Sam_Stone:
The report mentions the ‘resignation letter’, but it’s just a sideshow because it was never used by the Honduran government as justification for his removal, nor was any legal determination based on the existence of the letter. With or without it, his removal was legal.
Uh hu, there is the suspicion IMHO that the Congressional office omitted some important things that the not-so unanimous Honduras congress did to appoint Micheletti:
With Zelaya’s exile, Roberto Micheletti, the president of the National Congress of Honduras and a member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party of Honduras, was named the acting president of Honduras.
The Congress accepted a resignation letter presented by Congressional Secretary Jose Alfredo Saavedra, who claimed that it had been signed and dated on by Zelaya on Thursday.
It may not be an issue to the Congressional office regarding the justification of Zelaya’s removal, the problem was the appointment of Micheletti, or any other president when Zelaya was not made to face his accusers or had resigned. It remains an illegal move for the congress to appoint a new president under those circumstances.
But, as Zelaya was mentioned as a freak, we should concentrate on the current gorilla in power:
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today condemned the decision taken by Honduran authorities of the de facto Government to forbid entrance into the country to a delegation of OAS high officials...
OAS SECRETARY GENERAL CONDEMNS HONDURAN AUTHORITIES’ DECISION TO FORBID ENTRANCE OF OAS HIGH OFFICIALS INTO THE COUNTRY
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today condemned the decision taken by Honduran authorities of the de facto Government to forbid entrance into the country to a delegation of OAS high officials whose main objective was to pave the way for the visit to Tegucigalpa of a Mission composed of the head of the OAS and of Ministers of Foreign Relations of various regional countries.
“We lament this decision and consider it incomprehensible, since it was the very same de facto Government of Honduras that had agreed to the visit of the Mission of Foreign Ministers as well as to the OAS delegation whose objective was to prepare for it,” said Secretary General Insulza.
“Actions like those taken today by the Honduran authorities of the de facto regime seriously hamper efforts to promote social peace in Honduras and to find solutions to the current political conflict based on dialogue and national reconciliation,” said the head of the topmost hemispheric body. “I will inform the Permanent Council tomorrow, so that it may decide on the Organization’s future actions,” Insulza added.
Nevertheless, the Secretary General affirmed that the OAS will remain committed to “the search for a peaceful solution to the crisis that currently affects the Honduran people.”
After he called the few media that opposed to him “media terrorists” he send the troops to close them down:
In Spanish you can hear the last report given while the armed forces come in to tell the reporters to shut down the station.
I prefer a freak that respects the freedom of the press than a gorilla.
Then why do you support Hugo Chavez?
Because right winger sources told us Chaves was going to send the tanks to remove the newly elected opposition governors like for example the one in Caracas.
I’m still waiting. Oh, and most of the canceled media that had their broadcasting licenses revoked still continue on Cable in Venezuela.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22288
This is not an isolated example in Venezuela. The media there routinely broadcasts reporting and commentary that would not be allowed under FCC rules here. And the vast majority of the media in Venezuela is still controlled by the right-wing opposition. This fact was buried in a footnote in Human Rights Watch’s highly prejudiced and misleading 230 page report on Venezuela. The footnote acknowledged that RCTV, which lost its broadcast license for a long list of offenses that would have landed its owners in jail in the United States, still has a cable audience that is bigger than all of the Venezuelan state television combined.
So, will you denounce the corporate and right wing sources that continue to mislead you?
I’m not holding my breath for that one.
Some communist thug wannabe tries to subert the constitution and take over and he is stopped. And he’s the good guy?
And the new election “can’t be trusted”. Why exactly? But an election run by a guy who is trying to install himself as dictator for life can be trusted.
Anyone who is against this nutball is a “reactionary” and “against the people”. Why did their Supreme Court say he’s totally in the wrong? Are they just stupid? Are they reactionaries for not wanting a Cuban system and their constitution ripped up?
Cite that he was a communist?
