We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

US underwrites corruption and violence in Honduras

Click here to access article by Dana Frank from Al Jazeera
Since 2009, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has helped depose a democratically elected president in a military coup, ousted part of the country’s Supreme Court and facilitated the illegal appointment of Honduras’ sitting attorney general. He's jettisoned the Honduran constitution through militarized policing, helped abolish presidential term limits and he even pushed through Congress a law that says that the Honduran constitution doesn't apply in new, privately-run “model cities.”
The US thoroughly dominates the governments of Guatemala and Honduras, and through intimidation and bribes heavily influences events in the rest of Central America largely on behalf of resource extracting corporations. In the 1980s Honduras in particular has served the US as a successful application of a terrorist army (the Contras) used to destabilize a nearby government (Nicaragua). Probably inspired by this success, US Empire directors have applied this method elsewhere in places like Libya and now in collaboration with Middle Easter cronies in the form of ISIS in the Middle East.

(Note: If you wish to know more about US related events in Honduras, I suggest simply entering "Honduras" in one of my search engines.)