Leader Ousted, Honduras Hires U.S. Lobbyists
WASHINGTON — First, depose a president. Second, hire a lobbyist.
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Edgard Garrido/Reuters
Manuel Zelaya, right, the ousted Honduran president, before a news conference Monday at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
The campaign has had the effect of forcing the administration to send mixed signals about its position to the de facto government, which reads them as signs of encouragement. It also has delayed two key State Department appointments in the region.
Costing at least $400,000 so far, according to lobbying registration records, the campaign has involved law firms and public relations agencies with close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on foreign affairs.
It has also drawn support from several former high-ranking officials who were responsible for setting United States policy in Central America in the 1980s and ’90s, when the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies that defined the cold war. Two decades later, those former officials — including Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel W. Fisk — view Honduras as the principal battleground in a proxy fight with Cuba and Venezuela, which they characterize as threats to stability in the region in language similar to that once used to describe the designs of the Soviet Union.
“The current battle for political control of Honduras is not only about that small nation,” Mr. Reich testified in July before Congress. “What happens in Honduras may one day be seen as either the high-water mark of Hugo Chávez’s attempt to undermine democracy in this hemisphere or as a green light to the spread of Chavista authoritarianism,” he said, referring to the Venezuelan president.
Mr. Noriega, who was a co-author of the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the United States embargo against Cuba, and who has recently served as a lobbyist for a Honduran business group, declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Reich, who served in key Latin America posts for President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, said he had not lobbied officially for any Honduran group. But he said he had used his connections to push the agenda of the de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, because he believed that the Obama administration had made a mistake.
And Mr. Fisk, whose political career has included stints on the National Security Council and as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under Mr. Bush, had been promoting the Micheletti government’s case until two weeks ago as an aide to retired Senator Mel Martinez of Florida.
In addition to the support of such cold war veterans — and partly because of it — the de facto government has mobilized the support of a determined group of Republican legislators, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. They are holding up two State Department appointments as a way of pressing the Obama administration to lift sanctions against the country.
“We have made a wrong call here,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview with Fox News after returning from a trip to Honduras last Friday. Referring to the de facto government, he said, “This is probably our best friend in the hemisphere, the most pro-American country, but we are trying to strangle them.”
Chris Sabatini, editor of Americas Quarterly, a policy journal focusing on Latin America, said the lobbying had muddled Washington’s position on the coup. The administration has said publicly that it sees the coup in Honduras as a dangerous development in a region that not too long ago was plagued by them, he said.
But, he added, to placate its opponents in Congress, and have its nominations approved, the State Department has sometimes sent back-channel messages to legislators expressing its support for Mr. Zelaya in more equivocal terms.
“There’s been a leadership vacuum on Honduras in the administration, and these are the people who’ve filled it,” he said of the Micheletti government’s backers. “They haven’t gotten a lot of support, but enough to hold the administration’s policy hostage for now.”
After the June 28 coup, President Obama joined the region in condemning the action and calling for President Zelaya to be returned to power, even though the Honduran president is an ally of Mr. Chávez, America’s biggest adversary in the region.
But Congressional aides said that less than 10 days after Mr. Zelaya was ousted, Mr. Noriega and Lanny J. Davis, a confidant of Mrs. Clinton and a lobbyist for a Honduran business council, organized a meeting for supporters of the de facto government with members of the Senate.
Mr. Fisk, who attended the meeting, said he was stunned by the turnout. “I had never seen eight senators in one room to talk about Latin America in my entire career,” he said.
As President Obama imposed increasingly tougher sanctions on Honduras, the lobbying intensified. The Cormac Group, run by a former aide to Senator McCain, John Timmons, signed on, records show, as did Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, a public relations firm.
For his part, Mr. Reich sent his thoughts to members of Congress by e-mail. “We should rejoice,” he wrote to one member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “that one of the self-proclaimed 21st Century socialist allies of Chávez has been legally deposed by his own countrymen.”
As is often the nature of lobbying, some messages have been sent without any names attached. Floating around Senate offices in the last few weeks, for example, was a list of talking points aimed at undermining the nomination of Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon as ambassador to Brazil. Two Congressional aides, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about matters related to the coup, said that Mr. Fisk wrote the talking points.
Mr. Fisk denied having done so. He also dismissed the notion that he was operating from an old playbook. “Someone else may be fighting over the ’80s,” he said. “I’m not.”
Barclay Walsh contributed research.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/world/americas/08honduras.html
Micheletti has spent more than 400 thousand U.S. dollars lobbying
spent at least $ 400,000 in a campaign of lobbying by "high profile" in the U.S. to build support in Congress, given the position he tookoffice conviction of Barack Obama , said today the New York Times.
The campaign says the newspaper has had the effect of "forcing the administration to send mixed signals" about its position on the de facto government which, he adds, "interpreted as encouraging signs."
In this sense, the Times quotes the editor of the trade publication in Latin America Americas Quarterly, Chris Sabatini, whereby while the U.S. government has described as dangerous precedent the coup of June 28 in Honduras, at a time, "to placate his opponents in Congress, the State Department at times sent messages to legislators expressing support for Zelaya in more equivocal terms.
The statement is in line with the call made yesterday by the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, the beginning of the Roundtable in Tegucigalpa, sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS).
In a statement sent to several capitals hemispheric Zelaya called the "State Department officials" to enforce "in its actions and in their public statements," the "political position" of Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton .
The New York Times points out today that the strong lobby place mainly in Washington, and for which they have been hired law firms and public relations agencies with close ties to Clinton and Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, as the influential lobbyist Lanny Davis, has "delayed two key nominations" the State Department.
The paper deals with the appointment of the current secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon, a new ambassador to Brazil, and Chile's Arturo Valenzuela to succeed in the key post in the Obama administration relations with Latin America.
Shannon is part of the mission of foreign ministers and senior officials of the OAS yesterday participated in the installation of the Roundtable in Tegucigalpa.
In a hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee that reviewed his Senate candidacy in early July, Valenzuela, currently head of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, had defined the events of June 28 in Honduras as a blow State "classic" and strongly supported the condemnation issued by the White House.
The deputy spokesman of the State Department, Philip Crowley, confirmed yesterday in a meeting with journalists the freezing of the two candidates' positions vitally important "for U.S. policy toward the South American continent, although he was confident that both be adopted "very fast", although not stated date.
Besides lobbyists professionals, the New York Times reports that the de facto government of Honduras also has the support in Washington of "former top officials responsible for U.S. policy in Central America in the 80s and 90s," as the region struggled to break with military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies that defined the Cold War "in the region.
