Wesley Clark calls for U.S. internment camps by Wayne Madsen

Wesley Clark calls for U.S. internment camps by Wayne Madsen
Retired General Wesley Clark, who once commanded NATO forces and who is a longtime darling of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, told MSNBC that he favors the establishment of World War II-style internment camps in the United States for what he termed "radicalized Americans." Clark, who campaigned for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said, "We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning . . . I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists." During World War II, the U.S. interned Japanese-Americans in camps and also imprisoned German- and Italian-Americans believed to have had ties to the Axis camp. Clark also said he believed Britain, Germany, and France should consider establishing detention camps.

Clark made his statement in reference to the shooting attack on an Armed Forces recruiting center in Chatanooga by a suspected Islamist radical. However, in his statement, Clark broadened his call for the unconstitutional detention of American citizens from Muslims to all "radicalized Americans."

In 2003, this editor called out Clark for his neo-conservative policies in an article for CounterPunch titled "Wesley Clark for President? Another Con Job from the Neo-Cons." The article has since been deleted from the CounterPunch website. Although CounterPunch deleted most articles by this editor, that did not stop the website from publishing an article that lifted heavily, without attribution, from my article on the operations and motives of Israeli art students and movers and 9/11. CounterPunch was accused of steering blame for 9/11 away from Israel. The pulled CounterPunch article on Clark follows:

September 18, 2003 Wesley Clark for President? Another Con Job from the Neo-Cons By WAYNE MADSEN

Let it never be said the neo-conservatives are not persistent. That's why they must be rounded up by the FBI and charged with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes. But let's save that issue for another time. The latest trick of the neo-cons is running retired General Wesley Clark for President as a Democrat. But not just any Democrat -- a "New Democrat." The same bunch that are pushing Joe Lieberman's candidacy are obviously hedging on their bets and want to have Clark in the race as a potential vice presidential candidate (to ensure their continued influence in a future Democratic administration of Howard Dean, John Kerry, or Dick Gephardt) or as a "go-to" candidate in the event that Lieberman stumbles badly in the first few Democratic primaries next year. The "New Democrats" (neo-cons) are as much masters at the perception management (lying) game as their GOP counterparts (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld). Clark's presidential candidacy announcement in Little Rock is one warning sign. This city is a sort of "Mecca" for the neo-con Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its main nurturers, Al From and Bruce Reed. It was from Little Rock where the DLC propelled a little known governor named Bill Clinton into the White House. And although Clinton did not turn out exactly as conservative as the DLC hoped for, his support for globalization and selected use of U.S. military power abroad were neo-con keystone successes. Now enter "Arkansan" Wesley Clark. Like Hillary Clinton, Clark is a Chicago transplant to Little Rock. And he is about as power driven as the former First Lady. According to Pentagon insiders, when Clark was Commander of the US Southern Command in Panama from June 1996 to July 1997, he was fond of "ordering" Latin American military commanders and defense ministers to appear before him. Some of the Latin American officials, particularly those from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, refused to be bullied by Clark, whose personality is said to be acerbic. From his pro-consul position in Panama, Clark supported with US military advisers and American mercenaries, continued warfare against anti-oligarchic movements in Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, and Bolivia. Fast forward to the Kosovo wars when Clark was NATO commander. Not only did Clark lord over the first unprovoked aerial bombardment of a major European city (Belgrade) since Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe pounded virtually defenseless European cities, but he almost got into a shooting war with Russian peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. It was only the intervention of the British government, Defense Secretary William Cohen, and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Hugh Shelton that prevented Clark from starting World War III. When Clark ordered British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson to forcibly block Kosovo's Pristina Airport to prevent Russian planes from landing, the Briton replied, "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you." Jackson was backed up all the way to Number 10 Downing Street. Clark was forced to back down. Eventually, Cohen fired Clark as NATO commander three months before his term was to expire. Before becoming NATO Commander, Clark was the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy within the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From this vantage point, Clark was well aware of and likely supported the arming of the Bosnian government by accepting contributions from various deep-pocketed Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, Brunei, Jordan, and Egypt. Via something called the Bosnia Defense Fund, these countries deposited millions of dollars into U.S. coffers to buy weapons for the Bosnians and train them in their use through the use of private military contractors like Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI). And when some of the weapons and cash for the Bosnians became "unaccounted for," where did some of the guns and cash wind up? In the hands of Al Qaeda and Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) units in Bosnia. More interestingly is how General Clark's Bosnia strategy ultimately goes full circle. According to Washington K Street sources, the law firm that established the Bosnia Defense Fund was none other than Feith and Zell, the firm of current Pentagon official and leading neo-con Douglas Feith. Feith's operation at Feith and Zell was assisted by his one-time boss and current member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle. Both Feith and Perle advised the Bosnian delegation during the 1995 Dayton Peace talks. The chief U.S. military negotiator in Dayton was Wesley Clark. A long time ago, the French, tired of war, turned to a short general named Napoleon to lead them to peace and prosperity. Instead, Napoleon seized imperial power and ensured the French would have more war. After four years of Bush, the neo-con Fifth Column in the Democratic Party is trying to convince us that Clark is the "anti-war" candidate. Tell that to the people of Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Tell that to the coca farmer in Bolivia or Colombia who is trying to feed his family. Let's not fall for the deception and tricks of the neo-cons again. If you are tired of Bush, Cheney, and the neo-cons and their phony wars, Clark is certainly not the answer. He has been, and remains part of, the great deception of the American people.

