Honduras government will do what needs to be done to keep order

If Zelaya followers continue to block, obstruct and otherwise bring violence to the Honduran people, there is little doubt that the police and military will respond to restore order.

Another perspective in English in Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/honduras/
and Honduras This Week:
http://www.hondurasthisweek.com/

silly question!

You answer your own question with this: "that Canadian companies such as Gildan Activewear and GoldCorp have important interests in the country"

Why should anyone be surprised if a conservative government supports business regardless of the consequences?

After all they do their level best to suppress workers here too.

Rather than some conservative Miami Herald

You might try http://hondurasnews.com/. It paints a different picture.

The BS is just too obvious

What a dumb line of logic, jnewcombe. All that is required to "restore order" is to reinstate Zelaya.

There is more than enough accepted evidence that the coup itself is illegal.

Memo to Minister Kent

Your New World Order is unravelling. Your present attitude is just hastening the process.

Once upon a time

I was proud to be a Canadian.

No longer

Peter Kent

Didn't he use to be a journalist, you know one of these guys who went out in search of truth, who told the stories of the downtrodden and the oppressed. Whatever happened.to make him a puppet for the corporate media. There are enough independent news sources that you don't have to rely on the Wall Street Journal for your interpretation. What is it about a Reform/Tory that can blind them to all oppression as long as the corporate friends are happy.

Saddle up the posse!

A new generation of gringos prepare and call for invasions of Latin American countries.

Always in the name of 'right'.

How soon they forget. I wonder what Phil Ochs would say. I just can't get his beautiful and magnificent lament, "The marines have landed in Santo Domingo" out of my mind. I can hear it now.

Hondarus Dud

Wasn't Peter Kent known as the "Scud Stud" during the first Iraq war?

I guess we can now call him the "Honduras Dud" for his gutless defense of democracy and a fairly elected democratic president. We can see his lips move and we also know that Harper is the guy pulling the strings.

Canadians should be ashamed.

cghzd

Nope! That was his brother arthur...but Honduras Dud works for me...

Information & Action

Thanks Tyee for more great coverage. It has been so frustrating how much misinformation we've seen with this crisis in Honduras...that the de facto gov't is being democratic (clearly this is not the case)....that Zelaya was attempting to extend his term (impossible when the vote for constitutional change happens on your last day in office)...

Even though most mainstream English media is ignoring the extent of abuses...the good news is that Amnesty International has released a report on the human rights abuses under the de facto gov't:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR37/004/2009/en

For more great coverage on the situation in Honduras sign up for Rights Action's mailing list at: www.rightsaction.org

If you understand Spanish a great resource is Telesur: http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/afondo/especiales/Golpe_de_estado_honduras/

It is important that we, as Canadians, continue to hold Peter Kent (and our own MPs) accountable. Whatever your opinion on the situation - write to them & let them know what you think Canada should do!

None of our business, thanks

Curious that the article glosses over Zelaya's attempts to thwart the existing constitution which preceded his ouster, so the article's appeals to legality and rule of law are rather suspect. It's doubtful that Canada can do much to change or influence events in Guatemala, or indeed that we have an obligation to go chasing after any "human rights" chimera that any special interest group may construct. Funny how the left can't figure out whether it's in favour or against foreign "regime change" initiatives. I suspect this is just more pre-(Canadian)election planted Liberal party spin, more intended to influence democracy in Canada than in Hondouras.

No to a left-wing dictator

Zelaya was simply trying to ape Hugo Chavez, and had embarked on a path to retain power unconstitutionally. The Supreme Court and Congress of Honduras was right to turf the aspiring dictator out.

Soon there will be an election and matters will be resolved.

Mel Broke the Law, and ...

"The Honduran legislature, which had previously ordered Zelaya's arrest (but not his deportation), promptly voted him out of office and — following the constitution — selected its ranking member, Speaker Roberto Micheletti, as the interim president. Two key points to remember here: Martial law was never instituted, and the national elections, slated for November, are still a go. In effect, Zelaya's removal from power was an impeachment without trial — a classic rush job that denied him his day in court even as he had already lost his battle with the country's supreme court and displayed overt contempt for its rulings on his proposed poll."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/honduras-coup-analysis-070909#ixzz0OqV5lQUT

Errors in Fact

This commentary would be so much more believable if there were not demonstrable errors in fact in it. I'm talking about the reference to 'Billy Joya' and 'Battalion 3-16, a group of military officers who received training at the School of the Americas, and which is associated with hundreds of cases of kidnapping, torture and murder.' Billy Joya was never a student at the US Army's School of the Americas, which never trained 'battalions,' 3-16 or otherwise. Furthermore, not one single example of anyone using what he learned at the school to commit any crime has ever been shown--not even one! Makes you wonder if all the other 'facts' in the article are valid. (I'm the public affairs officer at the Dept of Defense institute that replaced the school almost nine years ago--and which has Canadian students too. I take offense at the moral libel of the Soldiers who taught at the school; those were my peers when I was on active duty.)

