Members of Congress who expressed concern to President Obama regarding Honduras policy, thanks to Nell of ALovelyPromise, who credits Greg Weeks. The text of the letter is here:
Raul Grijalva James McGovern Jose Serrano
John Conyers Chaka Fattah Mike Honda
Barbara Lee Jesse Jackson James Oberstar
Dennis Kucinich William Delahunt Jan Schakowsky
Donna Christenson Sheila Jackson Lee Linda Sanchez
____________________________________________________
Final update. Very few newspapers have been following the coup in any detail. In the Guardian, Seumas Milne had an OpEd.
From Adrienne Pine:
Military sharpshooters shot into a crowd of protesters in an incident apparently initiated by the president of the de facto Congress, Congressman Marvin Ponce viciously beaten and shot at (currently being treated for two bullet wounds and internal injuries, Congress turned into virtual concentration camp.
She doesn’t give a source. Honduras Oye says that the president of the Congress verbally insulted protestors, they responded in kind, and the police and military were given the order to “mop up”:
The mopping up consisted of mass detentions, tear gas (sometimes directly sprayed into eyes of detainees), shooting with rubber bullets, shooting with live rounds, and reports of torture in the basement of the Congress building.
And the helpful Deputies in the Congress must have gotten themselves “deputized” because they ended up assisting the police-military with interrogations and verbally terrorized the detainees.
Members of the press were in for the worst beatings and perhaps torture (although I’m not sure what kind).
The Congressional building used for torture. One can hardly imagine a better image for the death of a democracy. AP and Reuters did not see fit to mention it.
_______________________________________________________
Amy Goodman did an interview with Jeff Sharlet, who wrote a book called The Family. The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The interview is fascinating from a dozen angles, including the fact that this group was formed primarily to bust unions. Theologically, it’s fascinating because the Family’s belief is that Power = God, one of many heresies directly contradicted by the gospels.
The primary acolytes of the Family are, of course, Republicans. But my ears went up when Sharlet described the Democrats on which the Family has some degree of influence. One was Senator Mark Pryor, who famously said, “Jesus didn’t come to take sides. He came to take over.” And a second was… Hillary Clinton.
Caption: The US supports dialogue and negotiation to seek peace in Honduras
Image from Guillermo Fuentes, Rebelion.
Furthermore– and this was something that came as a surprise to me despite 15 years of studying the Christian Right– the Family recruits even among non-Christian foreign leaders. There has always been a firewall for heresies (like Power = God) within the Christian Church, namely the tendency toward sectarianism. If the Protestants were doing it, the Catholics could be counted on to be against, and vice-versa. Pentecostalism was the one break in the firewall, since it brings people together across all divides.
And this brings us to Honduras.
