2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Nation: 'Before Her Murder, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Criticism'
Secretary Clinton's role in the 2009 coup in Honduras has not received the scrutiny it so richly deserves. Instead, she wants to shift the discussion to what she fraudulently claims as Bernie Sanders' 'ties' to the Minute Men and the Koch brothers.
Meanwhile, at the debate in Miami on Wednesday night, Secretary Clinton brushed off questions about her role in the Honduran human rights disaster, as her campaign now denies any connection to the Honduran coup.
The time is up for Hillary Clinton.
Greg Grandin at The Nation:
In a video interview, given in Buenos Aires in 2014, Cáceres says it was Clinton who helped legitimate and institutionalize the coup. In response to a question about the exhaustion of the opposition movement (to restore democracy), Cáceres says (around 6:10): The same Hillary Clinton, in her book Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country. The return of Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be elections. Clinton, in her position as secretary of state, pressured (as her emails show) other countries to agree to sideline the demands of Cáceres and others that Zelaya be returned to power. Instead, Clinton pushed for the election of what she calls in Hard Choices a unity government. But Cáceres says: We warned that this would be very dangerous. The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.
The Clinton-brokered election did indeed install and legitimate a militarized regime based on repression. In the interview, Cáceres says that Clintons coup-government, under pressure from Washington, passed terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized political protest. Cáceres called it counterinsurgency, carried out on behalf of international capitalmostly resource extractorsthat has terrorized the population, murdering political activists by the high hundreds. Every day, Cáceres said elsewhere, people are killed.
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton removed the most damning sentences regarding her role in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices.
According to Belén Fernández, Clinton airbrushed out of her account exactly the passage Cáceres highlights for criticism: 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 (see Fernándezs essay in Liza Featherstones excellent False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton).
She will be held to account for this.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)For her role in the coup. And the Clinton Foundation too. If Americans actually gave a damn about human rights, this would sink her campaign.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)Baobab
(4,667 posts)Its a exhaustively researched book about one after another US interventions in country after country.
maybe 100 or more. Some of them involved huge numbers of killings.
Sample chapters are online.
"Killing Hope" read it.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,242 posts).
Close to 50 people dead, who have crossed their paths.
Now, anyone older than 30 probably remembers this was the rumor that was floating around.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp
.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)I don't think the Clintons ordered any murders of opponents.
On the other hand, the CIA and secret government does a lot of nasty things to favor the elites.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Punkingal
(9,522 posts)As it stands now, I doubt it. Not during the primaries, anyway.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)Some would find a a way to dismiss or rationalize this too.
JustAnotherGen
(32,001 posts)This is from the - The Progressive link at you last sentence:
She will be held to account for this.
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. - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/wx030510.html#sthash.ZvKOXBWL.dpufHillary Clintons embrace of Pepe Lobo is a disgrace, and it undermines President Obamas rhetoric about establishing a new chapter in U.S.-Latin American relations. - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/wx030510.html#sthash.ZvKOXBWL.dpuf
At the end of the day - we have a sitting President we all at DU (hopefully - certainly hope there aren't any McCain or Romney slithering little snakes at DU posing as Democratics) voted for the current sitting President.
WHY isn't the Media reporting on his role as Commander in Chief?
And seeing as this goes back to at least 2010 - what about all the Liberal, Leftist, and Democratic Party members who were in the House or Senate then - That allowed it to go on?
Shame on them.
seafan
(9,387 posts)Everyone involved should be scrutinized with respect to the Honduran coup, although it looks as if Obama was not on the same page as his Secretary.
We have seen, historically, that news of our government's meddling in Latin America has been swept off the front pages for decades. That must end now.
JustAnotherGen
(32,001 posts)My dad was one of the first Green Berets. He did more 'boy scout duty' in South East Asia (lived with and training the Montagnards) and more disruption in Central and South America.
And look to the government complicity with Monsanto - the folks who gave us a Rainbow of Agents (including orange).
jalan48
(13,907 posts)Our government, in the interests of large corporations, has been doing some bad stuff for decades. We overthrew Arbenz, the elected President in Guatemala in 1954. United Fruit (with ties to the powerful Dulles brothers) didn't like the socialist policies and Arbenz had to go. Vietnam was about much more than Communism. The Mekong Delta was referred to as the "Rice Bowl of SE Asia". Chile in the 70's, Nicaragua in the 80's. The hits (no pun intended) just keep on coming.
