Next: A Popular Referendum for a New Honduras Constitution? (tags)
"The coup was held on June 28 precisely to stop a non-binding referendum – one that asked if Hondurans wanted the right to vote for or against a new Constitution – but the regime’s own insistence on holding faux “elections” on November 29 inadvertently provides the people with the opportunity to do the very thing the coup was intended to stop: To put up ballot boxes outside of every “official” polling place and survey the people on that original question. Now that the Honduran civil resistance and its diverse social movements are so much better organized in every town and city than ever before, the little bird asked, why not utilize the November 29 date of the regime’s sham “elections” to hold a real referendum? The suggestion is to place a “First Ballot Box” (“primera urna”), outside of every official polling place, that asks the first question anew: “Do you favor convening a national Constituent Assembly to democratically write a new Constitution for the Republic of Honduras?” “Yes” or “No?” That little bird must have likewise carefully listened to the voices from below. We heard it - and reported it to you - from the northeastern cities of Trujillo, Tocoa, and Saba and the nearby farms of Guadalupe Tepayac. We heard it throughout our reporting from coastal La Ceiba and from the Afro-Honduran and Garifuna communities throughout that coast. From the popular barrios of San Pedro Sula and the highway blockades of Comayagua the same central demand was on everyone’s lips: ¡Constituente! From the colonias in resistance throughout greater Tegucigalpa, ¡Constituente!"
Declaration about the Situation in Honduras by ALBA Member Countries in the OAS (tags)
"We add our voice to the regional, national, and world organisations and institutions that have expressed their rejection of these barbaric acts that the coup leaders and supporters have committed in Honduras. We demand an end to the repression, a definite suspension of the curfew, respect of the inviolability of the Brazilian diplomatic headquarters, and the immediate and unconditional restitution of President Zelaya to his functions as Constitutional and Democratic President of Honduras."
What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras Crisis (tags)
"The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil's diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras." The United Nations isn't likely to ignore Lula's plea. As a body, it owes Brazil heavily for its leadership of UN Peacekeeping forces in Haiti, and also for its unique role as a respected organizer and spokes-country of "developing world" states as a force for global social and economic justice. Wealthier nations, meanwhile, from the US to China to Europe, are greatly dependent (or would like to be more so) on the gigantic consumer market that is Brazil. In eight short years, Lula has greatly risen Brazil's status and respect across the globe by playing these factors upon each other very shrewdly."
The President Has Returned: All Hell Breaks Loose in Honduras! (tags)
"This is a textbook example of what we've referred to before as "dilemma actions." It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country's own people - which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) - or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history."
U.S. Still Supports the Coup! (tags)
"Agency bankrolling “good governance” programs to ensure the “rule of law in the country” The taxpayer-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation has continued to move millions of dollars into Honduras since the June 28 coup d'état, but it is not alone, Narco News has now confirmed. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is slated to provide Honduras with nearly $47 million in funding in fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, 2009. Nearly all of that money (some $43 million) is scheduled to be delivered as previously planned to Honduras — which is now under the leadership of a putsch regime that President Obama has already described as “not legal.”
Juan and Pedro Enter the Honduras Oil Import Business, Coup d’Etat Follows (tags)
"Padre Fausto later chronicled his own share of detentions, which included being kidnapped by paramilitaries in Honduras in 1981 on charges of inciting guerrilla activity based on his concern for campesino and indigenous rights. In captivity, Fausto was subjected to a schedule of sitting in rooms with torture instruments and being removed whenever someone needed to be tortured physically rather than psychologically. He subsequently spent a number of years in exile in Mexico; as for other Hondurans in exile, Fausto boasted that Zelaya had spoken with him and other Hondurans for four hours the previous day in Managua, neglecting a group of visiting European parliamentarians."
Cracks in the Honduran Coup Regime Grow Wider (tags)
"Micheletti is in fact declaring the military a scapegoat for doing just once what Micheletti himself has ordered them to do a second and third time. He doesn’t really want Zelaya to stand trial because, first, the so-called evidence against the President is flimsy and falsified, and, second, because the regime fears that the very people of Honduras might assemble to break down any wall that might hold their elected president."