These quotes Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel W. Fisk, who, the paper says, "come to Honduras as the main battleground in a power struggle with Cuba and Venezuela."
Also, he adds, has strong support from conservative senators and congressmen, including Republican Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, who last week traveled to Tegucigalpa, like he did Monday IIleana Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, also repubicana.
In an interview with Fox earlier this week, DeMint criticized once again the U.S. officially condemned the de facto government, who said he is in power in a "constitutional".
Honduras is "probably our best friend in the hemisphere, the most pro-American, but we are trying to suppress for bringing back in power to the tyrant who tried to extend its mandate and become another (Hugo) Chavez," said DeMint on Zelaya.
Ros-Lehtinen also again criticized Washington's position after returning from Tegucigalpa on Tuesday.
"The United States has centered his focus on Zelaya, and this undermines the critical security interests of the United States and threatens to ruin the close ties that we share many years with the Honduran people," he said in a statement.
The U.S. government has so far supported the efforts of the OAS in the Honduran crisis and supports the San Jose Agreement as "best" solution to the conflict, at the same time has stated that "under present circumstances" is prepared to recognize elections in late November.
De facto government of Honduras and its allies in Washington influence: NYT
NEW YORK - The de facto government in Honduras and its allies launched a lobbying campaign after the coup and able to exert some influence on Washington, writes the New York Times.
According to an article published Thursday on the front page, the paper said the campaign had the effect of forcing the government to send mixed signals to the de facto government, which are read as signs of encouragement. "
The lobbying campaign has already spent about $ 400,000 in law firms and public relations have "close ties" with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the influential Republican Senator John McCain.
The lobbying was supported by three former senior U.S. government officials - Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel Fisk - who consider the case of Honduras as a battle against the influence of Venezuela and Cuba.
By lobbying in Congress by a group of Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the campaign even stopped in government appointments.
Again according to the article, the legislators involved in the lobbying took two appointments as hostages to pressure the government of Barack Obama, including that of Tom Shannon in the key post of ambassador to Brazil.
While Obama publicly condemned the coup, says the New York Times, the State Department "sent messages to legislators sometimes through other channels, expressing his support for Zelaya in more ambiguous terms.
Behind the recent pressure campaign against the Zelaya regime in Honduras lurks a shadowy world of right wing foundations, lobbying groups, and anti-Chávez figures. This tangled web of Washington, D.C. interests includes the Arcadia Foundation, a mysterious figure named Robert Carmona Borjas, and former State Department official Otto Reich. What do all these organizations and characters have in common? In one way or another, they are all tied back to Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
According to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Venezuelan lawyer Robert-Carmona Borjas helped to draft some of the infamous anti-constitutional "Carmona decrees" after Hugo Chávez was overthrown in the April 2002 military coup. After Chávez was returned to power, Carmona Borjas fled to the United States where he found his calling as a leading anti-Chávez figure and, more recently, as a fierce critic of the Zelaya regime in Honduras.
In 2004, Carmona-Borjas was listed as part time faculty at the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at George Washington University; as recently as November 2008, set up a class entitled "Political Management in Latin America" offered through the Graduate School of Political Management. According to the GW Hatchet, the local student paper, the class had a roster of right-wing, free-trade boosting speakers including Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich, Leopoldo López, a Venezuelan politician, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).
According to the Hatchet, the class sought to "analyze Latin American governments that have failed social policies, which have led to anti-system political movements." "Many Latin American countries have forged ties with re-emerging powers and countries in pursuit of nuclear capability," Carmona-Borjas said, "ties that can endanger the interests of the United States in the region."
But it was not part time teaching in D.C. that distinguished Carmona Borjas as a political player. No, it was the Venezuelan's work as Vice President of the mysterious anti-corruption and watchdog outfit known as Arcadia Foundation that really set him apart. From his perch at Arcadia, Carmona-Borjas launched anti-corruption attacks against Honduras and the Zelaya regime. In particular, he conducted a massive public relations campaign against Hondutel, the state telecommunications company in Honduras. In article after article published in the Central American media, Borjas-Carmona accused Hondutel of corruption.
The Right-Wing Telecom Connection
The Venezuelan right winger was joined in his criticisms by Otto Reich, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, State Department official under Bush, and foreign policy adviser for McCain's 2008 campaign. Reich was linked to figures in the 2002 coup against Chávez and has worked as a corporate lobbyist for firms such as telecom giant AT&T. His firm, Otto Reich Associates, advises U.S. corporations in Latin America and promotes the American free trade agenda by fighting privatization.
I speculated before that Reich and Carmona-Borjas might have known of each other, and the George Washington University connection is now proof of that. What seems to have united both Reich and Carmona-Borjas was their interest in the telecommunications issue. That's not too surprising in light of the history. Indeed, for McCain and his right-wing ilk the telecom industry has been a central political focus. McCain has had important historic ties to big corporations such as AT&T, MCI, and Qualcomm. In return for their financial contributions, McCain, who partly oversees the telecommunication industry in the Senate, has acted to protect and look out for the political and economic interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill.
To get a sense of the sheer scope of McCain's incestuous relationship with the telecoms, one need only log on to the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 1998 electoral cycle, AT&T gave $34,000 to McCain. In the 2000 cycle, the telecom giant provided $69,000; in 2002 $61,000; in 2004 $39,000; in 2006 $29,000; and in 2008 $187,000. Over the course of his career, AT&T has been McCain's second largest corporate backer.
What's more, AT&T has donated handsomely to McCain's International Republican Institute (IRI). McCain chairs this group and though he seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with the operation that is funded by the U.S. government and private money. The IRI, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy worldwide. In 2006, AT&T gave the IRI $200,000. AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris declined to elaborate on why the international telecommunications provider wrote a big check. "AT&T contributes to a variety of charitable organizations," he said flippantly.
IRI and Telecom Agenda in Latin America
The IRI has fought against regimes in Latin America that resist privatization of the telecom industry. In Venezuela, where the government nationalized the telecom firm CANTV, IRI generously funded anti-Chávez civil society groups that were opposed to the regime. Starting in 1998, the year Chávez was elected, IRI worked with Venezuelan organizations to produce anti-Chávez media campaigns, including newspaper, television, and radio ads.
Additionally, when politicians, union and civil society leaders went to Washington to meet with U.S. officials just one month before the April 2002 coup, IRI picked up the bill. The IRI also helped to fund the corrupt Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (which played a major role in the anti-Chávez destabilization campaign leading up to the coup) and Súmate, an organization involved in a signature-gathering campaign to present a petition calling for Chávez's recall.