Clark tried to cash in on the Bush administration's zealous desire to collect and mine personal meta-data on the American people. WMR reported the following on March 23, 2006:
"Retired General Wesley Clark has once again enmeshed himself in the military-industrial complex. Yesterday, Viaspace, a firm that bills itself as transforming 'proven space and defense technologies from NASA and the Department of Defense into hardware and software solutions' for homeland security and sensor technology, named Clark as a member of its board of directors. Clark said, 'Viaspace is leveraging previous NASA and DOD investment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop new generations of energy and security products.'

After he announced his candidacy for president in 2004, Clark resigned from the board of Arkansas-based Acxiom, a data mining firm. While working for Acxiom, Clark personally lobbied Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA, Justice Department, and Transportation Department to sell the Bush administration on an Acxiom system that would serve as the basis for the 'No Fly List' and other terrorist watch databases. A 2005 privacy study undertaken of a sample of Acxiom personal data reports found that their reports were 100 percent inaccurate -- with even the genders of data subjects being erroneous."

Clark told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman in 2007 that after 9/11, he was at the Pentagon and shown a memo stating that the Bush administration was going to "take out seven countries in five years." The countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Clark never once told Goodman that he was opposed to this neocon plan, merely that he was shown the memo by an anonymous Pentagon staffer. Clark said the plan to take out Iran was a "bad one," insisting that the Iranian government are not "good guys," however, he was completely mum on the plan to wage war on the other six nations.

Clark, whose father was Benjamin Jacob Kanne, a descendant from a long line of Belarusian kohanim (rabbis), is and always has been a neocon in the truest sense of the word. Clark's full name is Wesley Kanne Clark. Clark, who became a Baptist, has always expressed his admiration for his kohanim ancestry. That, alone, is a ticket for entrance into the neocon cabal that has nurtured his fellow travelers, including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, the Kagan family (including Victoria Nuland), Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, the Kristols, the Pipes, the Podhoretzes, and the rest. Clark's call for internment camps for "radicalized Americans" has earned him an extra knish and blintz at the next neocon banquet.

THE ROVING EYE - Asia will not 'isolate' Russia By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE
Asia will not 'isolate' Russia
Envy the fly on the wall in The Hague when cool Xi Jinping met Barack Obama, pivoting around himself because China and the rest of Asia will not "isolate" Russia. China is Russia's strategic partner and along with Japan and South Korea (essentially US protectorates) identifies more with a steady supply of oil and gas, and business deals struck in Moscow, than helping stir an anachronistic Western-provoked New Cold War.

Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime. 

The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded with class; if you don't want us, we have better things to do. [1] Everyone knows the G-7 is an innocuous, self-important talk shop. It's in the G-20 - much more representative of the real world - where crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic issues gain traction. 

