09/30/14 – Mark Weisbrot – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's the show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up is Mark Weisbrot.
He is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and is also the president of Just Foreign Policy.
Our friend Robert Naiman over there.
I guess I didn't have that straight, that association.
Very good.
This one is at america.aljazeera.com, Hard Choices.
Hillary Clinton Admits Role in Honduran Coup.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you?
Thanks.
Good to have you here.
Been a while.
I also want to recommend a link to this from time to time in discussions about Iraq.
It's a great article.
I guess it's reprinted at informationclearinghouse.com.
And it's called Our Own Holocaust Denial.
It's an article about the estimate of as many as a million Iraqis killed in the war from 2003 through, say, 2009 there, whatever it was.
And a very important article, and I like recommending that to people.
So anyway, thanks for writing that.
This one, Hard Choices, that's the title of Hillary Clinton's latest book.
And so tell us the story.
First of all, I guess the coup, and then her concession to the truth here.
Yeah, well, she actually admitted in this chapter, her chapter on Latin America, which really hasn't gotten a lot of attention, because, you know, the media doesn't actually pay attention much to Latin America in general, although, you know, there's a lot of reporting on it, just doesn't make the major news.
But she admitted that she worked with other governments in the hemisphere to help block the democratically elected president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a military coup in June of 2009.
She worked with these other governments after the coup to try and prevent him from returning to office.
All right.
And so, well, help us out with a little bit of background of why it was that the right wanted him out, and the excuse.
Because it's actually interesting, the kind of fake excuse that they used at the time, the same one, I guess, widely debunked, I know, by you, for one, back then, is the same excuse that she goes ahead and invokes in this book, as though nobody knows better, right?
Yeah, that was interesting, too, because she didn't do that during the actual post-coup events, because the Obama administration was trying to pretend that, you know, it was on the same page as the entire hemisphere, which was, of course, demanding Zelaya's immediate reinstatement, and trying to use the Organization of American States.
And that's where she blocked, most effectively blocked him from actually helping him get back to office.
But the U.S. was trying, and the media mostly brought that, if you didn't follow the details and read every article down to the end, you probably wouldn't know, you would think that that actually was the position of the U.S. government, and that it was only the hard right in Congress, you know, the Florida Cuban-Americans and those people who were really supporting the coup.
So it was a great public relations manipulation, I think, for the Obama administration to be able to pretend that they were on the side of democracy, when they were really on the side of this military coup.
So in the book, she admits, first of all, that she really did help prevent Zelaya from returning to office, and go against the entire rest of the hemisphere, and really poisoned relations.
I mean, we still have the worst relations with Brazil that we've had for decades, worse than during the Bush administration.
That's how it really started, because they were kind of horrified that the U.S. was the only, practically the only country in the hemisphere that didn't want this Democratic elected president to go back.
The second thing that you're asking about is, you know, she actually takes the line of the hard right in the book, saying that Zelaya was trying to get himself another term of office, and that that's why he was overthrown.
Now, of course, the Honduran constitution, which was written by a military dictatorship, has only one term for a term, only one term for the president.
And you know, some people think that's a good thing, but really it's there because the military wants to limit the power of the president.
But in any case, you know, Zelaya ran on a platform of trying to change the constitution.
And of course, if that constitution were changed, you know, who knows, maybe they'd have a second term.
But the point was, he didn't have any chance or attempt to change it, so he could.
What he proposed in June of 2009 was a non-binding referendum, just a poll, saying, would you like to have a constitutional convention where the constitution could be redrawn?
Now, this poll wouldn't have any effect immediately in June, but what it would have done was put on the ballot a, possibly, if he could get it through the Congress, it had the possibility that on the November ballot of that year, you would actually have a referendum on whether the country should have a constitutional convention and draw up a new constitution.
But that was too late for Zelaya, that was the end of his term.
