Mon Nov 30, 2009 at 07:31:41 AM PST
The US media is already in full spin mode in order to legitimize yesterday's presidential election in Honduras. Since the recent 180 of the Obama administration, the entire US establishment stands virtually alone in its support of the illegitimate election.
It was only three days ago, in full pre-electoral spin, that the New York Times had published an "analysis" of the Honduran crisis with a tendentious opening bordering on the paranoid:
Drug cartels are running amok in Mexico, Raúl Castro is tightening his grip on Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is making mischief with Russia and Iran, but it is a relatively obscure backwater, Honduras, that has provided the Obama administration with its first test in Latin America.
Today Bloomberg is reporting that "Lobo Wins Honduran Presidency After Peaceful Vote." And this within a context described in a recent report by Amnesty International as a "human rights crisis," marked by an"increasingly disproportionate and excessive use of force being used by the police and military to repress legitimate and peaceful protests across the country."
On Thursday, Calvin Tucker reported:
Trade unions and social movements calling for a boycott of the election are facing mafia-style threats, with the regime's chief of police boasting that he has compiled a blacklist of "all those of the left".
The Bloomberg report continues by citing a 62 percent voter turnout, according to electoral magistrate David Matamoros. Yet, only yesterday, the polling firm hired by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral had projected a 47.6% turnout with a 2% margin of error.
Regardless of the conflicting reports, Bloomberg and other US news outlets went ahead and published only the higher estimates. Needless to say, the State Department also jumped on the news. Ian Kelly issued a statement saying:
We commend the Honduran people for peacefully exercising their democratic right to select their leaders in an electoral process that began over a year ago, well before the June 28 coup d'etat. Turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election. This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country.
It will be hard to find out what really happened since the Organization of American States (OAS), the Carter Center, the United Nations, the European Union, UNASUR and ALBA have all condemned the electoral process as illegitimate and refused to send observers.
In conclusion, between the 180 on the Honduran sham election, and tomorrow's likely announcement of escalation in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has packed a foreign policy one-two punch to its progressive base this week. This goes to show how no matter what party is in power, American foreign policy doesn't change by much; with the only real difference resting in the different faces the two parties put on the same hegemonic foreign policy. But these two faces, openly ugly when it comes to Republicans and deceptively friendly when it comes to Democrats, are two faces of the same imperial coin.
Finally, the icing on the foreign policy cake goes to Republican senator Jim DeMint who took credit for the change in U.S. policy in a show of true bipartisanship:
I am happy to report the Obama Administration has finally reversed its misguided Honduran policy and will fully recognize the November 29th elections... Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Shannon have assured me that the U.S. will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. I take our administration at their word that they will now side with the Honduran people and end their focus on the disgraced Zelaya.
Sorry Michael Moore, you've been fooled once more. Fool me once...
UPDATE: The Washington Post has reported the lower turnout figures:
Turnout was 47.6 percent, several points less than the total in the last presidential election in 2005, according to projections released by the country's electoral tribunal. In addition, there appeared to be an unusually high number of null and blank ballots -- about 6 percent, according to projections.
Daily Kos
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