BIG MEA CULPA - I screwed up, It's Not Carmona's Brother, It's Worse

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I got the initial report about this in a phone call from a friend today. She told me it was Pedro Carmona's brother. It isn't, it's even better. The guy who showed up in Tegucigalpa is Robert Carmona Borjas, who is an attorney who specializes in military law and was an associate of Pedro Carmona, the illegal coup president in Venezuela. When the military went looking for Pedro Carmona to arrest him after Chavez returned, he was holed up in a vacant house with Carmona Borjas. Carmona-Borjas is vice-president of Arcadia Foundation which appears to be a shell to cover up god knows what.

Zelaya's nephew was accused of corruption at Hondutel, the phone company, and Carmona Borjas was sent in as the attack dog.


Here's a little background on Carmona Borjas and Hondutel.

From Nicolas Kozloff's article, "Did the Infamous Otto Reich Have Anything to Do with the Coup in Honduras?"

Excerpt from article relating to Carmona Borjas:


The Mysterious Case of Arcadia and Robert-Carmona Borjas

Building up the case against Hondutel and Chimirri was none other than the Arcadia Foundation, a non-profit and anti-corruption watchdog that promotes "good governance and democratic institutions." For an organization that purportedly stands for transparency, the group doesn't provide much information about itself on its Web site. The two founders include Betty Bigombe, a Ugandan peace mediator and World Bank researcher, and Robert-Carmona Borjas, a Venezuelan expert in military affairs, national security, corruption, and governance. The Web site does not list any other staff members at its D.C. branch. Outside of the U.S., the organization has outlets in Spain, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala.

In his columns published in the conservative Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, Borjas has gone on the attack against Chávez. In recent months, he had expressed skepticism about Obama's foreign policy openness, particularly if it meant dealing with "totalitarian" figures such as the Venezuelan President. According to his bio, Borjas left Venezuela after the 2002 coup against Chávez and sought political asylum in the U.S.

Interested in knowing where Arcadia's funding comes from? You won't get any pointers from the Web site. Click on "In The Media" however and you get an endless list of Borjas' articles and links to news pieces related to Hondutel (and I mean endless: I saw about 70 articles before I got tired and stopped counting). There's no other published research on Arcadia's site, leading one to wonder whether the organization's sole purpose is to pursue the Hondutel case. There's no evidence that Borjas knows Reich, though given their common interest (or should I say obsession) in the Hondutel affair it seems at least possible that the two might have crossed paths.

In recent months, Borjas had driven his anti-Zelaya campaign into overdrive. As Weinberg has written, "The Honduran newspapers El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) and La Prensa (San Pedro Sula) noted June 11 that Carmona-Borjas had brought legal charges against Zelaya and other figures in his administration for defying a court ruling that barred preparations for the constitutional referendum scheduled for the day Zelaya would be ousted. A YouTube video dated July 3 shows footage from Honduras' Channel 8 TV of Carmona-Borjas addressing an anti-Zelaya rally in Tegucigalpa's Plaza la Democracia to enthusiastic applause. In his comments, he accuses Zelaya of collaboration with narco-traffickers."

So, there you have it: the International Republican Institute, an enigmatic Washington, D.C.-based organization intent on driving back Hugo Chávez, an inflammatory former policymaker with business connections and a high profile effort to discredit Zelaya and the Honduran state telecommunications company. What does it all amount to? There's no smoking gun here proving U.S. involvement in the coup, but taken together, these stories smell to high hell and should warrant further investigation. Perhaps if the mainstream media can drag itself away from the likes of Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin, we can get a more thorough picture of the political tensions between Washington and the Zelaya regime in recent months."
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2011

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1. Short Article from Prensa Latina About Robert Carmona Borjas Being in Honduras

Venezuelan Coupist in Honduras

Tegucigalpa, Jul 9 (Prensa Latina) The presence of Venezuelan coupist Robert Carmona in Honduras was denounced by the local radio station Radio Globo and popular organizations that describe him as an accomplice of the de-facto regime.

Journalist Luis Galdames, who hosts the radio program Detras de la noticia in the aforementioned radio station, said Carmona is staying at the downtown Plaza Libertador Hotel, in the capital, with a false identity: Armando Valladares.

Carmona was seen entering the premises of the Public Ministry, at 09:10 local hour, and two hours after went the Presidential Palace, Galdames said.
The movement of pacific resistance to the coup in Honduras blames Honduran attorney general's office for being the key leaders of the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya on June 28.

Galdames added that Carmona is closely related to leaders of the US extreme right like former ambassadors Otto Reich and John Dimitri Negroponte.

Some representatives of the pacific protest movement made a phone call to Prensa Latina's offices, announcing the presence of Carmona in this capital.

It adds he fled Venezuela, seeking asylum in Miami, after the unsuccessful coup perpetrated against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in April 2002.

gdb/rl/ms

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2. k