Fausta’s Blog

My latest post, Taliban Purchasing Their Future Jihadis, is up at RightPundits. Please read it and leave a comment if you may.

The Washington Madam is a newspaper:

Washington Post sells access, $25,000+

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

Words fail me, but No Sheeples has a few choice comments on the presstitutes.

UPDATE
James Joyner was wondering,

There are two obvious stories here. First, the Post is going down a very steep, slippery slope to losing all journalistic credibility. Second, the Post’s management seems to think that they have senior White House staff at their beck and call. If there’s merit to this, it may be a bigger story than the first.

As it turns out, Howard Kurtz anwered the first question: Post Publisher Cancels Plans for Off-the-Record ‘Salons’.

For now, the second issue, whether the Post’s management “seems to think that they have senior White House staff at their beck and call” can only be surmised, considering that the “off-the-record dinner and discussion” were to take place at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.

The pressure on the Honduran government continues:

Spain has recalled its Ambassador to Honduras “for consultations” and “to show the EU’s firmness,” according to Spain’s foreign minister. France and Italy followed suit. Hugo Chavez didn’t waste any time and praised their actions.

US suspends military relations with Honduras, but (at least for now) the US Ambassador has not been withdrawn.

Al Jazeera video:

Economic impact:
Following the OAS ultimatum, yesterday froze economic aid to Honduras “a resolution of the present crisis.”
Honduras Credit Rating May Be Cut on Political Risk, S&P Says

Honduras’ sovereign rating may be cut should a prolonged political crisis and strained public finances erode foreign-exchange reserves, Standard & Poor’s said.

The credit assessor yesterday placed the nation’s foreign- and local-currency debt on creditwatch “with negative implications” after the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya in a coup on June 28. Police used tear gas and water canons to break up protesting backers of Zelaya the following day, while thousands rallied to support the newly installed interim President Roberto Micheletti.

“The current political crisis comes at a time of economic contraction at home and abroad, weakening the government’s ability to adjust fiscal and monetary policies,” S&P’s New York-based analysts Joydeep Mukherji and Roberto Sifon Arevalo said in a statement.

The $12.3 billion economy, the third smallest in Central America, may expand 1.5 percent in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund, compared with a forecast for a 1.5 percent contraction for all of Latin America. The nation’s international reserves have dropped 13 percent from a record $2.7 billion reached in June 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
…
The economy would be devastated should Central American neighbors extend a trade ban implemented after the coup, Roque Rivera, president of the Honduran banking association said yesterday. No U.S. banks have shut lines of credit with local lenders and it’s unlikely they will, Rivera said.

UPDATE
Commenter Einar points out

“Please note that Manuel Zelaya seized power in January 2006 and has thus spent a huge amount of the record international reserves.”

News from the country:
In a telephone interview with Honduran Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz asserted that Honduras’s military acted under judicial orders:

The arrest order she cited, approved unanimously by the court’s 15 justices, was released this afternoon along with documents pertaining to a secret investigation that went on for weeks under the high court’s supervision
…
Cruz said the military decided to shuttle Zelaya out of the country for his safety and that of other Hondurans because riots would’ve erupted had he been held for trial.

“If he had been allowed to stay in the country, there would’ve been blood on the streets,” she said.

Although lawmakers were moving toward impeachment proceedings against Zelaya for trying to conduct the poll, the ouster allows him to portray himself as a “victim,” said Rafael Lopez, a senior Honduras adviser to the Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
…
David Matamoros, a member of Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal, also defended the military’s action.

He said Zelaya originally called the vote a plebiscite, then, when that was barred, shifted to describing it as a poll, creating uncertainty as to its legal standing and his intent. No government agency was willing to conduct the vote, he said. All the ballots and equipment for the illegal poll were flown in on a Venezuelan plane, he said. The court ordered the materials confiscated.

In San Pedro, Honduras, La Prensa has side-by-side photos of the demonstrations. The photo on the left is titled “For the Constitution and the new government”; on the right “For Mel [Zelaya]”

Opinion and commentary
James Taranto replies to Simon Romero’s statement that “Mr. Obama’s nonconfrontational diplomacy seems to have caught Mr. Chávez off balance”:

Zelaya’s ouster is no “coup” but a lawful transition of power made necessary by his own defiance. As our colleague Mary O’Grady points out, the Honduran Supreme Court had ordered a halt to his unconstitutional efforts to extend his term, and the military arrested him for defying the court’s order. It’s as if the Angry Left’s paranoid fantasy had come true and George W. Bush refused to leave office this January.

