Report Details How US-Backed Coup Unleashed Wave of Abuses in Honduras

[Lodestar]

Survey by 54 civil society organizations and social movements presented to UN as alternative to official state report.

The U.S.-backed Honduran coup ushered in a wave of neoliberal policies that have systematically violated the economic, cultural, and social rights of the nation's Indigenous people, women, and farmers, while leaving activists and rights defenders—such as the late Berta Cáceres—vulnerable to criminalization and violence.

Such were the findings of a new report, prepared by a coalition of 54 Honduran social movements and rights organizations and presented as an alternative to the official government report submitted to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which began its 58th session in Geneva on Monday.

"The coup d'etat in 2009 meant an imminent reversal of human rights and a serious blow to the country's institutions," states the report (pdf), which is available in Spanish.

While the study does not single out international governments that supported the ouster of the country's democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, it comes as former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to assume the role of Democratic nominee for president. Clinton's role in the coup has come under increased scrutiny since the assassination of Cáceres, a Honduran Indigenous rights and environmental activist, in March.

cont'd
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/07/report-details-how-us-backed-coup-unleashed-wave-abuses-honduras

[Lodestar]

1. The very same thing is happening right here

in the good ol' usa.

[Herman4747]

2. "The U.S.-backed Honduran coup" -- that would be...

..."The Hillary-backed Honduran coup"

And what did this coup accomplish?

&quot It) systematically violated the economic, cultural, and social rights of the nation's Indigenous people, women, and farmers, while leaving activists and rights defenders—such as the late Berta Cáceres—vulnerable to criminalization and violence."


Henry would be so very proud of his star pupil!!


Hillary shouldn't be running for president, she should be running for the hills

[MisterFred]

9. Oh, but someone yelled at Dolores Huerta.

SQUIRREL!

[sulphurdunn]

12. Watch out y'all.

A HRC disciple will be along anytime now to accuse you of naivete, irrational Hillary hatred, misogyny, racism, blah, blah, blah and de facto support for Donald Trump by default.

[bvar22]

3. Hillary's fingerprints all over it.

That kind of blood don't wash off.

[felix_numinous]

4. Chickenhawks have come home

to roost.

[MisterP]

5. she was told of it a week ahead, and just made noises weak enough that it set DeMint off

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TEGUCIGALPA489_a.html

[zentrum]

6. The vast number

……of people in this country don't care what we do to other people in "faraway" countries. Just don't care.

This is one of the reasons it's hard to accept that this is the woman will be the one to break the glass ceiling.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Hillary, as Sec of State, ran a phony election in Honduras...

...using our own State Department to do so when no reputable elections group on earth would touch that situation (martial law, leftists being murdered). The fascists 'won.'

The coup in Honduras was fostered by Corrupt Media lies, starting with why the U.S.-funded/trained Honduran military shot up the elected president's house, kidnapped him and flew him out of his own country when the fascist junta seized power. They said he 'planned to' violate the Honduran constitution. Real reason: He raised the minimum wage for poor workers at U.S. factories and other helps to the poor.

Now our internal State Department has done the same thing, organized by Hillary and on her behalf. The DNC and our benighted Democratic Party leaders, in collusion with the Corrupt Media (which suspended exit polls for the remaining primaries and declared Hillary the winner yesterday) have run a primary s/election of such monumental corruption that it puts Hillary's machinations in Honduras into the background. Our Democratic Party primary wins the prize for destroying a democracy.

The Corrupt Media also blackholed Bernie Sanders for six months of the 'campaign' and when he started winning primaries by blowout margins, treated him as a footnote to Hillary's "inevitability", meanwhile CREATING Donald Trump out of nothing--by covering his every sneeze 24/7 throughout that same period--as her phony foil.

And nearly every one of our benighted Democratic Party leaders--who approved the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines in 2002, now spread like a plague all over this land, and have tolerated voter purges and other gross election crimes with no opposition whatsoever--have fallen in behind Wall Street's candidate, up for more Wall Street oil wars or whatever.

We have been bushwhacked, like the Hondurans. The only difference is that this coup has been bloodless, whereas thousands of pro-democracy activists in Honduras--many of them women and gay leaders--have been murdered by fascist death squads, or raped, beaten, imprisoned, threatened and/or fired from their jobs and are running for their lives as their society, like Libya, descends into murderous chaos.

Though our democracy has been more difficult for the corpo-militarists to subdue, because it is much longer lived and had more solid foundations than Honduras did, and though it had to be done relatively bloodlessly to succeed (except for JFK, RFK, MLK, Paul Wellstone and perhaps a few others, and, of course, all the victims of all the wars including our own soldiers), it has succeeded as surely as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Karl Rove stole two elections with our Democratic leaders doing nothing whatever to stop them. Any doubts about '00 and '04? Here we go again, this time with all the cunning of the Bush junta, using all their dirty tricks and more, perpetrated by our own Party.

--------------------------

Despite these hard truths, I urge all Bernie Sanders voters to VOTE TODAY if you have not yet voted, in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota!

Your vote MAY be counted. You never know. The only strategy we have right now, given this system, is massive turnout. Make it hard for this corrupt system to silence you!

And don't believe the lies the Corrupt Media is telling you. Hillary Clinton does NOT have sufficient pledged delegates to secure the nomination before the convention. They frigging LIED about this to make you stay home and not vote!

Don't give into despair! VOTE! And we'll talk about what we can do to un-rig our system, and organize for it, after this is over!

[Duval]

18. Thanks for your post!

I know about this, but so many don't. How can we say we're a Democracy when voters are ill informed? It is sad.

