Opinion Necia: La traicion de Washington era un hecho previsible

La traición de Washington era un hecho previsible. La necesidad de Estados Unidos por controlar la región no podía verse obstaculizada por un presidente que, deseando el progreso de su pueblo y ejerciendo los derechos de la soberanía, pasara por alto los principales intereses del imperialismo en la región.

¿Pero qué es el imperialismo sino la expresión de los intereses de la economía transnacional? Es así que la acciones que desde el 28 de junio ocurren en el país, estuvieron promovidas, financiadas y respaldadas por empresas transnacionales muy poderosas, que se vieron afectadas en sus ganancias por las medidas que adoptara el Presidente Constitucional Manuel Zelaya, en aras del beneficio de su pueblo. Entre ellas podemos destacar a EXXON, quien fuera la primera de las afectadas con la fórmula de los combustibles y el histórico cambio de proveedor que rompió con el monopolio comercial.

Pero no fue ese el único encontronazo del presidente con el imperio del norte. Supo del control directo de la Embajada Norteamérica de fiscales y jueces que protegen inversiones norteamericanas en todo el país, legales o ilegales. Así también descubrió el control por parte de la CIA de todas las agencias nacionales de inteligencia en el país; Inteligencia Militar del Ejército de Honduras, Inteligencia de la Policía, Inteligencia de las agencia de seguridad privada, Inteligencia de la Dirección General de Investigación Criminal, entre otros grupos de sistematización de información económica, política y social que existen en Honduras. A la vez, que como en todos los países de nuestro hemisferio, también actúan directamente  agentes de la CIA asignados a Honduras.

¿Qué protegen? ¿Por qué un control tan férreo por parte de los Estados Unidos?

La primera potencia militar del mundo, la más grande en la historia de la humanidad, mantiene un aparato de control que  existe con el propósito de defender los intereses imperialistas y también funciona para saber como imponerlos en el resto del mundo. La fuerza es el principal argumento de Estados Unidos en su política internacional; su brutalidad es tal que hace más de 50 años permanece en guerras en todo el planeta y ha generado con ellas el establecimiento de la dependencia de su nación a la industria bélica, lo que se le llama el Complejo Militar.

El monstruo imperialista que ha criterio del Presidente Zelaya, y como claramente lo expresara en reuniones abiertas de gabinete presidencial y movimiento popular, utiliza las empresas transnacionales para desarrollar el Neocolonialismo en todos los lugares del planeta en los que exista un mercado del que extraer riquezas naturales y fuerza de trabajo.

No obstante, el imperialismo encuentra con frecuencia que pueblos con dignidad se oponen a sus planes expansionistas, a su lógica de guerra y muerte, a su necesidad mezquina para mantener un estilo de vida que perjudica seriamente el medio ambiente y que somete al hambre, la desnutrición, la dependencia y el subdesarrollo al miles de millones de seres humanos. Es cuando el método pasa del Neo al colonialismo clásico; invasor, militar, fascista e inhumano.

El golpe de estado en Honduras tiene el sello de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, CIA, tiene el interés evidente de la ultraderecha norteamericana, tiene la venganza de las transnacionales que han promovido siempre a los políticos convenientes a sus intereses y que por un error de cálculo permitieron un hombre en la más alta magistratura del Estado Hondureño, un hombre que en su discurso inaugural declaraba tres cristianos y sencillos principios con los que gobernaría el país: No mentir, no robar y no matar, principios por demás incompatibles con el sistema capitalista y mucho más aún con las prácticas de la  oligarquía hondureña.

Es por eso que muchas transnacionales como Exxon, Entre Mares y Chiquita Banana son protagonistas del golpe de estado militar. Mientras que Roberto Micheletti, un empresario de poca monta, y Romeo Vásquez Velázquez, un ladrón de vehículos, no son más que un par de peleles en este asunto. El pueblo lo sabe y no les teme, por eso lucha contra ellos por una patria liberada y contra las transnacionales por un mundo sin guerras ni injusticias.

¡Venceremos!

¡Necedad!