Now where have I heard that before??

OK, a head of government gets elected in a jurisdiction with a constitution in place. Changes to the constitution are not part of the election platform. However, once in power, some of the things that does not fit with the government's hitherto hidden agenda are 'made illegal' or 'made legal' in contravention of the constitution. The powers to do these things is simply exercised in the moment, only to be gainsaid later, after a lengthy legal process, which can of course not retroactively avert the damage from the wrongful actions (Bill 29).

Imagine that some elected representatives with gumption would step up and turf such a government the minute it even looked to fudge with the law of the land! Is that not a 'made in Honduras' option we might like to check out further?

As it is, we have no reason as some say here, to be proud as Canadians, as we always wait for God or the judges to 'hand down' their corrections, and those who have the wherewithal to go the 'just watch me' route are oh, so few and far between.

Óscar Rafael de Jesús Arias Sánchez

Perhaps all those ready to vilify Zelaya for attempting to ascertain if the 'people' might care to reconsider some particular legislation ought to take a little time and research the 'history' of the current leader of Costa Rica - who happens to have a Nobel Peace Prize to his name.

They might be surprised to find what he thought of single term presidential limits.

As for your point dorothy, when the democratically elected members of Canada's House of Commons stepped up to the plate to use the levers of government constitutionally to unseat our own Pee Wee Rambo when he 'lost' the confidence of the House last December it was Harper who behaved like the Honduran military.

One has to be a little careful who one condemns for what these days.

Some people have a better memory, apparently, than others....

As for the School of the Americas and its history - some of us also remember a good deal about its past too.

R/man

No constitution was violated. The poll was non binding. The only problem was the paranoia of the elite who don't want to know what the public thinks because it might spoil their luxurious life styles. Gee, can't let the public express an opinion outside a narrow defined parameter, hey Dorothy. Nope its communist, except when a right wing dictator takes over and suppresses the media and beats up on innocent civilians. Then its in the name of upholding a constitution. Give me a break!

Parliament of the street?

“Gee, can't let the public express an opinion outside a narrow defined parameter, hey Dorothy.”

Oh, sure, if there truly is a fork in the road of a hitherto unknown nature!

However, this was not the case here. There is a constitution in place, and circumstances have not changed drastically in a way that would justify questioning the wisdom of its provisions. Yeah, it didn’t suit some politicos, so they decided to go out and raise a mob. It might certainly have been interesting to see just how non-binding it would have been considered, had the vote have come out in their favour…

The methodology used would tend to undermine the principle of representative democracy. I know many British Columbians are confused about this. The bunch of errand boys to big business we call our government here did get re-elected, and we are stuck with them, for election day is the day the people’s voice is heard in a representative democracy. Now people are going through these cramped agonies to try to come up with ways of finagling our way to turf the government in mid-term. Sad as it is, I have to consider such thinking as verging on the subversive, for we have been asked, we have answered, and the law gives us no turfing rights until the term is up. We need to grow up and realize the seriousness of how we use – or don’t use - our vote every single time. We live in a culture of second-guessing ourselves all the time, taking it back to the store, ditching the old man/woman, or, conversely, ‘renewing’ our marriage vows as if we weren’t serious the first time. Do we ever mean business? The people who threw out their transgressing President in Honduras did. And I would dearly love to hear less often on the news that ‘this may not be the end of it’.

Re-hash

skywalker. Not even his own government supported Zelaya in suggesting a change to the Honduran constitution because the constitution was crafted just to protect the fragile democracy from ANY leader trying to do just that. They all told him, including his own Attorney General, that just bringing the subject up was illegal under their constitution and the sanction of immediate removal is written in law! He has been replaced by a member of his OWN party!

" Article 239 The citizen that has been the head of the Execut[ive] Branch cannot be President or Vice-President (again).
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

You can read the constitution in the original Spanish here, or a full translation of it here. Article 239 clearly makes it illegal for a public official– such as Zelaya here — to even attempt to amend the constitution to allow multiple terms. And it is not just illegal:

ARTICLE 4 .- The form of government is republican, democratic and representative. Is exercised by three branches: legislative, executive and judicial, and independent and complementary relationship of subordination.