Iran in '53
Panama in the '70s
iraq in the '50s
etc,etc etc
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Pres. Obama.
His appointments of Mike Taylor, giving him a high position at the FDA, and Valsick, who has under Obama headed up the Department of Ag have not endeared him to those of us who want food to eat.
And as bad as Valsick's record on organics and Gm foods is, he was willing to work with activists in terms of having regs allowing for a buffer between Gm alfalfa crops and conventional alfalfa.
However, when someone at the WH told Mr Obama about that, he sent staffers over to the ag Department who twisted Valsick's arm until he complied with the dastardly pro-Monsanto stance that was Obama's.
CoffeeCat
(24,411 posts)I think there is a very dark element to our government when it comes to foreign policy. It started in the Repub party but seems to have metastasized in the Dem party too. Obama doesn't seem to subscribe to their dastardly actions.
There are many instances where it appears that Clinton furthers wars and the overthrowing of governments--actions that cause untold suffering, killing and chaos. Obama staked his territory when he was first elected, publicly stating that his foreign-policy attitude would be, "Don't do stupid stuff." Hillary immediately took to The Atlantic and openly criticized Obama's "Don't do stupid stuff" as not as proactive enough--and weak.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
Obama has been quoted repeatedly as saying that Libya was Hillary's project. Her deal. Anyone else think its possible that her private server existed to wall herself off from scrutiny? Maybe even from the White House? Do we know if Obama knew about her server before it was discovered?
Libya/Hillary:
http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16008
It's important to note that Hillary Clinton named Robert Kagan as her Middle East foreign policy adviser. Kagan founded the neocon movement. Kagan named Libya as one of the countries that he targeted to invade, dominate and control. This is fact!
It appears that Hillary, as Sec of State, with Kagan by her side--reached the neocon goal of destabilizing Libya. It's a decimated failed state with no government and untold numbers fleeing into Europe.
Obama and Kerry are not neocons. They forged the Iran agreement. The neocons want war with Iran. Obama/Kerry thwarted neocon efforts to push for American boots on the ground in Syria. Clinton wanted a no-fly zone in Syria, and she also wanted to arm the Syrian rebels. Neocons crave instability and chaos in these countries.
There's no doubt that Hillary shares and is part of the neocon mindset. Kagan endorsed her for President two weeks ago--over all Republican candidates.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/02/25/neocon-kagan-endorses-hillary-clinton/
DLnyc
(2,479 posts)Perhaps his optimistic belief in the basic good nature of people was a bit misplaced in this instance.
Mufaddal
(1,021 posts)Accountability should not be limited solely to Hillary.
JustAnotherGen
(32,001 posts)Why the hell would we wait until November at the earliest or January of next year at the earliest.
A lot of people can die in that time.
This is why I'm so anti Fed Gov - they are fucking worthless.
And we allow it by not demanding immediate action and getting caught up in 'Just wait until so and so is in office' or 'Just wait until after my next election'.
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)Herman4747
(1,825 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)The buck stops at the top.
Of course, Barack Obama is not seeking a third term. He holds responsibility - but so does his Secretary of State, who is seeking to be president.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)If we do not like Hillary's positions on Libya, Syria, Haiti or the Honduras, why should we applaud the man who made her Secretary of State?
Obama also consolidated and assisted the efforts of the Big Bankers and the Big Surveillance People and also Monsanto's interests, in order for them to become more powerful, so it sucks even more to be middle class.
I do not feel that Obama helped me, my friends or most of us in the middle class.
He was the lesser of two evils, but I am now thoroughly sick and ashamed of falling for the meme.
There is a decent Socialist Democrat who might be in the WH soon, and I will certainly do whatever I can to see they attain that office!
JustAnotherGen
(32,001 posts)My salary more than doubled since January of 2009, starting with my dad - he's the first President to make it financially right for Agent victims (orange, pink, white, green), the tax code and ACA made it feasible for my husband to turn his iron works into an employee owned co-op, and CBP is more focused on who is coming into the country than auditing paperwork of importers. I wish we had a sharp pivot to green infrastructure development but I will have to wait 20 years. O'Malley was the only candidate who built a record and provided a clear plan on making the USA the global leader.