In fact I see him as a businessman that is a misguided populist, but not a communist.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32170&Cr=honduras&Cr1=
Mr. Ban “does not believe conditions are currently in place for the holding of credible elections that would advance peace and stability,” his spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the UN is concerned about the current situation and allegations of human rights violations.
“The Secretary-General is convinced that an end to the crisis in Honduras requires a consensual agreement and supports regional mediation efforts to that end.
“He joins the Organization of American States (OAS) and regional leaders in calling for an agreement and urges all political actors to redouble efforts to find common ground through peaceful dialogue,” the statement added.
As mentioned, I came from El Salvador, when the oligarchs and money men control most of the government it is not hard to get enough reactionaries to turn even military coup or fraudulent elections into “democratic actions”.
When a thug like Michelletti tells the press that the opposition press will be sent to jail for doing “media terrorism” and follows on his threat, it is way past the time to continue making shameful excuses for them.
The current Honduras government does not deserve any recognition, respect or help.
It looks like Zelaya may be falling victim to the stress of the situation. In this Newsweek piece and in this Miami Herald interview Zelaya accuses Israeli mercenaries of using mind altering gas and radiation against him, and planning to assassinate him.
Well, the “planning to assassinate” part is certainly plausible. Though I don’t know if there is even such thing as Israeli mercenaries.
Why is ‘planning to assassinate’ plausible? Why would Israelis want to assassinate him? Would it be any more or less plausible to say that Indian assassins want to kill him? Or Russian assassins?
I don’t think the stress is getting to him at all. He’s just reading from the same conspiratorial, antisemitic, hate-filled playbook that Hugo Chavez is reading from.
Or it could be that the world-wide collapse of socialism has depressed him to the point of madness.
Israeli mercenaries (assuming there are any) would assassinate him because they’re hired to.
And why would Israel do that?
If there are such things as Israeli mercenaries, they do not work for the Israeli government (except, perhaps sometimes, on an independent-contractor basis, like Blackwater/Xe for the U.S. government). Mercenaries are freelancers by definition.
In fact, that’s where the word “freelance” comes from. In the Middle Ages, a “free lance” was a knight in no lord’s service, offering himself for hire.
You can learn a lot about mercenaries here.
I know what mercenaries, are, thanks. I’m wondering why you think it’s plausible that Israeli mercenaries could be planning to kill him. If you don’t mean to say the Israeli government would do it, why would you think the mercenaries would be Israeli? Why do you think ANY mercenaries might plausibly be trying to kill him?
I mean no more than that I think it’s plausible somebody could be planning to kill him, and somebody who could afford to hire killers. Don’t you?!
Sam_Stone:
Why is ‘planning to assassinate’ plausible? Why would Israelis want to assassinate him? Would it be any more or less plausible to say that Indian assassins want to kill him? Or Russian assassins?
I don’t think the stress is getting to him at all. He’s just reading from the same conspiratorial, antisemitic, hate-filled playbook that Hugo Chavez is reading from.
True, most Latin American leftists are anti-Semites as Jews are in their minds closely associated with the US, Allende for example.
One of the latest OAS press releases:
Washington, D.C., September 29, 2009 – The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IAHCR) expresses its most energetic rejection of the executive decree number PCM-M-016-2009...
Washington, D.C., September 29, 2009 – The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IAHCR) expresses its most energetic rejection of the executive decree number PCM-M-016-2009 dictated by the Honduras de facto government and the violations of the right to freedom of expression caused by its application.
On September 22nd, the Honduras de facto government adopted Executive Decree Number PCM-M-016-2009, published in the official journal La Gaceta on September 26th. This decree suspended, among others, the constitutional right to freedom of expression, by banning all the publications that may “offend human dignity, Government employees, or may threaten the law, and the government resolutions”. This decree authorized the National Commission of Telecommunications (Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, CONATEL) to immediately interrupt, through the use of State security forces, the broadcasting of any radio station, television channel or cable television system that in its opinion may violate the aforementioned dispositions. In application to the decree, in the early hours of September 28th, State security forces raided the offices of television Channel 36 and Radio Globo, media outlets that have been consistently critical of the de facto government, and seized their transmission equipment.
