"95 percent" would vote against Lisbon Treaty

Here's Ireland's EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy on the reaction in Brussels to the Irish NO vote last year:

“When Irish people rejected the Lisbon Treaty a year ago, the initial reaction ranged from shock to horror to temper to vexation. That would be the view of a lot of the people who live in the Brussels beltway.

“On the other hand, all of the [political leaders] know quite well that if the similar question was put to their electorate by a referendum the answer in 95 per cent of the countries would probably have been No as well . . .

“I have always divided the reaction between those two forces: those within the beltway, the ‘fonctionnaires’, those who gasp with horror [on the one hand] and the heads of state, who are far more realistic. They are glad they didn’t have to put the question themselves to their people.”

From The Irish Times.

Life is Cheap

by Charles Kenny

The WHO has declared swine flu a pandemic and the US is consideringa vaccination program involving 600 million doses.

So far, the CDC estimates that there have been a million infections and 127 deaths in the US. That’s a pretty low death rate, of around one per ten thousand. The US rate for measles in the 1970s was almost ten times as high. In turn, that suggests a comparatively low benefit-cost ratio compared to other vaccine programs.

The good news is that even more expensive vaccine programs are amongst the most cost effective health interventions. The flu vaccine only costs between $5-9 a dose, for example. And they are comparatively easy to roll out. Not least, thanks to vaccinations sold at a dollar a pop, almost no one gets measles in the US any more. In the first half of this year, there were only 25 cases in the whole country.

The even better news is that, thanks to expanded vaccination coverage, dramatically fewer people die of measles the world over. Measles deaths in Africa fell by 91% between 2000 and 2006 alone, from an estimated 396,000 to 36,000. Keep on going at this rate, and measles might be the next smallpox.

Other simple health solutions that have saved millions include hand-washing and antibiotics. Their spread lies behind a dramatic global convergence in health outcomes discussed in this book I’m plugging. And there’s still scope for cheap solutions to make a big difference to global health outcomes. One third of the remaining ten million child deaths each year could be prevented if parents worldwide breast fed, used sugar-salt solutions to treat cases of diarrhea and put their children to sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets. Breast feeding is free, sugar-salt packages cost pennies, and bednets perhaps $5.

The big problem now is to create demand –informed parents who understand what to do when their child has diarrhea, for example. In the Indian state of West Bengal, fifty percent of parents think you should give a child less to drink –absolutely the wrong thing to do. Child mortality in the state is three times higher than in the state of Kerala, where only five percent of parents suggest that response. And not all parents understand the importance of a vaccination program, especially when their state governors are telling them it is part of a plot to sterilize their children, as it might be –this particular piece of insanity helped delay the global eradication of polio.

Of course, as the recent flap over MMR in the UK demonstrates, the demand side isn’t just a Third World problem. Let’s hope we don’t face the same issues with swine flu vaccination.

A Fistful of Euros

Why Cleaning Banks' Books Is So Hard

by Dollars and Sense

It was almost impossible to get this without being a subscriber, so I'm reproducing it in full (here's the link to the article, which has accompanying charts:

JUNE 30, 2009
Wall Street Journal
Wary Banks Hobble Toxic-Asset Plan
By DAVID ENRICH, LIZ RAPPAPORT and JENNY STRASBURG

The government's plan to enable banks to dump troubled assets is facing troubles of its own.

Markets initially rallied when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced in March a two-pronged plan to offer favorable government financing to entice investors to buy bad loans and toxic securities from banks.

But that initiative--called the Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP--has lost momentum. Big banks worried about having to sell at fire-sale prices while small banks feared they would be shut out. Potential buyers balked at the risk of doing business with the government, concerned that politicians might demonize them for making big profits.

The program's problems threaten to stymie efforts by struggling smaller banks, in particular, to clean up their balance sheets. That in turn could hinder efforts to revive the nation's economy.

A look at why the program has stumbled underscores how difficult it has been to solve one of the economy's biggest problems: Mountains of bad debt sitting on the books of the nation's banks. As those loans and securities lose value, they are saddling the banks with losses and constricting their ability to lend.

U.S. officials and investors are playing down expectations for the plan--originally billed as a $1 trillion endeavor. Some federal officials say the banking environment has improved since the program was unveiled. They assert that because a dozen or so big banks recently succeeded in raising capital, they are under less pressure to sell bad assets.

Early this month, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. essentially shelved one arm of PPIP--the government-financed buying of bad bank loans. Mr. Geithner recently said the other part--to facilitate the buying from banks of troubled securities, many backed by real-estate loans--could be scaled back because investors are "reluctant to participate." This week, the government is expected to name investment firms to manage this securities-buying portion.

"The fits and starts on all this stuff has added to the uncertainty that makes [investors] stay on the sidelines," says Trabo Reed, the deputy banking superintendent in Alabama, where many small and midsize banks are looking for cash infusions from investors.

Lee Sachs, counselor to the Treasury secretary, says the department remains committed to the program and has received more than 100 applications from would-be investment managers. "One of the goals of the PPIP program has been to help create liquidity in frozen markets," he says. "Some banks will sell assets. Even those that do not will benefit from the greater ability to value the assets they hold."

The slimmed-down program will focus not on bad loans, but on toxic securities, which are a problem for a relatively small fraction of the nation's banks. That is bad news for hundreds of smaller banks burdened with growing piles of defaulted loans. These banks are less able to tap capital markets than their larger rivals, so they have been eager for U.S. help unloading loans as a way to bolster their capital cushions. Many of them can face big problems if just one or two large loans go bad. Seventy banks, most of them community institutions, have failed since the start of last year. Analysts are bracing for hundreds of lenders to collapse in the next few years.

