2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSwitch HONDURAS 1954 with GUATEMALA 2009
One picture is worth a thousand journalists.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was reported to be fond of Diego Rivera's mural, Glorious Victory, which tells the story of the CIA-led 1954 coup d'etat in Guatemala, using it for a Christmas card one year.
Today, we can substitute the name of a modern day Secretary of State for John Foster Dulles and plop in Honduras 2009 in place of Guatemala into the painting. History repeats, sickeningly.
One Diego Rivera mural is worth a thousand newspaper articles. Study Guide in PDF.

oberliner
(58,724 posts)The 1954 Guatemalan coup was instigated by the CIA.
The 2009 Honduran coup was instigated by the Honduran Supreme Court.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)-- John Stanton: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/15/is-the-clinton-foundation-the-dulles-brothers-sullivan-and-cromwell/
Who does Capitalism's Invisible Army serve?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Counterpunch nonsense notwithstanding. There is no evidence that the CIA was behind the coup in Honduras.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The facts, on the other hand, are not.
Hillary Clintons Honduran Disgrace
By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive, March 5, 2010
Hillary Clinton continues with her hawkish ways, making Obamas foreign policy less distinguishable from Bushs every day.
She just met with Honduran President Pepe Lobo, shes notified Congress that the Obama administration is restoring aid to Honduras, and shes urging Latin American nations to recognize the Lobo government in Tegucigalpa.
The democratic opposition in Honduras boycotted lobos election, since hes allied with the forces that overthrew Manuel Zelaya last June.
But for the longest time, Hillary Clinton stubbornly refused to call the June takeover a coup, even though her boss, the president of the United States, immediately denounced it as such.
SNIP..
Other countries of the region say that they want to wait a while, she said on her Latin American trip. I dont know what theyre waiting for.
CONTINUED...
http://progressive.org/wx030510.html
That's what she said. Her email provides further insight:
The Hillary Clinton Emails and the Honduras Coup
by Alexander Main
CEPR Blog, September 24, 2015
EXCERPT...
A number of Clinton emails show how, starting shortly after the coup, HRC and her team shifted the deliberations on Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS) where Zelaya could benefit from the strong support of left-wing allies throughout the region to the San José negotiation process in Costa Rica. There, representatives of the coup regime were placed on an equal footing with representatives of Zelayas constitutional government, and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias (a close U.S. ally) as mediator. Unsurprisingly, the negotiation process only succeeded in one thing: keeping Zelaya out of office for the rest of his constitutional mandate.
From the outset, U.S. interests and policy goals in Honduras were clearly identified in the emails that darted back and forth between Clinton and her advisors. On the day of the coup (June 28, 2009), Tom Shannon, the outgoing Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, provided an update for Clinton and her close staff that noted that he was calling the new SouthCom Commander to ensure a coordinated U.S. approach [since] we have big military equities in Honduras through Joint Task Force Bravo at Soto Cano airbase. A later email, with talking points for a phone call between Clinton and the Spanish foreign minister, indicated that Clintons team was already focused on making sure that Honduras upcoming national elections would take place on schedule (in November of 2009):
We hope Spain will work with us and the OAS to ensure a restoration of democratic order that will allow Honduras to carry through with its electoral timetable (presidential vote scheduled for November).
This talking point would prove to be mostly false. In later emails we see how the OAS is removed from the U.S. agenda, and the restoration of democratic order takes a back seat to the State Departments goal of going forward with Honduras November elections no matter what.
A little over a week after the coup, Shannon sent an email to Clinton, via her aide Huma Abedin, with background notes for a July 6 phone call to then President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. In it he discusses a burgeoning plan to bypass the OAS where many governments were growing increasingly impatient with the U.S. appearing to want to bolster the coup regime and organize direct talks between the coup regime and the exiled Zelaya government in Costa Rica, where they would be closely supervised by president Arias and U.S. State Department officials. The coup regime agreed to the Arias mediation, while vehemently rejecting OAS mediation. Zelaya understandably balked at the idea at first. In his message, Shannon outlines a plan for getting Uribe to lobby Zelaya to accept Arias offer of mediation of direct talks:
(Uribe like many other leaders with an interest in Central America, is worried that Honduras is slipping towards confrontation and violence. He probably does not think (OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel) Insulza is up to the task. (Secretary of State Clinton) should be aware that Arias is prepared to offer his services. I spoke with the Costa Rican (foreign minister), who said the de facto government has reached out to Arias, and that the Costa Ricans will be looking for a way to make the offer to Zelaya. Uribe knows Zelaya and has some influence. Uribe might want to talk with Arias and offer to help move Zelaya in the right direction. (Although Uribe and Zelaya come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are both ranchers and love horses, and this has created some comradeship.)
