Gord's Notebook : #OWS UPDATE: Obama Props Up Corrupt Anti-Democratic 1% Elite In Honduras

"I have first-hand information that the empire, through the U.S. Southern Command, is behind the coup d'etat in Honduras," Morales said during his visit to Uruguay's capital, Montevideo.

"Maybe I do not know Obama, but the imperial structure remains in force," he went on, accusing Washington of inciting civil violence in Bolivia and plotting his assassination.

Quote from 2009 article: Bolivian president says U.S. behind Honduras coup via Rianovosti July 14, 2009

President Obama has shown himself to be on the side of the 1% not just in America but in the Middle East (Bahrain ,Yemen,Saudi Arabia etc.) and Central America ( Honduras et al..)
Obama is no more in favor of recognizing the sovereignty of other nations than previous US presidents.

Obama supporters ignore the reality believing Obama's lovely little speeches and ignoring his actions.
Dana Frank sums up the consequences of Obama's anti-democracy anti-reform colonial Gun Boat diplomacy in Honduras since 2009.

"IT’S time to acknowledge the foreign policy disaster that American support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras has become. Ever since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed Honduras’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss. That abyss is in good part the State Department’s making.

The headlines have been full of horror stories about Honduras. According to the United Nations, it now has the world’s highest murder rate, and San Pedro Sula, its second city, is more dangerous than Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a center for drug cartel violence.

Much of the press in the United States has attributed this violence solely to drug trafficking and gangs. But the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression."

Quote from the article : In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S. By DANA FRANK The New York Times January 26, 2012

Obama is continuing the tradition of American Gun Boat diplomacy in latin America and the Middle East . Colonialism is not dead the Americans has never stopped treating countries around the globe as if they were American colonies which have no sovereign rights and the people are in effect America's slave laborers . The cold war they say is over yet the USA acts as if it is not as they take down regimes which are pro-democracy or pro-reform and those no longer enthralled by rapacious winner take all Corporate Capitalism. So the average citizens they say have no say in how they are to be governed its either America's way or no way. So any citizen of Bahrain or Honduras or even America who wants a society which is fair and just and takes care of their own are considered socialist and therefore by extension Enemies of the USA/CIA, the Military Industrial Complex and the 1% rich and powerful Elites and so according to American tradition Obama has no choice he tells us to carry on this form of Gun-Boat gun to the head diplomacy .

So here's a great song by Bruce Cockburn

Burn Baby Burn

Obama and his staff are personally involved with their continuing support of the anti-democratic Junta regime in Honduras. In 2009 the Obama government engineered a coup d'Etat to oust the legally elected and popular President of Honduras José Manuel Zelaya who had the audacity to suggest making changes in the country's constitution which was in fact a document written by Americans and foisted upon the peoples of Honduras. Unfortunately for Zelaya and the majority of the honduran people the United States wanted to maintain the status quo that is allowing a small elite of rich and corrupt notables rather than allow the Honduras to insist on its own sovereignty or to move towards a more democratic state in which the rights of all citizens would be protected and where most of the wealth of the nation was not concentrated in the hands of the elites.

One of the reasons Obama wants to insure friendly relations as in the case of Bahrain the US has a military base in Honduras and Obama has been increasing the numbers of bases across the globe. The oppression of either government is ignored by the Obama Regime as it presses forward with its own agenda. As Dana Frank argues the point;

"Why has the State Department thrown itself behind the Lobo administration despite brutal evidence of the regime’s corruption? In part because it has caved in to the Cuban-American constituency of Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and her allies. They have been ferocious about Honduras as a first domino with which to push back against the line of center-left and leftist governments that have won elections in Latin America in the past 15 years. With its American air base, Honduras is also crucial to the United States’ military strategy in Latin America."

so is this the start of more interventions in South America to parallel with what the Obama white House is doing in the Middle East takem down one by one
So now this is just history repeating itself just a couple decades later. The US uner Eisenhower Nixon Reaganjust like they did in the 1950s to 1990. The excuse or rationale during the Cold War they intervened because the Soviets were intervening so who's the enemy now any sovereign state which has a government that is not an ally and a sychophant to the USA then they are the "Enemy"
So sovereingty is just another old fashioned quaint idea.

