Hossam el-Hamalawy's Library tagged Honduras → View Popular

What are the Israelis doing here?
Until now what we know is that their mission is to prepare the Armed Forces and the police to aggressively and violently dissuade the demonstrations, by committing crimes of a selective nature in order to build fear, staged terror, and achieve a dismantling of the resistance. Other actions they are undertaking involve certain employees of private security firms putting on police uniforms and acting aggressively against the demonstrators. The police have already sort of been trained to dissuade demonstrations and are a bit fearful about attacking the demonstrators so that it's as if a bit of their human rights training lingers. On the other hand, the security guards are being paid double and their immunity is guaranteed. These are the practices that they are developing, using the experience of the conflict in Palestine and after having put into practice some of these actions in Colombia.
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- Another strategy is that the Israelis are training a group to instill in people's minds the idea that those of us who are leaders in this movement have a terrorist past or that we're tied to the same structure as the police. That's what somebody told me yesterday who was trying to put up posters, sticking them on walls in order to create distrust in the part of the population that still lacks awareness about the leaders in this country. According to them, they want the people to think that way; it's a historic strategy in Latin America, and later they try to justify the death of certain leaders as a result of this contradiction.

25 Jul 09

BBC NEWS | Americas | Zelaya stages Honduras 'road show'

news.bbc.co.uk/...8169101.stm - Preview

Honduras

One Gallup poll in 2008 indicated his approval rating had slumped to 25%.
But that statistic might be misleading.
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- Mr Zelaya has long said he wants to represent the poorest Hondurans who have no political voice, and are presumably not telephoned by pollsters.

granma.cu - Second day of general strike in Honduras

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Honduras Strikes Workers Unions Zelaya

21 Jul 09

Challenging coup in Honduras|25Jul09|Socialist Worker

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Honduras LatinAmerica DirtyWar Coup USA Imperialism

The government that emerged from the coup is supported by the judiciary, the armed forces, the Church, and the employers' organisations – and that fact tells its own eloquent story.
The immediate cause of the coup was Zelaya’s decision to hold a referendum that the could lead to a change in the constitution. He had also raised the minimum wage some months earlier. And perhaps most importantly, he had begun to appear at the side of Hugo Chavez at the meetings of ALBA, the Latin American regional organisation promoted by the Venezuelan president.
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- Venezuela is supplying cheap oil to Honduras, 60 percent of whose people live in poverty, so Zelaya had reason to be grateful. But Zelaya is no radical in the Chavez or Morales mould. He is a liberal elected to the presidency via the system of alternating power with the conservatives that has operated in the country for decades.
- The 1982 constitution – which Zelaya wanted to change – was passed under the close scrutiny of the US ambassador in Honduras at the time, John Negroponte. He is a sinister figure, who later became US ambassador to Iraq after the invasion, and then Bush’s National Security Adviser.
- US military aid to Honduras increased from $4m to $77m on his watch, and the US military base at Soto Cano is his legacy.
- It is that connection that probably explains the Honduran coup. It clearly took President Obama by surprise. At first he added his voice to the Organisation of American States and the United Nations in condemning the coup and demanding the return of Zelaya.
- Given Honduras’s absolute dependence on the US that should have been the end of the matter. But Zelaya has still not been able to return and representatives of the new “de facto” government of Roberto Micheletti have visited Washington under the auspices of Hillary Clinton and been well received by, among others, ex-presidential candidate John McCain.
- At the same time Clinton has set up negotiations between Micheletti and Zelaya. This has given the new regime legitimacy it had no right to and delayed the return of Zelaya that the mass movement continues to demand.
- Negroponte, his equally sinister colleague Otto Reich – George Bush’s sometime adviser on Latin America – and John McCain now reappear on the scene. All of them have worked closely with a Venezuelan lawyer called Robert Carmona-Borjas who was one of the architects of the failed 2002 coup against Chavez.
- McCain in particular has been campaigning against Zelaya because of his objection to the privatisation of Honduras’s mass media. And both he and Reich speak for the interests of the giant media corporation AT&T.
- Honduras itself is not very significant strategically. But if the Bush clique can push Obama into negotiation with the new right wing regime there, with what seems like the willing help of Hillary Clinton, this will lay the foundation for a new US strategy in the region – and for its increasing involvement in Latin American affairs.

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Reuters recognizes the coup in Honduras

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Reuters Honduras Media A7a

"Honduras' interim government on Sunday rejected a mediator's proposals for solving a political crisis in the country triggered by the June 28 military coup." Interim government? Since when?

10 Jul 09

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: It is official: the New York Times does not recognize the elected president of Honduras

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NYT Media A7a Honduras

07 Jul 09

BBC NEWS | Americas | Why Honduras matters to Chavez

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Honduras Chavez Left Venezuela

The two leaders are allies, although Mr Chavez did not, as some have suggested, fund Mr Zelaya's election campaign.
In fact, the two had not met until after Mr Zelaya came to power in 2005 on a very different platform to the left-wing, populist policies of Mr Chavez.
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- Yet over the past four years, President Zelaya has moved closer to Mr Chavez and something of the flamboyant style of the Venezuelan leader may have rubbed off on the former landowner.