The Honduran Coup Never Happened

I usually leave this sort of thing to Eli Stephens over at Left I on the News, but I couldn't resist this one, a New York Times on-line description of an article written by Ginger Thompson:

Honduran RIVALS Leave Negotiations Without Meeting Face to Face
By GINGER THOMPSON

The two men claiming the presidency gathered to begin talks aimed at resolving the political standoff that has divided their country.

Wouldn't want to be too explicit about what actually happened, now, would we? Haven't had time to read the article itself. It will be interesting to see if it surpasses my low expectations.

Narco News and The Field: No Longer Open for Debate

I present this post today with some sadness. There are few people who have taken advantage of the Internet to bring attention to marginalized people and social movements as Al Giordano. Through the creation of Narco News, he has extensively covered the political turbulence of Central and South America. Later, through The Field, he provided innovative coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, and continues to post on US politics, from an avowedly pro-Obama stance.

Despite being raucous, and sometimes personally insulting, Giordano posts articles that reveal what the commercial media conceals. For example, his articles about Mexico over the years have provided us with a priceless alternative perspective about the social turmoil there. Unfortunately, his recourse to villification has escalated in the aftermath of the Honduran coup on June 29th. Even worse, he no longer permits the targets of his abusive posts the courtesy of responding to them. Nor does he permit anyone else to come to their defense or merely object to his obnoxious, holier than thou, character attacks.

In other words, Giordano has become a bully, one who manipulates the moderation of comments on his sites to manufacture an adoring audience. He is now mirroring the behavior of the right that he finds so contemptuous. Perhaps, it has been this way for quite awhile, and I was unaware. I had the misfortune to discover it this week, when I had the temerity to post a comment at Narco News that George Cicarriello-Maher had correctly characterized the public pronouncements of the Obama administration in response to the coup as evasive, displaying an unwillingness to take any concrete action to reverse it. I posted an excerpt from that article here last Friday. By doing so, I was challenging the Giordano narrative that Obama has been against the coup, and will, eventually, take the necessary measures to drive the perpetrators from power. I was sticking my hand into a hornet's nest.

Giordano hates the Ciccariello-Maher article because it also criticizes him for dismissing the possibility that the US was actively involved in the coup, as asserted by Eva Golinger, and calls him to task for an implicitly misogynistic attack upon her screeching about such a prospect. Both Ciccariello-Maher and Golinger are cautioning us, quite rightly in my view, that it is far too early to make such a determination, even if we can conclude that the US is only willing to support the return of Zelaya to Honduras upon condition that he become a figure head serving out the remaining days of his term.

As noted by Ciccariello-Maher, Giordano dispatches Golinger with characteristic drama: In this hour, those that adhere strictly to the documented facts are those that are showing character worth trusting, today and into the future. It is a rather odd statement for many reasons, such as, for example, our knowledge that the documented facts are manufactured by those in the positions of power to do so, as cinematically explained to compelling effect in Kobayashi's samurai masterpiece, Harakiri, among other places. It is also odd, because, Giordano has made a name for himself, and justifiably so, by going beyond the documented facts to get the real story, over and over again. And, of course, it is very odd, because Giordano doesn't believe that our appreciation for the facts is enhanced by permitting people to comment openly, without censorship, on his sites. Because, you see, Giordano, and only Giordano, decides who has character and who does not.

As you might have guessed, Giordano only gave me one bite of the apple. He responded to my comment by saying that Cicarriello-Maher's article was an exercise in political masturbation. The moderator blocked my response that he should engage Ciccariello-Maher more substantively, although Giordano did publish a post that does so today over at The Field, one with a tiresome introduction rife with more personal insults. His primary complaint appears to be that Ciccariello-Maher failed to acknowledge the hard work of Giordano and Narco News in exposing the association of the US with the 2002 coup in Venezuela by (oh, the horror!) giving all the credit to Golinger. Apparently, Cicarriello-Maher, or one of his defenders, tried to post a reply in the comments section, but it was either removed or never cleared. If the posted comments are any indication, his audience of DailyKos liberals cheered Giordano's character attacks upon Ciccariello-Maher and his refusal to allow Cicarriello-Maher a chance to defend himself. I submitted a comment to the effect that I found the entire episode very sad because of what it reveals about Giordano and Narco News. Of course, it never got past the moderator.