Alternation in the presidency of the Republic is required.

Violation of this rule constitutes the crime of treason."

You may not like their constitution, they may not like ours. It is not our place to call their laws wrong.

To propose reform is a violation?

You can just about imagine who set this constitution up so it can never be changed. You can't even discuss change or feel out the public to see if it wants change. By your standard an opinion poll is against the law. What rot! This is not a democracy and it matter not one wit that the constitution as you see it has been violated. I'm with the right of the public to determine who leads them and for how long. I refuse to take my information from the Rupert Murdochs of the world and rather go to the independent sources.

So Zelaya's replacement belongs to the same party, so what. Self interest still prevails as the protection of the status quo.

Sorry

Any country that can't encompass the free expression of the people of that country is NO DEMOCRACY.

Any country that bans an opinion poll isn't worthy of calling itself a country - it's simply a military industrial autocracy.

What the Honduran military did simply proves that fact.

You may not like those facts and I'll continue to call what they did criminal, wrong and undemocratic.

When it requires the muzzle of a gun to make your point of view the conclusion about what is REALLY going on is not up for debate.

Except, apparently among the cabinet of the current tin pot PEE WEE who rides herd on the Canadian scene.

Shame. We have nothing to teach the Hondurans…but a lot to learn ourselves.

&, etc. ...

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/honduras-removal-president-legal-constitution-has-vaccine

As the BBC says: "Tension had been brewing in Honduras over recent months. Mr Zelaya sacked the head of the armed forces, who refused to give logistical support for the 28 June vote. The Supreme Court overruled him, saying the army chief should be reinstated.

When Mr Zelaya insisted the consultation would go ahead, Congress voted to remove him for what it called "repeated violations of the constitution and the law", and the Supreme Court said it had ordered the president to be removed from office to protect law and order. "

US Dept of Defense's Lee Rial's allegations of 'Errors in Fact'

You can only accuse the writer of getting the facts wrong if you deliberately misread what Moore wrote. She did not say the US Army's School of the Americas trained 'batallions'. She said it trained a number of Honduran officers who ended up running the notorious Battalion 3-16 which carried out killings and tortures of opponents to the Honduran govt. in the 1980s. There is no dispute that Battalion 3-16 existed and one of its leaders, a graduate of the School of the Americas, has been tried and found guilty.

http://www.cja.org/cases/grijalba.shtml

Joya has admitted that he was part of the Batallion 3-16 and asked forgiveness, according to an Associated Press story. A recent NYT piece reports that Joya was charged with dozens of human rights violations, and that Joya maintains his innocence whilr admitting he was part of Batallion 3-16. It also reports:

"Mr. Joya joined the military police, and in 1981 — as the Reagan administration spent tens of millions of dollars to turn this impoverished country into the principal staging area for a covert war against the region’s left-wing guerrilla groups — Mr. Joya said that he and 12 other Honduran soldiers received six weeks of training in the United States."

Again, read what Moore actually wrote. Joya is said in Moore's piece to have been an 'operative' of Battalion 3-16 which was led by various men trained by the School of the Americas. Moore's piece is based on numerous well documented sources.

By the way, while we don't rely on Wikipedia as a primary source, if Mr. Rial disputes the existence of Batallion 3-16, or its ties to School of the America's training, or the role of Billy Joya, perhaps he should spend some of his US taxpayer supported time trying to get the Wikipedia page on Batallion 3-16, heavily footnoted, wiped away. It's right here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_3-16_(Honduras)

Joya's got his own page, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joya

Imagine all the people (and what they could do)

“You can just about imagine who set this constitution up so it can never be changed.”

I can, but I do not know whether your imaginings and mine are the same. I would imagine it was done by people who realised the fragile nature of democratic constitutions. A good example is the Weimar republic. It was so diverse it had no strength against a determined ‘collector’ of power, just like a share company where the shares are distributed on a myriad of small shareholders, who do not speak to one another, can thus be bought up by someone determined enough.

Representative democracy is fragile, due to the outside pressures that can be exerted from determined interest groups. Just look at our own lobby system. In fact it is, from a democratic viewpoint, completely outrageous that people with the means can get the ears of government and present their special interests over and above all those who have an equal right to be considered, but do not have such means at their disposal. Even in the most democratic of countries such as the Scandinavian ones, often big business and big labor will be selectively consulted by government, and so no country is infallible when it comes to equal right and the protection thereof.

