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Military Coup Against Democratically Elected President of Honduras

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Kwame, Jun 29, 2009.

  1. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Another point of view.
    ********
    Contrary to most media accounts, President Manuel Zelaya wasn't seeking to abolish term limits.
    Almendares reported that in spite of massive repression on the part of the military leaders, "We have almost a national strike for workers, people, students and intellectuals, and they are organized in a popular resistance-run pacific movement against this violation of the democracy. … There are many sectors involved in this movement trying to restitute the constitutional rights, the human rights."

    Rafael Alegría, a leader of Via Campesina in Honduras, told Telesur, "The resistance of the people continues and is growing; already in the western part of the country, campesinos are taking over highways, and the military troops are impeding bus travel, which is why many people have decided to travel to Tegucigalpa on foot. The resistance continues in spite of the hostility of the military patrols."

    A general strike was also organized by various social and labor sectors in the country. Regarding the strike, Alegría said it is happening across state institutions and "progressively in the private sector."

    The 4th Army Battalion from the Atlántida Department in Honduras has declared that it will not respect orders from the Micheletti government, and the major highways of the country are blocked by protesters, according to a radio interview with Alegría.

    http://www.alternet.org/world/14102...sm_is_what_provoked_military_violence/?page=1
     
  2. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    Wow, great articles glynch, thanks. According to those articles, the President wasn't doing anything undemocratic and it also looks like the ousted President in Honduras definitely has the popular support of the people. This is getting very interesting.
     
  3. Mathloom

    Mathloom Shameless Optimist

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    There's no oil or potential for nuclear power in this country. That's all that matters.
     
  4. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    No, Democracy Matters:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. orbb

    orbb Member

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    That is exactly how it works. You dont start a referendum explicitly stating you want to remove term limits. You just ask for a broad sweeping constitutional amendment that you know will include removing term limits. All that remains is to make sure the attendees are favorably disposed towards you. Not hard to do at all.

    It would be political suicide for any western government to support a coup, even if it is legal.... otherwise everyone knows Zelaya f***d up. I'm betting no one is really going to put teeth into saving a rogue president.
     
  6. Mathloom

    Mathloom Shameless Optimist

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    Meh. The risk of corruption is high but the impact is LOW on the risk matrix.
     
  7. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    So you're cool with military coups. Thanks! We know where you stand.
     
  8. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Well the people have the right to change the constitution. The United States was a democracy before approx 1945 when we changed the constitution to not allow the president to run over and over. France, Britain and other countries that currently allow this are democracies.

    The latin American elites often times numbering a mere handful of families have a history of responding to any challenge like they just did in Honduras. The conservatives in the US has a history of supporting such corrupt elites. If Bush was in I think we would already seen Micheletti accepted and we would be offering to aid him in suppressing those resisting. I am hopeful, but I would not be surprised to see the Obama government working behind the scenes to do just that.
     
  9. glynch

    glynch Member

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    It is encouraging is that the mainstream US media is starting to allow the news as shown above to break through. I read an AP article in the print Chronicle that shows the other side. The original story about Miochelleti and the Honduran S.Ct. having some sort of legal argument for their right wing coup is being contested.

    It is interesting is that Zelaya is from a relatively moderate to conservative party and was a businessman, rancher and logger who no one expected to act so poppulist. Zelaya did such enfuriating things as raise the minimum wage by 60%.

    Chavez and the Left in South and Central America are putting real pressure on the US to try to actually help the majority in Latin America or risk being shut out of the action.
     
    #49 glynch, Jul 2, 2009
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2009
  10. Mathloom

    Mathloom Shameless Optimist

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    What? lol How did you get that?

    I'm just discussing the reason why this issue hasnt received the kind of press it deserves.

    When I say "Meh", I mean that it is "Meh" to everyone because there is no oil or nuclear power. That's a horrible thought to me, but in reality, this is why it is not receiving the attention it deserves.

    The word democracy has really taken a beating thanks to it being thrown around attached to alterior (sp?) motives.
     
  11. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    Oh okay, thanks for clearing that up. Do you condemn this military coup or not?
     
