“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Mr Zelaya says the Congress session would have no legal basis. He is wrong of course. The effetes from Spain, Brazil and Argentina do not want to recognize Honduras.
Honduras stood its ground and the despicable Zelaya diminishes by the day holed up like the rat he is in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.
Excellent. Score one for the good guys
This clip is in Spanish, but subtitled and with some amusing comments. Enjoy it. It is so refreshing to see the people of a country be able to overthrow a repressive regime and to have the guts to do so with world pressure against them.
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Honduran Congress votes down Zelaya's reinstatement
Congress in Honduras has voted overwhelmingly against allowing ousted President Manuel Zelaya to serve out the last two months of his term.
Of the 125 members of Congress present, 111 voted against his reinstatement.
Mr Zelaya, who was ousted in June, had told the BBC that he would refuse reinstatement in any case because he did not want "to legitimise a coup".
Conservative politician Porfirio Lobo won Sunday's presidential elections, which were condemned by Mr Zelaya. As well as Brazil, several other nations, including Argentina and Venezuela, have refused to recognise the vote, arguing it was held under an illegitimate government.
The US cautiously welcomed the polls, and Peru, Panama, Colombia and Costa Rica also voiced their support.
'Honduran reality'
After Congress voted not to reinstate him until his term ends in January, Mr Zelaya said: "This decision ratifies a coup and condemns Honduras to continue living in illegality."
On Monday, he had said the election of Mr Lobo as the next president had served only to intensify the political crisis.
Speaking to BBC Mundo from inside the Brazilian embassy where he took refuge in September, he said: "Will the elections change the military leadership that conducted the coup that ousted me? It remains the same. Will the elections change the composition of the Supreme Court that issued an arrest warrant [against me] without due cause? It remains the same," Mr Zelaya said.
Mr Lobo, who lost to Mr Zelaya in the 2005 election, has pledged to form a unity government and seek dialogue. Mr Lobo, who is due to take office on 27 January, also urged the international community to "understand the Honduran reality and stop punishing the country".
Mr Zelaya was forced into exile on 28 June after trying to hold a vote on whether a constituent assembly should be set up to look at rewriting the constitution.
His critics said the vote, which was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, aimed to remove the current one-term limit on serving as president and pave the way for his possible re-election.
Mr Zelaya has repeatedly denied this and pointed out that it would have been impossible to change the constitution before his term in office was up.
The very term 'International Community" rubs me wrong
Honduras has told the OAS to stay home. It certainly should repudiate the egregious interference in its internal affairs by Brazil. Today Honduras has threatened to revoke Brazil's diplomatic credentials for harbouring ousted president Manuel Zelaya in its embassy.
Honduras warned:
"If the status of Zelaya is not defined within 10 days, the [Brazilian] embassy will lose its diplomatic condition," Carlos Lopez Contreras, the de facto foreign minister, told a news conference on Sunday.
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, called on the Honduran government to "cease harassing the Brazilian mission".
Ambassador Rice: Good afternoon everybody. Speaking as president of the Council I want to make a statement on behalf of the Council as follows: Members of the Council heard from the Foreign Minister of Brazil today. Council members stressed the importance of respecting International Law through preserving the inviolability of the Embassy of Brazil in Tegucigalpa, and other protections afforded it by the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, and ensuring the safety of individuals on its premises. They condemned acts of intimidation against the Brazilian Embassy and called upon the de facto government of Honduras to cease harassing the Brazilian Embassy and to provide all necessary utilities and services including water, electricity, food and continuity of communications. Respect and protection of the inviolability of diplomatic premises is a universally accepted principle of international relations.
The members of the Council call on all parties to remain calm and to avoid actions that escalate the situation or place individuals at risk of harm.
The members of the Council voiced support for the regional mediation efforts facilitated by the OAS, including those by President Arias, to reach a peaceful solution.
I’d like to take questions on Honduras first, if there are any, and then we can move to other topics.
Reporter: Is the Security Council willing to go and (inaudible) take any actions (inaudible)?
Ambassador Rice: No, I think this constitutes the response of the Security Council to the information provided it today.
Reporter: Did you and the Foreign Minister of Brazil talk after the meeting? What did you talk about?
Ambassador Rice: We had a private conversation; I am not prepared to share it.
Reporter: This is the right place to bring this type of discussion? I mean this subject was being discussed by the OAS and now it is at the Security Council?
Ambassador Rice: The issue of the Embassy of Brazil in Tegucigalpa was the subject that the Security Council discussed, not the larger, not primarily the larger situation.
Reporter: Not the larger political?
Ambassador Rice: Not primarily, no.
Reporter: Is it true that the United States was not happy that this subject was brought to the Security Council?
Ambassador Rice: No, we are the president of the Council and we acted in accordance with the wishes of the Council.
