Actually, given the trajectory he was following, it is not an unreasonable hypothesis at all. I am not sure I would subscribe to it, but if someone more invested in the subject wished to argue the hypothesis there seems substantive grounds to.
Evidently I disagree about the reasonableness of the point. As for appreciation of democracy, well, I think a non-partisan - neither hard Left like yourself and Brainglutton nor lunatic American Right - would be well served by a Pox on All Houses position, but fully support a resolution that was democratic.
Your rendition is charmingly devoid of allowance for the “colourful” ousted President’s hammering on an initiative of dubious legality (per domestic courts of the highest instance), never mind long-term democratic practice. Of course the characterisation of the “poll” - binding, not binding, etc seems rather fundamentally at dispute.
However, none of this makes him a Socialist, nor Marxist. A populist demagogue, yes.
That is a profoundly stupid question.
The unconstitutional means are pretty clear, Chavez style rolling coup could be imagined (one builds support over time, leveraging the poll), pull over some disaffected officers, etc. Opining Zelaya has more of a power base now than before… eh. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
In any case, the Coup government shed any potential argument of legitimacy it might have advanced in the first month already, so one is back to a pox on all houses as not particularly genuinely democratic, and a pox on the bizarrities of the American Right that childishly keeps searching for 1980s era political themes…
Why the love for a wanna-be dictator that his own party dis-owned?
He’s trying to re-write the constitution and he has a hard-on for people like Chavez. Why do you care what label he gets?
Because we can’t support the coup-plotters either. If Zelaya is deemed unacceptable because he’s a communist no-goodnik, then we endorse the current dictatorship.
It doesn’t matter whether Zelaya is anti-American or buddies with Chavez or not, he’s the elected president of Honduras.
Without buying into the hard Left sanitisation of the ousted President’s recent actions, it is worth being as well critical of the manner in which the Honduran government (over-)reacted. I wouldn’t say all is legit with his ouster AND expulsion, for all that it was not (ouster) in no small part provoked. Just because he probably was evolving to a bad copy of Chavez does not make what happened subsequently all right and proper.
Two wrongs don’t make a democracy right, in short.
I understand what you’re trying to say but it wasn’t a random military coup. It was directed by the Supreme Court and sanctioned by Congress. Admittedly the congressional sanction was after the fact it still had some basis in political legitimacy similar to impeachment. Admittedly the restriction of freedoms that followed didn’t paint a very good picture.
I don’t like seeing “anti-American socialist” used as a content-free all-purpose beating-stick. Shoulldn’t that kind of bullshit have died with the Cold War?!
Zelaya is not a “wanna-be dictator,” either, or at least there’s no real reason to think so. At worst, he’s a not-terribly-competent politician in a not-terribly-competent country/region, with slightly better intentions than those who have supplanted him.
Like the Honduran people, I don’t have much love for Zelaya but hate the thugs who ousted him. Over the past 20 years Latin America has at long last been emerging from centuries of dictatorships and military juntas and establishing democratic governments. (Sometimes those are leftist governments, and you might not like that, but if you value democracy you have to accept the voters’ choices as legitimate even when unwise.) This sort of thing is a major setback if they get away with it.
The Honduran constitution was written under a military junta’s eye to forestall any political threat to elite privileges. Anything that seems likely to “re-write” it is worth doing.
So what if he “has a hard-on for people like Chavez”? (Which is bullshit, but just for the sake of argument.) Chavez has his bad points, no question, he is in some ways a thug and in some ways a clown. (I mean, Halloween an instance of “American cultural imperialism”? :rolleyes: Lighten up, Hugo!) But he is unmistakeably the people’s choice; he is not a dictator (yet); he is still the best president Venezuela has ever had (not that that sets the bar very high); and his “Bolivarian Revolution” might yet produce the first serious experiment with democratic socialism (as distinct from Communism, and as distinct from social democracy) that the world has ever seen. That’s worth trying, at any rate. Not that it has much to do with anything Zelaya tried to do, or could have done, or could yet do, in Honduras.
Chavez is silencing anyone who criticises him. He did this after making the job of President an open ended office. He’s a dictator in training and Manuel Zelaya was trying to repeat the process.
You published a left wing organization’s opinion over Human Rights Watch?
from Human Rights Watch: Minister Cabello also proposed new regulations that state that any cable channel with more than 30 percent Venezuelan-produced programming (including shows and advertisements) would be compelled to transmit President Chávez’s speeches live at his request, and would be subject to Venezuelan media laws, including the Law on Social Responsibility.
