re pigs,” he answered. “The only thing they respect is power. They have to know that I have life and death power over them. Only then will they work.” Stupidly, I asked: “Do they know that?” He laughed, called over one of the peons, took out his pistol and shot him in the head.

When I reported it to the Tegulcipaga chief of police, he quipped: “Yeah, but he owns that estancia.”

Now this “fellow” Vargas Llosa writes that President Zelaya is trying to become a dictator like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez by holding “a referendum with the ultimate aim of allowing him to seek re-election.” You’re supposed to think that the referendum is that change, and that it’s illegal because “the electoral court, the Supreme Court, Congress and members of his own party declared Mr. Zelaya’s intention unlawful.”

What Varga Llosa doesn’t tell you–and the Times would never say it either–is that all those bastards are the same as that oligarch who shot the peon just to prove a point. Nor would the Times tell you that that referendum merely put the question: “Hey, folks, should I try to get the constitution changed legally so I can run for re-election?” Nor would the Times tell you that Zelaya ran at first with a reactionary party, but changed on seeing how his country’s oligarchy, in partnership with US businesses, and abetted by the US-created death squad (set up by then- Ambassador Negroponte?), kept his people among the continent’s poorest. His Liberal Party was the party of the oligarchy.

Nor would the Times ever run my corrections, even if written politely without such insulting words as “bastard.” It never has. Because it believes in integrity, honesty, fairness, etc.

[emphasis added]

[John Schröder]

http://hondurasresistencia.blogspot.com/

[John Schröder]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/07/n ... th_04.html

"Hondurans know their coups, having experienced a string of them — in 1955, 1963 and 1972. This latest ouster of a president, though, was far more complicated than previous military raids because it included legal opinions, a court declaration and congressional resolutions, as well as guns pointed at the president when the army shuttled him out of the country in a predawn raid. “I’ve lived through coup d’états and this wasn’t that,” said a Zelaya foe, Thelma H. Enriquez, 83, who was awakened early Sunday morning when commandos stormed the president’s home, which is not far from her own. “I was surprised that he was removed like this, but he was a criminal and when I found out he was gone I was thrilled.” Many Hondurans had reached their wits’ end with Mr. Zelaya, who was elected in 2005 by the smallest margin in Honduran electoral history, less than 4 percentage points. As he has drifted to the left, and allied himself with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, his support has plummeted, to somewhere around 30 percent, according to recent polls."

[John Schröder]

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... -quit.html

Honduras: You can't fire me cos I quit



So the OAS goes over and presents a message from all other states that make up the group that tells the usurper Micheletti to desist or face having his country thrown out of the organization. Micheletti's reaction is to resign Honduras from the OAS. As the blog Honduras Resistencia correctly comments

"...the only thing this measure shows is the lack of capacity for dialogue from the coupmongers. The infantile attitude of the spoiled child of "better I leave before they throw me out" offers nothing to the climate of dialogue, concertation and peace that, hypocritically, is their motto.

"The repercussions of this action in the international community are incalculable and as always will affect the poor (first)..."

Put the Honduras Resistencia blog on your RSS, or on your own blogroll if you have a blog. The voice of the people from inside Honduras is the most powerful and it's clear that they are not taking this abuse lying down. Meanwhile, for those morons that still believe what happened in Honduras was legal, some basic facts. If you can give me cogent, democratic reasons for any of these then you have the right to move your madness forward.

* The forced explusion of Zelaya from Honduras was both against the law and against the constitution that the coupmongers say they were protecting.

* The resignation of Zelaya needed to be made to congress. The coupmongers did this by presenting a clearly falsified document to the parliament, one Zelaya says he did not sign and event the US State Dep't has said cannot be taken seriously.

* There was no attempt to impeach Zelaya and remove him by legal methods.

* Since seizing power, the de facto government has suspended several articles of their precious constitution, including articles that protest basic human rights including habeas corpus.

* Troops have been captured on video shooting out bus tires as they tried to transport people to the capital city in order to protest the de facto government.

* The Colon region of Honduras is now under an all-day military controlled curfew, the measure passed to stop residents from travelling to the protests scheduled in the capital today. The announcement came yesterday afternoon and caused panic amongst people had just two hours to buy in provisions before the extended curfew began.

* Media have been silenced with only pro-government news items allowed on TV, radio and newspapers. Pro-Zelaya Canal 36 has been closed down against the will of its director and is guarded by troops. Apparently CNN is "on the payroll of Hugo Chávez" which explains why id has been suppressed inside Honduras.

* The leader of the 3-16 death squad from the 1980's has been appointed as ministerial advisor.

* The mayor of San Pedro Sula has been deposed and arrested. In his place Micheletti has appointed his cousin (this one of many examples, unfortunately).

