*And to think we have in a way of " thanks " that it was Vice President and Foreign Minister* Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela( maybe future president but I doubt it, the base of the Bolivarian revolution will probably never support him), in one of his many foreign policy plunders, who n*egotiated* the return of Honduras to the OAS and which legitimize the first coup Lobo and the meeting between President Santos, Chavez and Lobo and the treaty of impunity where repression assassinations remained unabated and with another, new dictatorship in the offering.
What kind of anti- imperialism is that?!!! none... Cort http://quotha.net/node/2404 The Re-Golpe and the Dictatorship the Day After Thu, 12/13/2012 - 22:52 AP Tomas Andino Mencía (my translation) 12-12-12 Today in the pre-dawn hours there was another Coup d'État in Honduras (some call it a *Re-Golpe*/Re-Coup), this time against the "Supreme" [Court] by the official mechanical majority of the National Congress. That the Constitution was violated is true. Congress had no powers to do what it did, just as it had no authority to remove Mel from office. But let us remember that the Supreme Court is no gentle dove either. All of its judgments are political and, although here and there it carries out some kind of demagoguery to appear "impartial," the conduct of the judiciary has been characterized by favoring the wealthy and powerful groups in Honduras. Furthermore, let us not forget the role it played in legitimating the June 28, 2009 Coup d'État. So it is that many will say: "Let them fight amongst themselves. It's a fight among *golpistas*. This isn't our concern." To a certain point it is justifiable to think like this. But careful, after what has happened we should view objectively the situation in which the Nation in Resistance finds itself vis-a-vis State power of a State that is not ours and by which we are made vulnerable. My thesis is that this issue concerns all of us because the absolute monopoly on State power by a gang of thieves threatens the interests of ALL of us, without exception, at the current moment. The first issue that must be analyzed is "Why did Pepe and Juan Orlando carry out this coup against other *golpistas*? Did it really have to do with the police purge?" My opinion is no. If Pepe wants to purge the police so badly, why has he not done so by investigating and bringing to trial the officers guilty of colluding with organized crime? Why is he only going after the branches? Furthermore, Pepe and JOH [Juan Orlando Hernández] knew that this law expired on November 25th, and thus any Supreme Court verdict about a non-existant law doesn't make sense. So that, if the Court wants to make a fool of itself issuing verdicts on a law that is no longer law, Congress and the President could simply have ignored them. For many years, that's how things have been done in Honduras without anything happening. But this time things did not turn out that way. Let us then put things in perspective and tie up the loose ends. Let's start at the beginning. The economy! - The country is practically in bankruptcy, thanks to the plundering by the *golpistas* and bankers. Pepe spent this year's budget before the year was through and has had to dip into the Monetary Reserve (the backup fund in dollars that the country maintains for imports) so that the apparatus of the State will not cease to function. This alone is already a symptom of a dire economic situation. But let us continue. The national bank, which in the beginning lent [the State] millions and benefitted from it, no longer wants to continue financing it because it has surpassed its dept capacity (it owes L.51 billion to the private banking industry). Now Pepe wants to sell "sovereign bonds" so that international banks will buy them back at excessive interest, a desperate measure that is not at all easy to accomplish because placing such bonds on the market is only possible under humiliating contractual conditions due to strong international competition. And to cap it all off, the IMF in its last visit did not reach an agreement with the government, and what that means in clear English is that there is no green light for the rest of the international banks to to release funds to the State. In other words, Pepe is at the end of his economic rope. And so, where will he get the funds he needs to keep the State functioning and at the same time run [JOH's] electoral campaign? Here's the best part: - The government knows that under these conditions the only way to survive as a State is to turn itself over body and soul to the criminal policies of the IMF, drastically cutting the salaries of public workers destroying hard-won labor rights and social rights in general for everyone, privatizing liberally, handing the country over to transnational corporations, imposing [regressive] taxes and (hold on tight!) devaluing currency to satisfy the IMF. This means that next year (if this all does not mean the new tax code revision starts as a Christmas present) the government will be all over us with mass firings, reducing salaries wherever it can, approving more tax revisions in which the principal victim will be the working class. As such, the government knows that next year a SOCIAL BOMB like that in Greece will be brewing...and we all know what happened in Greece. The symptoms have already begun to be felt in the struggles being carried out today by some public employees who have not been