OPLN

[Organizacion Politica Los Necios: ]

Dr. Juan Almendares: The Biggest Embrace in History

“Have you ever been inside an empty stadium? Try it sometime. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing emptier than an empty stadium. There is nothing more silent than the stands with nobody in them”. – Eduardo Galeano

For the last five centuries the West and the hegemonic power of multinational colonization have been stealing the essence of life and the aroma of our Honduran lands. They were violent centuries, with massacres of the first peoples. Centuries of immolation and lies, in the name of the cross, “the idea of civilization” and weapons. Centuries antagonistic to the dreams of Lempira, Morazán, Bolívar, Valle and Martí. Centuries of resistance in historic unity by the peoples of Our America.

We were prisoners in the mining and banana enclaves. Wealth at the expense of hunger and misery. The forests were cut down. The mahogany was used to beautify the mansions in Europe, and adorn the doors of the White House in Washington. Agribusiness, agri-combustibles and the loss of alimentary sovereignty increased the treasures of Wall Street, and international financial capital. Honduras was born during the decadence of the old world and the emergence of the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. Invaded by marines and modern pirates, who sang in unison the chorus “In God We Trust” – in God and in the World Bank.

At the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, the 1954 banana workers’ strike took place. The army, guardians of the banana plantations, controlled by the Pentagon and the CIA, put an end to the workers’ movement and participated in the overthrow of the government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala.

In the 80s there is a military occupation of Honduras. The principal strategist, John Dimitri Negroponte, strengthened the National Security Doctrine. The disciples of the School of the Americas put into practice the torture and physical disappearance of people with the acquiescence of the state judicial apparatus.

Since 1956 until the present century, there have been: seven military coups, signifying seven plagues against national progress. The stigmas: “Banana Republic”, “Country for Rent” have injured the national soul. They are damned names that mask a history of crime, corruption and the negation of a people that have always struggled for liberation.

At the end of the 20th century we were hit by Hurricane Mitch; made worse by transnational financial capital that bribes the powers that be, sells territory to the mining companies, textile sweatshops, banana plantations, energy plants, that increase climatic injustice and social poverty.

Over all these centuries, of coups, blows, paquetazos and trancazos (economic packages and beatings), to the mother and fatherland, they have accumulated and assimilated their own experiences and those of other peoples. Unity is constructed in the honey of practice of the social being and in the hell of the condemned of mother earth.

We learn to reject the lies against the people and governments of Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the very government of Honduras presided over by Manuel Zelaya; because there is no bigger truth than the generous testimonies of unconditional solidarity in health, education, economy and transport; that we have received from these sister nations.

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is the most concrete expression of human cooperation and fraternity in the face of the unequal trade agreements with the United States and Europe.

In the first decade of the 21st century, June 28th of 2009; the first political, economic and military coup in Latin America takes place, carried out by an armed, religious, political, ideological and media alliance of local powers in tandem with world imperialist powers.

The de facto regime celebrated its repressive power in the patriotic festivities of September 15th. The festivities reminded us of our infancy when we were forced to march in the parades. As children we were dressed in uniform and transformed into “infantry”. We gathered in the stadiums to be passive, tolerant listeners to the despot of the moment. These were like religious rites, football and military rituals, with their generals, captains, bishops, reverends and chaplains and somehow a bad imitation of the carnivals of New York or California.

The lead soldiers marched, the uniformed robots without their masks of crime, the tanks and the canons burned gun powder and shot false canon balls. The speeches were rusty and cheaply patriotic. They debuted maneuvers in F5 planes, the parachute show of a parachute government.

The aerial noise did not scare the vultures that share the misery of the children living in the garbage, vultures that fly making fun of the war planes. It was a Neronian circus with forced students and teachers, beaten and threatened. The horses and the cavalry greeted with honors their great perfumed chiefs in ties. The popular protest could never be heard in a sports stadium empty of all popular warmth.

The National Resistance Against the Military Coup marched challenging the de facto government; rejecting the electoral farce, demanding the return to constitutional order and of president Zelaya. The popular clamor was for a Constitutional Assembly, The Second Independence, and the re-founding of the State of Honduras.

Recognition was expressed of the solidarity of all the peoples and governments, social movements, parties, ecclesiastical communities, women´s organizations, gay groups, human rights organizations, social communicators, worldwide fast, Vía Campesina, Friends of the Earth of Latin America and International Friends of the Earth.