So in other words, it was impossible for him to get another term from that, the same ballot on which it could have appeared, and there's no guarantee it would have.
And like you're saying, the question wasn't even about that.
The question was whether to have that question answered by another ballot in the future.
Absolutely right.
Was the only thing that they were even talking about.
Another ballot where it was too late for Zelaya to actually run, even if they had gone up and drawn a new constitution, he was out in November.
That was the end of his term.
So there was no question whatsoever of him getting another term.
And this was just a flat-out lie that the right promoted in order to actively support the coup.
And here it was chronologically impossible.
And here's Hillary Clinton in her book, just throwing it in there as if it's true.
I thought that was almost as striking as her confession that she helped prevent a democratically elected president from returning to power.
And now, so let me ask you, just what threat was this guy to entrenched interests in the first place?
I mean, he can't have been that revolutionary, would have gotten anywhere near the presidency at all.
Well, he was, no that's right, I mean he came from the Liberal Party, his traditional, huge, one of the big traditional parties in Honduras.
But he was progressive.
You know, I don't think they cared about so much his internal politics, like raising the minimum wage and, you know, some companies I'm sure didn't like that.
But I think what motivated the coup was just this overall strategy that the United States still has in Latin America, which is to get rid of any left government that they can.
Do you think the CIA was behind it in the first place, that they actually called a shot?
Well, Zelaya himself said, he actually said it on Democracy Now!
a couple years ago, that yeah, he thought the US was actually involved, and directly involved in the coup, not just in helping it establish itself, and fighting the whole rest of the hemisphere to make sure that it succeeded.
He thought they were actually involved in it, he was pretty sure.
And yeah, I think that's probably likely, because the other strategic interest they have is they have military base, and that's, you know, that's something they don't have much in Latin America anymore, they lost their main base in South America outside of Colombia, which was in Ecuador when Correa was elected.
And so, I think they were afraid that if Honduras ever had a new constitution, one of the things they put in there is no foreign military bases, which everybody else in the world would, almost, you know, everybody in the hemisphere, I think, bases on the same page as that.
Yeah, wasn't it Correa who said, yeah, you can have a military base here in Ecuador as long as we can have a military base in Florida.
That's right.
And I think that's a standard, you know, when people there see it differently than here, they don't see the United States as having special rights that nobody else has.
Yeah, I think Americans have never heard anything like that before, they're like, huh, what?
A base of your military on our soil?
No, no, no.
All right, hold it right there, there's some more follow-up here to go over, Hillary and Obama and America's role in the 2009 coup d'etat in Honduras, we'll be back in just a sec.
Hey, Al Scott here.
Ever wanted to help support the show and own silver at the same time?
Well, a friend of mine, libertarian activist Arlo Pignatti, has invented the alternative currency with the most promise of them all, QR silver commodity discs, the first ever QR code one ounce silver pieces.
Just scan the back of one with your phone and get the instant spot price.
They're perfect for saving or spending at the market.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate gets one.
And if you'd like to learn and order more, send them a message at commodity discs.com or check them out on Facebook at slash commodity discs.
And thanks.
All right, you guys, welcome back.
Wrapping up here for the day with Mark Weisbrot.
He's got this article at america.aljazeera.com hard choices.
That was easy.
President Clinton admits role in Honduran coup.
And so lots to follow up on here.
First of all, we talk about Hillary's maneuver in the Organization of American States and all of that to basically solidify the coup to make sure there was no going back.
It's interesting that the tactic that they chose was hurry up, call a new election.
So it wasn't necessarily the guys who are, you know, the face on the coup.
I don't know the details, but I guess it was not the face on the coup who ended up being elected.
They sort of tried to paint a little bit of legitimacy on it by holding this election.
But as she puts it, they were really just trying to make the early conclusion of his presidency a moot point by moving on as quickly as possible.
That's right.
And they didn't want to have a real election.
I mean, he should have been able to come back to the country before the election.
That's what all of South America was demanding.