A Times news story reports that the OAS–the group to which Obama is turning “for a multilateral solution”–has issued an “ultimatum to Honduras that it would be suspended from the organization if Mr. Zelaya was not returned to power.” Obama and the OAS, thus are all on the wrong side–Chavez’s side. It seems awfully credulous to say Obama outmaneuvered Chavez. It’s more like the other way around.

James Kirchick, in Commentary:

Though his [Obama's] public opposition to the “coup” might have thrown Chavez off for a day or so, it didn’t take long for the caudillo of Caracas to reorient himself, and now Obama is playing directly into Chavez’s hands. Ranting about American imperialism just a few days ago, Chavez — evidently delighted by his newfound friend in the White House — now says that Zelaya should score a meeting with Obama when he’s in Washington as such a photo-op would “deliver a major blow” to the interim government in Tegucigalpa, Honduras’ capital. Indeed, it would.

So let’s concede Romero’s point that Obama has “outmaneuvered” Chavez by escaping the traditional role of the president serving as a pinata for an anti-American leader. That’s very good for Obama’s self-esteem (recall the president’s relief, expressed in a speech at the April Summit of the Americas following an hours-long tirade from Daniel Ortega, that the Nicaraguan strongman “did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old”) but what have we gotten in return? U.S. interests in the region are not being served by continued international isolation of Honduras’s interim government, nor would they be served by restoring to power an anti-American authoritarian like Zelaya, who has approval ratings of less than 30%. Yet that’s what American policy supports. Instead of leading on this issue, we’re following, and following the likes of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez at that. But, hey, it’s nice to have these guys saying nice things about us for once, no?

William Jacobson (also at Instapundit): “Honduras gets condemnation from Obama, while Chavez gets hugs and Ahmadinejad gets deference.”

———————————
I’ll be updating this post with news during the day.

There will be no podcast today due to scheduling conflicts.

———————————-
11:35AM update:
Yesterday the Honduran Congress suspended the Constitutional guarantees to freedom of assembly and circulation during the curfew.

Costa Rica’s president Óscar Arias is opposed to Zaleya’s return. Arias, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom all are opposed to Zaleya’s reinstatement.

Yesterday Zelaya was saying that he will return to Honduras with Chilean president Michelle Bachelet; this was denied by Chilean chancellor Mariano Fernández, who disapproved of Zelaya’s removal but also deplored the OAS’s ultimatum as “extremely severe.”

La Prensa has reports on the pro-democracy, pro-government demonstrations in Puerto Cortés, Choluteca and La Ceiba.

Florida International University professor Eduardo Gamarra: Zelaya’s ‘poll’ more than that.

Washington Times op-ed: Obama stands with tyrants: Honduras is part of a pattern.
IBD: Honduras Defiant:

As the world follows Chavez’s lead in trying to force Honduras to accept a lawless man as its leader, disasters for Honduras loom.

The tiny country is impoverished. Its seven million people have a per capita income of just $1,635 a year. Its economy has been enfeebled by Zelaya himself. He has fixed prices and wages, and opened the door to drug traffickers, creating a burgeoning narcostate.

It seems impossible that Honduras could withstand new draconian pressure and isolation over taking Zelaya back.

Yet evidence shows that Hondurans consider the latter fate worse. If Zelaya is restored as president, he will resume his dictatorial ambitions while Hondurans lose their future freedoms. Oh, the OAS will tell them “dialogue” will solve it.

But Hondurans know better: If the rule of law won’t dissuade Zelaya from being dictator, why would sweet talk work?

Cartoon via Adam and Get Liberty

My friend Kate has an excellent post with opinion and analysis, Some brief thoughts on Honduras, that you should read.

Via Small Dead Animals, Is Obama becoming more and more like a Canadian?

12:25PM
While Zelaya says he’s heading to Honduras with the OAS’s Insulza, the WSJ reports:

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza is seeking to meet in a third country with a delegation of Honduras’s new leaders to demand Mr. Zelaya’s reinstatement, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Insulza is to report to the OAS members by July 6.

After marrying Carla, Sarko had to get into perineal shape.

WARNING: Not really suitable for work
Read the rest of this entry »

Horse flu? Bird flu? Swine flu?

How about the dog flu?

Are we done with the list of animals yet?