Sanders is money and Clinton is Security. In 8/9 years we will be in critical condition environmentally and it will be urgent slap dash band aids. Chasing our own asses without a measured forward plan - it's going to be an Environmental ICU.
And no - I don't believe either of the candidates left can multitask on this and lack the arrogance to let a former competitor come in an clean our approach to the environment up.. If the coal miners can make $15 an hour and get single payer - Sanders won't upset their Apple cart. If the Saudis or China want status quo or to be the leader - Clinton won't upset their apple cart.
Understand - some of us saw someone not tied down and bogged down with a bunch of the powers that be horse shit from the 60's. We had someone who could show us how to monetize it and bring the Right into the fold by showing them it was a money maker - but he wasn't sexy and shiny - or inevitable - so we lose.
20 years - then we can do something - but with the Fed Gov as it is now - ain't gonna happen.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)he's the first President to make it financially right for Agent victims (orange, pink, white, green),
Are you talking about Agent Orange?
I don't mean to be snarky - I just have no idea of what you are meaning.
####
Anyway my neighborhood saw one fourth to one third of its homes go into bankruptcy. The statistics on home ownership before the 2008 collapse were that 67 to 67% of all Americans owned their own homes - now that is at a record low of 62%.
And with Wall Street derivative-style speculation continuing on (Get a hold of The Big Short, THIS MOVIE IS AN EYE OPENER - if you wanna know what I mean) and due to the speculation, the middle class just lost another 1.2 trillion bucks.
No one I know has an iron works, and not to slur yr dad, I mean good for him if he got
a co op going, but Californians lost out big time. (Not every one owns an iron works.)
100,000 small time family owned dairy farms went belly up during the summer and fall of 2009 - in large part because of arch financial criminal Tim Geithner and how he did not make sure that Bankers who got bailed out used the money to bail out their community businesses. NOt a difficult thing to do - even the Republicans saw to it that banks bailed out after the Savings and Loan crisis of late 1980's were forced to bail out community businesses by making them loans. (Geithner is Obama's good buddy, and a man who claims that "Obama works for me."
We have gone from being a nation wherein 8 to 9 cents out of every dollar of profit generated inside our country goes to the Big Financial Firms to a county wherein 48 cents out of every dollar goes to the Financial Firms. Over the last five years, it has been nigh impossible for small companies just starting out to get funding, unless the owners max out their personal credit cards. (Often at interest rates close to or over 15%.)
The middle class financed the Bank Bailouts under Obama - and that has meant
that some $ 222,000 per person has gone out of Main Street's economy and over to the Big Wall Street firms. Amazons' lobbyists saw to it hat middle class publishing firms now pay MORE while Amazon has a sweetheart deal with the post Office, which is one of the reasons th e post Office is in trouble financially. (Have you noticed the PO deleviering mail from
Amazon on holidays! For cheaper rates than we small time publishers pay!)
And of course, it is a big reason why people ree not getting books shipped from anywhere but Amazon. This hurts so many people including me, and it was the Dem Majority Senate and House that did this in Spring of 2007.
Here in California the ACA is a joke, about which I wrote a cute poem, but I wasn't writing cute poems when reading my girlfriend's FB page about her relative's time in a facility.
(This week, my friend's granma went into a hospital or nursing home due to bad fall. The only therapist that the facility provided was hollering at the poor woman to stop being lazy and do some walking. The facility said she wouldn't do the "walk therapy," and so they would be sending her home. One nurse disagreed and got her into the imaging department where an MRI showed conclusive p[roof that the woman had several serious fractures to the foot in question. We are basically just warehoused inside California hospitals! This is so typical, so very typical, I am seriously thinking of hiring a hit man to off myself when I turn 72 or so.)
Anyway Bernie is going to change the situation with student loans. He will fix the situation of American's jobs going overseas. Also, he plans on re-vamping the Post Office so that we can have the P.Os' operate as banks, just as they did during the Depression.
DrFunkenstein
(8,745 posts)White House-invoked aid suspension, which was supposed to apply to all programs implicated under Section 7008, should also have included any funds being provided to Honduras through a US-backed aid agency known as the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
MCC is funded by taxpayers and overseen by a board that is chaired by the Secretary of State. But despite the White House policy on aid suspension to Honduras, the MCC continued to send millions of dollars monthly to the putsch regime in Honduras.