In a situation where chaos and ongoing strife has in fact been the order of the day, such as in Honduras, I can clearly see strong protective measures being warranted. Politicians cannot be hunted and pressured to accommodate interest groups, nor ‘owned’ by such groups to nearly the same extent, when successive terms simply are not happening. Just look at how our own Provincial Government is more and more in the pocket of corporate interests. Some of the stuff now being pulled in connection with the Olympics is downright obscene. Wouldn’t it have been nice if one term was all Gordo could have had at a time?

Deliberately misreading? Is this English or what ?

"Billy Joya is recognized as a former operative of Batallion 3-16, a group of military officers who received training at the School of the Americas,"

I too would understand "batallion 3-16" and "a group of military officers, who..." as being identical, just as in "Richard, the King", "Richard" is identical to "the king". I would also understand that since the group is mentioned prior to the training situation, the training was received by them as a group, or else the wording should have been "Having reeived training at the School of the Americas, these officers eventually formed the group known as batallion 3-16." or some such thing.

I interpreted the paragraph the same way as Mr. Rials did, and I had no prior knowledge of the specific existence of this batallion, but I did pass English 101...

Minister Kent is not waiting

Minister Kent is not waiting for anything, he is actively doing what the Canadian mining companies in Honduras want him to do.

Shame, really.

Oh really? How naive!

It all makes sense. Oust a guy who tried to get the people to vote in a non binding poll. Don't give him his day in court. Send him out of the country at night and prevent him from returning by force. Then shut down any media that questions the legitimacy of the existing coup. Start beating up any citizens who protest; protests are outlawed. All this while claiming that the guy you exiled wanted to become a dictator. It all makes sense doesn't it? Then R/man says it will all be decided in November. Conveniently the guy who would carry much of the fight has been exiled. Whjat a pile of rot.

It would not have made a difference

"Wouldn’t it have been nice if one term was all Gordo could have had at a time?" Not one bit of difference. Democracy is held together by an impartial, honest media. In BC Canwest and the corporate interests would have found another post with hair to do their bidding. They would have propped up his image so none of us would have known the difference. There are lots of Campbell clones ready and willing, some even post here. To suggest that the coup orchestrators are concerned about democracy is ludicrous. They don't even act like it.

This call is for you

“Democracy is held together by an impartial, honest media…”

Oh, I’ll certainly not deny that it is a way of taking the temperature of democracy, but aren’t the media simply conveying what people will pay them for conveying? You can be honest all you want, but you do have bills to pay sooner or later, so integrity you can’t finance is somewhat of a liability in the real world.

I would say democracy is held together by a critical mass of people giving a damn and doing their thing rain or shine. I’m not just taking about ‘political activity’, for if there is one Marxist maxim I do subscribe to, it is the one that everything is politics. If democracy is what you want to see, practice it wherever you have a chance. Go out and show leadership somewhere, and be a role model, and/or even a broken record. Don’t ever not answer a question that calls for your input. Vote in every single election. Don’t keep secrets. Tell your surroundings how you vote, and why. Don’t sit at home and spew cynicism through your keyboard. Vow that if things DO go to Hel in a handbasket, it’s not for lack of trying on your part. Don’t wait for some great political Deus ex machina to fix it all. Be the change you want to see happen. Discover what power you do have, and use every milligram of it. Step up to the plate, brother, and let us/them hear your voice every damn time without fail.

Media? YOU are a medium!

Journalism, My Butt

I visited Honduras in the 'seventies when the democratic movement was building, in face of Marxist uni-ideologism. Zelaya sought to restore the bad old days, by attempting to unilaterally alter the constitution so as to grant himself dictator status. His totalitarian pals Fidel Castro and Chavez, want top-down power structures imposed on Latin American people, so as to legitimate their own tyrannies. Zelaya was democratically elected, but clearly directed his authority towards a one-man/one-vote/one-time arrangement. The military acted in defence of the Constitution.

Jennifer Moore intentionally abridges consideration of Zelaya's subversion of Honduran justice. In so doing, her piece becomes nothing but propaganda for neo-Marxism in Latin America.

Tyee should print only bona fide reportage and opinion that follows facts, and not ideology. Putting Zelaya on the side of Democratic governance is absurd. Jennifer Moore's promotion of bloody polarization in Honduras, is highly reckless.