Because these lenders often play key roles supporting their local economies, taken together, they are important to the financial system and to a U.S. economic recovery, says Kenneth Segal, senior vice president at Howe Barnes Hoefer & Arnett Inc., an advisory firm for small and midsize lenders.

During the last banking crisis, nearly two decades ago, the government established the Resolution Trust Corp. to sell off the bad loans and securities of banks that had failed. Many experts credit the RTC with helping defuse that crisis.

This time around, efforts to rid banks of soured assets have sputtered repeatedly. In late 2007, federal officials helped cobble together a plan for a bank-financed fund to buy securities held by bank investment funds, but the effort was aborted. In 2008, the Bush administration established a $700 billion program to buy banks' soured assets. Partly because of the complexity of valuing those assets, the U.S. abandoned that plan, instead opting to directly pump taxpayer money into banks.

Scott Romanoff, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director, has referred to the current effort, PPIP, as "the greatest program that never occurred," because it "created confidence in the markets so banks can raise equity capital."

In recent weeks, markets have lost some vigor amid renewed concerns about the economy. That could make it more difficult for big banks to raise additional capital. Banks also could face further losses as bad assets decline more in value.

On March 23, when Mr. Geithner unveiled PPIP, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged nearly 500 points, or 7%, its biggest gain since October, on hopes that the program would nurse the banking industry back to health.

Many bank executives were skeptical about whether the program could succeed. Even before it was announced, some had grumbled that federal officials weren't consulting them, and instead were crafting the initiative with input from would-be investors. Some banking executives say they warned that they would be loath to sell at the kind of prices investors were likely to demand.

Executives at Citigroup Inc. shared those concerns, according to people familiar with the matter. While the New York bank was sitting on at least $300 billion of risky loans and securities, selling them at discounted prices would require painful hits to its already thin capital ratios, these people say.

Some Citigroup executives had a different idea: Maybe they could turn a profit by bidding on their own toxic assets at discounted prices, using government financing, according to the people familiar with the talks. Other big banks also talked about setting up distressed-asset units to snap up troubled loans and securities, including from their parent companies, with taxpayer financing.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair later publicly shot down the idea. Citigroup declined to comment.

Meanwhile, many small-town bankers hoped the program would help them unload the bad assets--generally loans to finance commercial real-estate projects--that were hurting their balance sheets. Some potential buyers had surfaced before PPIP was announced, but they were offering such low prices that few banks could afford to sell the loans without severely denting their capital cushions.

The hope was that PPIP would help narrow the gap between buyers and sellers. Investors would be able to bid more because the government would offer buyers little-money-down financing, along with some downside protection.

"We have illiquid assets," says Patrick Patrick, chief executive of Towne Bancorp of Mesa, Ariz. "It would be helpful to have a vehicle where you could sell them at market and be able to restructure our balance sheet."

Like many small banks, Towne Bancorp has been hurt by a handful of loans to finance real-estate projects that went belly up. In the first quarter, the bank said two souring commercial real-estate loans caused its portfolio of loans at least 90 days past due to swell by 52%. Such loans represent more than 22% of Towne Bancorp's $143 million in assets. The company has been trying for months to sell 19 pieces of real estate--including undeveloped land and a warehouse--that it seized when loans went into default.

When PPIP was announced, big-name investors were intent on figuring out how to profit from it. Raymond Dalio of giant hedge-fund firm Bridgewater Associates, which oversees $72 billion in assets, initially expressed interest in participating. But within days, he was blasting it, saying buyers and sellers would have difficulty agreeing on pricing and fund managers that profited would be exposed to criticism from politicians. The way PPIP is set up "makes us not want to participate and it makes us question the breadth of interest that we will see in the program," he wrote to clients.

Lawyers for hedge funds and private-equity investors warned clients about the risks of doing business with the government. The industry was unnerved by the restrictions placed on banks participating in another federal bailout program, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Fund managers were also bothered by President Barack Obama's criticism of the hedge funds holding Chrysler LLC debt who had refused the government's buyout offers.

In conference calls with bankers and investors, FDIC officials emphasized that PPIP was critically important to cleanse banks of their bad assets. "I think you know the stakes are very high with this," Ms. Bair, the FDIC chairman, said during a March 26 call, according to a transcript. "We need this program to work."

Ms. Bair and her deputies encountered skepticism. In an April 9 conference call with the FDIC, Mark Wolf of TRI Investments LLC, described his Carlsbad, Calif., firm as a potential PPIP bidder. "Unless you've got a process that either forces banks to sell or does a better job of encouraging them to sell, we're just going to see banks sitting back and dribbling these things out through an eyedropper over the course of time," he said.

Some bankers were hesitant. "If these loans are bought at a discount, we create a hole in capital," Lou Akers, executive vice president of Adams National Bank in Washington, told FDIC officials on the March 26 call. He suggested that regulators consider changing the way they calculate banks' capital in order to cushion the blow. Government officials were noncommittal, a transcript of the call indicates.

FDIC officials emphasized on the conference calls that PPIP was intended to benefit all banks, not just industry giants. But smaller banks began to worry they'd be locked out.

To participate in PPIP, local lenders were told, they would have to pool their loans with other banks. The process, which the FDIC said it would facilitate, was designed to simplify the bidding process for government officials and prospective investors. The agency didn't want thousands of banks put their loan portfolios on the block separately.

But the FDIC planned to require participating banks to kick in a minimum amount of assets, and some small-town bankers worried they wouldn't have enough to qualify.

Too high a minimum "will virtually eliminate all community banks from being able to participate in this program," wrote Julian L. Fruhling, president of Legacy Bank in Scottsdale, Ariz., in a letter to the FDIC.

Still, some investment firms that were hoping to help manage the government's program were optimistic. Laurence Fink, chief executive of BlackRock Inc., said in mid-April during a trip to Japan that if his firm is selected as a manager, it was ready to raise $5 billion to $7 billion to buy securities through PPIP. He said he hoped to raise money from individual investors in Japan and the U.S., and that potential returns could be as high as 20%.

The FDIC and other regulatory agencies were planning to use their "stress tests" of the nation's top 19 banks to push them to sell assets via PPIP, according to people familiar with the matter. But in the weeks before the stress-test results were announced in May, market sentiment began to improve. A number of banks succeeded in raising capital by selling new shares to the public.

Once the stress tests were wrapped up in May, even more banks sold shares--a total of roughly $65 billion within a month. The capital-raising removed regulators' leverage to encourage participation in PPIP, according to government officials.

Around the same time, BlackRock reduced its goal for the size of its potential PPIP investment fund to about $1 billion, say people familiar with the matter.

Earlier this month, the FDIC formally postponed the loan-buying portion of PPIP, called the Legacy Loan Program. "Banks have been able to raise capital without having to sell bad assets through the LLP, which reflects renewed investor confidence in our banking system," Ms. Bair said.

Next month, the FDIC intends to use PPIP for a far narrower purpose: to auction loans the agency has seized from failed banks. Eventually, it hopes to resuscitate the loan-buying program so that smaller banks can benefit from it.

But that could be tricky. The U.S. initially justified PPIP by invoking its "systemic risk" powers, which enable regulators to step in when the financial system is at risk. Regulators have debated whether such a justification would remain if the program were geared toward smaller banks. FDIC officials doubt they will muster the necessary consensus among regulators to invoke the special powers and keep the loan program alive, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Many banking experts contend that the financial system won't fully stabilize until banks get rid of their bad assets.

Mr. Segal, the bank adviser, complains that federal officials have cited recent capital raising by big banks as evidence that "the system is OK." That may be true "for the top 15 or 20 banks," he says. "But for everybody else, there really needs to be more attention paid."

Iran's Do-It-Yourself Revolution

Facing an unprecedented popular uprising against his autocratic rule and his apparently fraudulent re-election, Iran's right-wing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attempted to blame the United States. A surprising number of bloggers on the left have rushed to the defense of the right-wing fundamentalist leader. Citing presidential directives under the Bush administration, they argue that the uprising isn't as much about a stolen election, the oppression of women, censorship, severe restrictions on political liberties, growing economic inequality, and other grievances, as it is about the result of U.S. interference.

Meanwhile, critics on the right — who have shown little concern about democracy in other countries in the region that are just as oppressive yet more willing to support U.S. military and economic objectives have rushed to attack Obama for not intervening enough in Iran. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), for instance, insisted that the president should "come out more strongly" in support of the protesters.

The sordid history of U.S. intervention in Iran has made it easy for that country's hard-ine theocratic leadership to blame the United States for the unrest. Indeed, the United States is guilty of many crimes against that country. It overthrew Iran's last democratic government back in1953. Subsequently, the United States armed and trained the Shah's dreaded SAVAK secret police. In the 1980s, Washington supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran and, in the "tanker war" of 1987-88, the United States bombed Iranian coastal facilities, targeted ships, and shot down a civilian airliner. There was the arming of Kurdish and Baluchi separatists as well as the threats of war over Iran's civilian nuclear program (even as Washington continued to support neighboring states that have developed nuclear weapons arsenals). And in recent years, the United States allocated tens of millions of dollars to opposition groups for the express purpose of "regime change."

Despite this record of intervention, the United States has had nothing to do with the massive unarmed insurrection against the Iranian regime.

Not 1953

The Iranian regime and some of its apologists have tried to connect the homegrown protests now occurring in Iran with the U.S.-sponsored coup of 1953. At that time, CIA operatives bribed local leaders in South Tehran to lead riots in an effort to destabilize the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq.

This is a totally spurious analogy, however. First of all, the CIA operatives on the ground in Iran today are mostly likely involved in efforts to infiltrate the intelligence service and nuclear program, and engage in other kinds of espionage and intelligence gathering. The CIA is a poor vehicle for fomenting revolution from below. It has been notoriously poor at understanding developments on the ground in Iran. Just weeks ago, U.S. officials dismissed Mir Houssein Mousavi, whose suspicious loss in the recent elections prompted the uprising, as simply a less provocative face of the same old regime. Indeed, the degree of protests has clearly caught U.S. officials off guard. In any case, no foreign intelligence agency has ever demonstrated such an ability to provoke such a mass uprising.

The CIA-inspired mob actions in 1953 consisted of thousands of people, but was well short of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since the apparent stolen election. These recent large demonstrations have been overwhelmingly nonviolent, while the 1953 unrest largely consisted of rioting, with widespread vandalism, arson, and assaults against civilians. The riots of 56 years ago took place exclusively in Tehran, while the recent demonstrations have taken place in cities and towns across the country for well over a week, despite often-brutal oppression.

More critically, the 1953 coup itself did not result from massive protests, but because armed police and military units seized key buildings and the government radio station, and attacked Mossadeq's home. There were heavy exchanges of gunfire and artillery throughout Tehran neighborhoods that housed government facilities; over 100 people died in the battle in front of the prime minister's house. Mossadeq finally surrendered as tank columns moved into the city and General Zahedi installed himself as prime minister, calling for the return of the Shah.

In short, the circumstances surrounding the 1953 coup have little in common with the events of 2009.

