OAS-Honduras: US Amb. Amselem Delivers Collective Slap to Fellow Diplomats

I caught the end of the OAS live webcast and watched in amazement as Anselem spoke. He was the last speaker so there was no reply from the other ambassadors.

He said he was not "very sophisticated" and asked that if what was happening in Honduras was some sort of "magical realism." (At least it looks like he is aware of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Macondo" in "One Hundred Years of Solitude.")

It will be interesting to see what the South American media has to say about his stupid remarks.

I found the segment to examine, following magbana's suggestion.

http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/videos.asp?sCodigo=09-0289&videotype=&sCollectionDetVideo=19

Wait 'til it completely downloads which takes a couple of minutes, then go to around 18:30.

This is horrendously unprofessional. He's attempting to bully them. Not a trace of dignity in the jackass. Good grief.
He's crude, overbearing, and attempts to be threatening.

I hope it only encourages everyone to get as far away from poison like him as possible.

CanNOT believe an intelligent President would let this scum represent him to OAS.

Ouch!

Torture/death squad enthusiast, US delegate to the OAS, Lewis Amselem.

Have a look at his ilustrious history. Magana refers to a piece from Machetera:

Lewis Amselem, the head of the U.S. delegation to the Organization of American States (OAS), who called President Manuel Zelaya’s return to his country “irresponsible” and “foolish” was denounced years ago for having concealed the identities of individuals, one of whom was a U.S. national, who tortured and raped a U.S. nun in Guatemala.

On November 2, 1989, Dianna Ortiz was kidnapped, raped and tortured by members of Guatemalan security forces, supervised by a North American citizen.

Since then, Ortiz has tried, tirelessly, to get the U.S. government to reopen the files of all those who were victims of brutality in Guatemala during the period of the pro-USA dictatorships.

“Zelaya’s return to Honduras is irresponsible and foolish and it doesn’t serve the interests of the people nor those seeking a peaceful reestablishment of democratic order in Honduras,” said Lewis Amselem, with an arrogance correspondent to his role as Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the OAS.

Amselem was Human Rights Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala during the government of Vinicio Cerezo, a civil administration under which the army continued to savagely attack guerrillas. Cerezo was criticized for his inertia in confronting cases of human rights violations.

Coincidentally, 1989 was the year when the CIA agent and terrorist of Cuban origin, Luis Posada Carriles, passed through Guatemala, where he fabricated a cover for himself as head of security for the state telephone company, Guatel. President Vinicio Cerezo granted him special powers that turned him into a virtual gangster. He is credited with a series of executions, kidnappings, swindles and frauds during that period.

A Pit Full of Corpses

Dianna Ortiz was an Ursuline nun when she decided to dedicate herself to society’s most humble, and went to Central America with other nuns, to work as a nurse in small indigenous communities. Very soon she received anonymous death threats accusing her of complicity with guerrillas and ordering her to leave the country.

According to her account of a day in November, 1989, two men captured her in a garden of a community center, and took her in an unmarked police car to the former Polytechnic School, a military academy in Guatemala City.

A horrible interrogation began during which Ortiz was burned more than 100 times with cigarettes and raped repeatedly by her torturers, who ordered her to identify “subversives.” The treatment was so rough that she fainted.

According to a report published in 1996 by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, Ortiz, “at one point regained conciousness and found that her wrists had been tied over her head with a bra. It seemed that she was in a patio. Then she felt various people move a heavy slab on the floor. They lowered her into a pit full of corpses. She fainted again. When she awoke, she was on the floor and the men had started again to abuse her sexually.”

The interminable torture session was interrupted by the arrival of a person who was called Alejandro, who explained that she’d been confused for a guerrilla leader named Verónica Ortiz Hernández.

While “Alejandro” was taking her in his Jeep to the “house of a friend of the Embassy,” Dianna escaped, by taking advantage of a stop at a traffic light.

A Bush Holdover

What followed in the subsequent years was a true ordeal for a woman already destroyed by this hellish experience.

The Guatemalan Defense Minister, Hector Gramajo, said publicly that Dianna Ortiz had made up her story, adding insults and slanderous insinuations of a sexual nature.