Apparently, the sites are now ploughing new ground in parody as well, because, after several people posted how great it was that Giordano won't permit Ciccariello-Maher to respond, Anthony Schofield, a reporter associated with The Narcosphere, sounded the alarm about an anti-Al piece on Z-Net, and gave a short rebuttal there, not recognizing the obvious, embarrassing contradiction between a site like Z-Net that permits engaged debate and Narco News which does not. If I find the time, I may return and engage the substance of their dispute in more detail, but, for now, today's post is an exercise in consumer protection. The Field and Narco News are sites that you should visit at your own risk, with the recognition that the purported discourse in the comments section is strictly controlled. You should read any content there with the understanding that Giordano permits limited critical engagement with it. Narco News remains an essential portal for information about events in Central and South America, but, unfortunately, we must exercise caution in how we utilize it. And, of course, here, unlike at Narco News and The Field, Giordano is free to comment and say whatever he wants.

UPDATE: If you find that you have wandered into the comment section of either The Field or Narco News, click on the links under the names of those who have posted comments. You may be surprised at how many of them have been posted by reporters associated with The Narcosphere. It seems to be rather difficult for anyone outside the scene to actually post comments there. As a consequence, the comment sections take on the tone of an echo chamber.

The Time is Not Right

Pity poor Manuel Zelaya. He wants to return to Honduras to assume his powers as President, but Canada, speaking for both itself and the US within the Organization of American States, believes that he should wait awhile. After all, it's only been nine days since he was seized by the military and forcibly removed from the country.

Yesterday, Zelaya, against the wishes of Canada and the US, tried to return to Honduras by plane despite being threatened with arrest. He rallied his supporters from abroad, encouraging them to come to greet him at the airport. He even had the temerity to speak to the throngs gathered outside the Tegulcigapa airport that responded to his call from his plane as it unsuccessfully attempted to land, earning the condescending disdain of the New York Times. By the standards of the Grey Lady, that's just not how its done, going over the heads of the US State Department and the Pentagon, so as independently organize your return to power.

Both the coverage of the NYT and the public comments of the Obama administration echoed the line of the coup supporters in Honduras: the situation in the country is too volatile, and the return of Zelaya could incite violence. Most tellingly, no one in the Obama administration stated that Zelaya had the right, and, indeed, the obligation, to reassume his position as President. Equally disturbing, no one stated that the coup leaders should allow him to land in Tegulcigapa, and turn over control of the Honduran state to him. Nor did they make it plain that, if any violence erupted, as it did briefly yesterday, resulting in two deaths, that the US government would hold the coup leaders and the Honduran military responsible.

So, the fence straddling continues, a fence straddling designed to reduce Zelaya to an Aristide, one either permanently deposed, or one, if allowed to return to Honduras, sufficiently disempowered that the US accomplishes the goal of preserving the hegemony of the oligarchy and the military over Honduran society. It is reported that Zelaya is going to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tomorrow. Off the record sources have made the administration's objective quite clear:

One option under consideration is trying to forge a compromise between Zelaya, Micheletti and the Honduran military under which the ousted president would be allowed to return and serve out his remaining six months in office with limited and clearly defined powers, according to a senior U.S. official.

In exchange, Zelaya would pledge to drop aspirations for a possible constitutional change that could allow him to run for another term, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic exchanges.

Leaving aside the factual error that Zelaya's proposed constitutional measure would have allowed him to run for another term as President, something that, in the case of Colombia and Uribe, the US is willing to accept, the source candidly acknowledges that the Obama administration wants to typically have its cake and eat it, too. As noted here last Friday, it wants to burnish its credentials supporting democracy by overturning the coup in Honduras, while facilitating a transfer of power to the people responsible for it. Here, we have a classic instance of the mastery of the Obama team in regards to understanding distinctions between symbolism and substance as they seek to fashion a win-win scenario that pleases both domestic progressives and those with vested material interests in Honduras.

