Headline writers and media editors are hilarious.

You listed four incidents of "shutdown of opposition media." You can call that suppression if you wish but three of them look more like idle harassment to me. The fourth, the two TV stations; no indication if they actually did go off the air and / or are off the air at this time. I don't think you have much of a case for shutdown and none has been made that the media discussed is 'opposition' -- merely that it was reporting things someone decided would be better not reported. However, it doesn't look like they were really very serious about it...

Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
...It's a bit much to believe that he left willingly and then changed his mind.
Don't think anyone's saying that; the issue is the legality of his arrest and expulsion from the country under Honduran law and none of us seems to know -- including you.
So, just out of interest, should we close down the State Department and remove the United Nations from U.S. soil? Are the billions spent in those areas a waste of money?
Well the State Department doesn't get enough money IMO, so 'No' with respect to shutting them down -- we also need to resurrect USAID and the USIA that Bill Clinton and Maddy stupidly trashed...

So, indeed. Give State more Billions; rebuild AID and the USIA -- but realize all that will make little real difference in the way we are perceived through out the world. Nobody likes a guy who is rich, big, attracts all the girls and is a bit prone to act in his own interest. The others in the world act in their interests also -- it's just that when we do it, we're so big it rattles their cages. Badly. Only when China and India get a bit larger and the Turks and Brazilians start throwing their weight around will we be better accepted -- but even then, cautiously, just as we were between WW I and WW II.

Where to get extra $$ in a time of declining budgets (hopefully)? Why, cut DoD -- it's way over funded and wastes Billions (have to get on Congress about that -- much of the waste is at their insistence).

Get some also from the UN to whom we give too many $$ for what we or the rest of the World get in return. Like DoD, they're over funded and that breeds waste and abuse. The World needs a UN but it needs one that is not dysfunctional and hell bent to have a World government while not fulfilling its obligations as is now the case...