Photo by SkyTruth

Thursday, US State Department assistant secretary Philip J. Crowley made the following statement about Niger:

MR. CROWLEY: Right. Very fluid situation and the Embassy there is monitoring it closely. Indications are it could be an attempted coup. There was evidently an attempted assassination of President Tandja. My understanding is that our Embassy staff is safe. We do have Congressman Mark Grayson of Florida who happened to be in the country at the time and he is currently at the Embassy and is also safe.

This is a difficult situation. President Tandja has been trying to extend his mandate in office. Both the United States and ECOWAS have expressed our concerns about that, and obviously that may well have been an act on his behalf that precipitated this act today. Clearly, we do not in any way, shape, or form, defend violence of this nature. But clearly, we think this underscores that Niger needs to move ahead and – with the elections and the formation of a new government.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was removed from power 7 months before his term expired by an order from the Supreme Court and Congress of Honduras. Admittedly, the order was carried out by the military. But, no power of the state was dissolved, and the elections that were already planned for November were carried out as scheduled. Zelaya was against the elections and was trying to push through constitutional reform to “refound Honduras”, presumably as a socialist state in the image of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

On the other hand in Niger, the military dissolved all the powers of the government. The president of Niger had been successful in reforming the constitution a few months before, and was removed after a 4-hour gun battle.

With Honduras, minutes after Zelaya landed in Costa Rica, President Obama said: “We believe the coup was not legal … I think it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seing military coups as a means of political transition.”

Where is the outrage of the United States! Where is the State Departments decency! Where is their commitment to truth! Or at very least, their consistency! All of these seem to be sold out to uranium mining interests. Niger is has the fifth largest Uranium reserves on Earth.

Pro-Zelaya Activists, Image: Amnesty International

Much as I resent Amnesty International for defending the vandals who defaced and burnt down buildings and set buses and cars alight only to get media attention, I agree with them that President Lobo must begin investigating the police who were responsible for excessive force in repressing them.

I have seen video footage of police breaking down a riot after a football game in July 2009, and using their macanas (batons) ruthlessly in beating up hooligans. I have also seen the photos of wounded people from the clashes between Pro Zelaya protesters and police. My experience with the Honduran justice system before the crisis helps me find human rights violations very plausible.

I do appreciate the fact that they cite 20 human rights violations, not 50, not 100, not more. 20. Mel Zelaya seemed fond of citing hundreds of cases of murder, rape and beatings, and media sympathetic with him would gleefully repeat it without any qualms, nor investigation.

In November 2009 I complained to a reporter, whose article appeared in a prominent Mexican Newspaper. The article headlined Zelaya’s claim of 142 deaths as a result of the Honduran crisis. This was the nonchalant reply:

“Before anything else, I appreciate your email. On the other hand, the format of the piece you mention is that of an interview, which reflects the point of view of the subject of the interview exclusively.”

The politicization of Human Rights organizations is deplorable. I hope Amnesty International will realize that socialist and communist regimes are often the chief offenders against human rights in the world, aside from theocratic ones. Although I concede, capitalist regimes are not far behind.

The President of the Honduran Supreme Court has freed the five commanders of the armed forces of penal responsibility about an hour ago. They were guilty of violating the constitutional protection of Honduran citizens from exile or extradition when they forced Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica.

I was nervous about this. It wasn’t very logical that any other outcome would arise, but the threat of imprisonment might make a real military coup a very tempting offer for the military should they be condemned.

The chief justice cited the presence of about 900 foreigners of Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Spanish nationalities “representing an enormous danger to national security”. Evidence was presented of the involvement of Venezuela and Cuba in the process of establishing a “fourth urn” which was a call to a referendum on a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite our Constitution.

More troubling to me is the rumor of an amnesty-related ruling by congress to be announced today. Should that be the case, many crimes will go unpunished. Is this worth it to regain the graces of countries who repudiated us?

A recent Examiner article proposes that Micheletti deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, and has a slide show of pictures from the official campaign closings.

Evo Morales, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez, Image by Josh, Creative Commons license

Mary O’Grady wrote another brilliant article, entitled The End of Bolivian Democracy, about President Evo Morales, and Bolivian elections in December. In it she provides a chilling scenario of what could have happened to Honduras, and it makes me mourn for the Bolivian people, the poorest in South America. Bolivia voted against a Constitutional Assembly, but Morales used force to lock out the opposition delegates and plow his constitutional mangling through.