In addition to this lobbying by proxy, Zelaya was surely under direct pressure from Clinton, who he met with on July 7 in Washington. Following the meeting, Clinton announced to the press that Zelaya had accepted to have Arias mediate but that the U.S. also continued to support regional efforts through the OAS to bring about a peaceful resolution that is consistent with the terms of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
The emails provide strong evidence that the State Department had in fact no intention of pursuing a resolution to the crisis at the OAS. In the weeks that followed, a regional tug-of-war took place, with various OAS member governments trying to keep Honduras on the agenda at the OAS, and get members to agree to stronger measures against the coup regime, and the U.S. only showing interest in the Costa Rica mediation.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/24/hillary-clinton-emails-and-honduras-coup
You don't have to be a genius at CounterPunch to know who benefits from the coup.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Originally, President Obama backed ousted Honduran president (supporters shown in civilian clothes below).
Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup
"A coup anywhere in Latin America is a very big deal.
By Alvaro Valle
Harvard Political Review, April 13, 2015
SNIP...
The U.S. Response
Latin American governments immediately denounced Zelayas ouster as a military coup. The United States was not quite as decisive in its diction, with the initial statement from the Obama administration merely calling on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms. Obama did go on to denounce the coup in the following days, but Frank noted that Obamas characterization of the government change was very important. He very clearly failed to call it a military coup. If he had called it a military coup, the United States would have had to immediately suspend all police and military aid, Frank explained. Eventually some money sent was suspended, but the vast majority was not.
Following the coup, President Obama called many times for the reinstatement of Zelaya. In contrast, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks that were far more equivocal. When asked if the United States had any plans to alter aid to the coup government, , Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome. Clinton seemed to prioritize having a stable regime over preserving democratic ideals.
As further evidence, Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices, In the subsequent days [after the coup] we strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot, revealing that even as the administration publicly advocated for Zelayas return, Clinton was not working to ensure that it would happen.
Pastor added that Clinton had personal connections with supporters of the coup government that may have led her to soften her stance. For instance, Lanny Davis, Bill Clintons former personal lawyer and a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, lobbied in Washington for the Honduran coup government, Honduran elites, the Business Council of Latin America, and the American companies that took issue with Zelayas reforms. Bennett Ratcliff, another top Democratic campaigner with close ties to the Clintons, also worked for the Honduran coup government as a lobbyist in Washington. These personal connections to advocates for the coup government raise troubling concerns that political ties influenced Clintons stance.
In Clintons defense, these personal connections were not the only political forces supporting the coup. Levitsky noted that initial opposition to the coup in the United States may have given way because Republicans held a couple of major U.S.-Latin America appointments: the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassador to Brazil. They held these positions hostage to a softening of U.S. policy toward the coup government.
CONTINUED w/ links sources etc....
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/us-honduran-coup/
Of course, it's plausible that all this just happened to favor Empire at the expense of Democracy. Then, it would be mere coincidence that today many if not most of the progressive -- socialist -- regimes in South America and Central America have been replaced by rightist regimes. Kind of reminds me of another time in history when the State Department/CIA made an end-around directives from the Oval Office.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)This news you should know BEFORE the election.
As Greg Grandin at The Nation explains:
Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of State, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clintons emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society. -- This photo of Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres accompanied The Nations expose of the US role in her death. (image: Goldman Environmental Prize)
US Contribution to Death of Honduran Activist Goes Unmentioned in US Coverage
By Adam Johnson
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting/FAIR.org, March 4, 2016
EXCERPT...
The Honduran military abducted President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country on June 28, 2009. While the coup unfolded before the international community, the United Nations, the EU and the Organization of American States rushed to condemn it. Fifteen House Democrats joined in, sending a letter to the Obama White House insisting that the State Department fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place and follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law.
But Clintons State Department staunchly refused to do so, bucking the international community and implicitly recognizing the military takeover. Emails revealed last year by the State Department show that Clinton knew very well there was a military coup, but rejected cries by the international community to condemn it. As The Intercepts Lee Fang reported, Clinton attempted to use her lobbyist friend Lanny Davis to open up back channels with Roberto Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler installed after the coup, effectively endorsing the new right-wing government that would go on to crack down on Cáceres and others activists.
