THUNDER ON THE LEFT — Hillary Clinton and her campaign are sailing into the “Perfect Storm” — Foreign policy during Hillary’s time at the State Department – Corruption – The Clinton Foundation – A top Clinton Operator

In a real Left-looking attack on Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Clinton Team, Salon, the internet magazine, has projected  a major shit-storm across the planned route of former Secretary of State Clinton and Hillary Clinton Campaign “Champion” Lanny Davis  —   Politically and as a news story, it’s something that might well be described as a “... Perfect Storm” 

“Want to know why Clinton's State Dept. failed to help [a Latin American]  elected leader? Follow the money and stench of Lanny Davis”    —   “Salon”

Article highlights split between Obama’s White House and Hillary Clinton’s State Department over a military coup in Honduras  —   Show’s Clinton pattern of supporting oligarchs and elites in the Americas

With a significant rhetorical flourish to let “ Salon” readers know that all that follows is a BIG DEAL, an article by Matthew Pulver says that  “.... [t]hough it’s less sexy than Benghazi, the crisis following a coup in Honduras in 2009 has Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints all over it, and her alleged cooperation with oligarchic elites during the affair does much to expose Clinton’s newfound, campaign-season progressive rhetoric as hollow. Moreover, the Honduran coup is something of a radioactive issue with fallout that touches many on Team Clinton, including husband Bill....” (See “EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton sold out Honduras: Lanny Davis, corporate cash, and the real story about the death of a Latin American democracy” by Mattew Pulver, 6/8/15, Salon
[http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy/]).

HERE’S HOW IT WENT DOWN IN HONDURAS

According to what was reported in the Salon article,  “In the 5 a.m. darkness of June 28, 2009, more than two hundred armed, masked soldiers stormed the house of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. Within minutes Zelaya, still in his pajamas, was thrown into a van and taken to a military base used by the U.S., where he was flown out of the country....   It was a military coup, said the UN General Assembly and the Organization of American States (OAS). The entire EU recalled its countries’ ambassadors, as did Latin American nations....”

MEANWHILE BACK IN WASHINGTON

According to Salon’s author Matthew Pulver, these were the optics at our nation’s capital: “....  Washington was dragging its feet, but even within the Obama administration a distinction was seen very early [ ] between the White House and Secretary Clinton’s State Department. Obama called  Zelaya’s removal an illegal ‘coup’ the next day, while Secretary Clinton’s response was described as ‘holding off on formally branding it a coup.’ President Obama carefully avoided calling it a military coup, despite that being the international consensus, because the ‘military’ modifier would have abruptly suspended US military aid to Honduras, an integral site for the US Southern Command, but Obama called for the reinstatementof the elected president of Honduras removed from his country by the military. ***  [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton was far more circumspect, suspiciously so. In an evasive press corps appearance, Secretary Clinton responded with tortured answers on the situation in Honduras and said that State was ‘withholding any formal legal determination.’ She did offer that the situation had ‘evolved into a coup,’ as if an elected president removed in his pajamas at gunpoint and exiled to another country was not the subject of a coup at the moment armed soldiers enter his home....”

ONE MONTH AFTER THE COUP, SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON WAS SPEAKING OUT AGAINST THE RETURN OF HONDURAN PRESIDENT ZELAYA  —   AND SOON CLINTON’S STATE DEPARTMENT EVEN HAD TO DENY THAT IT WAS  “TAKING SIDES” AGAINST HONDURAN PRESIDENT ZELAYA

“.... Nearly a month [after the military coup], Secretary Clinton would call President Zelaya’s defiance of the coup government and return to Honduras “reckless” and damaging to ‘the broader effort to restore democratic and constitutional order in the Honduras crisis.’...”

Salon’s Pulver also noted that “....  even months later, with the increasingly violent and basic rights-denying coup government still in place, State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley would incredulously maintain, “‘We aren’t taking sides against the de facto regime versus Zelaya.’...”

PERHAPS ODDLY, SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON SIDED WITH THE RIGHT-WINGERS BOTH IN WASHINGTON AND HONDURAS

According to the Salon article, the Clinton State Department was working behind the scenes with various members of the right-wing establishment in Washington to make sure that President Zelaya would not return to power in Honduras. Furthermore, this U.S. cabal was coordinating with those behind the coup to effectively terminate the term of the elected President Zelaya, who was illegally deposed with one year left on his constitutionally mandated single term.

To make things worse,  Honduras was ‘descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss,’ as the post-coup government was seen to be actually committing crimes of its own.

Professor Dana Frank, an expert in recent Honduran history at UC Santa Cruz, went so far as to make the charge that the resulting “abyss” in Honduras was in good part Hillary Clinton’s  State Department’s making in the New York Times.

HILLARY CLINTON’S “HARD CHOICES” POINTS TO CONNECTION OF HILLARY AND OTHER CLINTON HANDS TO THE WINNERS IN THE HONDURAN COUP

Salon’s writer Matt Pulver quoted from Hillary Clinton’s book “Hard Choices as follows: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere…We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of [the previously duly elected President] Zelaya moot.”

According to Pulver, “....  One of those strategic partners appears to have been Clinton family legal pitbull, Lanny Davis, deployed as an auxiliary weapon against the rightful, legal, democratically elected president of Honduras. Davis famously defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings, and he’s been on Team Clinton for decades, most recently serving as a booster for Hillary’s campaign in its early days....  Davis, along with another close Clinton associate Bennett Ratcliff, launched a Washington lobbying offensive in support of the coup government and its oligarchic backers, penning a Wall Street Journal op-ed, testifying before a Congressional committee, and undoubtedly knocking on office doors on Capitol Hill, where he enjoys bipartisan connections....”

Salon then went on at length to describe how Davis and other Clinton hands have been tied into the oligarches and other elites throughout the Americas.

THE CLINTON STAMP ON LATIN-AMERICAN POLICIES SHOWS THE REAL HILLARY CLINTON   —   AND IT’S NOT ANYTHING LIKE WHAT YOU SEE IN OR FROM HER CAMPAIGN   

According to Salon, “....  This sort of engineering of regional politics in the service of the economic elite appears to be something of a hallmark of the Clinton camp. A case is being built that it’s the family business to cater to the global elite, despite the Clinton campaign’s salt-of-the-earth optics in Iowa and New Hampshire, which appears disingenuous in light of virtually everything else we know about Clinton. And with a growing list of Clinton associates being complicit, concerns about a President Clinton’s criteria for cabinet and agency appointments grow, as well....  Keeping wages down in places like Honduras and Haiti virtually ensure that those formerly decently paying, often unionized, jobs will never return to the U.S. Going to bat by proxy for Bechtel, a conglomerate with close ties to the GOP and the military industrial complex, doesn’t seem like the best use of the political talent of members of the Clintons’ braintrust....”

Pulver concludes with this: “....  It becomes fair to ask, ‘Who do the Clintons work for?’”