On September 15th millions of Hondurans marched against the military political coup. The popular joy announced a dawning of justice. The hummingbirds jumped for joy and bathed in the dew of the ALBA and savored the nectar of the dreams of liberation. The march was the Biggest Embrace in History, with which the people, poets of liberty, have become poets for all the people of the world.

[es] OFRANEH: Misil Mediático del Wall Street Journal dirigido al Frente de Resistencia al Golpe de Estado en Honduras

Video de la OFRANEH: Garifunas presentes en la resistencia al golpe de Estado en Honduras

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Misil Mediático del Wall Street Journal dirigido al Frente de Resistencia al Golpe de Estado en Honduras

El pasado 10 de agosto, el periódico estadounidense Wall Street Journal publicó un artículo de la Sra. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, intitulado los Amigos Hondureños de las FARC, en donde señala tener las “pruebas” de la conexión entre la Unificación Democrática (UD) – partido político vinculado a la resistencia al golpe de estado en Honduras –  y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).

Una vez más las famosas computadoras de Raúl Reyes, son fuente de señalamientos a las organizaciones sociales y partidos políticos que no se encuentran alienados  a favor de los intereses de los Estados Unidos en la región. Las computadoras sobrevivieron al bombardeo del campamento de Reyes localizado en el Ecuador.

La violación territorial del ecuador a manos del ejercito colombiano y la incursión aérea, que aparentemente partió de la Base militar de Manta (Ecuador), fue justificada por el régimen de Alvaro Uribe con la información extraída de las computadoras, la cual implica en actividades terroristas  a un sinnúmero de personas y organizaciones con una trayectoria de lucha social a lo largo del continente.

Este no es primer artículo que publica la columnista del Wall Street Journal referente al golpe. Dos días después redactó un libelo intitulado, “Honduras defiende su Democracia” (1), en el que se ensaña en contra del presidente Manual Zelaya y reduce los hechos a la influencia de Hugo Chávez en el proceso político del país. La  pobreza generalizada y la aberrante estructura feudal  imperante en el país, fueron omitidos en el artículo en aras de defender a los golpistas  y los intereses de los Estados Unidos.

En el caso de las acusaciones que presenta la Sra O’Grady en contra de la UD y por ende al Frente Nacional de Resistencia al Golpe de Estado, fueron inmediatamente utilizados por los medios locales de prensa  afines a los golpistas,  los que en los últimos meses vienen cocinando a fuego lento la supuesta conexión entre el narcotráfico y Venezuela, ademas de mantener una permanente campaña en contra de Manuel Zelaya y la intención de efectuar una Asamblea Constituyente.

Señala la Sra O’Grady que “Obama tendrá que explicar su apoyo a una facción política aliada al crimen organizado. De acuerdo a la evidencia recogida por la inteligencia colombiana que me llego indirectamente”. Por supuesto que la fuente de la información se destaca por su “parcialidad” y son famosos sus falsos positivos.

La satanización del movimiento popular en América Latina ha sido una de las faenas que han asumido los medios de comunicación afines a la Sociedad interamericana de Prensa, la cual le otorgó un premio a la Sra O’Grady en el año de 1997.

Los agentes de prensa de la SIP han aprendido la lección de sus maestros del norte en el “arte” del llamado en inglés spinnig the news , la cual se puede traducir como la capacidad de distorsión de los hechos y la repetición de algunas frases de cajón que maquillan las falacias convirtiéndolas en supuestas noticias. Como ejemplo clásico de lo anterior, se encuentran las famosas armas de destrucción masiva que poseía Hassan Husein, que sirvieron de pretexto para efectuar la invasión a Irak por parte de los Estados Unidos.

El Wall Street Journal (WSJ) es propiedad de Rupert Murdoch (2), el magnate de los medios de comunicación y  especialista global en distorsión. Murdoch adquirió el diario en mayo del 2007, como parte de sus joyas de prensa escrita en peligro de extinción, y al servicio de sus posiciones ideológicas de extrema derecha, las que no ha escatimado para atacar al mismo Barack Obama (3).