Like Hugo Chávez, Honduran President Zelaya was known to be as a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization. In this sense, he was at odds with the current coup president Roberto Micheletti as well as right-wing interests in the U.S. such as McCain's IRI, Arcadia, and Otto Reich Associates that push for the free trade agenda and privatization.
The Curious Case of Cormac
For evidence of further U.S. corporate and right-wing ties to the Honduran imbroglio, one need look no farther than PR Newswire for last Monday, July 6. In an article headlined "Honduran Congressional, Business Leaders to Hold Washington, D.C., Press Conference," we learn that a delegation sought "several days of meetings with United States policymakers to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras' constitutional process and to discuss next steps to ensure the preservation of the country's democratic institutions."
Founded in March 2001, the Cormac Group is a "strategic consulting and lobbying firm" advocating "open and fair markets." Cormac works in the telecommunications sector and seeks to construct "a barrier-free regulatory structure that enhances competition." Cormac's Founding Partner John Timmons was a fundraiser for McCain and former Senate aide and has represented AT&T. Another partner at Cormac, Jonathan Slade, "has developed a well-known reputation from helping American and foreign companies impact the U.S. foreign policy process, particularly related to Latin America."
Hard Right and Not Obama
What seems to have united all these right-wing groups and figures -- from Arcadia to Otto Reich -- was their allegiance to free markets and privatization of the telecom industry. It was these entities allied to the hard right and McCain that played the most prominent role in the pressure campaign against Zelaya -- not the Obama Administration.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006) and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008). Check out his Web site at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2021
While the Obama Administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras—condeming the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officals’ visas, and shutting off aid—that doesn’t mean influential Americans aren’t involved, and that both sides of the aisle don’t have some explaining to do.
The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya—an ally of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez—was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.
That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982 and the one term limit allows the brass hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way that Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.
And while Zelaya is indeed friendly with Chavez, he is at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage. “What Zelaya has done has been little reforms,” Rafael Alegria, a leader of Via Campesina told the Mexican daily La Jornada. “He isn’t a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn’t harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously.”
One of those “little reforms” was aimed at ensuring public control of the Honduran telecommunications industry and that may well have been the trip wire that triggered the coup.
The first hint that something was afoot was a suit brought by Venezuelan lawyer Robert Carmona-Borjas claiming that Zelaya was part of a bribary scheme involving the state-run telecommunication company, Hondutel.
Carmona-Borjas has a rap sheet that dates back to the April 2002 coup against Chavez It was he who drew up the notorious “Carmona decrees,” a series of draconian laws aimed at suspending the Venezuelan constitution and suppressing any resistance to the coup. As Chavez supporters poured into the streets and the plot unraveled, he fled to Washington DC.
There he took a post at George Washington University and brought Iran-Contra plotters Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams to teach his class on “Political Management in Latin America.” He also became vice-president of the right-wing Arcadia Foundation, which lobbies for free market policies.
Weeks before the June 28 Honduran coup, Carmona-Borjas barnstormed the country accusing Zelaya of collaborating with narco-traffickers.
Reich, a Cuban-American with ties to right-wing factions all over Latin America, and a former assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs under George W. Bush, has been accused by the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization of “undeniable involvement” in the coup.
This is hardly surprising. Reich’s priors makes Carmona-Borjas look like a boy scout.
He was nailed by a 1987 Congressional investigation for using public funds to engage in propaganda during the Reagan Administration’s war on Nicaragua. He is also a fierce advocate for Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both implicated in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1973 that killed all 73 on board.
Reich is a ferocious critic of Zelaya and, in a recent piece in the Weekly Standard, urged the Obama Administration not to support “strongman” Zelaya because it “would put the United States clearly in the same camp as Cuba’s Castro brothers, Venezuela’s Chavez, and other regional delinquents.”
Zelaya’s return was unanimous supported by the UN General Assembly, the European Union, and the Organization of American States.
One of the charges that Reich levels at Zelaya is that the Honduran president is supposedly involved with bribes paid out by the state-run telecommunication company, Hondutel. Zelaya is threatening to file a defamation suit over the accusation.
Reich’s charges against Hondutel are hardly happenstance.
The Cuban-American, a former lobbyist for AT&T, is close to Arizona Senator John McCain and served as McCain’s Latin American advisor during the Senator’s run for the presidency. John McCain is Mr. telecommunications.
The Senator has deep ties with telecom giants AT&T, MCI and Qualcomm and, according to Nikolas Kozloff , author of “Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge of the U.S.,” “has acted to protect and look out for the political interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill.”
AT&T is McCain’s second largest donor, and the company also generously funds McCain’s International Republican Institute (IRI), which has warred with Latin American regimes that have resisted telecommunications privatization. According to Kozloff, “President Zelaya was a known to be a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization.”
When Venezuelan coup leaders went to Washington a month before their failed effort to oust Chavez, IRI footed the bill. Reich, as then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s special envoy to the Western Hemisphere, met with some of those leaders.
In 2004, Reich founded his own lobbying agency and immersed himself in guns, rum, tobacco, and sweat. His clients include Lockheed Martin (the world’s largest arms dealer), British American Tobacco and Bacardi. He is also vice-chairman of Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production, a clothing industry front aimed at derailing the anti-sweat-shop movement.
Republicans in Congress have accused the Obama Administration of being “soft” on Zelaya, and protested the White House’s support of the Honduran president by voting against administration nominees for the ambassador to Brazil and an assistant secretary of state.
But meddling in Honduras is a bi-partisan undertaking.
“If you want to understand who is the real power behind the [Honduran] coup, you need to find out who is paying Lanny Davis,” says Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy.
Davis, best known as the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, has been lobbying members of Congress and testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in support of the coup.
According to Roberto Lovato, an associate editor at New American Media, Davis represents the Honduran chapter of CEAL, the Business Council of Latin America, which strongly backed the coup. Davis told Lovato, “I’m proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law.”
But White says the coup had more to do with profits than law.
“Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests,” says White. “The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour.”
According to the World Bank, 66 percent of Hondurans lives below the poverty line.
The U.S. is also involved in the coup through a network of agencies that funnel money and training to anti-government groups. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) contribute to right-wing organizations that supported the coup, including the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union. Many of the officers that bundled Zelaya off to San Jose were trained at the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former “School for the Americas’ that has seen torturers and coup leaders from all over Latin America pass through its doors. Reich served on the Institute’s board.
The Obama Administration condemned the coup, but when Zelaya journeyed to the Honduran-Nicaragua border, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced him for being “provocative.” It was a strange statement, since the State Department said nothing about a report by the Committee of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras charging 1,100 human rights violations by the coup regime, including detentions, assaults and murder.