Dorothy

Sure as you say "but aren’t the media simply conveying what people will pay them for conveying?". Exactly! That's why all that lack of news coverage is intentional. They are being paid to look the other way. But who's paying Jennifer Moore? Yet you claim her writing is propaganda. Sorry it doesn't wash. Your comment that Zelaya "by attempting to unilaterally alter the constitution" with a non-binding referendum is a real stretch. Maybe if he had actually extended his term then you and all the coup supporters might have had a case.

I would guess that the coup supporters knew that a referendum, non-binding as it was, might have started a discussion in the populace that they could not control. Democracy is like that. It works when people speak out and the tyrants who muzzle and intimidate and use force eventually fade away.

Human Player Pianos And Reactionaries

Informed support for Zelaya is 100% Neo-Marxist. Hugo Chavez bought Zelaya's election with oil money. The Venezuelan tyrant has been promoting cloned-puppets in ajoining states, because he wants US bases in Columbia, shut down. Nearly 100% of propaganda on behalf of Zelaya, is funneled through Chavez's proclaimed media-whore, Eva Golinger. That American disloyalist shills for tyranny through book contracts with the Marxist editors of "Monthly Review," and on her Chavezite mouthpiece blog, "Postcards From the Revolution."

In any case, apologists for totalitarian scum like Zelaya should be forced to defend their partisanship with brazen Stalinites. You need only backtrack on Golinger's barracks-communism blog for a day to day account of the Chavezite efforts at turning the defence of the Honduran Constitution, into a protracted Stalinist putsch. Zelayan golpists are human player pianos for the Caracas' Fidelistas.

http://www.chavezcode.com/

Golinger claims that her pimp, Hugo Chavez, named her "novia de Venezuela" (Venezuela's sweetheart), in pay for her slavish defence of his imperialism and aggression. Western "democrats" would do well to remember that Chavez, Zelaya, Castro and Evo Morales (Bolivian tyrant), all supported the bloody oppression of the democratic opposition in Iran.

Writer of article Jennifer Moore responds to Lee Rials

Moore sent this email from Honduras:

Regarding the sentence in question: “Billy Joya is recognized as a former operative of Battalion 3-16, a group of military officers who received training at the School of the Americas, and which is associated with hundreds of cases of kidnapping, torture and murder.”
I agree that this could have been written more clearly to read, “...a group of military officers a number of whom received training at the School of the Americas...” However, in terms of a correlation between military officers who received training at the School of the Americas and who participated in Battalion 3-16, the list of “Notorious Graduates of the School of the Americas” compiled by the School of the Americas Watch (http://www.derechos.org/soa/hond-not.html) documents
18 officers who received training at the school between 1963 and 1987 and who are alleged to have participated during the 1980s in Battalion 3-16, which is known as a death squad.

It is also true, as the person who responded to my article suggests, that the majority of cases of torture, kidnapping and murder that took place during the 1980s in Honduras remain in impunity. 184 disappearances were registered in Honduras between 1980 and 1989 without corresponding investigations or sanctions against those responsible. However, between 1988 and 2003, the Inter American Human Rights Court found the state of Honduras responsible for three disappearances. Also, in 1997, the Human Rights Defense Committee of Honduras (CODEH) brought charges against one officer on the SOAW list.
But as of the date that the list was compiled, he had failed to present himself before the court. Another School of the Americas Graduate is listed as having refused to take action against soldiers involved in Battalion 3-16 death squad activity while chief of the Honduran Armed Forces.

It is precisely for this reason that organizations such as the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained of Honduras
(ww.cofadeh.org) exist and why human rights advocates like Bertha Oliva are so sensitive to the possibility that those responsible for human rights violations and political assassinations taking place today be granted amnesty, as could happen under the San José Accord.

A couple of misdirected efforts...

‘Sure as you say "but aren’t the media simply conveying what people will pay them for conveying?". Exactly! That's why all that lack of news coverage is intentional.’

Er, your tunnel vision sticks out a mile here…When I mention people who pay, I am actually talking about readership, who buy the papers and magazines and viewers who buy cable services, not, as you seem to think, about sinister power brokers who buy media silence or twisting of the facts. Make it too real, too dry, too severely to the point, and people don’t want to read or follow it. There is little information one cannot lay hands on if one is stubborn enough to pursue the interest, but the fact is most people don’t want to know the dreary details of life in general. Were this not the case, there would be riots in the streets when media put squeaks and blurs and strange typeset characters into spaces where words should have been that everyone knows and uses, but which are ‘not nice’.