Como consecuencia del artículo de O’Grady en WSJ es de esperar una incontinencia en los ataques de parte de los inversionistas económicos e ideológicos en el golpe de estado,m además de  un repunte en las agresiones a las democracias latinoamericanas, en especial en contra de los vecinos a Honduras.

O”Grady comienza con el “spin” de la supuesta información de las computadoras de Reyes, casualmente cuando el Frente de Resistencia Nacional en Contra del Golpe de Estado, del cual forma parte la UD, reúne en las ciudades de Tegucigalpa y San Pedro Sula a miles de manifestantes que marchan en repudio a Micheletti y su turba de empresarios.

Mientras tanto la administración de Obama muestra cada día más la hipocresía reinante en Washington. Si bien entre dientes reconocen que se efectuó un golpe de estado, tras bambalinas persisten en apoyar a los militares hondureños y los empresarios promotores de la defenestración.

La ilegalidad de los hechos es totalmente irrebatible, no obstante los intereses económicos del imperio se imponen en detrimento del estado de ley. El historial de golpes en Latinoamérica demuestra la imposibilidad de efectuar una asonada sino se cuenta con el beneplácito de la embajada y la bendición de la iglesia.

Por supuesto que la CIA prosigue canalizando fondos  a través de la National Endowment for Democracy (NED) para darnos lecciones sobre la versión gringa de la demo_crak_cia y sus efectos en la libertad de mercado, que aparentemente es la piedra fundamental de la ideología neoliberal imperante, y la cual nos imaginamos es la excusa vital del séquito de abogados de la Secretaria de Estado Clinton.

Hipocresía es esconder que Tanto Lanny Davis como Bennett Ratcliff y Roger Noriega, parte del Lobby a favor de los golpistas, han venido utilizando el Capitolio en Washington como un escenario más del golpe. Mientras la  Resistencia  Nacional en Contra del Golpe demuestra su repudio en contra de la intervención en las calles de Honduras, en los pasillos del Congreso estadounidense los abogados de la Clinton no solamente justifican la irrupción del estado de ley, sino que al mismo tiempo en base a la distorsión de la realidad venden falacias  fabricadas por una supuesta periodista con fuentes “indirectas” como si fueran hechos verídicos.

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623282038066363.html Honduras defiende su democracia
(2) http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/08/confirmed-murdo/
(3) http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=okoobs&s=4

Dado en La Ceiba a los 12 días de agosto de 2009
Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH

Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH
Teléfono (504) 4420618, (504) 4500058
Av 14 julio, calle 19, Contiguo Vivero Flor Tropical, Barrio Alvarado, La Ceiba, Honduras
email: garifuna@ofraneh.org, ofraneh@yahoo.com

[en] New York Times: A Cold War Ghost Reappears in Honduras

“It was never my responsibility to detain people, to torture people or to disappear people. But if those had been my orders, I am sure I would have obeyed them, because I was trained to obey orders… The policy at that time was, ‘The only good Communist is a dead Communist.’ I supported the policy.” – Billy Joya Amendola, former member of Battalion 3-16

[Photo: Edgard Garrido for The New York Times]

By GINGER THOMPSON

Published: August 7, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras

THE coup here has brought back a lot of Central America’s cold war ghosts, but few as polarizing as Billy Joya, a former police captain accused of being the former leader of a death squad.

He didn’t sneak quietly back into national politics. He made his reappearance on a popular evening talk show just hours after troops had rousted President Manuel Zelaya out of bed and loaded him onto a plane leaving the country.

Mr. Joya’s purpose, he said, was to defend the ouster and help calm a public that freed itself from military rule less than three decades ago. Instead, he set off alarms among human rights activists around the world who worried that the worst elements of the Honduran military were taking control.

“The name Billy Joya reverberated much more than Micheletti,” Mr. Joya protested, perhaps a little too strenuously, referring to the head of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, installed by the military. “Instantly, my image was everywhere.”

Mr. Joya’s conflicting images — a vilified figure who portrays himself as a victim — are as hard to reconcile as his life story. Human rights groups consider him one of the most ruthless former operatives of an American-backed military unit, known as Battalion 316, responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering hundreds of people suspected of being leftists during the 1980s.

