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have support.
The other day you posted that Zelaya had been elected in 2005 amidst charges of "massive election fraud." In fact, none other than Mr. Lobo (now 'president' of Honduras amidst massive martial law and human rights abuses) made this rote rightwing charge just after losing to Zelaya in 2005, but gave it up, did not demand a recount, and conceded as soon as the vote count was complete. I asked you for a link to any site documenting "election fraud" in 2005, and you just ignored my question.
He "doesn't have popular support"--wrong!
Through ALBA, Zelaya negotiated cheap oil for Honduras from Venezuela and thus was able to lower the price of bus tickets for poor workers. Only the rich and the rightwing would consider that a joke. ALBA was an excellent alliance for Honduras, in order to free it from the tyranny of forced U.S. "free trade for the rich," and this is one of the reasons that U.S. embassy, which knew about the coup ahead of time, and the U.S. military at the U.S. military base in Honduras where the Junta plane carrying the kidnapped president out of the country stopped for refueling, did nothing to help him, and why the U.S. then pursued a strategy of delay, deception and treacherous backstabbing, ultimately approving the Junta. It was partly in service to Chiquita International and other slave labor operations in Honduras. Zelaya, in addition to joining ALBA, led the fight to raise the minimum wage--another offense against U.S.-based global corporate predators.
These were not misjudgments by Zelaya. He was pursuing popular policies (including the constitutional reform initiative). Where he may have misjudged things was in believing that the U.S., under Obama, would support democracy and social justice.
As for his "misjudging Congress," this was the same Congress that had endorsed his illegal and violent kidnapping and exile, and then trumped up charges against him based on a forged letter of resignation. A cowardly bunch of rats they are, toadying to the rich and powerful--rather like our congress. Zelaya didn't misjudge congress, but he may have misjudged U.S. ambassador Thomas Shannon, as to promises that he would be restored to office to finish his martial law-truncated term.
"Honduras can still undertake any needed Constitutional reforms under the new administration. that will be their call...". Yeah, right. It was an uphill battle for needed constitutional reform before the coup and the vicious repression of the Honduran people. If the current martial law-backed regime undertakes constitutional reform, it will only be to make things worse, and the people of Honduras will have nothing to say about it.
You seem to approve of power not righteousness. Yeah, President Zelaya and the Honduran people--the labor unions, human rights groups, religious advocates of the poor and other grass roots movements, representing the vast poor majority--were outmaneuvered by the combination of massive, violent repression, the entrenched power of the "ten families" oligarchy and the U.S. government and military. Does that make it right?
You are crowing that Zelaya was defeated. But look what it took to defeat him! The illegal, violent and treacherous means used to remove the ELECTED president and his great majority supported administration clearly exposes the ill motives of the Junta and its U.S. backers, and it points to something else as well--when combined with other facts, such as the big U.S. military build-up in Colombia. Zelaya had only six months left to his term of office. How much anti-corporate, anti-oligarchy reform could he have accomplished in that time--especially given the dirtbags running the congress. The reform initiative that he proposed was only an ADVISORY vote of the people. It would have taken years for any reform to get off the ground. So why didn't they just wait out his term, and then hold their Tweedle-dee/Tweedle-dum election, avoiding all reform?
I think there was an ulterior motive on the part of the Pentagon and the Obama administration, which was to secure the U.S. military base and port facilities in Honduras, for a 1980s-style war plan they have to destabilize Honduras' neighbors--which all now have elected leftist governments (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala)--topple those democracies, and create a ring around Venezuela's northern oil region, with the SEVEN new U.S. military bases in Colombia, a deal that contains NO LIMIT on the number of U.S. soldiers and 'contactors' who can be deployed there, unlimited diplomatic immunity for whatever U.S. soldiers and 'contractors' do there and with U.S. military use of all civilian airports and other facilities in Colombia; two new U.S. bases in Panama; the newly reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, and the secured U.S. military facilities in Honduras. I think that the ultimate goal of these activities in an oil war against Venezuela (possibly netting in Ecuador as well).
I can't think of any good reason for the coup in Honduras (they could have just waited Zelaya out), nor for the Obama administration support of that coup at the cost of all the potential good will they had in the region, nor for this massive U.S. military buildup in Latin America--at the cost of billions and billions of dollars that we don't have--except perhaps simple war profiteering (many lucrative contracts with the Pentagon). But, given the other wars that the U.S. is engaged in, and U.S. bankruptcy, my educated guess is that it's not just war profiteering--it's war. The U.S. war machine needs that oil, as do the globalized trade profiteers (to ship their sweatshop-manufactured goods around the globe). Secondly, they want to stop the democracy/independence movement that has caught fire in South and now Central America. (If the "will of the people" in Latin America is to prevail, it means less monstrous profits for the rich and local sovereign control of natural resources such as oil.)
As to misjudgments, I think Zelaya misjudged either the Obama administration's weakness in relation to the Pentagon and Bushwhack operatives, here and there, or misjudged their collusion with the forces of war and oppression. I couldn't 'read' the Obama administration either, early in the Honduran coup--as was true of a lot of people. When the U.S./Colombia's secretly negotiated agreement for this big buildup of the U.S. military in Colombia was finally made public--to the shock and dismay of other Latin American leaders--Chavez commented that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon." My guess at this point is that it's worse than that. It's either collusion or weakness combined with collusion. The war plan certainly has a Rumsfeldian odor to it. It's probably something he left on the desk, which seems to be proceeding of its own momentum, and without any opposition from the Obamites. All they have done is to make a few lame gestures to try to look innocent. Clever gestures, I'll admit (like Obama saying, early on, that Zelaya is "the ONLY president of Honduras"). They fooled me--or rather confused me--early on. I thought that Obama was trying to outmaneuver the Bushwhack plan in Honduras, and it was taking him a long time to get control of the U.S. clients running Honduras. But it looks more to me now that he was collusive--and then came the U.S. military buildup in Colombia, which he is defending.
So if I couldn't 'read' the man I voted for, how much more difficult it must have been for the exiled and profoundly threatened president of Honduras to understand what was really going on. The Honduran military was cutting off his cell phone calls at 40 seconds. He was (and still is) under siege in the Brazilian embassy, surrounded by troops. Shannon shows up like "Sir Lancelot" making promises about restoring Zelaya to his rightful office and about restoration of the rule of law. He's got his fingers crossed behind his back that Zelaya will believe him. Lord, what a disgusting tale this is!
So, hey, you go ahead and stomp on the defeated hopes of the Honduran people for real democracy and improvement of their lot. Go ahead and identify with brutal power. These, apparently, are your affinities. But I do urge you to consider what is right, not just what is powerful. Powermongering and world domination are ignoble goals for the U.S. I truly hate to see my country still pursuing them.
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