If this sounds familiar, it should, as correctly anticipated by Greg Grandin last week:

It seems like what the United States might be angling for in Honduras could be the "Haiti Option." In 1994 Bill Clinton worked to restore Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he was deposed in a coup, but only on the condition that Aristide would support IMF and World Bank policies. The result was a disaster, leading to deepening poverty, escalating polarization and, in 2004, a second coup against Aristide, this one fully backed by the Bush White House.

There is only one problem with such expedient, self-serving policy. The people of Honduras are becoming dissatisfied with the coup leadership, as explained by Al Giordano yesterday over at Narco News, with Zelaya having shown himself as willing to put his life on the line. By all accounts, Honduras is far removed from the conditions that prevailed in Venezuela just prior to the 2002 coup, where Chavez had substantial support among the populace and the military.

Even so, Hondurans are still willing to take action to reverse the coup, even if they are not yet willing to embrace a radical program of social change. Perhaps, that is the best that they can hope to achieve at this time, leaving the prospect of a transformed Honduras, liberated from neoliberal exploitation, to another day. There is a, however, a glimmer of hope in the fact that the US and coup leadership are so insistent that Zelaya abandon any hope of serving a second term as President, because it tends to suggest that he is not nearly so unpopular as we are repeatedly told.

Regime Change with a Human Face

I have been too busy to post for the last week or so, because of work and family commitments, but, now, I am back with this brief one. While I was away in Monterey County last weekend, there was a coup in Honduras. And, preliminary indications suggested that the Obama administration, unlike the previous Bush one, was on the side of the good guys.

Think again, in light of this withering analysis by George Ciccariello-Maher:

Previously resigned Obamaphiles, desperate to grasp at any shred of proof suggesting that they were right to get high on hope and expect imminent change, are closing ranks around their government and insisting that the U.S. government’s response to the Honduran coup is proof positive of such change. Some even go so far as to claim that the Obama administration’s support for Zelaya has been “unambiguous,” adding that “complaints that Washington hasn’t acted fast enough to denounce the Honduran coup are silly and ignorant on the face of them.”

Let’s be clear: no one is saying that U.S. foreign policy is the same under Obama as under Bush, but nor did we expect them to be. Rather, we expected things to look very different while maintaining an underlying continuity. And for anyone who looks closely, Washington’s response to the Honduran coup has been the definition of ambiguity, and such knee-jerk reactions to criticism simply fail to explain the subtle progression of this response, and moreover willfully neglect the subtleties and nuances that State Department officials and Obama himself have deployed.

Let’s lay this out briefly: On Sunday, at a meeting with narco-terrorist Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, Obama issued the following carefully-worded statement: “I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

Such a purposefully-vague statement was meant to communicate a wait-and-see approach: yes, we are “deeply concerned,” but what’s done is done and we must now work toward the reestablishment of “democratic norms.” The implication is clear: fascistic coup leaders are quite capable of leading a transition back toward the very same democracy they attacked, and the United States is still hoping to avoid Zelaya’s return.

Some commentators were understandably perplexed when the text of a conference call with unnamed “Senior State Department Officials” was released later Sunday, claiming that the United States recognizes only Zelaya as the legitimate leader of Honduras, while implying that the State Department would be calling for his return via an OAS resolution. But the sharp disconnect between this statement and Obama’s vagaries would only deepen when Secretary of State Clinton stepped into the fray, contradicting claims by both the president and the unnamed senior officials by insisting that the U.S. is not currently classifying events in Honduras as a coup and is not yet demanding Zelaya’s return, but only a vague return to democratic normalcy.

This, of course was another hedge, allowing the State Department leeway both to negotiate with and carry on business as usual with the coup regime were it to remain and to pressure Zelaya for a conditional return. As to the former, the U.S. seems unwilling to take the risk of cutting direct aid to Honduras, a legal requirement if a “coup” is declared. The latter is arguably more important: the State Department under Clinton most certainly did not support Zelaya’s efforts to radically challenge entrenched elites through a constitutional reform, and will likely pressure him to return humbled and defanged, with no such transformative aspirations.

