Chavez threatens military action over Honduras coup
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday put troops on alert after a coup in Honduras and said he would respond militarily if his envoy to the Central American country was kidnapped or killed.
Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army’s coup against his leftist ally, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
Outside intervention over another questionable election and term limits.
Honduran coup is about President Zelaya’s extra-constitutional attempt to extend his term. He would be out of office in January, but he wanted a referendum to permit him to run again. The Supreme Court stated that would be unconstitutional. The army general who was to have distributed the ballots refused, and was sacked. The military then snatched him from his villa and shipped him off to Hugo.
June 29, 2009 at 1:49 am
Villains, the lot of them. Only now, we’re becoming one of “them.”
June 29, 2009 at 2:45 am
Oh Mary, what are we going to do?
June 29, 2009 at 7:06 am
I wish I could say. As a minimum, we need to pray–and I mean really pray hard for Good to pit itself against the Evil.
June 29, 2009 at 7:30 pm
What the msm doesn’t tell you is that the general (and he’s not alone) is our guy from the School of the Americas
June 29, 2009 at 8:05 pm
http://rebelreports.com/post/132342133/a-few-thoughts-on-the-coup-in-honduras
June 29, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Thanks for the fabulous link.
June 29, 2009 at 8:16 pm
welcome, it’s pretty much best link of lot so far: wonder if the msm will cover it at all
Clinton made speech mentioning violation of the (OAS)Inter American Council for Democracy angle, so apparently we’re still pretending we don’t favor the coup: whole point is to squash all the new lefty democracies opening up in Central and South America; there’s getting to be more we’ve tried to overthrow than not
put up links at nq: everyone wants to jump Chavez, nobody pays attention
June 29, 2009 at 8:32 pm
SA is being placed on a back burner by the MSM. Too much distraction, perhaps?
June 29, 2009 at 8:52 pm
http://www.whymap.org/cln_101/nn_1055978/whymap/EN/Downloads/Global__maps/whymap__125__pdf,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/whymap_125_pdf.pdf
June 29, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Great NomNomNom.
June 29, 2009 at 11:19 pm
what were they to do? wait for Zalaya to declare himself dictator for life? Chavez took a vote on term limits too & look how that turned out. An elected official, the speaker of Congress, not the General, has been sworn in as a replacement.
Hondurans are celebrating the coup in Miami. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is cool with it. Barfy’s comments are inappropriate as usual. US troops in Honduras haven’t moved & aren’t going to. Barfy didn’t get his panties in a twist over peaceful protesters dying in Iran, but then his GE contract wasn’t at stake. Iranians voted. doesn’t that mean it’s a democratic country? I guess not.
June 30, 2009 at 12:44 am
The Honduran Constitution is at play here. Are they going to work with the Constitution or will they do what zero does with ours?
June 30, 2009 at 2:17 am
you are underinformed. do you see any talk about the president of Niger?? no, that’s because we don’t have a stake there, it’s china who wants their uranium, we’ll just go poison some more Dine, etc.
their freaking constitution was written by a military dictator who set it up to keep the army functioning as the judiciary.
go read something!
June 30, 2009 at 4:55 am
NomNomNom, why the ruse? This constitution was written by a military dictator, that goes without saying. By definition, what is happening in Honduras may be an example of a coup that is not only legal, but mandatory according to that constitution. Looked for the links at nq but did not find them. Spam ate them?
June 30, 2009 at 1:43 pm
yes, I am in Spaminator Purgatory: they haven’t printed any of my substantial posts since 10 last night.
I’ve got to go feed the cats and all, be back in awhile.
June 30, 2009 at 3:49 pm
This is a true shame Nom. I think many readers would like to understand this takeover better. Your comments clarify the mish mash jibberish that the msm is putting out right now.
June 30, 2009 at 2:31 pm
some of the nq posts up, additions to clarify in brackets.
if I were set on the idea that the poll is a bad thing (and I’m personally of no opinion on this), I’d have arrested him via the police which is no longer part of the military, put him in jail and started proceedings to try him for treason: there’s a provision in the Constitution that says trying to f#ck with the Constitution is treason.
[If the military were necessary to seize him, then I'd have handed him over on the spot to police in front of the presidential palace.]
I’d have told the US, who is the prime source of aid, including military aid to Honduras, and highly involved in the training of their military what I meant to do, and that the Honduran position was non-negotiable from the start. [They didn't: they were in negotiations with the US at least, and made a statement several days ago that there would be no coup.]
