Myths and Facts about the Coup in Honduras

[Downwinder]

http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/articles/myths-and-facts-about-coup-honduras

[Braulio]

1. Good Synopsis, but also incomplete

It fails to explain Zelaya's orders to the military were illegal, because the referendum or survey had been declared illegal by the courts. It also fails to mention that Zelaya had violated constitutional norms by failing to submit a budget to the Congress, as required by law.

The coup was indeed a military coup, later papered over by the Honduras Congress. However, Zelaya wasn't an innocent party in this drama. He was an incompetent leader, a buffoon who ignored the law, and brought the crisis on. It didn't help matters when he as seen by the Honduran elites as a Chavez stooge.

But let's keep things in perspective, Honduras is a small banana republic, has very little impact on things. They will have elections in November, the winner will not be somebody who is aligned with Zelaya, and things will just drag on, same as they ever have. Honduras will continue to be crime ridden, poor, and ruled by incompetents. That's the nature of human nature.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Anyone who calls President Zelaya a "buffoon" cannot be trusted. This sort of epithet

is similar to those used by the "degrade Hugo brigade" here at DU and elsewhere, to prevent people from thinking for themselves and researching the facts for themselves. "Buffoon" is intended to paralyze your mind--to make you not care.

A dismal view of human nature, which predicts that nothing will ever change, is also a key to trusting a writer on other facts. It's "human nature" that Honduras "will continue to be crime ridden, poor, and ruled by incompetents"? That is a far rightwing view. And, if it was true of "human nature," peoples' revolutions would never occur--including our own revolution--and, currently, the social/political revolutions that have occurred or are in progress in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, to name some of the countries where leftist governments have been elected, and where profound social/political changes have been occurring, over the last half decade.

Another key to the political views of a writer is their blaming of the victim: "Zelaya wasn't an innocent party in this drama. He was an incompetent leader, a buffoon who ignored the law, and brought the crisis on." Uh-huh, so now it's Zelaya's fault that his home was shot up by the military, who dragged him from his bed, kidnapped him at gunpoint, put him on a plane and flew him out the country, needless to say against his will? It's Zelaya's fault that the coup then declared martial law and began using live ammunition on those who protested these actions? It's Zelaya's fault that they shut down the media? It's Zelaya's fault that they've got thousands of political prisoners in jail? It's Zelaya's fault that the coup regime is beating people up, dragging them from their homes, blockading all the roads to prevent organizing and protesting, and tolerating (if not ordering) death squad murders of key leftist organizers?

That is bunk. It's like blaming an labor leader for the violence of the state or the company, after a strike has been called. It's like blaming peace protest or civil rights organizers when the cops start bashing heads. It's a rightwing view that people who protest oppression are themselves responsible for the violence of the oppressors against them.

If this junta had a case against Zelaya, they would have put him on trial! The "ten families" who control Honduras would surely have been able to "convict" him of whatever trumped up charges that Lanny Davis and John Negroponte could think up. But they had no confidence that such a kangaroo court would be believed, by the people of Honduras or the rest of the world. So they "tried" him in absentia, after violently exiling him, in proceedings in which he was NOT PRESENT and COULD NOT DEFEND HIMSELF.

I don't care what such a junta claims NOW. The truth is that their violent ouster of Zelaya, and their current violent MARTIAL LAW, were and are for the purpose of repressing a popular movement against the oligarchy and their enslavement of the Honduran people in sweatshops and on corporate farms. Zelaya raised the minimum wage. That pissed them off. Zelaya reduced busfare for the poor. That pissed them off. Zelaya provided lunches for poor schoolchildren. That pissed them off. Zelaya got cheap oil for Honduras by joining ALBA--the Venezuela-organized regional barter trade group. That pissed them off. Zelaya responded to labor unions, grass roots community groups, human rights groups and the poor majority of the country in proposing an advisory vote on forming a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution--a Constitution written by Reagan's henchmen to favor the rich and the military. And that pissed them off. And they decided to violently shut down this popular DEMOCRATIC movement before it cut too seriously into their untoward power and untoward profits.