I had lost hope that I would be able to vote from outside Honduras, as the Honduran ambassador to Mexico is staunchly pro-Zelaya. The Honduran Consulates in Mexico and the US are boycotting the election. The consul (named Patricia by the way) has seemingly leaned heavily on the press to publish Zelaya propaganda as truth. I had an email discussion with a reporter last week, who published an interview with Zelaya without disclaimer. The result is that now Mexicans believe Zelaya’s false statistics about deaths, violence and repression. Their death toll, 104. The true death toll,  three…four if we include the murder of Micheletti’s nephew, Enzo. If we give some margin of error, the number would still be no more than 12.

But La Gringa wrote today in her blogicito, that the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal has offices in the US, and will be allowing Hondurans living in the US to vote. Sadly, there are no options in Mexico. I am considering making the trip to Houston to vote. But, there is a caveat. Only those who have registered their new home address can vote. I haven’t, and am not very optimistic that it could be changed in time for Sunday. I will call them, hopefully I will be able to.

Zelaya's Resignation Letter

I suppose it was in the works a week or so before Zelaya “rescued” the ballots amigo Hugo flew to him. The media talk those days was that Zelaya was becoming mentally incompetent to govern, and that Congress was considering asking him to resign on those grounds. The letter above focuses on his creating national conflict and his eroding of his political base before mentioning his health.

Zelaya had already violated article 239 in private by saying that in 2010 Honduras would be governed by a Constitutional assembly with the intent on changing the protected reelection clauses, and on Thursday June 25, the date of this letter, publicly. That day, while confiscating the poll material, he said to Telesur reporters that in 2010 a Constitutional Assembly would govern Honduras, but did not mention reelection. Everyone knew his true ideas, the media complained loudly, but didn’t have Zelaya on the record admitting reelection was his intent.

But months before, he had published retroactively dated articles in the national Gazette calling for the a “referendum” to call for a National Constitutional Assembly. All Hugo Chavez’s ALBA nations had tried, and some succeeded, in creating those assemblies and rewriting their constitutions. When the Honduran Supreme Court pointed out to him that only Congress could call for a referendum, and ruled it unconstitutional, he changed the word to “survey” and published it again. That was the first public proof of his intent, but only lawyers read the Gazette. The Supreme Court again ruled the survey unconstitutional. Some time after his article was published, the Supreme Court drafted a secret document, dated June 2, accusing Zelaya of treason, abuse of authority, usurpation of functions among other things.

After the ballot revolt on Thursday June 25, Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces, and when Congress reinstated him on Friday, defied Congress and the Supreme Court. He called their opposition a coup, with a loud Hugo Chavez seeding the international media with the word “coup”. That night, June 26, there were already dozens of YouTube videos of Telesur coverage of a coup that did not exist. Zelaya hadn’t been deposed yet.

It seems the Congress and the Supreme Court thought they could convince Zelaya to relent, but when he plowed on, they changed strategy. Saturday, when Zelaya publicly stated that only God and the Virgin of Suyapa could stop the referendum, Congress and the Supreme Court declared the survey illegal again, and asked the people not to vote.

When Sunday June 28, the day of the survey/referendum, dawned, they arrested Zelaya based on Article 239. But since Congress had to rush to action, and already had that letter handy, I think they gave that letter for Zelaya to sign before he was flown out of the country. He had no choice but to sign it. Coercion is the only thing that could make it invalid

On the way to out though, looking for a country to grant him asylum, he must have talked to Hugo Chávez, who probably saw that Zelaya in Venezuela or Nicaragua wouldn’t garner public support, and sent him to Costa Rica instead, because he could count on Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, a closet supporter of constitutional reform, to harbor him. He had a sympathetic CNN team waiting for him in San Jose, baited to make him the victim in the eyes of the world. Especially jarring was the line, much parroted later on, that he was only conducting a non-binding survey.

With the image of Zelaya in pajamas beside Arias, Chávez even succeeded in fooling Obama to give a shoot-from-the-hip condemnation of the removal of Zelaya, which plagued everyone until last week. His ambassador, and advisers knew better. Thomas Shannon had been in Honduras during that final week. Obama must reign his tongue…he has gotten into trouble several times already by trusting his own opinion before he is briefed. Or maybe he was briefed…years ago he had written a strong condemnation about the US involvement in Grenada.

On Tuesday June 30th, the Court made the secret document public, a description of it can now be read on their website in their press release, (Google translation) explaining their legal grounds for removing him. Could this document have been drafted later and dated retroactively? Maybe, but given all the legal process the press release describes, I find it very unnecessary and unlikely.

In short, I think the letter was not fake, but might be legally void because of coercion.

Libertad para {¿manchar?} el pueblo

Esdras Amado Lopez complained today that someone is creating interference with his media, Channel 36 and Cholusat, by transmitting western movies and other content in the same frequency. Reuters has issued a report about this.

