Tag: coup

“I wrote, ‘Dear Western governments. You have been supporting the regime that was oppressing us for 30 years. Please don’t get involved now. We don’t need you.’ ” – Wael Ghonim 13 Feb. 2011

More on Seeing: American Exceptionalism

While State Department attempts to sell the world that the inauguration of a new president in Honduras has brought an end to the country’s crisis, the continuing assassinations of anti-coup activists and their children stands as sharp evidence to the contrary. Video includes interviews with Father Ismael “Melo” Moreno, director of Honduras’ Radio Progreso, and Adrienne Pine, anthropologist from American University and Honduras expert.

Produced by Jesse Freeston.

Real News Network – April 07, 2010

U.S. covering up reality in Honduras

State Department campaign denies the systemic repression that continues,

nine months after coup

Well, even though it’s now 9/12, I didn’t have time on 9/11 to do much of anything at all, so here’s my one-day-late 9/11 essay.

It is a direct copy of the piece that got me banned from DK.  It’s also a story of gross corporate media censorship, of a kind that should scare us all half to death.  

Okay, I’m not gonna copy it word for word.  Because that wouldn’t let me tell the story of how the book — and my piece was about a book that was written by a 9/11 Commission insider, John Farmer — has been “disappeared”.   I mean, this book seems to have simply vanished.

Here’s the original story I wrote over at Dailykos.  In it, I simply describe John Farmer, and his forthcoming book.  

John Farmer is pretty impressive:

John Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, where his areas of responsibility included assessing the national response to the terrorist attacks and evaluating the current state of national preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters, he also served as attorney general of New Jersey (1999-2002), as chief counsel to Governor Whitman, and as a federal prosecutor. He recently served as a subject matter/rule of law expert on security to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. He is currently a partner of a New Jersey law form and an adjunct professor of national security law at Rutgers University Law School. His editorials and articles have appeared in “The New York Times” and elsewhere.

I have since discovered an amazing site called “History Commons”.   If you do a search for John Farmer over there, you discover that it was he who constantly brought attention to the bullshit the Commission was receiving from the Pentagon, the FAA, and many others.  It was he who asked the questions that nobody would answer.  

Here’s a link to that.

Well, he decided to write a book.  And being who he was, none other than Houghton Mifflin Harcourt decided to publish it.  

Here’s what the book was going to look like:

It was scheduled to have been released by now.

From School of Americas Watch:

A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. — formerly known as the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas — is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned.

A day after an SOA-trained army general ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, President Barack Obama stated that “the coup was not legal” and that Zelaya remained “the democratically elected president.”

The Foreign Operations Appropriations Act requires that U.S. military aid and training be suspended when a country undergoes a military coup, and the Obama administration has indicated those steps have been taken.

However, Lee Rials, public affairs officer for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the successor of SOA, confirmed Monday that Honduran officers are still being trained at the school.

“Yes, they’re in class now,” Rials said.

Asked about the Obama administration’s suspension of aid and training to Honduras, Rials said, “Well, all I know is they’re here, and they’re in class.”

And, inside Honduras, nothing has changed either:

The ongoing training of Hondurans at Ft. Benning is not the only evidence of unbroken U.S.-Honduran military ties since the coup.

Another piece was discovered by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch, while on fact-finding mission to Honduras last week.

Bourgeois — accompanied by two lawyers, Kent Spriggs and Dan Kovalik — visited the Soto Cano/Palmerola Air Base northwest of Tegucigalpa, where the U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Task Force-Bravo is stationed.

“Helicopters were flying all around, and we spoke with the U.S. official on duty, a Sgt. Reyes” about the U.S.-Honduran relationship, Bourgeois said. “We asked him if anything had changed since the coup and he said no, nothing.”

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.soaw.org/presente/i…

And the US is still continuing aid to Honduras, according to Narconews:

http://www.narconews.com/

Crossposted from Fire on The Mountain.