The Hague Declaration comes complete with the kiss of death, as in, "The International Monetary Fund has a central role leading the international effort to support Ukrainian reform, lessening Ukraine's economic vulnerabilities, and better integrating the country as a market economy in the multilateral system." That's code for "wait till structural adjustment starts biting". 

And then there will be "measures to enhance trade and strengthen energy security" - code for "we will destroy your industry" but "are not very keen on paying your humongous Gazprom bill". 

All this in the sidelines of a supposed summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands, where US President Barack Obama, at the Rijksmuseum, in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, extolled Washington's "support of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people". Rembrandt's watchers have never seen anything like it in their glorious lifespan. It pays to be a Nazi after all; you just need to be in the right government, against the right enemy, and fully approved by the hyper-power. 

King Willem-Alexander hosted a lavish dinner for the members of the nuclear security summit at the Royal Palace Huis ten Bosch in The Hague - after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a (failed) bid to "isolate" Russia. The White House would later add that, as long as Russia continues "flagrantly" to violate international law, "there is no need for it to engage with the G7". Unless, of course, it starts conducting a drone war in Ukrainian badlands - with kill-list attached. 

All about NATO
The US Senate - always enjoying superb popularity ratings - laboriously laid the groundwork for debating a bill backing a US$1 billion loan guarantee for the regime changers in Kiev, plus $150 million in aid also including "neighboring countries". These figures are enough to pay Ukraine's bills for maybe two weeks. 

Meanwhile, in the facts on the ground department, Crimea will be booming soon - tourism included - and may even become a "special economic zone". [2] Subjects of the upcoming IMF/agrobusiness-plundered Khaganate of Nulands will see the results for themselves. 

Hysteria within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that Russia is about to invade everyone and his neighbor literally tomorrow - remember The Russians Are Coming! - persists unabated. Independent observers, The Roving Eye included, always insisted this is all about NATO, and not the European Union. [3] 

Since the go-go days of the Bill Clinton era, NATO has been expanding to the doorstep of Russia. The process graphically represents US hegemony over Europe; NATO "annexed" Eastern Europe even before the EU. And even those certified US Cold Warriors such as Paul Nitze always thought this was a needless, dangerous provocation of Russia. 

Very few remember how "Bubba" Clinton, to make sure terminal alcoholic Boris Yeltsin was re-elected in 1996, postponed NATO's expansion for a year. Afterwards, the expansion turbocharged into NATO as global Robocop - from the Balkans to the intersection of Central and South Asia, and to Northern Africa. 

NATO's humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia - 36,000 combat missions, 23,000 bombs and missiles - whose 15th anniversary is "celebrated" this week, codified the new realities. NATO had nothing to do with defense; it was a multi-lethal (transformer) attack dog. It was the epitome of clean war; aerial blitzkrieg, and no casualties. And it was totally legitimized by "human rights" over national sovereignty; that was humanitarian imperialism in the making, opening the way to "responsibility to protect" and the destruction of Libya. 

Moscow knows very well the lineaments of the neo-barbarian behemoth at its gates, in the form of NATO bases in Ukraine, assuming the regime changers in Kiev remain in power. And their response has absolutely nothing to do with "Putin's aggression". Or the so-called "Medvedev Doctrine" of Russia theoretically extending military protection to Russians everywhere. As if Russia was about to "threaten" its business interests in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan or Mongolia. 

What the White House calls "the international community" - roughly the "Hague Declaration" G-7 plus a few European minions - could not possibly admit that. Asia, on the other hand, clearly identifies it. China, Japan and South Korea, for starters, identify Russia with a steady supply of oil and gas and further business deals. Even considering that Japan and South Korea are essentially US protectorates, nothing could be more anachronistic in their calculations than a Western-provoked New Cold War. 

Asia will not "isolate" Russia - and Asians and Russians know it, as much as The White House is in denial. Beijing's abstention in "condemning" Moscow - talk about the American angry-schoolmaster brand of politics - is classic Deng Xiaoping-style "keep a low profile", as China is Russia's strategic partner and both are busy working for the emergence of a multipolar world. Not to mention Beijing's utmost rejection of US-style color-coded "revolutions" and regime change ops - as well as that "pivoting to Asia" encirclement ops. 

Oh, to have been an EU-regulated fly on the wall in that Hague room where Obama and Xi were talking; cool Xi meets Obama pivoting around himself. 

