Today's Stories

November 25, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

November 25, 2009

"Friendship Ends Where Duty Begins"

An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

By BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

When I arrived last week at the headquarters of the joint chiefs of staff of the Honduran military in Comayagüela—twin city of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras—I was informed that General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez had been delayed in a meeting at the presidential palace with coup president Roberto Micheletti who, according to Vásquez’ aide-de-camp could “not be rushed.” The general, head of the armed forces that had carried out the  June 28 coup against President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was said to be finalizing security preparations for the scheduled electoral process of  November 29; the infeasibility of rushing Micheletti was meanwhile suggested by the fact that after 5 months he had still not come up with a way of legitimizing the elections.

I had started to suspect over the past few weeks that the Honduran military had adopted the delaying tactics of their political counterparts when my communications with the aide-de-camp, Colonel Wilfredo García Rodríguez, for the purpose of procuring an interview with Vásquez had begun to consist of García answering the phone and promptly hanging up.

Around  November 10 García ceased hanging up and it was decided that I could email him my proposed interview questions for review, which meant that they had to be organized around traditional euphemisms for the coup against Zelaya such as “the events of 28 June” and “the presidential succession.”

I arrived to military headquarters in Comayagüela and was first placed in a waiting room outside the main building, where a lone soldier shrugged when I asked why he was listening to anti-coup radio and where available reading materials included a magazine highlighting the battle readiness of the Colombian armed forces and congratulating Israel on 60 years of existence.

I was eventually escorted into the building, where it was decided that it was not necessary for me to display any sort of identification. Deposited in the anteroom of Vásquez’ office, sparsely decorated with yellow couches and curtains, I acquired new reading materials showcasing the functions of the Honduran armed forces aside from executing coups, such as protecting the forests.

García appeared suddenly with a broad smile and the remark that he had expected me to be “old and fat,” although he denied that this was his motive for continuously hanging up on me. Emptying his pockets of a host of cellular and cordless phones, which he scattered across one of the couches, García indicated that he could not even keep track of the number of telephones he was in charge of, much less the people who called them; the credibility of the claim increased when during a tour of his office García discovered additional phones in a drawer and added them to his pockets.

The tour also included a meeting room with a long table and an amateurish painting on the wall featuring a battle coordination scene, in which García requested that I identify his likeness and I guessed the camouflaged figure clutching the telephone.

Vásquez’ delayed arrival meant that García and I had 2 hours in between phone calls to discuss such themes as how the colonel had once seen Jennifer López in person, how the weather in Fort Benning, Georgia—home of the former School of the Americas (SOA)—was similar to the weather in Honduras, and how the colonel’s studies in the Dominican Republic had led him to the conclusion that Dominicans spoke barely intelligible Spanish because they were negros, a term for which he provided the English translation “niggers” in case there was any confusion. Extensive international training conducted by the Honduran armed forces had nonetheless not prevented Simon Henshaw, Deputy Mission Chief at the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, from classifying them at a human rights discussion in August as “extremely uneducated.”

Vásquez would respond later that afternoon to Henshaw’s classification with the explanation that the free and democratic nature of Honduras enabled people to express whatever opinion they wanted, despite the fact that Henshaw’s comment had been in reaction to military and police methods of dealing with peaceful crowds expressing themselves against the coup. As for persons exercising freedom of expression vis-à-vis Dominicans, García assured me that the general was even nobler than he, with an even bigger heart, and wanted to know what I had heard about Vásquez.

When “good things” was not deemed a sufficient answer, I said I had heard the general was a very religious man, which was merely what Vásquez had consistently said about himself, confessing to the daily La Tribuna that prior to 28 June 28 he had been prepared to retire to a quiet family life but that god had made alternate arrangements. Whether god had made these arrangements all on his own was of course called into question by an El Heraldo interview with Vásquez that had also occurred prior to  June 28, in which Vásquez responded to the question of where he visualized himself in 10 years by saying: “Well… I might be the president of Honduras, ha, ha, ha, ha… Anything is possible.”

