Overthrown Honduran President Zelaya interviewed (tags)
He discusses the extreme violence, drug trafficking, economic depression, migration crisis, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), WikiLeaks, Venezuela, and more. Video by Ben Norton
Washington moves to silence WikiLeaks (tags)
The cutting off of Internet access for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is one more ugly episode in a US presidential election campaign that has plumbed the depths of political degradation.
Facade of Diplomacy Masks Same Old US Latin American Policy (tags)
imperialism
Venezuela Foils Obama's Coup Plot (tags)
Venezuela
Uncertainty about Chavez's Health (tags)
Chavez
Obama's Legacy of Shame (tags)
class war
Ban Ki-moon: A Record of Failure and Betrayal (tags)
UN
BTL:Ousted President Zelaya Returns to Honduras as Repression Continues (tags)
Interview with Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz , conducted by Scott Harris
US Intervention in Syria (tags)
imperialism
Ecuador, Venezuela: Danger South of the Borde (tags)
"The reason there is a bizarre attempt to pretend that this coup attempt never happened, is to hope that people won’t ask who might have benefited from such an action. A quick examination of the actions of President Correa sheds considerable light on that. In 2006, working with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Correa moved to increase state control over oil production in the country.[9] In 2008, he announced that Ecuador would not pay several billions of its more than $10 billion foreign debt, calling it “illegitimate.”[10] In 2009, he refused to renew the lease of the U.S. military airbase in Manta, saying that “the only way the US could keep their military base in Ecuador, is if Ecuador were allowed to have one of its own in Florida.”[11] In 2009, he officially brought Ecuador into ALBA – the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas led by Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. When a country increases state control, challenges illegitimate foreign debt, pushes the U.S. military out of the country and joins a regional alliance with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba – it is clear that the forces that would benefit from a coup would be: a) corporate interests inside Ecuador; b) International Financial Institutions; and c) the United States and its allies. There is another reason why the right-wing, corporate elite and the imperialist countries might have an incentive to minimize what happened September 30. There is now a shamefully long list of recent coup attempts in Latin America and the Caribbean – four of them against members of ALBA."
BTL:Obama's Policy on Post-Coup Honduras Follows Same Old Washington Script Toward Latin A (tags)
BETWEEN THE LINES Syndicated Radio Newsmagazine
Venezuela in Washington's Crosshairs (tags)
trying to undermine Hugo Chavez
US Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s Three-Day Fact-Finding Mission in Honduras (tags)
"Schakowsky’s three day visit from November 10-12 included meetings with family members of victims that have died directly from violence from the coup, media outlets such as Channel 36 and Radio Globo that have been attacked for honestly reporting on the resistance movement, and also a visit to the Brazilian Embassy where ousted President Zelaya and approximately 40 others have taken refuge for the last 53 days. The Chicago Congresswoman commented on her opportunity to hear a recording of some of the sounds bombarded into the Embassy and see the blinding lights set up outside, in addition to the crane set up for the military to spy into the Embassy."
Money talks in U.S. policy toward Honduran putsch regime (tags)
"So, in effect, since the earliest days of the coup regime in Honduras, the U.S. has done little more than repackage and rebroadcast the same aid cuts to appease the media and to compliment its rhetorical position of being against the coup. But behind the scenes, the economic effect of the aid cuts has been little more than symbolic posturing." "Henry Kissinger was brutally honest about the U.S. diplomatic reality in Latin America, when commenting decades ago on the government of democratically elected President Salvador Allende of Chile — who was overthrown in a 1973 U.S.-backed coup that led to Allende’s assassination and a subsequent reign of terror by the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon Under Secretary of State Clinton, that fundamentally anti-democratic foreign policy appears to continue to be the status quo for Latin America — absent a much more hands-on effort to change that course by the president of the United States.
Honduran coup has been far from bloodless (tags)
"Women protesters can face worse. On Aug. 14, a young mother was grabbed by police while participating nonviolently in a large protest. They separated her from male detainees and drove her out of town, where four officers of the National Police raped her and then raped her again with a baton. Rapes while in custody, assassinations and disappearances that are terrorizing Hondurans remain largely unreported in the U.S. press. On July 11, for example, Roger Ivan Bados, a longtime trade unionist and activist in the opposition party Union Democrática, was forcibly removed from his home and killed. Others who participate in demonstrations or other activities have been kidnapped, then found dead."
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."
Obama, like his "Old Man" - just can't keep his mouth shut
Honduras: Anti-Chavez ‘free speech’ warriors linked to coup (tags)
"This is because, for the IAPA, there was no coup. Its July 14 statement said the democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was simply “stood down” — not kidnapped and dumped in a different country by balaclava-clad soldiers. And if anyone can recognise a dictatorship, it is the IAPA. After all, as it points out, the IAPA has been fighting off dictatorships “for a long time” — in the form of the Chavez administration. Ironically, the only time in Venezuela that a TV channel was taken off air, constitutional rights suspended, and journalists arrested and assaulted since Chavez’s 1998 election was during the two days when he was removed from power in a short-lived coup in April 2002. "
It’s Still a Military Coup in Honduras (tags)
"We’ve already praised the singular work of TeleSur, and also of the courageous Hondurans who have broken the information blockade from below, filming coup abuses and the massive protests against them on their cell phones and uploading important videos to YouTube. And we’ve cheered as many corporate media organizations have become dependent on those reports-from-below in their own coverage. I’d like to add another media that deserves such recognition: Few have done the heavy lifting that Chiapas Indymedia has done, mainly in Spanish, to publish the communiqués, photos and videos that document the massive and organized nature of the Honduran grassroots movements with which it has worked and supported for years. (While the world mostly ignored Honduras in recent years, Chiapas Indymedia was shipping community radio transmitters and organizing communications workshops among Catrachos; that planting and cultivating bears significant fruit today in the information that does break out from behind the walls of censorship and simulation)."
CONDEMN THE US-BACKED MILITARY REGIME IN HONDURAS-AJLPP (tags)
The Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) based in the United States, adds its voice to the world’s condemnation of the military coup in Honduras that forcibly removed its democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya, Despite people’s protest, the military blocked the return of Zelaya and pounced on the more than 500,000 Hondurenos who rallied for his return. The military blocked the airport and forced Zelaya’s plane to Nicaragua last Sunday, July 5.