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Downwinder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-07-10 12:49 AM
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Hillary Clinton Visits Guatemala & Honduras
RIGHTS ACTION INFORMATION: Annie Bird, Washington DC

http://www.quotha.net/node/795
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-07-10 05:42 AM
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1. This part is too damned good to not post. Holy smoke. Wow.
From the article posted by Downwinder:

The last time Hillary Clinton visited Guatemala, her husband, then President, officially apologized for the US support of the military dictatorships that carried out genocide in Guatemala. What was seen then as an insincere apology remains so today, since the US has decided to continue supporting repressive military regimes in Central America.

So good to see that written and published.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-07-10 10:31 PM
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2. Thanks for posting this! It's especially enlightening on Guatemala and also on John Negroponte's
activities in Guatemala and Honduras, recently. I was aware of his past actions in this region. His trail through these countries still drips with blood. And Hillary Clinton seems to be forging a new legacy of murder, black ops and organized crime. I was appalled to learn that she had Negroponte as an adviser on Honduras, which helps to explain the U.S. stabbing Honduran President Zelaya in the back and U.S. toleration of death squad murders and promotion of a so-called election under martial law. On Latin America, the transition from Bush Jr. to Obama has been seamless. There is no difference between them that I can see--except that Clinton seems even more determined to destroy democracy in Latin America.

"The last high level State Department visit to Guatemala was the June 2008 visit from the then Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, who visited Honduras in the same trip."

Note this date, June 2008. The plot to dismantle Honduran democracy, to kidnap and exile the elected president and to begin murdering union, human rights and community leaders, likely began with Negroponte's visit a year before the coup was perpetrated. It clearly has the smell of a Bushwhack plot--and Bushwhacks John McCain, Jim DeMint and others were thickly involved. But the shocker was Clinton. I had no illusions about her on Clintonesque "neo-liberalism" and the servicing of U.S. multinational corporations and war profiteers. I didn't think she would be so brutal and go so far. The U.S./Colombia military agreement was the capper. Could her message of bullying, threatening and dominating Latin America be any clearer? And how/why did this come about, when Obama promised "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America? Was he lying? Has he been undermined? Is he powerless? I still don't really know. Chavez said that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon." I would say "prisoner of the Pentagon and the DLC and Jim DeMint" on Latin America. Obama's stated policy is being egregiously violated.

On Guatemala, the article provides some interesting stuff. For instance:

--

In 2008, Negroponte visited Honduras and Guatemala as tensions grew between the US Ambassador to Honduras Charles Ford and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. The newly installed Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colom, whom some consider to be left leaning, was struggling to get his footing amidst massive violence including a terror campaign of organized killing of bus drivers.

Hillary Clinton will now visit Guatemala to promote the same anti-drug initiative that was the pretext for John Negroponte’s visit, the “Merida Initiative”. She arrives in the shadow of the March 2, 2010 arrest of the Director of the Guatemalan police force (PNC) and the chief of the anti-drug agency (DAIA) by CICIG, the UN affiliated commission to prosecute organized crime in Guatemala.

The arrest of two principal partners of the Merida Initiative in Guatemala calls into question the impact of the Initiative, which in 2009 designated $16 million for programs in Guatemala, largely with the PNC and DAIA.
--from the OP

--

So, the U.S. has been funding corruption and crime. No surprise under the Bush Junta. But under the Obama administration?

The article asks the following question, but, frankly, I wouldn't put this in question form any more:

--

Does the Obama Administration not know that ‘staying the course’ in partnership with the militaries and police forces of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador will only strengthen organized crime, result in crimes against humanity, and foster instability…, or is that the objective?--from the OP

--

I think U.S. funding of corruption and crime in these countries, and in other Latin American countries, is intentional. Basically, only corrupt rightwingers will toady to U.S. corporate/war profiteer interests, so that is who the U.S. government supports--corrupt rightwingers, whether they be the "opposition" in countries with leftist governments, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador or Guatemala, or installed by the U.S, as in Honduras and Colombia, or got elected by corrupt means including U.S. funding or bribery/election fraud, as in Peru and Mexico and as I increasingly suspect occurred recently in Chile (with the 'election' of a rightwing billionaire, when the outgoing (termed out) leftist president has an 80% approval rating). The U.S. is always on the wrong side--the side of the rich elite, the corrupt and the criminal--and is avidly funding the wrong side, and actively working to destabilize and overthrow good social justice leaders.

The article describes the torture and death of Guatemalan President Colom's military defense adviser--a curious tale that points to the Bushwhack U.S. ambassador as a possible actor in removing this anti-military corruption adviser. It then describes one of the strangest political murder plots ever--the death of a prominent rightwing attorney who left behind a video blaming Colom for his murder. A UN commission was called in to investigate, and determined that the death was a suicide and that Colom had nothing to do with it. Was this another Bushwhack time-bomb like Honduras--intended to topple leftist Colom? It has the flavor of the Bushwhack CIA "suitcase full of money" caper out of Miami--by which they tried to sully the leftist presidents of Venezuela and Argentina. Bizarre, twisted, absurd Bushwhack evil. It may take 50 years of FOIA requests to find out.
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roody Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Mar-08-10 12:13 AM
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3. k and r for article and comments
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