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Honduras: There Will Be Blood
What I'm able to decipher is that Zelaya will return to Honduras this afternoon. The Archbishop of Honduras urged him not to return, because there would be a bloodbath. Some officials in the OAS are also urging him not to return for the same reason. Personally, I would urge him not to return. But Mel says he's going to return, and thousands of his supporters are trying to get to the airport in Tegucigalpa to protect him. Kirschner of Argentinia and Correa of Ecuador allegedly will accompany him, and perhaps other Latin American presidents as well. Are they safe? I don't think so.
I'm not going to speculate, it just looks very ominous to me. Troops have been deployed all day Saturday to block the Zelaya supporter from reaching the airport.
Surely Kirschner and Correa will travel with security personnel. What happens when it appears that these Presidents are threatened? Damn.
I'm not going to speculate, it just looks very ominous to me. Troops have been deployed all day Saturday to block the Zelaya supporter from reaching the airport.
Surely Kirschner and Correa will travel with security personnel. What happens when it appears that these Presidents are threatened? Damn.
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Add to this that Honduras left OAS only a few hours before the OAS voted to suspend it (and just a month before they said welcome to Cuba).
July 5, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, we know that Lalo (see my previous post). OAS did not accept the resignation because the present government of Honduras are outlaws.
July 5, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Update:
Two planes are leaving Washington. One, bound for Tegucigalpa, will carry el Presidente and UN General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto (a UN plane, perhaps?) The second plane is bound for San Salvador, and will carry Kirschner, Correa and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo.
On the ground, the Coup leaders have changed strategy, and they say now that they will not allow the plane to land. The airport is surrounded by an estimated 200,000 Zelaya supporters who vow to protect him.
July 5, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
This has the mark of the CIA all over it. Plus ca change plus ca ne change pas!
July 5, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Update II:
Coup controlled Channel 10 reported that Zelaya's plane changed course and landed in San Salvador. However, reporters at Comalapa airport in San Salvador report that neither plane has landed there.
July 5, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Update III:
Apparently Zelaya's plane has just recently left Washington, which would put it in Honduras airspace around 6:00 pm EST. Looks like Channel 10 was untruthing again. And it looks like more than two airplanes took off. Mel's plane, the Presidents' plane, and two planeloads of journalists:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090705/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup
July 5, 2009 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Update IV:
Coup President Micheletti has announced on National TV that Nicaraguan Troops are amassing on the border. Nicaraguan Army spokesman says that it totally false. But there's a backgrounder: Nicaragua's OAS ambassador Denis Moncada claimed that de facto government Honduras is manufacturing evidence of Nicaraguan, Cuban and Venezuelan meddling, including the coup's plans to carry out attacks on its own citizens, army and police, and blame it on outside interference.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7536
Meanwhile, President Zelaya has ordered the Honduran Air Force, of which he is Commander and Chief, to stand down and allow his plane to land at Tegucigalpa.
Radio Globo has reported that some Zelaya supporters have made it to the airport, are on the run ways, and warning shots have been fired by the military. Also Radio Globo is reporting that the support crowd has swollen to 500,000.
July 5, 2009 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
that the support crowd has swollen to 500,000.
It does not look like anything like that number in the video being played on BBC World, and now CNN, unless they could all run very very fast. Both networks are using the description "thousands of protestors." That's not to say that 500,000 might have wanted to be there, or were there in heart, but perhaps discouraged by presence of troops.
July 5, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Micheletti has said that the Nicaraguan troop movements are "not a big deal" but that the Nicaraguan government should be aware that they are being watched and should not take any provocative actions.
Also, Zelaya is no longer commander in chief of the Air Force.
What I don't understand is: if, as it appears, a big issue undermining Zelaya is a perception of his facilitating Chavez' interference in Honduras; why the hell is Zelaya trying to fly in on a Venezuelan aircraft while Chavez gives speeches filled with braggadocio about the Venezuelan pilots who are on a mission to "restore democracy" on Telesur? Isn't that just escalating the conflict? Surely a less hostile patron could have stepped up if the purpose was peaceful reconciliation.
This liveblog over on Kos has been pretty decent. They just updated with reports of shots fired and two dead, and Zelaya is currently in Honduran airspace trying to land.
My hopes are now for the safety of ALL Hondurans - regardless of their political stance. It's just an academic discussion for us, it is fast becoming potentially disastrous for the Hondurans.
July 5, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the update - I was about to add that. It was at the south end of the airport, and soldiers fired on the supporters.
