Informal Empire: The Case of Honduras, by Jeff Nygaard

[Downwinder]

http://www.quotha.net/node/680

PP. this might be the answer to my question.
It might also answer the Trial Balloon.

[Peace Patriot]

1. I don't agree with this author on some major points, but I think that his thesis is well worth

thinking about, most especially as the M.O. of the Obama/Clinton regime in Latin America, but that M.O. is not a changed U.S. policy; it is rather part of a continuum that includes (is intended to include) violence and proxy violence against the leftist majority.

The author (Jeff Nygaard) says, "I haven't seen any evidence of direct U.S. involvement in the June 28th coup in Honduras." He must be blind. The plane taking the elected president of Honduras out of the country at gunpoint stopped for refueling at the U.S. air base in Sota Cano, Honduras. Were the U.S. commanders at that base too busy playing video games to notice that a plane with blackened windows was passing through their airport? They're supposed to be monitoring drug operations and "terrorists"! The U.S. embassy in Honduras has admitted having pre-knowledge of the coup. So, who gave the order to stand down to the U.S. commanders at the Honduran base?

Secondly, where they dumped him on the tarmac in his pyjamas--after shooting up his house, terrorizing his family and removing him from the country by force (a violation of a plain prohibition against exile in the Honduran constitution)--was Costa Rica, a U.S. "free trade" client state, where Hillary Clinton, in collusion with Costa Rica's president, Oscar Arias, began the process of delay by which the Junta in Honduras was able to consolidate its power and start sending its death squads after anti-coup activists.

No "evidence of direct U.S. involvement"? I strongly disagree!

Nygaard then argues that the "new" U.S. foreign policy is a sort of "soft power" policy--what he calls "informal empire"--which involves "sending in the Marines" only is extremity. Tell that to relatives of the million dead people in Iraq! Tell that to the dozens killed every week by U.S. soldiers and U.S. "drones" in Afghanistan. But I will let Nygaard speak for himself:

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"When I say that Empire in the 21st Century is a global phenomenon, I am referring to the fact that there are established global trade and financial patterns that work to direct wealth and resources in certain directions, serving the interests of certain people at the expense of others. So, for example, people in India no longer pay taxes directly to England (as used to be the case with the salt tax, for example), but instead now work in the factories and offices of corporations, with the profits leaving the country, destination Europe and the USA. And this happens all over the world, with 'legions of hungry college grads in India, China, and the Philippines willing to work twice as hard for one-fifth the pay,' as Business Week recently put it."

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He says that Honduras was an example of this "informal empire" (--dead, beheaded, shot, tortured, raped, imprisoned anti-coup activists to the contrary notwithstanding).

He also says that the lies told here in Washington DC, and throughout the corpo-fascist media, were a means of preventing us--U.S. taxpayers, who pay for this "empire," and in whose name it is perpetrated on others--from perceiving this truth (i.e., that the Honduran coup was to preserve slave labor for Chiquita, for instance, or the Gap's sweatshops). Nygaard writes:

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"The New York Times headlined its story on the coup, 'Honduran Army Ousts President Allied to Chavez.' Get it? Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the most-recognizable official enemy of the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere, so such a headline serves to set a tone. As Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus put it in an August 6th column, 'The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya—an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez—was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.' Not only is that false, but much of the truth that might support a different interpretation of the recent events remains largely unreported in the U.S".

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That is true, as far it goes. The story line was an egregious lie. But I don't think this writer gets at the core motive for the coup, which I will discuss in a moment. He writes:

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"My point here is not to 'prove' U.S. involvement in the recent coup in Honduras. It is to point to some patterns and relationships and facts that, together, open the door to an explanation of the coup d'etat in Honduras that is equally plausible, or more plausible, than the explanation that is almost universally accepted by consumers of the news in this country. Not only is this alternative explanation more plausible, but it places the coup in the context of Empire, an informal Empire that doesn't directly send in the Marines, as 'past policies' would have it (they're busy in Asia at the moment), but instead weaves an Imperial Web of great power and little accountability."

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Again, true enough. And he throws in one more thing--as part of the corporate motivation:

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"Canadian activist Karine Walsh, writing in Dissident Voice on August 29th, reminds us in this vein that 'the coup in Honduras was not only directed against President Manuel Zelaya and the Honduran people, but it especially targeted the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean which had chosen (like Honduras) to join ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas) which is a proposed alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas, differing from the latter in that it advocates a socially-oriented trade block rather than one strictly based on the logic of deregulated profit maximization."

