re: "Honduran president: America is our No. 1 ally"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") brings us up to date on Honduras.

Money quote(s):

"Back in 2009, the State Department sided strongly with former President Manuel Zelaya, who was seized by the military and taken out of Honduras in what some called a coup. Zelaya snuck back into Honduras in September 2009 and holed up in the Brazilian embassy while the Obama administration worked to restore him to power.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even met with Zelaya in Washington, suspended aid to Honduras, and revoked the visas of Honduran officials. Later, Honduras was cut off from Millennium Challenge Corporation assistance.

Eventually, it became apparent that the de facto regime in Tegucigalpa, led by Roberto Micheletti, was winning the internal struggle and that new elections would take place. The administration began shifting its position in October 2009 and finally threw Zelaya under the bus when Lobo won the election and Zelaya rejected a deal that would have returned him temporarily to power."

Thus demonstrating that even U.S. foreign policy has a learning curve and can, eventually, recognize a mistake.

"Most U.S. trade and assistance to Honduras has been restored, although they are still not able to receive grants from the MCC."

10/5

re: "The betrayal of Honduras"

José R. Cárdenas at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") has an update about further attacks on the Honduran constitution.

Money quote(s):

"Only the willfully deluded or the dangerously naïve would believe that the return of the disgraced former president means anything more than increased civic disturbances, more violence, and more chaos in one of Latin America's poorest countries.

Why? Because that is the way Hugo Chavez wants it.

The Venezuelan autocrat has bankrolled the two-year exile of his puppet Zelaya, as well the international campaign to force the oligarch-turned-populist's return to Honduras. Chavez has never gotten over the fact that Zelaya's attempt to replicate the Chavez model in Honduras was cut short by his impeachment by the Honduran Congress and his removal from office by order of the country's Supreme Court for violating the country's Constitution and other illegal acts. (Zelaya's apologists insist on characterizing what transpired as a "military coup.") "

Previously, I'd had a reasonable feeling of respect for the OAS. After all, most of its members were/are (finally!) democracies. But the Zelaya-instigated constitutional crisis in Honduras made me re-think that, when the OAS and its membership made it clear that it was much more interested in protecting the rights and privileges of presidents than in the democratic liberties of its member nation's citizens.

"What is noteworthy is the complicity of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, whose government teamed with Chavez to engineer Zelaya's return. It is now apparent that President Santos cannot run away fast enough from the legacy of his wildly successful and pro-U.S. predecessor Alvaro Uribe. And peace and stability in the region will be the poorer for it.

Santos's foreign minister, María Ángela Holguín, is in Washington this week for a bit of diplomatic back-slapping with Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, another co-conspirator in forcing Zelaya's return who can always be counted on to do the wrong thing. (The OAS is scheduled to vote this week to reinstate Honduras, after they were suspended in the wake of Zelaya's ouster.)

So what we have here is that instead of allowing the Honduran people to move on with their lives following the turbulent and polarizing Zelaya years, they are now forced to accept the anti-democratic fox back into the henhouse just so a few Latin American politicians can preen before the cameras celebrating their diplomatic "victory."

And just what message is this "victory" sending to the hemisphere? That it is perfectly acceptable that an elected president can run roughshod over democratic institutions, undermine separation of powers, and rewrite the constitution to seek indefinite re-election? That co-equal branches of government must remain supine before any president bent on aggressively aggrandizing power? That the Chavez model is a paragon of democratic legitimacy and rule of law and any attempts to legally thwart it are ipso facto illegitimate? "

re: "Making Sense of Chaos "

Sean Osborne, Associate Director at Northeast Intelligence Network ("Investigating threats to our homeland") mixes good information with some obvious ideological axe-grinding.

Money quote(s)"

"(T)his administration’s blatant “ideologically motivated” incompetence and deliberate “strategic dementia” is leading the world down a path to an apocalypse which the Iranian Ayatollah and his sock puppet so fervently dream of. Indeed, all that will soon be left is for the Iranian’s to step in to fill the vacuum the Obama Administration is creating."

That's a little alarmist, at least in terms of Iran's ability (note, I don't say desire) to step up to anything.

"Unlike the Inept-in-Chief, his Ikhwan advisors and appointed incompetents in the U.S. State Department who have been attempting to micromanage the crisis in Egypt via remote control, there are other forces at work that have real boots on the ground in the former land of the Pharaohs."

