Full Story Here.Earlier this year, in the face of strong public opposition, Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales declared that he would stage a referendum to have the country’s constitutional term limits law overturned, thereby allowing him to remain indefinitely in power. The people of Honduras had adopted the single, four-year--term limit as part of their Constitution in January of 1982. Significantly, the term limits provision is one of only eight “firm articles,” out of 375. By law, cannot be amended.
The Supreme Court of Honduras declared the Zelaya referendum unconstitutional, his own Liberal Party came out in strong opposition, and the public overwhelmingly opposed his power grab. Despite this, Zelaya, a leftwing politician with strong ties to Cuba’s Castro and Venezuela’s Chavez, scheduled the referendum for Sunday, June 28. At midnight, Wednesday, June 24, the strong-arm president gave a televised speech accusing his opposition of promoting “destabilization and chaos” by attempting to thwart his unconstitutional referendum.
As the situation in Honduras continued to deteriorate, the Zelaya’s attorney general called for his ouster; his Defense Minister resigned; he fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for stating that he would refuse to send out troops to put down public protests; the chiefs of the army, navy, and air force resigned; and the country’s Supreme Court ordered the nation’s army and police not to support the unconstitutional referendum.
Through all of this, Barack Obama abetted the Zelaya power grab through his calculated silence....
Obama's not the only one to give the people of Honduras a rough ride: the S.G. of the U.N. is in on it too. He's with Zelaya today flying in to help the past president reclaim his lost spot. Who? This guy, standing up for Zelaya, like Obama's doing.
The U.N. General Assembly president accused the United States on Tuesday of “demonizing” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the latest blast against Washington by the former Nicaraguan official.“I don’t think anyone can doubt that in our part of the world, concretely here … Ahmadinejad has been demonized,” Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann told a news conference.
…
D’Escoto said that “the United States has been in the business of the demonization of people from (for)ever,” but had “canonized” former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.“And then we hear terrible things about Ahmadinejad,” D’Escoto said at the news conference on a recent trip to Syria, Finland, China, Bahrain, Switzerland and Iran to promote a U.N. conference in June on the world financial crisis.
D’Escoto said there had been “a big ado,” including protest letters written to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, when he went to a New York meeting attended by Ahmadinejad during the annual General Assembly summit last September. He did not say who had written the letters.
He said the “demonization” contrasted with the “great respect” in which Iran was held by its neighbors for hosting some 3 million refugees from Afghanistan.
D’Escoto also doesn’t want mass-murderer Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir busted because it would be “racist,”
He said it would “deepen a perception that international justice is racist.”
While he was at it, D’Escoto defends his statement accusing Israel of apartheid towards Palestinians because Jimmy Carter said it first.
http://faustasblog.com/?tag=Obama can nod and wink at Amadinejed, and D'Escoto can schmooze with him too. One big happy family.
Obama officials say talks with Iran still possible.
By PHILIP ELLIOTT The Associated Press
Sunday, June 28, 2009; 6:57 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is open to discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions despite protests questioning the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, U.S. officials said Sunday.
Ahmadinejad has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the United States for allegations of meddling. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran, which detained nine British Embassy employees Saturday before releasing four, has said it's considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain.
The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said he would make the U.S. regret its criticism of the postelection crackdown and said the "mask has been removed" from Obama's efforts to improve relations.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that Ahmadinejad is falling back on his government's usual strategy of blaming the West and the United States in particular for its internal problems.
"This is a profound moment of change. And what Ahmadinejad says to try to change the subject is, frankly, not going to work in the current context, because the people understand that the United States has not been meddling in their internal affairs," she said.
The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability, Rice said.
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Claudia Rosett has some good insight into the news from Honduras, particularly the Sandinista thug now in charge fo the U.N. Here's a bit of her piece, link to follow:
Zelaya — according to the AP – is traveling in a Venezuelan jet. And accompanying him is the last thing Honduras, or any other other embattled democracy needs: The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockman.D’Escoto sums up just about everything wrong with the United Nations. As head of the 192-member-state General Assembly for its 2008-2009 session, he has been empowered to swan around the world, swaddled in the UN flag and purporting to speak for the poor, the oppressed, and the “international community.” In truth, d”Escoto is a Nicaraguan Sandinista retread, oozing hard-left dogma, praising some of the world’s worst despotisms and agitating from his plush UN offices in midtown Manhattan for massive transfers of wealth from the world’s leading democracies to his pals in tyrants’ cockpits of places such as Iran.
