And out of the blue.. WAR IN SOUTH AMERICA!

[K-DoG7p7]

........

wtf? did this like happen in like 4 minutes or did the media just forget to report about it due to Jacko?

EDIT: or is it North? I keep forgetting where the border is

[rick]

........

wtf? did this like happen in like 4 minutes or did the media just forget to report about it due to Jacko?

A coup where nobody was hurt is not a war.

I'm not saying if it was good or bad mind you, but it is not a war.

[K-DoG7p7]

A coup where nobody was hurt is not a war.

I'm not saying if it was good or bad mind you, but it is not a war.

No one was hurt?
tell that to the ambasadors that no one have seen since it happened..

also Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade..


Its to soon to NOT call it a war.. and perhaps too soon to call it one as well..

[Eliseu Gouveia]

This is why there should be a Justice League South America.

[NickThompson]

Sorry to pick on a minor thing, but isn't it Central America?

[Adam C]

Sorry to pick on a minor thing, but isn't it Central America?

Well it's basic geography. I'll leave that to other people to determine if that constitutes a minor nitpick, though personally I hold it in the same regard as a calling a bloodless coup a "war".

And to actually establish what is happening here... (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55R24E20090628)

Army overthrows Honduras president
Sun Jun 28, 2009 4:57pm EDT

By Mica Rosenberg

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War, triggered by his bid to make it legal to seek another term in office.

U.S. President Barack Obama and the European Union expressed deep concern after troops came for Zelaya, an ally of socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, around dawn and took him away from his residence. He was whisked away to Costa Rica.

Zelaya, who took office in 2006 and is limited by the constitution to a four-year term that ends in early 2010, had angered the army, courts and Congress by pushing for an unofficial public vote on Sunday to gauge support for his plan to hold a November referendum on allowing presidential re-election.

[...]

A military plane flew Zelaya to Costa Rica and CNN's Spanish-language channel said he had asked for asylum there.

And some basic social context from the same article:

Some 2,000 pro-government protesters, some armed with shovels and metal poles, burned tires in front of the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and two fighter jets screamed through the sky over the city.

Democracy has taken root in Central America in recent decades after years of dictatorships and war, but crime, corruption and poverty are still major problems. Zelaya said the coup smacked of an earlier era.

"If holding a poll provokes a coup, the abduction of the president and expulsion from his country, then what kind of democracy are we living in?" Zelaya said in Costa Rica.

Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana exporter with a population of 7 million, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s. But Zelaya has moved the country further left since taking power. His push to change the constitution drove a rift between his office and the nation's other institutions.

Now whether this is mere conservative reaction ousting a popular leader looking to clean up the country or would-be Chavez being ousted due to creeping authoritarianism (or the more usual more likely nuanced reality between the two) is going to take some work on my part to establish since I haven't paid much attention to Honduras and this is the first I've heard of it. New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/world/americas/29honduras.html) has a bit more information including noting that much of the capital was without electricity during the coup and noting that the Supreme Court had ruled his earlier firing of an Army general illegal. The CBC notes (http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/28/honduras-zelaya-arrested.html) that even the congress and members of his own party opposed the firing, though suspiciously the Honduran Congress voted to accept Zelaya's letter of resignation even though was thrown out by the military and flown to another country. (Zelaya also alleges that the military beat his bodyguards.)

Also Honduras' Congress (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062801569.html) has appointed his replacement, and it notes that one of the things at issue is that the Supreme Court ruled him holding a poll on planned referendum to abolish term limits was illegal. It begs the question though why a military coup was needed to throw out a President who wasn't respecting the constitution, though the man they replaced with is the President of the Congress Roberto Micheletti, which according to Honduras' constitution is next-in-line for the Presidency. I'll follow up on this later, and just quickly finish by posting BBC link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8123434.stm) hi-lighting condemnations of the coup, from not only Venezuela, but Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Spain, the OAS, the EU, and the US. Don't know if that's all of the reactions yet though.

[Adam C]

No one was hurt?
tell that to the ambasadors that no one have seen since it happened..

also Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade..

Its to soon to NOT call it a war.. and perhaps too soon to call it one as well..

And by what possible means would Chavez invade Honduras? By Navy I suppose but it would be a logistical bitch and open the way to military reprisals from everyone else in the region worried that Chavez had finally gotten out of control. And really when Colombia made an unauthorized incursion into Ecuador to destroy a FARC base that didn't even start a war even though it was much more serious. This is empty dick waving on Chavez's part.