paid. - Additionally, on November 18th, government authority imposed itself through fraud, affecting all the currents of internal opposition within the Liberal and National Parties, just as it carried out a dirty trick on the LIBRE Party by not counting them in hundreds of precincts' voting records. In this instance government authorities swept out Ricardo Alvares and Yani Rosenthal so they would not provide a counterweight, and also to create the image among the electorate that LIBRE was not capable of overcoming two-party rule. Having achieved this first step thanks to the absence of a vigorous electoral resistance, now the regime has its eyes set upon the 2013 general elections. And the way the winds are blowing, what they have prepared is a huge fraud, which (surprise!) will favor the official candidate of the National Party, compared to which this year's fraud will look like child's play. - On the other hand, it is no surprise that there is a contradiction between the sector of the Arab bourgeoisie (bankers, industrial barons and businessmen) and the powerful group represented by Pepe and Juan Orlando. In this context, it is clear that in the past year a tense situation has arisen between the Executive and Legislative Powers and the Supreme Court leading up to the events of today. The intolerance of both sectors turned to war around two key themes: the retroactive 1% security tax (or "*tazón *") that they would force businessmen to pay and the Law of the Special Development Regions to enable the plunder that is "Charter Cities." It should be noted that in this conflict, Pepe and Juan Orlando have enjoyed the support of the U.S. Embassy and from the leaders of the Armed Forces, while the other sector of the oligarchy has played its own game weaving alliances with sectors of the corrupt police, to which Pepe responded by organizing his own special "TIGERS" force. Having arrived at this point, it was clear that one of the two sides had to be thrown out to sea. Both were preparing to throw the other out in a coup. Ricardo Álvarez's side lost a golden opportunity when they did not take advantageof course, for their own intereststhe verdict of the Supreme Court about the Special Development Regions Law, with which they could have kicked Juan Orlando out of the electoral race for the crime of "Treason." In their counter-attack, Pepe and Juan Orlando wove together a strategy that worked (no doubt with a little external aid). In recent months the Executive Branch sent various bills to the Court knowing full well that they were not constitutional or that they would be rejected for some other reason by that branch of State power. First was the project of the Law of Religions (which violated the Constitution by not giving the same treatment to all churches); followed by the Law of Police Purging (which violated the right of defense); and then the special bill about a referendum to hold a plebiscite which made no effort to hide his intention to hold a *Cuarta Urna *; among others. Why did he do it knowing that they would all be declared unconstitutional by the Court? Simple: to create artificial conflict and preventively destroy a conspiracy before it could be formed. The referendum is what in politics we call a "provocation" to make the enemy fall into a trap. And it appears that his adversary fell. This is how Pepe could denounce a "conspiracy" against himself and strip his rivals of their best weapon, the Supreme Court. In this way he killed two birds with one stone. The day after the Coup was the day on which Ricardo Álvarez would have filed an action for infringement of fundamental rights and freedoms with the Supreme Court to nullify the triumph of Juan Orlando; and it was the day on which the appeal of the decision regarding the unconstitutionality of the Law of the Police Purge would have been debated. By throwing out the four magistrates, the balance of power in the Court is changed, rendering it a pawn to [Pepe and JOH's] plans. Now let us tie together the loose ends...Where is all of this leading us? The country's economic crisis that is forcing the regime to attack the working class, the social bomb that is waiting to go off, the electoral fraud that the governing powers have planned and the political defeat just exercised upon their rivals with the Coup against the Supreme Court, form the perfect scenario for the appearance of a DICTATORSHIP that seeks absolute control of the State by illegitimate means, in order to confront the economic, social and political crisis that is going to explode next year, without the "inconveniences" of a democracy, even if it is a bourgeois one. This dictatorship is not just more of the same. Under the extraordinary circumstances I have mentioned, it is an extraordinary dictatorship. We are talking about a dictatorship that is prepared to do whatever it takes to obtain absolute control over everything and to maintain it. All we need to remember is that the next Congress will elect a new Supreme Court, a new Attorney General/Public Ministry, a new Supreme Electoral Tribunal, a new Public Accounting Authority, a new Institute for Access to Public Information, a new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, among other key appointments of the machinery of the State. Whoever has the power over all of this will be the owner of Honduras. Do I make myself clear? Who within the State could stand up to the relaunching of the "Charter Cities" idea, or the approval of petroleum, mining or