Franklin's Focus 8/1/10

The Amazing Deeds of Our Nobel Peace Prize Winner

When that prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger, I knew with absolute
certainty Empire Amerika had greased the way with some form of
bribery. No other explanation could serve to explain giving one of the
most rabid hawks and disseminators of bloody violence in American
history a peace prize. I simply could not come up with any other
explanation. Bribery, after all, has always been an integral cog in
American diplomacy.

It therefore did not in the least surprise me when another jingoistic
hawk in the form of Barack won one of the most coveted world awards.
Did bribery or unknown forms of cajoling bring about such an absurd
choice? If you have a better explanation, please let me know.

The alleged peace maker Obama and member of the rightwing Democratic
Leadership Council Hillary Clinton have as of late coerced Colombia
into letting the U.S. establish something like a dozen large military
bases in Colombia. That establishes Colombia as a de facto American
colony. That these strategically located bases will one day back up a
CIA created army of mercenaries leading a military attack on Venezuela
is almost a given.

Bolivia is also on Amerika's imperialistic agenda. The CIA has been
quite busy in Bolivia engaging in typical CIA mischief such as a
buying an entire underground army and occasionally bombing tourist
hotels. This type of bombing is pro forma for the CIA, which has also
bombed tourist hotels in Cuba. Scaring away tourists is a powerful
tool, since tourism in most Latin American countries is an important
source of income.

I won't get into what Barack and Hillary have been up to in Honduras.
I have for your reading pleasure, or displeasure, as the case may be,
a terrific summary of that ugly business by the always eloquent Chris
Floyd.

During my college years I met and became an extremely close friend of
a Honduran surgeon seeking to become board certified in America. He
married a Minneapolis woman who also eventually became a good friend
of mine. In fact, she is a subscriber to this rag. She and he had
three children, who are now adults. He, alas, died way too young. His
three grown children might have one day chosen to visit their blood
relatives in Honduras; however, what Hillary and Barack have wrought
in that God forsaken little country have made Honduras an undesirable
place to visit.

Floyd's article provides a poignant picture of the dictatorial horrors
imposed on that former democracy. If you wonder why Barack is so
interested in making a puppet out of Honduras, a look at the map
offers a vivid clue. Honduras offers a large bay jutting out into the
Caribbean. This huge bay looks down on Venezuela. It can accommodate a
whole fleet of American aircraft carriers and battleships.

So it is that oil rich Venezuela will now be facing American might
both on land and at sea. About all that is lacking now is another
Tonkin Bay incident.

Very large amounts of money are being funneled into Venezuela to
establish flunkies in the military and judiciary. There is a large
class of wealthy rightwingers who hate Hugo Chavez. They are licking
their chops as the underground preparations for a bought and paid for
coup slowly grow and take shape.

Today's Quotation

'Puerto Rico became a part of the United States by an act of conquest,
and even if the people were to vote for independence, Puerto Rico
can't become so... neither independence, developed commonwealth, or
statehood can be had. Puerto Rico must remain a colony.'

Senator Henry Jackson, 1974

Warmest regards.
Richard

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7/28/10 http://www.chris-floyd.com/

Hungry Like the Wolf: Obama's Legacy of Hope and Change in Honduras
by Chris Floyd

In the first year of his presidency, the first year of the "hope and
change" he promised to bring to the conduct of American affairs,
Barack Obama countenanced -- and abetted -- a coup in Honduras that
ousted a mildly reformist, democratically elected president and
replaced him with a clique of thuggish elites who now rule,
illegitimately, through repression, threat and outright murder.

Since the installation of employing these throwbacks to the corrupt
and brutal 'banana republics' of yore, Obama's secretary of state, the
"progressive" Hillary Clinton, has spent a good deal of time and
effort trying to coerce Honduras' outraged neighbors in Latin America
to "welcome" the thug-clique, now led by Porfirio Lobo, back into the
"community of nations." Let bygones be bygones, Clinton says, as
Lobo's regime murders journalists (nine so far this year), political
opponents and carries on the wholesale trashing of Honduran
independence (such as sacking four Supreme Court justices who opposed
the gutting of liberties and the overthrow of constitutional order).
After all, isn't that Obama's own philosophy: always "look forward,"
forget the crimes of the past? Every day is a new day, a clean slate,
a chance for a new beginning -- indeed, for "hope and change."

In other words: let the dead bury the dead -- and the rich and
powerful reap their rewards.

In her assiduous backroom efforts to "rehabilitate" the killers and
crooks that she and Obama have helped foist on Honduras, Clinton might
profitably paraphrase a wise old saying of her great hero, Franklin
Roosevelt, when he was needled about his support for the murderous
Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza: "He may be a son of a bitch,
but he's our son of a bitch."

