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"Political winds change" like a US backed coup in 2009 that put the guy in power who made these laws? What international institution protects against that? Are countries bound by law if it was made by an illegitimate government?

The only US involvement in ousting Zelaya was the State Department asking neighboring countries not to intervene. The Supreme Court of Honduras issued the arrest warrant for him on their own. It was an entirely internal affair until after they tossed him onto a plane. And on top of that, the guy was trying to illegally change the constitution.

It stretches credulity that the US wasn't involved in some way. The state department had an opinion on what outcome they wanted [0] and it'd be out of character if they didn't put their thumb on the scale as much as was necessary to get the outcome they wanted.

We don't really need public acknowledgement to assume that the US is involved in American politics. If there is a coup in their back garden, they'll have someone there doing some pruning.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...

Yes, I've read the wikipedia article too. I was also studying Latin America in college at the time and can read Spanish so I was pretty closely following the issue.

Having an opinion on the outcome you want doesn't mean you're actively putting a thumb on the scale or driving events. The State Department has a position on almost ever major political event happening in the world. It can't possibly be intervening in all of them.

> If there is a coup in their back garden, they'll have someone there doing some pruning.

Except the US specifically stayed out of this and encouraged Honduras's neighbors not to get involved either. If the US had chosen to support Zelaya, then the people backing the Supreme Court would have called that a US intervention.

Is your standard that having an opinion on a foreign political outcome is tantamount to intervention? If not what is your standard and how does it apply here?

Did you make an account just for this post?

Is that relevant to the question they asked?

yes. this is an election year and GPT is a thing.

shillbots gonna shill. this is a blatant one, which means it's low-effort; here to stir the pot. the real agi-prop effort will be a repost bot with a real looking history.

Nope. Real person, sorry! Yes i make a new account every time I lose my ddg session. Not llm spam. Just a very opinionated human/dog

> Honduras solicited investment in the form of charter cities, where corporations could buy pockets of land and run them however they wanted.

Bioshock: Jungle Edition

TIL what “fnord” is. I think that is a perfect way to describe much of this article.

_The Illuminatus Trilogy_ , where I learned this word, is a fantastic read.

I wonder if all the huge manufacturing factories near San Pedro Sula/Cortez will pack up and move to either El Salvador or Guatemala in response to this?

> Honduras solicited investment in the form of charter cities, where corporations could buy pockets of land and run them however they wanted. Then a more socialist government came into power, reversed the law allowing them to exist, and refused to give them their money back.

No mention of democratically elected government being ousted by US-backed coup, or the fact that this single company is asking for a third of the country’s GDP.

On crypto: you seem very confident about your position, yet if you talk to actual people on the ground, you’ll get a different story than you are proposing. Crypto advocates are bragging about this very subject. It started with El Salvador, but goes well beyond one country now.

And for the record… I am not anti-crypto. I have been involved with bitcoin for 9 years.

A “US-backed coup” is a bit misleading: Zelaya refused to follow the law, but the US didn’t back him - they tried to keep it from turning into a war before an election he was excluded from so the Honduran people could settle it democratically. I don’t like the realpolitik in avoiding recognizing his coup attempt as such but that’s not the same as backing him.

That is the narrative, sure, but is it the reality? Why would it ever be presented otherwise?

The US government refuses to follow its own laws.

It isn't "the narrative". The Honduran Supreme Court issues the arrest warrant. There was a congressional investigation that reviewed state department cables and found exactly what the part post is claiming.

“Narrative” would be when you use “U.S.-backed coup” to describe a president refusing to leave office legally and the U.S. working to keep him out. There’s valid criticism that the U.S. should have been more aggressive in condemning it as a coup but none of the evidence suggests that the U.S. supported a coup in violation of Honduran law. The State department cables which were leaked show their focus was on preserving aid to people until a new election.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_constitutional...

Zelaya was constitutionally barred from re-election.

Post-coup

No, he was term-limited to the single term allowed by the constitution and was running anyway, with a fig-leaf of a referendum for a proposed constitutional convention to retroactively legalize the second term, the timing of which could never have allowed him to legally run for president. This was a “constitutional coup” by the judiciary designed to prevent an illegal second term that was clearly otherwise going to happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduran_fourth_ballot_box_r...

When Ukraine told Russia it was not going to pay back loans (prior to invasion) the West applauded.

Today the West is seriously considering expropriating external Russian property. Also apparently there is nothing wrong with this.

But when a small country in what is "rightfully" the US' playground threatens to protect its sovereignty from US corporations, apparently this is a whole different story.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. --Thucydides