Chavez is nothing but a power hungry socialist thug.
Coups are rarely random so I fail to see that as any kind of argument at all, and the behaviour after say the initial event rather undermine a genuine protecting democracy argument.
Contra Brain et al whitewashing, I do not see Zelaya as particularly defendable as such, however the Hondurans did not have to go down the full coup a la 1980s route. They chose to. A more proper impeachment and democratic response is easily imaginable.
Two wrongs - again - do not make a democratic right.
Actually you rather prefer to put out a vision heavily spun through a hard Left lens, although I agree with point 2
But the Americans seem to have a hard time giving up the Cold War, something like old men liking to relive their glory days.
Bollocks. There are plenty of “real” reasons to think so (dismissals, charging ahead despite clear contrary legal rulings, etc). At best he was merely incompetent. And the “better intentions” … whatever.
At least your true colours show on this.
Agreed, but that does not make counter-coups the proper response. Nor make it proper to excuse them.
The proper response if one supports democratic culture is to tell both sides they’re wrong and idiots to boot.
Yes, one that just mentions the fact that all media in the USA **forgot **to report that right wing media in Venezuela still reaches more Venezuelans via cable. And that left wing organization also quoted that same Human rights organization.
Besides resorting to fallacies (killing the messenger), you are also not just showing better evidence but evidence **already **seen only in part by many in the USA.
The fact was that virtually all reports in the USA regarding that subject only mentioned the closing of the stations, that was not the whole truth, and the piece you quoted is just a proposal. Even with that, the right wing media and even media groups that were accused to being left wing for supporting democracy in Venezuela (they were against the coup in Venezuela), like the quoted V-headline by Narconews, continue to make posts critical of the current Venezuelan government.
But once again, the current dictator in Honduras did not go to the courts to **completely **close the opposition stations, he confiscated the equipment and ordered police to take over the stations.
Why is it that we should assign the same behavior (a pre-crime indeed) to Zelaya? No, It is clear that this is not a “pox in both your houses” situation, we should be actively going against the dictatorship in Honduras.
It would be worth pointing out again that the Congressional Law Library’s report to Congress says that that the deposing of Zelaya was carried out legally within the confines of the Honduran constitution. The only thing illegal about this alleged ‘coup’ was the removal of Zelaya from the country. Therefore, Zelaya may have the right to some sort of restitution for his illegal exile, but he has no right to reclaim his place as leader of the country.
It’s also worth pointing out that even if Zelaya had remained in power, there would be an election next month in which he would not be eligible to run. So it seems to me that the proper resolution to this conflict is to carry out that election (as the current government plans to do), and let the results fall where they may. There will be plenty of international observers there making sure the election is carried out fairly.
It baffles me why the U.S. has suggested that it will not recognize the results of that election unless Zelaya is reinstated first. That’s simply ridiculous. It’s also not going to happen. There’s no way Zelaya will be reinstated before the November elections.
The Obama administration had a perfect opportunity to back away from this crisis by changing its position to an insistence on a free and fair election, but it’s refused to do so. As a result, it will be in the position of watching a democratic election take place, then refusing to recognize the winner. That’s simply bizarre foreign policy.
It is worth pointing out that everything you say here (1) has been debated in this thread and (2) is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Zelaya is an “anti-American socialist.”
Even the UN has withdrawn support for the next elections as not being proper under the current circumstances, even by “removing” the decree on Monday the fact is that the current regime in Honduras continues to repress the media and the people.
And yet they’re happy to deal with the government of Iran, which clearly rigged its last election, and with the governments in the middle east which don’t even allow elections.
This says far more about the current UN than it does about the Honduran government.
That is likewise irrelevant, etc., but, since you brought it up, it comes under the heading of picking your fights. E.g., in the context of Iranian politics, open U.S. support for the opposition would do them about as much good as a Soviet endorsement would have done Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaign in 1952. (And I don’t recall the UN endorsing or certifying as fair the latest election results there, BTW.) In the case of Honduras, OTOH, the coup regime is very new, very unpopular, and international pressure actually has the potential to destabilize it.
And, of course, having free and fair elections, or elections of any kind, is not a condition of UN membership and never has been. That does not mean the UN cannot properly issue an official report on the fairness of a given election that takes place.
It is not only the UN, the American states and OAS are mentioning that it is for the lack of negotiation and repression that the next elections should not be recognized.
:dubious: And this is bullshit. At the time of the coup, Zelaya had not even the popularity to get re-elected if he could have run. And the military and the elite hated him. Who does that leave, to support a “rolling coup,” and by what means?