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Yes, yes, yes, this is true--and probably the main corporate target. But what Nygaard ignores is Honduras' strategic position and history as a "lily pad" country for U.S. aggression in the region, the Pentagon's simultaneous huge military buildup in Colombia (a secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia agreement for SEVEN new U.S. military bases in Colombia, with other dramatic escalations and escalation clauses; and $6 BILLION in U.S. military to Colombia--a government and military with one of the worst human rights records on earth ); two new U.S. military bases in Panama, the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, and other activities and plans, which--taken together (if you look at a map)--show the Pentagon surrounding Venezuela's main oil reserves, facilities and shipping on Venezuela's oil coast.

Eva Golinger uncovered a USAF document that explained what this was all about--this military buildup is for "full spectrum" military operations in South America, to deal with threats from drugs, "terrorists" AND "anti-U.S. countries."

I have stated many times that I think the Pentagon is planning a war against Venezuela--to net Venezuela's northern oil region into a U.S. "sphere of influence" in the Central America/Caribbean/northern South America region. Toppling the leftist governments that have been elected in Central America, recently, and that are allied with the Chavez government, either directly in ALBA, or in spirit--an alignment on most major policies--would be the first order of business for such a war plan. And Honduras would be the first place to strike--then, the leftist democracies that are adjacent to Honduras: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala. The Honduran coup provides the "lily pad" from which to destabilize and topple these newly elected leftist governments, but--more important than anything else--it secures the U.S. military base in Honduras, which President Zelaya proposed converting to a commercial airport, and also Pentagon port facilities in Honduras (for the 4th Fleet).

Ecuador, another Venezuelan ally, adjacent to Colombia to the south (and also on the Pentagon hit list, for acquiring sufficient oil to fuel its great war machine) just this year kicked the U.S. military out of Ecuador. The Pentagon does not want this to happen anywhere else!. That was a threat, with President Zelaya; and, at the least, he would not be a cooperative partner in any aggression against Venezuela.

What the Pentagon is setting up in South America--primarily in Colombia--is South Vietnam deja vu all over again. The client state--with a government and military wholly propped up with U.S. tax dollars--"invites" the U.S. military into their country, and they are then used by the U.S. as the front for a U.S. war.

Let me conclude by just mentioning this new U.S./Colombia military base that Colombia just announced is going to be built on the Guajira peninsula. The Guajira peninsula is a butt of land that sticks out into the Caribbean on the northwestern (Colombia) side of the Gulf of Venezuela, and the tip of the peninsula, where this base will be located, is a controlling position for shipping in and out of the Gulf from Venezuela's oil coast. The peninsula also contains a sliver of land belonging to Venezuela. The U.S/Colombia military base will be only 20 miles from the Venezuelan border--a convenient location at which to manufacture a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident to start a war. Also, USAID and other funds have been poured into the pockets of rightwing politicians and fascist vigilante groups in this northern region of Venezuela, who openly talk of secession. So you have a "double South Vietnam" situation: Colombia "invites" the U.S. military full scale into Colombia, and local fascists in Venezuela declare their "independence" and "invite" the U.S. and Colombian militaries into Venezuela to support their "freedom fight." (There is considerable evidence that this is the war strategy that will be used.)

Whether this will be Obama's new war, or Obama is merely letting all of these war assets be put in place, to be used by whoever the war profiteers Diebold into the White House in 2012, I do not know. It may be like the one-two punch of Bill Clinton crippling Iraq with sanctions and no-fly zones, then Bush/Cheney ordering the U.S. military to bomb the country unmercifully, killing a million innocent people, and invading and occupying the country, for Exxon Mobil & brethren. $6 BILLION (thus far) to Colombia in military aid alone. SEVEN new U.S. military bases. U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports in Colombia. NO LIMIT on the number of U.S. troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there. Unlimited "diplomatic immunity" for those troops and 'contractors.' And secrecy, sneakiness and lying about it all to the American public. ("Just a few military advisers...".)

I see the Honduran coup--the direct involvement of the Pentagon, the probable involvement of the U.S. embassy and the State Department--in this context: The U.S. militarization of its dispute with the leftist governments of the region.

We are not just looking at "soft power" or "informal empire." We are looking at the Roman legions marching in. And, believe me, it was no "soft" game in Honduras. Ask the dead.