Although it has received little to no attention in the European media, the military coup in Honduras last year is highly significant. When the country’s president Manuel Zelaya tried to put constitution reform to a national vote last year, generals trained in the infamous School of the Americas staged a coup, and Zelaya was kidnapped.
Everyone in Honduras knew that Washington approved. President Zelaya is a democrat, nothing could be more threatening to US interests in Honduras than a popular democratic leader. Zelaya had to go.
With the exception of the fascist regime in Colombia, no South American government recognises the new US-backed military dictatorship in Honduras. Even the European Union has, at least until now, refused to recognise the new regime. But Washington insists it is legitimate in spite of the well-documented evidence of widespread state terror, press censorship, and government-backed death squads.
The age-old US strategy in Latin America of deposing democratic presidents and replacing them with subservient dons still fails to penetrate the waves of mainstream media discourse. We hear journalists all over the world praising Barack Obama’s non-existent ‘change’ and wondering what will happen next if Iran continues to ‘threaten’ the world.
Those of us familiar with the politics of the ‘Big Lie’ can already finish the script. As US destabilisation tactics increase in Iran, more images of Iranian ‘repression’ will be flashed across our screens. But the western media seldom tell us who exactly is being ‘repressed’.
For example, one of the people arrested by the Iranian authorities recently was a terrorist from the Islamic terrorist group Jundallah, en route to Kyrgystan from a US military base in Afghanistan. This was reported by Press TV and other news agencies, but received little coverage elsewhere.
What is interesting here is the interconnectedness of events in this globalised world, and the deep ironies they reveal. As the western media descended into paroxysms of outrage over the Iranian government’s post-election actions, there was no talk about the US-backed military coup in Honduras where political murders were already a daily occurrence.
But this campaign to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran – by way, ironically, of US-funded Islamic terrorism and media disinformation – is deeply connected with events in Latin America.
US Secretary of Defence Hillary Clinton recently toured the region in order to drum up support for her new puppet in Honduras, Porfirio Lobo. But this time she looked rather worried, as South American leaders still refuse to obey Washington’s orders by recognising the Honduran criminals.
Looking at Clinton’s hysterical performance on Brazilian TV, ranting and raving about the ‘danger’ posed by Iran with her glazed eyes and piercing voice, I was reminded of Joseph Goebbels’ final speech before the Brandenburg Gate at the end of the Second World War, trying to motivate veteran troops to face the Soviets when the war was already lost.
Perhaps President Ahmadinejad was right when he said that the west is desperate. We are now being told that al-Qaeda is recruiting blue-eyed Caucasians with no Islamic backgrounds! Just like fascist Europe in the 1940s, we are drowning in our own lies and fantasies. We have reached the reductio ad absurdum. It is what Oscar Spengler called Der Untergang des Abendlandes – the decline of the west.
Latin America, Africa and Asia no longer believe us. It is a sign that the future of humanity will surely lie with them.