‘Your comment that Zelaya "by attempting to unilaterally alter the constitution"… ‘

This is actually not my comment. I said he was trying to raise a mob. This I say, because he tried to get people hot on a question that is, according to the constitution, purposeless to bring up, as the section in question cannot be altered. Thereby he forfeited the right to lead his country, also according to the law. I am disappointed that seemingly, the main argument here is that the law in this case runs parallel to the best interests of some corporations. It stands to reason that sometimes this will be the case without gross conspiracy being involved, but reaching that conclusion seems to call for independent thinking beyond what some people are capable of.

Castro-Chavezite Aggression Against Hondurans

Each and every apologist for puppets like Zelaya is an ideologue and, as such, in order to follow the party-line, MUST endorse both the election theft and bloody repression of the democratic movement in Iran. They have a hidden agenda. In 1994, Hugo Chavez took direct counsel from the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, on subversion of democratic constitutional orders. He put that theory into practice in Venezuela, and then exported same to Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua (failed), Columbia (failed), etc.

Media coverage of Castro-Chavez imperialism and aggression, has been abominable. If you can't read Spanish, please use Google translation facilities, to read the following articles on the Neo-Stalinist campaign of Hugo Chavez, to establish a personality cult in captive states and use same to obliterate national sovereignties. Cloned traitors like Morales in Bolivia and Zelaya in Honduras, exist for the sole purpose of turning once free countries into forward bases for Castro-Chavezism.

Chronology of the rise of the totalitarian dictatorship of Hugo Chavez;

http://www.elcato.org/node/2352/

Articles on Chavezite use of one-time democracy, for perma-dictatorship:

http://www.urru.org/papers/papersIndex_2009.htm

Honduran national defence against Chavezite aggression:

http://www.urru.org/papers/2009_varios/Honduras_ZelayaChavez.pdf

Buying Chavezite clones:

http://urru.org/papers/2008_varios/Regalos_de_Chavez.pdf

Tied Chavezite aid to the Bolivian tyrant:

http://www.urru.org/papers/2008_varios/20080725_VersionFinal_Evo253.jpg

Chavez links to Iran autocracy:

http://www.urru.org/papers/2008_varios/Tarek_El-Aissami.pdf

Articles on the State of Fraud in Chavezite' "elections" and anti-Constitutionallism:

http://www.urru.org/papers/200408_en_adelante_Fraude.htm

Chavezite use of one-time elections to advance Stalinist putsches.

http://www.urru.org/papers/2009_varios/RECURSO_NULIDAD_LEY_DISTRITO_CAPITAL.doc

Thank you for the reply, but then again...

“However, in terms of a correlation between military officers who received training at the School of the Americas and who participated in Battalion 3-16, the list of “Notorious Graduates of the School of the Americas” compiled by the School of the Americas Watch
(http://www.derechos.org/soa/hond-not.html) documents
18 officers who received training at the school between 1963 and 1987 and who are alleged to have participated during the 1980s in Battalion 3-16, which is known as a death squad.”

It is my understanding that Lee Rials objected to the inference that the School of Americas had knowingly trained people of the battalion 3-16 in their capacity of members of that unit, implying an endorsement of its actions, while the above paragraph rather now expresses the perception that training at this school might have been pretty standard for an entire age group of officers of Honduran extraction, and some of these eventually became members of said unit. It appears from the SOA website that there were many more graduates of the Honduran school than those who became members of the battalion. But the statistics are incomplete, as we cannot know how many could potentially have been members of the battalion, but chose otherwise.

In order for the numbers to be meaningful in terms of correlation, we need to know whether there were differences between this group and that of Honduran officers who did not receive their training at the same school, as well as we need to know what proportion of the members of the battalion had received their training elsewhere. Otherwise it is no more informative than ‘All people of the Andes walk in a single file. At least the fellow I saw did’.

Hmm

....Nothing has been suspended except a President

Sounds an awful lot like MOB RULE to me - just happens to be a mob with uniforms and guns...of course SOME people are very impressed by uniforms and guns.

But thanks at least for having the honesty to recognize that Zelaya was doing a "consultation" and not a constitutional challenge.

We may finally be getting somewhere.

Umm

Personally, I'll go for a few nee-Marxists - of which Zelaya is definitely not one - in place of the long long of US sponsored and financed neo Conservatives who've ridden the region long and hard for the better part of the last century.

Bring 'em on.

Every Latin American country should have Cuba's literacy rates and health care.

The alternative doesn't have much to recommend it.

