Angry White Kid

Race or Class or Both? A response to MC Serch

Early this year I started working with author JLove Calderon on a multimedia project she started called Till the White Day is Done. Part of that effort was her interview with MC Serch (of 3rd Bass and executive producer of Nas' Illmatic) and my response to it. Below are both the interview and my brief response. Hopefully we'll be producing more of this in the future.

In the interview, MC Serch comments on the role of both race and class in analyzing the causes of injustice and inequality.  He comes clearly down on the side of class trumping race, stating:

“We have to look at economics and see where it plays, and not race. Because now more than ever the guy with the most money wins.”

“I find it idiotic when people say, ‘It’s a black and white issue.’ It’s not.  It’s a poor or rich issue.”

Without a doubt, Serch is right that class is tremendously important.  It goes without saying that with enough money, a person can have access to almost anything.  But an important aspect of looking at the differences and inequalities between the working and middle classes and the upper and ruling classes, is the racial makeup of those classes.

Numerous studies have shown both that the wealthiest Americans are almost exclusively white and that on average, whites are wealthier than people of color.  For example, a 1997 paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, of all places, points out that the richest 1 percent of U.S. households own 33 percent of the wealth in the U.S.  And of that richest 1%, 92.1% are white.

Thomas Shapiro, director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, writes that in 2007, white households had a net worth that was $142,600 greater than black households, up from $100,700 in 1997. Shapiro states that “the racial wealth gap [is] a fundamental axis of racial inequality,” and that these numbers show “a firmly embedded racial stratification.”

Following Serch’s suggestion, by looking at these numbers to see who the guys with the most money are, the answer is definitive: the white guys.

Most white people reading this are probably wondering, “Well, if white people are the rich ones, then where’s my share?”  That’s a fair question, because obviously most white people are not rich.  But the fact still remains, even if we’re not rich, on average we still have more resources and wealth than people of color do, simply because we’re white.

At first glance, that last sentence doesn’t make very much sense.  A more in-depth explanation will have to wait for another blog post but the brief explanation is this: The reason white people across the board have more money is because for hundreds of years, the U.S. economy was built along racial lines designed to favor whites at the expense of all others.  Through the mechanisms of genocide, slavery, exclusion acts, Jim Crow laws, and redlining and other racist financial practices, whites amassed wealth, reinvested it and passed it on to their children; while entire segments of the population, especially blacks, were barred from owning anything and the wealth they did produce was taken from them.  

Stretch that out over 400 years and it’s easy to see why whites as a whole are in such a better financial condition.  That legacy of unequal wealth distribution and white supremacy is why in 2009, it’s still the case that the wealthiest people in the U.S. are almost all white, and that whites across the board are wealthier than any other racial group.

A "separatist" journalism grows in Bolivia

The new attacks on Walter Chávez confirm that the CIA is rolling out a Psychological Operations plan in the country

A “separatist” journalism grows in Bolivia

By Wilson García Mérida
August 3, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell
 
(Datos & Análisis).- The Psychological Operations Command of the Pentagon, which operates in Venezuela through a mercenary communications firm tied to the CIA, is expanding its actions in Bolivia. Proofs of this are the recent media attacks suffered by libertarian journalist Walter Chávez, whose presence in the last meeting of Evo Morales’ cabinet caused an insipid national scandal.  With the same bad intentions, this emerging separatist journalism continues making apologies for the frustrated attempts at Balkanization by mercenary Eduardo Rozsa and cynically spreading misinformation about the undeniable advances of the agrarian revolution in Pando.

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Annually, and in a very selective manner, the U.S. government’s information service, more well known by its initials in English, BBG, “invites” journalists who in general work for large media companies, preferably editors-in-chief, columnists, TV anchors or “star” reporters, with the goal of formatting not just the style but also, above all, the subject matter, these reporters, “privileged” by the attentions of the U.S. embassy, will convey in their daily work.