Human rights violations by the coup government have been condemned by the Inter American Commission for Human Rights, the International Observer Mission, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protest Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders.
Davis claims that the coup was a “legal” maneuver to preserve democracy. But that is a hard argument to make, given who some of the people behind it were. One of those is Fernando Joya, a former member of Battalion 316, a paramilitary death squad. Joya fled the country after being charged with kidnapping and torturing several students in the 1980s, but he has now resurfaced as a “special security advisor” to the coup makers. He recently gave a TV interview that favorably compared the 1973 Chilean coup to the June 28 Honduran coup.
According to Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, the coup makers also included the extremely right-wing Catholic organization, Opus Dei, whose roots go back to the fascist regime of Spanish caudillo Francisco Franco.
In the old days, when the U.S. routinely overthrew governments that displeased it, the Marines would have gone in, as they did in Guatemala and Nicaragua, or the CIA would have engineered a coup by the local elites. No one has accused U.S. intelligence of being involved in the Honduran coup, and American troops in the country are keeping a low profile. But the fingerprints of U.S. institutions like the NED, USAID and School for the Americas—plus bipartisan lobbyists, powerful corporations, and dedicated Cold War warriors—are all over the June takeover.
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan08102009.html
Hesitation to Honduras reveals weak U.S. policy toward Latin America
WASHINGTON - The government's mixed messages of Barack Obama address the crisis in Honduras highlight a diplomatic team still "crippled" and lack of a clear U.S. policy to Latin America, analysts said Thursday in Washington.
"We need greater depth and greater control over U.S. foreign policy toward the region in terms of having a consistent message," said Steven Clemons, director of program analysis strategy of downtown New America Foundation.
It is imperative to assess "the level and quality of care we provide to the region," Clemons said during a teleconference on the crisis in Honduras.
Nearly nine months after assuming the presidency, Obama has failed to renew the most important post for Latin America in the State Department.
Confirmation of candidate Obama, Arturo Valenzuela, as undersecretary of the Department for Latin America still pending in the Senate, where Republican Jim DeMint keeps locked precisely to oppose the condemnation of the Obama administration to the coup in Honduras.
Within hours of the coup happened on 28 June that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya, Obama refused and demanded the return of the president.
Some Republican lawmakers, led by DeMint in the Senate and the cubanaestadounidense Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the House of Representatives, say whom Zelaya-linked to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez-violated the constitution and that his departure was legal.
Certain statements emanating from the State Department over the crisis in Honduras have raised questions.
After the first attempt to return Zelaya of Honduras in an airplane, department officials stated that this action risked the mediation of President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias.
Then, when the president sought to walk across the border from Nicaragua, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, calling him reckless.
Last week, the U.S. representative to the OAS, Lewis Amselem, called the clandestine return of Zelaya in Honduras, where it remains a refugee in the Brazilian embassy, "irresponsible and stupid".
This outburst led to "people wonder what the U.S. policy," the analyst said Clemons.
The State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, on Thursday rejected suggestions that the Obama has been ambiguous response to the crisis in Honduras.
"I do not think this administration will be putting off the issue. We had a consistent principle of supporting the idea of constitutional order," said Kelly told reporters.
"There are many ambiguities about the situation," because the positions face depending on whether or not sympathize with the policies he advanced Zelaya in Honduras, said Doug Cassel, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.
In the Obama still comes from government officials that former Republican George W. Bush and his team is "crippled" without the confirmation of the undersecretary for Latin America, said Clemons.
And Republicans like DeMint "take advantage of this situation, when in fact they have helped prevent the government has a consistent policy," he added.
The New York Times reported Thursday that a public relations operation conducted by the de facto regime of Honduras, had the effect of forcing the (U.S.) government to send mixed signals to the de facto government. "
While Zelaya and leaders of the region such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales have accused sectors of the American right of being behind the coup in Honduras.
| Washington Plays Both Sides on Honduran Coup |  |  |
| Written by Laura Carlsen | |
| Monday, 05 October 2009 | |
| Source: Americas MexicoBlog The good news is that Washington has finally begun to take stronger actions on Honduras. The bad news is that the actions completely contradict each other, resulting in ambiguity, paralysis and infighting as the Honduran crisis explodes. For many months, the news out of the U.S. capital focused on contradictions between multilateral resolutions to condemn the coup, the scarce but firm remarks from President Obama and fudging from the State Department. At the same time, the Pentagon kept true to its image of the strong-but-silent-type, not responding to confirm or deny accusations that its base at Palmerola played a role in the abduction of President Zelaya, that it invited the Armed Forces of the coup regime to participate in PANAMAX exercises last month, or that its military presence in Honduras was tacitly supporting the coup. All these contradictions still exist. But now members of the U.S. Congress and private sector have made coherent policy even more unlikely by openly working to oppose the U.S. official position. Congress Faces Off A small minority group in the U.S. House and Senate is determined to support the Honduran coup regime despite official government policy to oppose it. In a showdown that reveals the depths of the division in Congress, conservative Senator Jim DeMint announced a plan to travel to Honduras with three fellow Republicans (U.S. Representatives Aaron Schock R-Illinois, Peter Roskam R-Illinois and Doug Lamborn R-Colorado). DeMint has been outspoken in saying that the military coup in Honduras is legal and constitutional, outright rejecting the UN and Organization of American States resolutions that the Obama administration voted to approve.Head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry, refused to approve Committee financing for the trip. DeMint credits Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell for getting around Kerry's refusal to fund his coup-tour by obtaining a plane from the Defense Department. He does not define this as a "fact-finding trip" as much of the press has falsely re-dubbed it. Instead, he explicitly announces the political bias of his publicly funded Honduran jaunt, writing on Twitter, "Leading delegation to Honduras tomorrow to support Nov. 29 elections. Hondurans should be able to choose their own future.” The U.S. government, along with other governments in the hemisphere, has announced that it will not recognize the Nov. 29 Honduran elections if they are held under the military coup. DeMint lashed out at Kerry's move, calling it "bullying." Kerry shot back that DeMint was blocking development of government Latin America policy. But Kerry's office wasn't referring to DeMint's anti-democratic stance on Honduras. He was referring to the DeMint-led veto on key Obama diplomatic appointments to Latin America. Under Senate law, if a single senator objects to a nomination, the Senate must muster 60 votes to overcome the objection. The Democrats currently have only 59, counting independents. This means that DeMint can apparaently indefinitely block Obama's appointments to major posts in Latin American diplomacy. The region is the only one that still does not have a new under-secretary of state to coordinate policy, since the nominee, Arturo