I’d convene the member nations of the OAS (which includes the US) and attempt to get them to sign off on removing him prior to the end of his term and replaced with Micheletti in an official rather than acting capacity.
To me the problem with the poll isn’t the content of the poll, but the fact that it’s being held within 6 mths of the election which, in addition to being illegal that close to an election may well not be enough time to inform everyone sufficiently about the effects of a National Constituent Assembly which would have the power to review and change the Constitution.
That a majority of the government doesn’t back the poll doesn’t matter to me, because a majority of the people might want it: if they do, and I of course have no idea, then I don’t have a problem with their having one. [But not now, within the 6 month to the election time frame: it's too late and Zelaya shouldn't have been attempting it].
That the military came and arrested him instead with police outside as well, is highly disturbing to me. [He should have been turned over to to the custody of the police].
Also, Zelaya was not the only one arrested: some of the others’ whereabouts are unknown such as Cesar Ham (initially reported killed, but later said to be either arrested or in hiding) and Foreign minister Patricia Rodas. Where are they?
Also arrested were the Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Cuban ambassadors. WTF?
Add to this the allegedly Constitutionally mandated military backed Micheletti made false statements to the entire population of Honduras that Zelaya had resigned. [He got on national tv and the radio and read a fake letter saying Zelaya was resigning "for health reasons", with an implication that it was mental health: this is exactly what the US backed coup of Chavez did.]
Then they proceeded to cut off electricity and news coverage of their doings on a wide scale, possible throughout the country (differing reports) and tear gas and water cannon protesters. [At least 6 reporters were detained and beaten and their live feed of events ended.]
Micheletti, or anyone who would do these things is not anyone I would want in charge of my country.
Imo these features of use of the military for the arrest, kidnapping of officials, lies to the public about the situation, and suppression of knowledge makes this a military backed coup, just one step up from School of the Americas Gen. Vasquez declaring himself in charge.
June 30, 2009 at 2:35 pm
another nq one:
The reason there is one term is to limit the influence of the president. This was to prevent military puppet regimes that went on and on: it certainly started out as a very good thing, and may be a good thing still.
Honduran government = executive + legislative + judiciary (& local etc); with 1 term the executive branch normally maintains its authority by its role in appointing the military. But in Zelaya’s case– he was elected by the conservatives but then turned lefty in his economic policy– the legislature and military no longer want him in charge.
The judiciary is historically weak: it does what the military and rich people want. The military is semi-autonomous. The whole government suffers from corruption.
btw, I’m not suggesting that Zelaya is in the right: the Congress certainly has the authority to remove him: but not by a military backed, let alone instigated, coup. This is at the very least a violation of their international treaties. Also, exile has not been in play there as a solution in a long time: it’s not good to see a return to it. My concern is solely in seeing another military run government, and a great fear we have a hand in it. The stronger the lefty democracies get the more our influence wanes. And it sure wouldn’t be the first time.
June 30, 2009 at 2:54 pm
nq won’t print this one, apparently:
What no one says is that the Honduran Constitution—their 16th, btw since their independence from Spain in 1821—only dates back to 1982, and was implemented 1 week after the inauguration of Córdova, who was elected after 10 years of military rule under Policarpo Paz García, and under whose rule the 71 member Constituent Assembly who approved the Constitution was elected. That is to say: their constitution was written under and by a military dictatorship that the US supported.
Don’t forget this is the same time frame where the US under Pres. Reagan had over 3,000 US troops in Honduras rendering aid to the Nicaraguan Contras first under the direction of the CIA and then the NSC. Reagan continued this even after our Congress passed the Boland amendments first making aiding the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government illegal, and later outlawing any funding of military or paramilitary operations, when the first Boland was interpreted so as to fail to stop us from trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Iran-Contra affair ring a bell?? Poindexter? North? We were there trying to overthrow Sandinista Nicaraguan government. This wasn’t the first time we interfered in Nicaragua either, because we occupied/ ran it from 1912 to 1933, and kept going back whenever the Nicaraguan Canal looked like it might get established without our controlling it.
We have tried to overthrow Chavez’s democratically elected Venezuelan government. We have tried to overthrow Evo Morales’ democratically elected government. Do you see a pattern emerging?
Pres. Zelaya was attempting to implement a nonbinding referendum that was to be held on June 29 to determine support for adding a “cuarto urno,” a fourth ballot box, to vote on the installation of a National Constituent Assembly which would have the power to review and change the Constitution: the actual adding of the 4th box and vote was not to occur until November 29 in the general election.
