Honduran de facto government announces withdrawal from ALBA

[subsuelo]

TEGUCIGALPA, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Honduran de facto government announced on Wednesday its withdrawal from the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA).

De facto Minister of the Presidency Rafael Pineda Ponce said that the decision was made at a meeting of the ministers' board, and will be presented to the National Congress for final approval.

"Today (Wednesday) it will be sent to the National Congress. The decision was made yesterday night at the ministers' board with an agreement signed by (de facto) President Roberto Micheletti," Ponce said.

According to Ponce, the decision was taken because Honduras has been mistreated by other countries in the ALBA.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/17/content_12658661.htm">full story

[Bacchus39]

1. I knew that was coming. certainly no loss for Honduras

where's magbana???? is it legal for a member of ALBA to secede from the group??? will ALBA initiate the same type of forceful military action to retain Honduras as you thought they would to restore Zelaya???

[Downwinder]

2. The de facto government was not a member of ALBA.

[Bacchus39]

3. certainly not anymore!! How is that ALBA thing going anyway??n/t

s

[Peace Patriot]

4. This is a great loss for Honduras in countless ways!

Through ALBA, President Zelaya negotiated cheap oil from Venezuela and was thereby able to lower the bus ticket price for poor workers. Honduras has one of the poorest populations in the hemisphere. Items like this are VERY important for its people to have minimally decent lives.

Honduran unions had contributed to the ALBA fund--money that has now been looted by the rightwing military coup.

The ALBA countries are seeking to create an alternate to U.S.-enforced "free trade for the rich" (which is dominated by multinational corporations like Chiquita International and Gap and other clothing retailers, who want the cheapest labor possible, by fabulously wealthy resource extractors like Exxon Mobil, who want to pay nothing of the country's social or environmental costs, and by the World Bank/IMF, which enforces ruinous policies like the privatization of public services). By banding together, the ALBA countries could have some clout with which to protect their own people from being exploited and trade cooperation amongst themselves to boost their own products and services, and achieve independence from our corporate rulers. "Divided and conquered," they are easily exploitable.

It is a great tragedy that the U.S. and its lackey oligarchy in Honduras has done this to Honduras and to ALBA. It is cruel, aggressive, arrogant and disgusting.

And one other thing it is: It is an assault on Honduran democracy. The "deciders" on this issue achieved their power by violence. They have no legitimacy whatsoever as the government of Honduras. The people of Honduras voted for MEL ZELAYA as their president, whose policies had a 67% approval rating in Honduras. This violent coup then held an 'election' under martial law. With many leftist activists dead, and the leftist movement crushed with tear gassings, beatings, imprisonment, rape, torture, home invasions, suspension of all civil rights, purges of government employees and firings from jobs, and shutdown of the opposition media, a rightwinger was 'elected' president, Pepe Lobo, whom the U.S. and the Honduran junta want to be accepted as the legitimate leader of Honduras. But here the junta is taking drastic action--canceling a treaty and membership in a trade group--when they were never elected to anything!

This is more evidence that Lobo is just a tool of the oligarchy and a U.S. puppet. And worse, it violates the will of the people of Honduras, who were benefiting from ALBA membership. They have a right to a voice on this matter, and they have none.

[Bacchus39]

6. maybe Lobo will decide to rejoin once he's president. n/t

s

[Peace Patriot]

7. One false move, and he's on a plane to Costa Rica or worse. That's the atmosphere

in Honduras now. You raise your voice in a political cause that the U.S. or the oligarchy dislikes, you can get your head shot off or literally hacked off, as just happened to one anti-coup activist. The oligarchy has been picking off anti-coup activists with "drive-by" shootings and other death squad murders. They now have government "lists"--people marked for death, beatings, arbitrary arrest, job firings and other punishments. And this U.S-backed oligarchy has no more respect for presidents than they do for ordinary citizens. They have been given permission to do anything they like by the monarchs who own the fiefdom of Honduras--the US State Department and the Pentagon, acting in the interest of the ultimate rulers, our war profiteers and ag, retail and other multinational corporations.

So, no, Lobo cannot do what you suggest. He does NOT have the normal rights or powers of a true president. Ending Honduras' membership in ALBA and breaking Honduras' ties with Venezuela was one of the key purposes of this violent coup. Another was undoing Zelaya's reforms which had provided a bit of decency and help to poor workers--like raising the minimum wage, lowering their bus ticket costs and a school lunch program for poor children. Those will likely all be gone by the end of the year. Honduras no longer has any right as a sovereign country to protect its people from slave labor on corporate farms and retail sweatshops. That's gone! Lobo, if he were inclined to do anything like this, cannot do it.

Another and probably one of the chief reasons for the coup was the Pentagon securing the US military base and port facilities in Honduras for its war on Venezuela. Zelaya had proposed converting the US air base at Sota Cano to a commercial airport. Intolerable! All Honduran policy now has to be approved by the US State Department and the Pentagon. And if Honduran leaders don't obey, they're out--violently ousted by the oligarchy with the help of the US military base in Honduras (from where Zelaya was shipped out of the country) with cover from the State Department and the White House.

