Money talks in U.S. policy toward Honduran putsch regime

to the rightwing junta in Honduras, while pretending not to. And this explains why the Junta feels so confident in its survival that it just arrested and jailed a high profile leftist candidate for the Honduran National Assembly, and national leader of the anti-coup coalition, former union president, Rene Chavez. See

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x22284

NarcoNews answers the very question I raised in that thread--how much money was "in the pipeline" from Clinton's Millennium Corporation just before and during the months of the coup? That is, is the State Dept. "freeze" on money to the Junta phony?

The meat of the NN investigation...

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"MCC spokesperson Sarah Stevenson told Narco News last week that as part of her agency’s $215 million compact with Honduras, as of Aug. 31, MCC had “committed approximately $191 million to contracts; approximately $91 million has been disbursed” — actually sent to Honduras.

She added that the $11 million in funding terminated at the Sept. 9 board meeting involved money not yet committed under contract. Although she failed to address the $4 million put on hold, the MCC press release makes clear that money also is linked to funds that have not been “contractually obligated.”

A simple math computation tells us, then, that MCC still has some $100 million in contractually committed funding to deliver to the putsch regime in Honduras between now and the end of 2010.

In fact, according to recent reports released by the Honduran Central Bank, MCC has delivered $10.7 million to Honduras since the June 28 coup — including $3.8 million in late August, a little more than a week prior to MCC’s funding-termination media show. And the balance of the MCC funding can be expected to continue to flow into Honduras, to the benefit of the putsch regime, to the tune of an additional $100 million, in the weeks and months to come.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens has previously stated that terminating the remaining $100 million in contractually committed MCC funding in Honduras would create major legal liabilities for the U.S. government. But that assessment seems to be a dodge, if not an outright fabrication.

The MCC aid funds are distributed to Honduras through an independent government agency, called MCA-Honduras, set up in Honduras under that nation’s laws and whose board is dominated by members of the putsch regime. In addition, MCC’s own compact language makes clear that “MCC is not a party” to the contracts inked by MCA-Honduras with vendors.

From MCC’s Web site:
'These procurements are awarded and administered by the country through an “accountable entity” (also known as an “MCA Entity”) … established by the country to manage the programs identified in their Compact. MCC is not a party to these contracts.'

So, it would appear, based on the structure of its funding program, if MCC chose to cut off the remaining $100 million in contractually committed aid under the Honduran compact, it would be the Honduran putsch regime that would be on the hook legally and economically for making good on the contracts — and not the U.S. government."

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/09/money-talks-us-policy-toward-honduran-putsch-regime

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NN then chronicles the various State Dept. statements about the funding, and the sleight-of-hand figures and language they have used to make it seem like they were pressuring the Junta, and concludes:

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"...despite the barrage of convoluted number schemes unleashed on the media, no matter how you cut it, at a minimum in the case of MCC and USAID combined, Honduras is still in line to receive more than $130 million in U.S. tax dollars. And that continues to be the case even though the country is now ruled by a coup regime publicly deemed illegitimate by both the U.S. President and Secretary of State.

"In addition, the 'funding cuts' announced to date with respect to MCC — the major source of foreign aid to Honduras — involve only a promise of future aid and not the tens of millions of dollars already committed to the country to fund contracts now under the legal control of the putsch regime."

"That is the story not being told by the mainstream media."

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What this means is that it is more than likely true that what Clinton wants in Honduras is a rigged election. The Junta will continue rounding up leftist candidates and activists--over a thousand political prisoners as of about a month ago--silencing them and putting them out of commission, re the election, then it will suddenly announce that it agrees to the Arias Accord and an OAS-run election. This will be treated by the US State Dept. (and our corpo/fascist media) as a triumph of diplomacy, and will fuzzy up the picture of the lack of political freedom in Hondurans sufficiently to divide the leadership of Latin America on the issue of recognizing the results of this election, and provide cover for various profiteering entities--like the EU and the IMF--to go back to "business as usual"--business with some rightwing puppet president of Honduras. The vast peoples' movement for fundamental reform in Honduras will thus be squashed--or so our corpo/fascists hope.

I think the case against Clinton on this issue has become very strong. She is likely in league with the fascists in this country who support this coup, but, more than this, it points to her collusion on the Bushwhack war plan for regaining global corporate predator control of Venezuela's and Ecuador's (and possibly others') oil. The other day the State Dept. announced that it had "certified" Colombia on its human rights record--one of the worst on earth--for purposes of "free trade" and mostly military aid, but most importantly for the establishment of seven new US military bases in Colombia (which is adjacent to Venezuela and Ecuador, and has been harassing those borders). With the US military base in Honduras secured by the rightwing coup, and the US 4th Fleet reconstituted in the Caribbean (by the Bushwhacks last year), they have Venezuela surrounded.

I've been going back and forth about where Clinton, and Obama, might stand on this war plan, and wondering if events like the Honduran coup were traps laid by the Bush Junta--to embarrass the new administration, sabotage Obama's stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America, and possibly drag them into an oil war, or prepare one for the future (post 2012, after Obama is Diebolded out of office). It could have been, for instance, that Obama/Clinton salvaged a bad situation in Honduras--a Bushwhack coup they couldn't stop--saved Zelaya's life, are preventing worse horrors by the coup, and did their best, with the Arias Accord, to try to set things right. Such a forgivable scenario has grown increasingly unlikely--and this continued funneling of money to the coup makes it very unlikely. I still don't know where Obama stands. But I am more sure now that Clinton is NOT carrying out Obama's stated policy in Latin America. This is not "peace, respect and cooperation." This is war.