You think this is normal? Good for society? Legal? Decent? As reader 'GR' wrote in a mail this morning;

Here the media do not talk or write about the Coup d`Etat, or so little.
It was a different story for Iran. We have been inundated with reports about the evil country for weeks.
But why this difference? First explanation that comes to my mind; there is no oil involved. Secondly this could be a "good dictatorship" (pro-Washington) as opposed to a "bad dictatorship" (anti-Washington).

Meanwhile, the whole of the international community...all of them, every single last one of them, have condemned the coup. Micheletti's lies about having places like Taiwan as allies have also been exposed at the highest level.

If you don't like Zelaya, that's fine by me. But why on earth do we have to be pulled back to the 1970's because it suits the self-interests of people who couldn't find Honduras on a map one week ago? You have the whole of the international community on one side, and a military government with a bunch of wingnuts on the other. Gimme a break here........

PS: Greg Weeks at his blog has been covering Honduras in a more scholarly, intellectual way (i.e. better than here), so go see for yourself.

[John Schröder]

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... ma-is.html

Honduras's de facto chancellor: "Obama is a little black man who knows nothing."

Cute huh?


Enrique Ortez (for it is he)

Meet Enrique Ortez, the man given the job of Chancellor of Honduras (basically foreign minister) by the usurper Micheletti. In an interview on Honduras TV last night he said the above about President Obama and a whole lot more. Here's a translation of this report in the El Salvador daily, LaPagina:

Following the Coup D'Etat over José Manuel Zelaya, the de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti has named its new government team, among them the new Chancellor Enrique Ortez Colindres, who in his declarations has made the position of the coupmongers clear.

According to the Argentine newspaper El Clarín, the new "chancellor" Enrique Ortez took part in a journalistic TV program in Honduras where he was asked about the international reactions to the coup d'etat. Ortez said that he gave no importane whatsoever to the OAS and "the other little groups out there", he said (Spanish premier) José Luis Rodrígues Zapatero should "go back to his shoes*" and said that he was not going to talk about (Honduras neighbour) El Salvador "because it's not worth talking about such a small country, where you can't even play football because the ball lands in another country".

But he went for more by defining President Barack Obama of The United States as "that little black man who doesn't know anything".

Keep apologizing for your coupmongers, wingnuts. Cos by gawd, every day there's more to apologize for.

UPDATE: I've had a couple of mails from people about what this Ortez scumbag actually said about Obama, so here goes with a bit more. His precise words in Spanish were "Ese negrito que no sabe nada de nada". I decided to translate this as "that little black man who knows nothing" or "that little black man who doesn't know anything" to stay away from the controversial side of the statement and be as bland as possible. In fact the use of the word "negrito", i.e. the diminuitive of "negro", is very derogatory in nature and overtly racist in context; the kind of racism that would force the resignation of any public figure in the USA (for example). One mailer offered up the translation of "that know-nothing black boy" to get the proper feeling of the message implied by Ortez, and although it's extremely difficult to hit the translatory nail on the head in this case, I'd tend to agree that the offered translation captures the sentiment better than my deliberately bland version. Another way of catching the drift would be "That blackie that knows nothing about anything", or even "That negro...." would work, even the other "N" word would be a fair translation of what he meant.

The bottom line is that Ortez's statement, alongside the equally offensive words he has for Zapatero and the nation of El Salvador (note Revolter's comment below and Google up about the "football war" if you haven't heard about it previously) is dripping with bigotry and hatred.

* a play on words with the word "zapatero", which means "shoemaker" in Spanish

[John Schröder]

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... orrow.html

Zelaya returns to Honduras tomorrow

So reports The BBC and plenty of other news channels.

I'm hoping that it's a peaceful happening, but (take it away Mr. Marley) I know my history and I see where I'm coming from. I can't help thinking about an occasion in 1973 when an exiled president returned under controversial circumstances to his Latin American homeland and the ensuing battle in and around the airport where he landed caused dozens of deaths and hundreds (in fact probably thousands) of injuries. It also marked the beginning of the militarization of the country that ended up with tens of thousands of disappeared citizens.

Read about the 1973 Ezeiza Massacre at this wiki page to start with, then find out more from the links offered. Learn from history and you're not doomed to repeat it.

[John Schröder]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/04?FORM=ZZNR2

No Press Freedom in Post-Coup Honduras

by Medea Benjamin

When José David Ellner Romero heard the soldiers breaking down the door of the Globo radio station on the evening of the June 28 coup, he had a flashback. His mind conjured up the terrible images from the 1980s, when he was arrested by the military, thrown into an underground prison and tortured. "I couldn't stand the thought of going through that hell again, so I got out on the ledge of the windowsill and jumped," Elner told our delegation. His fractured shoulder, ribs and bruises were minor given that he jumped from the third floor.