In fact, an investigation at the time showed the MCC delivered $10.7 million to Honduras in the two months following the June 28 coup and had another $100 million or so in contractually committed funds in the pipeline to be delivered in 2010.
As chair of the MCC, Clinton should have been well aware of this flow of dollars to a regime deemed illegitimate by her boss, President Obama, but proof of that direct knowledge could not be verified previously.
The State Department email trail recently made public, however, shows for the first time that Clinton did know that MCC funding was continuing to pour into Honduras even as publicly the White House, as well as the State Department, were telling the nation that such US aid had been suspended.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2015/07/emails-show-secretary-clinton-disobeyed-obama-policy-and-continued-fund
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)This should end all of the jibber-jabber that Hillary was a great SOS.
druidity33
(6,450 posts)and that it's from July, but i'd never heard about this. How reliable is NarcoNews?
K&R
That is jaw-dropping.
And it has so few responses. Hmm.
MisterFred
(525 posts)Yes, we should. That was easy.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)and a lot more.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Thanks for making that point. I was so transfixed by the magnitude of this, I hadn't thought of it.
seafan
(9,387 posts)People hold up photos of slain Honduran indigenous leader and environmentalist Berta Cáceres outside the coroners office in Tegucigalpa. (AP Photo / Fernando Antonio), via The Nation
The Honduran governmentthat unity government Clinton is proud ofhas Castro in lockdown, refusing him contact with the outside world.
Since he is the only witness to a murder that will implicate many government allies, if not the government itself, Castros life is clearly in danger. An international campaign to release Castro is being mounted by a number of high-profile groups, including Amnesty International and the American Jewish World Service. The organization Other Worlds worked closely with Cáceres and her Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. Heres a link for how to take action to demand Castros safe passage.
There must be justice.
This is pretty damning:
It would have been much better for her to just leave it and spin it.
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)One can buy very good copies of the hardback for $0.01 + $3.99 shipping the paperback for less than $5 plus $3.99 shipping, or under $13 total for one of each. That would not put any money in the pockets of Hillary or her publisher, but it would probably give $.50 or so to the company run by Jeff Bezos who has been helping Hillary's campaign via his Washington Post. I thought about buying them, going through them side by side and marking the areas that had been changed. But the reviews of the book are so awful that I decided against it. Multiple reviewers say it was written in a highly sanitized way because Hillary knew it would be opposition material for a future campaign and that's what makes it virtually unreadable.
ljm2002
(10,751 posts)...and none of what it says is good.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)angrychair
(8,750 posts)Do you want 4 years of this?
seafan
(9,387 posts)This horrible deceit has been going on for decades. It's time to end these lies.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)This, of course, has Henry Kissinger's gloves all over it. It will be the same in the White House. All her glowing praise of Kissinger from the podium is an indication she would consult him on foreign policy. We will be at war all over the planet.
kgnu_fan
(3,021 posts)Mufaddal
(1,021 posts)It was very, very good.
polly7
(20,582 posts)by Media Lens / March 10th, 2016
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/death-in-honduras-the-coup-hillary-clinton-and-the-killing-of-berta-caceres/
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)The media silence on this is deafening and there is no accountability for Hillary or Obama.
polly7
(20,582 posts)seafan
(9,387 posts)Thank you for posting it here, polly7. Berta Caceres was a heroine of her people.
From a link in the piece:
She won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her role in fighting the dam project. AP
I fear for my life, she told the newspaper El Universo last year. Honduras is a country of total impunity. No one cares if they kill us. Its not that we want to be Rambo, but this is a vital fight for our ecosystem, for our home. At the time, she lived an Arafatesque life, rarely staying in the same house for more than one night and not speaking on the phone for fear of assassination. She said she was being constantly watched by police or government agents.
Having taken on big business, landowners, developers and thereby her government which backs them, Caceres, a 40-year-old mother of four, had received many rape or death threats. But she said she would fight on and called on other campaigners to do so. Given the worldwide reaction to her murder, they surely will. Hundreds of Hondurans took to the streets after her death and supporters around the world, including recent Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio, condemned the killing.
.....
The motive for her killing was almost certainly the fact that she had co-founded a group called the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), on behalf of the natives who had been in the Central American nation long before the Spanish conquistadors arrived.
