Honduras coup, Act III, Day 32/update 2

Update2: There are signs that as soon as the OAS is out of town, the repression will escalate. First, according to HondurasOye, damage at Cholusasat is so serious that they may be off the air for days or weeks. Radio Globo is broadcasting on a backup. Eliminating opposition media is an essential first step for tyrants who want to abuse human rights with impunity. Second, Honduras Oye has an alert by Felipe Stuart C that was posted Monday AM, stating in part:

Today, at 7:41 AM local time, the capital finds itself militarized and there are reports of strong military contingents in the roads leading out of interior cities to the capital. Incoming routes are also covered with army check barriers.

::No, no, no basta rezar
Hace falta muchas cosas para conseguir la paz::

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Update: Tiempo says that masked men entered Radio Globo and Channel 36 and threw liquids in the transmitters, damaging them and knocking them off the air. Radio Globo is very much on the air. I am not able to bring channel 36 up. According to TeleSur, this happened last night. On Radio Globo, the discussion suggests that the liquid was acid.

(Image from TeleSur)

A commission of 90 European Parliamentary deputies said that they would not accept a government that attempted to replace the democratically elected one. This is potentially important news. While the European Parliament is not truly representative of opinion inside the constituent countries, and while 90 deputies is only 10% of the total, the very fact that the issue has penetrated that far is a good sign.

The Mexican chancellor Patricia Espinosasays that the coup menaces democracy throughout the region.

Taxi drivers who are seeking the payment of a ($474 in Tegucigalpa and $263 elsewhere) fuel subsidy offered by Zelaya (but withheld by the coup) engaged in blockades in Tegucigalpa and were hassled by the police. What the police actually did is unclear.

Mark Weisbrot had an interesting piece in The Guardian a few days ago:

A few days ago, an official of the Zelaya government told the press that this plane actually stopped at the Palmerola airbase in Honduras, home to 600 US troops, on its way out of the country. According to the Associated Press, the official offered this as evidence that the US was involved in the coup. US officials declined immediate comment, but later followed up with a statement that the US “had no knowledge or part in the decisions made for the plane to land, refuel and take off.”

This does not seem to be a credible story. To believe this denial, we would have to believe that the US military has such complete confidence in Honduran security that it allows them to monitor and control the airspace over this base where 600 US troops are stationed, as well as takeoffs and landings – without any involvement of US personnel. A tough swallow, especially given the post-9/11 concerns about terrorist attacks against US military personnel stationed abroad.

The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that no major US media outlet will look further into this matter.

On Radio Globo: The anti-coup Congressmen issued a communique affirming their loyalty to LP principles and re-affirming their rejection of the coup.

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As mentioned yesterday, a letter from President Zelaya (or, more accurately, attributed to Zelaya’s cabinet and dated 8/17: thanks for delicately pointing these things out, RAJ) to US Ambassador Hugo Llorens expressed in frank terms frustration with the US over its ambiguous (duplicitous) policy toward the legitimate government.

But there’s a very good reason to think that the (unsigned) letter was written by Zelaya himself: the letter, which circumspectly uses the third first person plural slips into first person singular, saying “Also, I haven’t seen the coupistas regretting anything. The only laments I hear are of the Honduran people, to which you and your government have turned a deaf ear [lit: have made your ears deaf].” While the bulk of the letter could have been written by someone else–indeed, it lacks the evangelical language into which Zelaya often lapses–that shift into the first person singular voice is characteristic of someone passionately engaged in an issue.

Yet remarkably, this letter has been out there apparently for six days without any discussion that I am aware of. Added: RAJ tells me that there are some doubts about the provenance of the letter.

Radio Globo: A demo walking on Central American Blvd. Juan Barahona: No one is surrendering. We will never renounce the fight. (Spanish Judge) Baltazar Garzon is here, as well as Insulza. So expectations are high. The resistance is getting stronger every day [stream gets interrupted]. Wednesday, a car caravan.

 ::Honduras, el pueblo esta contigo::  ::::

Alberto Gutierrez: [stream gets interrupted] at the National Agricultural Institute is the only institution in the coupista government [where there has been an occupation]a colonel Rodriguez I was talking to him and he was upset [stream gets interrupted] 230 people in this building. We won’t have serious difficulties. We’re ready for whatever happens. They asked me where does Concha X live, where is Daisy Y? [stream interrupted] This institution belongs to us, the farmers. [stream interrupted]. Carlos Paz in front of the hotel where the chancellors are: [very difficult to follow] The leadership of the anti-Coup front (or at least the Congressmen) has been invited. Interviews. The commission doesn’t have the solution to this problem at hand. Hondurans have to solve it. [and with that I have to move on.]

Williams 1, Chomsky 0

One of the more depressing things of the late 1990s was watching the far left make common cause with the far right over Kosovo, in large part because both groups insisted that any action undertaken by Bill Clinton was flat-out wrong no matter what.

Recently, Ian Williams reminded us all that Noam Chomsky claimed and still claims that the US and NATO air raids were the cause of the worst ethnic-cleansing bouts of Slobodan Milosevic. Professor Chomsky did not take kindly to this and in turn accused Williams of having blood on his hands. Williams was allowed to respond, and does so thus:

One can certainly accuse the West of neglecting the plight of the Kosovars, but it was Milosevic and his regime that deprived the Kosovars of their rights and then began to kill and deport them. It was that regime that had recently killed up to 8,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica, whose dismembered and reburied bodies are still being found. There was no NATO bombing to blame for that rather shameful inaction.