The owner of the station, Alejandro Villatoro, was thrown to the ground by soldiers who put their guns to his head and demanded to know where the transmitter was. Villatoro also happens to be a deputy in the National Assembly from the governing Liberal Party, but that didn't afford him special treatment. While Villatoro was not a fan of deposed President Mel Zelaya, he believes in free speech and always guaranteed his employees that freedom. After the military invaded and censored his station, he now supports Zelaya's return. "If this new government says it's for democracy, then why is it censoring the press? This is the 21st century," he told us. "We shouldn't have coups and censorship and thugs running the country."

Radio Globo is now back on the air, but one of its most critical programs, Hable como habla, is still banned and the host of the show, Eduardo Maldonado, is in hiding. And every now and then, like when they broadcast an interview with the deposed president, their signal is suddenly blocked.

Reporter Luis Galdamez, who hosts a show on Radio Globo, is back on the air but the military told him not to criticize the new government. He refuses to buckle, but he's scared. "I get death threats every day. I don't even read my text messages anymore, they're so grotesque" he said. On our insistence, he pulled out his iphone and randomly picked from the 64 new messages he had. "We're watching you," the message read. "We know where you live and how many children you have. If you keep talking shit, we're going to hang you and cut out your tongue for talking shit. Remember what happened in the 80s."

Galdamez, a single father, is under tremendous pressure. At night, he sees cars without license plates outside his house, rifles pointing out the window. He wants to leave the country, but doesn't know where he and his children could go.

Another radio station under attack is Radio Progreso in the city of Progreso. Four hours after the coup around 25 soldiers stormed into the studios of the community-based station and closed it down. Hundreds of local people quickly gathered to defend the station and demand that the military leave. Thanks to the tremendous outpouring of support, Radio Progreso opened the next day, Monday, but by Tuesday the soldiers were back again. The station is now transmitting clandestinely.

While the coup leaders say they are bringing back democracy by deposing an autocratic president, their first actions after kidnapping the president and flying him to Costa Rica was to keep the public in the dark. At the time of the coup on June 28, they cut the electricity and when it came back on four hours later, news programs had been replaced by music shows, soap operas, sports and cooking lessons.

By day two, most TV and radio stations were back on the air, but the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) notified cable TV operators of a ban on broadcasting certain international TV stations such as Telesur, Cubavisión Internacional and CNN Español. The pro-Zelaya Channels 36 and 50 were also banned, their studios surrounded by soldiers. Another TV station not allowed to broadcast was Canal 66 Maya TV. "They've taken off the air everyone who does not support the coup," said Santos Gonzalez, a Channel 50 reporter.

The owner of Channel 36, Esdras Amado Lopez, received threats that he would be arrested and went into hiding. A week after the coup, the station was still shut and surrounded by soldiers. The government-operated Channel 8, located inside the heavily guarded presidential palace, was taken off the air but was back in business on Wednesday-transmitting the new government's propaganda. All of the TV stations are now decidedly pro-coup, devoting significant coverage to demonstrations in favor of the new government while ignoring or minimizing mass rallies supporting Zelaya.

The only reason there is not more press censorship in Honduras today is because most of the media-TV, print and radio-is owned by businesspeople who support the coup. Edgardo Dumas, publisher of the large circulation daily La Tribuna and the country's former Defense Minister, claims that rumors about censorship are "totally and absolutely false." In a July 2 interview with W Radio in Bogotá, Colombia, Dumas claimed, "I don't see any limit on freedom of the press. The four newspapers are putting out impartial and true news. No TV or radio station has been interfered with." When asked why CNN was cut, he said it was "misinforming" the public and was "on the payroll of the dictator of Venezuela Hugo Chavez."

The more educated Hondurans are now seeking information from the internet and text messages, but most Hondurans are getting a daily dose of pro-coup propaganda and journalists who oppose the government are doing so at great risk to themselves and their families.

The Honduran people should have the right to know what their new leaders, in the name of democracy, are doing to destroy the very basic foundations of a democratic system-a free press.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org).

[John Schröder]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebo ... theft-ring

Honduras Coup General Was Charged in 1993 Auto Theft Ring

By Al Giordano



General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who appeared on stage this week with Honduran coup “president” Roberto Michiletti, and who ordered the kidnapping and forced deportation of P resident Manuel Zelaya last Sunday, was charged with grand auto theft in 1993, Narco News has learned.

On February 2, 1993, the front page of the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo included this headline: “Eleven Members of the Gang of 13 Go to Prison”:

“Eleven individuals arrested for their alleged participation in the theft of 200 luxury automobiles… were sent to prison yesterday… (including) Colonel Wilfredo Leva Caborrea and Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, accused as alleged participants…”

(Narco News makes the document available for download by press and public here, including two interior pages of the newspaper that report on the case, each mentioning the then-major, now commander of the military coup in Honduras.)

