HONDURAS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 11 2009

By Emile Schepers

There is now a nearly complete lineup of contries which have cut off all or part of their aid to Honduras, including all the countries of Central and South America plus the United States and the European union. Furthermore, most of these countries, including the United States, have now declared that they will not recognize the results of the November 29 elections if president Zelaya and constitutional order are not returned forthwith.

There are a few holes in this fabric. One is that Canada, which has important mining interests in Honduras, is not on board for sanctions, though Canada did vote with everybody elsei in the OAS to condemn the coup. There is also some pressure from US military to allow the coup regime to participate in join naval maneuvers in the Caribbean, which are coming up.

Internally, there is no letup in protest activities including national and local work stoppages, street protests and car caravans. The resistance media seem to be back on the air again. The demands of the National Front Against the Coup, the main resistance organization, has demands which go beyond the return of Zelaya to include also a constituent assembly to re-write the Honduran constitution, and no impunity for the coup leaders.

Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias quotes National Front coordinator, paraphrases labor leader Juan Barahona, as saying the following (my translation from Spanish): He pointed out that the prolonged resistence of Honduran men and woman makes no sense if it is limited to these purposes [of restoring Zelaya and constitutional order and carrying out a constituent assembly], for which reason he indicated that it is necessary to go on toward a real transformation of the country.

Barahona advised the Front to maintain its unity and not get itself dispersed by the activities of the various political parties which only want the people's votes and forget about them afterward.

"He said that the struggle is to overturn the neoliberal privatizations which have had the result that a small group of businessmen and transnationals have taken control of the riches of the nation.

"He added that this model should be replaced by one that provides high quality and absolutely free education and health care for the poorest".

The report adds that there was a protest at the US embassy in Tegucigalpa today, demanding that the US exercise effective pressure for the return of Zelaya, with the added demand for the freedom of the Cuban 5, imprisoned in the US for their efforts to stop terrorist attacks on Cuba by ultra-right Miami exile groups.

All for now.

HONDURAS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 10 2009

By Emile Schepers

Two important pieces today.

1. EUROPEAN UNION WARNS OF FURTHER SANCTIONS AGAINST HONDURAS COUP GOVERNMENT: Reuters is reporting that next week the European Union will issue a warning to the coup regime in Honduras that if there is not a peaceful solution, new sanctions will be considered, perhaps targeting individuals involved with the coup and the de-facto regime headed by Roberto Micheletti. UE financial aid to Honduras has already been suspended. The UE is supportive of the Arias mediation process.

2. MILLENIUM CHALLENGE CORP. WILL BLOCK TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS IN HONDURAS. Bloomberg is announcing that the Millenium Challenge Corporation, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is going to block two transportation projects worth $11 million, and another $4 million road building project that was evidently also financed by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (which had cut off support for Honduras earlier). This is in addition to $30 million in military and economic aid already suspended. Reports from other sources have suggested that Elvin Santos, the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party who is seen as complicit in the coup, had financial interests in some of the projects funded by the Millenium Challenge Corp. The other big party candidate in the November 29 elections, death penalty enthusiast Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, is more connected to the big landowning agricultural sector.

The noose is tightening, and the internal resistance remains mobilized and strong.

More tomorrow.

HONDURAS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 9 2009

By: Emile Schepers

The United States has joined most of the rest of the world in saying that it will not recognize Honduras' Nov. 29 election results if President Zelaya and constitutional order are not restored forthwith, as well as adding some sanctions, so we will see if the Micheletti regime can last.

The internal resistance in Honduras is amazingly strong and consisten on day 74 of the coup (which happened on June 28). Almost every day there is some kind of protest. Although we mainly hear about what is going on in the larger cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, various sources report impressive actions in smaller communities all over the country.

As predicted, the illegal de-facto regime of Roberto Micheletti is planning to squeeze the Honduran people harder in order to have the resources to continue the regime. A Reuters interview today with coup de facto Finance Minister Gabriela Nunez seems to bear this out (if you can read Spanish you can read the whole thing at http://lta.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleID=LTASIE5882U520090909 ). Nunez says that the coup government is "adopting a series of austerity measures" due to Honduras having lost $60 million in the suspension of foreign credits (she does not give more details in the interview). Nunez says that it is a pity that the poor will be the ones most affected by the cuts the defacto government is going to make.