  12. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    I might have to withdraw my earlier condemnation - I'm not sure what you're doing with this information. Does it mean I have to subscribe to a magazine? I didn't realize what I was getting myself into when I started condemning. Now all I know is that I'm on the condemning list and I'm scared.
     
  13. Oski2005

    Oski2005 Member

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    I don't believe in just snatching a President and kicking him out, but there was definitely something fishy going on there when the ballots to be used in this referendum were printed in Venezuela where Chavez seems to be setting himself up to be in office for life and slowly chipping away all checks against him.
     
  14. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    Lol, I'm just trying to see if people are going to be consistent and apply the same standards across the board when it comes democracy, human rights, etc..
     
  15. juicystream

    juicystream Member

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    It certainly would be nice to have all the facts 100% certain. Who knows if this was good or bad for Honduras? In the end military coups usually lead to worse, more authoritarian leaders, but this was coup led by the Nation's congress and courts. At least it hasn't led to war at this point.
     
  16. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    Very interesting article here:

    http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4579

    Honduras: Latin America's Media Battle Continues
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    July 2nd 2009, by Nicolas Kozloff

    Read or listen to the mainstream media these days and you get the impression that Sunday's coup in Honduras was all about a simple disagreement over the constitutionality of presidential term limits. But as the coup unfolds it's becoming clear that the authorities want something more: the restoration of Honduras's conservative political order and an end to President Manuel Zelaya's independent foreign policy which had reached out to leftist countries like Cuba and Venezuela.

    As part of their effort to consolidate power officials have moved quickly to restrain the free flow of information, in particular by cracking down on progressive leaning media. Only TV stations sympathetic to the newly installed coup regime have been left alone while others have been shut down. The climate of repression is similar to what we have seen elsewhere in Latin America in recent years. Specifically, there are eerie parallels to the April, 2002 coup in Venezuela when the briefly installed right wing government imposed a media blackout to further its own political ends.

    Perhaps somewhat tellingly, the Honduran army cut off local broadcasts of the Telesur news network which is sponsored by leftist governments including Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba. Adriana Sivori, Telesur's correspondent in Tegucigalpa, was in her hotel room speaking on the telephone to her network when ten soldiers arrived with rifles drawn. The men unplugged Telesur's editing equipment in an effort to halt the network's coverage of protests in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

    When a soldier lightly slapped Sivori's hand so she would hang up, the journalist grew alarmed. "They're taking us prisoner at gunpoint," she remarked. Sivori along with producer María José Díaz and cameraman Larry Sánchez were taken to an immigration office in a military caravan. There, the authorities beat them and demanded to see their Honduran visas. Shortly later, the journalists were released. However, the authorities have warned Telesur journalists to cease transmitting images in support of Zelaya or face further detention.

    What is so important about Telesur in particular? In my latest book, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008) I devote considerable attention to the rise of the new station, itself a product of South America's stormy political battles and contested media landscape. First launched in 2005, Telesur represents Venezuela's effort to counteract the power of the right wing media establishment which played a role in the short-lived April coup of 2002 against the Chávez government. Seen as South Ameica's answer to Al Jazeera and CNN, the station has been spearheaded by Andrés Izarra, up until recently the station's president. A rising star in the Chávez administration, Izarra got his start as a journalist at NBC and CNN. Disgusted by right wing media coverage of the 2002 coup, he started to work for Telesur.

    Since its launch, Telesur has given CNN en Español a run for its money and now has slick production values. Station Director Aram Aharonian says the news industry has gone through a dumbing down since the Gulf War. Journalism, Aharonian remarked to me during our interview in Caracas, had become instantaneous but also devoid of any investigation, analysis or debate. Telesur, by contrast, was "rescuing" journalistic ethics by providing context and opinions about goings-on. While you can expect to see more critical coverage of the Iraq War on Telesur than most mainstream U.S. media outlets, Aharonian says Telesur is independent and doesn't have any particular political axe to grind.

    Such assurances aside, the conservative establishment views Telesur as a threat. When the station announced a content-sharing agreement with Al Jazeera in 2006, Connie Mack, a right-wing Republican congressman from Florida, remarked that the decision was designed to create a "global television network for terrorists." In light of Sivori's recent detention, one may surmise that the Honduran coup regime agrees with Mack's hysterical views.