The newspaper report further stated:

“…Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, connected to the theft of luxury cars in the ‘Gang of 13,’ will be imprisoned in the Central Penitentiary (PC, in its Spanish initials).”

Prior to his criminal acts, Vásquez attended the US School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, when the school was located in Panama, but he did not graduate.

It was the same Honduran Congress that endorsed, after the fact, last Sunday’s military coup, and named Roberto Micheletti as the country's "president," that promoted this common car thief as head of the Armed Forces.

Memo to the General: Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear...

[John Schröder]

http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/07/day-7 ... duras.html

Well, it's official! The Organization of American States (OAS) doesn't need to bother suspending Honduras from the OAS because the coup government has decided it is withdrawing from the most important regional body in the Americas. Roberto Micheletti, the dictator who was sworn in as de facto president in Honduras on Sunday, after the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped at gunpoint by masked soldiers and forced into exile, has said, "to hell with you OAS", "we don't need you either!" During Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza's visit to the Central American nation to hand deliver the 72-hour ultimatum demanding the coup government step down or face suspension (the most severe sanction the OAS can impose), coup leader Roberto Micheletti gave a speech before supporters and later issued a formal statement withdrawing Honduras from the OAS, declaring, "we don't have to respond to anybody, we are a sovereign nation". The OAS visit was intended to reach some kind of dialogue or solution to the crisis in Honduras since the coup occurred on early Sunday morning, yet the coup government held tight to its position of power.

On Saturday, the OAS will convene a new meeting to review the results of its failure in Honduras and the decision of the coup government to defiantly ignore the regional body's intentions to resolve the conflict peacefully (if that is even possible at this point). Several presidents, such as Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Rafael Correa of Ecuador will travel to Washington for the special OAS follow up meeting to the Honduran crisis.

President Zelaya had hoped to return Saturday to his elected post, yet the situation in his country, post-coup, is more complicated than originally imagined. Hondurans supporting Zelaya marched cross the nation to the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Friday to send a message to the OAS General Secretary that they are waiting for their legitimate president to return.

If the Obama administration doesn't formally sanction the coup government in Honduras and suspend all relations, as every other country around the world has done so far, a terrible precedent will be set in the hemisphere, allowing for coups that produce "friendly" results for Washington. The United States is pleased with the outcome of Sunday's coup, which deposed a leftist president aligned with countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, but at the same time is not happy with the method - a military coup- to achieve the end goal. However, if Washington continues without firmly condemning the coup government's actions and withdrawal from the OAS, Obama will lose all credibility in Latin America.

[John Schröder]

http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2009/06 ... exile.html

Army General Romeo Vasquez, who was in charge of the operation (despite being officially fired), has an interesting take. He actually says he likes Zelaya personally, and claims taking him out of the country was intended to avoid bloodshed:

''He is an excellent boss. He is a good person. I tried to have a friendship with him, but the friendship ends with duty,'' Vásquez said. "We had to get him out of the area to avoid worse things. We felt that if he stayed here, worse things were going to happen and there would be bloodshed.

I've studied the Latin Americna military for a long time. I do not remember any general making such a statement, discussing personal friendship alongside his perceived duty as he overthrew him. It is another unusual part of a highly unusual story.

http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2009/07 ... oints.html

After quite a few posts and many comments on this blog, not to mention countless articles and blog posts elsewhere, many of them contradictory, several key points have started to stick in my mind about the coup in Honduras.

1. According to the constitution, taking Zelaya out of the country was illegal. Period.

2. Zelaya is charged with trying to amend the constitution to allow re-election of the president (which would be illegal), yet no one has ever provided evidence to that effect. It is illegal to amend seven particular parts of the constitution, but the wording of the proposed vote did not mention any of them.

I do not care if you are positive he wanted to, as that does not constitute evidence. He said before the coup that he would leave office in 2010. Maybe he was lying, maybe not. But it deserves more investigation before overthrowing him. Ousting a president requires more than just assumptions about intent.

3. At various times, commenters have mentioned Venezuela as intruding (such as with the plebiscite materials) but I have never seen the Supreme Court or Attorney General mention evidence.* Until I do, I think Venezuela is irrelevant. That Zelaya liked Hugo Chavez is not relevant to his standing as president. That Chavez says ridiculous things about invasion is not relevant to Zelaya's case either.

4. Zelaya was unpopular (even with his own party) and many people in Honduras are glad he's gone. This is irrelevant to the law. Surprisingly, I have not yet seen anyone make an argument for how a parliamentary system might have mediated the situation better--Honduran political institutions are so weak it might not have mattered.

* It is also troubling for a Supreme Court justice to use the gossipy phrase "some say" as in "some say it was not Zelaya but Chavez governing."