Moreover, the Guatemaltecan news broadcasters Alberto Cardona, a journalist from Guatevisión and Rony Sánchez, a cameraman from Guatevisión and the Mexican channel Televisa, were beaten by the security forces as they covered the shut down of Radio Globo. The Rapporteurship received information that the security forces confiscated the video of the shut down of the radio station and damaged the video camera.
According to information received, the Honduran Congress allegedly asked the Executive Decree to be revoked. However, despite the fact that the de facto government has indicated this is a possibility, at the time of issuing this press release the decree was still in effect and the very serious restrictions to freedom of expression registered under it have not been corrected.
The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression makes an urgent call for the re-establishment of the radio stations and television channels that have been shut down, the devolution of the seized equipment in excellent condition and the protection of the affected journalists, as well as the re-establishment of all the necessary guarantees for the full exercise of the right to freedom of expression in Honduras.
What is clear to me is that Micheletti does not care that his actions are shooting down any idea that the next elections would be fair or valid.
Even the Right wing candidate came against what the coup regime pulled.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3479/second-coup-fails-lonely-oligarch-plots-third-honduran-coup-2009
The cloak of “democracy” and “constitutionality” fell off the coup regime overnight on Sunday. Leading presidential candidate Pepe Lobo rejected the decree, as did the current president of the coup Congress, and business leaders who saw the new rules would be bad for their wallets told Micheletti that it wasn’t going to work. And now Micheletti is slowly backing away from it, so slowly that he hopes nobody will notice then demand that his jackboots return the transmitters and equipment they stole Monday morning from key TV and radio stations.
All this time over the past three months, Micheletti, Vásquez, Facusse and the rest of their gang of reverse Robin Hoods thought that if they just stalled for time they would be able to run the clock out and impose November 29 “elections” on a fixed playing field as the final solution. But as Mexican pollster Dan Lund noted today, Micheletti’s Sunday night decree inverted that dynamic: Now there is not possibly enough time left on the clock to overcome the damage done by Micheletti’s decree to the claim that elections so soon after The Second Coup and its authoritarian vices can possibly be free or fair. Lund writes:
"The timing of the elections set for November 29, 2009 is now a straight jacket, especially in the context of current confusion, the emergency decree... the complex media situation (an open and truly fair media being the sine qua non for an election of this significance), and the need for enough reconciliation to give confidence to the whole process."
Don’t they know Marx was a Jew?
I mentioned before that in reality when repression comes into Latin American nations it is the catholic upbringing and prejudice among the extreme right and left that comes up when unrest happens.
Otherwise it would be tough to explain why Jews also got it bad under right wing dictatorships:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Argentina_STATUS.html
Despite the fact that Jews constitute only one percent of the population of Argentina, an estimated ten percent of the victims of the dirty war were Jews. That this war had an anti-Semitic side is attested to by CONADEP, which devoted a section to illustrate this point. It is illustrated, to quote the report, by the "particular brutality in the treatment of prisoners of Jewish origin .1117 Jews were not only tortured, but the torture often took on an anti-Semitic form. The torturers painted swastikas on one Jewish prisoner’s back with a sharp pointed marker. Another torturer who called himself the “great fuehrer” made Jewish prisoners shout “Hell Hitler.” A Jewish woman on her way to an excursion in Israel was called by her abductors “a Yid,” and subjected to the cattle prod. They wanted information from her and from her files on Jews. She was told that the Jewish problem was second only to the problem of subversion. Later, they told her that her abduction was a mistake and to forget it. In one torture center Jews were made to raise one hand and to shout “I love Hitler.” One prisoner remembered the ordeal of another prisoner, a Jew nicknamed “Chango,” at the hands of his torturer called “Julian the Turk.” Julian always carried a key ring with a swastika and wore a crucifix around his neck.
More recently in Colombia I noticed many Jews left when the civil war got worse. It seems that the military and paramilitary forces could not guarantee their safety, but I have seen reports that not all Jews are right wingers, and in the end they fear more the catholic right wing military thugs than the left ones.