Zelaya's Honduras: Venezuelan Colony

Freedom is non-existent in the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez. Neo-Marxists, embarassed by the democratic dominoes that trampled the Ortega tyranny in Nicaragua, etc in the eighties, have chosen to champion one-time democracies llike the Chavez dictatorship. Refusing to see his mass murder practices at home, and his export of tyranny abroad, they colour the South American fuhrer with the populist veneer. Support for the Castro-Chavez archipelago is support for the most savage entities in the Americas. That support also embraces Iran's Ayatollahs, and the genocidal anti-Semitic movement, Hizbollah.

The apologists above don't support human rights and development; they support the Marxian framework of a party-centrist, dictatorship of the proletariat.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9254

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1110&full=1

http://www.cato.org/pubs/dpa/dpa2.pdf

Tit for tat? Puleeeaze....

“Sounds an awful lot like MOB RULE to me - just happens to be a mob with uniforms and guns...of course SOME people are very impressed by uniforms and guns.”

I hope you do not include me in SOME people here. For you have to know that in and of themselves, neither uniforms nor guns impress me, other than to realise that people behind them must be afraid of something, and it would be dumb to unnecessarily offer them yourself as a possible choice for being that something. But any animal handler would know that.

The note that disturbs me is – do you really consider that there is no such thing to be defined as law and order? That what passes for ‘right’ is simply a matter of the greater ‘might’? And that, if the tables were turned by the means of greater might, this would then re-define right?

I happen to believe there is such an entity as the Law, in the abstract as well as practical sense, that one can hold to, and should, for if we don’t have that, we have nothing. Nothing on the horror of the gulags and the KZs; nothing on that African tribe, the king of which spent every miserable night awake and alone in his hut, because anyone who could take him out would be king, greater might being the only qualification. And of more actuality, perhaps, we certainly have nothing on those members of the Taliban forces, who see fit to fulfil their life’s mission by throwing acid and grenades at children looking to know more about their World.

Our own cultural tradition includes good sources for an idea of what lawfulness entails. We have Common Law, which was modelled on Laws actually written down in Scandinavia as well as Scots Law, which has more or less the same predecessors and has been less altered by Christian influence. In all of these places you would find that one respected the law that was in place, and if something new happened and it needed discussion, you would seek to have it among those duly elected, not those who had handed over their mandate to the these people through election. This is the very foundation of representative democracy.

If I hear one more time, that Zelaya ‘was just seeking an opinion’, I will be guaranteed to throw up. I will challenge anyone with a keyboard in front of me to give a good reason to look for such opinion, regarding an issue that the law gives no means to address based on the elicited opinion, other than mischief and plans to circumvent the law. Now don’t trample each other there!

The country through a rose coloured lens ezperience...

"I feel sort of at home with the half-assed approach as you say..."

No doubt you do. Which is obvious enough and your choice.

It is not mine though-, having been born here and observed the socio-economic deterioration since the late 70s down to the present, as our ruling class and its political leadership has more and more sought to take the country, as a junior partner, into the US "free market" and "imperialism" model.

And I understand that perfection does not exist anywhere. I was aware of it even before you so pedantically pointed it out to me.

No doubt you are grateful for having gotten away from whatever it was you were escaping somewhere else. I get your sense of relieved gratitude, and can even understand your contentment with that. Your expectations are, as a result, I expect, somewhat less for the country than mine.

I, however, think I am coming from a somewhat more objective experience with this country, that sees it in the context of more its own history and potential, rather than comparatively to some failed place like yourself. As a consequence, I hope at least, my perspective doesn't see "the country" through quite your more rose coloured lenses framed experience.

That said, I always enjoy reading you, good woman... even being scolded by yourself. :-D

School of the Americas

I thank Dorothy for her thoughtful comments on the school, and I'd like to point out that simply saying that someone attended a school at some point in his life, with no supporting data to show that the attendance had anything to do with later behavior, is meaningless in this context. There is no evidence that attendance had anything to do with later behavior, so I often say the allegations are a moral libel of the people who taught at the school.

Won't buy that either

In the fall of 1996 major newspapers all over the US carried a Pentagon story that U.S. Army intelligence manuals, which had been used to train Latin American military officers, contained passages advocating the use of a variety of methods of intimidation, including assassination and torture. The School of the Americas also used these manuals - which is well known.

The only moral libel going on here is the attempt to whitewash the record.

Lee Rials

Sez you:

"....so I often say the allegations are a moral libel of the people who taught at the school."

I often say the prime requisite of being a neocon is the ability to completely ignore anything that doesn't agree with one's POV, such as David Beers response 2 days ago, and the many sites that have also been offered.