More specifically and recently, she had been campaigning against wealthy plantation owners, illegal loggers and a hydroelectric project which threatened the lands and lives of the Lenca people, including what to them is a sacred river. She had kept the project stalled until her death.
I cannot freely walk on my territory or swim in the sacred river and I am separated from my children because of the threats, she told an interviewer [three of her four children live in exile abroad]. I cannot live in peace, I am always thinking about being killed or kidnapped.
But I refuse to go into exile. I am a human rights fighter and I will not give up this fight. But in the end, in this country where there is total impunity I am vulnerable. When they want to kill me, they will do it.
.....
Last year, Caceres was one of six winners of the global Goldman Environmental Prize often described as The Green Nobel for her opposition to the Agua Zarca dam project in the Gualcarque river basin, which includes German, Dutch and Finnish investment. One of the other prize winners was Howard Wood of Arran in Scotland for his campaign for a community-developed marine protection area. After receiving her prize, Caceres told The Guardian: We must undertake the struggle in all parts of the world, wherever we may be, because we have no other spare or replacement planet. We have only this one, and we have to take action.
Today, the wife of the facilitator of the Central American guerrilla wars of the 1980s was buried next to him.
Rest in peace, Berta Caceres.
MidwestTech
(170 posts)no one at that level ever is.
look at *, cheney, rumsfeld, kissinger, et al.
there is no justice in this world.
All we can do is hope there is justice in the next.
seafan
(9,387 posts)The People are awakening. And it will never be the same.
MidwestTech
(170 posts)Bush was actually brought out as a GOOD example of a bush
Rumsfeld is still in politics
Olly North is a radio host making millions
Kissinger is still walking free and worth millions
there is substantial proof that ALL of these people are WAR CRIMINALS and TRAITORS!
yet even decades later nothing is done.
I literally became religious again because I NEED to believe in a hell that these evil assholes will burn for all eternity in for their sins against humanity. I NEED that to believe that life is still worthy living... still worth playing by the rules. Because if it's not... what's the point?
seafan
(9,387 posts)And it makes us even more determined to bring justice for people and our planet.
Don't give up, MidwestTech! There are so many more of us now, working together to vanquish these dark forces.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Nephew of murdered Honduran activist Cáceres: 'The atmosphere is terrifying'
Silvio Carrillo grew up alongside Berta Cáceres, a leading campaigner for human rights. After the deaths of hundreds of campaigners in Honduras in the span of a few years, he believes his aunt was targeted for her efforts
by David Smith
The Guardian, March 9, 2016
Silvio Carrillo holds a creased black and white photo of a three-year-old girl, frowning at the camera and clutching a doll, and fights back the tears. The girl grew up to be his aunt, Berta Cáceres, a fearless human rights activist and heroine to indigenous people in Honduras. Last week, she was shot dead in her home, a day shy of her 45th birthday.
Cáceres had long complained of death threats from police, the army and landowners groups over her opposition to one of Central Americas biggest hydropower projects. She won the 2015 Goldman environmental prize, regarded as the worlds top award for grassroots environmental activism.
Carrillo, 43, told the Guardian he believed she had been targeted for her work. She pissed a lot of people off She was a major threat to the establishment.
She was a moral leader. She was put on this grand stage and that multiplied when she won the Goldman prize. If you heard her speak, she was powerful. She was near becoming impossible to take down, he said.
Cáceres earned admiration and enemies leading a decade-long fight against a project to build a dam along the Gualcarque river, which is sacred to the Lenca people and could flood large areas of ancestral lands and cut off water supplies to hundreds. A week before her death, she had spoken out against the murder of four indigenous leaders in the Lenca community.
The co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh) was shot four times by gunmen at her home in La Esperanza at around 1am on Thursday. Gustavo Castro Soto, a Mexican human rights activist, survived by playing dead after bullets grazed his cheek and left hand. The attack was internationally condemned.
Carrillo, a US citizen who lives in Oakland, California, learned the news in a dawn phone conversation with his weeping mother, who was Cáceres eldest sister. He said the investigation had been mishandled from the start, with officials and the media circulating wild rumours of two perpetrators, 11 perpetrators, a crime of passion, a random robbery (nothing was stolen) or a power struggle within Copinh.