Today, Mr. Joya, a 52-year-old husband and father of four, has become a political consultant to some of the most powerful people in the country, including Mr. Micheletti during his failed campaign to become president last year. Now that Mr. Micheletti has effectively secured that post, Mr. Joya has resurfaced again as a liaison of sorts between Mr. Micheletti and the international media.

Mr. Joya looks straight out of central casting, though not for the role of a thug. He has more of the smooth, elegant bearing of a leading man. And in the 14 years since he was first brought to trial on charges of illegally detaining and torturing six university students, he has undertaken a solitary quest — one that can at times border on obsession — aimed not only at defending himself, but also at vindicating the government’s past fight against Communism.

In 1995, he released a 779-page volume of newspaper clippings, government records and human rights reports meant to substantiate the military’s narrative of the cold war, which essentially accuses its opponents of having blood on their hands as well. And in 1998, after living for a couple of years in exile in Spain, Mr. Joya said he was the first and only military officer to surrender himself for trial.

“Not once in 14 years has there been a single legitimate piece of evidence linking me to these crimes,” he said. Referring to human rights organizations, he said, “What they have done is to condemn me in the media, because they know if they proceed with these cases in court, they are going to lose.”

The odds would appear to be on Mr. Joya’s side. In 1989, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights determined that the Honduran military was responsible for systematic abuses against government opponents. Still, in the 27 years since this country returned to civilian rule, authorities say, Honduran courts have held only two military officials — Col. Juan Blas Salazar Mesa and Lt. Marco Tulio Regalado — accountable for human rights violations.

ONLY about a dozen other officers ever faced formal charges. And most of those cases, like Mr. Joya’s, remain unresolved by a judicial system that remains crippled by corruption.

Meanwhile, Mr. Joya has not suffered silently in legal limbo. In some ways, he has hardly suffered at all. His business as a security consultant and political adviser to some of the most powerful elected officials and businessmen in the country has been lucrative.

“He is like one of those guys who went to Vietnam,” said Antonio Tavel, president of Xerox in Honduras. “He had an ugly job to do once upon a time, and now he’s a regular family guy.”

Mr. Joya is the son of a businessman who helped start several successful companies in Honduras but gambled away more money than he made. Mr. Joya, one of four children, said he enrolled in the military academy at 14, mostly as a way to gain early independence.

He was expelled from the academy, he said, when a teacher caught him cheating on an exam. But instead of giving up his dream to be a soldier, he enlisted as a private and within two years had risen to become the youngest sergeant in the army.

Mr. Joya joined the military police, and in 1981 — as the Reagan administration spent tens of millions of dollars to turn this impoverished country into the principal staging area for a covert war against the region’s left-wing guerrilla groups — Mr. Joya said that he and 12 other Honduran soldiers received six weeks of training in the United States.

He acknowledged that he went on to become a member of Battalion 316. But that’s where his version of events diverges from those of his accusers. He has been charged with 27 crimes, including illegal detention, torture and murder.

The most noteworthy case involved the illegal detention and torture of the six university students in April 1982. The students said they were held in a series of secret jails for eight days. During that time, the students testified, they were kept blindfolded and naked, denied food and water, and subjected to beatings and psychological torture.

Among those detained was Milton Jiménez, who later became a lawyer and a member of Mr. Zelaya’s cabinet. In 1995, Mr. Jiménez told The Baltimore Sun that officers from the battalion stood him before a firing squad and threatened to shoot him.

“They said they were finishing my grave,” he said at the time. “I was convinced I was going to die.”

Edmundo Orellana, the former Honduran attorney general who was the first to try to prosecute human rights crimes, said it was “absurd” that Mr. Joya remained free.

“Billy Joya is proof that civilian rule has been a cruel hoax on the Honduran people,” Mr. Orellana said. “He shows that ignorance and complicity still reign inside our courts, especially when it comes to the armed forces.”

Absurd, Mr. Joya countered, are the charges against him. After his television appearance, he said he received so many threats that he took his wife and youngest daughter to the United States. Now he returns to Honduras only intermittently to meet with clients.

