New York Times (8/14/17)
The August 14 New York Times reported that the threat by Donald Trump to use the US military against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has brought together Latin American leaders, divided on other things, in opposition to US intervention. Along the way, reporter Nicholas Casey cites a regional expert who says, “An often ugly history of US interventions is vividly remembered in Latin America — even as we in the US have forgotten.” Which the Times followed thus:
Under President Barack Obama, however, Washington aimed to get past the conflicts by building wider consensus over regional disputes. In 2009, after the Honduran military removed the leftist president Manuel Zelaya from power in a midnight coup, the United States joined other countries in trying to broker—albeit unsuccessfully—a deal for his return.
There’s a word for that kind of statement, and the word is “lie.”
Zelaya was indeed overthrown in a military coup, kidnapped and flown out of the country via the joint US/Honduran military base at Palmerola.
Honduran military suppressing protests after the 2009 coup. (cc photo: Roberto Breve)
Now, the US is supposed to cut off aid to a country that has a military coup—and “there is no doubt” that Zelaya’s ouster “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup,” according to a secret report sent by the US ambassador to Honduras on July 24, 2009, and later exposed by WikiLeaks. But the US continued most aid to Honduras, carefully avoiding the magic words “military coup” that would have necessitated withdrawing support from the coup regime.
Internal emails reveal that the State Department pressured the OAS not to support the country’s constitutional government. In her memoir Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton recalled how as secretary of State she worked behind the scenes to legitimate the new regime. In the days following the coup, her book relates:
I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras, and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.
Hondurans take to the streets following the coup. (cc photo: Yamil Gonzales)
Let’s add, for the record, that with a corrupt, drug-linked regime in place—thanks in large part to US intervention—the murder rate in Honduras soared, rising to fully 50 percent above the pre-coup level. Many of the murders involved criminal gangs, but a great deal was political, with resuscitated death squads targeting journalists, opposition figures, labor activists and environmentalists—of whom indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was only the most famous.
So is it really that we in the US have forgotten what happened in Honduras? Or is that many of us believe falsehoods about that history brought to us by media like the New York Times? The paper may run a correction or a letter to the editor; we’re providing contact information below for readers to contact the Times to encourage them to set the record straight.
But really, how can you see such an outright inversion of reality as a slip-up? “Oops, did we say the US opposed the coup? What we meant to say is that the US, virtually alone in the world, supported it.” The real lesson is, when the US government declares a country an enemy, keep in mind that for corporate press, that basically means—anything goes.
ACTION: Please contact the New York Times and ask it to correct the false claim that the United States tried to restore the democratically elected president of Honduras.
CONTACT: nytnews@nytimes.com
Corporate media will never revel that in large part the bottom line is rotating drug dollars…
History is written by the winners’ scribes
The CIA and their mouthpiece the NYT should stop interfering in the legitimate democratic processes in Central and South America.
Too bad the USA cannot support democracy around the world. In a democracy corporate control might be compromised or limited—can’t have that.
What Hillary doesn’t say in her disingenuous memoir is the connection she and Bill had with the Honduran coup. An old friend of theirs came to DC as chief lobbyist for the coup leaders and voila, all was suddenly sweetness and light. The military coup wasn’t a coup. And butter wouldn’t melt in Hillary’s mouth.
Yet, the DNC still can’t figure out why she wasn’t elected president. It wasn’t just her Goldman Sach’s baggage. It was her duplicity on a grand scale, never more obvious than the crocodile tears she shed over Bernie’s treatment by her hatched wielding agent, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Or stop reading the NYT.
I am sure that at the NYT they know that they are spreading fake news to their readers. So no need to tell them as a concerned reader that they write fake news.
Actually the only place where I am reading the NYT is on Websites like FAIR, or the British version of FAIR, fi here http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2016/814-death-in-honduras-the-coup-hillary-clinton-and-the-killing-of-berta-caceres.html
Media Lens is awesome and yes! very much the UK’s equivalent to FAIR, if you haven’t I highly recommend getting their books in this particular Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, Newspeaks in the 21st Century, and then the books by the individual co-editors David Edwards and David Cromwell, so David Edwards’s books Free to be human and the Compassionate Revolution: radical politics & Buddhism and David Cromwell’s books Private Planet: corporate plunder & the fight back (this was the This changes of everything of the 90s except is was underrated hehe!) and Why are we the good guys? which is part memoir to.
LOL, it seems that the Ny Tiimes is getting more Hearst-like as time goes on. Hearst and the NY Journal, famous for being judge,jury and liar for Remember the Maine. Back then , the NYT had a more mesured and factul look, So, NY Times “Return to the days of yesteryear and the mighty sound hi ho truthfulness
Oh wait, are you all still mad about the stupidity of forcing the maduro man;s plane down when the spy people decided that he was hiding Mr. Snowden? Or am mixing that up with another insane government move?
That was Evo Morales’s plane.
Most of this article is a lie. Zelaya was a crook. He was trying to become a dictator (like Maduro). In the Honduran constitution, the only one that counts, a President cannot initiate legislation to change the term or other election laws, only the legislature. There was NO coup. The Honduran people stood up to him and ran him out. Actually, his friends protected him from being arrested and thrown in prison by allowing him to get on that plane and leave. Legal elections were held. Roberto Micheletti is a hero. True, I never trusted Lobo, but JOH is a good man. Good riddance to Zelaya. Quit bellyaching!
Zelaya wasn’t trying to initiate legislative change. He was organizing a non-binding referendum.
Wrong. It was a civil coup…but the left media reported it as a military coup because it fit the narrative better.
and remember folks respectful communications is highly suggested not an aggressive/abusive tone.
Sadly, the United States was not “virtually alone in the world” supporting the coup against Honduran democracy.
Canada’s Harper regime followed suit, pretending to oppose it but backing the U.S. scheming at the OAS, etc. Disgusting, but not surprising, as Canada-based mining and other scurrilous companies have jumped in to profit from the violent and corrupt (as well as illegitimate) Honduran regime.
One would like to think Justin ‘Sunny Ways’ Trudeau wouldn’t support another coup. But his cold warrior foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, is happily lining up with Trumpian/Tillerson belligerence against the besieged Venezuelan government.
For good reason, progressive Latin American governments set up UNASUR to rival the OAS — excluding the U.S. and Canada.
Has the NYT printed any letters or corrections for about this article?