Honduras Coup - Drug Lords' message to South America?

[TonyGosling]

A former businessman who sports a cowboy hat and thick mustache, Zelaya, 56, told Venezuela-based Telesur television station that he was "kidnapped" by soldiers and barely given time to change out of his pajamas. He was later bundled onto a military plane to Costa Rica. Zelaya was to fly on Sunday evening to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, to meet Chavez and other regional leftist leaders.

Even US appears ... to be concerned.
Move against Chavez?

Cuba Condemns Honduras Coup As "Criminal, Brutal"


The Honduran army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya on Monday in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War.

Angry Zelaya supporters took to the streets and set up barricades.
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/protests-erupt-after-coup-in-honduras-281 0235


The dawn coup was strongly condemned by Zelaya's regional ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - who has long championed the left in Latin America. Chavez put his military on alert in case Honduran troops moved against his embassy or envoy there.

US President Barack Obama's administration, the European Union and a string of other foreign governments also voiced backing for Zelaya, who was snatched by troops from his residence and whisked away by plane to Costa Rica.

Zelaya, in office since 2006, had upset the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.

Pro-Zelaya protesters, some of them masked and wielding sticks, set up barricades in the center of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and sealed off road access to the presidential palace.

Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who announced a curfew for Sunday and Monday nights.

Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana exporter with a population of 7 million, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s.

ARMY UPSET

But Zelaya has moved the country further left since taking power and struck up a close alliance with Chavez, upsetting the army and the traditionally conservative rich elite.

Zelaya tried to fire the armed forces chief, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, last week in a dispute over the president's attempt to hold an unofficial referendum on Sunday about changing the constitution to allow presidential terms beyond a single, four-year term. Under the constitution as it stands, Zelaya would have been due to leave office in early 2010.

The country's top court said on Monday it had asked the army to remove Zelaya.

A former businessman who sports a cowboy hat and thick mustache, Zelaya, 56, told Venezuela-based Telesur television station that he was "kidnapped" by soldiers and barely given time to change out of his pajamas. He was later bundled onto a military plane to Costa Rica.

Zelaya was to fly on Sunday evening to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, to meet Chavez and other regional leftist leaders.

[Disco_Destroyer]

Venezuela military on alert over Honduras coup
10 hours 43 mins ago

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090628/twl-venezuela-military-on-alert-ov er-hon-41f21e0.html
Venezuela's president has put his troops on alert over a coup in Honduras.
Hugo Chavez said he would respond militarily if his envoy to the Central American country was kidnapped or killed.

Mr Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army's coup against his leftist ally, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The Honduran army ousted Mr Zelaya and exiled him in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.

Mr Chavez said if his ambassador to Venezuela was killed, or troops entered the Venezuelan Embassy, "that military junta would be entering a defacto state of war. We would have to act militarily... I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert."

US President Barack Obama has expressed deep concern after troops came for Mr Zelaya at dawn and took him away from his residence.

A military plane flew Mr Zelaya to Costa Rica and local media have said he has asked for asylum there.

Police have reportedly fired tear gas at pro-government protesters in the capital and two fighter jets screamed through the sky over the capital.

The impoverished Central American country had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s, but Mr Zelaya's push to change the constitution to allow him another term has split the country's institutions.

Mr Zelaya fired military chief General Romeo Vasquez last week for refusing to help him run an unofficial referendum on extending the four-year term limit on Honduran presidents.

The EU has condemned the coup and Mr Obama has called for calm.

Mr Obama said: "Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

[Disco_Destroyer]

there is one in Bigger Picture you might want to merge

[Thermate911]

Typical Yahoo headline, that, innit?

I'm posting this article in full to save anyone having to go there...
http://www.heritage.org/research/latinamerica/wm2463.cfm

[Thermate911]

and right on cue:-
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-militar y-coup-trained-in-us.html

[QuitTheirClogs]

School of the Americas (SOA)

http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=131544

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC or WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas (SOA; Spanish: Escuela de las Américas) is a United States Department of Defense facility at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia in the United States.

Between 1946 and 2001, the SOA trained more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Some of them became notorious for human rights violations, including generals Leopoldo Galtieri, Rios Montt and Manuel Noriega, dictators such as Bolivia's Hugo Banzer, as well as some of Augusto Pinochet's officers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security _Cooperation

[QuitTheirClogs]

Manuel Zelaya was threatening the drugs trade:

In another move that must have raised eyebrows in Washington, Zelaya declared during a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean anti-drug officials that drug consumption should be legalized to halt violence related to smuggling. In recent years Honduras has been plagued by drug trafficking and so-called maras or street gangs which carry out gruesome beheadings, rapes and eye gouging. “Instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand,” Zelaya said. Rodolfo Zelaya, the head of a Honduran congressional commission on drug trafficking, rejected Zelaya’s comments. He told participants at the meeting that he was “confused and stunned by what the Honduran leader said.”

“The legitimate struggle against drug trafficking…should not be used as an excuse to carry out interventionist policies in other countries.” The struggle against drug smuggling, Zelaya wrote, “should not be divorced from a vigorous policy of controlling distribution and consumer demand in all countries, as well as money laundering which operates through financial circuits and which involve networks within developed countries.”

The Coup in Honduras -- Obama's Real Message to Latin America?
by Nikolas Kozloff - CounterPunch - June 29, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14161

[cem]

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https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/433385.html


Coup in Honduras - Protest Tuesday

Obama's first military coup?