Valenzuela, has not been approved. The second Congressional practitioner of renegade diplomacy is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Florida Congresswoman is planning to visit Honduras in the coming weeks. It's pretty clear why Ros-Lehtinen goes out on a limb to defend the Honduran coup. Of Cuban descent, she's virulently anti-Castro and jumps on any opportunity to attack center-left governments in Latin America, particularly ones with ties to Venezuela. Ros-Lehtinen describes her presumably public-funded trip with a bias that's inexplicit about its opposition to the official policy of the country she ostensibly represents: "I am traveling to Honduras to conduct my own assessment of the situation on the ground and the state of U.S. interests in light of the U.S.'s misguided Zelaya-focused approach," she stated. The Congresswoman plans to meet with Micheletti, business leaders, the US Embassy and other members of the coup. She had a meeting scheduled with Honduran businessman Alfredo Facusse in Miami last week but Facusse, a supporter of the coup, had his visa revoked under the U.S. State Department measure to sanction the coup. This would be but a last gasp of the fading ultra-conservative Florida Cuban group were it not for the fact that Ros-Lehtinen has power in Congress. Due to her seniority—she has been a member since 1989—she is currently a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Fervent clashes in the Capitol are common on both domestic and foreign policy, but it is rare that Senators and Congressmen approach foreign governments (or coups) directly to negotiate positions contrary to their governments. A TPM blog notes that this is the new GOP strategy, not only in Honduras but in at least three other situations as well. Alarmed at the counter-diplomacy efforts undertaken by the rightwing fringe, other members of Congress rallied today to express support for the administration's call for a return to constitutional order in the Central American nation. An Oct. 2 letter to the Honduran Congress by Congressional representatives Bill Delahunt, Jim McGovern, Janice Schakowsy, Sam Farr, Gregory Weeks and Xavier Becerra begins: The letter follows similar letters from the office of Rep. Raul Grijalva."We understand that you have received visitors from our Congress who represent the minority party, the Republican Party, who have expressed views that differ markedly from those of President Obama's administration and the Democratic majority party in the US Congress..." It goes on to spell out the democratic position: "We believe that the coup against President Zelaya was unconstitutional; the absence of a legitimate president, the violations of human rights and the curtailment of civil liberties are unacceptable; and these conditions make the holding of free and fair elections next November in Honduras impossible." It doesn't matter much whether Ros-Lehtinen and DeMint go to Honduras for the photo op with Micheletti or not. It has happened before (rightwing Congressman Connie Mack was there with a delegation on July 25 ) and had very little impact, except to delight the coup-controlled media for a day or so. But it really does matter who pays. The U.S. taxpayer—whether through the Defense or State Departments or through Congressional funds—should not have to pay for congressional junkets that aim to undermine official government policies. The U.S. government has signed both the OAS and UN resolutions deeming the coup a coup and calling for non-recognition of the Micheletti regime. PR Firms Reap Mega-Contracts to Undermine U.S. Government Policy Last Monday, we reported that the Honduran coup had contracted with the Washington PR firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates worth over $290,000. The contract was filed with the Justice Department on Sept. 18 and is available on-line. As noted in the Sept. 28 blog, this is the first time that the de facto regime has contracted directly, in this case signed by Rafael Pineda Ponce, head of Institutional Strengthening for the coup regime. It includes monitoring the press and coordinating responses to negative publicity. Honduran organizations have asked the State Department to investigate the legality of the contract. For one thing, the coup regime is spending Honduran public funds to sustain itself as an anti-constitutional government.The contract reads, "The registrant will engage in the following activities on behalf of the foreign principal: providing advice and planning on strategic public relations activities, designing and managing said activities through the use of media outreach, policymaker and third party contact and events and public dissemination of information to government officials, the staff of government officials, news media and non-government groups. The purpose of these activities is to advance the level of communication, awareness and media policymaker attention about the political situation in Honduras." The Justice Department should also be concerned about violations of foreign lobbying regulations. It's one thing to lobby U.S. policymakers for a foreign government but quite another to lobby for a foreign military coup. By all logic, this should be prohibited under the lobbying rules. This is another example of how the State Department's refusal to do its job by designating the Honduran coup a coup gives Micheletti wiggle room he never should have been given. The ambivalence and contradictions coming out of Washington these days only serve to prolong and deepen the conflict in Honduras. It will never be possible to convince certain rightwing actors to accept a return to democracy in the country, not to talk slick PR firms into acting along any criteria but money coming in. The only solution is to diligently apply the law—something Hondurans no longer have the option of doing—to resolve this crisis. The coup must be isolated and sanctioned until its leaders realize that hijacking democracy is not acceptable practice. |
Nikolas Kozloff: Who's Behind Honduras Destabilization? All Roads Lead to McCain
by Nikolas KozloffBehind the recent pressure campaign against the Zelaya regime in Honduras lurks a shadowy world of right wing foundations, lobbying groups, and anti-Chávez figures. This tangled web of Washington, D.C. interests includes the Arcadia Foundation, a mysterious figure named Robert Carmona Borjas, and former State Department official Otto Reich. What do all these organizations and characters have in common? In one way or another, they are all tied back to Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
According to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Venezuelan lawyer Robert-Carmona Borjas helped to draft some of the infamous anti-constitutional "Carmona decrees" after Hugo Chávez was overthrown in the April 2002 military coup. After Chávez was returned to power, Carmona Borjas fled to the United States where he found his calling as a leading anti-Chávez figure and, more recently, as a fierce critic of the Zelaya regime in Honduras.
In 2004, Carmona-Borjas was listed as part time faculty at the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at George Washington University; as recently as November 2008, set up a class entitled "Political Management in Latin America" offered through the Graduate School of Political Management. According to the GW Hatchet, the local student paper, the class had a roster of right-wing, free-trade boosting speakers including Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich, Leopoldo López, a Venezuelan politician, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).
According to the Hatchet, the class sought to "analyze Latin American governments that have failed social policies, which have led to anti-system political movements." "Many Latin American countries have forged ties with re-emerging powers and countries in pursuit of nuclear capability," Carmona-Borjas said, "ties that can endanger the interests of the United States in the region."
But it was not part time teaching in D.C. that distinguished Carmona Borjas as a political player. No, it was the Venezuelan's work as Vice President of the mysterious anti-corruption and watchdog outfit known as Arcadia Foundation that really set him apart. From his perch at Arcadia, Carmona-Borjas launched anti-corruption attacks against Honduras and the Zelaya regime. In particular, he conducted a massive public relations campaign against Hondutel, the state telecommunications company in Honduras. In article after article published in the Central American media, Borjas-Carmona accused Hondutel of corruption.