And they had the support of the rightwing in THIS country, and thought they could get away with it, because of this. John McCain, for instance, has funneled $43 million in US taxpayer money to these rightwing coup groups in Honduras, via the USAID and the "International Republican Institute." The Pentagon sat on its hands while the coupsters' plane carrying their kidnapped president re-fueled at the US air base at Soto Cano, Honduras. The Bushwhack-appointed ambassador to Honduras had prior knowledge of the coup--in fact met with the coupsters prior to the coup--and did nothing to stop it. They had plenty of reason to believe that the Bushwhack vipers in Congress would argue their case--and, indeed, these vipers not only support this violent military coup in Honduras, they are holding up Obama appointments in Latin America as a pressure tactic, to get the Obama administration to back down on its support for democratic rule in Honduras.

Yeah, this is all Zelaya's fault.

:sarcasm:

And, by the way, welcome to DU!

:patriot:

[Braulio]

4. It's just more of the same

Huh, Brazil didn't have a revolution of any sort. They elected a leftist leader, who's actually doing a pretty good job. Revolutionary? I doubt it. The same goes for Argentina, the Kirchner-Fernandez era seems to be coming to an end, after they got trounced in recent elections. And it gets worse, things in Argentina are getting so bad, it may have to import meat next year (thanks to Fernandez' killing off the cattle industry). Venezuela? They're squandering the money they got during the recent run-up in oil prices. The non-oil economy is slowly being strangled by price controls and government actions to nationalize properties ad-hoc. And the oil industry isn't doing so well either, it's threading water because the state oil company is being run as a political entity, rather than as an oil company. So where are all these "revolutions" headed? The same place the Bolsheviks, the North Koreans, and the Cubans went...poverty, and backwardness.

And yes, it's Zelaya's fault he lost power.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Your facts are so wrong on Venezuela that I distrust everything you say.

"The non-oil economy is slowly being strangled by price controls and government actions to nationalize properties ad-hoc."

Venezuela's economy has shown astonishing economic growth over the previous five years (2003 to 2008)--a nearly 10% growth rate, with the most growth in the private sector, not including oil. In fact, they needed to slow down a bit, to control inflation.

Where on earth do you get the idea that Venezuela's economy is "slowly being strangled"? In fact, Venezuela's economy is NOT being strangled PRECISELY BECAUSE the Chavez government took state control of the industries that corpo/fascist forces COULD USE--and tried to use--TO strangle the economy, and topple the Chavez government, so the rich can get richer once again. Further, Venezuela landed on its feet despite a worldwide Great Depression induced by the Bushwhacks' massive deregulation and massive looting. The Chavez government--while fully funding all of their many bootstrapping social and development projects--managed to save $43 billion in international cash reserves for just such a "rainy day" as the Bushwhacks rained on almost everybody else. This money gives them financial flexibility (they can determine how to finance using the funds). Venezuela was further insulated by strong government regulation of the finance and banking industries. Brazil also did well in this respect. Both of these countries survived the US/Bushwhack financial meltdown because they ignored advice from people with views just like yours--for instance, that spending money on social programs is "squandering" the money.

Venezuela is "squandering the money they got during the recent run-up in oil prices." Squandering money on what? Education, adult training, full literacy, free education through college, universal free medical care, grants and loans to small businesses and co-ops, land reform, bridges, roads, streetlights, gasoline subsidies, housing, regional development projects, such as the Bank of the South, the Orinoco Bridge (to Brazil), the new proposed highway from Brazil's Atlantic coast to the Pacific, through Bolivia (to turn ally Bolivia into a major trade route)? These are the things that oil surpluses SHOULD BE spent on--not on second yachts and third mansions for multinational oil executives.

