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...indeed, its ALBA accounts are being looted by the golpistas--and missing out on the help now available from countries like Venezuela, Brazil and Chile, who are aiding the smaller countries and economies in a new spirit of solidarity throughout the region (--the result of LEFTIST government and transparent elections!). Brazil and Venezuela have committed to building a new highway from Brazil's Atlantic coast across South America to the Pacific, through Bolivia, which will make Bolivia a major trade route of the "Global South," and Chile has meanwhile settled a long-standing dispute by giving land-locked Bolivia access to the Pacific. Brazil helped Paraguay's new leftist leader re-negotiate its hydroelectric contracts with Brazilian multinationals, to give Paraguay a fairer deal. Brazil, Argentina and Chile all helped Evo Morales fend off a Bushwhack-supported, white separatist coup attempt last year. Venezuela has organized a dozen small countries into the ALBA trade group, where they are creating trade deals that have social justice goals (as opposed to US trade deal--i.e., "free trade for the rich"). Venezuela has helped Argentina and others out of ruinous World Bank/IMF debt. And it was providing Honduras with cheap oil which allowed Zelaya to lower the cost of bus tickets for the poor. All that is over now, in Honduras, which is being boycotted by Latin American countries and virtually the entire world.
Whether Honduras' membership in ALBA can be restored is a big question, since the US is out to destroy ALBA, and the US is a critical player in Honduras. US corpo/fascists want war in South America--ultimately to grab Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil. They don't care how many leftists the golpistas torture and kill. They want to secure and expand the US military base in Honduras, which combines with the seven new US military bases in Colombia, and the newly reconstituted US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, to surround Venezuela's northern oil region with a constant threat, high tech spying and ultimately invasion. The more polite US dominationists--Obama and Clinton--may or may not approve of a war strategy (I'm not sure yet), but they certainly are shills for US corporate sweatshops and control of resources wherever they can impose "neo-liberal" policies (low wages, slave labor, looting of public services and social programs, rule by the rich and unaccountable profiteering off of natural resources). It's sometimes hard to tell which is worse--outright fascism or the illusion of democracy, although, in the end, I'd say that the illusion of democracy at least presents the opportunity to make it real, whereas, if you are dead, in prison, tortured, crippled or living in fear, from fascist juntas--as the Bushwhacks instigated in Honduras, and effectively instigated in Colombia (and tried to instigate in Venezuela and Bolivia)--the opportunity for democratic progress is severely hampered.
Thus, Cuba--robotically reviled by US politicians--is slated to become of the hub of trade in the Caribbean, totally peacefully, while the US utterly wastes our money--indebting us unto the 7th generation--on militarism, arms, war plotting and the corrupt, failed, murderous, hypocritical "war on drugs--and the "polite" Obamaites try to hold back the leftist tide on behalf of our global corporate predators. If the Obamaites keep dicking around on the Honduran coup, and don't (or can't?) do the right thing there (oust the Junta, restore Zelaya and permit a Constitutional Convention, to revise a Constitution that even Oscar Arias says is "the worst in the world"), then Obama/Clinton will have lost the opportunity to accomplish anything in Latin America, let alone what they should be seeking: FAIR trade! Probably this is one motive of the corpo/fascists here who arranged the corpo/fascist coup in Honduras--to embarrass and sabotage Obama/Clinton on any "polite" sort of proceeding, and to head off whatever tendency they might have to be FAIR.
In the end, the countries of the region and the people of Honduras may solve the Honduran crisis themselves. It may take time, but what it will mean is full Honduran sovereignty and their return to ALBA (and rejection of CAFTA). So if Clinton wants to end up with any cache in the region at all, she had better act fast and join with the OAS, Arias, Brazil's Lulu and others in creating a viable political solution that isn't entirely the illusion of democracy. I really don't think the leftist democracy movement in Latin American can be stopped, except by blunt force, and even in that case--war--I'm not at all sure that the US would win. Psychologically, for the combatants, it would be comparable to the reverse of WW II. Instead of democracy-inspired US soldiers fighting and defeating Hitler's great war machine, you would have democracy-inspired Latin Americans fighting the great US war machine, with the people back home in the US in complete rebellion by then, and US soldiers highly ambivalent about killing peasants in the Amazon and the Andes, and losing, a la Vietnam. Latin America does not have a great war machine, but that may not be the essential ingredient of winning such a war--and they do have the resources to build a great war machine, if they must.
A war against Latin America is lunacy--just like every other Bushwhack project. That doesn't mean they aren't building up to it, and won't inflict it upon us and the Latin Americans. They have the power, the money (ours) and the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines to do it. I think that is the darkest cloud hanging over the Honduran situation. It isn't just some sort of "banana republic" coup. It is fundamental to this war plan that Rumsfeld no doubt left on his desk--and there are major players in it here (John McCain, for one). If Obama wants to fend this off, and truly wants to establish peaceful, respectful, cooperative relations with Latin America, he MUST solve the Honduran crisis, and soon. And given the attitude of the McCain-backed golpistas, it is going to require some bold and clever moves. Obama/Clinton may have already shown some cleverness, by not officially designating this coup as a military coup, which kept the matter away from Congress and Jim DeMint. And we may find out tomorrow how clever they are, and how bold. (Deadline for restoring Zelaya to office, set by Zelaya's government and the Resistance.) I don't think Obama/Clinton want a messy, rigged election there; and they need something much better, in order to retain good relations with leaders like Lulu. Arias' statement about Honduras' Constitution ("the worst in the world") may have been the harbinger of the solution they have come up with. If a Constitutional Convention vote is properly run (by the OAS/UN), it won't--and can't be--entirely an illusion of democracy. The golpistas will get something. The people of Honduras will get something. But I think, if this happens (the US doing something semi-right), ALBA and the Honduran alliance with Venezuela will likely be taken "off the table" (nixed by the US). Benefits like we are reading about in this OP, for Cuba, will likely be out for Honduras.
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