The Right-Wing Telecom Connection
The Venezuelan right winger was joined in his criticisms by Otto Reich, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, State Department official under Bush, and foreign policy adviser for McCain's 2008 campaign. Reich was linked to figures in the 2002 coup against Chávez and has worked as a corporate lobbyist for firms such as telecom giant AT&T. His firm, Otto Reich Associates, advises U.S. corporations in Latin America and promotes the American free trade agenda by fighting privatization.
I speculated before that Reich and Carmona-Borjas might have known of each other, and the George Washington University connection is now proof of that. What seems to have united both Reich and Carmona-Borjas was their interest in the telecommunications issue. That's not too surprising in light of the history. Indeed, for McCain and his right-wing ilk the telecom industry has been a central political focus. McCain has had important historic ties to big corporations such as AT&T, MCI, and Qualcomm. In return for their financial contributions, McCain, who partly oversees the telecommunication industry in the Senate, has acted to protect and look out for the political and economic interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill.
To get a sense of the sheer scope of McCain's incestuous relationship with the telecoms, one need only log on to the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 1998 electoral cycle, AT&T gave $34,000 to McCain. In the 2000 cycle, the telecom giant provided $69,000; in 2002 $61,000; in 2004 $39,000; in 2006 $29,000; and in 2008 $187,000. Over the course of his career, AT&T has been McCain's second largest corporate backer.
What's more, AT&T has donated handsomely to McCain's International Republican Institute (IRI). McCain chairs this group and though he seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with the operation that is funded by the U.S. government and private money. The IRI, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy worldwide. In 2006, AT&T gave the IRI $200,000. AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris declined to elaborate on why the international telecommunications provider wrote a big check. "AT&T contributes to a variety of charitable organizations," he said flippantly.
IRI and Telecom Agenda in Latin America
The IRI has fought against regimes in Latin America that resist privatization of the telecom industry. In Venezuela, where the government nationalized the telecom firm CANTV, IRI generously funded anti-Chávez civil society groups that were opposed to the regime. Starting in 1998, the year Chávez was elected, IRI worked with Venezuelan organizations to produce anti-Chávez media campaigns, including newspaper, television, and radio ads.
Additionally, when politicians, union and civil society leaders went to Washington to meet with U.S. officials just one month before the April 2002 coup, IRI picked up the bill. The IRI also helped to fund the corrupt Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (which played a major role in the anti-Chávez destabilization campaign leading up to the coup) and Súmate, an organization involved in a signature-gathering campaign to present a petition calling for Chávez's recall.
Like Hugo Chávez, Honduran President Zelaya was known to be as a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization. In this sense, he was at odds with the current coup president Roberto Micheletti as well as right-wing interests in the U.S. such as McCain's IRI, Arcadia, and Otto Reich Associates that push for the free trade agenda and privatization.
The Curious Case of Cormac
For evidence of further U.S. corporate and right-wing ties to the Honduran imbroglio, one need look no farther than PR Newswire for last Monday, July 6. In an article headlined "Honduran Congressional, Business Leaders to Hold Washington, D.C., Press Conference," we learn that a delegation sought "several days of meetings with United States policymakers to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras' constitutional process and to discuss next steps to ensure the preservation of the country's democratic institutions."
Founded in March 2001, the Cormac Group is a "strategic consulting and lobbying firm" advocating "open and fair markets." Cormac works in the telecommunications sector and seeks to construct "a barrier-free regulatory structure that enhances competition." Cormac's Founding Partner John Timmons was a fundraiser for McCain and former Senate aide and has represented AT&T. Another partner at Cormac, Jonathan Slade, "has developed a well-known reputation from helping American and foreign companies impact the U.S. foreign policy process, particularly related to Latin America."
Hard Right and Not Obama
What seems to have united all these right-wing groups and figures -- from Arcadia to Otto Reich -- was their allegiance to free markets and privatization of the telecom industry. It was these entities allied to the hard right and McCain that played the most prominent role in the pressure campaign against Zelaya -- not the Obama Administration.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006) and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008). Check out his Web site at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2021
A U.S. Connection
The Honduran Coup
By CONN HALLINANWhile the Obama Administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras—condeming the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officals’ visas, and shutting off aid—that doesn’t mean influential Americans aren’t involved, and that both sides of the aisle don’t have some explaining to do.
The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya—an ally of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez—was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.
That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982 and the one term limit allows the brass hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way that Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.
And while Zelaya is indeed friendly with Chavez, he is at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage. “What Zelaya has done has been little reforms,” Rafael Alegria, a leader of Via Campesina told the Mexican daily La Jornada. “He isn’t a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn’t harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously.”
One of those “little reforms” was aimed at ensuring public control of the Honduran telecommunications industry and that may well have been the trip wire that triggered the coup.
The first hint that something was afoot was a suit brought by Venezuelan lawyer Robert Carmona-Borjas claiming that Zelaya was part of a bribary scheme involving the state-run telecommunication company, Hondutel.
Carmona-Borjas has a rap sheet that dates back to the April 2002 coup against Chavez It was he who drew up the notorious “Carmona decrees,” a series of draconian laws aimed at suspending the Venezuelan constitution and suppressing any resistance to the coup. As Chavez supporters poured into the streets and the plot unraveled, he fled to Washington DC.
There he took a post at George Washington University and brought Iran-Contra plotters Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams to teach his class on “Political Management in Latin America.” He also became vice-president of the right-wing Arcadia Foundation, which lobbies for free market policies.
Weeks before the June 28 Honduran coup, Carmona-Borjas barnstormed the country accusing Zelaya of collaborating with narco-traffickers.
Reich, a Cuban-American with ties to right-wing factions all over Latin America, and a former assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs under George W. Bush, has been accused by the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization of “undeniable involvement” in the coup.
This is hardly surprising. Reich’s priors makes Carmona-Borjas look like a boy scout.
He was nailed by a 1987 Congressional investigation for using public funds to engage in propaganda during the Reagan Administration’s war on Nicaragua. He is also a fierce advocate for Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both implicated in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1973 that killed all 73 on board.
Reich is a ferocious critic of Zelaya and, in a recent piece in the Weekly Standard, urged the Obama Administration not to support “strongman” Zelaya because it “would put the United States clearly in the same camp as Cuba’s Castro brothers, Venezuela’s Chavez, and other regional delinquents.”
Zelaya’s return was unanimous supported by the UN General Assembly, the European Union, and the Organization of American States.
One of the charges that Reich levels at Zelaya is that the Honduran president is supposedly involved with bribes paid out by the state-run telecommunication company, Hondutel. Zelaya is threatening to file a defamation suit over the accusation.