The Coup is illegal, khb999. There is not one single government on this planet that believes it is legal. Even Uribe's right wing Colombian government thinks it's illegal. Only wingnuts inside and outside Honduras think it is legal. Hell, even the Honduran Army's top lawyer said it was illegal. Obviously, Zelaya is still Commander and Chief.
July 5, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
My impression is the military was speaking simply about the legality of the decision to exile him vs. taking him into custody. I haven't heard the military assert that stripping him of the presidency was illegal.
also ... from the liveblog I linked to above:
Wonder what the next move will be. Some have speculated a diversion to an Air Force base.
July 5, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, that was what the military lawyer was talking about. The kidnapping and deportation IS the coup, and it was illegal under the Honduran constitution. If they had arrested Mel on legal charges, with the right to trial etc. it wouldn't have been a coup. But that would require that they had a legal case against the President, which they obviously didn't.
July 5, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's somewhat less obvious to me. Honduran law seems a bit screwy. I'd be more inclined to agree with Zelaya's position had he not formed a mob and recovered the confiscated ballots by force - how can that possibly not be illegal? It also seems undemocratic to *order* all government employees to participate in his referendum - and attempting force the military to participate as well.
Anyhow. I'm certainly happy this didn't go as badly as it could have. Apparently some business leaders are pushing for a negotiated settlement. So maybe this can resolve without another violent drama.
This crap makes me dislike Chavez even more - he seems to be frothing at the mouth to foment a violent uprising. The people in Honduras are in danger and he's thumping his chest and engaging in braggadocio - hardly acting like a statesman. IMO, his manipulations as getting to be as bad as the CIA's.
(BTW: thanks for keeping up on this - for whatever reason it doesn't seem to be creating the same level of coverage as Iran).
July 5, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're welcome, kgb. As for the thought you have raised concerning coverage, I think there's sort of a negative feed-back loop going on. Americans generally don't indicate much interest in Latin America, in large part because of low press coverage, and the press coverage is low because the marketing surveys reflect the low public interest. I know that during the horrible killings in Guatemala in the early eighties, there was not one U.S. press center in Central America - the nearest was Miami. Reporters regularly went on government sponsored junkets, and didn't really witness what was going on.
On the other hand, we now have TeleSur, part of the Bolivarian Alternative, aggressively covering all of Mexico, Central and South America, and the Carribean in Spanish, and it becomes THE authority. CNN espanol is right behind them, but TeleSur is certainly the Al Jeezera of the hemisphere. That means Latin America is being blasted with the Bolivarian message. To the victor go the spoils, eh?
July 5, 2009 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
This crap makes me dislike Chavez even more
In my experience, most people who actually follow any news story involving him in detail comes away with this opinion, I've known even lefties of strong socialist, if not full communist, bent to come to that opinion. They start out real sympathetic to the man and his fans and the ideal he represents, and then learn some unglamorous realities. He's kinda like Castro that way, a good example of "the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend." I visualize the other, more sane members of the club secretly thinking of him as a real pain in the butt, where it's necessary to put up with his egotisical "I am Simon Bolivar reincarnated" b.s. and sometimes counterproductive shenanigans because he's the one with the power of major oil.
July 5, 2009 11:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chavez to Telsur: Evil Yanquis are supporting them, but Obama's not one of them.
July 6, 2009 1:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Update:
He's trying to land, but the bastards have the runway blocked with military vehicles.
Plan B?
July 5, 2009 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll wrap this up. It's confirmed that Mel's plane is going to Managua, and Kirschner, Correa and Lugo are in San Salvador.
The two deaths are semi-confirmed. Some sites are reporting one death and several injuries. There are pics of one victim - not very pretty:
http://twitpic.com/9g17m (unconfirmed, but the person in the next, from NYT, is obviously the same)
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/06/world/06honduras02ready.html
What can you say? It's a good thing there weren't more. If you watch the TeleSur footage of the incident, it's clear that most of the soldiers were trying NOT to hit anyone. A lot of lead was flying.
July 5, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
*Attention sports fans*
Not being one of you, I just ran across this by accident in a search of google news for Honduras:
The United States, 22-0-1 in group play in the (Concacaf) Gold Cup, will play Honduras on Wednesday in Washington
The played Haiti while all the commotion was going on. Apparently political power comes and goes, but the soccer show must go on.
July 6, 2009 1:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
LA Times summary of the day, filed from Tegucigalpa, by Tracy Wilkinson and Alex Renderos:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-honduras6-2009jul06,0,1801880.story
NY Times summary of the day, filed from Tegucigalpa, by Marc Lacey and Ginger Thompson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/world/americas/06honduras.html
Both have photo slideshows.
