Janet Albrechtsen has denounced the coup in Honduras as an assault on democracy, and praised the brave protestors putting their bodies on the line to preserve the rule of law; in the UK Mad Melanie Phillips has denounced those on the right who would quibble about abstruse constitutional law in the face of a military takeover; while in the US, the National Review‘s “corner” blog has been running hot with praise for the brave Honduran protestors.
Oh, sorry. I was in UpsideDownAbsurdistan for a moment. In fact the Honduran coup has been greeted with near silence from the right, which was waxing lyrical about the brave youth of Iran — whom they would cheerfully see bombed to crap if Israel asked them to — despite the fact that the military has now closed down all anti-coup TV and radio stations, including CNN Espanol, and the Latin America wide Telesur network.
Despite the fact that the protests in Honduras look much more like a full pro-democracy uprising than Iran — the Hondurans are less enamoured with Twitter than with building barricades and fighting back on the street — the coverage has not taken on the holy narrative of the advancing western enlightenment that Iran has been constructed as.
Of course not. As numerous commentators and irritants have pointed out, the Honduran top brass were all trained at the CIA’s coup finishing school, the School of the Americas (now renamed as Central Queensland University), and the whole thing is as traditionally choreographed as a provincial tour of Swan Lake.
Planet Janet can’t muse as to whether George Dubya Bush has perhaps inspired those brave kids in Tecuig… Tegucli… in Honduras City, because they would all to a woman and man, string Dubya from the nearest lamp-post if they got a chance — for, among other things, supporting the failed anti-Chavez coup of 2002. David Burnout Burchell won’t have much of a platform to denounce everyone on the left except him, because the whole thing is reminiscent of the sort of the thing that went on in the years when he carried a party card.
Indeed some have gone further. The National Review in the US is supporting the coup — with a single article — while largely ignoring the democracy pushback altogether. The dodge is that Zelaya is allegedly breaching the constitution — a document drafted in 1982 when Honduras was a cold-war fiefdom and which, very democratically, prohibits referenda altogether.
Nevertheless, charges by some on the left that the US has a role in the coup seem based on pretty thin evidence. Z Mag notes that former Dubya South America wrangler Otto Reich’s NGO Grupo Paz Y Democracia (!) has supported the coup calling the kidnapping and exile of the President a process of “democratic transition”. Paz y Democracia they note, receives USAID money.
Well yeah, but so do half a million other groups and it is hard to see what upside the US could possibly get from this coup — Zelaya is in the Chavez camp, or close to it, but the US has recently restored ambassadors to Venezuela. The best that anti-US conspiracy theorists can come up with is that it “looks like” the 2002 Venezuelan coup. Well, how different can coups be?
Of course it may turn out that there are lower-level machinations that created the coup, but the idea that it is coming from anywhere higher seems to be a US left default setting. One hopes.
Meanwhile as an actual full-bore fight for democracy goes on, the right will continue to march past, eyes firmly to the right.
6 thoughts on “Honduras, not quite #Iran”
Liz45
June 30, 2009 at 2:05 pmI seem to recall that the right in the US were silent about Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Sth Africa, Mexico etc and probably still are, or support the murderers and torturers. I recall sitting in my car one night and listening to the ABC re El Salvador and Nicaragua, and can still remember feeling almost faint with the horror stories. I don’t recall any politicians from the right in this country supporting these people, most living in horrific poverty, while the very small minority lived in wealth and splendour – propped up and assisted with money, guns, torture techniques etc.
It was the US/Britain/ Australia and others that supported the bloodbath in Indonesia, that could have resulted in the killing of 3 million people in the 60’s, and remained silent while over 180,000 were murdered in East Timor in latter years. Where were the cries of anguish by the right then, or again now? I’m yet to be convinced, that the military in Honduras haven’t at least had their actions sanctioned (quietly) by the US. The US has form for just this type of behaviour, and a list of presidents at best ALLOWED it to happen. We learnt in later years, that they did much more than that. I’ve also been reading about CIA money and Iranian demonstrators? Why wouldn’t that surprise me either?
Jonathan Maddox
June 30, 2009 at 4:32 pmOh Liz, do let Guy believe Obama is benign, at least until proven otherwise. Hasn’t he earned that much complacency?
