Deposed President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, attempted to land at the international airport in Tegucigalpa in a Venezuelan plane that left Washington D.C. earlier today. Despite thousands of Zelaya supporters on the ground, the Honduran military, under orders of Interim President Roberto Micheletti, converged on the runway making a landing impossible. Meanwhile, the Honduran military opened fire and used tear gas on the unarmed protesters, killing two, including one child according to reports, and leaving over a dozen wounded.

In an interview with Telesur from the plane, which ended up landing in Managua, Nicaragua, President Zelaya said that he would keep trying to return to Honduras, tomorrow or the day after that. He also called on the United States to use economic sanctions against the Micheletti government and for international agencies to investigate and prosecute the human rights violations that occurred at the hands of the Honduran military.

I wanted to make a few comments on what I saw as all of this transpired and I watched twitter, telesur, and Univision.

Yes, the plane that Zelaya was on was a Venezuelan plane and the pilots were also from Venezuela. Yes, Telesur is a Venezuelan station, but given the fact that the military was shooting at the media inside Honduras and that most internal Honduran media have been censored, why does any of that matter? Does it change that despite low approval ratings, Zelaya was ousted by a military coup? Zelaya was democratically elected. Imagine if when the shrub was President, with his low approval rating was forced out by the military? Pero those things don’t happen in the U.S. The U.S. makes them happen in other places.

That said there is no proof that the US had anything to do with the coup of Zelaya although Hugo Chavez blames the yanquis still (though not Obama, whom he says is a prisoner of the yanqui empire).

I was really bothered by some of the tweets that doubly victimized the two people who lost their lives today in Honduras. By some accounts, one was a 10 year old child. This of course led to people saying why would a parent bring their 10 year old child to a protest that could potentially end in violence. No mention that the protesters were unarmed and it was the military who decided to shoot. How that child’s death is anyone’s fault except the Honduran military is beyond me. And yes I take this personally because I am a mother who has taken her children to protests and in Chile, shared the streets with schoolchildren who taught me how to protect myself from tear gas,.