And that really, as I said, isolated the U.S. government further in the hemisphere, even worse than Bush was isolated in some ways.
And then when they had the election, was it just a joke or what?
It was pretty bad.
I mean, nobody accepted it as legitimate, almost nobody in the hemisphere other than the United States and one or two other countries that were willing to go along with the U.S.
And the Europeans didn't even send observers.
So, you know, for the rest of the world, it wasn't really a legitimate election.
And then I'm sorry, I think I interrupted you there when you were about to say something else.
No, I mean, that was it.
I think, you know, you could tell if you were watching this thing from the beginning that the U.S. was, you know, supporting the coup from day one.
You know, the first statement that came out of the White House didn't even condemn the coup.
It just called on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democracy.
Now, what does that mean?
Every diplomat in Washington, D.C. knew exactly what that meant.
That meant that they were behind the coup, because in the 21st century, you can't say you support a coup.
So by not saying anything bad about it and just pretending like it was a dispute over an election or something, they were telling the Hondurans and the world that the coup really had the support of the United States.
So from day one, anybody who was paying attention really knew it.
But as I said, most of the media pretended that the U.S. was against it.
Yeah.
Now, I thought I remembered some kind of little detail about Obama coming out against it at least a little, and then Hillary accused him of going wobbly.
And it was her and Lanny Davis and the whole kind of Hillary regime over there that had maybe been the ringleaders more than Obama, kind of Newland in Ukraine sort of a situation.
But not that I mean to apologize for Obama or anything.
Is that not right?
Well, I think that Obama, especially at that time, didn't pay a lot of attention to the to the, you know, he doesn't pay much attention to Latin America in general.
But he was ultimately, you know, in charge, and I don't think anything went on behind his back.
In fact, Zelaya came to Washington six times after the coup, and there were people close to Obama trying to get him to just at least meet with him, and he never did it.
And that, to me, showed something very strong, too.
I mean, why does it take just five minutes, shake hands, show that you support the elected president?
But he didn't want that to be seen in the world.
Right.
And I thought that Zelaya was some kind of pariah either.
I mean, he was, you know, besides being a Democratic elected president, I mean, he hadn't done anything that anybody except the far right would would really say he was terrible for.
Yeah.
You're saying it's mostly just the image that he wasn't right wing enough, America aligned enough.
And that's enough.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the way they see it, especially then, I'd like to believe they're, you know, softening some right now.
Not sure, though, you know, the way they see it is that this is like a chess game and it's like the Cold War.
And so you have all these left governments, you know, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, you know, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Salvador.
They just didn't want one more.
I mean, they don't want any more.
And in fact, they're always trying to get rid of whoever they can.
And so this was kind of a crime of opportunity, you know.
And I mean, on the positive side, I should say there's been a huge geostrategic or geopolitical change in that they can't get rid of any of the sizable or medium sized countries, governments or even some of the smaller ones.
Really, the weakest, you know, this is like the third poorest country in the hemisphere.
And the other one they got rid of, of course, was Haiti in 2004 and in Paraguay in 2012.
And the U.S. was involved in those as well.
But they can't, you can't really get, they tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela.
There was a tentative coup in Ecuador a few years ago.
And there was violent, violent attempts to topple the government of Bolivia.
And all of these were, you know, the U.S. was either involved in some way or trying to support it.
But they, you know, they can't really do that much, except in these cases where the government is weak and they have very, very close ties with the military, they did in Honduras.
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like, you know, then when they get away with one, all they do is just solidify as though this was ever really in doubt anyway, but they just help to push public opinion against the American position in all of those countries you listed.
You know, this is, you know, just like in the Middle East, just like if there's some foreign back coup d'etat in Louisiana, Texans and Arkansans still care, you know, even if it's just the state next door.