I mention Iran in particular because d’Escoto made a five-day visit there in March, with his expenses apparently paid by the Iranian government. He returned to New York to hold a press conference trashing free countries such as the U.S., and praising Iran’s regime as one enjoying “great respect.” For more detail, here’s a link to my column at the time for Forbes.com , covering D’Escoto’s performance on that occasion.
[d'Escoto embracing Ahmadinejad at the UN]D’Escoto took special pains to denounce the U.S. for having “demonized” his buddy, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – whose rigged “relection” as president on June 12th, as we all know, has inspired massive protests inside Iran itself.
Wielding the credentials of president of the UN General Assembly, D’Escoto enjoys the pernicious position of being a prominent official who is responsible in theory to everyone, but in practice is accountable to almost no one — while serving at the pleasure of a General Assembly which is dominated by unfree states. The GA’s most powerful voting bloc is the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, which overlaps with the so-called Group of 77 — a UN caucus organization which actually includes 130 members, who chose as their chairman for 2009 … wait for it… Sudan. That’s the kind of crowd behind d’Escoto.
Nicely written piece. Read it all here: http://pajamasmedia.com/
And who is this winner?
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, M.M., born in Los Angeles[1] on February 5, 1933, is a Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest.[2] He is the current President of the United Nations General Assembly; taking up his one year term in September 2008 and presiding over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.More, if you can stomach it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
D'Escoto was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Maryknoll congregation, before engaging in politics. He was a key figure in the founding of the Maryknoll imprint, Orbis Books, in 1970, and was an official with the World Council of Churches. As an adherent of liberation theology, he secretly joined the Sandinistas.
He served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega's FSLN government from 1979 to 1990. ... While foreign minister, he received the Lenin Peace Prize for 1985-6....
[Elected to head the U.N.] D'Escoto designated[13] 15 senior advisers : Brother David Andrews CSC (USA), Ms. Maude Barlow (Canada), Mr. Mohammed Bedjaoui (Algeria), Mr. Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Mr. Kevin Cahill (USA), Mr. François Houtart (Belgium), Mr. Noam Chomsky (USA), Mr. Ramsey Clark (USA), Mr. Richard Falk (USA), Mr. Michael Kennedy (USA), Ms. Eleonora Kennedy (USA), Mr. Olivier De Schutter (Belgium), Mr. Joseph Stiglitz (USA), Sir John E. Sulston (UK), Mr. Howard Zinn (USA).
UN Watch has this on the "special advisors":
And now this: UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, former Nicaraguan FM and unrepentant Sandinista, has named a rogues’ gallery of anti-Western crackpots and 9/11 conspiracy theorists as his “Special Senior Advisors.” The indefatigable Matt Lee of Inner City Press has the story here.Now advising the head of the UN’s parliament are Professor Richard Falk, cheerleader for the theory that 9/11 was an inside job; Ramsey Clark, tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes, and Noam Chomsky, the anti-American guru who lends his name to Holocaust deniers. ...
http://blog.unwatch.org/?cat=
[As Ralph Waldo] Emerson (1803 - 1882) sagely noted, every hero becomes a bore at last. The danger for the celebrity entertainer Barack Obama may lie not so much in his inane and perfectly commonplace juvenile politics, i.e. his "liberalism," as in the fact that he is beginning to bore the audience.Teleologicus, Jun 30, 05:47 AM at: http://www.americanthinker.
When the audience becomes bored by its heroes it begins to lust for something new - and that something new can always become the horrific spectacle of sudden fall and disintegration. It's all show biz after all - and the show must go on.
Sarah Palin is like my mother, (assuming that I'd had one,) a normal and ordinary and decent woman like most others back home. Do we really want celebrity Commies for leaders instead? This just ain't right.
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