Those Kids Crossing the Border From Mexico Wouldn't Be There If Obama Hadn't Supported a Coup the
Published on Saturday, July 12, 2014 by Common Dreams
Those Kids Crossing the Border From Mexico Wouldn't Be There If Obama Hadn't Supported a Coup the Media Doesn't Talk About
by Ted Rall
If you're reading this, you probably follow the news. So you've probably heard of the latest iteration of the "crisis at the border": tens of thousands of children, many of them unaccompanied by an adult, crossing the desert from Mexico into the United States, where they surrender to the Border Patrol in hope of being allowed to remain here permanently. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention and hearing system has been overwhelmed by the surge of children and, in some cases, their parents. The Obama Administration has asked Congress to approve new funding to speed up processing and deportations of these illegal immigrants.
Even if you've followed this story closely, you probably haven't heard the depressing backstory — the reason so many Central Americans are sending their children on a dangerous thousand-mile journey up the spine of Mexico, where they ride atop freight trains, endure shakedowns by corrupt police and face rapists, bandits and other predators. (For a sense of what it's like, check out the excellent 2004 film "Maria Full of Grace."
NPR and other mainstream news outlets are parroting the White House, which blames unscrupulous "coyotes" (human smugglers) for "lying to parents, telling them that if they put their kids in the hands of traffickers and get to the United States that they will be able to stay." True: the coyotes are saying that in order to gin up business. Also true: U.S. law has changed, and many of these kids have a strong legal case for asylum. Unfortunately, U.S. officials are ignoring the law.
The sad truth is that this "crisis at the border" is yet another example of "blowback."
Blowback is an unintended negative consequence of U.S. political, military and/or economic intervention overseas — when something we did in the past comes back to bite us in the ass. 9/11 is the classic example; arming and funding radical Islamists in the Middle East and South Asia who were less grateful for our help than angry at the U.S.' simultaneous backing for oppressive governments (The House of Saud, Saddam, Assad, etc.) in the region.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/07/12-4
= new reply since forum marked as read
Zelaya's attempted coup doesn't count, it would appear.
Friday 15 April 2011
U.S. to Open a New Military Base in Honduras
Tegucigalpa - Douglas M. Fraser, Commander of the U.S. Southern Command met Honduran Minister of Defense Marlon Pascua and agreed that the United States will increase its military bases in Honduran northern coast.
Fraser is visiting Honduras, according to him, for concreting cooperation agreements to fight drug trafficking and for a better regional security.
El Heraldo newspaper posted that a new base will be open in Islas de Bahia with the assessment of U.S. Southern Command.
The U.S. Southern Command is assessing another base since 2010 in Gracias a Dios department, in the border with Nicaragua with the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.
http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2011/april/15/centralamerica11041501.htm
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US to Open New Military Base in Honduras
by CubaDebate
The United States is planning to open a new military base in the Islas de la Bahía (Bay Islands) in Honduras, according to a report in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo this Wednesday.
The news emerged after the meeting between Honduran Defense Minister Marlon Pascual and the head of the US Sothern Command Douglas Fraser.
The US military commander is on a visit to this Central American country to promote agreements that supposedly expand the collaboration against drug trafficking and the struggle to improve regional security.
The Honduran newspaper said that the opening of this new military base would constitute the second such opening in less than a year, after April 2010 when the Southern Command established its presence in Gracias a Dios Department on the border with Nicaragua.
More:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/honduras160411.html
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Honduras Base Shows U.S. Military Role in Drug War
By Guy Taylor | 30 Nov 2011
Increased U.S. funding to fight drugs and organized crime in Mexico and Central America has attracted a good deal of attention in recent years. But flying largely under the radar is the growing role being played in that effort by the U.S. military, most notably now in Honduras, where U.S. Marines are engaged in a joint training exercise with Honduran troops and the Pentagon is financing a new naval base.
“There’s been a noticeable uptick in U.S. military aid and cooperation in Honduras during the past year,” says Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America.
While the United States has a history of coordinating with the Honduran military, Isacson reminded Trend Lines this week that the “spigot of aid” was, for a time, shut off after the June 2009 military coup that ousted former President Manuel Zelaya.
The best illustration that those taps are once again flowing may be the $2 million base slated to open next month on the island of Guanaja, just off the northern Honduran coast east of Belize.
More:
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/10793/honduras-base-shows-u-s-military-role-in-drug-war
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Enclosing an article just for the right-wing, pushy, greedy, pointless, perverted visitors who imagine progressives want to hear from them:
Honduras: The Frontline in the Battle for Democracy
Written by Dick Emanuelsson, Translation: Jessica Shao and Monica Wooters
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 02:46
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Battalion 3-16
Gloria Esperanza Reyes was one of the women arrested in the 80s, but she was lucky. She wasn't assassinated or forcibly disappeared like 218 and 110 Hondurans (respectively), victims of an order from the military intelligence unit known as "Battalion 3-16." The women were tortured with electric cables applied to their nipples and vaginas. They would start with 110 volts and ramp it up to 220 volts. "The first shock was so strong that you wished you were dead," recalls Gloria. José Barrera, one of the torturers of "3-16" confirmed Gloria's phrase, "They begged us to kill them. Torture is more horrible than death," said the thug on June 13, 1995 in an extended report from the Baltimore Sun daily newspaper in the United States.
What Barrera and the U.S. reporter did not know then was that one of the most hated members of "3-16," its captain Billy Joya, would walk into the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa on June 29, 2009 and sit down beside the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti as his "ministerial adviser." Joya knows how to pull the strings in a coup or a dirty war. He was one of the students "trained" by the Chilean police force during the Pinochet dictatorship.
The CIA Created a Monster
In August 1980, 25 officials from the Honduran Armed Forces landed on an unpaved runway in the deserts of the southwestern United States. They were received by five CIA agents, one of them called "Mr. Bill." Florencio Caballero, one of the 25 Hondurans that would be turned into an expert on "disappearances" in 3-16, told the Baltimore Sun, "We arrived at a military base; everything was private, no television, only video clips."
Battalion 3-16 was created by recommendation of the CIA in the context of the "Preventative War." It was an independent intelligence paramilitary command that with blind hatred executed anyone who smelled of subversion, progressiveness, or people's movements in Honduras. The inspiration and the "professors" came from the CIA and the Argentine military dictatorship, where their "efficiency" was shocking and resulted in 30,000 disappeared. Two Honduran generals, Gustavo Alvarez Martínez and José Bueso Rosa, confirmed that "the United States offered to create a special forces unit."
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2043-honduras-the-frontline-in-the-battle-for-democracy