Golpe (Honduras) — Lyrics & Music by Simon Rios

Oye, Nica, Salvadoreño,

Indio, Garifuna, Brazileiro,

Gringo, Gaucho, y Caraqueño,

Chilango, Cholo, Potorro y Porteño

Esto es una llamada, en nombre de los Hondureños

Hay ke levantarnos todos, por este justo desempeño

Hay que defender ese pueblo, con puño y con cerebro

Hay que defender ese pueblo, con puño y con cerebro

June 28th, 2,009 was the day

When they uprooted los catrachos, from the progresista way.

Mel Zelaya was the president, who’d gone from right to left,

He was a magnate of the old school, but was calling out the theft

& pillage of Honduras, & the whole of the continente

by los gringos asesinos, & their local asistentes.

So they kidnapped Mel at gunpoint, at five o clock in the morn

And America woke that Sunday, said what the hell is going on?

Que carajo esta pasando? Otro golpe militar!

Otro once de septiembre, otro tiempo pa gritar!

This isn’t about Manuel Zelaya, it ain’t about the constitution,

It’s about the oligarchía, and it’s about the revolution.

The Honduran Magna Carta, was designed by the ruling class

With the oversight of Washington, & the rulers of the past

And Zelaya wanted reform, to promote participation

Cuz democracy ain’t about, pulling a lever & waiting patient

It ain’t about a rich criollo, sucking blood out of the nation

Its about power to the people, & the old order is changing

Pues America esta cambiando, por un modelo socialista,

anti-fascista, contra estes malditos golpistas

Tres-cientos mil up en la calle, dicen Zelaya no se va!

Los golpistas dicen democracia, mientras hacen coup d’etat

It’s like saying save the trees, while revving a chainsaw

It’s like saying it ain’t me babe, when you’re the one I saw.

And the golpistas waved a banner, reading we shall overcome

Which side would Martin be on, if Martin could’ve come?



Oxala pudiera cantarte, una rolita mas alegre

But the golpe en Honduras, makes me mutherfucking angry

I wish this was a nightmare, or a skit on cha cha cha

But its real as rigor mortis, cuz they made a coup d’etat

Hay que tener rabia pueblo, Honduras es America

La misma sangre y consigna, desde Ushuaia hasta Merida

Y de ahi para Recife, y de ahi pa Torreón

Desde el bosque de Chapultepec, hasta las minas de Cerrejón.

No importa que pinche dia, no importa en que lugar,

Pues la esperanza comun, es lo quieren asesinar.

And they speak of an invasion by Venezolano agents

Y no aguantamos eso, they say, cuz we’re a sovereign nation.

Sovereign nation? With a gringo base in Chaperola?

You mean sovereign to the people? Or sovereign to Coca Cola?

And you’d be foolish if you thought that the gringos didn’t play a role

You think that the ambassador, Hugo Llorens, didn’t know?

This ain’t the US of Obama, but of Reich & of la CIA

The ones who planned the golpe contra Hugo Chavez Frias

The ones who killed Allende, & who tried to kill Fidel

The ones who speak of freedom, while manifesting hell

The ones who infiltrated the mighty Tupamaros

The ones who drew & quartered, the brave Tupac Amaru

The ones who own la prensa, y las haciendas y maquilas

The ones who stand to profit, from the riches of the minas

And the reporters of the mainstream, are more full of shit & piss

Than the sewage tank at midnight, on the Chinatown Express

Sowing fear of comunismo, and a thousand huevonadas

Cuz la prensa esta vendida, y su gente, comprada

Comiendo baleadas, mientras los pobres comen basura,

And they still can’t understand, why there’s tanta amargura

And you think they give a damn about the starvation of a people?

The disenfranchising of a people? the genocide of a people?

Cuz they’re killing little kids, & they’re killing periodistas,

They’re killing esperanzas, & they’re killing sindicalistas.

Here’s a fist up for Murillo, martyr of Tegucigalpa

Whose death served to make la resistencia stand mas alta

Here a fist up to COFADEH, OFRANEH, y el COPINH

From the pueblo of Geronimo & Martin Luther King.

This is the wakening of Honduras, in the form of a class war

It’s a fight of good & evil, & the good ones are the poor

Nothing more, and it sure ain’t nothing less

And it wont stop till the coup drops, and justicia is addressed.