PORING over dozens of newspaper clippings and court dockets during an interview, he argued that Battalion 316 was not established until two years after Mr. Jiménez’s detention, and that it was a technical unit specializing in arms interdiction, not counterinsurgency.

He also argued that the former students’ testimony against him is rife with contradictions. He said Mr. Jiménez, for example, later recanted his charge that Mr. Joya was involved in his interrogations.

“It was never my responsibility to detain people, to torture people or to disappear people,” Mr. Joya said. “But if those had been my orders, I am sure I would have obeyed them, because I was trained to obey orders.

“The policy at that time was, ‘The only good Communist is a dead Communist,’ ” he continued. “I supported the policy.”

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Published online. A version of this article appeared in print on August 8, 2009, on page A5 of the New York edition.

[en] SOA-Watch: November 20-22, 2009 – Converge on Fort Benning, Georgia

Please forward this [message] widely

November 20-22, 2009 – Converge on Fort Benning, Georgia

Mass Mobilization to Shut Down the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC)!
The military coup by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas has on Latin America. The actions of the school’s graduates are unmasking the Pentagon rhetoric and reveal the anti-democratic results of U.S. policies. It is time for a change towards justice.

From November 20-22, 2009, thousands will vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand up for justice, to shut down the School of the Americas and to end the oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the school represents.

The campaign to close the SOA is in a crucial phase right now. Despite promising comments from President Obama during his election campaign, the SOA/ WHINSEC is still in operation and the Pentagon is moving forward with plans for new U.S. military bases in Colombia. With a Democratic administration in the White House, it appears that some Democrats in Congress are becoming timid when it comes to opposing the Pentagon.

It is up to us to keep up the pressure and to hold them accountable. People power is going to win over Pentagon lobbying!

It is tremendously important that we have a strong showing at the gates of Fort Benning for the annual vigil and nonviolent direct action, in order to demonstrate that we won’t go away until the SOA is shut down and the U.S. government has stopped turning to “military solutions” (or political-economic interventions) to enforce its oppressive foreign policy in Latin America. Too many people have suffered and died at the hands of SOA graduates.

You can take a stand for solidarity and justice now! Join hundreds of organizers around the country and start planning for the November vigil. Contact your local unions, universities, workers centers, social justice organizations and faith communities and ask them to re-commit to the struggle to close the School of the Americas.

Click here to forward this Call to Action to your family and friends.

To download the SOA Watch November organizing packet, for a travel guide and a hotel listing, as well as information about accessibility and information for people without U.S. citizenship and more, visit www.SOAW.org/november

[en] Dominion: Five things the Corporate Media doesn’t want you to know about the Coup in Honduras

[posted by Dawn Paley: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/dawn/2795%5D

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1. It was a military coup carried out on behalf of corporate, national and transnational elites. “Restoring Democracy” though a military coup is akin to bombing your way to peace.

2. Coup participants were trained by the CIA and at the School of the Americas. Reactionary, anti-democratic US training grounds such as these are responsible for mass murder throughout the Americas.

3. President Mel Zelaya is a centrist, and his movements towards the “left,” such as joining the ALBA trade block, are a result of massive popular pressure for change.

4. The constitutional referendum was not focused on extending Zelaya’s term limit. The referendum on the constitution marked the beginning of a popular process of participative democracy, which is extremely threatening to local and transnational elites.

5. Transnational corporations support the coup. Goldcorp has been bussing employees to pro-coup marches, other Canadian companies have stayed silent and are complicit in the coup.

Photo of demonstrators in Tegucigalpa by Sandra Cuffe

[en] WW4 Report: Otto Reich Behind Coup in Honduras?

