Obama and the Cunning Micheletti
Monday, 3 August 2009, 3:08 pm
Opinion: Carlos Fazio
La Jornada, July 27, 2009, p.19.
The oligarchical-military coup in Honduras represents an Obama-Clinton Administration strategy which is designed to push back the advances of democratically elected governments so that its imperial power can be maintained and consolidated in some “hot zones” of the planet. Such a strategy operates from a several prong political base, combining direct military intervention (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Irak) with clandestine and destabilizing operations (Venezuela, Iran, Honduras, Bolivia, Ecuador) and a two way diplomacy, that seeks to utilize the instruments and initiatives inherited by Barack Obama from the Bush Administration
The classist attack on the weakest Latin American link was undertaken to turn back the democratic government of Manuel Zelaya so that a new de facto client regime could be imposed in the empire´s back yard. The coup hopes to reinforce the conservative militarized pole of the Plan Puebla Panama/Merida Initiative, led by Mexico and Colombia. The progressive advances in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador complicated Washington´s geopolitical plans, that sought to bring an interventionist platform in South America into line focusing upon hydrocarbons in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the immense Amazon and the Guarani water resources. In that sense, it was also a blow against ALBA, the Bolivian Alternative for the Americas (la Alternativa Boliviana para las Americas).
To carry out the conspiracy, the State Department and Pentagon used the Honduran military high command that has been structurally penetrated by US security and intelligence organisms. The coup´s general, Romero Vázquez, its cunning adviser Roberto Micheletti and the founder of the 1980´s squadrons of death Billy Joya Améndola, were “exemplary students” in the US School of the Americas (la Escuela de las Américas). The military coup participants acted like an occupying army in their own country. But Honduras is also occupied by the United States which controls the Soto Cano (or Palmerola) military base where the force of the Tarea Conjunta Bravo can be found, consisting of half a thousand military personnel with advanced espionage and interventionist equipment including air combat equipment such as the HU-60, the Black Hawk and the CH-47 Chinook.
That base is part of a network of Advanced Operating Posts (FOL) of the Pentagon, integrated by Comalapa in El Salvador, Guantánamo in Cuba, Arruba, Curazo and Manta, in the Ecuadorian Pacific. Similar to Ecuador´s president´s decision about the Manta base, Zelaya had told the White House of his intention to convert Soto Cano into an international commercial airport which would be financed by Alba and Petro-Caribe. In substitution for Manta, the Pentagon succeeded in convincing Álvaro Uribe to put (Colombian) military bases at its disposal in Palanquera (Cundinamarca) Apiay (Meta) and Malambo (Atlántico) which will convert Colombia into the Israel of Latin America.
The hawks in the Department of State and the Pentagon also fell back upon their old connections with the primitive Honduran oligarchy which controls Congress and the Supreme Court and they (also) counted upon the legitimization of Cardenal Oscar Rodríguez Madariaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa. What we witnessed, then, was a civic-military coup of US design, with the consensus of the fascist powers.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0908/S00009.htm