Caerá la dictadura, como todos los demas

Y llegará un tiempo de justicia, justicia con paz

Pero mientras tanto y los llantos, los molestaré con mi canto

En frente de las marchas, con mas bravura que mil Rambos

Ambos ladosde la izkierda y por debajo

Venceremos Hondureño dale duro pueblo catracho.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Apparently, Rush Limbaugh just could not let Michael Sheuer win the worst person of the week award.

    ” If we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back. ”

    Why yes, wouldn’t we be lucky if a coup overthrew the American government, disrupting millions of lives and the important issues facing our nation.

    Gee, wouldn’t that be just swell.

    That way, Conservatives who are so unappealing they can not get elected can get their Government back. What were we the people thinking? Didn’t we know that this is a center-right nation?

    I guess the only thing that can even compete with ” The only thing that can save America is a massive attack by al Qaeda. ” is hoping for a coup.

    And what kind of coup would please Herr Limbaugh? A military coup? A bloodless coup? A violent coup? Would it be okay if we deport the President like they did in Honduras? Or maybe we need something a little more drastic?

   When did ” I hope he fails ” become ” I hope he is overthrown ? ”

   And I wonder who would replace Barack Obama as President?

   I’m sure Rush has an idea.

   So, according to Rush, we Americans would be “lucky” if a coup overthrew our Democratically elected Government, throwing our nation into havoc and harming our recovery from the clusterfuck left behind by, that’s right, the Conservatives.

   Is it fuck patriotism week and nobody told me?

   What a way to celebrate our nation’s independance.

Original article, by Niklas Albin Svensson , vial Socialist Appeal (UK):

Yesterday John McDonnell MP explained why US imperialism is so concerned about developments in Bolivia and Venezuela: “What the US is terrified of is the prospect that socialism will catch light all across the Americas, so of course it has to go on the attack. But it is exactly for this moment that solidarity campaigns exist.” He explained that, “what is happening is not a personal attack on Morales or Chavez but an attack on the seeds of socialism that they are spreading.”

I’m going to steal a part of Peter Kornbluh’s title, above, from his Huffington Post Report about this, also a cut from him:

I’ve been trying to get around to posting a follow-up on the May One at Faneuil Hall thing. I’ve got lots of great pix but my battery went semi-dead the last week. Not the camera battery, my posting battery. Maybe it’s my digestion – of life in Bush’s America circa 2008. Turning over the compost piles and planting things has been taking up my mind. So I was thinking earlier that it’s been seven full days since then and rising up from memory comes the book of the title name. Synchronicity sends me wandering down the rabbit hole.

Seven Days in May was both a book and a movie, both of them pretty good. It’s a political thriller about a plot by the Pentagon to pull off a bloodless (more or less) coup to overthrow the president. The problem with the president is he’s not sufficiently anti-Communist for the right-wing plotters. He’s actually about to sign a treaty with the Soviets to mutually nuclearly disarm.

The plot itself, called ECOMCON (for “Emergency Communications Control”), entails the seizure of the nation’s telephone, radio and television network infrastructure by a secret United States Army combat unit created and controlled by Scott’s conspiracy and based near Fort Bliss, Texas. Once this is done, General Scott and his conspirators will control the nation’s communications assets; then, from their headquarters within a vast underground nuclear shelter called “Mount Thunder” (based on the actual continuity of government facility maintained by the U.S. at Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia), they will use the power of the media and the military to prevent the implementation of the treaty.

The book came out in ’62 and the movie in ’64. The movie was shot in ’63 while Kennedy was still alive. He encouraged the filmmakers by heading home to the Cape when they needed to get shots done around the White House; the Pentagon was none too pleased. If written today the authors would have to add in cell phones, cable and the internet to complete the communications media needed to be controlled. Take a jump to the link above for some solid background and I’ll give you a tour of the rabbit warren. We’re going to visit Granddaddy Bush and Dick Cheney’s Undisclosed Location – Raven Rock. We’ll see an actual coup d’etat plot against FDR, Lee Harvey Oswald will jump up in a plot line you’ve probably never even heard of and you may even get a whiff of a hint of a sense of the presence behind the curtain. Who knows?

Feel free to break out the Reynolds Wrap.