Reporter: Will you have another meeting about this issue?
Ambassador Rice: No, I don’t anticipate another meeting at this time on this issue.
Reporter: Is there anything else that the Security Council can do besides condemning the situation?
Ambassador Rice: This was the case brought by the government of Brazil of the circumstance of its Embassy in Tegucigalpa that was discussed. I have shared the Council’s reaction to that. And the Council looks to the regional mediation to continue its work on the larger political question of Honduras.
Reporter: Was it unanimous, your statement?
Ambassador Rice: This is a consensus statement.
The US is fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stating the need for a constitutional system. A so-called timber baron, Zelaya decided he wasn't satisfied with being a legal president for the constitutionally prescribed one term limit and wished to emulate the other Latin leftists and become a president for life.
The US should be applauding Honduras, not condemning it. but then we have our own leftist administration to contend with. Too bad for Honduras.
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Honduras vows to close Brazil embassy, cracks down Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:45pm EDT By Patrick Markey and Gustavo Palencia
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras' de facto government threatened on Sunday to close Brazil's embassy for harboring ousted President Manuel Zelaya and moved to suppress dissent, defying international pressure to give up power.
The government, which took power after a June 28 coup, also denied entry to an Organization of American States delegation that had hoped to help broker a solution to the crisis.
The moves were aimed at stifling opposition and sending a clear message that it would not allow the leftist Zelaya's return to power under any circumstances, but they will also likely bring further international condemnation.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he would ignore a 10-day deadline set by de facto leader Roberto Micheletti to decide what to do with Zelaya, who is holed up with his family and some supporters in Brazil's embassy in the capital.
"Brazil will not comply with an ultimatum from a government of coup mongers," Lula told reporters at a summit of African and South American leaders in Venezuela.
Lula also demanded an apology from Micheletti, but the government instead warned that Brazil would lose its right to have an embassy in Honduras if it ignores the deadline.
Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup on June 28, but he secretly returned from exile last Monday, sparking a tense standoff with the de facto civilian government that has promised to arrest him on charges of treason.
Hundreds of soldiers and riot police have surrounded the embassy all week, while protesters have mounted almost daily marches to demand Zelaya be reinstated.
Let's be clear, Obama has sided with socialists and left-wing groups his entire adult life. He brought that propensity into the office of the US President. He is backing the Marxist Zelaya in Honduras.
Brazil is blatantly using it's embassy to side with Zelaya.
Honduras is on the verge of civil violence and the blood will be on the hands of Obama and his left wing soul brothers. It is a disgusting and shameful exposure of the true Barack Hussein Obama.
It is being reported in this Tico Times article that:
"Concerned for the safety of embassy officials, the Brazilian government has asked the United States for protection if necessary, something the northern superpower seems willing to give."
I find it hard to believe that the US military will be misused to protect Brazil's interference in an internal Honduran affair, but we shall soon see.
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U.S. prepared to back Brazil in Honduran crisis By Chrissie Long Tico Times Staff
Planes in Honduras have been grounded and the de facto government is extending curfews, hoping to stem violent outbreaks following the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
Meanwhile, Roberto Micheletti, the former congressional president who assumed the presidency in Zelaya's absence, encouraged Hondurans to remain strong and “not to lower their guard,” according to a Tuesday article in the Honduran daily La Prensa. He also said he won't chase down Zelaya, who is holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.
The deposed president, who was marched out of his home at gunpoint on June 28, arrived at Brazil's embassy on Monday and has been broadcasting messages to his supporters from a Venezuelan television station.
Thousands of Zelaya supporters, who gathered outside the embassy to cheer on the ousted leader, clashed with police who, according to Human Rights Watch, used “excessive force” while attempting to disperse the crowd.
Concerned for the safety of embassy officials, the Brazilian government has asked the United States for protection if necessary, something the northern superpower seems willing to give.
“I am sure we will provide assistance, but we are in the midst of discussions on how to do so,” said Ian Kelly, White House spokesman, in a press conference on Tuesday. “It's a very sensitive situation and we don't want to get into the details (of what actions we will take) … but we are willing to offer our help.”
The U.S. Embassy, which was closed Tuesday for reasons relating to the uncertain political situation, posted a message on its Web site that a decision to reopen “will be taken during the course of the day.” Meanwhile, the embassy urged U.S. citizens living in Honduras to register with the embassy. (The U.S. State Department will be post the latest security information on its Web site).
French residents living in Honduras were warned to “stay in and not to move until further notice” in a message appearing on the French Embassy's Web site on Tuesday.
“This is a situation that could play out in many different ways,” said Luis Guillermo Solís, political analyst and former professor at the University of Costa Rica. “But it's a good opportunity for the parties to reshape the negotiations, as the situation has caused both sides to become seemingly radicalized.”