Uribe got served a waffle at the White House, but Chiguirre Bipolar instead saw it as a game of boggle:

Which makes as much sense as anything coming out of the White House these days.

In more serious news, Alvaro Uribe has gone on the record stating that there should be no foreign intervention in Honduras.

Thank you to Soccer Dad for the Watcher of Weasels nomination.

Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The big news this week is Honduras, of course. You can read my posts here, here, here and here; however, if you can read Spanish you should read Informe especial I: Decreto PCM-020 era una celada de Zelaya contra la democracia, also at a discussion board.

LATIN AMERICA
Coca and cocaine in the Andes: Mixed signals among the coca bushes
An apparent fall in cocaine production conceals the remarkable resilience of an illegal industry

Drug policy in the Americas: At last, a debate
And an intemperate defence of prohibition

Israeli Intelligence’s Iran increases its influence in Latin America

Term Limits and Constitutional Tinkering in Latin America

ARGENTINA
Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez Political Fight

Un golpe definitivo

In Argentina Polls, a Couple in Power Try to Hold On to It

BOLIVIA
Bolivia busca apoyo ruso para potenciar sus fuerzas armadas

BRAZIL
Computer Failures Are Probed in Jet Crash

COLOMBIA
The Obama Presidency: Obama Likely to Tread Carefully With Uribe

Southern Discomfort
Obama to Colombia: Military base now, free trade later.

Colombia: Coca Growing Declines

CUBA
A Dissident Deflected: Why doesn’t President Obama have time for Cuba’s pro-democracy opposition?

Where Does Cuba Find its American Spies? Guess?

Cuba’s spy program deeply rooted in U.S.

CURACAO
Mystery Surrounds Alleged Hezbollah Links to Drug Arrests in Curacao

GUATEMALA
Guatemalan fears a tweet will make him a jailbird

HONDURAS
The Winner in Honduras: Chávez

Honduras: what CNN will probably not tell you

Honduras Defends Its Democracy: Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.

Honduran Congress: Not a Coup, Former President Broke and Ignored Laws

MEXICO
GREAT MEXICAN PHONE MYSTERY

PANAMA
How To Get A Panamanian Driver’s License

PARAGUAY
Insólito comentario de Lugo: Vamos a imitar la dictadura de Chávez

PERU
Drug trade grows in Bolivia, Peru - U.N.

VENEZUELA
Chávez’s war on independent media

Venezuela’s media: Chávez’s bugbear
The harassment of Globovisión

Bugbear to all

Primaries for the Venezuelan opposition?

EN VENEZUELA LOS CORRUPTOS OBLIGAN A LOS POBRES A VIVIR EN ALTO RIESGO ¡VEAN LAS PRUEBAS!

Hugo Chavez says Ahmadinejad won election legally: Venezuela accuses “imperial hand” of Iran unrest

Via RCW, The tragedy of Chávez: Ten years in, a capitalist elite has merely been replaced by a quasi-socialist elite with little regard for Venezuelans.

This week’s other posts and podcasts
Waffles for Uribe
Evo Morales buying Russian weapons on credit
Cubazuela: wiretapping now legal
12 tons of gold missing in Sinaloa
Obama gives Cuban dissidents the cold shoulder
At Real Clear World:
Honduras In Turmoil
More Weenie Diplomacy: Now With Venezuela and Syria
Chavez Reaffirms His Support for Ahmadinejad

UPDATED
Please scroll down for the afternoon updates.

If you can read Spanish, please read this:
Informe especial I: Decreto PCM-020 era una celada de Zelaya contra la democracia, also at a discussion board.

Yesterday Mel Zelaya was talking tough at the UN and said he would fly back to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the head of the Organization of American States. Cristina Fernandez, president of Argentina, said from Argentina that she would accompany him back to Honduras. Zelaya also said that he’d bring along the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. I guess Hugo Chavez is still too busy to join them.

Be that as it may, following Zelaya’s speech at the UN, Zelaya headed to the OAS, after which the OAS gave Honduras an ultimatum,

The Organization of American States gave Honduras three days Wednesday to restore the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, or face suspension, as the interim leader of the country defied international condemnation of the coup that led to his appointment and said only force could unseat him.
…
In a sharply worded resolution, concluded after marathon talks that ended at 2 a.m. Wednesday, the organization called the coup an “unconstitutional alteration of the democratic order.” The envoys demanded Mr. Zelaya’s immediate and safe return to power, and issued an ultimatum to Honduras, saying that it will expel it from the organization if Mr. Zelaya is not returned to power.