[leveymg]

24. Thanks for raising your voice. You speak for many of us.

The world is not theirs unless we allow them to take it.

[nyabingi]

13. Agree 100% (nt)

[azmom]

10. I had no idea that it was

Canadia mining companies which Caceres was oppossing. Frank Guistra, an associate of the Clintons, is one of the chief Canadian financiers in mining Honduras. Follow the money.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/devastating-impact-of-canadian-mining-in-honduras/17285

[HeartoftheMidwest]

16. I wonder if......

...Mr. Guistra has made any contributions, significant or otherwise, to the Clinton Foundation?
Is there a list of donors and donor amounts?

[azmom]

20. He is a big, big donor, and a major player

In the mining industry.

These guys are now suing the state of Arizona because we will not let them mine near the Grand Canyon.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

[HeartoftheMidwest]

22. Like sequoiyas, the Grand Canyon is irreplaceable.

What is it with the greedy people that have to destroy everything?

I did not know about Mr. Guistra...looks like I have homework to do. Thanks!

[L. Coyote]

11. Thanks Obama. Helping create a narco dictatorship, never a good idea!

[George II]

14. This isn't going to change anything. Stay tuned for 8 PM Eastern tonight.

[nyabingi]

15. Hillary tried to slip out of the room

unnoticed a few years back when all of the Hondurans were fleeing in large numbers to the US (including a lot of children without guardians). The US (and Hillary's) role in this was quietly swept under the rug and left the impression that people were fleeing to the US just to be here.

If Hillary becomes president, expect more regime changes, coups, death squads, and more of the same things her mentor Henry Kissinger was so well known for.

[azmom]

21. Yes, and Hillary coldly declared that these unaccompanied

Minors should be sent back in order to send a message. Some of the kids that were sent back were killed.

People are still fleeing. The reason they don't make it to our borders is that Mexico, aided with US dollars is apprehending them.

[nyabingi]

25. It's amazing to me what the media

and her supporters have let her off the hook for while still letting her claim she cares about women and children.

[Doctor_J]

17. Another highlight on Hillary's resume

Along with Iraq, Syria, Libya, doma, TPP, and dadt.

[Dont call me Shirley]

19. Acts such as these are C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L. End Rule By Psychopath!

[Lodestar]

23. How Russia plays into the current U.S. coups in Latin America

and our recent reconnection with Cuba.

The missile defense build up on Russia's border and the recent spate of
U.S. backed coups in Latin America are related. As you recall
during the first Cuban Missile Crisis, the Russians in part were responding to American Jupiter missiles being placed close to Russia, so they attempted to reciprocate by placing their own missiles in Cuba. Well this time the U.S. is attempting to remove the Cuban option from Russia by reopening relations. And of course the U.S. has a military base there as well.
Over the last decade or so Russia has been making economic and military inroads with several Latin American countries which inevitably would mean both competition with U.S. corporations for resources and a geographically closer military presence - arms sales, building nuclear and military infrastructure in those Latin American countries. So this movement by Russia is being countered by a spate of coup attempts. Anyway, there are many layers to what is going on besides just the usual neoliberal aggressions.

Putin made a tour of Latin American countries in 2014, and one of his actions was to forgive a huge part of Cuba's debt. So I'm guessing this escalated U.S. fears of Russia's growing influence in Cuba as well as in Latin America.

Russia writes off 90% of Cuba's debt ahead of Putin's 'big tour' to L. America
https://www.rt.com/business/172020-russia-cuba-debt-writeoff/

Putin: U.S. missile defense on Russian borders is similar to Cuban missile crisis
http://www.wave3.com/story/7270861/putin-us-missile-defense-on-russian-borders-is-similar-to-cuban-missile-crisis

Russian Bombers Could Be Deployed to Cuba (2008)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/21/AR2008072102478.html

And here's a very dark thought...but there are huge untapped natural resources now available in the Arctic due to ice melt, which is creating another area of great tension between Russia and the U.S./Canada.
I know we have been developing geo-engineering/weather manipulation for some time (fact not fiction), terraforming, and I recall a story about Russia's development of an 'artificial sun', so wonder if the ice melt is intentionally part of an attempt to open up that region for exploration/drilling. I know, it's out there, but certainly within the realm of current technological ability.

[nyabingi]

26. I don't think a lot of this is "out there"

People reflexively believe that anything not broadcast openly for their knowledge is not really happening or that it's a "conspiracy theory", but there really are people who are working on creating advantages through geo-engineering and weather manipulation. There are groups solely dedicated to inventing new ways to kill and control people, and most of them are funded with public dollars.

You're right, I think the US is pressing hard now to return neoliberal leaders to Latin America to fend off competition from Russia, just as Obama has ramped up Bush's AFRICOM program to secure African resources from China.

[Lodestar]

27. Resources and security.

China is also making headway in Latin America and besides resource competition and arms sales, that also places them close to our doorstep.
And I'm sure China feels the same way about our presence in
their region of the world. It's big stakes, big players.

Yep, a lot of darkness at work in the world

[alarimer]

28. To be fair, this kind of crap has been going on for decades or more.

But certainly it is not a progressive thing to even tacitly approve the overthrow of a duly elected government anywhere.

This has Kissinger written all over it. At the time, Democracy Now covered it pretty well (they usually do), but there was almost no mention in the mainstream media.

But, hey, at least she's not Trump (which is not nothing, of course).

My expectations of a Clinton presidency are extremely low. I expect her to do the sorts of things we would normally condemn in a Republican. I'm not holding my breath to see if her more vocal supporters condemn such actions, because of course it's okay of our team does it.