Whoever is doing this is doing more damage than good. Even with the incendiary and patently false content Cholusat and Channel 36 discharge into the Honduran airwaves, they should not be able to claim anyone is impeding their freedom to address the Honduran public. Although I would rather watch Osama Bin Laden than them.

UPDATE: Thursday Nov 26, 12:39 am

It is becoming increasingly clear that Esdras Amado López is faking this and other government “repression” against his news media in order to get international news media to give Roberto Micheletti bad press. Today, the channel shows an TV color test pattern and the words: “Interfieren Señal de canal 36 para impedir que informemos.” Translation: “{They’re} interfering channel 36’s signal to stop us from informing”. La Gringa writes in her blogicito, that immediately before this image came up, López stated that he would take the channel off the air “in protest”.

After months of purposely mystical and calculated comments, the US State department is now speaking with diaphanous clarity on the situation in Honduras. This sudden openness came after it became clear that Zelaya would not uphold the Tegucigalpa/San Jose agreement if not reinstated immediately. In today’s press conference, Ian Kelly showed with detail, the position of the US on Honduras’s November 29 election, and although raising a hostile eyebrow of the clearly pro-Zelaya questioner, survived.

This is a large excerpt from yesterday’s daily press briefing:

QUESTION: Ian, on Honduras, the parliament seems to have put off until after the election a decision on whether Zelaya will be restored. What does that do for the possible credibility of these elections?
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, let me give you kind of an update of where we are. Craig Kelly, of course, has been in Tegucigalpa. He’s been down there to help support the implementation of the accord. He held a series of meetings down there to support the OAS efforts to have it fully implemented. He’s met with President Zelaya and he met with the de facto leader Mr. Micheletti. He told us that these were very frank and open talks.
Regarding the reports on the Honduran lawmakers will not decide on whether or not to restore Zelaya until after the elections, according to the accord, the – it called for the national congress to issue a pronouncement on the restoration of a democratically elected authority, Mr. Zelaya. As you know, it never stipulated a timetable for the congressional action. All along, we’ve called on the congress to act expeditiously in the spirit of the accord. We believe that steady steps towards the implementation of the accord will enhance the prospects for transparent, free, and open elections that will ultimately resolve this crisis and allow Honduras to rejoin the international community of nations.
Another one of these important steps towards the implementation of the accord and resolving this crisis is the formation of the – of a government of national unity. So that’s also an important component to this.
But since the accord never actually gave any kind of deadline by – to have this vote by the national congress, scheduling the vote on December 2^nd doesn’t necessarily – isn’t necessarily inconsistent with the accord.
QUESTION: What – I’m sorry. That’s – you’ve just opened your – this is – they’re going to have a field day with this. So it’s okay with you if five years from now, they go and come back and say, all right, yeah, Zelaya can go – he’s restored, when you can’t – you can’t be restored after you’re voted out of office if you’re not – he’s not even running.
MR. KELLY: That’s right. I mean, he – his term ends the end of January.
QUESTION: Yeah. And so it’s okay – so it’s okay with you, and you’ll – it will be all right and you’ll accept the results of the election, if they – even if they don’t put him back in when you –
MR. KELLY: Well, he’s not running. He’s not running for the election.
QUESTION: Yeah, but he’s going to be out – he’s effectively out of office. I mean, talk about – that’s the lamest of lame ducks. He’s not – he is – I’m confused. You no longer think that he has to be restored before he is voted out of office?
MR. KELLY: Well, it has been a very strong principle of ours that in order for the country to be reconciled, there has to be a restoration of the democratically elected president. That implies that he has to be restored before the end of his term, okay?
QUESTION: So basically –
QUESTION: All right. So 10 minutes – 10 minutes before the end of his term?
QUESTION: December – until the end of January it can be.
MR. KELLY: Look, I mean, clearly, he has to be restored in a timely way. And I don’t think we’ve ever said anything but that.
QUESTION: Well –
MR. KELLY: But what we’re focused on is the implementation of the accord. I mean, that’s – and – I think that’s what everybody has to be focused on is. And that’s what Craig Kelly was down there for to make sure that it’s done step by step. And there are a number of steps that have to take place. Now, the national congress has set a date to pronounce on this, to pronounce on this issue of the – what – I mean, the accord calls it a pronouncement on the reversion of the executive branch, a pronouncement on the – whether or not Mr. Zelaya should return.
This is a – this is basically – it’s a – we have a lot of interests, obviously. This is – the Organization of American States have a – has a lot of interest in having a government down there that reflects the will of the people and having reconciliation between the Zelaya camp and the Micheletti camp.
QUESTION: Am I correct in thinking that there’s –
MR. KELLY: And the accord is the best to do this.
QUESTION: Am I correct in thinking that there is no way to guarantee that this pronouncement will even restore him to office?
MR. KELLY: It’s up to the congress.
QUESTION: They could come –
MR. KELLY: The both sides –
QUESTION: — back and say no, he can’t come back and –
MR. KELLY: They could come back. I mean, that is –
QUESTION: Well, what happens then?
MR. KELLY: Well, we’ll – let’s see then.
QUESTION: Then you walk into –
MR. KELLY: It’s now. It’s not then.
QUESTION: Ian, will the election –
MR. KELLY: It’s a Honduran crisis. And we want to make sure that –
QUESTION: Well –
MR. KELLY: — the Hondurans are able to sit down –
QUESTION: — you inserted yourself into it –
MR. KELLY: We have.
QUESTION: — quite – so it’s no longer just a Honduran crisis. You’re involved.
MR. KELLY: Of course, we’re involved. We are involved because we want to be involved, because it’s important for us to be involved. We’re involved because they want us to be involved.
QUESTION: Ian, the election will enjoy international support, including that of the United States, even if at the time they vote the Congress hasn’t decided?
MR. KELLY: It all depends on how the vote is conducted. It depends on how the campaign is conducted. We will decide how to pronounce on the election when we see how it is conducted.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Sorry, another topic.