hydroelectric concessions, reforms to the Labor Code and the privatization of the social welfare institutions, etc.? The dance of the billions will not end. This is what is at play. This means that if it becomes necessary to break the opposition Parties in order to carry out the plan, it will be done, as long as the latter are upsetting the order, and until they submit and play the game like the UD is doing (at the very least), trying to find a place in the new order; to the contrary, those of us who are in true opposition will be in the list to be the turkey for dinner. But those who think that being "good boys" to please those in power fool themselves, they will gain nothing from the Lobo-Hernández gang for all their favors. Think it through well, because as the popular saying goes, "The devil pays poorly he who serves him well." Can anyone doubt that this is the best moment to contemplate the urgency of a truly Popular National Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution? Written in the city of Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. on the twelfth day of December, 2012 http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/12/ducktatorship-in-honduras.html Saturday, December 15, 2012 Ducktatorship in Honduras I believe that we are on the brink of an imminent dictatorship which will be led by the current president of the National Congress. So says Edmundo Orellana, a lawyer and former Public Prosecutor for Honduras, about Juan Orlando Hernandez's subjugation of the Supreme Court in Honduras. This story<http://www.elheraldo.hn/Secciones-Principales/Al-Frente/Estamos-ante-inminente-dictadura-dirigida-por-presidente-del-Congreso> was the part of the front page of the web edition and print edition before *El Heraldo* removed all links to it from their front web page. What I see is that the next person to occupy the presidency will be a reincarnation of General Tiburcio Cárias Andino. Cárias Andino was the longest ruling of Honduras's 20th century dictators, from 1932-1949. German Leitzelar, a Congressman from the PINU party, agreed with Orellana, and said that Juan Orlando Hernandez has the agenda of being elected president then staying in power for more than the term of four years. Leitzelar asserted that now that he's subjugated the Supreme Court to the Legislative branch, All that needs to happen for what Edmundo Orellana said is to reform the article that prohibits re-election [of the president] and if you have succeeded in arranging it properly, you have arranged for a constitutional dictatorship. According to both Leitzelar and Orellana, Juan Orlando Hernandez is sure to win the 2013 presidential election because he has all the mechanisms of power behind him. This is an oblique reference to the blatant fraud<http://www.tiempo.hn/portada/item/1998-trep-negocio-millonario> in reported vote counts from the ballot boxes in the primary election, where 26 percent of the ballot boxes failed an international audit, and where a post-election audit by the International Institute for Democracy showed Juan Orlando Hernandez with 7% fewer votes in the primary for the National Party than the official total. That would have been enough to make Ricardo Alvarez, Mayor of Tegucigalpa, the winner of the National Party's nomination for president. Leitzelar said that Juan Orlando Hernandez has the political goal of becoming the leader of the country and is attempting to remove all the obstacles that present themselves to attain that goal. Among the obstacles was the appeal Ricardo Alvarez brought before the Supreme Court the day before Congress voted to remove four Supreme Court justices. Alvarado is asking that the Supreme Court order the Election Court to actually count all the votes from the primary election. But it is not just Juan Orlando Hernandez who delivered this blow to democracy in Honduras; it is Porfirio Lobo Sosa too, who supports the action, even if he didn't actually put Juan Orlando Hernandez up to it. Lobo Sosa showed his complete disdain for an independent court, as called for in the Honduran constitution, when he told<http://www.tiempo.hn/portada/item/3669-lo-que-ha-pasado-nos-servir%C3%A1-para-que-nos-escuchemos-todos> journalists in a Christmas lunch yesterday: If there is a law there [in review by the court], before issuing an opinion they should at least consult with those who wrote the law, or those who approved the law; I think [what happened to the Supreme Court justices] is totally just because the powers are independent, but complementary. Lobo Sosa went on to add: We should understand that here no one is above the people, the first power of the State is the Legislative branch because it is the one elected. The Honduran Constitution, Article 4, actually specifies that there are three independent and equal powers, not that the Legislative branch is above the other two. The PINU party released a statement<http://www.elheraldo.hn/Secciones-Principales/Pais/Crece-clamor-para-que-Congreso-rectifique-el-golpe-al-Poder-Judicial> Saturday that read in part: These decisions [of the Congress] are characteristic of dictatorial governments that seek control of the democratic institutions through intimidation and abuse of power. Or as German Leitzelar put it: When we have an animal that quacks like a duck, has feet like a duck and feathers like a duck, then its a duck ------------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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