Notes:
1. Russia not clinging to G8 if West does not want it - Russian FM, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.
2. Crimea to become Russian special economic zone-Medvedev, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.
3. Why the EU won't annex Ukraine, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.


Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

Obama gets "F" for initial Haiti earthquake response

President Obama attempted to not repeat the same mistakes made by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in responding to natural disasters. Bush's handling of relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Indonesian earthquake and resulting tsunami was nothing less than abysmal. Obama, on the other hand, was on television the morning after the devastating and deadly earthquake in Haiti trying to look "presidential." However, Obama's handling of the response to the Haiti disaster was in keeping with Obama'ssecretive CIA past. Obama kicked off his media appearance by stating that his first response was to dispatch a U.S. military ground assessment team Haiti that included a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion from the U.S. surveillance base at Comalapa in El Salvador conducting aerial surveillance of the devastated country. The plane overflight is, of course, reminiscent of President Bush's survey of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina from the safety of Air Force One.

While Obama, who is clearly not suited to emergency response by defaulting to his military in responding to the Haiti earthquake, was talking about U.S. military assessment teams going to Haiti, Cuba's President Raul Castro and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez already had field hospitals on the ground in Haiti rendering medical assistance to the injured. Obama is hamstrung in deploying any military logistics and medical personnel to places like Haiti because the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is now over-extended in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and, now, Yemen.

It was only later that Obama officials decided to dispatch the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and some Coast Guard cutters to Haiti. There remained confusion over the dispatch of the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, to Haiti, something that was specifically requested by the wife of Haitian President Rene Preval because all of Port-au-Prince's hospitals were destroyed or abandoned after the quake. However, as of the evening of January 12, the Comfort was still docked in Baltimore with a five-day transit time to Haiti. Only in the late afternoon of January 13 was the Comfort ordered to sail to Haiti.

One of the problems in providing relief for Haiti is that much of the Caribbean region's initial U.S. emergency response was being coordinated by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, an entity more interested in overthrowing Latin American governments through covert operations like that conducted against Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, than in providing humanitarian assistance.

Obama also named his director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Rajiv Shah, as his overall coordinator for Haiti relief operations. Shah was sworn into office on January 8. Obama could not have made a worse choice. USAID, which is a cipher for the CIA, has largely been responsible for Haiti remaining the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Shah's previous work for the dubious Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, as well as his being a political hack for Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who is imbued in corruption in Harrisburg, should not give the beleaguered people of Haiti any hope.

And not to be left out, there were indications that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hoping for a repeat disaster relief fund-raising engagement by her husband, Bill Clinton, who garnered so much public attention in his and former President George H. W. Bush's tsunami relief work after the 2004 Indonesia earthquake disaster. Last year, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is owned and operated by the U.S. government, appointed Bill Clinton as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton has ensured that the populist opposition loyal to exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man he helped regain office after a 1991 military coup ousted him, remain suppressed. To make matters worse, Obama has asked former President George W. Bush, the man who was disengaged over the Asian tsunami and Katrina, to join Bill Clinton in Haiti relief efforts. Obama's tone deafness to political reality has his erstwhile progressive base wondering just who is occupying the White House.

The combination of Bill Clinton and USAID invited yet another disaster -- a financial one -- for the people of Haiti. USAID and members of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA) who are political cronies of the Clintons have wreaked havoc on Haiti's once thriving rice growing business. Once a net exporter of highly-nutritional rice, a combination of USAID policies and one-sided Clinton-era trade deals destroyed the Haitian rice industry and made the country dependent on expensive and non-nutritional genetically-engineered bleached white rice from Arkansas agri-businesses. In 2008, the soaring price of rice worldwide and price-fixing by U.S. agri-businesses linked to both Clinton and Bush 41 resulted in food riots breaking out in Haiti.

No sooner had Hillary Clinton turned her plane around on a trip to Australia and New Zealand to head back to Washington to deal with the Haiti situation, her husband launched the following high-tech appeal on the web site of his William J. Clinton Foundation: "Text 'HAITI' to '20222' and $10 will be given to the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund,
charged to your cell phone bill." Clinton also solicited for donations of up to $1000 for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund.

