The Honduras Coup - Were We Punk'd by Obama ?

[cactusflower]

The Honduras coup is a sign: the radical tide can be turned | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

An intense struggle is underway in Honduras, and serious questions at this stage have to be asked about the US, and Obama's, role in the recent coup.

Seaumas Milne wrote in today's Guardian

Right now, in the heart of what the United States traditionally regarded as its backyard, thousands of pro-democracy activists are risking their lives to reverse the coup that ousted the country's elected president. Six weeks after the left-leaning Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped at dawn from the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa and expelled over the border, strikes are closing schools and grounding flights as farmers and trade unionists march in defiance of masked soldiers and military ro******************************************s.

The coup-makers have reached for the classic South American takeover textbook. Demonstrators have been shot, more than a thousand people are reported arrested, television and radio stations have been closed down and trade unionists and political activists murdered. But although official international condemnation has been almost universal, including by the US government, barely a finger has been lifted outside Latin America to restore the elected Honduran leadership

This coup, carried out by troops trained by the US, is of a character that most of us had hoped we would never see again in South America. A chain of election victories from the left in Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia has been shifting resources in favour of social equality. Zelaya, following suit, increased the minimum wage and halted privatisation. Honduras, Milne says, is a country of 15 oligarch families ruling a population of 7 million.

Barack Obama went to the polls offering change from the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld mode of US imperialism.

...as Barack Obama declared, there was to be a "new chapter" for the Americas of "equal partnership", with no return to the "dark past".

The reality is business as usual.
In Honduras, the same old US faces can be seen working with a puppet US-friendly government. A Clinton advisor is working as a lobbyist for the Honduran government. Clinton said that Zelaya was "reckless" to try to return to do his job. Iran is being threatened with sanctions, in the style of the progressive squeeze on Iraq that ended we know how. The war in Afghanistan has been cranked up and spread to Pakistan.

In the New York Times, the question is being asked "Has Obama Punk'd Us?"

On health and on the banks as well as in foreign policy, the reality is a deeply cynical continuance of looking after the powerful and wealthy, but with populist verbal veneer of talk about change.

His first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street’s latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.

Frank Rich concludes

It’s a measure of how out of touch G.O.P. leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are that they keep trying to scare voters by calling Obama a socialist. They have it backward. The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy

Figures this month show that the average American is working longer hours for less money: this after thirty years of relative wage stagnation.

The racist hysteria of the right against Obama is his best friend, helping him to hang on to the appearance of radicalism, while he ploughs ahead with regime change, torture and war abroad, and wage cuts and banker bonuses at home.

Time we gave up hope, at least in relation to Obama, and look for change.

[Clanrickard]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[mutley]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

your cliche response is even more zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

you remind me of someone who sticks their fingers in their ears and sings a song when they don't want to listen to what someone has to say.

The Americans have form, sure look at what they did in guatemala

[Clanrickard]

your cliche response is even more zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

you remind me of someone who sticks their fingers in their ears and sings a song when they don't want to listen to what someone has to say.

The Americans have form, sure look at what they did in guatemala

So what did Obama do in Guatemala?

[zakalwe1]

The Honduras coup is a sign: the radical tide can be turned | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

An intense struggle is underway in Honduras, and serious questions at this stage have to be asked about the US, and Obama's, role in the recent coup.

Seaumas Milne wrote in today's Guardian



This coup, carried out by troops trained by the US, is of a character that most of us had hoped we would never see again in South America. A chain of election victories from the left in Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia has been shifting resources in favour of social equality. Zelaya, following suit, increased the minimum wage and halted privatisation. Honduras, Milne says, is a country of 15 oligarch families ruling a population of 7 million.

Barack Obama went to the polls offering change from the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld mode of US imperialism.



The reality is business as usual.
In Honduras, the same old US faces can be seen working with a puppet US-friendly government. A Clinton advisor is working as a lobbyist for the Honduran government. Clinton said that Zelaya was "reckless" to try to return to do his job. Iran is being threatened with sanctions, in the style of the progressive squeeze on Iraq that ended we know how. The war in Afghanistan has been cranked up and spread to Pakistan.

In the New York Times, the question is being asked "Has Obama Punk'd Us?"

On health and on the banks as well as in foreign policy, the reality is a deeply cynical continuance of looking after the powerful and wealthy, but with populist verbal veneer of talk about change.



Frank Rich concludes


Figures this month show that the average American is working longer hours for less money: this after thirty years of relative wage stagnation.

The racist hysteria of the right against Obama is his best friend, helping him to hang on to the appearance of radicalism, while he ploughs ahead with regime change, torture and war abroad, and wage cuts and banker bonuses at home.

Time we gave up hope, at least in relation to Obama, and look for change.

is it cus he is black?

only joking....obama is big on rhetoric and little on action.

[mutley]

So what did Obama do in Guatemala?

He hasn't done anything in Guatemala, I never claimed he did.

He is no better than his predecessors, meddling in the affairs of Southern and central american countries

[Clanrickard]

is it cus he is black?

only joking....obama is big on rhetoric and little on action.

I agree. He has done nothing and that means he has not interfered in Honduras contrary to the guff being spouted.