[K-DoG7p7]

Sorry to pick on a minor thing, but isn't it Central America?

Central America is not a continent..


a<nd i just did some reserch...

Honduras is NORTH America.. the border is between Panama and Colombia

[Adam C]

Central America is not a continent..

a<nd i just did some reserch...

Honduras is NORTH America.. the border is between Panama and Colombia

Technically no, but it is however a distinctly identified geographic subregion of the Americas, encompassing anything past the southern border of Mexico and down to the Panamian-Colombian border. And most people seem to identify it as such, including the press reporting on the coup, so it's probably a lot easier to use that term.

[K-DoG7p7]

yeas.. but it scares you american more if we say..

WAR IN NORTH AMERICA!!

and its 100% correct to say that it is in North America.. given that it is

[Adam C]

yeas.. but it scares you american more if we say..

WAR IN NORTH AMERICA!!

Actually that would probably make me laugh more.

and its 100% correct to say that it is in North America.. given that it is

Yes, though by the same right it is also completely correct to say Honduras is in Central America. The point I was getting at is that given conventions of geography in North America, saying "Central America" is much more clear and more precise.

[K-DoG7p7]

Actually that would probably make me laugh more.



Yes, though by the same right it is also completely correct to say Honduras is in Central America. The point I was getting at is that given conventions of geography in North America, saying "Central America" is much more clear and more precise.
yes.. but there is no continent called Central America.. its just a region..


But there really should be a Central American continent.. given that Central america + the caribbian is its own Tectonic plate (Well.. the southern part of "Central")

[Adam C]

Directing the conversation onto more productive channels.

Also it seems that Chile has condemned the coup (though I found this out at a Spanish language link) and France, so it's not exactly mustering any international support. Also, Zelaya's provisional replacement Roberto Micheletti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Micheletti) is a part of Zelaya's political party, the Liberal Party of Honduras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Honduras) and it holds 62 of 128 seats of the Honduran Congress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Congress_of_Honduras). So while the coup may not have been the best way to go about things, at this point it doesn't look like your past Latin American coups since the party of the deposed President supported it. Still begs the question as to why they went forward with a coup.

As it turns out this whole thing started over the legality of holding a referendum of plebiscite.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8120161.stm

Tensions are rising in Honduras after President Manuel Zelaya ignored a court order to reinstate the army chief.

Mr Zelaya fired Gen Romeo Vasquez after he refused to help with a referendum on constitutional change that could allow the president to seek a second term.

Both Congress and the courts have already deemed the planned referendum unlawful.

The Supreme Court ordered Gen Vasquez reinstated on Thursday but Mr Zelaya told crowds he refused to comply.

"We will not obey the Supreme Court," the president told cheering supporters in front of the presidential offices.

"The court, which only imparts justice for the powerful, the rich and the bankers, only causes problems for democracy," he said.

Mr Zelaya was elected in 2006 and under the current constitution is barred from standing for re-election.

He wants to hold a referendum on Sunday to ask Hondurans if they approve of holding a vote on unspecified constitutional change at the same time as the presidential election in November.

On Tuesday, the Honduran Congress passed a law that appeared to block these plans. The new bill prevents the holding of referendums or plebiscites 180 days before or after general elections.

Armed forces chief Gen Romeo Vasquez then said he could not help to organise the referendum as he would be breaking the law.

While I understand his sentiment regarding the courts, wow the man's obviously an idiot. He not only openly ignores a court order, but a law passed by congress.

[Adam C]

Following on the thread of why this happened congress was discussing legal avenues to toss him out (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47389) following General Romeo Vasquez's sacking. Again no clear reason why there was a coup. It does note however:

Zelaya was elected president as the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party, but soon after taking office his politics took a turn to the left, creating resistance and anger among Liberal leaders and lawmakers on the one hand, and attracting support from the opposition, civil society organisations and popular movements on the other.

The UD, the international peasant movement Vía Campesina and similar groups, trade unions, indigenous, women's and human rights organisations like CODEH and the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), are now his staunch supporters. So is the Popular Bloc, a coalition of workers' organisations.

So a member of an establishment party sharply turns from his programme and ends up alienating his own party. That does explain a lot and suggests its more of a rebellion of the establishment than the basic facts of the coup would lead us to believe. The article mentions that the main left-wing party of Honduras, Democratic Unification Party (UD), backed his proposed referendum, though one (out of five) UD lawmaker voted against the referendum as illegal and said that those backing the referendum were under investigation for corruption.