Well, I suppose it's some progress that the author differentiates between the "appointed incompetents" at State from us career ones.

"When Obama & Company declared that the transition from Hosni Mubarak’s rule to whatever is supposed to come next had to begin “now” with Mubarak’s immediate resignation, they utterly failed to account for specific provisions of the Egyptian Constitution."

That, for me, echoed similar miscomprehensions about Honduras' constitution.

(Is it really too much to ask that States' country desk officers keep a translation of "their" country's constitution somewhere handy?)

re: "Remember Honduras? Obama does, and he hasn’t given up trying to destabilize the country"

Neo-Neocon ("to tell the tale of my political change and provide a forum for others") doesn't seem inclined to discount malice as the motive.*

Money quote(s):

"Obama supported Zelaya not just because he is a fellow-leftist, but in order to stand for the principle that, once a person is elected, he’s allowed to do anything he wants. "

"All the newspapers in the United States should be covering this on their front pages. But they are not; and when they did cover the Honduras story they got it exactly (and purposely, I believe) wrong."

&

"Let’s hope the people of Honduras are the ultimate victors. And I’ll say the same for the people of the United States."

___
* "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor.

SFE - International child abductions tear families apart

From my archive of press clippings:

San Francisco Examiner

International child abductions tear families apart


By: Katie Worth Examiner Staff WriterJanuary 31, 2010

International child abductions have sharply increased nationwide, ripping many families apart and leaving others in search of answers. (AP file photo)


SAN FRANCISCO — Dusk had long since fallen over the jungles of northwestern Honduras, but Lt. Carlos Sanchez could still make out the three children playing in the dirty yard of the bare hut his team had surrounded.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The children had been abducted from San Francisco by their father in June 2008, and he had carefully hidden them."

"The children were victims of what the U.S. Department of State believes is a growing phenomenon: international child abduction. According to State Department statistics, there are about 3,000 children currently missing who have been abducted by a parent and ensconced out of the U.S. At least 400 of those missing children are from California — about 50 from the Bay Area.

The issue of international child abduction briefly received widespread attention last Christmas when a New Jersey father successfully retrieved his 9-year-old son from Brazil, where his mother had taken him for a visit and never returned. After her death, the boy’s stepfather refused to return him to the U.S. until courts forced him to.

The international press treated the Brazil case as an anomaly. In fact, the number of open international kidnapping cases have doubled in about a decade: In 1998, there were about 1,000 open cases, according to nonprofit Committee for Missing Children. Today, there are about 2,000 open cases, State Department spokesman Ryan Palsrok said."

"The abductions are complicated, because both parents often feel they are right in their actions. Because the abductions are international, multiple countries’ legal systems are often involved, as well as an international body empowered by a 1980 Hague Conference treaty.

According to the treaty, an abducted child must be returned to his or her “country of habitual residence,” whose courts will determine the best outcome for the child."

Tips:

- A well-written custody decree: This can be an important line of defense against international parental child abductions. The decree can include a statement that explicitly prohibits your child from traveling abroad without your permission or that of the court. If the other parent has significant ties to a foreign country, the court can require that parent to post a bond that would be forfeited if they leave with the child.

- Passport Issuance Alert Program: You may ask that the State Department alert you if an application for a U.S. passport for the child is received. Because it is much easier to travel out of the country with a child if the child has a passport, preventing one from being issued can deter international travel.

- Quickly alert the State Department: If the child is in the process of being abducted but is not yet abroad, contact the department’s Office of Children’s Issues. The office can work with law enforcement in the U.S. and in other countries to try to stop the departure of children being abducted from the U.S.

The Office of Children’s Issues can be reached at (202) 736-9090 during working hours, and (888) 407-4747 evenings, holidays and weekends. For additional details on missing children, visit www.missingkids.com. If you have information on a missing child, call (800) 843-5678

Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of Children’s Issues

Unresolved cases
2,000: Open cases of international parental abductions known by the U.S. Department of State
3,000: Children involved in these cases
400: Children taken from California
50: Children taken from the Bay Area
50: Percent increase in cases reported to the State Department in the last two years
62: Countries on six continents where children from California have been taken
Source: U.S. Department of State

______
kworth@sfexaminer.com

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/International-child-abductions-tear-families-apart-83080057.html#ixzz0eJ8ijE9k

JO - Time to care again for Caricom

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Time to care again for Caricom

Sir Ronald Sanders

Sunday, April 26, 2009


IT seems that every time the countries of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) make one step forward in the quest for deeper integration, they take two steps backward, and the goal becomes even more elusive.

