Honduras' former president Zelaya plans to publish book describing ouster last year

[EFerrari]

By Associated Press

10:17 p.m. EST, March 7, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya plans to write a book describing his ouster last year.

Zelaya says Honduras' business elite was behind last June's military-backed coup that sent him into exile.

In a television interview broadcast in Venezuela, Zelaya said the business leaders feared he planned to copy President Hugo Chavez's socialist policies and some were upset over his decision to seize control of fuel terminals used by store imported oil.

Honduran officials say Zelaya was ousted for refusing to drop a campaign for a referendum on changing the constitution, which the Supreme Court had ruled illegal.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-venezuela-zelaya-book,0,4278778.story?track=rss

[protocol rv]

1. Aha!

Incredible revelation. Imagine that, Honduras' upper classes didn't like Zelaya after he became Chavez' friend. Now that he's told us the secret, I don't think I'll buy the book.

[EFerrari]

3. This forum can always use more humor. Thanks.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Protocol rv, your racism against the Indigenous has discredited you. Other DUers should know

...n Comment #36, here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x30994

Your comments about the "rainforest Chernobly" in Ecuador--the Chevron-Texaco toxic oil spill the size of Rhode Island, which has destroyed fisheries, rivers and streams and the living of 30,000 Indigenous people in the Amazon forest--and your racist remark, that the charges against Chevron should be disregarded because they were "presented by an Indian," taint all your other comments on Latin American issues. You are an oil corporation apologist. And your remarks are so ignorant, uninformed and so like the crap put out by Chevron's 12 P.R. firms--which they hired to discredit the Indigenous who filed suit against them for damages and cleanup--that your views have no credibility whatsoever.

In fact, I advise other DUers to use my Rule No. 1 from the Bush Junta as a guide to determining the truth of your statements: To wit, whatever you assert, the opposite is the truth.

Thus, we can surmise that Zelaya's forthcoming book will be quite a good read. We've had your views--the view of a person who makes racist comments and is an apologist for Chevron-Texaco--and we've had the views of the Associated Pukes, et al, who repeatedly LIED about the content of Zelaya's Constitutional referendum, and the views of the State Department and the CIA and Hillary Clinton and her pal John Negroponte, and John McCain, and Jim DeMint, and P.R. whore Lanny Davis and the murderous coup leaders, all trumpeted by the corpo-fascist press--and now we'll get the views and narration of President Zelaya himself, which--if my Rule of Thumb holds true, as applied Protocol rv--will be fascinating.

[protocol rv]

6. "My trip in Pajamas"

Or "How I learned not to upset big fat Honduran generals", Play in Three Acts by ex President Manuel Zelaya.

Act 1. President Zelaya, in his pajamas, is led by a fat general and two sleepy soldiers to a Toyota.

Background music: Clint Mansell's Moon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_EcdU7i9hE&feature=related

President Zelaya sits back as the Toyota speeds away, puts his hands over his face and sings:

I remember, when Chavez became my friend!
Many people danced in the baalll room
It was late September, oil prices were real high!
And we had the best deal financed so soon

Then I was smoking with the boys upstairs
when I heard two soldiers running upstairs
i SAID... oh no, this coup just won't do
I'm not going to be taken down by this fat fool

But then I got me this surprise
My bodyguards were out or didn't rise
And I find myself flying out at sunrise

Patricia Rodas, she told me it was going to be ok
But she ran down to Mexico, and no, Guadalajara won't do
And this damn trip means I'm not going be so cool

When Tegucigalpa, falls into the sea!
That's the day I'll go back to the damn palace.
I didn't think this girl Rodas was such a fool
I'm never going back, I'm not going to be so cool

Petrocaribe, that sure sounds like a nice gig
I think I'll wear my hat and the suit that fit
Hermenegildo Zegma, thanks for your free gift
I know it's for profit, but it's gonna be a hit

And I'll be smoking with the boys upstairs
And Chavez will call me to discuss affairs
Oh, no, Santo Domingo really won't do
And I'm never going back to be Patricia's fool!

Music to the Lyrics: My Old School by Steely Dan

[rabs]

2. Mr. Z. has a new gig ...

Former Honduras President Zelaya to Head Venezuela Petrocaribe Political Council

By Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS -- Ousted former Honduras President Manuel Zelaya has been appointed Head of a "Political Council" of Venezuelan energy consortium Petrocaribe which allows Caribbean and Central American nations to buy oil at a discount from Venezuela.

The newly-formed "Political Council" came out of talks between Zelaya and Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, one of Zelaya's main supporters and sponsors. Zelaya arrived in Caracas on Thursday from the Dominican Republic, where he lives in self-imposed exile. (self-imposed exile ???)