Presently, most of the Honduran Constitution can be amended, but not the so-called unchangeable articles, including the limitation of presidents to a single term.
The country was going to vote on whether it wanted a change to the Constitution or not. I can see a lot of issues in which I would greatly appreciate a referendum for altering our Constitution: the ERA, national legalization of gay marriage: … many things. There was a certain degree of support in this country for re-implementing the third presidential term in our elections under both Reagan and Clinton. No one in our country thought this was equivalent to hurling our Constitution in the trash bin either. [Though admittedly, we have no parts considered unalterable; still that is a feature of the Honduran constitution that only dates back to 1982].
Additionally: the general in charge of the army, and the man behind the coup, is Gen. Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the School of the Americas. As was the head of the Honduran Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo.
Another thing: we have 500-600 soldiers of Joint Task Force-Bravo located at Soto Cano Air Base
There’s no freaking way we didn’t know this was coming. We are the principal trading partner of Honduras. We could have stopped this at any time.
It was us.
[I don't mean we could have stopped them from deposing him: he needed to be deposed and we should back his removal; I mean we could have stopped them from removing him via the military and running f#cking tanks through the streets subduing protesters. That we didn't and that the principal actors in the removal are SOA generals makes me think we signed off on the military removal].
June 30, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Of course the administration knew.
We DO have a long history of working in the background in SA. NomNomNom, these are excellent comments. What do you think will happen today at the UN?
June 30, 2009 at 5:17 pm
No idea: so far there is not one government either among the 35 Inter American Democratic Council nations, their 61 observer nations, or anyone else, not even Libya! lol, backing this coup.
That alone ought to register on people, but it doesn’t seem to here in the US.
Can you imagine if our military had stormed the White House, seized Nixon, a cabinet member, and 3 ambassadors; and put Nixon on a military plane to France??? I cannot believe anyone thinks this could be helpful in the long run to democracy in Honduras.
I hope the UN condemns the coup, backs the return of Zelaya to Honduras, puts someone other than the now tainted Micheletti at the helm for the rest of Zelaya’s term, and puts the OAS into overseeing charges brought against Zelaya in Honduras.
I don’t want to see any Aristeed nonsense or Khomeinis living in France situations.
June 30, 2009 at 5:54 pm
The MSM is sheer evil Nom. I highly doubt that the UN will say much. I don’t want to see the France situation either.
June 30, 2009 at 3:07 pm
some links/ websites:
http://countrystudies.us/honduras/
http://rebelreports.com/post/132342133/a-few-thoughts-on-the-coup-in-honduras
http://www.soaw.org/
http://www.narconews.com/
maybe this will be of use to you, I can’t read it! still looking for complete english translation
http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Honduras/hond82.html
July 1, 2009 at 1:45 am
Noms favorite candidate illegally siezed AGAIN.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/30/cynthia-mckinney-aboard-boat-seized-israeli-navy-demands-immediate-release/
just where is the outrage for this coup?
July 1, 2009 at 3:30 am
To whose outrage do you refer? mine? the Gazans who aren’t getting their supplies? or someone else’s?
I’ve been following this since before she left, through the detention of all 36 persons in Cyprus, the release of just one boat, and now the boat seizure. It’s important news, &
imo opinion it deserved more coverage than it got from the outset, but the msm hates her.
That alone ought to be reason for intelligent people to give her a second look. Not to mention her success in making BHO look like the hypocritical POS-AIPAC stooge that he is.
Did you see her letter from before they left?:
“Cynthia McKinney personally made sure President Obama is aware of the Free Gaza Movement’s activities. She sent a letter to the White House over the weekend:
“I understand that you sent a message to Israel about its blockade of Gaza. Thank you. It is reported that you specifically mentioned food, medical supplies, cement and building supplies in your note. This note is to inform you that I embark today on a trip to Gaza and we will have for the people of Gaza, exactly the materials that you mentioned, and school supplies for the children. Thank you for the note to Israel and I hope that also means that you will not sign any appropriation bill that has weapons for Israel. President Carter noted that seven schools were completely demolished with F-16s from this country. We all are responsible and I know you know that. But all of us are not in a position to stop the carnage. You are. Please, not one more dime not one more weapon for Israel’s war machine.”
Now there’s a candidate who puts her beliefs into action. The Israelis rammed her boat the last time, and she went back for another round. She can’t even swim.
And you know what the best thing about her is? She isn’t owned by any neocons.