Sir Ronald Sanders

There have been several recent manifestations of this, one of them being the approach to ALBA - the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas - created by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"One member government of Caricom is formally a member of ALBA and two others have indicated that they might join the organisation.
The government that has joined ALBA is Dominica and the governments that have announced their intention to do so are St Vincent & the Grenadines and Antigua & Barbuda."

"The known members of ALBA are: Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Dominica.

When ALBA was conceived, it was not a treaty organisation and its principles resided in economic co-operation arrangements which appeared to benefit countries that joined it with Venezuela being the principal donor."

&

"Since then, however, a military dimension has crept into the organisation. Both Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega have argued that the member countries of ALBA "should work to form a joint defence strategy and start joining our armed forces, air forces, armies, navies, National Guards, and intelligence forces, because the enemy is the same, the empire (meaning the United States)"."

_____


Responses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com

Sir Ronald Sanders is a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat.

re: "Dramatic And Dark Turn As Obama Stands More Firmly Against The Honduran People And Their Duly Elected Government"

Jude at Hugh Hewitt ("A blog of Townhall.Com") is not sugar-coating it.

JO - Handling of Honduras crisis flawed from the start

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer


Handling of Honduras crisis flawed from the start

SIR RONALD SANDERS

Sunday, August 02, 2009


Call it Latin American "hot blood" or "Commonwealth cool", but there is definitely a marked difference between how the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Commonwealth handle conflicts in their member states.

SIR RONALD SANDERS

Both the 53-nation Commonwealth and the 34-nation OAS have had their share of coup d'états, fraudulent elections and abuse of civil and human rights. And both organisations have drawn up Declarations of Principle for their member states - infractions of which lead to penalties of some kind.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"(W)hereas in the OAS suspension of a state from membership of the organisation was the first step taken in relation to Honduras where it was claimed a coup d'état had occurred, in the Commonwealth suspension of a member state is an action of last resort, taken only after many initiatives have been exhausted.

Unlike the OAS, the Commonwealth has standing machinery designed to deal with breaches of the fundamental democratic principles to which it adheres."

&

"The OAS secretary general was given 72 hours to find a solution to the Honduran situation. He might just as well have been asked to push a huge boulder up a steep mountain. There was no way it could have been achieved given the high emotion that existed on all sides.
In giving him such a mandate, the OAS General Assembly was clearly pressed into their decision by a group of countries led by Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua and Bolivia (the key members of ALBA) who wanted their man, Manuel Zelaya, immediately back in the presidency, whether or not he had been removed in accordance with the Honduran Constitution and law. As an important aside, let me say in this connection that however legally correct the impeachment of Zelaya may have been, the interim regime wrong-footed itself by having the military remove him from the country."

_____

Responses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com

Sir Ronald Sanders is a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat.

re: "Honduras coup: Nice job, but here's how to do it better next time"

J Michael Waller at PoliticalWarfare.Org ("Words, images and ideas as tools of first resort.") had some suggestions for Honduras.

Money quote(s):

"How different modern Latin American history would be if the US had backed the brave Venezuelan officers and civilians who dared challenge the man who would abuse the democratic system to become an aggressive dictator.

Across Latin America, the Chavez model of political subversion of existing democratic and legal structures is taking root, with extremists taking power through Venezuelan petrodollar-funded covert operations to topple pro-western governments and create a Bolivarian "near abroad."

The US has done nothing to try to stem the trend. Nothing. Democrat or Republican - American leaders have handed the playing field over to Chavez and his Cuban and Iranian allies. It's been a pathetic show.

How refreshing it was to see that humble Honduras is the only country in the region not to lose its political cojones and that, to keep its Chavez-backed president from violating the constitution, its other institutions acted.

"It's all about process. As Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush proved in Venezuela, it's not really democracy that the US wants. It's legalistic process that matters. Just like the bureaucrat who doesn't care if you've really complied with a regulation, all that matters is the piece of paper that certifies that you did comply. Whether or not you really did. So Chavez can build his dictatorship simply by working through the democratic system and subverting it, and his model has been replicated again and again in the Americas. All to the cheer of do-gooders and demokracy-uber-alles fanatics alike.

And when the Good Guys step in to stop the nonsense, they are condemned because they are working outside The Process."

&

"Zelaya is a nut and illegal political agent of a foreign power who has alienated practically everyone in Honduras. He can hardly get TV time. His own party unanimously abandoned him, voting to agree to his resignation and the alleged "coup." The rest of the democratically elected congress called on the military to take action against him, too. So did the Supreme Court."

re: "On The Wrong Side Of The Right Man"

Jude at Hugh Hewett ("A blog of Townhall.Com") provided some illumination about the new Honduran president.

Money quote(s):

"Roberto Micheletti is the legally elected president of Honduras who counts among his allies the Honduran constitution, the rule of law, the Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court and Catholic Bishops, plus a majority of the Honduran people, including the business and political classes. Meanwhile, perched in Nicaragua and seeking to overturn the constitutional government of Honduras is ousted president Manuel Zalaya. Among his allies are Marxists, despots and cocaine cartels, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Castro, and ...President Obama."

&

"How is it possible for our President to get this one so wrong without having ill will toward Honduras and the desires of a democratic people?

Whether the military over-stepped or not by taking Zelaya out of the country, the transfer of power was legally performed."

re: "Why Honduras matters"

Neo-Neocon ("to tell the tale of my political change and provide a forum for others") explained the significance of Hondura's "coup".

Money quote(s):

"The summary version: the UN, which is now mostly a vehicle to promote tyranny, wants Zeleya back, whereas patriots in Honduras are working feverishly to prevent their country from becoming another Venezuela. Obama, of course, is on the side of the UN."

"I happen to be in favor of not only democracy, but constitutional checks on the possible tyranny of the majority in a democracy. And I would like to preserve such things even for little countries like Honduras, whose government is trying mightily and heroically to maintain its sovereignty, and to stop those who would usurp its ability to protect itself from that tyranny.

Unfortunately, our very own President Obama is among those people."

"(T)o recognize what’s been occurring there and what it signifies, one must know something about history, most particularly about how such power grabs occur. Then the patterns become clear. "

&

"(T)yrants very often use “democracy” as an excuse to get the people to override a constitution and grant them what turns out to be dictatorial, or near-dictatorial, powers, as well as the ability to extend or abolish term limits and stay in power longer than the constitution says (and in many cases indefinitely). Once the rules are changed about term limits, and power is consolidated and the voting apparatus compromised, staying in power is a relatively easy matter, really a trifle.

Most dictators of recent history have gone this route; the path is well worn and the methods tried and true. Zeleya was attempting to follow in the footsteps of compadre Chavez, and the government and people of Honduras knew it."

re: "Tyranny At Home. Tyranny Abroad."

Scipio at The Return of Scipio ("writing not for fortune or fame but because God is watching") explained what Honduras has to do with liberty.

Money quote(s):

"Who could have guessed that one day little Honduras would be in the news? Who could have guessed that one day little Honduras would be seen as a bulwark against tyranny? Who could have guessed that one day Honduras would stand firm against pressure from the OAS, the UN and the US?"

"Honduras is reliving the ancient struggle between liberty and tyranny. In all of our 6000 years of history liberty has almost always gone down to defeat. Simply put, tyranny has had too much in its favor. Laws were written by tyrants to ensure their hold on power. States would create an apparatus of prisons and police and spies to prop up any dictatorship. All media were placed under the direct scrutiny of those who ruled. These things were as true for Ashurbanipal as they are true for Hugo Chavez. "

&

"The most earth shaking event in secular world history was the creation of the United States of America. It was quite literally “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Nothing like it had ever come about. From the start she presented to the world a frightening thing, the possibility that the citizens of a nation might actually control the levers of power in a state. If she succeeded she would become a “dangerous nation” and a threat to tyranny around the world. Thus the hatred that European nations had for the new nation. None of them even believed that the US could possibly survive. It was a good thing for them that she did."

re: "Mark Steyn on MJ's entourage, CNN's airport audience, & Afghanistan's tribes, & Obama getting Honduras wrong."

