...for refueling, for godssakes! It was a U.S.-sponsored coup--and we now know one more of the interests behind it--mining corporations! But whether the coup was of Obama administration design I don't know. I tend to doubt it because of the timing--only six months into the Obama administration, and shortly after he announced a policy of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. I think it was designed by the Bush Junta, implemented by Bushwhack moles within the government and military and abetted by assholes like first term Senator Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold), with Hillary Clinton in collusion with them (to what extent I'm not sure; perhaps agreed to the coup but not to Zelaya being killed, and then became a full-on colluder when she arranged a U.S. State Dept. election in Honduras under martial law--a total farce). One of its purposes was to derail Obama's stated policy and he couldn't do anything about it (if he was sincere about his policy in the first place--unclear, hard to know). I don't think Obama had much power at that point. Leon Panetta had been commissioned by Bush Sr. to end the war between the Pentagon and the CIA that Cheney and Rumsfeld had started, and keep Jr. out of jail. And both Obama and Panetta were also running Bush's two wars, and Obama was a bit preoccupied with that and with the Bush Junta-induced worldwide Depression.
I don't think Obama has much power now, but more than he did then. in any case, the Honduran coup occurred on his watch, with many colluding U.S. parties--also John MCain, who has telecommunications interests in Honduras and probably Chiquita and other such exploitative and death squad-using U.S. corporations, as well as the Miami Mafia and associated interests, and "war on drugs" profiteers (DEA, FBI, AFT, etc., and the Pentagon's so-called "Southern Command" which is building more bases in Honduras). "Banana Republics" are a gravy-train for many U.S. interests, and are also a launching pad for making trouble in neighboring countries like Nicaragua (leftist government) and little El Salvador (leftist government). Honduras has a long, ugly history of being the footstool of U.S. paid killers. Indeed, one of the coup generals stated that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States (--in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). By "communism," of course, he meant universal free health care, universal free education, workers' rights, good wages, benefits and working conditions, strong corporate regulation, good government services and honest elections--in other words, government "of, by and for" the people.
So now they've got their bastion against 'communism' reaching these shores and they can exploit it to the hilt, for every evil purpose.
There was some further odd going's on around all this, and my suspicion is that Bush Jr. and/or other Bush Junta principles may have been indictable in Colombia, for U.S. military and other U.S. crimes in Colombia, that Bush operative Alvaro Uribe (who murdered his way into the presidency of Colombia) and the U.S. military and other agencies were involved in consolidating the trillion+ dollar cocaine trade into fewer hands and better directing its huge profits to U.S. banksters and other beneficiaries. I think they needed Honduras as a transit route. An honest government would not have permitted it. As we have seen in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, their record of busting big drug lords has greatly improved since they threw the U.S. "war on drugs" out. U.S. spying and subversion have also been reduced. (Agencies like the DEA were being used for such purposes). They had to get rid of Zelaya, for this and other reasons. He was an obstacle to the drug lords and to their succubi, the U.S. (allegedly) anti-drug agencies.
So Honduras, in addition to being raped by U.S. transglobal corporations and their political lackeys, by the Pentagon, by the U.S.-trained and funded Honduran military, by the "ten families" who run the country on behalf of these interests and to fatten their own pockets, and by the imported and local rightwing death squads--many murders of leftists, journalists and others--is being trampled over by drug lords, and the more U.S. "war on drugs" agents pour into the country, the more the drugs do flow. It is a hogtied relationship--the "war on drugs" and the flow of drugs.
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