Current Haitian President Rene Preval has long been in the pocket of the CIA and USAID. Clinton chicanery with Haiti, continued under Bush and, now, Obama, was detailed in the editor's book, "Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops & Big Oil":

"In 1995, Preval’s government contracted with a number of U.S. companies close to U.S. intelligence and military circles to provide security services, including Brown & Root, which Dick Cheney headed at the time. Preval, a favorite of the U.S., defeated Aristide in the 1995 presidential election. In 1999, Preval began to rule by decree. After the Haitian armed forces were disbanded, Dyncorp (now owned by Computer Sciences Corporation [since sold off]) was brought in to establish and train the new Haitian National Police. Dyncorp recruited former Ton Ton Macoutes of the Duvalier regimes and pro-US former members of the military junta as policemen. According to U.S. congressional sources, some of these Dyncorp-trained police served as a virtual fifth column in the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Chemonics, a firm that is involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, has made hundreds of millions of dollars from State Department contracts, and is close to the Pentagon and State Department, was involved in US Agency for International Development (USAID) agricultural projects in Haiti in the 1990s. Chemonics’ sister company, Rice Corporation of Haiti (RCH), maintained a virtual monopoly on rice imports into the impoverished nation and helped drive Haiti's many small rice farmers out of business. Both Chemonics and RCH are owned by ERLY Industries, Inc., an agribusiness firm with headquarters in Houston and Los Angeles. ERLY is owned by Gerald Murphy and his son, Douglas. They are longtime Republican supporters of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. The elder Murphy set up Chemonics, as he said, to have his 'own CIA."' Chemonics and its top officials have given thousands of dollars to the Republican Party. Since his return to power, Aristide came under attack for some time by a usual array of neo-conservative publications, including the New York Sun, a leading propaganda outlet for neo-conservative interests in the United States."

USAID continues to team up with Chemonics in agriculture projects in Haiti, where USAID also happens to have another partner, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where Shah first served Obama as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics before being nominated to be the director of USAID last November.

President Obama reacted as anyone with his background as a non-official cover employee of Business International Corporation, a CIA front, would react: turn over humanitarian relief to those military and intelligence agencies responsible for Haiti's pre-existing poverty and despair.

From Coup-Lite to Truth-Lite: 10 Ways the U.S. Fought Democracy in Honduras

By Andrés Thomas Conteris

In his essay “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side the United States Government Is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras,” Mark Weisbrot correctly illustrates U.S. backing for the coup regime and the lack of U.S. support for democracy. For more than 100 days, I have been holed up with President Manuel Zelaya inside the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, covering the story for “Democracy Now!” and other independent media. In case Weisbrot’s points were not convincing, here are another 10 ways the U.S. has undermined democracy in Honduras.

10. The resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on June 30 strongly condemned the coup in Honduras. The United States, however, prevented the U.N. Security Council from taking strong measures consistent with the resolution.

9. When President Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa and took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy on Sept. 21, Lewis Amselem, the U.S. representative at the Organization of American States (OAS), called his action “foolish” and “irresponsible.” Amselem, whose background is with the U.S. Southern Command, is known in the halls of the OAS as “the diplomator.” He led the charge for validating the Honduran elections, while many other countries opposed recognition of elections held under the coup regime.

8. The U.S. Southern Command sponsored the PANAMAX 09 joint maneuvers, conducted Sept. 11-21 off the coast of Panama with military forces from 20 countries. Even though the U.S. publicly stated that ties with the Honduran military had been severed, the invitation to Honduras to participate in these maneuvers was not rescinded. The Honduran armed forces finally said they would withdraw, but only after several Latin American countries threatened to boycott the exercises.

7. Key members of the Honduran military involved in the coup received training at the School of the Americas (which changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHISC), including Gens. Romeo Vasquez and Luis Javier Prince. Even after the June 28 coup, the Pentagon continued training members of the Honduran military at WHISC, in Ft. Benning, Ga.