Mark Steyn had a great couple of quotes on Hugh Hewitt's show last month:

Regarding the media:

"(G)iven that the problems the media have at the moment with their sinking audiences, you can understand why, you know, CNN is dying. If it weren’t for airports, if it weren’t for the fact that America’s lousy airline industry somehow thinks it will put you in a better mood if your three hour delay at the gate is accompanied by three hours of Wolf Blitzer, there would be no audience for CNN. And I think that’s essentially, they seized on this thing as a drowning man clutches a straw. And the straw in this case I think is toxic."

The straw.... is toxic.

Beautiful.

Also, regarding Afghanistan:

"The British concluded that they did not want Afghanistan formally within the British Empire simply because they did not have the will to do what would be necessary to make it a civilized part of the world as they understood it. And so they contented themselves with a more or less friendly regime in Kabul, and essentially tribal regions carrying on pretty much as they always had done. And in a sense, that system worked until the overthrow of the Afghan monarchy in the 1970s. Afghanistan didn’t progress, but in a way, it was manageable. It was kind of super-decentralized. The King’s write didn’t really run thirty miles from the palace. And tribal, local tribal chiefs more or less got on with life as they always had done. And I’m not sure anyone has yet come up with a working model for Afghanistan that is any better than that. And trying to impose order on the Helmand Valley in particular, I think is something that as I said, the British felt that even, who had as much imperialist swagger as anybody, felt that that was even beyond them. And I’m not sure the United States, with its general preference for a light footprint, is likely to be any more successful there."

Read to the very end to catch the bit about Honduras.

re: "Backtracking on Zelaya"

DRJ guest-posted at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense"):

Money quote(s):

"(T)welve days have passed since a State Department spokesman acknowledged that U.S. legal advisers were “actively assessing the facts and the law in question.” These advisers have clearly had enough time to conclude their research regarding the legality of Zelaya’s actions and the Honduran response, as well as communicate their conclusions to the State Department and the White House.

The continued silence by the Obama Administration on this topic speaks volumes. My guess is the word went out to Hugo Chávez and Manuel Zelaya that the Obama Administration is throwing Zelaya under the bus."

re: "Estrada On Hunduran Treason"

Jude at Hugh Hewitt ("A blog of Townhall.Com") had a recommendation:

"Estrada grew up in Honduras before coming to America, and his take on what's going on in Honduras right now should be the one piece you read and remember on Zelaya: Honduras' Non-Coup."

re: "Honduras and Democracy"

Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog") captured the essential issues.

Money quote(s):

"The most important news is from Honduras, where the army, the courts, and the legislature are united in opposing a change in the Constitution that would allow the country to have a president for life as they have had in Cuba and Venezuela.

Much of the world seems to see the expulsion of the president -- Constitutional and done with a supreme court warrant so far as I can tell -- as an attack on "democracy." That raises the question of what is democracy?"

&

"(O)ne needs to think hard about what means by democracy. In Honduras there is an attempt to make it mean "one person, one vote, for one man for life." The Honduras Supreme Court, its army, and its legislature have said that it must not mean that. Given the location of Honduras it's probably inevitable that the US take a stand on this. Which side should we be on? And should we choose that by national interest or by some kind of political principle? And if the latter, what is that principle? Is it that a majority may choose whatever it likes? If there are to be limits on what the majority may choose, what shall those limits be?"

JO - UN tells Jamaica to 'control' the guns

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

UN tells Jamaica to 'control' the guns

Sunday, June 08, 2008

THE United Nations wants the Jamaican government to institute strict gun control regulations as a means of stemming the heavy inflow of guns and ammunition into the island.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"In a joint press release issued by UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)for the Global Week of Action against Gun Violence, the UN urged all stakeholders to increase their efforts to tackle the arms flow, and embark on a social intervention drive in order to curb the high rate of armed violence that has taken over the island."

&

"With the decline of Jamaica's importance as a trans-shipment port for cocaine destined for the United States, a flood of weapons have found their way into the island as unscrupulous people exploit the island's porous coastline and have established a booming guns for drugs trade between arms smugglers from Jamaica, Haiti, Honduras and other countries in the region."