    In Latin America, media has become a crucial fault line in the battle between the pro-U.S. elite and the incipient left "Pink Tide" which has been sweeping into power. In Honduras, the coup regime has not only gone after Telesur but also Channel 8, the official broadcaster of the Zelaya government. The moves prompted Venezuela's official Bolivarian News Agency as well as Cuba's Granma newspaper to issue formal letters of protest. Meanwhile a climate of fear and intimidation reigns throughout the capital, with networks providing scant coverage of political protest. Soldiers are reportedly guarding local television and radio stations.

    In recent years Zelaya had been embroiled in a war with the conservative private media in the country. Now that the President is gone, these outlets have rallied in defense of the coup regime. Honduras' two leading radio networks, Radio América and Radio HRN, have urged Hondurans to resume their normal routine and not to protest. Even as hundreds of protesters rallied at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to demand Zelaya's reinstatement, radio and TV stations made little reference to the demonstrations. Instead of reporting on political goings-on, the Honduran media outlets played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.

    It's reminiscent of the April, 2002 coup against Chávez when conservative media station Venevisión refused to cover pro-Chávez demonstrations and preempted its normal news coverage with a day-long marathon of American films such as Lorenzo's Oil, Nell, and Pretty Woman. Venevisión, which substituted nonstop vitriolic anti-Chávez propaganda for its regular programming in the days leading up to the coup, was owned by billionaire media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, himself a leading figure in the Chávez opposition who reportedly bankrolled the opposition's takeover of government.

    In Venezuela, conservative coup leaders misjudged the popular mood. Amidst street protests, Chávez was reinstated in two days. In the wake of the coup Venevisión began to moderate its strident tone and the Venezuelan President went on the political offensive by spurring the creation of Telesur as well as other media outlets. If you flip the TV dial today you can still watch rabidly anti-Chávez stations like Globovisión, though the playing field has been leveled considerably. In addition to Telesur Venezuelans can also watch Venezolana de Televisión, a government channel, as well as state sponsored Vive which provides discussion on Venezuelan culture and politics. Chávez has his own TV talk show, Aló, Presidente, and there are dozens of pro-government papers including a tabloid called VEA.

    The antagonistic media environment in Venezuela is echoed in other left-leaning countries in South America. Indeed, the newly elected Pink Tide regimes have taken on the private media with a vengeance: in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has proposed that the constitution disallow bankers from financing media outlets. According to him, Ecuadoran television is controlled by powerful interests and the Association of Television Channels is nothing more than a "bankers club." In Bolivia, indigenous President Evo Morales launched a weekly radio show called The People Are News. The show airs for two hours each week on the Patria Nueva (New Fatherland) state network.

    If Zelaya returns to power in Honduras, which seems likely, then we could see the government take on the power of private TV, radio and the like more significantly, perhaps by emphasizing more state media. It will be merely the latest chapter in the ongoing information war between the conservative, globalizing elite and more left-leaning leaders who are coming to power throughout the region.

    Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006) and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008). Follow his blog at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com/
     
  17. Sacudido

    Sacudido Member

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    It isn't so hard to find the true intent here. Since Zelaya was unable to extend his presidency through their constitution as written, he tried to use a backdoor approach. His ultimate goal is to be a mini-Chavez, in my opinion. Why on earth would he need to force this issue 6 months from the next election, and why else were the ballots printed in Venezuela?

    In any case, I am in favor of not letting anymore of these little socialist tin-pot regimes take hold anywhere. So in this case, in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, good for the coup leaders.
     
  18. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Good to see you supporting the small wealthy elite. May I ask if you yourself are elite or just identify with them?
     
  19. Oski2005

    Oski2005 Member

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    So the only answer to the "wealthy elite" is to have one person fully running a country at his whim with no checks to his power?
     
  20. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    If you didn't, apparently, have a layer of concrete surrounding your brain, you would find your answer in my first post in this thread. Sorry, but the more you huff and puff, the less interested I am in replying in a fashion you seem to believe fits your needs.

    I think the comment above is absurd. If you paid the least attention to what other members have posted in the past about just such issues as this, you wouldn't make an assumption that some might find insulting, and not worthy of a reply. You should be happy. You got some replies regardless.
     

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