Yesterday, Sunday 28th June, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected left wing President of Honduras, kidnapping and flying him out to Costa Rica. The coup was staged just as the country was preparing to vote in a poll over a new constitution, President Manuel Zelaya had fired the head of the army after the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for the vote. A new president has been sworn in, whilst the legitimate President Zelaya refuses to quit, and has made clear that he continues in his post saying “this was a plot by a very voracious elite, which wants to keep this country in an extreme level of poverty.”

Protest Tuesday 30 June, 5pm outside the Honduran Embassy (115 Gloucester Place London W1U 6JT). Bring placards, banners, whistles and your mates.



more info:


http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 95892&Itemid=1

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/28/18604444.php

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/28/18604428.php


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related links:


http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/06/coup-detat-underway-in-honduras.html

Coup d'etat underway in Honduras: Obama's first coup d'etat (28 June 2008)


http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/800/41204

Honduras: Indigenous people condemn plot (28 June 2009)

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[QuitTheirClogs]

Second day of general strike in Honduras

Global Research, July 27, 2009
Prensa Latina
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14546


TEGUCIGALPA (PL).—The three principal labor unions in Honduras are maintaining a general strike in the state sector for the second day this Friday, supported by road blocks put in place by the popular forces repudiating the coup d’état.

The country remained paralyzed yesterday for several hours due to the closing of several strategic routes by demonstrators, workers leader Juan Barahona informed Prensa Latina.

Barahona, president of the United Workers Federation, described the first day of the strike as a success, taking into account the road blocks and occupation of various state institutions by workers.

The popular actions cut off the country’s principal ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as highways connecting the capital with the northern part of the country.

Meanwhile, thousands of people began to move toward the Nicaraguan border. Constitutional President Manuel Zelaya affirmed yesterday that he is to return to his homeland overland from Nicaragua.

Many people called Radio Globo, a radio station that is keeping its microphones open for the people, to report that they had been victims of repression by the army forces who attempted to halt their movement.

In addition, a new problem has presented itself to the de facto government headed by the entrepreneur Roberto Micheletti: police discontent over delays in paying their wages, which has provoked a strike by some agents from a station in the capital.

Daniel Molina, an official police spokesman, tried to downplay the issue, assuring the press that it was merely related to administrative problems.

Nevertheless, officers interviewed by TV Channel 36 – the only station with a critical stance toward the June 28 coup – said that they will not attend to their duties until their complaints are resolved.

The problems arising in this repressive body, which includes the special Cobras squadron, comes in addition to the regime’s international isolation and the wave of popular condemnation that will completes its 27th day this Friday.

The leaders of the National Front against the Coup stated last night that the popular struggle will continue until the coup leaders are defeated and constitutional order and Zelaya are restored.

During the blocking of the northern exit of the Panamericana Highway in the capital yesterday, the crowd was urged over loudspeakers to leave in convoys for the border with Nicaragua to await Zelaya.

[QuitTheirClogs]

Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

By John Perkins - 7 August 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14862

In writing my new book Hoodwinked (Random House, Nov 2009 publication date), I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras's minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala's democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti's president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya's.

I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, "Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a 'leftist revolt' in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people."

[cem]

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http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/honduran-president-zela ya-israeli-mercenaries-are-planning-to-assassinate-me/

Honduran President Zelaya: Israeli mercenaries are planning to assassinate me


1) Honduran President Zelaya: Israeli mercenaries are planning to assassinate me (24 September 2009)
2) Brazil Calls on Security Council to Ensure Security of Embassy in Honduras (25 September 2009)

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http://www.miamiherald.com/1506/story/1248828.html


excerpts from: They're torturing me, Honduras' Manuel Zelaya claims

by Frances Robles, Miami Herald, 24 September 2009

[outsider]

'Zelaya: Open Letter to the American People':
https://unac.papillonweb.net/2018/01/01/zelaya-open-letter-to-the-amer ican-people/
JANUARY 1, 2018 UNAC EDITOR

'...People of the United States:

For the past century, the owners of the fruit companies called our country “Banana Republic” and characterized our politicians as “cheaper than a mule” (as in the infamous Rolston letter).

Honduras, a dignified nation, has had the misfortune of having a ruling class lacking in ethical principles that kowtows to U.S. transnational corporations, condemning our country to backwardness and extreme poverty.

We have been subject to horrible dictatorships that have enjoyed U.S. support, under the premise that an outlaw is good for us if he serves transnational interests well. We have reached the point that today we are treated as less than a colony to which the U.S. government does not even deign to appoint an ambassador. Your government has installed a dictatorship in the person of Mr. Hernández, who acts as a provincial governor–spineless and obedient toward transnational companies, but a tyrant who uses terror tactics to oppress his own people. Certain sectors of Honduran private industry have also suffered greatly from punitive taxes and persecution.

You, the people of the United States, have been sold the idea that your government defends democracy, transparency, freedom and human rights in Honduras. But the State Department and Heide Fulton, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires who is serving as de facto Ambassador to Honduras, are supporting blatant electoral fraud favoring Mr. Hernández, who has repeatedly violated the Honduran Constitution and (as noted by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) basic human rights. He is responsible for the scandalous looting of USD $350 million from the Honduran Social Security Institute and while he lies to you shamelessly that he is fighting drug cartels, he has destroyed the rule of law by stacking the Supreme Court with justices loyal to him.....'