With rare exceptions, practically all the Bolivian journalists who today occupy “decisive” positions in the conglomerates and networks of the communications business, have been favored with at least a trip to U.S. cities, at the invitation of the BGG, from which they return convinced that the Indian who governs Bolivia is a terrorist.  These are pleasure trips with stays in five-star hotels in order to participate in “seminars” and “guided visits” to important U.S. media outlets.  Once they return from these trips, these colleagues put themselves at the service of fascist politicians directly connected with the media outlet owners.

This form of “cooptation” which is part of the CIA’s strategy to exercise control over information systems in Latin America, has voraciously intensified and widened since the attacks that felled the twin towers in 2001.  And today it is intensifying in Bolivia.

Soldiers of fallacy

After the Persian Gulf crisis, the war against Iraq and the attacks of September 11, the United States discovered that control of information and all of the technological apparatus inherent in it were the most efficient weapons of war.  The journalist is conceived of as a key part of these invisible, yet lethal, social battles called “Psychological Operations” (PsyOps), whose objective is to prevent “the enemy” (in this case the government of Evo Morales) from having favorable public opinion for their actions.  The modern warlike design of the United States opts for shooting lies, prior to bullets or together with them, producing equally devastating effects.

Federico Montanari, quoted by Joám Evans, affirms that today, “It is communication itself that can be turned into a continuation of war by other means,” through a “reversible continuum of politics and war, between which war and politics meld through communication.”  And this brings us psychological war as such, understood as, “The planned use of propaganda and other actions oriented to generate opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of foreign groups, be they enemies, neutral, or friends, in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives [of the U.S.].” (Daugherty)

And the professionals called upon to carry out these “Psychological Operations” are not exactly psychologists, but above all journalists, reporters and publicists. 

Latin America is today, as the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the Balkans were in their time, the stage where an information war is being unleashed with complete vehemence, and it is such that the Pentagon, in its fervor to relieve itself of the uncomfortable presence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on the world stage, has reinforced its “Psychological Operations Unit,” based in Fort Bragg, where 1,200 specialists work, charged with creating “reliable messages” to support the interventionist politics of the United States.  And coating these deeds is the shiny gloss of the CIA.

According to Rodrigo Guevara, the Pentagon’s PsyOps Command is charged with “packaging” together “pre-fabricated” speeches and writings for the “consumption” of the objective-population.  During the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to reporting from the Times, USAID (the U.S. cooperation agency on which the BGG relies), developed and distributed tens of thousands of iPod-style audio devices (digital music players with hard drives or flash memory) which transmitted packaged civic messages, “but they did it through a contractor to assure that the ‘fingerprints’ of the Pentagon or the U.S. government weren’t on them.”

Rodrigo Guevara explains that along with hiring mercenary communications firms, the Pentagon also turns to bribing journalists in occupied or besieged countries.  Or they co-opt them through the pleasant trips organized by the BGG.

In its war against Hugo Chávez and the Venezuelan people, the PsyOps Command of the Pentagon hired a mercenary communications firm, the Rendon Group, which is charged with “packaging” the spin that guides the Venezuelan journalists subordinated to this bellicose form of distorting information.  Such methods are now in Bolivia.

Anything goes against the Peruvian

The informational thuggery foisted on Bolivia by the CIA and Pentagon is causing the growth of a separatist, prejudiced, and openly racist journalism which seeks to emphasize the weaknesses of President Evo Morales.  In Bolivia, the famed “journalistic objectivity,” ethics, and impartiality in the handling of the facts are relics of the past.  Today it is more important to be able to convince people that the enemy is in the other lane, that he is an Indian and a terrorist, even though in doing so one has to defame and misinform to the detriment of the people’s right to know the truth.

Examples abound; but the recent case of Peruvian journalist Walter Chávez, who was “surprised” by the cameras entering a meeting of Evo Morales’ cabinet during an event held in the municipality of Huajchilla, which was cause for scandalous front-page headlines, plainly shows the way in which Bolivian journalism, dominated by large media companies, has turned itself into a shameful appendage of the separatist and racist strategies still underway.  “Accused terrorist turns up at Evo’s cabinet,” is one of the lie-filled headlines which seek to intimidate public opinion into a fervor, encouraged by the CIA, to undercut the citizenry’s confidence in the indigenous government.

Walter Chávez, as we all know in our country, is an intellectual educated at San Marcos University, Peru, and has been in Bolivia since 1992 as a political refugee after being persecuted by the Fujimori dictatorship.

He has worked as a journalist for more than 10 years, founding at the beginning of the 2000s the independent weekly “El Juguete Rabioso” [The Mad Toy], which helped clear the way for Evo’s path to the presidency.

In the middle of 2008, this fascism dug up Fujimori’s old smear over Chávez’s supposed links, never proven, with the MRTA and pushed for his “extradition” to Peru with the unique urge to discredit the Bolivian government.

Chávez was a journalist with La Razón and other traditional media during the neoliberal governments of Paz Zamora, Sánchez de Lozada, Banzer, Tuto Quiroga and Carlos Mesa, and was considered “a good journalist” and it didn’t occur to any of them to extradite him to Peru when they were in power.

But when he was seen next to Evo Morales, he turned out to be a “dangerous terrorist” who had to be expelled from the country, without considering that along with enjoying the rights as a refugee under the aegis of the UN, Walter Chávez created a home in Bolivia, has a daughter born in La Paz, and in many aspects is more of and a better Bolivian than the many politicians and local overlords who seek to Balkanize their country by hiring true terrorists such as the Hungarian-Croat mercenary Rozsa.

In May of 2008, the Supreme Court made a binding ruling that Walter Chávez can not be thrown out of Bolivia in any way, let alone extradited, and that he enjoys the status of a political refugee with all the prerogatives honored by the UN.

And although they achieved the dismissal of Chávez as an advisor to the president, he didn’t lose his ties with Evo Morales nor does he have cause to work in secret.

As such, his “appearance” in the cabinet at Huajchilla was not secret.  Walter regularly enters the Palace to meet with Evo Morales, Álvaro García Linera or Juan Ramón Quintana, coordinating a series of investigative works such as the one, for example, he is carrying out together with the Datos & Análisis Information Service in relation to the Rozsa case.

Walter Chávez versus Rozsa Flores

“Opposition worriedly eyes the return of Chávez to Evo’s side,” reads a clearly insidious headline, within the framework of the “psychological operation” to undermine the governability of the regime.  Walter Chávez is the scapegoat that the CIA is using so that the separatist journalism can achieve its ends.

They lied with similar malicious intent and perversely manipulative capability when they tried to turn the agrarian revolution in Pando into a simple electoral dirty trick, and they seek to impede the migration of landless peasants from the Andes to the Amazon, stigmatizing this historical event as a “genocide in the making.”

This same separatist journalism which makes a mockery of the right of freedom of movement that helped Walter Chávez as a political refugee, is trying to turn Eduardo Rozsa Flores, the Balkanizer hired by the wealthy landowners in the east, into an innocent victim of Evo Morales’ “terrorist regime.”

It was immoral the way these journalists were able scare off and discredit Spanish colleague Julio César Alonso, who arrived in the country in order to report on Rozsa’s background as a war criminal investigated by the UN.

None of Alonso’s detractors bothered to check the UN files relating to the Balkans, where Rozsa is effectively accused of several murders.  Here is what was reported to the Commission on Human Rights in February 1994, in a document titled “Letter dated 10 February 1994 from the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the Chairman of the fiftieth session of the Commission on Human Rights,” where an explicit allusion is made to Rozsa’s pillaging, with a slight error in his last name:

“At the end of 1991, the Osijek operations zone of the Croatian Army had an international brigade established by Eduardo Rosses Flores [sic], the Zagreb-based correspondent of the Catalonian paper “La vanguardia.” The brigade was composed of former French Legion combatants and mercenaries from the wars in the Middle East and Latin America. It often operated on its own in the region of Eastern Slavonia and committed massacres against Serbian civilians in the villages of Divos, Ernestinovo, Tenjski Antunovac and others.”

The United Nations rapporteur charged that the Croatian government protected Rozsa Flores in order to prevent his prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.  According to its report to the UN responding to Yugoslavia’s charges, the Croatian government protected him with the argument that since he was a Croatian citizen, he was not a mercenary:

“In respect of the eighth allegation about ’an international brigade’, in fact it concerns the volunteers. There are no data to support the claim that they committed massacres. Their commanding officer, Mr. Eduardo Jorge Roses Flores, born in 1960, is a Croatian citizen.”

In spite of the weight of this historical fact which we are aware of thanks to JC Alonso, for those confused Bolivian journalists who command large audiences, our Spanish colleague was the evil one just for telling us that Rozsa was a chemically pure mercenary and well-deserving of a place in hell.

The most well-perfected model of this mercenary and separatist journalism that is taking shape in Bolivia is the dealings in Santa Cruz of former socialist Cayetano Llobet, an employee of Croatian businessman Branco Marinkovic, who a few days ago bought all the stocks of the newspaper El Día, whose frivolity-filled pages are now covered with the packaged powder of the Pentagon’s PsyOps Command.

And La Razón is not far behind. Nor are the large television stations whose owners are those eastern landowners who believe that draining the land and distributing it to the country’s dispossessed is a “terrorist act.”

The basic strategy of the genuine terrorist consists of accusing his victims of being terrorists.  It was a basic scheme during the dark days of Plan Cóndor.  And when journalism lends itself to this ignoble game, it means that something is faltering in the consciences of those colleagues who should be expecting, anxiously, the next BGG invitation to travel to the U.S.

Wilson Garcia Merida is an independent journalist in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Director of the Servicio Informativo Datos & Analisis. His email is llactacracia@yahoo.com.

Mexico's fake RCMP report backfires

8/9 UPDATE: On Thursday, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission joined the chorus condemning the not-RCMP report, saying it "is not based on expertise, it's based on opinion." Still no response from the report's authors. Also, a reader pointed out that my nod to Amnesty International was more praiseworthy than merited. While Amnesty's statement urging that Plan Mexico funds be withheld is welcome, overall the organization has taken a disgraceful stance on Plan Mexico.  As Kristin Bricker reports, after Plan Mexico passed, it praised the initiative, calling it "appropriate and timely" and supporting the fact that only a paltry 15% of funds were conditions upon respect for human rights.

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It's been a busy and interesting week regarding developments in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the U.S.

First, there was the report in the Mexican media on July 29 that an investigation by officials from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the murder of U.S. independent journalist Brad Will affirmed the conclusions drawn by the Mexican Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) regarding his death.  The PGR, contrary to all available evidence, claims Will, shot in Oaxaca in 2006, was killed at close range by a anti-government protester.  The media reports raised more questions than they answered. For example, why was the RCMP investigating this, and why, as evident from the reports, did they carry out such a clearly laughable investigation?

These questions and more were answered when Brad Will's family released a statement soundly debunking the so-called RCMP report. As it turns out, there was no official RCMP investigation.  It was merely three retired RCMP officers who did an "investigation" which the Mexican government then presented to the media as an official RCMP report.  Today, Physicians for Human Rights - a group that actually did investigate Brad's murder - issued a press release that similarly called into question the veracity of the ex-RCMPers report.  James Stephen, Phil Ziegler and Gary Buerk certainly have some serious rebutting to do if they don't want to be tarnished as integrity-free hacks-for-hire.  Although I'm sure there's always a market for those types.

The conclusions of another "investigation" regarding Oaxaca were released yesterday by Mexico's Supreme Court. They took it upon themselves to investigate the actions of the state and federal governments who brutally repressed the 2006 uprising.  Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court found the use of force - which left 27 dead and hundreds injured, arrested and tortured - to be legitimate.  This is the same court which found the murders and mass rapes by police that occurred in Atenco in 2006 to be unworthy of investigating either.

But one question remains - why all these reports stating how the Mexican state is not at fault for the atrocities of 2006 in Oaxaca?  The answer can be found in Plan Mexico, aka the Merida Initiative. The three-year, $1.4 billion aid (mostly military) package to Mexico and Central America has a human rights requirement for Mexico.  Yearly, the U.S. State Department must certify Mexico's respect for human rights and the Congress must approve that certification.  If that doesn't happen, then Mexico loses 15% of the Plan Mexico funds.  Of course, Mexico gets the other 85% no matter how many people it tortures and kills, but it could do it much more effectively if it got 100% of the funds.

Also, later this month both Clinton and Obama are to visit Mexico to see how the U.S.'s hegemonic efforts under the tutelage of Felipe Calderon are holding up.  The family of Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno - the Oaxacan social activist being framed by Mexico for the murder of Brad Will - is requesting an audience with Obama in Mexico City.  The Mexican government would of course rather avoid this and any other scrutiny of its human rights record, while at the same time receiving all the Plan Mexico funds.  So the timing of the non-RCMP and Supreme Court reports saying that everything is fine in Oaxaca is no surprise.

However, it appears that their efforts have all been for naught. For while Clinton's State Dept. dutifully certified Mexico's human rights record this week, even though human rights complaints have risen 600% under Calderon's regime, Senator Leahy yesteday blocked the certification from being voted upon in the Senate, basically saying he doesn't believe the State Dept.  Maybe Amnesty International got to him.  This means that, at least for the time being, the Mexican government will only have 85% of the Plan Mexico funds at its disposal to deploy against the social movements demanding justice and an end to impunity.  Which, given that Plan Mexico shouldn't exist at all, is still appallingly too much.

Obama administration sides with the coupists in Honduras

The below video by The Real News Network provides a good overview of where things stand at the moment with regards to the coup in Honduras and the U.S.'s non-response.

So Hillary Clinton's buddy is lobbying Congress on behalf of the coupists and the Obama administration has yet to take any action to reprimand the de facto regime.  Of course they're being helped in creating public acceptance for their coup-coddling with deliberating misleading editorials from papers such as the Washington Post and the Arizona Republic.

Ken Silverstein at Harper's rightly sums it up:

Based on his response to events in Honduras, Barack Obama may as well be Ronald Reagan or George Bush when it comes to coups in Latin America. The Obama administration initially managed to muster "concern" about the coup, and has been acting in a cowardly fashion ever since.

Obama, Honduras and Hamas

In Russia on Tuesday, Obama stated that he supports the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya, the overthrown president of Honduras, based on the following rationale:

America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies...We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not.

Then why does Obama not respect the right of the Palestinians to choose their own leaders when they elected Hamas? (This of course is a policy critique and does not delve into the matter of whether leaders are necessary to begin with.)

The Obama administration's stance on the coup in Honduras has been disgraceful. Today, Clinton even refused to call for Zelaya's reinstatement:

While Secretary Clinton reiterated the United States' condemnation of Mr. Zelaya's ouster, she stopped short of calling for his reinstatement, a departure from statements by President Obama earlier Tuesday and from the position taken by much of the international community.

When asked whether the United States viewed Mr. Zelaya's return as central to the restoration of democratic order, she said that she did not want to "prejudge" the talks before they began.

I have been traveling but hope to translate more documents on Honduras in the coming days. In the meantime, I suggest NarcoNews.com, HablaHonduras.com, and Tlaxcala.es.

The test for Obama: The Pentagon is behind the coup d’etat in Honduras - with or without the approval of the White House?

By Eva Golinger
June 29, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

When President Manual Zelaya of Honduras was brutally kidnapped from the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, was enjoying the peace and tranquility of the countryside at Camp David, the vacation residence for the U.S. head of state.  While President Zelaya was beaten by Honduran soldiers and forced into an airplane without knowing its destination, President Obama ate breakfast amidst the relaxing calls of birds in the Maryland forest.  And while the coup developed in Honduras yesterday, producing multiple human rights violations: the kidnapping and violence against the Foreign Minister of Honduras, Patricia Rodas; the brutality against and kidnapping of the Cuban and Venezuelan ambassadors in Honduras; and the illegal seizure of power by an illegitimate de facto government, President Obama was making a very, very difficult decision about the church that he and his family would attend over the coming years.

Today’s headline, “Obama chooses the same church at Camp David that George Bush went to,” is more prominent in the U.S. media than this headline that also minimizes and manipulates the truth, “Chávez and allies back the overthrown president of Honduras.”  It’s obvious, the choosing of the church which the Obama family will spend all their Sundays during the next four years is much more important than a coup d’état in a Central American country.  Now one can understand as well why yesterday the statements from the White House about the coup in Honduras, made only by spokespersons and not directly by the president, were so ambiguous and measured.  Obama not only was retired in the countryside with his family, but was also making high priority decisions about their future Sunday locale.  He didn’t have time to worry himself with matters far from his personal sphere.  Coup? What coup?  Obama was deciding about his own life and death, because according to a report in Time magazine, “in spite of Obama wanting to attend a congregation in Washington, later, after trying out various churches, he decided that it ‘was uncomfortable’ to be in a public place where ‘the people’ gathered around to see him.”  So, because of this, he urgently had to go to Camp David to isolate himself from his people.

The point is that President Obama, in spite of being the actual Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces and the president of the empire, is not directly in control of the entire imperial machinery.  Sources close to Washington have confirmed that the Pentagon, through the military mission (military group) of the United States in Honduras, has been working with the military coupists involved in the coup d’état against President Zelaya.  The South Command carries out nearly 55 operations annually with the Honduran armed forces.  The military mission in the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa finances the armed forces of Honduras with approximately two million dollars every year, and that does not include the millions of dollars that Washington provides through other cooperation programs with Honduras, and the large investment in the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras.

Yesterday, members of the coupist congress in Honduras announced that they were in meetings the previous week with the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens.  As well, one Honduran congressman stated that the ambassador wanted them to let the poll scheduled for last Sunday about future referendum for the calling of a Constituent Assembly to happen, because “later on we will be able to resolve the problem of constitutional reform, don’t worry.” But, according to the congressman, they didn’t want to wait until November and allow Zelaya, together with the people, “to make decisions about the future of the country.”

It’s true that the U.S. government has joined the forceful declaration by the Organization of American States condemning the coup d’état and demanding the immediate return of President Zelaya to power.  But up to now, the spokespersons in Washington who have been speaking about the situation in Honduras have said that they are still not considering suspending economic and military aid to Honduras if the coupists refuse to observe the Inter-American Democratic Charter and democratic principles.  Will it be a coup like that of Haiti in 2004, when they kidnapped President Aristide and brought him to exile in Africa before the world was aware of the brutal violation of democracy that was occurring in the Caribbean country?  It was a U.S. plane that carried off Aristide, escorted by U.S. soldiers.  And then, the U.S. government, together with the OAS, condemned the break up of democratic order.  But instead of working for the return of Aristide to his legitimate position as president of Haiti, it supported a “transition period” during the following year.  As well, it sent U.N. troops to Haiti to “guarantee peace and order” in the country.  They are still there today.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) finances so-called “civil society” groups in Honduras with more than $50 million a year.  The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the State Department also channel millions of dollars and strategic assistance to the principal political parties and political organizations in Honduras through the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and other agencies in Washington.  Groups like Peace and Democracy, who yesterday openly backed the coup d’état in Honduras, receive part of this money originating from the self-labeled “promoters of democracy.”  Just as was the case in Venezuela, during the coup in April 2002, the U.S government financed those groups involved in the coup, and they continued financing them in spite of knowing of their plans for a coup.  Perhaps there will be no smoking gun or direct evidence which proves the hand of Washington in the coup, but it is enough to demonstrate its complicity.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden once stated that President Obama will be subjected to an international test during his first year in office.  Washington’s condemnation of the coup d’état in Honduras has to be much stronger than a simple signature at the end of an OAS declaration.  If it doesn’t signal that it will suspend financial support to the coupist government in Honduras if it remains in power, the “change” that President Obama guaranteed with reference to the relationship between his administration and Latin America will become more like blackmail.

Honduras: The futility of the coup

Honduras: The futility of the coup
By Atilio Borón
June 28, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

History is repeating itself and will very likely end in the same way.  The coup d’état in Honduras is a re-issue of that which was carried out in April 2002 in Venezuela and that which was aborted in the face of an explosive reaction from several regional governments in Bolivia last year.

A president violently kidnapped in the early morning by masked soldiers, following to the letter what is outlined for death squads in the Operations Manual of the CIA and the School of the Americas; a fake resignation letter released with the goal of fooling and demobilizing the population and which was immediately retransmitted to the entire world by CNN without confirming the veracity of the report beforehand; the reaction of the people who, aware of the operation, take to the streets bare-chested to stop the tanks and army vehicles and to demand the return of Zelaya to the presidency; the cutting of electricity to impede the functioning of the radio and television and to sow confusion and despondency.

As in Venezuela, while not quite jailing Hugo Chávez the coupists installed a new president: Pedro Francisco Carmona, who was popularly rebaptized as “the short-lived one.”  The one fulfilling this role in Honduras is the president of the unicameral congress of that country, Roberto Micheletti, who was sworn in this Sunday as the provisional leader and for who only a miracle will keep him from facing the same fate as his Venezuelan predecessor.

What happened in Honduras made manifest the resistance of traditional power structures to any attempt to deepen democratic life.  It was enough for President Zelaya to decide to call for a popular referendum - supported with the signatures of more than 400,000 citizens - about convoking in the future a Constitutional Assembly for the different regulating state institutions to mobilize to stop it, belying their supposed democratic character: the Congress ordered the dismissal of the president and a judgment of the Supreme Court validated the coup.  It was none other than this court which issued the order for the kidnapping and expulsion from the country of President Zelaya, embracing as it had done all week the seditious conduct of the armed forces.

Zelaya has not resigned nor has he requested political asylum in Costa Rica.  He was kidnapped and expatriated and the people have gone into the streets to defend their government.  The statements that succeeded in getting out of Honduras are clear in that sense, especially that of the world leader of Vía Campesina, Rafael Alegría.

The governments of the region have repudiated putchism and this same sentiment moved Barack Obama to say that Zelaya “is the only president of Honduras that I recognize and I want to make that very clear.”  The OAS has expressed itself in the same terms and in Argentina President Cristina Fernández stated that, “we are going to push for a meeting of Unasur, even though Honduras is not a part of that body, and we are going to demand to the OAS the respect for the institutionality and reappointment of Zelaya, as well as guarantees for his life, his physical integrity and that of his family, because this is fundamental, because it is an action involving democracy and all people.”

The brutality of the entire operation bears the indelible mark of the CIA and the School of the Americas: from the kidnapping of the president, sent in his pajamas to Costa Rica, and the unheard-of kidnapping and beating of three ambassadors of friendly countries: Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, who had been close to the residency of the Honduran Minister of Foreign Relations, Patricia Rodas, to express their countries’ solidarity, to the ostentatious display of force by the soldiers in the principal cities in the country with the clear aim of terrorizing the population.

In the late afternoon they imposed a curfew and there is strict censoring of the press, yet there has been no statement from the Inter-American Press Society (always attentive regarding the situation of the media in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador) condemning this assault on the freedom of the press.

It’s not too much to remember that the Honduran armed forces were completely restructured and “re-educated” during the ‘80s when the U.S. ambassador in Honduras was none other than John Negroponte, whose “diplomatic” career brought him to cover destinations as different as Vietnam, Honduras, Mexico, Iraq and later, to become the head of the intelligence super-agency as the Director of National Intelligence.

From Tegucigalpa he personally monitored the terrorist operations carried out against the Sandinista government and promoted the creation of a death squad better know as Battalion 316, which kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of people inside of Honduras while in his reports to Washington denied that there were human rights violations in the country.

At the time, U.S. Senator John Kerry showed that the State Department had paid $800,000 to four air cargo companies belonging to Colombian narcotraffickers to transport weapons to groups that Negroponte organized and backed in Honduras. The pilots testified under oath, confirming Kerry’s statements.

The U.S. media reported that Negroponte was linked to drugs and arms trafficking between 1981 and 1985 with the goal of arming death squads, but this did not slow down his career.  These armed forces are the ones who today deposed Zelaya.  But the correlation of forces on the internal and international level is so unfavorable that the defeat of the coupists is only a question of (very little) time.

Atilio Borón is an Argentinean author and sociologist.

Photo by rbreve.

Honduran coup faltering? And how could the U.S. not know?

