Honduran journalist killing makes 8 for the year

[Judi Lynn]

Honduran journalist killing makes 8 for the year
By the CNN Wire Staff
August 26, 2010 -- Updated 0029 GMT (0829 HKT)

(CNN) -- A Honduran reporter was found shot to death Tuesday in the city of San Pedro Sula, making him at least the eighth journalist killed in the country this year.

Unidentified gunmen shot Israel Zelaya Diaz twice in the head and once in the chest, according to local press reports. Zelaya worked for broadcaster Radio International. He had last been seen earlier Tuesday.

"It is a very deep hurt in my heart because it leaves a hole in me, I'm left helpless, I'm left alone," said his daughter, Angie Gabriela Zelaya. "I feel very bad because of everything that is happening in the country and the authorities must investigate the death of my father because this cannot stand."

Zelaya worked as a journalist for more than 20 years and reported on national issues during his radio show.

International press freedom organizations expressed alarm at the killing of another journalist in Honduras.

More:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/25/honduras.journalist.killed/index.html#fbid=q1U2OJnT7yd&wom=false

[Peace Patriot]

1. I've long suspected that much of the chaos in Iraq was deliberately induced by Rumsfeld

and the private military 'contractors' that he larded our money on. And it certainly reminded me of U.S. policy under Reagan in Latin America, and under Bush Jr in Colombia. And now we seem to have this policy in Honduras, deja vus all over again. Michel Chossudovsky (Canadian Center for Research on Globalization) fingers John Negroponte--ambassador to Iraq under Jr, and, as we learned, advisor to Hillary Clinton, on the Honduran coup.

--------------------------

America's secret war: From Latin America to Iraq

Published 25 August, 2010, 03:35

Death squads, a military tactic that began in El Salvador in the 1980’s, are now being seen in Iraq.

Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Center for Research on Globalization in Canada argued that the death squad approach created in El Salvador to fight the liberation movement has been adopted by the US and employed in Iraq.

Chossudovsky said that John Negroponte, former US ambassador to El Salvador, played a key role in supporting this approach, and assisted in setting up similar programs supported by the US in other Latin American nations.

In 2004 Negroponte became the US ambassador to Iraq, brining this military approach, ‘the Salvadorian option’ to Iraq.

“We see the practice of this Salvadorian option in Iraq; it was directed against university professors, intellectuals, professional, medical doctors, the whole basis of Iraqi society,” said Chossudovsky.

(MORE)

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-08-25/americas-secret-war-iraq.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. It doesn't do Negroponte's image any favors when he tries to protest any involvement in El Salvador

with the death squads when we learn the death squad plan they set up in Iraq was even named El Slavador Option.

Of course anyone who's heard of him all these years knew he was lethal, and treacherous long ago. What a shock it is to know this Democratic administration is using his services. It absolutely sickens a person.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Hillary Clinton's agenda in Latin America seems to be exactly the same as that of

the Bush Junta and its operatives, such as John Negroponte, Jim DeMint (Diebold-SC) and William Brownfield. All you really had to know about her is that she hired Mark Penn--a paid agent of the narco-fascists running Colombia--to run her campaign. That shocked even me! Then we found out she has John Negroponte advising her as well. Jeez. Obama was more circumspect and still is. Hard man to figure. What I hoped was that she would enact HIS stated policy of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. Then came Honduras (with Negroponte as adviser). End of that hope.

What I see happening now--and am greatly worried about--in broad outline is a shift from wasting military and other resources on the hopeless Bushwhack disaster areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Middle East in general, and re-focus of U.S. government service to multinational corporations and war profiteers in Latin America. Closer to home. Easier pickuns. In fact, I'm thinking this was the main reason that Clinton was chosen to be, and agreed to be, Sec of State--to reconquer Latin America, most particularly for control of the biggest oil reserves on earth, Venezuela's (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to a recent USGS report)--right across the "smaller pond" of the Caribbean, where the U.S. has reconstituted the 4th Fleet and has been placing and securing other war assets, some right off Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast. The next target--after the rightwing coup in Honduras--is probably Nicaragua, another Venezuelan ally, and this is probably why the U.S. military is set to occupy the once demilitarized Costa Rica. The immediate strategy, I think, is to "circle the wagons" in the Caribbean/Central America/northern South America region, hijacking closer-to-home oil supplies, in Venezuela (and probably Ecuador), and other resources, securing large populations of slave labor, and installing U.S.-friendly, fascist governments, with the aim of preventing a Latin America Common Market (which is well on its way to formation in South America, and was just forming in Central America), and "dividing and conquering" and destroying the leftist democracy movement in Latin America, in general. The methods will be similar to the Reagan era methods--economic warfare, death squad hits against community leaders (rife in Colombia already, and increasing in Honduras), dirty tricks (aimed at destabilization), intense propaganda (already well under way), and possibly, this time, outright war: Oil War II.

I have no illusions left about Hillary Clinton. I still have a few about Obama (that he wouldn't authorize such a war), but he can be easily dispatched by the lethal combo of the corpo-fascist media and rightwing corporate monopoly control of the voting machines throughout the U.S. They're already working on that narrative.

Recent developments in Colombia would, on the surface, seem to suggest a DIFFERENT Clinton policy in Latin America than that of the Bush Junta (which was to, basically, pour billions of our tax dollars into Colombian military death squad killings of union and leftist/community leadership, plot coups and assassinations, pour more billions into the most rightwing groups in the region, and ratchet up U.S. militarization of the region. The new U.S. tool in Colombia, former Defense Minister Manuel Santos--replacing the Uribe narco-thug regime--seems more into democracy cosmetics. They can afford such cosmetics now that so many trade unionists and other leftist leaders are dead, and so many peasant farmers (5 million!) displaced from their land. I really don't trust this at all. I think it's merely P.R. to sweep all the bloodshed under the rug and get the U.S./Colombia "free trade for the rich" agreement through Congress (where it has been held up by labor Democrats who object to the slaughter of trade unionists in Colombia). "Free trade for the rich" in a big country like Colombia--with considerable mineral and other resources, and a vast pool of deliberately impoverished slave labor--is needed to begin the economic warfare against leftist countries in earnest.

The U.S. is bucking an historical movement whose time has come--social justice and self-rule in Latin America. The U.S. may well cause a lot more suffering and create considerable mayhem but I don't think it will win this battle, even if they escalate to war. Relative wealth and military hardware are not so important as motivation--defense of one's homeland, desire for self-determination--as we learned in Vietnam--and, indeed, as we learned in our own revolution. We have been on the wrong side in Latin America for more than half a century, and now we are on the wrong side of history as well.