At the London Review of Books blog, John Perry details the state of
the stolen nation of Honduras one year after the beloved pets of Barry
and Hillary took over:


On the night of 14 June, Luis Arturo Mondragón was sitting with his
son on the pavement outside his house in the city of El Paraíso in
western Honduras. He had often criticised local politicians on his
weekly radio programme, the latest edition of which had just been
broadcast. He had received several death threats, but disregarded
them. At 10 p.m. a car drew up and the driver fired four bullets,
killing him instantly. Mondragón was the ninth journalist to be
murdered so far this year. Honduras is now officially the most
dangerous country in the world in which to work for the press.

The overthrow of President Zelaya last year was only the second
military coup in Latin America since the end of the Cold War. The
first, a US-backed attempt to overthrow Chávez in Venezuela in 2002,
was a failure. The coup in Tegucigalpa shouldn’t have succeeded
either: Obama had promised a new approach to US policy in the region,
and there was strong popular resistance to the coup in Honduras
itself. And yet, a year on, the coup’s plotters have got practically
everything they wanted. Zelaya is in exile in the Dominican Republic,
and the right-wing Porfirio Lobo, elected president in January’s
widely-boycotted elections, has consolidated his power base. Honduras
is slowly being welcomed back into the international fold: it’s still
excluded from the Organisation of American States, but was quietly
invited to rejoin SICA last week. In Honduras, Lobo has reversed the
changes begun by Zelaya. In particular, he has blocked land reform and
done nothing to resolve violent conflicts between peasants and land
owners, supported by the army and police, in the Aguan river valley.

Last month, 27 members of the US congress wrote to Hillary Clinton to
express their ‘continuing concern regarding the grievous violations of
human rights and the democratic order which commenced with the coup
and continue to this day’. Along with the murders of the nine
journalists, they noted the arbitrary arrests, torture and
disappearances of members of the National Popular Resistance Front
(FNRP). They also pointed out that four supreme court judges who
opposed the coup have been sacked, while military leaders involved in
it have benefitted. General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, the head of the
armed forces at the time of the coup, has not only been pardoned for
arresting an elected president and expelling him from the country, but
in January was allowed to retire from the army and given the
presidency of Hondutel, the state-owned telephone company.

How very nice for the general. Perry notes that Roland Valenzuela, a
former minister in Zelaya’s government, claimed in an interview that
he had papers which named several American-connected business figures
behind the coup plot, including "former members of the army death
squad known as Battalion 316." Perry also notes that "in a separate
development, it has become known that the plane which flew Zelaya out
of the country first called at the US airforce base Palmerola."

And what has been the upshot of these shocking charges?

Not surprisingly, the exiled Zelaya has claimed that all this points
to the prior knowledge and probable involvement of the US government
in the coup. The State Department describes his allegation as
‘ridiculous’. Unfortunately, Valenzuela is unable to elaborate as,
shortly before the recorded interview was broadcast, he was shot.
Yes, that's "continuity" for you; that's just how they did in the good
old days, to protect our sons of bitches.

But it turns out that the Honduran people are not as supine as some
other folks just north of them that we could mention when it comes to
watching their lives and liberties be blighted by rapacious elites.
Instead of keeping their heads down, obeying their betters -- or
joining "Tea Parties" that support (and are bankrolled by) the very
malefactors of great wealth who have ruined their country, they are
standing up courageously:

Like the rest of Central America, Honduras celebrates its independence
on 15 September. By then the resistance front aims to have collected
more than a million signatures (in a country with fewer than eight
million people) calling for a new constitution. In his absence, they
have elected Zelaya as their leader. They show no signs of giving up
the struggle, but on the other hand they are well aware that, if
Honduras slips back into obscurity, the oppression will only get worse.
One-eighth of the population openly, adamantly refusing to accept the
rule of rapacious elites, even in the face of arbitrary arrest,
dispossession and murder! That would translate into more than 37
million Americans fired into action against the fraudsters of Wall
Street and the war criminals in Washington.

And that is one main reason why said fraudsters and war criminals will
continue to work hard to "rehabilitate" their junta pals in Honduras.
For one of the greatest "continuities" of America's bipartisan elite
in the past century has been their adamant determination to quash any
"bad examples" of people trying to order their lives and societies in
any way outside the "Washington Consensus." Those who do must be
punished: with juntas, with sanctions, with covert actions -- or with
invasions, if need be. The American people must never get the idea
that they can get together and stand up to their bosses, their
benevolent betters. (See Matt Taibbi's skewering of David Brooks'
recent advocacy of this übermensch rule.)

Of course, this exemplary punishment does not apply solely to
foreigners. Remember the last American who seriously threatened the
power structure with a mass movement behind his call for economic
justice, a "revolution of values" in society and his condemnation of
the American War Machine as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today?"

That's right; we celebrate his birthday every January 15 ... while
forgetting everything he really stood for -- and stood against. I
wonder how hard he would be trying to "rehabilitate" the killers of
Luis Arturo Mondragón?

[Of course, the reference is to Martin Luther King.]

End