I don't have more details at present, but it sounds like the defacto government is now reduced to holding the Honduran people hostage.

Attempt to Alter School Textbooks at Center of Republican Frenzy over Obama Speech

While President Obama’s address to students was a consoling speech on education, staying in school and students’ taking personal responsibility for their learning, David Bradley, a Republican member of the Texas State Board of Education and loudest critic of President Obama, and other Republicans were whipping themselves into a frenzy over Obama’s address before the speech even took place. Constantly employing scare tactics to reinforce the idea that it was an effort to “indoctrinate” the youth of the country, they now appear themselves to be responsible for an attempt to indoctrinate the nation’s school children and to revise substantial content of the nation’s school history books.

As part of the hysteria generated by the Republicans in general, several school districts in Texas did not show President Obama’s harmless and quite normal eighteen-minute address asking students to dream big and work hard, but replaced it with a six minute snippet from his speech on retirement savings made the previous Saturday, September 5th, instead and broadcast over the Internet that afternoon.

Yet the GOP-controlled Texas State Board of Education, which is composed of ten Republicans and five Democrats, is now working feverishly on a new set of statewide textbook standards in the Gingrich-inspired mold for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies since the Reconstruction Era. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far beyond the Lone Star State itself.
The first draft of the standards, released at the end of July lays out a simplistic, human events version of U.S. history.
What makes this a national story is that what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas, according to TPM Media’s Muckracker newsletter which quoted Diane Ravitch, professor of education at NYU. Since Texas is one of the two states with the largest student enrollments, along with California, "publishers vie to get their books adopted for them, and the changes that are inserted to please Texas and California are then part of the textbooks made available to every other state," says Ravitch, who has written a book entitled “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn,” about the politics of textbooks.
In one infamous episode in the late 1990s, Bradley physically ripped apart an Algebra textbook because he was unhappy with pictures, recipes, references to women's suffrage, and other subjects incorporated into the text.
In 2003, he voted with a minority of board members against new biology textbooks because they didn't address "weaknesses" in evolution, according to a Texas Freedom Network, which describes itself as an organization dedicated to fighting the religious right.

--Mike Towsen

HONDURAS UPDATE SEPT 8 2009

By Emile Schepers

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a step in the right direction by announcing several new sanctions against the coup regime.

1. A further cutoff of all non-humanitarian aid.
2. A declaration that unless the San Jose accords are accepted by the Micheletti regime, the results of the Nov. 29 Honduran elections will not be recognized.
3. The Millennium Challenge corp will announce this week whether there will be a cutoff of funds.
4. The possibility of revoking U.S. visas of Honduran coup leaders is being studied.

The BBC announced that due to the crisis in Honduras, the amounts of money (remittances) Hondurans living in the U.S. are sending to their relatives in Honduras have been increasing.

I will get you the info on the fate of Millennium Challenge money and the cutt of visas as soon as I have it.

So tune in again tomorrow.

HONDURAS UPDATE SEPT 7 20

Tomorrow I will be back to my regular blogging schedule, after a brief trip out of town.

The main news today is that the National Front Against the Coup carried out a major national assembly in Tegucigalpa to coordinate strategy for the coming period. I wll try to get more details for tomorrow.

HONDURAS UPDATE SEPT. 6 2009

Emile Schepers

Only one major development today so far, which is that the Honduran coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti has threatened to cease all operations aimed at stopping drug imports passing through Honduras on the way to the United States. The pretext for this announcement is the new sanctions which the U.S. State Department put on Honduras after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with legitimate president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya last Thursday. The de-facto governments decision to stop cooperating with drug interdiction was announced by the coup defense minister Adalfo Sevilla, who phrased it in terms of Honduras not being able to carry on the anti-narcotics struggle without now-suspended U.S. financial aid.

Euripides said: "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad".

I'll check in this evening again to report on any further developments.