I've given you examples of what the oil profits ARE being spent on. You say they are being "squandered," so you have an obligation to say on what? Is bootstrapping the poor "squandering" the money? How has it been "squandered"?

As for Argentina--Argentina's economy was destroyed by the World Bank/IMF. Literally destroyed. Nothing left. Everything looted by the rich at home and abroad. They are still recovering. Their problem is they still have a powerful rightwing/rich landowner elite determined to regain control so that they can loot whatever the Kirchner/Fernandez administrations, and the workers of the country, have restored. Like here, the rich resist fair taxation and want to punish and loot the poor and end or privatize all services. And, like here, there is a corpo/fascist press that constantly promulgates this rightwing view and hammers away against leaders who support justice and fairness. They failed against Fernandez's husband, previous president Nestor Kirchner, because the country was on the ropes. Kirchner brought about the recovery. Now the rightwing thinks they have a chance to get back in power, so they are using every trick in the book to sabotage Fernandez, the first woman president of Argentina. Both Fernandez and our own president, Obama, need show more FDR-like strength in dealing with "organized money" (as FDR put it). They need to crush the looters and greedbags who have brought us all into such a desperate situation.

As for cattle, agricultural commodities are one of the hardest hit industries worldwide. Argentina also suffered a catastrophic drought. You will have to prove to me that Fernandez "killed off the cattle industry." She had nothing to do with the drought, nor with the meltdown caused by First World banksters and the deregulation-mad Bushwhacks. The only thing she did was try to tax the profiteering exporters of soy. The biggest, richest landowners organized against it, and defeated the tax by one vote in Congress. So prove it. How did Fernandez "kill off the cattle industry"?

Some info:

Drought Decimates Argentinean Cattle Industry

ARGENTINA - Argentina's beef industry and wheat and corn production have been devastated by the country's most severe drought since 1961, which has also affected agriculture in neighboring Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil.

According to Hugh Bronstein of msnbc, the crisis is compounded by the world economic slowdown, which is cutting demand for farm products and draining state finances just as ranchers look to the government for help. (MORE)

http://www.thecattlesite.com/news/25878/drought-decimates-argentinean-cattle-industry

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Argentinean Cattle Herd Declines

ARGENTINA - The national Argentine cattle herd has dropped from 55 million to 52 million in the last year, as many breeding cows have been slaughtered along with large numbers of dairy cows.

There were over 1.5 million cattle lost to the drought, which - according to FarmingUK - was in part caused by the incompetence of the Argentine Gentlemen absentee farmers, who did not take the cattle to slaughter.

FarmingUK says that 90 per cent of these farmers have herds of around 500 beef cows, mainly Angus or Hereford, except in the north of the country where the Brahman and Nelore are favored in the tropical climates.

However farmers are only getting the same price for cattle, as they were four years ago which is genuine reason for complaint.

"The biggest problem in meat production in the Argentine, is the slaughter of cattle with a live weight of 300-350 kilos, vealers or big suck calves, which are slaughtered for the domestic market, which last year utilized 84 per cent of cattle produced," says FarmingUK.

While indeed this makes the most magnificent beef to eat, the cattle if kept to double the weight would more than double the beef production.

TheCattleSite News Desk

http://www.thedairysite.com/news/26753/argentinean-cattle-herd-declines

[Downwinder]

8. +

[Bacchus39]

5. also, the Supreme Court ordered his arrest in a 15-0 ruling with the majority of justices being from

his own party. I wonder why that was left out?

[Peace Patriot]

2. This is an EXCELLENT article! It clears up so many 'myths' (i.e., lies) that people

are hearing about Honduras from the corpo/fascist press. Highly recommended. Very succinct and quotable. From "Grass Roots International: Funding global movements for social change."

:applause:

[Judi Lynn]

7. Finally got a chance to read this article. Superb. Saving it for future use.

It certainly supports so many things we've been reading. The truth WILL be known completely. There's no way they're going to bury this story permanently.

As Mark Twain said, "A lie is halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots."