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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 05:46 PM Mar 2016

Who killed Berta Cáceres and what should the US do?

Who killed Berta Cáceres and what should the US do?

A culture of impunity, misguided U.S. policy that has pursued expediency above principle, and an unwillingness of Honduras' political elites to reform their institutions of justice and governance are all to blame.

By Robin Broad, John Cavanagh and Joe Eldridge, March 10, 2016.




(Image: Flickr / SOA Watch)

On March 2, in the dark of the night, armed assailants broke into the Honduran home of Berta Cáceres and shot her four times, killing her. The assailants also wounded a Mexican colleague, Gustavo Castro, who survived only by playing dead.

Cáceres was in Washington just last year to receive the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prizes. She was a leader of the indigenous Lenca people in Honduras and had incited the wrath of the Honduran government, which seized power in a 2009 coup, with her leadership against a massive dam project that would have destroyed communities and the environment in areas near the Gualcarque River.

Castro is the coordinator of Friends of the Earth-Mexico and coordinator of a Central America-wide network against environmentally destructive dams. Despite being wounded and traumatized, he is not being allowed to leave Honduras.

So who killed Berta Cáceres?

At the eulogy for a slain civil rights worker in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked rhetorically “Who killed James Reeb?” In his remarks, Dr. King concluded that “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murder.”

More:
http://www.ips-dc.org/killed-berta-caceres-us/

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Peace Patriot

(24,010 posts)
1. "misguided U.S. policy"? Nope. Deliberate, and Sec of State Clinton was in charge.
Thu Mar 10, 2016, 07:18 PM
Mar 2016

Very deliberate destruction of a democratic leftist government, that wasn't even that leftist: did things like a slightly higher minimum wage (esp. helpful to U.S. clothing mfrs workers who work for slave wages), school lunch program and free bus pass for poor workers. THE best president Honduras has ever had. Mel Zelaya.

Dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, his house shot up, his family terrified, put on a plane with blackened windows, stopped for fueling at the U.S. air base in Honduras, and forcibly flown out of his own country (a direct, explicit violation of the Honduran constitution). And then the death squads began.

Beheaded one protestor against the coup, and left his body in the road for all to see. Shot one teacher to death in front of his students. And began a systematic program of rape against both the many women leading the protests against the coup--jailed, beaten and raped--and other women at random. And the killings and other reprisals continued.

Clinton told them to (ahem) "cut it out" and never stopped the money flow to these utter bastards who were destroying Honduran democracy and committing so many atrocities. And then she began the legitimising of the coup--starting with putting the coup regime AT THE TABLE in Costa Rica with the only elected and legitimate president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya.

Once the coup regime had all of the "trouble-makers" out of the way, and had the pro-democracy Hondurans terrified, the coup regime held an "election." No reputable election monitoring group on earth would agree to participate--not the Carter Center, not the OAS, nobody. So Clinton had the U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT run the "election," and called on groups like the Republican International Institute to monitor it. The election was held under martial law. The fascists won.

This was NOT "misguided U.S. policy." This was deliberate encouragement of murder and mayhem, to which Clinton applied a MASK of legitimacy--a false face--in the interest of U.S. transglobal corporations, war profiteers and the "ten families" who comprise the Honduran oligarchy who collude with our corporate rulers to oppress and brutalize their own people.

This was June 2009, only six months into the Obama administration. Obama was new in office, and at the time, truly beset with the financial meltdown and the Iraq disaster, plus Afghanistan and everything else. I think now that he was overwhelmed with these other enormous messes and simply couldn't monitor what she was doing. He initially said it was a "military coup," which would have cut off funding. Thereafter he was silent as Clinton continued the funding (and told a number of lies about this in public). I don't think she designed the coup. I think the Bush junta did. But she was right there for the fascists and the oligarchs and U.S. transglobals.

A note on Obama: His actions, or actions in his name, since Clinton left the Sec of State office--the opening to Cuba (LatAm countries unanimously condemned previous U.S. Cuba policy), the successful Colombian peace talks, and also the opening to Iran--tell me that, if Obama had been in full charge in June 2009, it is likely that the Honduran coup would have been immediately shut down and Zelaya restored to office. I wasn't sure how to read Obama at first. But his post-Clinton actions (with Kerry as Sec of State) are revealing as to what his own beliefs are, regarding war and intervention.

I felt despair when Clinton announced her run for U.S. president. I thought: "Look out, Latin America! This could be worse than Bush!" Looked like she was going to be crowned queen. When Bernie Sanders announced, I felt hope again for U.S. Latin America policy. He has been against the U.S. dirty war on Latin America for more than thirty years. And he is doing extremely well, against all expectations, in challenging Clinton for the nomination (and in polls he beats Trump by twice the % that Clinton does, and further beats all Republicans, while she loses to several of them).

There is no question in my mind that Hillary Clinton is indirectly responsible for the assassination of Berta Cáceres. Clinton encouraged and empowered a culture of assassination of peaceful activists and democracy lovers in Honduras. This alone should disqualify her from the Democratic Party nomination.

 

Mika

(17,751 posts)
4. Thank you for your post.
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 01:08 PM
Mar 2016

Hil is elbow deep covered in the blood of those seeking freedom, education, labor rights, fair wages.
Some "Democrat" (sic)! Uh huh.





Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
2. Death In Honduras: The Coup, Hillary Clinton And The Killing Of Berta Cáceres
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 04:31 AM
Mar 2016

Death In Honduras: The Coup, Hillary Clinton And The Killing Of Berta Cáceres

by Media Lens / March 10th, 2016

On February 28, Hillary Clinton told an audience from the pulpit of a Memphis church: ‘we need more love and kindness in America’. This was something she felt ‘from the bottom of my heart’.

These benevolent sentiments recalled the national ‘purpose’ identified by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, shortly before he flattened Iraq. It was, he said, ‘to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world’. Clinton, of course, meant North America, specifically the United States. But other places in America are short on love and kindness, too. Consider Honduras, for example.

On June 28, 2009, the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped at gunpoint by masked soldiers and forced into exile. Since the ousting, the country ‘has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss’ as the military coup ‘threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and… unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression’. In 2012, Honduras had a murder rate of 90.4 per 100,000 population, then the highest rate in the world. In 2006, three years before the coup, the murder rate had stood at 46.2 per 100,000.

The years since 2009 have seen ‘an explosive growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects that would displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the country’s land was earmarked for mining concessions, creating a demand for cheap energy to power future mining operations. To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects around the country, privatizing rivers, land, and uprooting communities.’ In 2015, Global Witness reported that Honduras was ‘the most dangerous country to be an environmental defender’.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/death-in-honduras-the-coup-hillary-clinton-and-the-killing-of-berta-caceres/

 

Mika

(17,751 posts)
5. +1000+ Judi Lynn and Peace Patriot are the main reason I'm still here.
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 01:29 PM
Mar 2016

Of course, there's other good leftists here, but, imo, not enough. Plenty enough of those "Dems" who support interventionism and aggression against those seeking liberation.





polly7

(20,582 posts)
6. Totally agree with that! They are treasures and I can't get enough of reading them and
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 01:31 PM
Mar 2016

you also, Mika!

polly7

(20,582 posts)
8. I just post articles I come across - the three of you know the history of the
Fri Mar 11, 2016, 01:39 PM
Mar 2016

events and lives of the people you care and post about. I love it.

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