Screen Capture of the Washington D.C.Honduran Embassy Website

Honduran embassy websites are campaigning strongly against the election, and continue to hold on to the idea that Manuel Zelaya is the “Constitutional” President of Honduras. I won’t display the image they are using here, I’ll spare your neurons. But if you must see it, visit the website of the Honduran Embassy in Washington D.C. and scroll down a good bit.

Manuel Zelaya clarified that he is not renouncing returning to the presidency. He said that he is renouncing returning to the presidency through a US-backed accord. But what other option to returning to the presidency does he have? The people won’t overthrow the election as he seems to hope, they want the crisis to end. The accord, even though it was very unlikely gamble, had a better chance of reinstating him than his apparent plans for electoral sabotage. Why is he giving up on the accords?

I have begun to suspect that Zelaya has no ulterior motive, but is genuinely confused, and that his chief financier and strategist, Hugo Chávez, has already given up on him. Chávez is currently more interested in fabricating threats nearer to home, claiming to fear US invasion through Colombia. What would motivate Colombia to invade Venezuela? What would motivate the US to start another war?

No one will invade Venezuela, Venezuela simply isn’t a credible threat, its economy is severely dependent on that of the US. Russia has no interest in war with the US; the threat exists only in Hugo Chavez’s rhetoric. Hugo Chavez’s paranoia is enormous, but it might be false; it’s an enormously convenient cover for his failures at home. I think we are witnessing a rhetorical eclipse of the truth. I have a repulsive mental picture of an enormous tongue covering the sun, engulfing Venezuela in darkness. But the rest of the world has light.

Why won’t the left, intellectual as they are, read their history books and realize that unbridled socialism, just like unbridled capitalism, leads to corruption and disaster? The advocates of capitalism grew out of a love of freedom, and efficient use of land, labor and capital. The advocates of socialism grew out of the idea of class struggles and concern for social justice. But guess who have a better grasp of economics?

Social justice and economics need not be enemies; why can’t we have both? How can we have freedom and justice? Through work, democracies free of corruption, and education, the best way to eliminate class boundaries. Without class boundaries, there are no class struggles, and marxism has no reason to exist. We don’t need a government to permanently take care of the poor as a social class, but instead to help individuals realize their potential to escape poverty, taking their families with them.

We don’t need to attack the rich to help the poor, but to involve the rich in rescuing individual poor people, and creating workers who, through more valuable skills, will produce more valuable labor, and thus will be paid more, and will no longer be poor. Scholarships, not hand-outs. Entrepreneurship, not syndicates. The investment in even one person will benefit everyone in the long run. I am a living example.

My parents escaped poverty, in Honduras, through hard work and education. Work is not enough; millions emigrate to the US to escape poverty through hard work, but fail, because of their ignorance. In Honduras or anywhere else, hard work, education and freedom are the recipe for lasting justice and peace. They are the wiser choice over government ownership of land, labor and wealth.

But because this is not happening today, and billions of people are poor, uneducated, and worse, abandoned, third-world democracies are vulnerable. Unscrupulous leaders can rise, promising freedom for the them, but in the end removing freedom from everyone. As long as the poor are a majority this will continue to occur. Let’s lift the third world out of the hands of tyrants, one family at a time.