And every day, the press will actually describe how the legislative and judicial branches blocked the executive's illegal attempt to extend his term of office by asking the military to arrest Zelaya. But since the word "coup" was used early on in the press reports, nobody seems to be able to get past that word and understand that there was no coup--at least not by anybody but Zelaya who appears to have been intent on one of his own to become a Hugo Chavez of Central America. So the press continues to say that there was a coup and that Zelaya was the wronged party. The world community has bizarrely gone along with this charade.
I'm confident enough in my abilities to read the English language to have moved past the word "coup" to read the accounts of what happened. I trust my judgment enough to say this was no coup despite the apparent opinion of the international community that there was a coup in Honduras.
So I was gratified to get an email from an American woman who has lived in Honduras for many years now, who read one of my posts and was actually grateful that some blogger in Michigan was actually writing about what happened and not about that word--as if the word is the story--which all those journalism majors have focused on (and I post this with Linda Raymond's permission):
I am a US citizen who has lived in Honduras for the past 24 years. Many of us feel desperate after seeing how the international media has portrayed the situation in this country, and has judged our situation by using a very small conventional square box called coup, disregarding a million other events that led us to this unfortunate incident. I do not know if I will ever be able to look at a newscast in the future, without wondering if anything that I am seeing is accurate or even true.
How alone must they feel down there for someone to grasp at my blog as a voice of reason--something that matches what they can see with their own eyes--in the global insanity that has engulfed their small beleaguered community? How can the press fail to report on Zelaya's ambitions and the rather reasonable efforts by the Hondurans to stop him?
(Well, other than the media's collective inability to pour water out of a boot when the instructions are written on the heel. Most reporters can get out some reasonably accurate facts but are almost all hopeless in analysis. Take the discreet facts reported and use your knowledge of local events and history to analyze the events and what they mean. You'll do far better than trusting the media to really understand what is happening.)
I just hope that the Hondurans can hang on to their rule of law despite the irrational demands of the sainted international community to restore that would-be Mini-Me Zelaya to power.
The bright side is that the sainted international community has little staying power and will soon be distracted by some shiny object elsewhere.
Or, as I've mentioned, the Hondurans can claim they have nuclear weapons and threaten Miami. That's the way to get high level diplomats and financial aid--and some respect--in this insane world.
UPDATE: And because the international community has embraced rather than shunned Zelaya, we have a full blown crisis with Zelaya trying to return and Nicaragua reportedly moving troops to the border of Honduras.
So what will we do if Venezuala flies in troops to Nicaragua and they both march into Honduras with Zelaya in tow?