CONTINUED...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/berta-caceres-honduras-activist-murder-nephew-silvio-carrillo-interview
"Money trumps peace." -- George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007
Divernan
(15,480 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Especially if she or he should be one of our own.
I physically feel like I'm dying when I think of such a terrible thing.
Perhaps that is why some describe it as "unspeakable.
seafan
(9,387 posts)People are awakening everywhere, my good friend.
We are about to discover that peace trumps money.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Yes, my good Friend! Yes! For Democracy, we have worked, faithfully and diligently.
For the Record: Originally, President Obama backed ousted Honduran president (supporters shown in civilian clothes below).
Somehow, somewhere, someone got him to change his mind.
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.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)And it stinks to high heaven.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)And I mean that in the most serious way. The deep power in the country HATES democracy and populism in Latin America.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)EXCERPT...
...Following a meeting regarding U.S. policy on expropriation on the Presidential yacht Sequoia on June 10, 1971 (details of which have yet to be declassified) the Administrations hard-line position gradually began to take shape.
A number of important meetings took place the day after the Sequoia meeting. During this first meeting, Nixon and Kissinger discussed Chilean attempts to secure new loans and renegotiate their existing obligations. Nixon fumed over the unwillingness of the Congress to do more for Brazil, which, in contrast to Chile, was led by friends of the United States. Nixon and Kissinger also discussed the assassination of the former Chilean Cabinet Minister, Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, on June 8, 1971 by a Chilean anarchist group, Vanguard of the People. Nixon and Kissinger chuckled at the Allendes accusation that the CIA had orchestrated the assassination, noting that Zujovic was a conservative opponent of Allende, and probably the last person the U.S. Government would want to assassinate. Besides, as Kissinger noted, the CIA was too incompetent to pull off such an operation, recalling that the last person whom the CIA assassinated had lingered for three weeks before expiring.(vi)
SOURCE w/details, tapes, yada...
http://nixontapes.org/chile.html
Wonder what "expropriation" they talked about? Cuba? Chile? Chicago? Wonder how many CIA victims took three weeks to expire? And that was back when assassination was still illegal, before the world changed on 9/11.
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)Even the Establishment and Leadership within the current Democratic Party. Superdelegates and the power of the superdelegates to sway public opinion prior to voting is one obvious and blatant instance.
Most Establishment politicians (even in the Democratic Party) openly state they are NOT populists.
So, they're openly saying they are elitists and will follow an elitist agenda. Even elected Democrats.
It's an outrage to me, but apparently not to many Democratic voters since Bernie is not soundly beating HRC.
HRC is not a populist no matter what she might say on any given day.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)thereismore
(13,326 posts)liberalnarb
(4,532 posts)Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)Yes, Hillary's actions regarding Honduras supported a regime that very probably killed Cáceres. But that's simply way too far removed from the actual murderers or even the people that ordered them. This insinuation is too much like a lot of the crap from the Hillary camp.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)and she told the camarilla she'd do anything to keep it from returning
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Oh maybe because of what has happened in two nations, where the Clintons have helped to undermine democracy.
There is this in Haiti:
One leader of the armed bands is Guy Philippe, a former member of the Haitian military who received training from US Special Forces in Ecuador in the 1990s and was then sent back to Haiti, where he became a brutal police chief and sought to organize a coup in 2000. He is suspected of involvement in cocaine trafficking.
These heavily armed terrorists invaded Haiti from across the border with the Dominican Republic. There is convincing evidence that they were trained, financed and armed by Washington, provided with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers and other weapons out of stockpiles originally sent to the Dominican army.
Hundreds of Haitians have died as a result of this made-in-the-USA coup. In cities that fell to the gunmenGonaives and Cap Haitienthey have reportedly carried out a house-to-house manhunt for government supporters, executing those who failed to escape.
And this in the Honduras:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/death-in-honduras-the-coup-hillary-clinton-and-the-killing-of-berta-caceres/
LiberalLovinLug
(14,178 posts)Did she know in advance of the murder? I would highly doubt it. But she was smart enough to understand the persecution of rights activists that would happen if the country was allowed to slip back to the US corporate friendly military regime.
mountain grammy
(26,663 posts)The number one reason I can't support Hillary for our nomination is the continuation of our disastrous foreign policy. Of course, Republicans are far worse, but the will for real change, sadly, hasn't come from Democrats. After all, any resistance to America's corporate coddling foreign policy is met with the fiercest of resistance, up to and including assassination.
seafan
(9,387 posts)From polly7's link above:
The Embassy perspective is that there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch There is equally no doubt from our perspective that Roberto Michelettis assumption of power was illegitimate.
