Hillary MUST Answer For Honduras: Another Assassination Raises Questions Re: Coup Involvement

[AzDar]

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/18/hillary_must_answer_for_honduras_partner/

From The Link:

The early March assassination of Honduran social movement leader Berta Cáceres provoked international outcry, and calls for 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton to discuss her support of the country’s 2009 coup, which ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya and escalated the violent repression of human rights defenders.

Now, just days after the Clinton campaign dismissed these demands for accountability as “simply nonsense,” Nelson Garcia, a member of the same indigenous justice organization Cáceres was part of, has been shot to death. An outspoken activist with the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Garcia, 30, was killed by “unknown assailants” this week following the violent eviction of families in the community of Rio Chiquito in Rio Lindo, according to a COPINH statement emailed to AlterNet.

The U.S. role in the coup is verified in Clinton’s memoir and released emails. WikiLeaks cables from 2009 show that the state department at the time had no illusions about what was happening. As Greg Grandin recently noted in the Nation, Zelaya’s ouster paved the way for “an all-out assault on these decent people—torture, murder, militarization of the countryside, repressive laws, such as the absolute ban on the morning-after pill, the rise of paramilitary security forces, and the wholesale deliverance of the country’s land and resources to transnational pillagers.”

It’s hard to understate the extent to which Clinton’s actions on Honduras were a huge foreign policy failure,” Beeton continued. “Clinton needs to answer why she did this and why they thought this was a good idea.”

LOVE how the Clinton Campaign initially tried to dismiss this as "simply nonsense" like SO MANY other bungles and scandals...


More At Link...

[wyldwolf]

1. or... what?

[tk2kewl]

4. or wait for Karma to catch up with her

[wyldwolf]

7. mmm... ok.

[surrealAmerican]

16. Or the Republicans are going to bring it up in the general election.

Sure, they look stupid, but they do this kind of stuff.

[wyldwolf]

17. so if she 'answers' for it, Republicans WON'T bring it up?

[surrealAmerican]

18. So, you would rather wait until closer to the election?

Why is that a better strategy?

[wyldwolf]

19. like other faux scandals being pushed by 'prooogresssiiivvees,' this is a non-issue

[surrealAmerican]

22. So, you assume, based on your research ...

... that this is fake?

Why wouldn't she talk about it then, and put the matter to rest?

[wyldwolf]

25. yeah, I do. Innuendo.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

23. No. It's a real issue. I wasn't very up on it until last week, and I spent a couple of hours reading

That, of course, doesn't make me an expert. But it does let me know that there's some real significance to this story on multiple fronts.

[monicaangela]

2. I can't see any reason for this or Libbya

[AzDar]

3. She is a DISASTER... Henry The K must be so PROUD of her exploits.

[monicaangela]

15. I would say he would be....was she, is she a student of his?

If she isn't, then she has read his books and appears to be trying to imitate what his has uh accomplished/done. I agree, a disaster is a perfect description.

[artislife]

5. And they call her progressive.

Ha.

[Onlooker]

6. It should be Obama who answers, not Hillary

The buck stops with the President, not the Sec'y of State, but this is a good strategy to help drive black voters away from Bernie.

[TheDormouse]

9. It would be great if we could take off our campaigning hats for a second & discuss this

as Americans, as human beings.

Has the public ever gotten a full explanation from Obama and Clinton and other involved administration officials of their actions related to the events in Honduras?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

24. Since she was hiding much of this information from the President, she needs to answer.

And sure, Obama should have to answer for this too. He chose her as Secretary of State, and when your Secretary of State aids in the aftermath of a coup, you need to be held responsible. But the lion's share goes to Hillary.

[MisterP]

8. there's always one incident that tips the scales: Iran-Contra had actually

been revealed in the US media several times since 1983, but it took the switcheroo with Eugene Hasenfus in 1987, because that's how the news cycle works

Honduras, unfortunately never in the headlines for good reasons, saw hundreds of deaths over 7 years, and it never made it past reports in Democracy Now and firewalled articles in The Nation

it took one death, one woman who'd gotten US attention before, to finally get the conversation started

[TheDormouse]

11. The coup WAS in the news at the time; it was on tv news broadcasts even, but

since then it has disappeared down the memory hole.

The mainstream media would rather cover Donald Trump's hands size than investigate US actions involving Central America.

Remember all those kids crossing the border that led to the massive stirring up of the immigration debate? Which led to Trump announcing at his initial press conference that he would seal the border and throw out all the immigrants? It partly traces back to the instability in Honduras.

[kgnu_fan]

10. Hillary was deeply involved and she can not escape from this.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/18/slain_activist_berta_caceras_daughter_us

[Dem2]

12. I saw this stupidity on reddit

Of course it gets upvoted, but the top few comments separate the wheat from the chaff.

[wyldwolf]

21. LOL. The first reply nails it.

[Octafish]

13. Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup

Originally, President Obama backed ousted Honduran president (supporters shown in civilian clothes below).

Dancing with Monsters: The U.S. Response to the 2009 Honduran Coup

"A coup anywhere in Latin America is a very big deal.”

By Alvaro Valle
Harvard Political Review, April 13, 2015

SNIP...

The U.S. Response

Latin American governments immediately denounced Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup. The United States was not quite as decisive in its diction, with the initial statement from the Obama administration merely calling on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms.” Obama did go on to denounce the coup in the following days, but Frank noted that Obama’s characterization of the government change was very important. “He very clearly failed to call it a military coup. If he had called it a military coup, the United States would have had to immediately suspend all police and military aid,” Frank explained. “Eventually some money sent was suspended, but the vast majority was not.”

Following the coup, President Obama called many times for the reinstatement of Zelaya. In contrast, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks that were far more equivocal. When asked if the United States had any plans to alter aid to the coup government, , “Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome.” Clinton seemed to prioritize having a stable regime over preserving democratic ideals.

As further evidence, Clinton wrote in her book, Hard Choices, “In the subsequent days [after the coup] … we strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot,” revealing that even as the administration publicly advocated for Zelaya’s return, Clinton was not working to ensure that it would happen.

Pastor added that Clinton had personal connections with supporters of the coup government that may have led her to soften her stance. For instance, Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton’s former personal lawyer and a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, lobbied in Washington for the Honduran coup government, Honduran elites, the Business Council of Latin America, and the American companies that took issue with Zelaya’s reforms. Bennett Ratcliff, another top Democratic campaigner with close ties to the Clintons, also worked for the Honduran coup government as a lobbyist in Washington. These personal connections to advocates for the coup government raise troubling concerns that political ties influenced Clinton’s stance.

In Clinton’s defense, these personal connections were not the only political forces supporting the coup. Levitsky noted that initial opposition to the coup in the United States may have given way because “Republicans held a couple of major U.S.-Latin America appointments: the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassador to Brazil. They held these positions hostage to a softening of U.S. policy toward the coup government.”

CONTINUED w/ links sources etc....

http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/us-honduran-coup/

Thank you for the heads-up, AzDar. Odd how little Democracy matters to some people who should have it in their DNA.

[vintx]

20. This story should be HUGE here.

A more apt name for this site would be Conservative Democrat Underground

[amborin]

14. K&R

[Trust Buster]

26. How can Hillary run for president ? According to the Sanders crowd, she already was the president.

[Uncle Joe]

27. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, AzDar.