In her memoirs, Clinton herself discloses she had no intention on restoring the elected President Zelaya to power. In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras, Clinton wrote, and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.
On September 28, State Department officials blocked the OAS from adopting a resolution that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorshipgiving the USs final seal of approval to the military coup that began three months prior.
One wouldnt know any of this reading US reports of Cáceres death. The coup, and its subsequent purging of environmental, LGBT and indigenous activists, is treated as an entirely local matter, reduced to the cycle of violence cliche often employed with destructive governments the United States helped usher into power.
CONTINUED UNDEMOCRATIC AS ALL HELL...
http://fair.org/home/us-contribution-to-death-of-honduran-activist-goes-unmentioned-in-us-coverage/
Ha ha. It is to laugh at fascism.
PS: Thank you for caring about Honduras, its people, Justice and Democracy, Cheese Sandwich.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)
Critics argue the secretary of states efforts paved the way for the violence still plaguing Honduras.
by Roque Planas
National Reporter for The Huffington Post, 3/12/2016, Updated Mar 14, 2016
EXCERPT...
In June 2009, Zelaya was overthrown by the Honduran military, ushered out of the presidential palace at gunpoint wearing only his pajamas. Months of protests against the de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti followed. While virtually all Latin American governments condemned the coup and called for Zelayas restoration, Clinton and the U.S. pushed for elections to bring in a new government a position she detailed in the hardcover edition of Hard Choices, published in 2014.
Days after the coup, she wrote, she teamed up with Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa to come up with a response.
We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future, Clinton wrote.
But that paragraph indeed, the entire two-page discussion of the Honduran coup disappeared from the paperback edition. In the paperback version, the chapter on Latin America ends abruptly after a look at the debate over whether Cuba should be included in the Organization of American States. The deletion was first noted in an essay by Belén Fernández in the forthcoming book False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton that was cited in The Nation.
Its a striking cut, given that Zelaya was overthrown just three weeks after Clintons visit to Honduras for the OAS meeting at which Cubas membership was debated, which she recounts as the penultimate anecdote of the Latin America chapter.
CONTINUED...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-honduras-coup-memoirs_us_56e34161e4b0b25c91820a08
The facts show a concern for image over human life. The story reminds me of 1984 and the Memory Hole.
greytdemocrat
(3,300 posts)The BFEE took care of that!!!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Which is funny, considering how the BFEE never seem to be held to account for their criminality.
We the People, OTOH, are called to pick up their tab. Here's what Joseph Stiglitz had to say about Larry Summers, kingpin of such economic Buy Partisanship across multiple administrations.
Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked
By Greg Palast
Reader Supported News, September 16, 2013
Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"
Huh?
Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?
A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.
[font color="green"][font size="5"]Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books. [/font size][/font color]
CONTINUED...
http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/
The JFK Assassination: A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes
Of course, BFEE seems to be an outdated term these days. Perhaps calling them the War Party or Wall Street-on-the-Potomac would work.
John Poet
(2,510 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)
Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger: It's Personal. Very Personal.
The Clintons and the Kissingers regularly spend holidays together at a beachfront villa.
DAVID CORN
FEB. 12, 2016 7:32 PM
EXCERPT...
This Clinton lovefest with Kissinger is not new. And it is not simply a product of professional courtesy or solidarity among former secretaries of state, who, after all, are part of a small club. There is also a strong social connection between the Clintons and the Kissingers. They pal around together. On June 3, 2013, Hillary Clinton presented an award to de la Renta, a good friend who for years had provided her dresses and fashion advice, and then the two of them hopped over to a 90th birthday party for Kissinger. In fact, the schedule of the award ceremony had been shifted to allow Clinton and de la Renta to make it to the Kissinger bash. (Secretary of State John Kerry also attended the party.) The Kissingers and the de la Rentas were longtime buddies. Kissinger wrote one of his recent books while staying at de la Rentas' mansion in the Dominican Republic and dedicated the book to the fashion designer and his wife.
The Clintons and Kissingers appear to spend a chunk of their quality time together at that de la Renta estate in the Punta Cana resort. Last year, the Associated Press noted that this is where the Clintons take their annual Christmas holiday. And other press reports in the United States and the Dominican Republic have pointed out that the Kissingers are often part of the gang the de la Rentas have hosted each year. When Oscar de la Renta died in 2014, the New York Times obituary reported:
At holidays, the de la Rentas filled their house in Punta Cana with relatives and friends, notably Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy and Henry Kissinger, and the art historian John Richardson. The family dogs had the run of the compound, and Mr. de la Renta often sang spontaneously after dinner. First-time visitors, seeking him out in the late afternoon, were surprised to find him in the staff quarters, hellbent on winning at dominoes.