That was behind closed doors. In public, fifteen US House Democrats urged the US regime to fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place and follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law. Writing for the Common Dreams website, Alexander Main supplied some detail:
Ann-Marie Slaughter, then director of Policy Planning at the State Department, sent an email to [Secretary of State] Clinton on August 16 [2009] strongly urging her to take bold action and to find that [the] coup was a military coup under U.S. law, a move that would have immediately triggered the suspension of all non-humanitarian U.S. assistance to Honduras.
This, Hillary Clintons State Department refused to do, thus implicitly recognising the military takeover. As FAIR noted, Clinton makes clear in her memoirs that she had no intention of restoring 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 and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.
Secretary Clinton had many contacts with us. She is a very capable woman, intelligent, but she is very weak in the face of pressures from groups that hold power in the United States, the most extremist right-wing sectors of the U.S. government, known as the hawks of Washington. She bowed to those pressures. And that led U.S. policy to Honduras to be ambiguous and mistaken.
Zelaya added:
President Obama has not wanted to hear our peoples. He has turned a deaf ear on the cry of the people. First we protested in the opposition. A few months ago, they physically removed me from the Congress, the National Congress, because our party mounted a peaceful protest. The military removed us, using tear gas in the Congress. They expelled us, beating us with batons, beating us into the street. This is the government that President Obama supports, a government that is repressive, a government that violates human rights, as has been shown by the very Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. It has shown this to be the case.
Alexander Main concluded:
A careful reading of the Clinton emails and Wikileaked U.S. diplomatic cables from the beginning of her tenure, expose a Latin America policy that is often guided by efforts to isolate and remove left-wing governments in the region.
(bolding added)
Thanks, DUer mountain grammy. I, too, share your concerns about her consistently hostile decisions in foreign policy.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,027 posts)Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)racking up war criminal points to present to the master?
Naw, her actions lacked a certain competence & covertness for that IMO - would not have impressed Henry.
Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)Which is one more reason to deem her disqualified for the presidency. Taking advice from war criminals? Not presidential material.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)Duval
(4,280 posts)Babel_17
(5,400 posts)Mark 750
(79 posts)Great song about these types of shadow actions of our great nation. It's going to be interesting seeing Henry Kissinger and Lanny Davis roaming the halls of the White House if Hillary is the Commander and Chief.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)Recommended
JeaneRaye
(402 posts)I first heard this issue discussed on Nicole Sandler's show, "Radio or Not". One of her regular guests was discussing this. You can see more on this isssue at that guest's blog: LitBrit.blogspot.com. This information needs to be spread far and wide.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)I see n/t all the time but I don't know what that means. Please enlighten me.
Gmak
(88 posts)in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices."
I remember when this coup happened and feeling sickened that we (the US) had thrown our lot in with Honduran oligarchs once again. Our foreign policy toward Central America then was no different than the Bush years had been, putting corporate profits first and Honduran national sovereignty last. Now Honduras has devolved into a narco state where parents urge their young children to flee to heaven knows what fate in other countries to escape the certain death or enslavement in their own. We should have a national day of mourning and repentance for our interventionist disasters.
Does ANYONE believe that a Hillary Clinton administration will do anything differently? She has shown herself to be a war hawk over and over again, in word and deed.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)But, it won't work.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)For those people who even know about the Honduran coup, they blame Hillary, but not Barack.
It is almost as though she appointed him to his position, rather than he appointed her.
tularetom
(23,664 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,506 posts)Thanks for the thread, seafan.
seafan
(9,387 posts)That's quite a 'look' she's aiming his way.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)pdsimdars
(6,007 posts)And this is who her supporters want to run things? Poor judgement and decisions at every turn.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)They orchestrated it.
OneCrazyDiamond
(2,032 posts)The Nation is now caught up in "The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy".
PatrickforO
(14,602 posts)Zelaya, who was presumably bad for US business concerns.