6. The negotiating teams for both sides of the conflict reached an accord Oct. 30. Days later, when the U.S. made it clear it would honor the Nov. 29 election whether or not he was reinstated as president, Zelaya declared the accord to be a “dead letter.” The Obama administration claimed it would recognize Zelaya as the president of the country but refused to accept his withdrawal from the accord. That Washington is ignoring the Honduran president is also evidenced by the failure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama to respond to his letters.

5. U.S. officials continue to sing the praises of the accord, but they have been cherry-picking which parts of the agreement to underscore and which to ignore. The Verification Commission mandated by the accord came together only on one occasion, for a photo op. The accord stipulates international aid for the commission’s work, but the U.S. provided no economic or political support. Had the Verification Commission been activated, it would have denounced the Nov. 5 deadline passing without the formation of a government of national unity. It would have had to consider rebuking coup leader Roberto Micheletti for assuming he would preside over this new government. Given the violations by coup leaders, the commission would have had to rule whether the Nov. 29 elections should have proceeded, or been recognized.

4. The U.S. supports a comprehensive amnesty, a component intentionally left out of the accord. The coup regime filed 24 criminal charges against President Zelaya, and he says he is willing to face all of them in an impartial court of law. He has called for an independent international tribunal and rejected the option of amnesty for himself and the coup perpetrators. If amnesty is declared, impunity will be enshrined for the golpistas, as well as for the U.S. Pentagon and civilian officials complicit in the crimes of the coup.

3. The accord calls for the establishment of a truth commission during the first half of 2010. U.S. officials say they favor this; however “truth-lite” seems to be what they prefer. In recent decades, most truth commissions have limited truth-telling to circumstances within their countries’ borders. One exception occurred in Chad, where the role of foreign governments in funding and training the perpetrators of human rights crimes was investigated. If Honduras followed Chad’s example, its truth commission would examine U.S. behavior before, during and after the coup. Some possible questions: What role did those formerly employed by the U.S. government, such as John Negroponte, Otto Reich and Lanny Davis, play before and after the coup? Why did the plane carrying the kidnapped president on June 28 land just 60 miles from the capital at the airbase where the U.S. Joint Task Force Bravo is headquartered? (U.S. officials claim it was to refuel.) Why did the U.S. allow aid to continue to flow to the coup regime while not declaring that a “military coup” had taken place against the advice of the State Department’s legal experts? Top U.S. officials labeled what happened in Honduras as a coup, but given their actions, it’s more like “coup-lite.”

2. Last August, at the Summit of North American Leaders in Mexico, President Obama had harsh words for opponents of his policy, declaring: “The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening. … I think what that indicates is that maybe there’s some hypocrisy involved in their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations. ...”
The continuing U.S. intervention and hypocrisy in Honduras go well beyond what Mark Weisbrot and I have described. Aid continues to flow to the de facto regime, despite U.S. law that mandates cutting aid to military coups; that is intervention. Lifting the symbolic sanctions temporarily imposed on the dictatorship after the accord was signed but not implemented, that is intervention. Bestowing harsher criticism on President Zelaya and his nonviolent supporters than on the perpetrators of gross human rights crimes, that is hypocrisy.

1. Here in the Brazilian Embassy, incoming death threats are part of the psychological warfare directed against those who continue to accompany Zelaya. Elsewhere in Honduras: Resistance leader Carlos Turcios was kidnapped and beheaded Dec. 16; two members of the United Peasant Movement of Aguan were abducted by four hooded men Dec. 17; and resistance member Edwin Renán Fajardo, 22, was tortured and murdered Dec. 22. In an open letter to fellow Central American presidents Dec. 28, Zelaya cited more than 4,000 human rights violations by the coup regime, including 130 killings, more than 450 people wounded, more than 3,000 illegal detentions, and the political imprisonment of 114 people.
The silence of the U.S. government over the last six months regarding the ongoing human rights violations by the golpistas in Honduras confirms that the Obama regime has sought to support a death-squad democracy, rather than reinstating the nation’s elected leader.

That is intervention. That is hypocrisy.

Andrés Thomas Conteris is director of Program on the Americas, for Nonviolence International, and works with “ ‘Democracy Now!’ en Español.”

AP / Arnulfo Franco

Soldiers and police stand guard near the Brazilian Embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where Honduras’ ousted President Manuel Zelaya has been sheltered since sneaking back into the country in September.