As you can read in the OAS resolution, they invoke

the importance of the importance of strict adherence and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms

and

the principles established in the Charter of the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Democratic Charter on the strengthening and preservation of the democratic institutional system in member states

The OAS, which recently voted to let Cuba back in, is talking about principles, and “the importance of strict adherence and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”? Where the hell is the OAS when it comes to the Ladies in White, their husbands and relatives, and the Cuban political prisoners that Marc Masferrer blogs about, week after week? When has there ever been democracy in Cuba in the past decades?

Where was the OAS before the “coup”?

For weeks, Zelaya — an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela — has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.

First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country’s congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ”non-binding,” he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.

His actions have been repudiated by the country’s supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya’s sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.

After the OAS ultimatum, Zelaya postponed the date of his return to “the weekend,” in order to “give the diplomatic process a chance.” He didn’t specify a date but says Insulza, Correa and Fernandez are tagging along all the same. Reportedly Zelaya slept at the OAS.

Today Zelaya’s heading to the inauguration of the president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli.

For his part, Insulza didn’t specify when he’d be heading to Honduras or whether he would just telephone in (I’m translating from Noticias 24), but insists that his job is not to negotiate with the new administration, but “to exert pressure” towards Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Yesterday the Honduran government (which AP refers to as “the regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya”, ignoring the fact that a. it was members of his own party and b. the Congress, Courts and institutions remain the same as when he was in power) accused Zelaya of drug ties

“Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds … and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking,” its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol.

“We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it,” he added.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in Washington said he could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.

That clouds the issue at hand: Zelaya, as I have posted over the past three days conspired over a lengthy period of time to act unlawfully, and indeed acted unlawfully against the Constitution, in spite of repeated warnings by the electoral authorities, the Congress, the Supreme Court and his own party.

Honduras News, in a post from last May, also explains that Zelaya had been working at this since at least November 2008:

Zelaya first broached the topic on November 11, 2008. That day, the San Pedro daily La Prensa reported that the president had proposed that a fourth ballot box be installed at polling places on November 29, 2009. Honduran voting booths presently contain three ballot boxes: one to vote for the president, one for the congressional, and one for local mayoral candidates. Zelaya suggested installing a fourth box to vote on whether or not the electorate wanted to choose a National Constituent Assembly. According to Zelaya, this proposed body would draft a new Honduran constitution. Zelaya seeks a changed constitution which would allow him to run for reelection. On March 24, Zelaya upped the ante by announcing, via executive decree PCM-05-2009, that this national referendum would take place no later than June 28, and that it would be administered by the National Statistical Institute (INE)

The Honduran constitution, which contains 375 articles, can be amended by a two-thirds majority vote in congress. However, there are eight “firm articles” which cannot be amended. These include presidential term limits, system of government that is permitted and process of presidential succession. Since the president has the ability to amend the remaining 368 provisions by means of a congressional majority, some have called into question what the president’s true intentions may be.

Critics immediately labeled Zelaya’s action as a blatant and cynical attempt to extend his term limits. Some, such as Honduran political analyst Juan Ramon Martinez, argue that we are witnessing a concerted effort on Zelaya’s part to discredit some of the country’s key democratic institutions in order to possibly extend his rule. “There appears to be a set of tactics aimed at discrediting institutions…he has repeated on several occasions that democratic institutions are worthless and that democracy has not helped at all,” said Martinez.

The president’s comments on a number of occasions have buttressed the grounds for this type of interpretation. He has stated several times that the constitution has been repeatedly violated by politicians and that it needs to be adapted to the new “national reality.” Zelaya has not precisely spelled out what changes would be necessary to make in order to adapt the country’s social contract to that new national reality. Zelaya announced on May 22 that the new constitution would include direct democracy initiatives such as popular referendums and recall elections. However, the current constitution already contains provisions for popular referendums and does not expressly prohibit recall elections.

I’ll be talking about this in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, and will update you as news develops.

And by the way, thank you to the blogger who referred to my posts on this subject as “Fausta’s hysteria.” Coming from the ideology of the person saying that, and in view of the inherent sexism in the remark, it is a compliment indeed.

A brief roundup of posts
White House backing of Zelaya starts to draw criticism
Honduras under the bus

WSJ editorial The Wages of Chavismo
The Honduran coup is a reaction to Chávez’s rule by the mob.