Rena Zurawel
June 30, 2009 at 5:18 pmThere are people who have basic problem with the concept of ‘democracy’.
And there are people who know that God was man- made because ‘he hates the same lot we do’.
AR
June 30, 2009 at 6:18 pmNever forget Dr K (and his current avatars) “I don’t see why we should let a country go communist through the irresponsibility of its people.” Which they didn’t and, barring major genetic/psychic/social modification, never will.
Guy Rundle
June 30, 2009 at 6:55 pmjesus, talk about your braindead anti-americanism. i’m not suggesting that obama is not involved in the coup out of superior virtue – i simply cant see the upside of it, when the obama admin is clearly trying to restore relations with the latin american left. what possible interest – in a post cold-war world setting – could the us have in helping a coup in a poor backwater like honduras? and then denouncing it? please. i’m quite happy to believe rogue elements in the us military etc are co-operating with the honduran military, but anything else strikes me as bizzarely far-fetched.
warwick fry
July 2, 2009 at 10:19 amThis is more like it Guy ! I can read your articles again without going too far out of my comfort zone. I’ll try to answer your point from a point of view that is not so much anti-american (although by rights, that should be anti-US), but pro latin-american.
Venezuela has resuscitated a project that was initiated several hundred years ago by Simon Bolivar, who envisaged a united Latin America after the war of independence with Spain.
Venezuela with a government that ploughs the economic advantages of being resource rich back into social programs rather than seeing it all go off-shore as had occurred with previous governments.
It is also ‘sharing’ this bounty with other Latin American countries by setting up a financial system that is freeing them from the historical hegemony of the US, the IMF and the World Bank. It bought Argentina’s foreign debt, a few years ago, is setting up trade and development networks with other Latin American countries, and established the ‘Banco del Sur’ (Bank of the South), that enables Latin America to break its former dependence on the IMF and the World Bank. This project is called ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America).
The election of a series of ‘left wing’ governments in Latin America is no coincidence. It is a demonstration of the way Latin American would really like to go once free of the economic blackmail and pressures applied in the past. It is a direct result of ALBA. (Which is virtually ignored by the anglophile ‘western’ media).
Now, to get back to the ‘little backwater’ of Honduras. The coup in Honduras came directly on the heels of the inauguration of FMLN supported President Mauricio Funes in neigbouring El Salvador. El Salvador was seen as the last bastion of the neo fascist right in Central America (and indeed, most of Latin America). El Salvador, while not breaking away from CAFTA (the US brokered Central American Free Trade Agreement), is about to become part of the ALBA bloc. Nicaragua is already reaping benefits, and Zelaya, the deposed President of Honduras made a surprise move toward ALBA and support for, and from Venezuela over a year ago. (Zelaya was originally supported as the candidate for the Conservative Party, but once elected made a surprise swing to the left).
Starting to get the picture? The right in El Salvador ran their campaign on a ‘fear and smear’ TV blitz, warning that a vote for the FMLN candidate would deliver El Salvador into the hands of the ‘dictator’ Hugo Chavez. The US is losing its tight grasp on Latin America.
The coup in Honduras is probably meant, among other things, as a warning to Funes not to get too close to Hugo Chavez. A friend who spoke with some US diplomatic personnel said that many of them refer to Nicaragua as ‘having been lost’.
Now as for Obama – he is very courteous and polite, and is probably trying to assess just how much damage the Bush administration has done to US/Latin American relations, before he makes any decisive moves. However he is being carefufl not to step on the toes of the right either, and he is not going to abandon US interests in Latin America lightly. Hence, the fact that he has reopened diplomatic relations with Venezuela might look as though he wants to ‘restore relations with the latin american left’ (whatever that might mean), but from the Venezuelan point of view, appointing an ambassador who was runnning the mission in Chile at the time of the Pinochet coup is not promising, and might even be viewed as provocative. There have been several appointments like this that indicate that Obama is not exactly doing a U turn, in terms of US policy in Latin America. And of course there are still a majority of Bush appointees in place (like the current ambassador to Honduras) and ideologues in the State Department. He is not likely to carry out a purge, and the recent ambassadorial appointees indicate that he is not likely to do so.
Let’s not forget that the Bay of Pigs invasion took place under the Kennedy administration, and he is regarded as one of the US’ more ‘benign’ Presidents, too.
Warwick