So and since they've all been through this at one time or, you know, 10 times or another, you know, this just helps solidify Uncle Sam as the evil imperialist tyrant from the North doing everything he can to thwart their self-determination, no matter what their determination is really, just as long as it's self, it's intolerable to the USA.
I think that's kind of it.
I mean, I think that they, you know, they see this in Cold War terms and they're trying to kind of a strategy of containment and rollback.
And so that's, you know, that's what the overall strategy is mostly.
Now, every now and then the Obama administration takes a slightly different approach and or even significantly different, and then they get blocked by the right.
So for example, they tried to have exchange ambassadors in 2010 with Venezuela.
Venezuela is one of three countries in South America that we don't have ambassadorial relationships.
The others are Ecuador and Bolivia.
And so when they try and do this, then the right mobilizes and the administration is not willing to sacrifice, you know, $2 of political capital to get this done.
And so relations remain strained.
So in that sense, there is this disproportionate influence of the far right.
But in the case of the Honduran coup, I think there was no real daylight between the Obama administration and the far right.
They really did see this as an opportunity to get rid of this, you know, left government.
And now, I'm sorry, in the last minute and a half or two, could you talk about the consequences?
At all, if anything has changed in the standard of living of the people there, the drug wars and this kind of thing?
Yes, well, it definitely was terrible for Honduras, you had a 50% increase in the homicide rate was already the highest in the world from 2008 to 2011.
A lot of political repression, murder of opposition political candidates.
And this is still continuing.
And so the drug related violence, of course, is a big thing, too.
But the security forces have killed a lot of people, a lot of human rights crimes there.
And the US government still continues to give aid to the military and police, even though more than 100 members of Congress have written to the administration and asked for them to cut it off or to enforce conditions against them.
Not too much has really happened in that regard.
All right, well, I'm sorry, I meant to get to that earlier and give you more time to discuss that, Mark.
We're out of time.
But thanks for coming back on the show.
I sure do appreciate it.
OK, thank you.
All right.
That's Mark Weisbrot.
And and he writes about some of the domestic consequences for the for the people there in this article, too.
Please look at America Al Jazeera dot com.
Hard choices.
Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup.
See you tomorrow.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
You like me.
You need coffee.
Lots of it.
You probably prefer taste good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee Company at Darren's Coffee dot com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world.
All specialty premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren's Coffee.
Order now at Darren's Coffee dot com.
Use promo code Scott and save two dollars.
Darren's Coffee dot com.
You hate government.
One of them libertarian types.
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers or warmongers.
Me, too.
That's why I invented Liberty Stickers dot com.
Well, Rick owns it now and I didn't make up all of them.
Still, if you're driving around, I want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are.
There's only one place to go.
Liberty Stickers dot com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right.
Libertarian empire.
Police state.
Founders quote.
Central banking.
Yes.
Bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And well, everything that matters.
Liberty Stickers dot com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
This part of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by Audible dot com.
And right now, if you go to Audible trial dot com slash Scott Horton Show, you can get your first audio book for free.
Of course, I'm recommending Michael Swanson's book, The War State, The Cold War Origins of the Military Industrial Complex and the Power Elite.
Maybe you've already bought The War State in paperback, but you just can't find the time to read it.
Well, now you can listen while you're out marching around.
Get the free audio book of The War State by Michael Swanson, produced by Listen and Think Audio at Audible trial dot com slash Scott Horton Show.
Hey, all Scott Horton here.
I want to tell you about this great new book, Live in La Vida Baroca, American Culture in an Age of Imperial Orthodoxy by Thomas Harrington.
While he comes from the left, Harrington has little time for much of what is passed off under that label today.
Like us libertarians, he puts peace and freedom first.
The book's got great essays on American fascism, empire, the Israeli occupation, the left and Obama, liberalism in the state, and some interesting lessons from the history of Imperial Spain.
Live in La Vida Baroca by Thomas Harrington.
Check it out at Scott Horton dot org slash books or Scott Horton dot org slash Amazon.