Honduras has a long history of being used as a "step stool" for US aggression against its neighbors. Honduras was the toilet that Ollie North's and John Negroponte's death squads crapped in, on their way to slaughtering teachers and mayors in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in the 1980s. And I mean that exactly as I said it. Honduras is regarded as an outhouse of the US empire. The right of Honduran workers to a decent life, the right of Honduran children to good schooling and adequate nutrition, and the right of Hondurans to a government that represents their interests, are of no importance whatsoever to US war profiteers and corporate monsters, which are positively hostile to democracy in Honduras and in any other US client state in Latin America.

And when you look at a map, you see why. The US is "circling the wagons" in the Central America/Caribbean/north South America region, with SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, NO LIMIT on the US troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there, unlimited diplomatic immunity for whatever US troops and 'contractors' do there, and US military use of all Colombian civilian airports and other facilities; their now secured US military base and port facilities in Honduras; the newly reconstituted US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean and the two new US military bases in Panama . I believe that the Pentagon intends to gain control of all the oil in this region--in particular Venezuela's main oil region in the north, adjacent to Colombia and the Caribbean. They also likely have their eyes on Cuba's new oil find, on Ecuador's northern oil reserves (adjacent to Colombia to the south), and possibly on Brazil's (Lula da Silva warned of this--he said that the US 4th Fleet is "a threat to Brazil's new oil fields"). And the US has been trying to get Mexico to privatize its oil for some time now. The Pentagon wants to secure all the oil that it can, close to home, to fuel its great war machine, and US global corporate predators need secure oil supplies for shipping products from their sweatshop countries to consumer markets. The Pentagon was unable to extend their Mideast War to Iran. So they are looking to their "backyard" and are intending to create one giant outhouse of fetid corruption and death squad rule as far into South America as they can penetrate, but at the least in Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia and northern Venezuela.

Colombia is the paradigm--rule by death squad. Thousands of union leaders and members have been slaughtered by the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads, in addition to thousands of murders of human rights workers, community organizers, teachers, political leftists, journalists and many peasant farmers. That is now happening in Honduras. It, too, is being turned into a death squad country. Only by this kind of vicious bloody rule could the Honduran people--who were seeking independence from the U.S.-- be forced into compliance. The US clearly has its sights set upon the neighboring leftist governments--Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala--and has, of course, been seeking to topple the Chavez government in Venezuela for more than half a decade. It has also been engaged in psyops against Ecuador's leftist government (and a bombing/raid experiment in the border region back in March 2008).

The Honduran coup did not happen in a vacuum. It is part of a plan for US economic and military control of as large a region of Latin America as it can acquire--by force or by bribery and corruption. Clearly--CLEARLY!--the people of many Latin American countries are trying to declare their independence from the US, and trying to band together in new institutions that give them collective power and that do not include the US--trade groups like Mercosur and ALBA, and the overarching "common market," UNASUR--and clearly the US is trying to stop them. Independence is what the leftist democracy movement in Latin America is all about. Independence is what President Zelaya was trying to achieve, in joining ALBA.

So, Mr. Pepe Lobo--beneficiary of this violent rightwing coup in Honduras--is extremely unlikely to assert Honduran sovereignty on any issue, let alone re-joining ALBA, and, if he were to do so, he would be instantly removed, as was President Zelaya. And he will have on his head being the toady to the oligarchy's deaths squads, being the traitor who helped trash Honduras' chance at independence and the phony 'president'--like Uribe in Colombia--who permitted his country to become the US staging area for a regional war against democracy, as Honduras was in past times. The toilet of the empire.

[Judi Lynn]

9. No doubt at all this was all planned during Bush's bogus Presidency, too, like Bay of Pigs

was all arranged and ready to go BEFORE John Kennedy was elected. Eisenhower even had his Cuban paras and others trained in Guatemala, which they had overthrown in 1954, on behalf of the United Fruit Company, its major voices being John Foster Dulles, and bruther Allen Dulles, Sec. of State and CIA director.

Such a small world, and it looks so easy to control when you've got all the weapons, and money or threats for bribery and/or coersion.

It's a matter of time, however. This empire is going to lose its death grip on all those many people. Inevitable. Hope it will happen during our lifetimes.

How Latin America positions itself regarding Honduras is going to be intensely important.

[bemildred]

5. So would that be a de facto withdrawal too? nt

[Peace Patriot]

8. You nailed it! Honduras remains a member of ALBA at least until January 27--

the inauguration of US puppet, Pepe Lobo--and even then, the so-called 'election,' under martial law, which Lobo allegedly 'won,' does NOT have legitimacy, so, any such action by Pepe Lobo would also be illegitimate.

The coup has no right to do this--remove Honduras from ALBA. They hold power by violence alone. They were elected by NO ONE! And Lobo was 'elected' by a rightwing minority during brutal martial law conditions and the suspension of all civil rights.

[Bacchus39]

10. member nations decide their status

besides, its not like ALBA would not have kicked out Honduras anyway. Unlike an actual alliance or bloc of nations, ALBA is an alliance of governments who share political ideology. its a requirement for membership.