The general arrived a little after 4 p.m. and was greeted enthusiastically by García while I was left with the moral quandary of having been kissed on the cheek by the perpetrator of the Honduran coup. 52 years old and dressed in fatigues, the diminutive Vásquez led me to his office, which consisted of predictable items such as artwork depicting Jesus Christ and a wine rack and less predictable items such as a book about Western Sahara on his desk. The presence of the latter, it turned out, was not part of a research project to determine appropriate exile destinations for Zelaya but rather a result of Honduran military participation in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara.

As for parts of the world in which illegitimate elections had been deemed preferable to referenda, Vásquez declared that the current mission of the Honduran military in Honduras was to prevent violence on November 29. Seating himself in a chair to my right, Vásquez rejected suggestions by the anti-coup Resistance that the elections would be characterized by sangre y fuego—blood and fire—with the argument that “there will always be people who want to attain power through ways other than the proper way of being elected.” It was not clear whether Vásquez understood the implications of his assertion given that Zelaya had been elected and Micheletti had not, and given the Resistance’s assumption, based on recent trends, that blood and fire would be initiated by the Honduran military and police.

Other sorts of fire were reported on  November 13, when the Honduran media hype for the day consisted of an alleged explosion the night before in the vicinity of the warehouse where election materials were being stored. The initial story was that the explosive device had been launched from a passing aircraft; when it was eventually conceded that the aircraft in question had been a TACA Airlines flight arriving from Guatemala, the explosion was instead blamed on an RPG—a weapon the Honduran police had determined was only possessed by the army of Nicaragua despite the fact that they were still unable to determine where exactly the explosion had taken place.

Vásquez nonetheless blamed the practice of inventing things on opponents of the coup: “They try to create fictitious scenes in order to make the world think that Honduras is in the midst of conflict, right? And as you can see since you are in Honduras, we are not in conflict at the moment; we have simply had problems with regard to the law.” I refrained from elaborating on what I had seen in Honduras, such as the October burial of union leader Jairo Sánchez, who had gone into a coma after being shot in the face by police; Sánchez’ niece had informed me at the cemetery that the police had subsequently denied the existence of the bullet.

Legality factored heavily into Vásquez’ outline of the events leading up to  June 28, in which he stressed that the refusal of the military to follow Zelaya’s orders to retrieve public opinion survey materials from the Air Force base outside Tegucigalpa was “not because the armed forces didn’t want to carry out the mission but rather that we simply couldn’t because we had to uphold the rule of law.” The supposed illegality of complying with orders from the commander in chief of the military had been determined, according to Vásquez, by “all of the judges”—meaning the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice—and other entities such as the Attorney General’s Office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the College of Lawyers. The general stressed that all of these institutions had been consulted by the armed forces in their search for “a peaceful solution to the crisis” of what to do about the survey, which he attributed to “part of an international project commanded by Hugo Chávez via countries belonging to the ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America].” Vásquez nonetheless maintained that the Honduran armed forces were not ideologically motivated—possessing, rather, “a very flexible mentality because the world is changing”—and refrained from mentioning that Micheletti had endorsed Honduras’ ALBA debut.

Military acceptance of global change apparently did not extend to the artículos pétreos of the Honduran Constitution of 1982—the articles that were not permitted to be reformed, such as those prohibiting the reelection of presidents and the presidential candidature of the current vice-president and congressional president. Intermittent institutional flexibility with regard to reforming these articles had however been exhibited by the Supreme Court of Justice which, despite determining that potential modifications to the Constitution in accordance with the aspirations of the Honduran populace was unconstitutional, had nonetheless determined that Micheletti could run in the presidential primaries of 2008 even though he was the president of Congress. Micheletti’s superior flexibility had additionally been observed in 1985 when as a Congress member he attempted to prolong the presidency of Roberto Suazo Córdova; more successful Constitutional sleights of hand meanwhile consisted of the fact that Elvin Santos, the current Liberal Party candidate for president, served as vice-president in the Zelaya administration.