[published on July 5th @ http://ww4report.com/node/7541%5D

The Cuban newspaper Periodico 26 July 3 notes claims by the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) of the “undeniable involvement” of former US under-secretary of state Otto Reich and the DC-based Arcadia Foundation in the coup d’etat in the Central American country. The account says OFRANEH accuses Reich of “heading misinformation and sabotage operations, with close ties to international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban-American mafia in Miami.” The account also names an anti-Zelaya civil coalition, the Movimiento Paz y Democracia, which was apparently funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The website Solidarity with the People(s) of Honduras runs the complete text (in Spanish) of the OFRANEH statement. We translate the critical passages:

The mobilizations in support of the de facto government are being organized by, among others, Sra. María Martha Díaz Velázquez, who directs the supposed civic organization known as the Peace and Democracy Movement (MPD), which has for several months been acting as a pressure group against the administration of Manuel Zelaya… The same Sunday the 28th [as the coup], the Peace and Democracy Movement convened a demonstration in Tegucigalpa’s Plaza Morazán, accompanied by the Civil Democratic Union, a group made up of the country’s ultra-conservative business associations…

The ambiguous position assumed by the government of Barack Obama is clear indication of the participation of the United States in the coup perpetrated last Sunday. The Obama administration has condemned the coup in timid terms, but has taken no concrete actions. The press declarations from the White House call the coup illegal, but avoid declaring the events a coup d’etat, which would mandate an immediate suspension of economic aid from the United States.

According to the Obama administration, it is trying to “reinstate” Zelaya, and he insists on disassociating himself from the impertinent rumors of his country’s involvement in the recent events. According to the White House press statements, the United States Embassy made efforts to avoid the coup, serving as a mediator between the golpista army and Manuel Zelaya.

[But it] is undeniable that there exists direct interference on the part of organizations of the extreme right in the United States, such as the Arcadia Foundation, in which meddles Otto Reich, the notorious personality in charge of disinformation and sabotage operations, not far from Posada Carriles and his Cuban terrorists entrusted with dirty tricks by the CIA. Supposedly, one of the primary objectives of the Arcadia Foundation is the struggle against corruption, and under this pretense it has maintained a low-intensity war against the Zelaya administration since 2006.

Then there are the large sums of money received by the Peace and Democracy Movement through US AID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), institutions recognized as financiers of coups and processes of destabilization across the planet…

For OFRANEH, it is clear that the Obama administration could halt the efforts of the intelligence organisms dedicated to destabilization and disinformation, and which seek to create a confrontation between groups allied with the golpistas and the defenders of democracy. It is the United States government that will be directly responsible for any bloodshed.

The Arcadia Foundation website does indeed identify the non-profit as an anti-corruption watchdog, which also promotes “good governance and democratic institutions.” Otto Reich’s name does not appear in any obvious place on the website. However, one of the two names on the site’s Founders page is Robert Carmona-Borjas, identified as “a Venezuelan lawyer and an expert in military affairs, national security, corruption and governance. In Venezuela, concerned with the issue of governability, the defense of human rights, democracy and the fight against corruption, he became an activist, disregarding the risks that such a stance implied. Following the events of April 2002, he was forced to abandon his country and seek political asylum in the United States of America.”

The Honduran newspapers El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) and La Prensa (San Pedro Sula) noted June 11 that Carmona-Borjas had brought legal charges against Zelaya and other figures in his administration for defying a court ruling that barred preparations for the constitutional referendum scheduled for the day Zelaya would be ousted. A YouTube video dated July 3 shows footage from Honduras’ Channel 8 TV of Carmona-Borjas addressing an anti-Zelaya rally in Tegucigalpa’s Plaza la Democracia to enthusiastic applause. In his comments, he accuses Zelaya of collaboration with narco-traffickers.

Reich’s name did pop up in the media in relation to Honduras earlier this year, when he publicly accused the Zelaya administration of corruption after the Latin Node digital telephone company (which had since been acquired by eLandia) was fined $2 million by US authorities for allegedly bribing officials in Honduras and Yemen. “President Zelaya has allowed or encouraged this kind of practices [sic] and we will see that he is also behind this,” said Reich. (Miami Herald, April 9) After an outcry in Honduras, Reich said he was prepared to make a sworn statement on the affair before Honduran law enforcement—but said he would not travel to Honduras to do so, because his personal security would be at risk there. (HonduDiario, April 25)

The US government recently filed criminal perjury charges against Luis Posada Carriles, although he remains at large and his trial has been postponed until next year. (AP, June 11) Federal prosecutors are moving to suppress documents his lawyers are seeking detailing Posada’s “long-term association with US government intelligence and law enforcement agencies.” (AP, June 12)

See our last post on Honduras.