Reich’s charges against Hondutel are hardly happenstance.
The Cuban-American, a former lobbyist for AT&T, is close to Arizona Senator John McCain and served as McCain’s Latin American advisor during the Senator’s run for the presidency. John McCain is Mr. telecommunications.
The Senator has deep ties with telecom giants AT&T, MCI and Qualcomm and, according to Nikolas Kozloff , author of “Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge of the U.S.,” “has acted to protect and look out for the political interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill.”
AT&T is McCain’s second largest donor, and the company also generously funds McCain’s International Republican Institute (IRI), which has warred with Latin American regimes that have resisted telecommunications privatization. According to Kozloff, “President Zelaya was a known to be a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization.”
When Venezuelan coup leaders went to Washington a month before their failed effort to oust Chavez, IRI footed the bill. Reich, as then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s special envoy to the Western Hemisphere, met with some of those leaders.
In 2004, Reich founded his own lobbying agency and immersed himself in guns, rum, tobacco, and sweat. His clients include Lockheed Martin (the world’s largest arms dealer), British American Tobacco and Bacardi. He is also vice-chairman of Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production, a clothing industry front aimed at derailing the anti-sweat-shop movement.
Republicans in Congress have accused the Obama Administration of being “soft” on Zelaya, and protested the White House’s support of the Honduran president by voting against administration nominees for the ambassador to Brazil and an assistant secretary of state.
But meddling in Honduras is a bi-partisan undertaking.
“If you want to understand who is the real power behind the [Honduran] coup, you need to find out who is paying Lanny Davis,” says Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy.
Davis, best known as the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, has been lobbying members of Congress and testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in support of the coup.
According to Roberto Lovato, an associate editor at New American Media, Davis represents the Honduran chapter of CEAL, the Business Council of Latin America, which strongly backed the coup. Davis told Lovato, “I’m proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law.”
But White says the coup had more to do with profits than law.
“Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests,” says White. “The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour.”
According to the World Bank, 66 percent of Hondurans lives below the poverty line.
The U.S. is also involved in the coup through a network of agencies that funnel money and training to anti-government groups. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) contribute to right-wing organizations that supported the coup, including the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union. Many of the officers that bundled Zelaya off to San Jose were trained at the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former “School for the Americas’ that has seen torturers and coup leaders from all over Latin America pass through its doors. Reich served on the Institute’s board.
The Obama Administration condemned the coup, but when Zelaya journeyed to the Honduran-Nicaragua border, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced him for being “provocative.” It was a strange statement, since the State Department said nothing about a report by the Committee of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras charging 1,100 human rights violations by the coup regime, including detentions, assaults and murder.
Human rights violations by the coup government have been condemned by the Inter American Commission for Human Rights, the International Observer Mission, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protest Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders.
Davis claims that the coup was a “legal” maneuver to preserve democracy. But that is a hard argument to make, given who some of the people behind it were. One of those is Fernando Joya, a former member of Battalion 316, a paramilitary death squad. Joya fled the country after being charged with kidnapping and torturing several students in the 1980s, but he has now resurfaced as a “special security advisor” to the coup makers. He recently gave a TV interview that favorably compared the 1973 Chilean coup to the June 28 Honduran coup.
According to Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, the coup makers also included the extremely right-wing Catholic organization, Opus Dei, whose roots go back to the fascist regime of Spanish caudillo Francisco Franco.
In the old days, when the U.S. routinely overthrew governments that displeased it, the Marines would have gone in, as they did in Guatemala and Nicaragua, or the CIA would have engineered a coup by the local elites. No one has accused U.S. intelligence of being involved in the Honduran coup, and American troops in the country are keeping a low profile. But the fingerprints of U.S. institutions like the NED, USAID and School for the Americas—plus bipartisan lobbyists, powerful corporations, and dedicated Cold War warriors—are all over the June takeover.
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan08102009.html
Honduras Coup: the US Connection by Nil Nikandrov | |
| . | |
-Discussions in George Bush’s team revolved around the timing of the coup. One option under consideration was to synchronize it with Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia in order to demonstrate US assertiveness over all azimuths, but the idea was found too extreme even by the staunchest hawks given the upcoming elections in the US. -The oil crisis that erupted in Honduras finally convinced Zelaya to change course. US companies, which monopolized the business of importing oil to the country, manipulated prices and created an artificial shortage in the fuel supply. Protests and strikes which left Honduras on the verge of a full-blown crisis made Zelaya temporarily expropriate oil storages owned by US companies. As the next step, he forged closer ties with ALBA leaders and signed several deals with Venezuela to buy oil at discount prices, broaden trade between the two countries, and jointly modernize transit infrastructures. One of Zelaya’s priority projects was to construct with the assistance of the ALBA countries a modern airport on the site occupied by the US Soto Cano Air Base....The threat of losing another strategic airbase in Latin America made Washington hurry up with the coup. -Throughout 2008 Negroponte was building in Central America an intelligence and diplomacy network charged with the mission of regaining the positions lost by the US as well as of neutralizing left regimes and ALBA integration initiative. At present the US ambassadors to Latin American countries – Hugo Llorens to Honduras, Robert I. Blau to El Salvador, Stephen G. McFarland to Guatemala, and Robert J. Callahan to Nicaragua - are Negroponte’s people. All of them have practical experience of destabilizing and subverting political regimes unfriendly to the US, launching propaganda campaigns, and creating fifth columns in the form of various NGOs. -Elections in Honduras are scheduled for November. If they take place as planned, those who organized the coup – and the US more than others – will be trying to ensure Zelaya’s defeat. The topic most widely debated in Latin America at the moment is what Obama’s administration has got to do with the recent coup in Honduras. The answer is straightforward – everything. The coup is aligned with US strategic objectives and is going to be used by Washington to regain positions in the region which it lost during George Bush’s presidency. No problems between Honduras and the US loomed on the horizon over the first months of Manuel Zelaya’s presidency. The relations fit entirely within the traditional colonial pattern: Tegucigalpa fully recognized its inferior status and never did anything that could provoke Washington’s discontent. In Honduras - one of Latin America’s poorest countries where the economy is controlled by US companies and foreign politics is guided by the US State Department - the de facto loss of sovereignty has long ago translated into a political inferiority complex. The Honduran political and military elites competed over US favors while never forgetting to extract material benefits from the humiliating status quo. Honduras always served the US as a foothold for offensives against liberation movements in