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A U G U S T
 2 0 0 9Issue 31
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THE U.S. INSISTS IT WANTS ZELAYA’S RETURN TO HONDURAS "Our policy remains the same, that we want the restoration of democratic order and that includes the return by mutual agreement of the democratically elected president, and that's President Zelaya," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington. President Barack Obama has condemned the coup, cut military aid to Honduras and thrown his support behind the mediation efforts of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, whose proposals include Zelaya's reinstatement.
 "The position of Secretary Clinton at the beginning was firm. Now I feel that she's not really denouncing (it) and she's not acting firmly against the repression that Honduras is suffering," Zelaya told reporters over the weekend. Asked if the United States would impose new sanctions on the de facto government in Honduras, Kelly said it wanted to give Arias more time to seek a negotiated solution. "We're content to let that process play out, we're not going to put any artificial deadline on that," he told reporters. Zelaya, who was ousted as he sought a referendum vote to change the constitution, is in exile in neighboring Nicaragua. He went to the border and took a few symbolic steps on Honduran soil last Friday, a gesture criticized by Clinton as "reckless." No foreign country has recognized the de facto government but interim President Roberto Micheletti has so far refused to back down. Seeking to win over his critics and perhaps avert harsher U.S. sanctions, Micheletti wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday arguing Zelaya's removal was legal because he was seeking to extend presidential term limits. "The truth is that he was removed by a democratically elected civilian government because the independent judicial and legislative branches of our government found that he had violated our laws and constitution," said Micheletti, chosen by Congress to lead the country hours after Zelaya was ousted. Around 2,000 Zelaya supporters gathered on a major exit route from the capital Tegucigalpa to block the road in protest on Monday as Congress was due to examine and debate Arias' proposals. It was expected to reject the plan because it includes Zelaya's return as president. Zelaya was seized before dawn by soldiers and flown out of the country. The Supreme Court ordered his arrest and Congress backed his removal, appointing Micheletti as president. Micheletti said he understood criticism of the abrupt way that Zelaya was ousted, saying: "Reasonable people can believe the situation could have been handled differently." "But it is also necessary to understand the decision in the context of genuine fear of Mr. Zelaya's proven willingness to violate the law and to engage in mob-led violence."  TEXAS FINANCIER STANFORD REQUESTS NEW PRISON CELL WITH AIR CONDITIONING AS HIS $7 BILLION FRAUD TRIAL IS DELAYED
Texas financier R. Allen Stanford wants to be moved from a private prison because he's been without air conditioning and shares a cell with up to 10 other inmates. Stanford is jailed on charges of operating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. He's been held at Joe Corley Detention Facility since being arrested and brought to Texas from Virginia last month. Stanford's attorney Dick DeGuerin says in court filings that conditions are "intolerable." He says Stanford's cell was without power for part of last week and didn't have air conditioning for at least a week. The facility is run by Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO Group. Spokesman Pablo Paez declined to comment on the prison's conditions.  The Houston Chronicle reports DeGuerin is requesting Stanford be moved to the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston. Meanwhile his $7 billion fraud trial in Texas has been delayed by a federal judge in Houston. Stanford, who denies all wrongdoing, faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious of 21 counts of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction stemming from what the government says was a Ponzi scheme involving the sale of certificates of deposit through Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. Dick DeGuerin, Stanford’s attorney, declined to predict when a trial might begin. He previously said it might take him a year to prepare the case for trial. Stanford is being held without bond in a federal jail in Conroe, Texas, while awaiting trial. Stanford will be tried alongside Chief Investment Officer Laura Pendergest-Holt, Chief Accounting Officer Gilberto Lopez and Mark Kuhrt, his global controller, all of whom have entered pleas of not guilty. Antigua’s former top banking regulator, Leroy King, has been accused in the same case of accepting bribes and participating in the scheme. He hasn’t appeared in a US court. Stanford security employee Bruce Perraud, who was charged in Miami with destruction of evidence, has a trial date of Aug. 24. He too has pleaded not guilty. Stanford’s second-highest-ranking executive, finance chief James M. Davis, was charged in a separate criminal complaint that accuses him of participating in the fraud. Davis began cooperating with the government after the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Stanford and his companies in February. Davis will plead guilty when he is re- arraigned on criminal charges next month, according to his attorney, David Finn. Lawyers for the Stanford defendants on July 15 filed a joint motion requesting that Hittner formally delay the trial to allow time to search a computer database of company documents as well as travel to investigate and interview witnesses. “There are hundreds of thousands of documents in this case,” the defense lawyers told Hittner. “Counsel for Mr Stanford, who has been in the case longer than the other defense counsel, expects it will take six months to try the case.” OBAMA’S HONEYMOON WITH VENEZUELA’S CHAVEZ MAY BE OVER
When Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez told US President Barack Obama in April he wanted to be his friend, there appeared to be a decent chance he would tone down some of his fierce anti-American rhetoric. But relations have taken a turn for the worse and the Venezuelan president is once again on the attack. Chavez first accused Washington of backing the coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, his leftist ally, and then reacted angrily to a US Congress report that said corruption in his government had allowed a sharp rise in cocaine trafficking through Venezuela. But Chavez was especially upset when Colombia said it planned to increase the number of US anti-narcotics operations in the country. Chavez says all three events show that US hostilities toward Venezuela continue under Obama, and that the extra military help for Colombia's conservative government is a threat to Venezuela and its neighbors in the Andean region.  "Obama's mask is falling," Chavez told national legislators at the weekend. "The empire is still alive and kicking." Within days of Colombia's announcement, Chavez, who has been in power for over a decade, said he would buy more tanks from Russia and strengthen the air force and navy. Obama has promised an overhaul of relations with Latin America, raising hopes that long-running tensions with a new bloc of leftist presidents led by Chavez would ease. Venezuela and the United States recently restored full diplomatic relations and left-wing governments from Cuba to Ecuador have eased their sharp criticism of US policies. But new disputes with Venezuela could fuel even greater arms spending in the region and hinder rather than help cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking. Venezuela's government was furious over a report by the US Congress' Government Accountability Office, which said Venezuela had a "permissive" attitude toward drug trafficking. "This report tries to discredit and criminalize the Venezuelan government," said Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington. Chavez's latest attack on the United States and Colombia may be an attempt to rally supporters behind the flag as weaker oil revenues put a strain on the economy, government finances and his approval ratings. Still, critics say the Obama administration may be making a mistake in pushing for an increase in US troops in Colombia after it lost a military base in Ecuador. The move is seen by several countries in the region as threatening the balance of power. "It's a lack of sensitivity," says Hellinger. "They don't really have their foreign policy team for Latin America in place yet and that's the problem when you're preoccupied with Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan." Republican Senators unhappy with US policy on Honduras last week delayed the Senate foreign relations committee's vote on the confirmation of Obama nominee Arturo Valenzuela as his top official for Latin America. |
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THE HAVANA NEWS TICKER THAT ANGERED CUBA IS TURNED OFF
The United States has turned off a news ticker at its diplomatic mission in Havana that long had irritated the Cuban government, the US State Department said on Monday, in another sign of efforts to improve relations with Cuba. The five-foot-high news ticker ran across 25 windows on the outside of the fifth floor of the US diplomatic mission's building on Havana's busy seaside Malecon drive. It streamed news, political statements and messages blaming Cuba's problems on the country's communist system and socialist economy. The ticker infuriated Cuban President Fidel Castro when it was turned on by former US President George W. Bush's administration in 2006. President Raul Castro took over from ailing elder brother Fidel last year. After the United States launched the ticker, Cuba erected obstructions so it could not be seen and put up anti-US billboards. Cuba took down those billboards earlier this year. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington that the news ticker was turned off in June. Kelly said the ticker was "really not effective as a means of delivering information to the Cuban people" and, together with the earlier Cuban billboards, was "not serving the interests of promoting a more productive relationship." "It was evident that the Cuban people weren't even able to read the billboard because of some obstructions that were put in front of it," Kelly said. The turn-off of the news ticker comes amid moves by US President Barack Obama to ease nearly half a century of enmity between the United States and Cuba following Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.  