Anti-coup demonstrations continue and sanctions begin to bite. Rigoberta Menchu says that a coup is possible in Guatemala, though she thinks that economic players rather than the military will execute it. The racist Foreign…er, Justice Minister Enrique Ortez Colandres has now resigned from the latter post to spend more time with his family (actually, he said it would relieve international pressures on the coup).
Bill Conroy gives the details on who is bankrolling the Honduran dictators’ propaganda-fest in Washington under the leadership of Lanny Davis: Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena, Grupo Lovable’s Elasticos Centroamericanos y Textiles, and snack foodistas Grupo Dinant are prominently mentioned.
Laura Carlsen has an important post showing the connections between the attempted coup in Venezuela and the coup in Honduras. The key links are Robert Carmona, a Venezuelan expat who runs the Arcadia Foundation, and Otto Reich, who helped bring death squads to Honduras a quarter century ago.
Otto Reich is another name that has come up repeatedly since the Honduran coup as the man behind the scenes. Although Arcadia has denied a formal affiliation, Reich was intimately involved in Arcadia’s anti-corruption charges against the Zelaya government. Honduran government officials note that he was formally featured on the Arcadia site up until Sep 10, 2008 when he was erased from the web page. Reich is infamous for his involvement in the illegal Iran-Contra affair. A 1987 report by the U.S. Comptroller-General, “found that some of the efforts of Mr. Reich’s public diplomacy office were ‘prohibited, covert propaganda activities,’ ‘beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities….’”
Carlsen also shows how the Honduran media act as an Orwellian propaganda device, repeating and repeating the coup talking points and trying to persuade the wealthier classes that they’re in the right.