Honduran Prison Fire Example Of Obama's Disastrous Policy in Honduras

Honduran Prison fire highlights on going problem in Honduras which have worsened since the 2009 Obama backed Coup D'etat which ousted popular President José Manuel Zelaya who wanted to use Honduras' wealth to better the living conditions for all Hondurans and not just the elite and their supporters in the military and the police forces.

Honduran Prison Fire tragedy was forseeable and preventible . The government of Honduras which came to power in a 2009 coup d'etat backed by the Obama administration to oust the popular president Zelaya who wanted to create a more fair and just society in which the Elites (the 1%) would be made to share some of their wealth with the rest of the country's population. Zelaya made the mistake of believing that he could improve the lot of the Honduran peoples without US interference . Zelaya was wrong the US has been intervening in Hunuran domestic politics for at least the four decades or more.

Honduran leaders are supposed to accept the fact that whatever they do must first be approved by the USA in this case the Obama Regime.
The Junta has been a disaster for the peoples of Honduras since the Honduran government is corrupt and is itself involved in the the drug trade. The government in power in Honduras does not recognize the civil or human rights of its citizens except for those who are part of the elite in power at the moment .

It was during this US manufactured Coup d'etat that President Obama proved he was just part of the status quo in America and was sending a clear message to show what the US would do to other politicians or groups or individuals who would have the audacity to insist on real substantive reforms and change in their countries without US approval. America as we know finds it easier to deal with Oppressive brutal regimes which are stable and dependable rather than deal with more democratic governments which can be unpredictable from one election to another.

Just an aside those in the #OWS or Occupy movement and those who still support Obama unconditionaly should take note of what the Obama regime really thinks about democracy, human rights and freedoms and " the fair and just" redistribution of wealth.Honduras is not the only oppressive regime Obama supports we can also add Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen up until recently Egypt , Morocco , Syria, Uzbeckistan .
This should also be a reminder that for all his blather Obama did not and still does not support the so-called Arab Spring which has ousted friends of the Obama and previous American Regimes.

In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.
By DANA FRANK The New York Times January 26, 2012

IT’S time to acknowledge the foreign policy disaster that American support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras has become. Ever since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed Honduras’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss. That abyss is in good part the State Department’s making.

The headlines have been full of horror stories about Honduras. According to the United Nations, it now has the world’s highest murder rate, and San Pedro Sula, its second city, is more dangerous than Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a center for drug cartel violence.

Much of the press in the United States has attributed this violence solely to drug trafficking and gangs. But the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.

The current government of President Lobo won power in a November 2009 election managed by the same figures who had initiated the coup. Most opposition candidates withdrew in protest, and all major international observers boycotted the election, except for the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which are financed by the United States.

President Obama quickly recognized Mr. Lobo’s victory, even when most of Latin America would not. Mr. Lobo’s government is, in fact, a child of the coup. It retains most of the military figures who perpetrated the coup, and no one has gone to jail for starting it.

...This chain of events — a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted — has now allowed corruption to mushroom. The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns. At least 34 members of the opposition have disappeared or been killed, and more than 300 people have been killed by state security forces since the coup, according to the leading human rights organization Cofadeh. At least 13 journalists have been killed since Mr. Lobo took office, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The police in Tegucigalpa, the capital, are believed to have killed the son of Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the country’s biggest university, along with a friend of his, on Oct. 22, 2011. Top police officials quickly admitted their suspects were police officers, but failed to immediately detain them. When prominent figures came forward to charge that the police are riddled with death squads and drug traffickers, the most famous accuser was a former police commissioner, Alfredo Landaverde. He was assassinated on Dec. 7. Only now has the government begun to make significant arrests of police officers.