Blaming the Other

When popular armed socialist revolutionary movements swept Central America in the 1980s, U.S. officials and their right-wing allies insisted that these uprisings were not about resisting oppressive military-dominated regimes, death squads, endemic poverty, or social injustice. Rather, they argued, the Soviet Union was pulling the strings of what they considered puppet movements to seize control of these countries, as part of their grand communist plot to take over the world. According to this theory — constantly repeated on the floor of Congress, on op-ed pages, and in reports from conservative think tanks — Moscow and their Cuban allies were "exporting revolution" by forcing otherwise content peasants, workers, and others to rebel against legitimate governments.

In a similar manner, since the end of the Cold War Washington has tried to blame Iran for a wide range of activities: attacks on U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, unrest in Bahrain against that island's autocratic monarchy, the rise of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, growing support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Generally the left, through its understanding of broader structural causes for social and political problems, has recognized that popular uprisings against repressive governments grow out of certain objective social conditions rather than as a result of outsiders stirring up trouble. Unfortunately, a surprising number of leftists in the United States and other Western countries, aware of very real imperialist machinations by the U.S. government elsewhere, have argued that popular civil insurrections against autocratic regimes are part of some grand U.S. conspiracy.

Anticipating a similar challenge to their increasingly unpopular rule, Iranian leaders began insisting a couple years ago that the popular pro-democracy uprisings in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine earlier this decade were an American plot to advance U.S. imperialism. In a broadcast on state television in July 2007, for instance, the Iranian regime claimed that Serbian student activist Ivan Markovic, one of the leaders of the successful nonviolent uprising against Milosevic in 2000, had met with President George W. Bush in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava in 2005 to plot the overthrow of the Iranian government. In reality, their "meeting" — which was photographed and widely circulated in Iran — consisted of a three-minute conversation in the midst of a group reception and didn't include any mention of Iran. Markovic, an outspoken left-wing critic of U.S. imperialism, later described how he found Bush to be profoundly ignorant of and apparently disinterested in nonviolent resistance of the kind he and his Serbian colleagues successfully utilized in their pro-democracy movement.

In another bizarre episode, in February last year, Iranian government television informed viewers that Gene Sharp, the elderly theorist of strategic nonviolent action who works out of his tiny home office in a working-class neighborhood in Boston, was "one of the CIA agents in charge of America's infiltration into other countries." It included a computer-animated sequence of Sharp with John McCain and other officials in a White House conference room plotting the overthrow of the Iranian regime. In reality, Sharp has never worked with the CIA, has never met McCain, and has never even been to the White House.

U.S. Funding for Opposition Movements

The U.S. government has provided financial support for opposition groups in a number of countries, including Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. It has also provided seminars and other training for opposition leaders in campaign strategies. However, in none of these cases did the U.S. government provide any training, advice, or strategic support that resulted in overturning these regimes. Nor did the U.S. government or any U.S. government-funded entity ever provide operational funding or subsidies for any nonviolent action campaign. In any case, this limited amount of outside financial support cannot cause nonviolent liberal democratic revolutions to take place any more than the limited Soviet financial and material support for leftist movements in previous decades caused armed socialist revolutions to take place. No amount of money could force hundreds of thousands of people to leave their jobs, homes, schools, and families to face down heavily armed police and tanks, unless they had a sincere motivation to do so.

The Bush administration certainly did attempt to subvert and destabilize Iran through funding opposition groups. While continuing to back repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries, Congress approved the administration's request for $75 million in funding to support "regime change" in Iran. However, few serious dissident organizations within the country accepted such support money from the U.S. government.

Indeed, more than two dozen Iranian-American and human rights groups formally protested the program, arguing that "Iranian reformers believe democracy cannot be imported and must be based on indigenous institutions and values. Intended beneficiaries of the funding — human rights advocates, civil society activists and others — uniformly denounce the program." As president of the National Iranian American Council Trita Parsi noted, "While the Iranian government has not needed a pretext to harass its own population, it would behoove Congress not to provide it with one."

Virtually the only ones to accept such funding were exiles who had very few followers within Iran and no experience with the kinds of grassroots mobilization necessary to build a popular movement that could threaten the regime's survival.

In an even more counterproductive venture, the Bush administration began arming and supporting Kurdish and Baluchi separatists. The Obama administration ceased its support for these groups within days of taking office, formally labeling them terrorist groups. Ironically, Republicans are now attacking the administration for thus abandoning Iran's pro-democracy struggle at the same time that Ahmadinejad and his supporters are citing these now-discarded efforts as proof of U.S. complicity in the current uprising.

Learning from History, Not Foreigners

Uprisings like the one witnessed in recent weeks have occurred with some regularity in Iran since the late 1800s. Indeed, the idea of Americans having to teach Iranians about massive nonviolent resistance is like Americans teaching Iranians to cook the Persian stew fesenjan.

Iranians successfully rose up against economic concessions to the British in 1890. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905 against the corrupt rule of the Shah and regional nobles led to the emergence of an elected parliament and financial reforms. The uprising against the U.S.-backed Shah in the late 1970s brought down that autocratic monarchy. In each of these cases, the tactics were remarkably similar to those used in the weeks following the contested elections: strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and other forms of nonviolent action. The Iranians are learning from their history, not from Americans.

Though the subsequent Islamist regime has proven to be at least as repressive, the legacy of the largely nonviolent overthrow of the Shah remains an inspiration for Iranians still struggling for their freedom. Indeed, the current movement has consciously adopted many of the symbols and tactics of the 1978-79 period. There is the use of green (the color of Islam) as the movement's identifying color. Demonstrators in Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and other cities have gathered at the same locations of anti-Shah rallies. Protesters chant "Death to the Dictatorship" during demonstrations and shout "Allah Akbar" (God is Great!) from the rooftops. Demonstrators place their palms in the blood spilled by a killed or injured comrade and pressing the red palm print on a nearby wall as a sign of martyrdom.

Yet scores of leftist bloggers are trying to convince people that all this was something planned and organized by Americans over the past few months. There is something profoundly ethnocentric in arguing that civil insurrections and other pro-democracy campaigns have to be launched from Washington and that Iranians (like Eastern Europeans) are incapable of organizing a popular movement on their own. This argument simply adds weight to the neocons' insistence that democracy can only take hold in Middle Eastern countries through U.S. intervention.

The future of Iran belongs in the hands of the Iranians. The best thing the United States can do to support a more open and pluralistic society in that country is to stay out of the way. It does a gross disservice to those putting their lives on the line in towns and cities across Iran to fail to recognize the genuine indigenous origins of this popular movement.

Stephen Zunes

Honduras coup triggers clashes Security forces and supporters of deposed president face off outside presidential palace.

Protesters supporting Zelaya have voiced their anger at the court-backed military coup [AFP] Honduran security forces and protesters calling for the reinstatement of the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, have clashed outside the presidential palace in the capital Tegucigalpa. Police and army units were deployed to guard the compound on Monday in the wake of a military coup that forced Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica. Mariana Sanchez, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tegucigalpa, said riot police and soldiers at the presidential palace pushed against the protesters, who defied a curfew. "The police and the army have been repelled by rocks thrown by the protesters - but now, I am watching a man being beaten by the police and the army," she said. "The police have fired tear gas against the protesters." Roadblocks were set up soon after the military forced back the demonstrators, our correspondent said. Protesters hurt Cristian Vallejo, a Red Cross paramedic, said he had taken 10 protesters to hospital, most of them with injuries from rubber-coated bullets. At least 38 demonstrators have been detained by the security forces, said Sandra Ponce, a human rights prosecutor.

Honduras Coup Poses Challenges, Questions for Obama, Congress

by John Nichols

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a reasonably muscular condemnation of the military coup in Honduras, where elected President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya was kidnapped and flown out of the country by soldiers bent on blocking an advisory vote on constitutional reform in the country.

Zelaya supporters took to the streets in an attempt to prevent military reinforcements from arriving at the Presidential Palace. (Photos: REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas)

President Obama's statement was softer and in tone:

I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.

Senior aides to the Obama administration tell reporters that U.S. diplomats were working to ensure Zelaya's safe return. And the Wall Street Journal suggests that the administration may have worked behind the scenes to try and avert the coup.

But Roberto Lovato argues that the U.S. response at this point is insufficient. The savvy expert on U.S. relations with Latin America writes:

President Obama and the U.S. can actually do something about a military crackdown that our tax dollars are helping pay for. That Vasquez and other coup leaders were trained at the WHINSEC, which also trained Augusto Pinochet and other military dictators responsible for the deaths, disappearances, tortures of hundreds of thousands in Latin America, sends profound chills throughout a region still trying to overcome decades U.S.-backed militarism.

Hemispheric concerns about the coup were expressed in the rapid, historic and almost universal condemnation of the plot by almost all Latin American governments. Such concerns in the region represent an opportunity for the United States. But, while the Honduran coup represents a major opportunity for Obama to make real his recent and repeated calls for a "new" relationship to the Americas, failure to take actions that send a rapid and unequivocal denunciation of the coup will be devastating to the Honduran people -- and to the still-fragile U.S. image in the region.

Recent declarations by the Administration -- expressions of "concern" by the President and statements by Secretary of State Clinton recognizing Zelaya as the only legitimate, elected leader of Honduras -- appear to indicate preliminary disapproval of the putsch. Yet, the even more unequivocal statements of condemnation from U.N. President Miguel D'Escoto, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and the Presidents of Argentina, Costa Rica and many other governments raise greatly the bar of expectation before the Obama Administration.

Obama should be more outspoken. This is a time when clarity is essential, and potentially influential.

There is also a role for members of Congress, who need to examine the timing and character of this coup -- which was carried out by military officers trained in the U.S. at the School of the Americans/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), in a country with a substantial U.S. military base (home to roughly 500 troops and air force combat planes and helicopters) in Soto Cano. It is difficult to imagine that the Honduran military would have moved against Zelaya without notifying U.S. military officials -- a prospect that, considering the sordid history of Washington's entanglements in the region, ought to be reviewed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Honest players on that committee, such as Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, have a right and a responsibility to ask tough questions about the removal of a democratically-elected leader whose most serious "crime" appears to have been a determination to challenge the corrupt status quo in his country.

Zelaya, a businessman with a record of activism on behalf of decentralization of power and respect for indigenous peoples, was elected in 2005 as the relatively moderate candidate of the country's historically powerful Liberal Party.

Photographed in genial conversation with former President George Bush, he was not viewed as a particularly radical player when he took office. But Zelaya's left-leaning economic and social policies earned praise from labor unions and civil society groups, and he had forged regional alliances with the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other elected leaders in Latin America established as a counter to the neoliberal trade and security policies pushed by the U.S. under Bush.

That made relations with the U.S. somewhat more tense, especially as Zelaya wrangled with conservative forces over media, presidential succession and constitional issues.

Chavez has suggested that U.S. meddling -- and a Central Intelligence Agency tie -- enabled the coup.

School of the Americas Watch is following developments closely, and well -- lots of fresh photos and blogging on its site.

The Persecution of Michael Jackson

ISHMAEL REED

Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable. On CNN they were promoting “Black In America, ” an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled “The Showman and the Slave, ” by Benjamin Reiss. The early penny press sold a “whiteness” upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self esteem boosting product. One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth, who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O. J. story of the time. Circus master, P. T. Barnum , charged admission to her autopsy, which attracted the perverted in droves.