the region and was even dubbed the “Honduras aircraft carrier” as a result. While Latin America was generally drifting left and the so-called populist regimes pursuing social justice and opposing predatory capitalism were emerging, until recently Honduras remained a bastion of the US neocons and the forces of Latin American reaction. John Negroponte who was the US ambassador to the country in the 1980s, an epoch marked by the proliferation of leftist insurgencies in the region, wrote a particularly dark page into Honduran history. Convinced that any means were acceptable, he did everything possible to bleed the enemy. The political scene in Honduras was cleaned totally as potential opposition leaders invariably got killed when ambushed by the secret police, disappeared without trace, or “committed suicide”. The ruthless killings of those who espoused left-of-center views have never been forgotten, and, extrapolating from past experience, Hondurans still regard a new round of repression as the only potential scenario for the future after the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya. He was dragged from his bed early on June 28 and put on a plane to Costa Rica by army conspirators. The coup was backed by an intense propaganda campaign with an outpouring of allegations that Zelaya was a murderer, an aide of the tyrant Chavez and Castro brothers, and a psychotic individual attempting to use a Constitutional Assembly referendum to lift constitutional limits on his presidential term. Roberto Micheletti, former leader of the Honduran parliament which was in opposition to Zelaya, became the de facto president of the country. As usual during such coups, media outlets which sided with the toppled president were closed, censorship was instated, and journalists from “unfriendly” (populist) countries were deported. A smear campaign against Zelaya swept across the Honduran media. The charges brought up against the forcibly removed president seemed to be borrowed from the Cold War era: claims were made that he sold himself for petrodollars and discount oil supply prices, that he was corrupt and betrayed the country’s national interests. One idea that was upheld permanently was that the removal of Zelaya – the alleged madman – was an entirely domestic affair and the result of Honduran patriots’ resolute action that was in no way inspired from outside the country. Was this actually the case? The US involvement became fully manifest over the less than three weeks since the coup, preparations for which were blessed already by George Bush’s administration. The US neocons were convinced that the populists were not as strong as they appeared, and that one powerful strike would trigger a domino effect. The key figures behind the conspiracy were US Vice President Richard Cheney and John Negroponte. It was a matter of pride for them to arrest the drift of Honduras – the country they saw as the main instrument of curbing the influence of Hugo Chavez - in the direction of the populist camp. Discussions in George Bush’s team revolved around the timing of the coup. One option under consideration was to synchronize it with Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia in order to demonstrate US assertiveness over all azimuths, but the idea was found too extreme even by the staunchest hawks given the upcoming elections in the US. Instead, it was decided to spin off the plan and leave the whole risky venture to the Democrats to put into practice. Zelaya is a wealthy individual who was successful in the agro-industrial business. During his presidential campaign, he sold his candidacy as a neoliberal politician who nevertheless appreciated the importance of improving the living standards of his less affluent countrymen. At the very early stage of his presidency, Zelaya realized that the neoliberal model did not work, the budget was depleted, the hopes that investments and free market would ensure economic growth were not coming true, and the only thing that was actually growing in the country was widespread poverty. Honduras was kept afloat mainly by remittances from Honduran immigrants to the US who encountered difficulties dealing with US authorities – were fined or deported in numbers - whenever Zelaya showed signs of what Washington saw as undue independence. The oil crisis that erupted in Honduras finally convinced Zelaya to change course. US companies, which monopolized the business of importing oil to the country, manipulated prices and created an artificial shortage in the fuel supply. Protests and strikes which left Honduras on the verge of a full-blown crisis made Zelaya temporarily expropriate oil storages owned by US companies. As the next step, he forged closer ties with ALBA leaders and signed several deals with Venezuela to buy oil at discount prices, broaden trade between the two countries, and jointly modernize transit infrastructures. One of Zelaya’s priority projects was to construct with the assistance of the ALBA countries a modern airport on the site occupied by the US Soto Cano Air Base. The airport that is currently operating is located practically in downtown Tegucigalpa and is technically unsafe. The threat of losing another strategic airbase in Latin America made Washington hurry up with the coup. Negroponte is known to have visited Honduras already after the inauguration of Barack Obama. He met a number of opposition politicians and secured Micheletti’s pledge “to go all the way”. Similar guarantees were given to him by representatives of the Honduran business community, the Roman Catholic Church, the owners of TV channels, and the military elite. At the time former adviser to Condoleezza Rice in the US State Department Negroponte had jumped to Hillary Clinton’s team – the new administration obviously deemed his specific expertise in international affairs still useful. Throughout 2008 Negroponte was building in Central America an intelligence and diplomacy network charged with the mission of regaining the positions lost by the US as well as of neutralizing left regimes and ALBA integration initiative. At present the US ambassadors to Latin American countries – Hugo Llorens to Honduras, Robert I. Blau to El Salvador, Stephen G. McFarland to Guatemala, and Robert J. Callahan to Nicaragua - are Negroponte’s people. All of them have practical experience of destabilizing and subverting political regimes unfriendly to the US, launching propaganda campaigns, and creating fifth columns in the form of various NGOs. An organization of the kind – the Civil Democratic Union – was established in Honduras. It brought together the entire spectrum of Zelaya foes – from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchs to the Council of Private Business and from the Confederation of Honduran Workers to the Generacion X Cambio rightist student group. A conflict with the military and the failed attempt to fire army chief Romeo Vasquez were indications of the intensity of the crisis in Honduras. Vasquez and most of the army’s senior officers were trained in the US-patronized School of the Americas and maintain close ties with the US military mission, regularly getting subventions via its network. Not surprisingly, the Honduran army’s elite sided with the US and is going to oppose Zelaya’s reinstatement. If the overthrown president does return, he will have to keep it in mind that the military elite presents a permanent threat to his life. In Honduras, the army has an extensive experience of murders justified by “the country’s supreme interests”. Hypothetically, Zelaya can expect to find some support among the mid- and low-ranking officers. They are the target audience of his radio-addresses from abroad in which he continues to say that the authority in the country has been usurped and that they have the right to resist. Officially, Washington is actively advocating reconciliation in Honduras, but in reality it is helping Micheletti by impeding Zelaya’s return. The US would rather see Micheletti gain ground and Zelaya lose irreversibly. Theoretically, there exists a possibility of a compromise between the two, but in this case Washington will be pushing for a radical limitation of Zelaya’s authority. Elections in Honduras are scheduled for November. If they take place as planned, those who organized the coup – and the US more than others – will be trying to ensure Zelaya’s defeat. | |
Global Research Articles by Nil Nikandrov | |
Honduran Coup: The U.S. ConnectionConn Hallinan | August 6, 2009Editor: Jen Doak | ||
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While the Obama administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras — condemning the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, 
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