In Honduras Mr. Chávez funneled Veneuzelan oil money to help Mr. Zelaya win in 2005, and Mr. Zelaya has veered increasingly left in his four-year term. The Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single term, which is scheduled to end in January. Mr. Zelaya was using the extralegal referendum as an act of political intimidation to force the Congress to allow a rewrite of the constitution so he could retain power. The opposition had pledged to boycott the vote, which meant that Mr. Zelaya would have won by a landslide.

Such populist intimidation has worked elsewhere in the region, and Hondurans are understandably afraid that, backed by Chávez agents and money, it could lead to similar antidemocratic subversion there. In Tegucigalpa yesterday, thousands demonstrated against Mr. Zelaya, and new deputy foreign minister Marta Lorena Casco told the crowd that “Chávez consumed Venezuela, then Bolivia, after that Ecuador and Nicaragua, but in Honduras that didn’t happen.”

It’s no accident that Mr. Chávez is now leading the charge to have Mr. Zelaya reinstated, and on Monday the Honduran traveled to a leftwing summit in Managua in one of Mr. Chávez’s planes. The U.N. and Organization of American States are also threatening the tiny nation with ostracism and other punishment if it doesn’t readmit him. Meanwhile, the new Honduran government is saying it will arrest Mr. Zelaya if he returns. This may be the best legal outcome, but it also runs the risk of destabilizing the country. We recall when the Clinton Administration restored Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, only to have the country descend into anarchy.

Ousting a Chávez Wannabe
We should support the removal of Manuel Zelaya.

What happened in Honduras was not a standard coup. The Supreme Court ordered the army to remove Zelaya from office. The Congress, albeit after his detention and exile, voted unanimously for his removal and confirmed his constitutionally mandated successor to fill the remainder of his term in office.

Prior to his exile, Zelaya had insisted on a referendum to allow for his reelection in direct violation of the Honduran constitution. In other words, he set out to perpetuate himself in office. Roger Noriega, a former Bush administration official and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it clearly: “Zelaya brushed aside every other institution of the state in insisting on a referendum that would benefit his selfish interests.”

Shredding constitutional prohibitions to presidential reelection has become a popular political ploy in several Latin American countries in recent years. To date, leftist regimes in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have scrapped constitutional presidential term limits, each time using extralegal ploys to do so. Most recently, Washington’s best friend in the region, Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, has sought a constitutional change to extend his presidency for a third term, but so far he is working within the law.

Supporters call such moves vital for their nation’s peace and well-being; opponents say they reflect presidential hubris and greed. Call the penchant to scrap presidential term limits what you will: The efforts have clearly negated each and every country’s constitution.

In the case of Honduras, President Zelaya stood alone among political, legal, economic, media, and military leaders. Backed by a noisy rabble and funded by Venezuela’s ever-meddling autocrat, Hugo Chávez, Zelaya’s campaign was seen as a way to reverse the defeat of the pro-Chávez candidate in Panama’s recent presidential election.

The ballots for Sunday’s suspended referendum were actually prepared in Venezuela. On Saturday, Zelaya made an abortive effort to storm and steal the ballots from the Honduran military base where they were stored.

2:10PM
Gateway Pundit has a photo that says a thousand words:

Indispensable reading (in Spanish):
Informe especial I: Decreto PCM-020 era una celada de Zelaya contra la democracia, also at a discussion board.
¿Resistirá Honduras? Si cede a la presión exterior, el chavismo comenzará a roer las instituciones hondureñas, que caerán en la órbita de Venezuela y que se deslizarán hacia una dictadura.

2:45PM
Two from Noticias 24:
Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom rejected Hugo Chávez request that the UN invade Honduras if Zelaya’s not reinstated.
Micheletti asks Cristina Fernandez and Rafael Correa to not interfere in Honduras

And another link, at Heritage Honduras Fires Its Runaway President: Constitutional Order Is Preserved, via Babalu

3:45PM
Honduran coup leader to AP: Zelaya won’t return

Honduras’ interim leader warned that the only way his predecessor will return to office is through a foreign invasion, even as the hemisphere’s leaders gave him 72 hours to hand over the presidency.

4:10PM
Pro-Micheletti’s government demonstration in Honduras, via Val

4:50PM
Video via Adam

5:25PM
Very interesting interview of former Venezuelan ambassador to the U.N. Diego Arria (h/t Venezuela News and Views:

Posted this one before, but it’s really great, so here it is again,

El Flaco Dani García & Luna Palacios