In 2012, the Wall Street Journal, in a profile of de la Renta, wrote:
Over Christmas the Kissingers were among the close group who gathered in Punta Cana, including Barbara Walters, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Charlie Rose. "We have two house rules," says Oscar, laughing. "There can be no conversation of any substance and nothing nice about anyone."
A travel industry outlet reported that Vogue editor Anna Wintour was part of the crew that year. The Times described the house this way: "

This gathering of the Clintons, the Kissingers, and the de la Rentas seems to occur most years. In 2011, de la Renta, a native of the Dominican Republic, told Vogue that he built this seaside estate so he could host his close friends, and he cited the Kissingers and Clintons as examples. "At Christmas," he said, "we're always in the same group."
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/hillary-clinton-kissinger-vacation-dominican-republic-de-la-renta
SidDithers
(44,298 posts)Sid
Octafish
(55,745 posts)
Last night, Clinton once again praised a man with a lot of blood on his hands.
By Greg GrandinTwitterFEBRUARY 5, 2016
EXCERPT...
Lets consider some of Kissingers achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixons top foreign policymaker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistans ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the USs arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissingers Shadow!
SNIP...
Hillary Clintons progress as a public figure and politician can, in fact, be indexed perfectly by her relationship to Henry Kissinger. In 1970 as a law student at Yale before she met Bill, Hillary Rodham, in April and May was at the center of what she called the Yale-Cambodia madness, a series of protests that started around the New Haven Nine Black Panther trial but escalated when Nixon, on April 30, announced the invasion of Cambodiaan invasion Kissinger was instrumental in planning and executing. On May 1, the day after Nixons speech, Vietcong flags filled the air; gas masks were distributed. Streaming banners and impromptu chants abounded: Seize the Time! End U.S. imperialism around the world!
SNIP...
As first lady, Hillary Clinton spent the early months of her husbands administration drafting healthcare-reform legislation, only to see it put on the back burner by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Kissinger, in his role as a global consultant, had played a critical role in bringing the various parties who would write that trade treaty together during the previous George H.W. Bush administration. Kissinger continued his NAFTA advocacy with Bill Clinton. As Jeff Faux writes in his excellent The Global Class War, Kissinger was the perfect tutor for Clinton, who was trying to convince Republicans and their business allies that they could count on him to champion Reagans vision.
SNIP...
Clintonism is largely an extension of Kissingerism, so Clintons cozy relationship to Kissinger shouldnt come as a surprise. Both Clintons have excelled at exactly the kind of fudging of their public-private roles that Kissinger perfected. Kissinger, the private consultant, profited from the catastrophes he created as a public figure. Beyond his role in brokering NAFTA, in Latin America his consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates, was a key player in the orgy of privatization that took place during Clintons presidency, enriching itself on the massive sell-off of public utilities and industries, a sell-off that, in many countries, was initiated by Kissinger-supported dictators and military regimes. The Clintons, too, both as private philanthropists and private investors, are neck deep in corruption in Latin America (especially in Colombia and Haiti)corruption made worse, à la Kissinger, by the policies they put into place as public figures, including the free trade treaties and policies that Hillary helped push through, first as senator and then as secretary of state.
SNIP...
Then theres Libya. Kissinger has long had the secular radical Muammar Qaddafi in his crosshairs (Kissinger, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, prefers to work with Wahhabi theocrats). On April 14, 1986, when the Reagan administration launched an airstrike on Libya in clear violation of international law, Kissinger did the rounds on news shows to justify the bombing. The day after the bombing, Kissinger appeared on ABCs Good Morning America to voice his total support. Attacking Libya, he said, was correct and necessary. Asked if he was worried about a backlashincreased radicalization, reprisals, or a boost to Muammar Muhammad Qaddafis staturehe answered, The question is whose endurance is greater. I believe ours is. The bombing, which reportedly killed one of Qaddafis daughters, would, Kissinger said, reduce the incidents of terrorism.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thenation.com/article/henry-kissinger-hillary-clintons-tutor-in-war-and-peace/
The truth can be hurtful, but not as hurtful as ignorance. That's why your criciticsms, siddithers of DU, really aren't worth doodley squat.
Lord Magus
(1,999 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Are you talking about those who lie America into war?
Those have not been held to account.
If you are implying what I posted, show where I'm lying.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)