It's that Monroe Doctrine, folks. This is what it looks like, and Honduras isn't the only place whose legitimate governments have been changed by American sponsored coups.
What do you all say we QUIT DOING THIS SHIT?
seafan
(9,387 posts).....'when it comes to great nations needing organizing principles'.
Sounds like a good principle to me.
From Death In Honduras: The Coup, Hillary Clinton And The Killing Of Berta Cáceres
These benevolent sentiments recalled the national purpose identified by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, shortly before he flattened Iraq. It was, he said, to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.
Clinton, of course, meant North America, specifically the United States. But other places in America are short on love and kindness, too. Consider Honduras, for example.
On June 28, 2009, the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped at gunpoint by masked soldiers and forced into exile. Since the ousting, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss as the military coup threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression. In 2012, Honduras had a murder rate of 90.4 per 100,000 population, then the highest rate in the world. In 2006, three years before the coup, the murder rate had stood at 46.2 per 100,000.
The years since 2009 have seen an explosive growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects that would displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the countrys land was earmarked for mining concessions, creating a demand for cheap energy to power future mining operations. To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects around the country, privatizing rivers, land, and uprooting communities. In 2015, Global Witness reported that Honduras was the most dangerous country to be an environmental defender.
It seems that many of our leaders have done more than their share of 'stupid stuff' in Latin America.
It MUST END now.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)John Poet
(2,510 posts)K & R.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)that experience is beneficial to the 99% or just the 1%. It doesn't matter to them.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)For the ordinary people of the world that is.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)myrna minx
(22,772 posts)GoneOffShore
(17,342 posts)seafan
(9,387 posts)How can Secretary Clinton loftily proclaim on the presidential campaign trail, in particular, how she will protect the rights of women and LGBT, when she has played a direct role in the explosion of murders of women, LGBT and so many others in Honduras?
And how can she continue to deify Henry Kissinger's influence in her thinking, especially concerning Latin America?
Or Viet Nam? And many other places in the world?
Hard choices: Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath, September 29, 2014
The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into the United States, has gone largely unnoticed. In letters to Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, more than 100 members of Congress have repeatedly warned about the deteriorating security situation in Honduras, especially since the 2009 military coup that ousted the countrys democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. As Honduran scholar Dana Frank points out in Foreign Affairs, the U.S.-backed post-coup government rewarded coup loyalists with top ministries, opening the door for further violence and anarchy.
The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.
First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico, Clinton writes. 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.
.....
Clintons false testimony is even more revealing. She reports that Zelaya was arrested amid fears that he was preparing to circumvent the constitution and extend his term in office. This is simply not true. As Clinton must know, when Zelaya was kidnapped by the military and flown out of the country in his pajamas on June 28, 2009, he was trying to put a consultative, nonbinding poll on the ballot to ask voters whether they wanted to have a real referendum on reforming the constitution during the scheduled election in November. It is important to note that Zelaya was not eligible to run in that election. Even if he had gotten everything he wanted, it was impossible for Zelaya to extend his term in office. But this did not stop the extreme right in Honduras and the United States from using false charges of tampering with the constitution to justify the coup.
With this presidential primary, we are at an historic turning point in the U. S.
seafan
(9,387 posts)Former President Manuel Zelaya sits among reporters at a press conference in Honduras, March 18, 2016. | Photo: Twitter / @gerardoTteleSUR
In an open letter addressed to the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court of Justice, Zelaya called for the nullification of a decision declaring his re-election unconstitutional.
.....
In 2009, democratically-elected Zelaya was ousted by the Honduran military, allied with opposition parties. The coup against Zelaya was widely condemned by governments across Latin America, the European Union, the Organization of American States and other regional blocs.
The coup has come back into the spotlight recently as campaigners remember the role played by Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the illegal coup.
She admitted in her autobiography Hard Choices, that she used her power to shift the crisis into a favorable position for the U.S., even if it meant forgetting about democracy.
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, she admitted in her book.
Furthermore, the political vacuum created by the coup has spawned years of state violence with impunity, most recently seeing the assassination of the renowned activist Berta Caceres.
The Nation: 'Before Her Murder, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Criticism', March 11, 2016
Another Member of Berta Caceres Group Assassinated in Honduras, March 15, 2016
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)Berta Cáceres murder in particular sickens me,
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Rec for Democracy.