Word: gunpoint
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...Administration also sent a significant mixed signal. It didn't use the m-word: Military. Its lawyers have determined that while Zelaya's overthrow was a coup d'etat, it was not technically a military coup. The main reason: even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President. Other "complicating factors," as the U.S. calls them, include lingering questions about which Honduran institution - Congress, the Supreme Court or the Army - actually ordered Zelaya's removal after...
...phenomenon in which victims display compassion for and even loyalty to their captors. It was first widely recognized after the Swedish bank robbery that gave it its name. For six days in August 1973, thieves Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson held four Stockholm bank employees hostage at gunpoint in a vault. When the victims were released, their reaction shocked the world: they hugged and kissed their captors, declaring their loyalty even as the kidnappers were carted off to jail. Though the precise origin of the term Stockholm syndrome is debated, it is often attributed to remarks during a subsequent...
...things have peeved Latin America more than Washington's hypocrisy regarding coups. Overthrowing our friends at gunpoint is bad, the traditional U.S. line seemed to go, but toppling our foes - even the democratically elected ones - is O.K. So it surprised Latin Americans when U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the June 28 military ouster of leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a critic of the U.S., and called for his return to office. "We respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders," Obama said, "whether they are leaders we agree with...
...Zelaya's resorting to such a circus only underlines the impotence of the international community in reacting to his ouster. More than a month after Zelaya was flown out of the country at gunpoint, the de facto government still refused demands to return him to office. A plan brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias appeared to be heading nowhere, although Honduran lawmakers said they would study proposals of amnesty for players on both sides of the coup, including Zelaya...
...coup as an affront to democratic norms and demanded that Zelaya be returned to office. The U.S. and Venezuela, which only last month returned their ambassadors to each other's capitals after pulling them out last year, agree that booting the democratically elected President out of his country at gunpoint in his pajamas was, as Chávez said, a "troglodyte" way of getting rid of the leader, even if Zelaya had flouted his own constitution. (Read about Washington's options regarding the Honduras coup...