Researching the subject, reporters from ABC News identified the source of these degrading rumors. They came from the Office of Human Rights’ Lewis Amselem, who upon being asked about them, vehemently denied any involvement.

The Reverend Joseph Nangle of the Assisi Community, said later that Amselem had spoken on the subject in his presence, with an outrageous vulgarity.

Other people confirmed Nangle’s comment and added that Amselem multiplied his insulting references to the presence of religious volunteers in Guatemala’s indigenous communities.

On October 16, 1996, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission recognized the veracity of Ortiz’s declarations, based on the information presented and its investigation and analysis of the case, and condemned the Guatemalan government.

However, the U.S. Ambassador, Thomas F. Stroock and his employee, Amselem, who constantly hindered the investigation, are not mentioned in the document.

In 1995, a U.S. court sentenced Hector Gramajo to pay $47 million to Ortiz and his other victims.

Amselem was a diplomat from the Bush Administration, who remained in place, just like many other ultra right-wingers in the current Obama administration.

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/the-sordid-history-of-lewis-amselem-deputy-u-s-permanent-representative-to-the-oas/q

Diana Ortiz is well known to people who have been trying to catch up on what our own corporate media refused to cover for American citizens.

http://www.stjoan.com.nyud.net:8090/er2/ortiz.jpg http://www.ursulinesmsj.org.nyud.net:8090/images/OrtizDiannareplacement.JPG http://www.yesmagazine.org.nyud.net:8090/images/issues/71/41adamsDOrtiz.jpg

Sister Diana Ortiz

Sitting here thinking about this--first thought: How long is Obama going to let death squad-promoting Puke fascists sabotage his stated policy of peace, RESPECT and cooperation in Latin America, before that policy becomes sand in everybody's mouths?

Speechless with wonder and outrage.

:wow:

The deal began to unravel last week when the Congress announced it would postpone a vote on Mr. Zelaya’s return to power until after the election. In protest, Mr. Zelaya then refused to submit names for the coalition government. And the United States, breaking with its allies in Latin America, announced it would recognize the results of the upcoming presidential election, even if Mr. Zelaya were not reinstated.

While the announcement was celebrated by Republicans as a “reversal” in the administration’s policy, it ignited a firestorm of criticism from Mr. Obama’s allies at home and across Latin America.

Rep. Howard Berman, Democrat of California who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, telephoned Assistant Secretary of State James Steinberg to express his concerns about the administration’s handling of Honduran crisis. An aide to the congressman said, “It was not a feel-good phone call.”

Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the senator believed the State Department’s “abrupt change” of policy towards Honduras, “caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.”

On Tuesday, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said that he would not send observers to monitor the presidential election, scheduled for Nov. 29. And many of the organization’s 34 members said they would not recognize the winner of the contest unless Mr. Zelaya was reinstated to complete his term.

“Paraguay is not only not going to accept the outcome of the elections, it will not even accept that the elections are held,” said Hugo Saguier Caballero, Paraguay’s ambassador to the O.A.S.. “These elections for us simply will not exist.”

Ruy de Lima Casaes e Silva, Brazil’s ambassador to the organization, said the situation in Honduras seemed like a “badly written soap opera, with sinister characters played by the de facto regime, which history will judge.”

The Obama Administration’s representative to the O.A.S., Lewis Amselem, said that the agreement signed in Honduras two weeks ago did not guarantee President Zelaya’s reinstatement, but put that decision in the hands of the Honduran Congress.

Mr. Amselem (US ambassador) said it was not possible to translate Latin America’s position on the coup into policy, noting that most of the countries had themselves used elections to establish democratic order after coups. And he urgently pressed for a more pragmatic line.

“I’ve heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras,” Mr. Amselem said to his counterparts at an O.A.S. meeting in Washington. “I’m not trying to be a wise guy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?””

http://hondurasoye.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/honduran-national-resistance-update-1110/
Posted by Downwinder here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x26195

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His remark is even more insulting that as described in the OP. He is accusing most of the leaders of Latin America of not living in the real world--of living in "the world of magical realism," a literary genre that was created in reaction to the horrors inflicted on Latin America by the U.S. including sick Buswhack toadies like 'ambassador' Amselem who helped cover up monstrous acts by the U.S. government and its Latin American proxies.