As for Article 102 of the Constitution prohibiting the forced expatriation of any Honduran citizen, Vásquez responded to my question of why Micheletti had announced that the decision to remove Zelaya from the country had been incorrect by saying that the military respected the coup president’s opinion but that he should understand that “what we did was based on humanitarian considerations.” According to the general, had Zelaya not been expatriated “he would have been taken to a military facility… and his followers would have gone to take him out of there just as they did at the Air Force base”—where they had however been retrieving survey materials neglected by the armed forces, not retrieving a captured president—“which could have caused a lot of deaths, including his [Zelaya’s] own.”

Vásquez did not explain who would have been perpetrating such deaths as Zelaya’s followers presumably would not have killed him, and was similarly noncommittal in his explanation of civilian deaths at Toncontín Airport and on the Honduras-Nicaraguan border during the president’s two failed attempts at repatriation: “Confrontations between protesters and other groups tend to create violence and cause deaths.” The identity of the other groups could be narrowed down by a consideration of who besides protesters was generally present at protests; as for why Costa Rica was the traditional destination for victims of Honduran military coups, de facto Honduran defense minister Adolfo Lionel Sevilla had opined that Zelaya had simply wanted to go there.

At a  October 5 press conference at the presidential palace with Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Micheletti had professed to be “sure” that the judicial process against the sectors responsible for Zelaya’s removal from the country was already underway. More expedient judicial processes however included the Supreme Court of Justice’s restitution of Vásquez as head of the joint chiefs of staff on 25 June, one day after Zelaya had dismissed him for refusing to follow orders with regards to the survey materials—which Vásquez told me had not been a refusal but rather a respectful request “that he give us an order that was constitutional.” The general’s grasp of the proceedings was then partially cast into doubt with his assertion that Defense Minister Edmund Orellana had also been dismissed, as Orellana had in fact resigned.

Additional inconsistencies in perspective included Vásquez’ proclamation that the “goal of the military at the moment is the protection of life” and that “human life is the priority of the state,” a position contradicted not only by Honduran and international human rights groups. iRegarding Vásquez’ position that “no Honduran is above the law,” meanwhile, this appeared to be at odds not only with his enthusiasm at the prospect of illegitimate elections but also with military disregard for Article 102 of the Constitution.

Despite Vásquez’ allegation that Zelaya’s intended public opinion survey was part of a project spearheaded by Chávez, he refrained from directly specifying the provenance of the survey materials: “I don’t know where they came from, only that they came through El Salvador.” Other characters who had pleaded ignorance of all but the Salvadoran portion of travel trajectories included Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, who following Zelaya’s return to Honduras claimed to have no details of the event beyond Zelaya’s stopover at the San Salvador airport. Andrés Pavón, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, suggested to me several weeks ago that the reappearance of the Honduran president had been a sign of weakness on the part of the Honduran armed forces; Army commander Miguel Ángel García Padgett had meanwhile denied military weakness on the Frente a Frente television program in August when he announced that the Honduran military had succeeded in halting the spread of socialism.

According to García, socialism disguised as democracy had up until  June 28 been en route to the “heart of the United States,” which he declared already had enough to deal with given organized crime and narcotrafficking problems on the US-Mexican border. Different forms of democratic disguise had been implied by Víctor Meza, Zelaya’s lead negotiator in talks with the coup government, who in a 2007 essay outlined the tendency of powerful Honduran economic groups to place their relatives and allies in key political positions; Vásquez had meanwhile tempered García’s condemnation of socialism by reminding the Frente a Frente audience of the flexible mentality of the armed forces when it came to ideological varieties, and by denying to me that the decision to remove Zelaya was an altruistic move designed to ease the stress imposed on the global superpower—although he did agree with the threat that narcotrafficking posed to the region as a whole.