John Negroponte, for one, sees things this way, arguing that Clinton “wants to preserve some leverage to try and get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum.” And when it comes to containing and undermining Central American leftists, few know the playbook by heart like Negroponte, who as U.S. ambassador to Honduras during the Contra wars personally oversaw both death squads and the drug trade. Indeed, against all the left-liberal defenders of the Obama administration, it was probably Mara Liason who was closest to the truth when, speaking as one of three panelists on Fox News (all of whom, incidentally, support the coup), argued that:

“I think they are perfectly happy with the outcome… Now, I think it’s the correct public diplomacy and policy to say, of course we’re for the democratically elected president and we don’t like coups in Latin America, but when all the dust settles, they will be perfectly happy to work with this new guy. They are not working to get Zelaya back into power… This is the outcome the United States would have preferred, this is not the method they would want to publicly condone.”

This is the iron fist with a velvet glove: while it may feel softer, it’s as “interventionist” as ever.

But all this aside, what is truly shocking is that the government is being taken at its word in the first place. Here, the White House and State Department functions as a stand-in for the U.S. state as a whole, obscuring an entire history of underhanded interventionism, especially from the CIA. Few have sought more insistently to reveal this dark underside of U.S. interventionism in Latin America than Eva Golinger, whose legal efforts to demand the release of government documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed the true extent of the Bush administration’s role in the 2002 coup against Chávez (published in The Chávez Code). Golinger, who has been liveblogging the coup as it has progressed, describes a situation in which it would be utterly implausible to assume the United States government was not at least passively involved:

“The United States maintains a military base in Soto Cano, Honduras, that houses approximately 500 soldiers and special forces. The U.S. military group in Honduras is one of the largest in U.S. Embassies in the region. The leaders of the coup today are graduates of the U.S. School of the Americas, a training camp for dictators and repressive forces in Latin America…The US Military Group in Honduras trains around 300 Honduran soldiers every year, provides more than $500,000 annually to the Honduran Armed Forces and additionally provides $1.4 million for a military education and exchange program for around 300 more Honduran soldiers every year.”

As Greg Grandin described the situation on Democracy Now!: “The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government… if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it’s Honduras… So if the U.S. is opposed to this coup going forward, it won’t go forward.” To which we could add Jeremy Scahill’s response: “Obama and the US military could likely have halted this coup with a simple series of phone calls,” or, we might add, by threatening to pull funding (which now, even after the coup, they seem unwilling to do). When we consider the leverage the U.S. enjoys in Honduras, claims by the Obama administration that they attempted to prevent the coup border on the absurd. Even more absurd, however, are efforts to defend the continued funding of a coup regime as “progress.”

Ciccariello-Maher's evaluation of the US response raises a lot of interesting questions: Did the Obama administration order the Honduran oligarchy to take action? Probably not. Did the Obama administration know in advance that it was going to happen? Probably, for the reason put forth by Grandin, although we cannot dismiss the possibility that people within the US military and intelligence community held back their knowledge just long enough for it to go forward.

There are other questions that we can answer more confidently. Is the Obama administration willing to take action to compel the perpetrators of the coup to relinquish power. Not yet, and possibly not ever. Indeed, consistent with Obama's trademark caution, he is having it both ways as long as he can, giving the perpetrators of the coup time to legitimize their rule while distancing himself from their actions. Some time soon, he will be compelled to take a clearer stance, and there is no reason to believe that he will act contrary to the wishes of the military industrial complex and order it to sever its historic ties the Honduran oligarchy.

At the risk of looking very silly, I don't see Zelaya ever returning to power, and, several months from now, after the military junta has conducted a farcical election to create a democratic veneer for itself, the US will urge the rest of Central and South America to acquiesce to reality. For, while Obama may not be willing to sully his hands with the dirty work of regime change in the Americas, he will be perfectly willing to enjoy the fruit of the labors of those who do.