Zelaya backs down

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Foreign ministers from seven nations launched a direct, high-profile attempt Monday to persuade Honduras' interim government to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya. ...

The foreign ministers — from Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic — met with Zelaya supporters in the morning and they "showed they would support the accord," Stagno said. ...

Xiomara Castro, Zelaya's wife, said her husband has accepted all of the plan's 12 points, including abandoning efforts to change the Honduran constitution, the move that prompted the coup. ..."

No legal mechanism available though.

"To impose a president legally removed from the presidency, it's an option that the Honduran Constitution does not allow," ...

AP

School of the Americas...

From School of the Americas Watch. School of the Americas: where they train the next generation of US Empire goons and oppressors.

http://www.soaw.org/type.php?type=8

Thanks for the sympathy but no (Cuban?) cigar..

“No doubt you are grateful for having gotten away from whatever it was you were escaping somewhere else. I get your sense of relieved gratitude, and can even understand your contentment with that. Your expectations are, as a result, I expect, somewhat less for the country than mine. “

OK, so I did not run with just the clothes on my back from a miserable, murderous, failed state. I am a Dane. And social democrats parsing out everything and everybody to the point of being ridiculous, as well as taxing the life out of a whole breed of innovative, thriving small business, had spent thirty years plus beating the stuffing out of what was indeed a ‘real country’, when I was born as one of its citizens. The last straw for me was when the people to the South, who had for at least 1200 years had their greedy hands out to sweep up the ‘Nordmark’ and never succeeded, were served it on a silver platter though the infamous new version of ‘Neuropa’ known as the European Common market. I could see my very real country being hopelessly lost.

ERGO, my choice was to go to a country that had no pretence of being a real one, but was struggling to become so. I don’t want to spend my life attending funerals, but rather prefer to be present at births. And this I have got from Canada. The birth of a new constitution, a growing understanding in the people of what that means for them, something to celebrate, like the unanimous rejection of the Charlottetown accord. There is so much to be done, before this will become a ‘real country’ in both yours and my sense of the word, but your method of dissing the whole effort is not, I think, as productive as doing behaviour shaping, supporting to the hilt everything that goes in the right direction. The carrot rather than the stick. I also think our vision of Canada has to be that it is a ‘real country’, for else it will never fill in the gaps. We must have a working model, as closely aligned as possible with what is already on the books. This will put us to the right side of to of Saul Alinsky’s maxims: one, Make opponents live up to their own book of rules, and two, we avoid this one: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

I like to be in a place where I am asked to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Resting on some tired old laurels is just plain boring to my kind. But my expectations are certainly not lower than yours, in fact I do not think all was well as long as Canada was still a colonial outpost with a military government. ?? Yes, our ersatz head of state is still called a Governor GENERAL, right? Except now it is sort of a bogus power position, and elected people call the shots. We may have problems with according to which manual they call them, but at least they call them.

Your stuff is always inspiring, thanks.

And another thing...

Thanks for posting the School of Americas stuff. It was wildly intersting, reminded me a lot of some of the material from 'Penkovsky's diary'. It seems the espionage business hasn't changed much over the years; not so surprising, since it deals primarily with human nature. I can still remember 'Americans like to walk around, hands in pockets, chewing gum, and wearing tennis shoes one or two numbers too large'. Well, not so much has changed, has it?

As far as Jesuits go, those familiar with European history would not count them as defenseless victims of anything, but hard-core agents in their own right, and certainly an opponent to be reckoned with. I wonder how much these emissaries of the Church of Rome would respect anyone's attempts at seeing their country become 'real', as they essentially do not recognize borders as anything else than a damned nuisance, and do not in reality count any authority other than their own head of state. Not to mention the atrocities they have, down through history, been the ingineers of.

Or maybe this was all just propaganda dispersed by my social democrat gang of teachers back there in the Northern boonies??

From SOA to SOCC...to Miss Universe?

From the School of the Americas to the School of Castro-Chavez - que hay de nuevo?

Castro and his military are mentoring Chavez, Chavez is sending out his ALBA legions to use sedition and dollars to turn politicians in Latin America.

Reading the Venzuelan opposition newspapers - lots about Miss Venezuela becoming Miss Universe, in part because they KNOW that Chavez hates the "Miss" industry.

Even more galling to the neo-marxists is that the Miss Universe pageant didn't exclude the lovely Miss Honduras:
http://cdn.missuniverse.com/media/photos/galleries/gallery_photo1250098408Hondurus.jpg