Vásquez declared that it was “obvious that the political conflict in this country would be exploited by narcotraffickers” and argued that exploitation had been facilitated by the fact that “basic international cooperation” against the movement of drugs “had been reduced almost to zero,” leaving Honduras to “face the narcotrafficking threat alone.” Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had seconded Vásquez’ assessment by claiming during her  October 5 visit to Tegucigalpa that narcotraffickers would use international isolation of Honduras in order to strike at the US; less devastating results were, however, suggested by the fact that US troops stationed at the joint Honduras-US Soto Cano Air Base in Comayagua continued to perform their anti-narcotic duties independent of the Honduran military.

According to a conversation I had in September with a Black Hawk helicopter pilot stationed at Soto Cano, Honduran soldiers had never been instrumental in such operations, anyway, and had proved more adept at getting stuck in trees while practicing jumping out of planes—a phenomenon that had been temporarily suspended in the post-coup period given that the planes had to be borrowed from the US. Vásquez confirmed that Honduras had few resources, especially when compared with the “unlimited resources” possessed by drug runners and regularly displayed in Honduran newspapers. The front-page headline of the  October  25 edition of El Heraldo, for example, proclaimed that a “Narco-plane cemetery” had been discovered in the region of Mosquitia; the corresponding article included a photograph of what appeared to be a patch of dirt, grass, and household light bulbs, with the following caption: “The area has also been used as a secret landing strip. Here is the evidence.”

Similar varieties of evidence are found in the popular pro-coup claim that narco-plane activity in Honduras had subsided while Zelaya was in exile but resumed upon his reentry, as though it was possible to convert the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa into an air control tower when it was not even possible to engage in jamming-free cell phone communications with people inside the building. As for other kinds of interference, Vásquez denied that the military and police had ever played irritating music in the environs of the embassy at early hours of the morning but professed to understand why the embassy inhabitants would register such complaints: “They are saying a lot of things because the situation they are in is difficult and complex, and they have to continue blaming all the bad things that happen to them on someone else”—which appears to be an even more logical practice when the “someone else” being blamed for the bad things is the one actually committing them.

Vásquez went on to contend that any music occurring in the vicinity of the Brazilian embassy was a result of “normal things, like for example the birthday of a soldier or policeman,” in which case the birthday song “‘Las Mañanitas’ is sung… but it’s in the street, right? [Laughing] And ‘Las Mañanitas’ is with a guitar, right? But it’s in the street and not inside [the embassy]. And there is no order to harm [the occupants] in any way… We are soldiers but we are not people who want to hurt anybody.”

The final assertion, which would presumably be questioned by coup opponents who had been on the receiving end of military-induced cigarette burns, was upheld by de facto defense minister Sevilla, who proclaimed on October 21 —Armed Forces Day—that Zelaya should thank god he was on the receiving end of music and not bombs as was the custom in other countries. As for countries with similarly beneficent attitudes, Sevilla did not explain whether “Las Mañanitas” had also been the theme of the US serenade of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega at the Vatican embassy in Panama City in 1990; a visit to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa on the afternoon of 21 October meanwhile revealed obstacles to the flow of information in Honduran military channels when soldiers told me that no music whatsoever had ever been played in the vicinity of the building and that even Armed Forces Day celebrations were merely taking place inside their own hearts.

I had been surprised to discover on the morning of October 21  that it was Armed Forces Day, as I had been under the impression that the very same holiday had just been celebrated in September. Cursory research revealed that the September celebration had merely been the Day of the Soldier, which to its credit had lasted only a single 24-hour period; a more liberal interpretation of the word “day” was enjoyed by the later celebration, which continued until  October 26.

The holiday was celebrated by La Tribuna in a 12-page section commemorating the fifty-third anniversary of the Honduran armed forces, page 5 of which highlighted the military declaration of  October 21,1956, explaining that it was due to a great sense of duty that the armed forces had not been able to “remain indifferent to the aspirations of the Honduran people” and that “the greatest desire of the armed forces of Honduras [wa]s the return of the country to constitutional normality.” The continuity of Honduran military vocabulary throughout time was rendered even more significant by the fact that 21 October 1956 was the date of the military coup against Julio Lozano Díaz.