July 6, 2009 1:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cuba's Granma news service's spin on it, filed from Tegucigalpa, July 5; no Chavez style pandering to Obama here:
July 6, 2009 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Granma from Washington July 5, is pushing what the Nicaraguan ambassador, Denis Moncada, said to the OAS: Honduran coup leaders’ plots against other countries revealed, that “There are macabre plots aimed at accusing the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba of promoting an armed intervention in Honduras from my country”....
July 6, 2009 1:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
If one would just compare the reporting on the unrest in Iran, with all the covert support via US technology and the illegal coup now in Honduras, it would be immediately obvious that "democracy" and the "rule of law" do not apply equally to all peoples.
July 6, 2009 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is completely reminiscent of the old CIA style of subversion in Latin America, and the Honduran military are affiliated with and trained in the School of the Americas. Change indeed! And it seems there will be blood:
" “There are macabre plots aimed at accusing the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba of promoting an armed intervention in Honduras from my country,” the diplomat emphasized.
He noted that via their control of the media the coup perpetrators are trying to generate a state of opinion unfavorable to the mentioned countries and to involve them in bloody actions that could take place in the next few hours.
Moncada refuted the notion that the Honduran people were being supplied with any kind of arms, or that such supplies had even been considered.
He affirmed that, on the contrary, the instigators of that plot are those who are distributing weapons to shady forces loyal to the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti with the aim of producing a bloodbath to coincide with the return to the country of the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya.
According to Moncada’s exposé, the coup leaders want to create a point of focus to distract the world from viewing the mass struggle of the Honduran people for the restoration of constitutional order.
The Nicaraguan representative’s revelation coincides with a strange statement in Tegucigalpa from the Honduran cardinal, Oscar Andrés Rodríguez, who warned today that a “precipitate return” to Honduras by President Zelaya, “could unleash a bloodbath.”
The prelate did not condemn the coup faction as possibly being responsible for such a bloodbath, nor did he condemn the repression of the people.
“It was the language of guards and not of souls,” the legitimate representative of Honduras to the OAS affirmed."
July 6, 2009 3:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad you posted that, Qwerty. I don't know what to make of Moncada's statements. On the one hand it seems like he's talking about 1980, but on the other, as you point out, there's that training component that must inform the coup leaders to a certain degree.
But here's something with an edge of certainty to it. Several of the photos I have seem from Honduras show the firemen hosing down the demonstrators with red dye. I believe this practice goes back to the 1960s in Venezuela, used on the student demonstrators who were so active then. The follow-up was house to house searches and arrests of people with the red dye on their skin, as it took several days to wear off. The Honduran police/military wouldn't use the dye without the follow-up in the works...we're talking about knocks on the door in the middle of the night.
July 6, 2009 4:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cal Thomas' recent column is titled "The Honduras Predicament"
http://www.calthomas.com/index.php?news=2638
It's not really about Honduras at all. Thomas uses "Honduras" for a hit piece on President Obama. But I'll bet most of the folks who read it believe it was about Honduras. It also says some naughty things about President Chavez, which Thomas also uses to hit Obama. If Cal Thomas was intellectually honest, he would have titled the piece "Obama is a bad boy" or something, and support his thesis with examples of Obama's handling of Honduras, and/or Chavez.
Equally, many are using Honduras as a hit piece on Hugo Chavez. Again, if you want to be intellectually honest you should should put the horse before the cart and write your "Chavez is a bad boy" piece and support your thesis with Honduras, not the other way around.
Those are just two examples of writing about something else under the pretense that you are writing about Honduras. As a discursive practice, I think is rather dangerous. This sort of writing has all the earmarks of propaganda, for example, but I think that the real danger is that it is an impediment to clear thinking.
Here's an example of unclear thinking. In all the volumnes that have been written recently about Honduras recently, there is no fact or evidence to support the notion that Manuel Zelaya was seeking to extend his term in office. But there was an assumption that he was seeking this, and that assumption is based on the fact that Hugo Chavez has taken action to extend his term limits. I think this is exactly what the coup leaders assumed, and they assumed this due to their anti-Chavez pathology. This is semantic disease, really. Meanings that were once clear and distinct from one another fuse together into generalities under the weight of national security pseudo-ideologies.
Mel likes Hugo; Hugo likes term limit extensions; therfore Mel likes term limit extensions and Raul Castro is a nasty old man anyway.
July 6, 2009 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink