Angry White Kid

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 [email protected].

Open Letter to Oscar Arias

By National Front Against the Coup D’état
July 19, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

The National Front against the Coup D’état in Honduras, composed of the different organized groupings in the country and united by the situation caused by the coup d’état, reports the following to the national and international community:

1. We reiterate that the intransigent position of the commission named by the coupists makes a successful solution to the mediation occurring in San José impossible.

2. We are in agreement with the first point of the proposal presented by Óscar Arias, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner, consisting of the immediate return of Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the presidency of the Republic of Honduras, which we demand be of an unconditional nature.

3. We reject the rest of the proposal because it is not inline with our proposals and demands, we take issue with the following: Number 2 makes possible the inclusion of persons connected with the coup d’état and who, therefore, have committed crimes against humanity.  Number 3 means the negation of the rights of the people to a participative democracy. Number 4 promotes impunity for those who planned, executed and sanction the coup d’état. Number 5 implies the possibility of the carrying out of an electoral fraud, that of which clear indications have been seen. Number 6 disregards our proposal of reviewing the constitutional role of the armed forces and their involvement in the coup d’état. Number 7 does not have a reason to be there and it does not resolve the earlier points.

4. We denounce the attitude of tacit disregard for the human rights violations to which the people have been subjected by the de factor government and its repressive apparatus, of which there is proof: assassinations, illegal detentions, harassment and persecution of representatives of the social movement; media outlets, journalists and social organizations have suffered attacks against their freedom of expression; they have violated the individual and fundamental rights of citizens as provided for in the Constitution of the Republic.  We also denounce the regression the country has suffered in regards to human rights, militarization, and harassment of communities such as Guadalupe Carney, in Silín, Colón; the militarization of public institutions and the deployment of death squads around the country; added to the collusion of the Public Ministry, courts and tribunals with the de facto government, which has left the people in a state of helplessness.

5. We maintain our stance of arriving at an inclusive political process which allows for the democratic participation of men and women through the creation of a National Constituent Assembly.

6. We remain steadfast in our struggle, until the recovery of institutional order is achieved.

Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. July 19, 2009

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.

They knew and they helped a little

By Juan Gelman
July 16, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

The White House knew for months that a coup was being prepared in Honduras, even though now State Department spokespersons feign a surprised innocence. The U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, knew it very well: on September 12, 2008, he arrived in the Central American country and, nine days later, the current coupist general Romeo Vásquez declared on the radio station HRN that they had sought “to overthrow the government of president Manuel Zelaya Rosales” (www.proceso.hn, 9/12/08). He added: “We are a serious and respectful institution, which is why we respect Mr. President as our Commander-in-Chief and we subordinate ourselves as dictated by law.”  Just like Pinochet before rising against Salvador Allende. Any resemblance is just the work of reality.

On June 2 of this year, Hillary Clinton went to Honduras to participate in a meeting of the Organization of American States.  She spoke with Zelaya and shared with him her discomfort with the referendum that the leader planned to hold at the same time as the next presidential elections.  U.S. officials indicated that “they didn’t believe that the plebiscite was constitutional” (The New York Times, 6/30/09).  Six days before the coup, the Honduran paper La Prensa reported that Ambassador Llorens had met with influential politicians and military chiefs “in order to find a solution to the crisis” caused by the referendum (www.laprensahn.com, 6/22/09).  The “solution” they found is obvious.

It’s difficult to assume that the military leaders of Honduras, armed by the Pentagon and educated at the School of the Americas, where many Latin American dictators were trained, would have made a move without the approval of their mentors.  Aside from that, the coupists did not hide the reasons for their actions: Zelaya was getting too close to the “communism” of Chávez, the Venezuelan most-hated by the White House: in July 2008, under his mandate, Honduras joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the new “axis of evil” in Latin America. Too much, right?

Too much, yes, because Honduras is strategic territory for the Pentagon, which from its base in Soto Cano, where it stations troops from the U.S. air force and infantry, doesn’t only dominate Central America: this bona fide enclave is fundamental in the U.S. military’s scheme for a region rich in natural resources.  Although he never touched the interests of foreign corporations or the local owners of economic power, Zelaya constituted a danger of “destabilization.”  It’s fitting to mention that the referendum about holding a Constituent Assembly that could have permitted the reelection of Zelaya was non-binding.  No one was bothered in Washington by the constitutional reform in Colombia that allowed for the re-election of Alvaro Uribe, the great ally of the U.S., which was not even a plebiscite. It’s that one thing is one thing and another is another.

The Honduran coupists are not very presentable.  General Romero Vásquez Velásquez, thrown out by Zelaya, came back with the coup and authored the kidnapping and expulsion of the president, was sent to the national penitentiary in 1993, together with ten other members of a gang accused of robbing 200 luxury automobiles (www.elheraldo.hn, 2/2/93).  He was then a major in the army; as a general, he devoted himself to robbing a government elected at the polls.  Another unpresentable one is Advising Minister Billy Joya, who doesn’t do justice to his last name [jewel] (or does, depending on how you look at it): he was head of the tactical division of Battalion B3-16, the Honduran death squad that tortured and “disappeared” numerous individuals in the 1980s.  “Lawyer Arrazola” - one of his aliases - is an expert in such activities: he studied the methods of the Argentinean and Chilean dictatorships (www.michelcollon.info, 7/7/09).  These are well-known facts, in spite of which, or because of which, he was chosen to form a part of the so very democratic coupist regime.

The repression in Honduras continues. Thursday of last week the father of Isis Obeid Murillo, the 19-year-old young man killed by the army at the Tegucigalpa airport, was detained: he had the crazy idea to publicly demand justice for his son (www.wsws.org, 7/11/09).  The saviors of democracy expelled journalists from the Associated Press, Channel 21 disappeared off the screen, and the armed forces occupied Channel 36 (Miami Herald, 7/1/09). It is the concept of freedom of the press that characterizes the coupists.

The White House continues meekly with what it classifies as an “illegal act.”  Hillary refuses to call it a “coup d’état” because that would automatically implicate the cessation of U.S. economic and military aid to Honduras.  The talks about a peaceful resolution taking place in Costa Rica, in which President Oscar Arias is acting as a mediator at Obama’s request, are a farce.  But they have an important aspect: they signify an official recognition of the imposed regime.  Arias already announced that he will treat coupist Micheletti as “presidentially” as the leader elected at the polls and then deposed.  That is equanimity.

National Front Against the Coup D’etat: Communique 12

As time allows, I am trying to translate the short statements coming from the National Front against the Coup d'etat in Honduras, with the most recent first. I'll try to interlink them as they're completed.

July 15, 2009
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

The National Front against the Coup D’état in Honduras, composed of the different organized groupings in the country, conveys to the rest of the population:

1. We are thankful for the support and solidarity of the people of the world, particularly the presence of the Continental Social Alliance (ASC), a gathering space of American social movements, which is in Honduras to understand and call international attention to the situation caused by the coup d’état.

2. We denounce the use of the mass media in the hands of the oligarchy, which is trying to show a country at peace and normality, while popular leaders are assassinated and persecuted.

3. We communicate the participation of a National Front against the Coup D’état delegation in the United States which will report to senators and other U.S. government authorities about the violations of human rights and the negation of democracy and the rule of law.

4. We denounce the dictatorial, fascist path that the de facto regime is walking, which places value on the armed forces and denies spaces for participation and basic communication.

5.  We express our recognition of the Honduran people, who have maintained their resistance for the reestablishment of institutional order, demanding the return of elected president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and the creation of a National Constituent Assembly to promote a society of participatory democracy.

6. We continue calling for the rest of the population to join in the actions to achieve the downfall of the usurpers of the state.

Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. July 15, 2009

Communique No. 2
Communique No. 11

National Front Against the Coup D’etat: Communique 11

July 12, 2009

[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

The National Front against the Coup D’état in Honduras, composed of the different organized groupings in the country, united in the face of the situation caused by the coup d’état, conveys:

1. We energetically condemn the assassination of comrade Roger Bados, a militant of the Democratic Unification party and a member of the Popular Block. The incident occurred in his house and left his housemate and his sister wounded.  Roger was an active member of the Honduran popular movement and actively participated in actions against the coup. We demand punishment for those intellectually and materially responsible for this crime.

2. We reiterate our demand for the unconditional return of institutional order in the country, and at the same time we reaffirm our desire to continue with the process that will bring us to the creation of a National Constituent Assembly that allows the re-founding of Honduras.

3. With regards to the mediation talks happening in San José, Costa Rica, we denounce that its been shown that all of this has been a delaying tactic to keep President Zelaya out of the country.  It is not true that the talks are open, for when the commission of President Zelaya’s government asked that the mediation happen in Honduras there was no response and the coupists’ commission stated plainly that they would not accept that this process occur in our territory.

4. We repudiate the persecution and capture of Telesur journalists.  They were detained Sunday morning by the national police, removed from the hotel they were staying in, taken to the embassy of that country [Venezuela], all this based on the argument that they didn’t have anything to do in Honduras.  We condemn the repression against media outlets that report on what is really happening in the country.

5.  We inform the rest of the Honduran people that the radio programs by the Center for Women’s Rights and the Center for Women’s Studies, which are broadcast on the radio station Voices, on Saturday, July 11, the signal was cut at the time they were to be broadcast.  These programs report on the actions occurring against the coup.

6. We convey that last weekend there were various protests and occupations against the coup all over the country.  In San Pedro Sula, Santa Barbará, Sava, Sonaguera, Trujillo, Tocoa, Copan, and Tegucigalpa, where on Saturday a political-cultural event was held in the location where the armed forces killed young Isis Obed Murillo.  The homage included protest music by prominent artists, messages from different people, among them the relatives of the youth, there was also a Garífuna ceremony.

7.  We call on the entire population to continue the struggle and demand the return of individual guarantees, as for now the curfew has been lifted but the rights of the people continue to be violated as the guarantees are still suspended.  The intimidation of people by militarizing offices, organizations, highways, and other locations also affects all people.

Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. July 12, 2009

Communique 2
Communique 12

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.

National Front Against the Coup D’état: Communique 2

National Front Against the Coup D’état
Communiqué Number 2

The popular movement, through its different organized manifestations, reports to the rest of the Honduran people that we remain in the struggle at the national level, in resistance against the coup d’état perpetrated by the ultra-right oligarchy and we communicate the following:

1. We reaffirm that what happened on June 28, 2009, against the government of President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, is a coup d’état and a violation of the Constitution of the Republic and a breaking of the State of Law.
2. Orders have been given to repress the peaceful resistance mobilizations and all people who are not in agreement with the coup d’état.
3. Those leading the repression are soldiers, former soldiers of the national army, the national police and Battalion 316, a saddening reminder for Honduras of the times of the cold war, for the assassinations and disappearances committed in the service of the oligarchy.
4. To the Honduran people, we ask you to remain in resistance and to continue the peaceful demonstrations in the major cities, highways, and municipalities of the country.
5. The coup d’état has been rejected internationally and in a U.N. resolution; they have refused to recognize the farce that installed Roberto Micheletti as president.
6. We condemn the violation of the freedom of expression.  There are closed television and radio stations, and journalists who are imprisoned, persecuted or with arrest warrants.
7. We make public the knowledge that the Public Ministry is preparing legal injunctions that are dated before the coup occurred against citizen President Zelaya Rosales and his cabinet in order to justify their actions.
8. To make the population aware that at the meeting in Central Park on June 30, organized by the coupists, the employees of fast food restaurants, maquiladoras, and private security companies were obligated to participate in the event.
9. We invite the Honduran people to continue demonstrating in all forms possible against the coup d’état and for the re-establishment of constitutional order with the return of President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

Tegucigalpa M.D.C. June 30, 2009
National Front Against the Coup D’état

[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

Communique 11
Communique 12

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.