With the international community (except Panama) unwilling to recognize the November elections and Micheletti consequently turning his back on the lead mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the situation was becoming increasingly tense daily. But Zelaya may have opened a window of opportunity, Solís said.
“It would be a shame if a four-month crisis turned into a four-year problem,” he told The Tico Times. “One would have hoped that the elections would be a way out of the crisis, but that is not possible if there is no agreement (between the Honduran government and the outside world).
“If there's no agreement, there's no guarantee that the elections in November would be fair and transparent,” Solís added.
The Obama Administration is moving to punish Honduras for the heroic measures taken to enforce their own constitution in preventing Hugo Chavez wannabe, President Manuel Zelaya, from establishing another left-wing dictatorship in Latin America.
Zelaya had no constitutional right to try and change the constitution so that he could become another president for life, and was rightly prevented from doing so. In Obamanation, that is a criminal offense, so the Obama Administration is considering withdrawing US aid.
Honduras has 29% unemployment, and I can assure you being unemployed in Latin America is not the same as in the US. There is no such thing as unemployment compensation or other government welfare programs. You don't work, you don't eat and neither does your family. No job, no money. Your teen age daughter ends up as a hooker and your best hope is to get into the United States by any means. You do what you can to survive.
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U.S. moves toward formal cut off of aid to Honduras Thu Aug 27, 2009
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.
The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has yet to make a decision on the matter although one was likely soon.
Washington has already suspended about $18 million aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup and this would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid "to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree."
The official said that $215 million in grant funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation to Honduras would also have to end should Clinton make the determination that a military coup took place.
About $76 million of that money has already been disbursed and a second U.S. official said this implied that the remaining roughly $139 million could not be given to Honduras should the determination be made.
Diplomats said that the United States had held off making the formal determination to give diplomacy a chance to yield a negotiated compromise that might allow for Zelaya's return to power.
Such efforts, however, appear to have failed for now and so the United States is taking steps -- including its decision on Tuesday to cease issuing some visas at its embassy in Tegucigalpa -- to raise pressure on the de facto government.
"The recommendation of the building is for her to sign it," said the first U.S. official said of the 'military coup" determination, saying this was a response to the de facto government's refusal to accept a compromise that would allow Zelaya to return to power ahead of November elections. (Editing by Jackie Frank)
Why I Came to Honduras By Dennis Prager "Why have you come to Honduras?"
That is the question posed to me by Hondurans, surprised that anyone from the outside world, let alone from the media, cares enough to now visit their small country (population 8 million), a country that they themselves consider relatively insignificant.
The question is a valid one. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel alert (through July 29) warning Americans against coming here. There are very few outsiders here now. The plane from Houston to San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second largest city, was almost empty, and the few passengers were nearly all Hondurans. The hotels are largely empty.
It is all eerily reminiscent of Jerusalem during the height of the Intifada terror. I went there then for the same reason I have come to Honduras now -- to broadcast my show and thereby show solidarity with an unfairly isolated country, and to encourage, by example, people to visit Israel then and Honduras now.
Honduras has joined Israel as a pariah nation. The United Nations has condemned Honduras by a vote of acclamation, and the Organization of American States has suspended it.
The way in which nearly all the world's media portray the legal, Supreme Court-ordered ouster of President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya is one major reason for the universal opprobrium. Because military men took part in the deportation of the sitting president, it has been portrayed as a classic Latin American "military coup," and who can support a military coup?
The lack of context in which this ouster took place has prevented the vast majority of the world's news watchers and readers from understanding what has happened.
I wonder how many people who bother to read the news -- as opposed to only listen to or watch news reports -- know:
-- Zelaya was plotting a long-term, possibly lifetime, takeover of the Honduran government through illegally changing the Honduran Constitution.
-- Zelaya had personally led a mob attack on a military facility to steal phony "referendum" ballots that had been printed by the Venezuelan government.
-- Weeks earlier, in an attempt to intimidate the Honduran attorney general -- as reported by The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady, one of the only journalists in the world who regularly reports the whole story about Honduras -- "some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general's office. 'We have come to defend this country's second founding,' the group's leader reportedly said. 'If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection.'"
-- No member of the military has assumed a position of power as a result of the "military coup."
-- Zelaya's own party, the Liberal Party, supported his removal from office and deportation from Honduras.
-- The Liberal Party still governs Honduras.
The United States is threatening to suspend all aid to one of the three poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere in order to force that country -- against its own laws and with the inevitable violence it would entail -- to allow Zelaya back as president.
Yet, no Honduran I talked to said he or she wanted Honduras to cave in to the American financial threat. "We will tighten our belts," one man struggling to make a living told me. Indeed, what is happening is that Hondurans are coming to realize that American aid -- even purely humanitarian aid -- comes with strings.