And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival, there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business. According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P. T. Barnum, but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.

I would classify CNN’s “Black In America” as a stunt. In preparing for a sequel to the first ‘Black In America, ”which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans. Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow a statistician for The New York Times recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn’t deter The New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote inThe Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last “Black in America, ” Soledad O’Brien, CNN’s designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for notattending his daughter’s birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O’Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75% of white children will live at one time or another in a single parent household and that the Gov. of South Carolina’s not showing up for Father’s Day isn’t just a lone aberration in “White America.”

How would CNN promote a “White in America?” The thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth? The suburban Dallas white teenagers who are overdosing on “cheese” heroin? Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and MacDonald’s to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring “Black In America , ”the aim of which is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country’s social problems. For ratings.

During CNN’s carnival act disguised as news, the scene of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minster being urinated upon by a monkey, while sitting in his garden drew snickers in the newsroom. This is what passes for coverage of the African continent by CNN.

When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed. The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out. “ Weird, bizarre, eccentric, ” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie. Dan Abrams, who made his reputation by convicting O. J. Simpson, before the opening arguments of his criminal trial, made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness. Mr. Abrams, a higher up at MSNBC, employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan. Given Abram’s background, why isn’t that considered weird?

Former Calfornia poet laureate Al Young called to inform me that CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O. J. alumni, and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O. J. Simpson’s innocence, had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show”to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance).

Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial. ( For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see Media Matters. com). She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was “devastating. ” So devastating that some legal experts said that Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., a vindictive District Attorney, into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star, during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

In my lengthy examination of the trial printed in my book, “Mixing It Up, Taking on The Media Bullies, ” I concluded that though millions of Jackson’s fans celebrated his acquittal, the District Attorney, who was allowed to squander the California taxpayers’ money so that he might humiliate a rich black man, whom he felt had sassed him, was the victor. At the beginning of the trial , Jackson was dancing on top of a van. During the trial he had to be hospitalized. At the end, he was a frail emaciated wreck.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile. ( When the trial opened, a USA Today CNN Gallup Poll found that 72% of whites and 51% of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.) Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement, he can gloat over the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. He even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.

Of course, none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media, out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric, Joe Jackson, Jackson’s father was MJ’s sole abuser. The eyes of yesterday’s media, black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence.

Guthrie also said that the prosecution “had conducted mini trials within the trial,” which brought up “ a whole history of prior bad acts of molestation. ”She was referring to 1994 case in which Jackson was accused of pedophilia by a youngster who , according to writer Mary Fisher, a serious journalist, was used by his father to wrest some cash from Jackson. In, ”Mixing It Up…, ”I summarized Mary Fisher’s serious and thorough investigation that was originally published in GQ, October, 1994, under the title “Was Michael Jackson Framed?” Jackson, settled out of court because Johnnie Cochran didn’t want him to face one of those all white suburban juries that O. J. faced.

Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented. ”

Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the thirteen-year-old accuser’s stepfather, Evan Chandler, who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son. At one point, he asked Jackson to build him a house. Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal, which is known to induce false memory. Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show, where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience. She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.

None of the media descriptions of Jackson’s career, including a superficial pop driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper, referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J. C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse. She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel. Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story. ” During the 2005 trial,

Jackson’s Attorney, Tom Mesereau Jr. got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J. C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1, 2005, that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Jay Leno and others, “even though insurance was paying his bills. ” Linda Deutsch, one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005. said that Mesereau got the 15 year old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert, a school official that “nothing happened “ between Jackson and him.

Connie Keenan, editor of Mid Valley News, wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper. She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it. During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal, the mother received $965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “ My gut level, she’s a shark. She was after money. My readers were used. My staff was used. It’s sickening. ”

While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother, Janet Arvizo. At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland, Jackson’s ranch, in a hot air balloon.

On Apr 18, 2005, Agence France-Presse reported “The mother of Michael Jackson's young molestation accuser claimed that she feared her children would be spirited away from the star's Neverland Ranch in a hot air balloon. In some of the most bizarre testimony of Jackson's frequently surreal trial, the woman revealed that she told police she feared her three kids would vanish from Neverland into California's blue skies.

"Did you tell the sheriff that you thought your children might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland?" Jackson's lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau asked the woman under cross-examination.

"I made them aware," she said.

Finally, in November of 2006, according to TMZ, Janet Arvizo pled no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles. She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8, 600 in restitution. During Jackson's trial, Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud. Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150, 000 settlement from J. C. Penny’s. Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies, Nancy Grace, commenting on the death of Jackson, said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the prosecution.”

Yet, these journalists insist that their news product is superior
to that of bloggers. (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond, a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death)

G. Q. s Mary Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fairdidn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings. She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia. Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jurie's decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo, Courtney Hazlett. She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland and as there was to Graceland, because “bad things happened at Never Land. ” We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures.

All of these opinions seem to indicate that Cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please. This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.

But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey. For years cable, which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury, accused her of murdering her child. Only after her death was it found that she was innocent.

If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough, it didn’t get any better the next day, June 26.

Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to forty charities, on the “Today Show, “it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children, questions meant to attract the prurient. Again, Diane Dimod was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star. Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning. This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble( that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world.

I would like to have seen more independent African-American journalists comment on the passing of Michael Jackson, but, according to Richard Prince, who runs a media blog for The Maynard journalism Institute, hundreds have lost their jobs over the last two years, including Pulitzer Prize winners like Les Payne.

With the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P. T. Barnum.

Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, "Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies" was published by De Capo.