At our interview Vásquez categorized the 1956 events—which he had lauded as the date of the armed forces’ “birth as a professional institution” in the Tribuna commemoration—as a “coup d’état,” and explained that the military had been required to intervene in order to rectify Lozano’s accumulation of absolute power, just as the current armed forces had been called on almost 5 months previously. He nonetheless rejected the possibility of lauding the current coup as a coup, claiming that “[i]n this case it is different because… the order to act was delivered to the military by the Supreme Court of Justice” and that “there has not been a constitutional interruption but rather a constitutional succession, since the powers of the state—the executive power, etc.—have continued functioning.” The argument that there has not in fact been a constitutional interruption in Honduras calls into question the necessity of the coup in the first place; the term “functioning” is meanwhile called into question by the recent decision on the part of the de facto executive power to give itself a week of vacation from the presidency.

Vásquez assured me that “we are very democratic soldiers” and that “we want liberty and we ourselves guarantee the liberty in this country, right, because if there wasn’t such [an amount of] liberty there wouldn’t be so many people going around doing things they shouldn’t be doing, like insulting people, dirtying walls [with graffiti], setting buildings on fire, etc, etc… In fact, there is probably too much liberty [here].”

As for the spiritual side of the armed forces, Vásquez explained that “religiously devoted armies are generally the ones that win,” which raised the issue of why Army commander García was concerned about halting the spread of socialism northward when Rear Admiral Juan Pablo Rodríguez had decreed that said ideology did not allow any space for god. According to Rodríguez, the exclusion of god was undemocratic, with proof of Honduran commitments to democracy consisting of the admiral’s statement that god was “on our side.” This same divine alignment with democracy had been threatened by Micheletti in the event of a foreign invasion of Honduras to impede elections; Vásquez meanwhile commented to me that spiritual devotion by bellicose men had been a historical constant: “Even when they did not know god the pagan kings made sacrifices when going to war; I mean, they had faith in someone.”

Vásquez’ personal faith had been put on display in recent weeks when he appeared on television clutching a crucifix at a commemorative mass on Armed Forces Day. The general explained to me that Honduran military training instilled three different feelings in the soldiers: “profound love for god, profound love for the patria, and profound love for… for… the people, the population.” Vásquez’ momentary difficulty in recalling the third profound love was rectified in an interview with El Heraldo in which he professed that what made him proudest was helping the needy of Honduras; also professed in the interview was that his family “depends on loans from the bank” but that his wife’s family “does have a lot of land,” a claim that was somewhat buttressed by El Tiempo’s definition of Vásquez as being “known as a prominent rancher in the department of Olancho.” The general’s definition of the Honduran armed forces as a “serious institution” was meanwhile called into question by the fact that he waited until I had turned off my tape recorder to suggest that he could have two wives.

Other kinds of Honduran military training aside from the inculcation of the three profound loves included Vásquez’ stints at the School of the Americas, where he told me the course he had most enjoyed was on civil-military relations—which it turned out was not merely an SOA code name for military repression of civilians. Vásquez explained that civil-military relations in Honduras were sometimes complicated “given the complexity of the actions” undertaken by certain politicians, with complexity on the part of Zelaya having led Vásquez to adopt the phrase: “Friendship ends where duty begins.”

According to Vásquez, duty had begun due to the fact that “we are in the twenty-first century” and that power should be pursued by legal means. The implication that Zelaya had determined to remain eternal president of Honduras was of course contradicted by the proposed public opinion survey question of  June 28 —which was not “Should Zelaya be appointed eternal president of Honduras?” but rather “Are you in favor of installing a separate ballot box at the 29 November elections such that citizens might vote on the whether or not to convene a national constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution?”—as well as by Zelaya’s ineligibility to run in said elections in the first place.

Vásquez’ argument that national constituent assemblies can be convened “only when there has been an interruption of the constitutional order” does not include an explanation of why dissatisfaction with the current constitutional order on the part of the majority of the populace does not suffice to delegitimize it. The head of the Honduran armed forces may have found himself in a new century, but so has the determination to extinguish popular will.

Belén Fernández can be reached at belengarciabernal@gmail.com.

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