More news from and about Honduras.

Two Military Battalions Turn Against Honduras Coup Regime
by Al Giordano

Community Radio “Es Lo de Menos” was the first to report that the Fourth Infantry Battalion has rebelled from the military coup regime in Honduras. The radio station adds that “it seems” (“al parecer,” in the original Spanish) that the Tenth Infantry Battalion has also broken from the coup.

Rafael Alegria, leader of Via Campesina, the country’s largest social organization, one that has successfully blockaded the nation’s highways before to force government concessions, tells Alba TV:

“The popular resistance is rising up throughout the country. All the highways in the country are blockaded…. The Fourth Infantry Battallion… is no longer following the orders of Roberto Micheletti.”

Angel Alvarado of Honduras’ Popular Union Bloc tells Radio Mundial:

"Two infantry battalions of the Honduran Army have risen up against the illegitimate government of Roberto Micheletti in Honduras. They are the Fourth Infantry Battalion in the city of Tela and the Tenth Infantry Battalion in La Ceiba (the second largest city in Honduras), both located in the state of Atlántida."

Honduras: Is it Written?
By Jos Steinsleger

"Throughout the top and to the right," Zelaya began to distance himself from the beautiful people.  And he made the great mistake of asking himself why, if in the tourism brochures, Honduras is compared to Switzerland, the per capita income of a Honduran is $2,793 a year while for a Swiss it is $53,352.Zelaya reached the obvious conclusion: seven million Swiss, seven million Hondurans.  Honduras isn't Switzerland.  What if we were to make a socially integrated republic, in tune with the great Latin American integration projects underway?

A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras
By Jeremy Scahill

While the US has issued heavily-qualified statements critical of the coup—in the aftermath of the events in Honduras—the US could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and told the military coup plotters to stand down. The US ties to the Honduran military and political establishment run far too deep for all of this to have gone down without at least tacit support or the turning of a blind eye by some US political or military official(s).

And for those who read Spanish, a great source of information is HablaHonduras. They are reporting that one worker from the telecommunications company Hondutel was hit and killed by a military vehicle as the army forcefully took over the company.  Video of that incident is below.

Obama gets a settlement

Obama's efforts to scold Israel into stopping its illegal settlements in the West Bank seems to be yielding fruit.  In the opposite direction of course.  Maan News reports that:

Israeli settlers established a new illegal West Bank outpost on Thursday, dedicating it partly to US President Barack Obama.

The settlers, calling themselves the "Land of Israel Loyalists," named the outpost Oz Yehonatan, near Binyamin, but were calling part of it the "Obama Hut," according to the Israeli news agency Ynet.

And according to a report from Israel's Arutz Sheva news agency, the outpost was named "in recognition of the president’s actions, which have led to a dramatic increase in the number of outposts being built throughout Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]."

Given Obama's speech yesterday where he merely called for current settlement construction to stop - saying nothing about the almost 500,000 Israeli colonists already living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem* - this is the type of progress we can expect from Barack "More of the Same" Obama.  Which itself is all that can be expected.

* Or apartheid, or the nakba, or Jim Crow laws inside Israel, or Israel's nuclear weapons, or international law, or the massacre in Gaza, or the continuing murders of non-violent anti-wall protesters etc., etc., etc.

Catastrophe: 61 years and counting

A scene from the nakba.

Today around the world Palestinians commemorate the nakba (catastrophe) of the 1948 establishment of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of 75% of the indigenous Palestinian population from their lands and homes.

Sixty-one years later the Palestinian population is dispersed around the globe, forbidden by Israel to return to their homes.  Millions live in the refugee camps of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.  Millions more live in camps or homes under occupation in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  And more than a million live as third-class citizens under an openly racist, apartheid regime in the land they were born - now called Israel.

While Hamas and Fatah squabble over who gets to be the Palestinian facilitator of Israel's occupation, dictatorial Arab regimes count their U.S. dollars, and Israel continues the nakba backed by the U.S. and Europe.

Civil society, the only place where power truly resides, must continue to act.  BOYCOTT. DIVESTMENT. SANCTIONS.