Earlier this month, US and Cuban officials held their first talks since 2003 on Cuban migration to the United States, a step US officials said showed Washington's desire to engage constructively with the communist-ruled island. They also discussed how to ease restrictions on their diplomats travelling outside Havana and Washington. The Obama administration this year also lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans travelling to the Caribbean island and sending remittances to family members. But Obama has made clear he will keep in place the 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba until the Cuban leadership moves to improve political and human rights. Cuba has expressed an interest in broadening the immigration talks to include drug trafficking, human smuggling and disaster preparedness. The US Interests Section news ticker in Havana often sought to cast blame for everyday problems experienced by Cubans on the communist authorities. "Some go around in Mercedes, some in Ladas (a Russian car), but the system forces almost everyone to hitch rides," read one message, playing on a common complaint that there are few buses and that Cubans need government permission to buy a new car. Furious about the ticker, Fidel Castro accused the US mission of becoming "headquarters of the counterrevolution," which he said violated diplomatic protocol. He ordered a parking lot in front of the building to be dug up and 100-foot-high (30.5 metre-high) flags installed to block the ticker from view. He also marched a million people by the mission in protest, erected billboards around it depicting Bush as allied with anti-Castro terrorists and decreed there would be no more contact with US diplomats in Havana as long as the ticker remained on. BOAT WITH HAITIANS ABOARD CAPSIZES: 113 SAVED AND 85 ARE MISSING
A boat carrying Haitian migrants capsized and sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands and up to 85 people are missing, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday. One survivor said the boat struck a reef as it tried to elude police. Rescuers found 113 survivors stranded on two reefs and recovered two bodies, said Lt. Cmdr. Matt Moorlag, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, revising an earlier statement that four bodies had been found. "Our main goal right now is just to get everybody out of the water and get medical attention for those who need it," said Petty Officer Third Class Sabrina Elgammal, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. The shipwreck happened around 2 p.m. Monday, July 28th. By late evening, Turks and Caicos authorities using small boats had rescued about 40 people stranded on a reef 2 miles (3 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos island. Many others were later found on a nearby reef, Moorlag said. The boat carrying up to 200 Haitians had been at sea for three days when passengers saw a police vessel and accidentally steered the boat onto a reef as they tried to hide, survivor Alces Julien told The Associated Press at a hospital were some survivors were receiving treatment. Elgammal said information from survivors indicates that between 160 and 200 people were on board when the vessel capsized near this island chain north of Haiti and southeast of the Bahamas. She said the cause of the accident is under investigation. A Coast Guard cutter has been searching through the night for survivors, and Moorlag said a helicopter and a jet will join the search at first light. He said a C-130 aircraft was expected Tuesday morning to help in the search. Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of escaping poverty in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. In May 2007, an overcrowded sloop carrying more than 160 migrants capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands. Some of the victims were eaten by sharks. The 78 people who survived accused a Turks and Caicos patrol boat of ramming their vessel as they approached shore and towing them into deeper water. This past May, a boat carrying at about 30 mainly Haitian migrants capsized off Florida's coast, killing at least nine people, including a pregnant woman. |
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A secure, residential community of 1700 acres set on rolling hillsides and dramatic cliffs rising away from the water, providing amazing ocean, mountain and valley views. Nicaragua is only 3 hours by air from Miami and Houston is in the heart if Central America, and is exposed to both major oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic. The Estate home sites are about a kilometer from the beach. The latest section has properties that range in size from an acre to almost 3 acres, starting at just $32,800.
PHENION ON THE RIDGE - JAMAICA
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| Related Articles | ||
| July 2009 | ||
| Hot Off The Press July 2009 | ||
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| May 2009 | ||
| Hot Off The Press May 2009 | ||
| Trump has sued the developers of the Trump Ocean Resort in Baja, Mexico…and the swine flu is now impacting land, air and sea travel in to Mexico. Several Caribbean nations have new tourism executives. The EU has advanced aid to the developing nations in the Caribbean and the UN is urging generosity at Haiti’s Donor Conference. Two Caribbean islands are to come test beds for a $35M climate change project. ---> Read More | ||
| April 2009 | ||
| Hot Off The Press April 2009 | ||
| President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will attend the fifth Summit of the Americas held in April in Trinidad and Tobago…a group of leading Caribbean intellects is preparing for this Summit…a report from the World Bank describes the finance gaps facing developing nations such as those of the Caribbean…and the Caribbean countries are called on to safeguard free trade and stimulate their economies….the Haiti Education Foundation has initiated a fundraising campaign to further help feed and educate the children of Haiti… ---> Read More | ||
| March 2009 | ||
| Caribpro .com - Hot Off The Press March 2009 | ||
| The Caribbean has its own bank scare as the Sanford case causes a run on Antigua banks…meanwhile history is in the making at the 29th Annual Heineken Regatta in St Marten… after years of hosting the legends of the music industry as they recorded their albums, Montserrat has established a Wall of Fame to honor those musicians…and speaking of music, the legendary reggae band the Wailers plays again in March at St Maarten… ---> Read More | ||
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