Lyrics: by Michael Jackson

They wanna get my a**, dead or alive.
You know he really tried to take me down by surprise.
I bet he missioned with the CIA.
He don't do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

He out shock in every single way.
He stop at nothing just to get his political say.
He think he hot cause he's BSDA.

I bet he never had a social life anyway.
You think he bother with the KKK?
I bet his mother never taught him right anyway.
He want your vote just to remain TA.
He don't do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Dom S. Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Honduras isolated over Zelaya ouster

Mica Rosenberg

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Leftist Latin American leaders rallied around ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Monday and tried to thrash out a response to an army coup that sparked protests in the impoverished nation and drew worldwide condemnation.

Pro-Zelaya demonstrators defied an overnight curfew and held a vigil by the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, while Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez led talks with Zelaya and other allies in neighboring Nicaragua.

The coup is the biggest political crisis to hit Central America in years and will test U.S. President Barack Obama as he tries to mend Washington's battered image in Latin America.

The Obama administration called for Zelaya's return to office as legitimate president of Honduras, placing itself in the same camp as a group of leftist governments that are at ideological loggerheads with the United States.

The Organization of American States demanded Zelaya's immediate return, saying no other government would be recognized.

Tension mounted this week when Zelaya, a Chavez ally, angered the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and army by pushing for a public vote to gauge support for changing the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term.

Before he could hold the poll on Sunday, the Honduran military seized Zelaya in his pajamas and flew him to Costa Rica in Central America's first successful army coup since the Cold War.

"We cannot allow a return to the past. We will not permit it," thundered Chavez, a champion of Latin American socialism who survived an attempted army coup in 2002 and who has put his troops on alert in case Honduras moved against his embassy.

Flanked by Zelaya, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Chavez denied that he was launching an invasion. "We are here to support, respecting the sovereignty of Honduras," he said in Managua.

Bolivia's Evo Morales and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza were due to join the group in Managua later on Monday and Washington said it was following the crisis closely.

Honduras was a U.S. ally in the 1980s when Washington helped Central American governments fight Marxist rebels and the United States still keeps some 600 troops at a Honduran base used for humanitarian and disaster relief operations.

Pulled to the left since Zelaya took power in 2006, Honduras was left isolated as the United States, the European Union and a string of other governments backed Zelaya.

PROTESTS SPARK PANIC-BUYING

In Honduras, a curfew was imposed for Sunday and Monday nights by Roberto Micheletti, who Congress named as interim president within hours of the coup. Micheletti said no foreign leader had the right to threaten Honduras.

Many people in Tegucigalpa cowered at home, scared there would be violence. Shops saw panic-buying and many people drew out cash or shuttered businesses.

Las claves para entender qué pasa en Honduras

Ignacio Escolar

1- Lo que había convocado para ayer, lo que los golpistas han impedido, no era la reelección permanente de Zelaya ni la presidencia vitalicia. Ni siquiera la reforma de la constitución. Lo que se votaba era un referéndum no vinculante para preguntar a los hondureños si les gustaría que en las próximas elecciones, en las de noviembre, se votase también la creación de una asamblea constituyente que reformase la carta magna. En resumen: era algo en apariencia tan inofensivo como preguntar si se podía preguntar por reformar la constitución.

2- La actual constitución de Honduras establece un mandato único a los presidentes de cinco años. Zelaya termina el suyo en noviembre y, en cualquier caso, no se podría presentar a la reelección porque en esa fecha no estaría aprobada la reforma constitucional que él propone. Como mucho, habría sido posible que en noviembre se votase la posibilidad de una reforma constitucional. Él mismo ha negado en varias entrevistas que tenga intención de presentarse a la reelección.

3- El parlamento está enfrentado con el presidente entre otras cosas porque Zelaya, que concurrió a las urnas por el Partido Liberal (de centro derecha), ha hecho después una política de izquierdas y se ha aliado con Hugo Chavez. Hace unos días, el parlamento aprobó una ley para prohibir que se celebrase cualquier tipo de consultas 180 días antes de unas elecciones. Es una norma ad hoc, hecha para impedir el referéndum de Zelaya.

4- El argumento que utilizó Zelaya para seguir adelante con su referéndum, a pesar de las sentencias y nuevas leyes en contra, era que no se trataba de un referéndum sino de una encuesta. En Honduras, el voto es obligatorio. No así en la consulta de Zelaya, donde el voto era opcional. Para sortear las sentencias, la “encuesta” iba a ser realizada por el equivalente hondureño al CIS, el Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas. La oposición argumentaba que la consulta estaría manipulada, pues el recuento lo haría un organismo que depende del presidente.

5- El Tribunal Supremo que ha ordenado la expulsión de Zelaya del país (según la surrealista explicación de los golpistas) no es un Tribunal Supremo equiparable a los europeos. Para empezar, porque su nombre completo es Tribunal Supremo Electoral, su composición emana del Parlamento (es decir, de los partidos que están enfrentados con Zelaya, los golpistas que hoy han dado por bueno el golpe militar) y entre sus poderes está regular las elecciones pero no detener a los presidentes electos. No es la primera jugarreta de esta “institución”. Cuando Zelaya, inesperadamente, ganó las elecciones, el TSE retrasó durante más de un mes su acceso al poder con excusas técnicas.

6- Como jurídicamente no está establecido que el presidente deje de serlo porque el ejército lo deporta, los golpistas han falsificado una carta de renuncia de Zelaya -que su supuesto autor ha negado- firmada hace unos días y donde se asegura que deja al cargo por motivos de salud. El Congreso ha votado hoy su destitución y el nombramiento de un nuevo presidente utilizándola como argumento.