More

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=353329&CategoryId=10717

---------------------------

So Mr. Z will have a big say on whether Gorilobo and the golpistas will get oil from Venezuela. Guess thay can always buy it elsewhere, like Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

[protocol rv]

8. Let's see

They can get it from Mexico, Trinidad, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Congo. They're a lot closer than Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Can't wait to see this book. He'll sell a lot of them. Good idea. Thanks for the alert. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

7. I'm very glad that Zelaya has been given a position in Venezuela--for his security

and that of his family. Venezuelan presidential security is obviously the best in the region, given that Chavez has survived for ten years with a CIA bull's eye target on his back and death squads from U.S. funded Colombia and no doubt certain corporate entities gunning for him. The Bushwhacks were abducting and assassinating people all over the world, and the U.S. is still doing that at least in Afghanistan, with Blackwater involvement. And I read somewhere that Blackwater was also 'training' in Colombia. President Zelaya will have the benefit of security forces that have foiled all of these entities thus far. I am also glad that his family will have some financial security. He and they were criminally deprived of their home, their property, their belongings, their friends, their lives. The bloody coup regime violated an explicit provision of the Honduran Constitution forbidding the exile of any Honduran citizen when they removed Zelaya from the country at gunpoint (via the U.S. air base in Honduras). They shot up his house, beat him up and terrorized his family, which has lived in fear and great tumult for nine months now.

Zelaya is a very, very brave man, in my opinion, in his repeated attempts to return to Honduras, and his legendary covert travel over the countryside to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa where he and his family and government aides lived surrounded by coup regime military forces under constant harassment and threat. His wife, too, was extraordinarily brave in leading anti-coup protests in his absence. Some hundred anti-coup protesters have been assassinated by coup regime--and probably U.S. taxpayer funded--death squads. Many have been unjustly imprisoned, many have been tortured, beaten, raped. Dare to raise your voice in protest in Honduras, now, and you risk being hunted down and killed. This was the atmosphere in which Zelaya returned to Honduras and in which his wife led anti-coup protests. Very brave leaders, both of them.

Mel Zelaya was the ELECTED president of Honduras, who had tried to mildly liberalize Honduras with raises in the minimum wage, lowered bus ticket prices for poor workers, school lunch programs and other decencies, and who supported the widespread labor union and grass roots movement for Constitutional reform, in a country in which ten rich families have used the Reagan regime-written Constitution to rule for their own benefit amidst vast poverty. Zelaya himself came from that ruling class, and--like our own FDR and also JFK--proved that he had a great spirit, above the greed and viciousness of his own class.

Zelaya also tried to assert Honduras' sovereignty in joining ALBA, the Venezuela-Cuba organized trade group aimed at the smaller countries in Central America/Caribbean region achieving collective economic clout. And his ouster aroused one of the fastest growing and greatest leftist reform movements in the region. The Associated Pukes, et al, have egregiously LIED, over and over again, about the content of the national vote on the Honduran Constitution that Zelaya proposed--repeating the Lanny Davis and John Negroponte-contrived goddamned lie that the proposed vote was about term limits. It absolutely was NOT. It was an advisory vote on the following: Do you want to have a vote in the fall election on whether or not to form constituent assemblies to reform the Constitution? Zelaya could NOT have gained anything from this vote. It would merely have opened discussion on reform.

The lie that the vote was about term limits--repeated over and over again in the corpo-fascist press--has bothered me no end. Clearly, our corpo-fascist press has no conscience whatsoever. Zelaya did absolutely nothing wrong and was ousted with U.S. help for U.S. geopolitical reasons, in service to U.S. multinational corporations and war profiteers. Democracy be damned. Human rights be damned. The rule of law be damned.

As a target of U.S. corporate and war profiteer interests, President Zelaya cannot be safe ever again. But if anyone can provide good security and some normalcy for Zelaya and his family, it is Venezuela, where they know quite a lot about U.S. and rightwing ruthlessness. And I am greatly looking forward to Zelaya's book. He has nothing to lose in telling like it is, and, from everything I can gather about him, always has.

[protocol rv]

9. Security in Venezuela is relative

I don't think Zelaya will get the same security Chavez gets. And I doubt he'll want to move his family to Venezuela, the crime rate is very high. Also, the cost of living is very high, Caracas is really choked with traffic, Chavez just said all capitalists were devils (and Zelaya happens to be a really rich capitalist), so I suspect he'll continue to live in Santo Domingo, it's a very nice place.