Good news: Zelaya returns to Honduras - coup regime faces defeat

Some good news to report:

Elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras and has been under the protection of the Brazilian Embassy. This makes it very likely that the coup regime will fall quite soon. Zelaya's return is an important victory in itself - the fact that he has returned peacefully and unhindered undermines the arguments used to justify ongoing support for the coup. When the coup falls, this will be a dramatic victory for democracy in Latin America and a significant blow to US imperialism.

[It is worthy of note that to this day, the Australian government has refused to condemn the coup! Shame on Kevin Rudd! Shame Stephen Smith!]

Honduras: Zelaya returns — the people celebrate
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/811/41737

Regular updates about the situation can be found at:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/

A Sydney Morning Herald report (http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/clinton-zelayas-return-could-help-honduras-crisis-20090922-fz9l.html) makes clear that the US will be pushing for Zelaya's return under "appropriate circumstances" - that is they will be seeking the greatest compromises out of Zelaya and the Honduran resistance against the coup. However, the key thing will be that Zelaya's return, regardless of the specifics will ensure that the November elections will not be controlled by the coup regime.

Clinton: Zelaya's return could help Honduras crisis

SMH: 22 Sept 2009
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said Monday that ousted leader Manuel Zelaya's surprise return to Honduras offers an opportunity to end the country's political crisis.

"Now that President Zelaya is back it would be opportune to restore him to his position under appropriate circumstances, get on with the election that is currently scheduled for November, have a peaceful transition of presidential authority and get Honduras back to constitutional and democratic order," Clinton told reporters as she met with Arias in New York. [MORE]

Venezuela’s Chavez Calls on Honduras Coup Government to Peacefully Hand over Power to Manuel Zelaya

Caracas, September 21, 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today congratulated the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya on his "heroic" return to his homeland eighty-six days after he was ousted by a military coup on June 28. Chavez also called on the coup regime, headed by Roberto Micheletti, to peacefully hand over power to Zelaya. [MORE]

Excerpt from "The Field":

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/

2:04 p.m.: Connecting the dots... The return of Zelaya has all the markings of a very well coordinated operation by the Honduran civil resistance and the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS). The choice of Brazil's embassy - the Latin American country with the largest Air Force - pretty much guarantees that the coup regime can't possibly think it can violate the sovereignty of that space. That the US State Department confirmed, this morning, that Zelaya is in Honduras while the coup regime denied it strongly suggests it had advance knowledge that this would happen today (if not active participation).

This is a textbook example of what we've referred to before as "dilemma actions." It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country's own people - which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) - or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history.

2:24 p.m.: Some other consequences of today's breaking development: President Zelaya today erases any of the talk or speculation that he did not have the courage to put himself at risk in this struggle, which will also have an emboldening effect on every single individual among the hundreds of thousands in the civil resistance. The effect is causing all to think: If he's willing to risk all, then so am I.

This move also makes a laughing stock out of Micheletti and his security forces. Remember our reports about how airfields throughout the country were blocked by buses and other vehicles, so paranoid was the regime about Zelaya's potential return? That Zelaya slipped through the security net demonstrates that the coup regime does not have the control it claims to have. Micheletti - the usurper dictator - has also helped elevate his status as a national buffoon with his early claims today that Zelaya hadn't really returned. He accused the media that reported his return of lying and of "media terrorism." Well, now the same pro-coup newspapers that reported his tantrum have this photo, taken today, of President Zelaya and his cabinet members inside the Brazilian Embassy:

There you have it. Countdown to complete mental breakdown by Micheletti and his dwindling core of supporters (and, yes, that includes a grouplet of US expats that have been blogging constant disinformation from Honduras - their self-delusion and dishonesty to all is now crashing on the rocks of reality, too).