7- La oposición política al presidente hace tiempo que utilizaba al poder judicial para boicotear su gobierno. Entre los casos más surrealistas está el de un plan para reducir el consumo de combustible y la contaminación que se denominó “Hoy no circula”, a imitación de otro similar de México DF, que funciona desde hace años. Zelaya pretendía obligar a todos los coches a que parasen un día a la semana. La Corte Suprema de Justicia lo declaró inconstitucional.

8- ¿Está Estados Unidos detrás del golpe? Para variar, no. Y tanto Obama como Hillary Clinton como el embajador de EEUU en el país han sido claros al respecto. Ahora mismo está reunida de urgencia la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), de la que saldrá en las próximas horas al menos un nuevo comunicado de condena

Lunes en Madrid, a las 19:00, concentración frente a la embajada de Honduras. C/ Rafael Calvo 15. Metro Iglesia o Rubén Darío. Pásalo.

Obama Must Strongly and Unequivocally Condemn the Coup in Honduras

By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet. Posted June 29, 2009.

Failure to take actions that send a clear message of condemnation will be devastating to the still-fragile U.S. image in Latin America.

Viewed from a distance, the streets of Honduras look, smell and sound like those of Iran: Expressions of popular anger- burning vehicles, large marches and calls for justice in a non-English language- aimed at a constitutional violation of the people’s will (the coup took place on the eve of a poll of voters asking if the President's term should be extended); protests repressed by a small, but powerful elite backed by military force; those holding power trying to cut off communications in and out of the country.

These and other similarities between the political situation in Iran and the situation in Honduras, where military and economic and political elites ousted democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya in a military coup condemned around the world, are obvious.

But when viewed from the closer physical (Miami is just 800 miles from Honduras) and historical proximity of the United States, the differences between Iran and Honduras are marked and clear in important ways: the M-16’s pointing at this very moment at the thousands of peaceful protesters are paid for with U.S. tax dollars and still carry a "Made in America" label; the military airplane in which they kidnapped and exiled President Zelaya was purchased with the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid the Honduran government has been the benefactor of since the Cold War military build-up that began in 1980’s; the leader of the coup, General Romeo Vasquez, and many other military leaders repressing the populace received "counterinsurgency" training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the infamous "School of the Americas," responsible for training those responsible for the greatest atrocities in the Americas.

The big difference between Iran and Honduras? President Obama and the U.S. can actually do something about a military crackdown that our tax dollars are helping paying for. That Vasquez and other coup leaders were trained at the WHINSEC, which also trained Agusto Pinochet and other military dictators responsible for the deaths, disappearances, tortures of hundreds of thousands in Latin America, sends profound chills throughout a region still trying to overcome decades U.S.-backed militarism.

Hemispheric concern about the coup were expressed in the rapid, historic and almost universal condemnation of the plot by almost all Latin American governments. Such concerns in the region represent an opportunity for the United States. But, while the Honduran coup represents a major opportunity for Obama to make real his recent and repeated calls for a "new" relationship to the Americas, failure to take actions that send a rapid and unequivocal denunciation of the coup will be devastating to the Honduran -- and to the still-fragile U.S. image in the region.

Recent declarations by the Administration -- expressions of "concern" by the President and statements by Secretary of State Clinton recognizing Zelaya as the only legitimate, elected leader of Honduras -- appear to indicate preliminary disapproval of the putsch. Yet, the even more unequivocal statements of condemnation from U.N. President Miguel D’Escoto, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and the Presidents of Argentina, Costa Rica and many other governments raise greatly the bar of expectation before the Obama Administration.

As a leader of the global chorus condemning the Iranian government and as one of the primary backers of the Honduran military, the Obama Administration will feel increasing pressure to do much more.

Beyond immediate calls to continue demanding that Zelaya and democratic order be reinstated, protesters in Honduras, Latin America and across the United States will also pressure the Obama Administration to take a number of tougher measures including: cutting off of U.S. military aid, demanding that Hondurans and others kidnapped, accounting for all those jailed and detained, bringing Vasquez and coup leaders to justice, investigate what U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, did or didn’t know about the coup.

With the bad taste left by the widely alleged U.S. involvement in recent coup attempts in Venezuela (2006) and Bolivia (2008), countries led by Zelaya allies Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, the Obama Administration faces a skeptical Latin American audience.

Latin American skepticism of U.S. intentions is not unfounded. Throughout his administration, Zelaya has increasingly moved left, critiquing certain U.S. actions and building stronger ties to countries like Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, according to the Council on Hemespheric Affairs. COHA, a non-profit research organization, writes:

While Honduras signed onto the U.S.-led Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2004, and the U.S. currently is Honduras’ primary trading partner and the source of approximately two-thirds of the country’s foreign direct investment (FDI), Zelaya has, within the past year, joined Petrocaribe, Chavez’s oil-subsidy initiative, as well as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the Venezuelan-led trade bloc. Honduras’ Congress ratified its membership in Petrocaribe on March 13, by 69 votes, and Zelaya signed ALBA membership documents on August 22.

The Honduran president has said that apathy on the part of the U.S. as well as by the international lending institutions toward rising food prices and deepening poverty in his country -- one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, with per capita income around $1,600 -- compelled him to turn to Caracas."

Obama’s meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Monday, whose government has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other international organizations as one of the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere, both complicates and will be complicated by Sunday’s’ resurgence of militarism in Honduras.

Zelaya, who continues denouncing the coup from Costa Rica, outlined the long term threat to Honduran and U.S. interests in the region, "I think this is a vicious plot planned by elites. Elite who only want to keep the country isolated and in extreme poverty," he said adding that, "A usurper government cannot be recognized by absolutely anybody."