Americans should pay attention to Honduras–no better example of Democrat and Republican Neo-Liberalism at work
January 18, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Honduras
There are a lot of lessons that Honduras can provide regarding the neo-liberal trade agreements that BOTH the Democrat and the Republican leadership along with the White House Support. None of these trade agreements are for the 99% of the USA or the 99% of any country.
The USA has a long tradition of supporting the illegal overthrow of governments in South and Central America followed by the installation of a ruthless dictator who is friendly to Wall Street coupled with the trade agreements that are created for Wall Street by its bought and paid for Congressional stooges. USA trade agreements result in crimes against the majority of the people in any country whose 1% leaders agree to sign such a trade agreement which amounts to a partnership with Wall Street and the 1% of the USA.
Most often these crimes consist of militarized police (often trained by the USA) driving small farmers off their land. Why? Because this benefits the 1% of the country as they can then rent large tracts of land to multinational corporations to farm. All the people of the world, even the 1% should be concerned about this neo-liberal practice because it destabilizes food security for everyone living on this planet. Greed has no sensibility and it has nothing to do with education. Many of those who support these neo-liberal anti-human practices have the best educations that money can buy–Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc. These people are quite simply blinded by their own greed. It’s the same blindness to humanity that was demonstrated by the Goldman Sachs commodity traders in 2008 who falsely inflated the price of wheat (in the year of the largest wheat production in 100 years) and thus literally starved millions of people to death. Their sense of humanity is obliterated by their greed.
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THE WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS KNEW
Background on the Illegal Coup in Honduras in 2009: The Obama administration and the US State Department knew that the Honduran coup was illegal and they didn’t give a damn. They still supported it and even sent a Clinton operative, Lanny Davis, to act as a PR for the thugs.
As you may remember, while directing from the sidelines and pretending neutrality, the US State Department supported the coup in Honduras that was led by racist thugs. Yes, I mean that literally. One of the current members of the Honduran government actually referred to black people as “monkeys.”
Just weeks after the coup had taken place, the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a secret cable to Hillary Clinton on July 24, 2009. Published by Wikileaks, the cable declared that in the forced removal of Zelaya, “there is no doubt that the [Honduran] military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.” Nonetheless, the Obama administration backed the coup leaders by leaving in place almost $200 million in aid programs (though it did suspend $16.5 million in military aid) and by claiming that State Department lawyers could not determine if the coup met legal requirements for U.S. action, despite the unambiguous embassy cable–this in spite of the fact that all civilized western governments condemned the coup as being illegal.
This video is evidence of the greed of the rich coming to fruition. And the leadership of BOTH US political parties supported this illegal coup. Lanny Davis, a Clinton operative serves as the official PR agent representing the illegal leadership of the coup. In October of 2009, Jim DeMint led a delegation of right-wing elected officials on a trip sponsored by the Department of Defense (DOD) at the taxpayers’ expense to Honduras to congratulate this illegal racist pro-business group of thugs. Now look what they are doing. Just more American supported intervention and thuggery in central America.
After the Coup
Ongoing Violence, Intimidation, and Impunity in Honduras
December 20, 2010
This 65-page report documents the state’s failure to ensure accountability for abuses committed under the country’s de facto government in 2009. The report also documents 47 cases of threats or attacks – including 18 killings – against journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists since the inauguration of President Porfirio Lobo in January 2010.
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Update January 9, 2012 on Honduras
“On Jan. 9, 2012 an Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) delegation of US and Canadian citizens visited the farming community or Rigores, Honduras in the fertile Aguan Valley near the country’s Caribbean Coast. Rigores is a long-established community of farm cooperatives. The cooperative which the AfGJ helped shield from eviction was 10-years-old, a tenancy under Honduras’ Law of Agrarian Reform which should have insured them title to the land. But one of Honduras’ rich landowners wants their corn fields, bean fields, grazing land and orchards so he can expand his African Palm plantation with this tree that produces an oil that is used in the majority of food products in First World supermarkets and supplies an increasing share of the European and US biofuel market.
The visit by the group a few days ago was a far different visit than was experienced by a previous AfGJ delegation just six months earlier where nearly 20 North Americans wearing blue t-shirts reading “Observador Internacional de Derechos Humanos” (International Human Rights Observer) standing with the Honduran people won a standoff with the militarized police. What had prompted that visit is shown in the video above.
One week before the American delegation arrived for the standoff last July, the police had entered Rigores and at gunpoint burned the homes of 135 families, killed their animals, bulldozed their orchards, the school, and two churches. When the Americans arrived on July 1, the community was living in the town’s community center and a large tent provided by a Catholic charity. Their intentions that day to drive off or kill the people, breaking their tenancy and weakening their legal case of ownership on behalf of the 1%.
Police, military, and private “security guards” still drive through the community and fire their weapons. On Sept. 16 and again on Sept. 19, the military invaded and terrorized the community. The 15-year-old son of the community spokesperson and another boy were kidnapped by the military, beaten, doused with gasoline and threatened with being set on fire.
And today, what do the people of Rigores face? ”. . .they still struggle to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they have learned from the media that an official eviction order has been signed by a judge with an eviction date of later this month. At this point the eviction order may or may not exist. It is certain that they are receiving daily threats of violent eviction from the hired thugs of a rich landowner.”
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And Remember: This is the thug government that your votes and your tax dollars support–both in Honduras and in the USA.
Will you continue to accept the myth of their propaganda that we have a “two-party” system?
Will you continue to believe that a millionaire neo-liberal Republican like Jim DeMint who led the delegation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and paid for by your tax dollar to congratulate the leaders of this illegal coup is any different from the neo-liberal Democrat-led White House and U.S State Department who, at the least, were willfully blind to what was taking place and to what continues to take place in Honduras.
The first step to facing facts is to let go the myth that a neo-liberal Wall Street suckup Republican is any different from a neo-liberal Wall Street suckup Democrat.
At least 44% of our Congress consists of multimillionaire Wall Street investors. They all must go.
Of course, if you like things as they are, if you think that what is happening in Honduras benefits the world, the go ahead and continue to vote for either a Democrat or a Republican and you’ll be sure to get more of the same.
Over 15,000 Colombians descended on the oil rich city of Barrancabermeja in Central Colombia to attend a national ‘Peace Congress’. The slogan for the meeting was, “dialogue is the path”, and was attended by communities across the country who have been severely affected by the ongoing conflicts.