In our increasingly morally confused -- i.e., left-wing influenced -- world, even America is having a harder and harder time distinguishing between right and wrong as it comes to value realpolitik and a desire to be loved, from Iran to Venezuela to Honduras, more than it values liberty. To the extent that Americans will be loved, it will be thanks to supporting liberty and thanks to the work of American charities such as Cure International, with its pediatric orthopedic hospital here and in other impoverished places (www.cureinternational.org).
Let there be no ambiguity here. Little Honduras was supposed to be the next country to lose its liberties as it joined the anti-American, pro-Iranian Latin American left. But Little Honduras decided to fight back. And this has infuriated Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who will surely attempt to foment violence in Honduras.
Therefore, if you love liberty, you will do whatever you can do help Honduras resist Chavez and his allies, which include the United Nations and Organization of American States.
There are many ways to do that. Buy Honduran goods. Write your representatives in Washington to back the present, law-based Honduran government. And, yes, even visit this friendly beleaguered place. When the world's governments isolate a country, with few exceptions, that's all you need to know about who the good guys are.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Flipping through a stack of legal opinions and holding up a detention order signed by a Supreme Court judge, the chief lawyer of the Honduran armed forces insisted that what soldiers carried out over the weekend when they detained President Manuel Zelaya was no coup d’état.
“A coup is a political move,” the lawyer, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza Membreño, said Tuesday night in an interview. “It requires the armed forces to assume power over the country, which didn’t happen, and it has to break the rule of law, which didn’t happen either.”
Governments around the world have decided differently, labeling Mr. Zelaya’s removal an illegal act and calling for his prompt return to power. On Monday, the day after the coup, President Obama said, “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there.”
Colonel Bayardo, dressed in green camouflage and wearing a blue beret, described a behind-the-scenes struggle between the armed forces and Mr. Zelaya that played out over the weeks before the decision to grab the president from his home, shuttle him to a military base and fly him out of the country.
The army had resisted participating in a nonbinding referendum on constitutional changes that Mr. Zelaya continued to push after both Congress and the courts had labeled the president’s move unconstitutional. Army lawyers were convinced that Mr. Zelaya was moving to lift a provision limiting presidents to a single term in office, Colonel Bayardo said.
When the army refused an order to help organize the referendum, the president fired the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez. He was reinstated by the Supreme Court, which found his removal illegal.
The detention order, signed June 26 by a Supreme Court judge, ordered the armed forces to detain the president, identified by his full name, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, at his home in the Tres Caminos area of Tegucigalpa, the capital. It accused him of treason and abuse of authority, among other charges.
“It was a clean operation,” Colonel Bayardo said, dismissing Mr. Zelaya’s remarks before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in which he described the arrest as a brutal coup. “It was a fast operation. It was over in minutes, and there were no injuries, no deaths. We said, ‘Sir, we have a judicial order to detain you.’ We did it with respect.”
Mr. Zelaya has challenged the legality of his ouster, telling reporters that whatever missteps he might have made did not justify his being put on a plane and sent out of the country.
“If I do something illegal, take me to court and give me the right to a defense,” he said. “But do not use the army to kidnap the president and carry him violently out of the country.”
Colonel Bayardo defended the president’s expulsion, saying there was a last-minute decision to send him out of the country, to lower tensions and prevent violence.
Two days before Mr. Zelaya’s removal, military leaders met with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of Congress at the time and now the interim president, to discuss what was viewed as a constitutional crisis, Colonel Bayardo said. But it was not until the day before the raid that everything came into place with a flurry of secret meetings involving army and civilian lawyers as well as a small group of political leaders. About 11 p.m. Saturday, the detention order reached the army’s top command, Colonel Bayardo said. It was carried out early the next morning.
Colonel Bayardo said a tight circle of people knew about the raid, and they did not include any American military or civilian leaders or other foreigners. “We had no obligation to inform the U.S.,” he said.
To maintain a credible constitutional democracy, it is necessary to have a slow and difficult procedure to change the constitution, otherwise you have a popular referendum, pack the ballot box and mob rule. The military in Honduras was right to have removed the Hugolito, Zelaya, and stop his Venezuelan mime. Of course our Acornated Master and Ruler objects. No shock there, as he is busy larding the electorate for his next election ascension.
Watch Obama go hard ass on this one to really make his lefty bona fides.
Dos amigos, Chavez y Zelaya. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (L) is embraced by his Honduran counterpart Manuel Zelaya upon his arrival at the Honduran Air Force base in south Tegucigalpa, 15 January, 2008. Chavez was in Honduras on an official visit to meet Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to sign a subsidized oil supply agreement between Honduras and Petrocaribe. No doubt they shared their thoughts and theories on constitutional democracy.