In fact, faced with that cold-blooded massacre, NATO leaders had every reason to fear the worst in Kosovo.

I would recommend that Chomsky read the judgment of the UN war crimes tribunal, after it had considered the evidence of 113 witnesses for the prosecution and 118 for the defense, not to mention tens of thousands of pages of documents submitted by both sides. It found five Serb officials guilty of the “criminal enterprise” that he attributes to NATO. It concludes that “the direct testimony from many witnesses demonstrates that the Kosovo Albanian population was fleeing from the actions of the forces of the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] and Serbia, rather than the NATO bombing and the KLA.”

For a flourish that should excite some indignation, the report added that “there is no doubt that a clandestine operation consisting of exhuming over 700 bodies originally buried in Kosovo and transferring them to Serbia proper took place during the NATO bombing” and adds that the “great majority of the corpses moved were victims of crime and civilians, including women and children.”

As Williams states, Chomsky, like many of the far left, “betrays a persistent Manichaean worldview in which the United States is always the source of evil in the world”. The truth is a bit more complex. Not everything the US does is wrong, and not everything its enemies does is right. Giving in to the urge to put things in black-and-white framings sets one up for making egregious errors, and for being bamboozled.

Honduras coup, Act III, Day 31/ Update 3

Update2:  Associated with that brilliant picture from El Libertador (I took the liberty of supplying the obvious caption), we have the text of a letter that Zelaya wrote to Llorens, and it’s not quite as sweet:

It’s obvious that your perspective differs from that of the Honduran people and that the US will not dispose  its interests to defend Honduras, but I will guarantee to you, Mr. Ambassador, that in the long view, this situation will have serious repercussions for the entire hemisphere and history will condemn the US for not having defended a legitimate democracy in a country which today more than ever is fragmenting due to misery and injustice. You know the danger of a scenario like this (of a coup), not only for Honduras but for the whole hemisphere, setting a dreadful precedent for the region and the world, leaving the United States before the world as a weak society or as one without democratic intentions

It goes on at length, never getting less frank, saying (paraphrase):

The coupistas feel supported and encouraged

You know how things were under John Negroponte [death squads]

The only laments I hear are not from the coupistas, but from the Honduran people, to whom you are deaf

You have no empathy for those whose human rights are being violated

On various occasions, you have shown the great generosity of Secretary Clinton in asking you not to leave Honduras while the UN and the OAS ordered the departure of ambassadors from Honduras.

It’s indisuptable that the Arias proposal, made by Secretary Clinton, is being manipulated by the de facto regime and that it permits them to impose conditions and agendas

Regarding Barack Obama’s declarations that it’s hypocrisy to ask the US to intervene, who are the hypocrites. It seems that the coupistas know things you don’t want the world to know. This conduct daily diminishes the stature of the US. The US intervenes whenever and wherever it wants to, so we understand that it’s not convenient for you that President Zelaya returns to Honduras.

Honduras is being looted and the thieves will go to Miami with what they’ve stolen

We hold you and Secretary Clinton responsible for those who have died or been wounde.

We would like to know your intentions

Added: Zelaya added to that a statement on Radio Globo that people should not participate in elections, because that is a way of legitimizing the coup. He believes that the coupistas will be judged by an international court and sentenced to life in prison.

Correction. Section 7008 of Public Law 111–8 forbids all assistance to governments formed through coups. See below for the exact text. My error. Mea culpa.
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Update3: Miguel Angel Ferrer, via Narconews:

It’s well known that one of the largest supporters of the coup against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, was a Cuban multi-millionaire named Rafael Hernández Nodarse; more commonly know by his alias “Ralph H. Nodarse.” He is the owner of San Pedro Sula’s most popular TV station, Channel 6, which has played a decisive role in the justification of the coup and in the campaign to support Micheleti and the other insurrectionists.

Perhaps slightly less well known is that, before the coup, Ralph Nodarse was an active participant in assassination attempts against president Zelaya. And it may not be common knowledge, outside of Honduras, that his name came to light in a bombing attempt against former Honduran president Carlos Roberto Reina.

Outside of Honduras people probably don’t know about the meetings Nodarse held in his San Padro Sula house with members of the Miami mafia to plan action against President Zelaya and his chancellor, Patricia Rodas, for their pro- Cuba posture in the meetings in Trinidad and Toago in April; two months before Micheleti’s coup in June.

Narconews has two other articles, one a humorous but informative one by Belen Fernandez and the other by Al Giordano on how the teachers are adapting

Brother John has a nice piece about doing aid work not as a top-down, this-is-how-you’re-going-to-do-it effort, but as a community. Sustainability, disaster prevention, and a little bit of cash for the community are all part of the planning.

And Radio Globo goes to static, at 10:20PM.
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Update: The concert is on Radio Liberado. (oops. Looks like a few other people figured it out. Net congestion is bad. It’s not quite as much fun hearing every other note.)

Lockerbie: What The US Press Won’t Tell You

Namely, that there’s evidence that Iran, not Libya, did the bombing – but that the CIA did its best to pin it on Libya so that Iran, who was holding some American citizens hostage at the time, could be persuaded to free them.

So yes, when the cancer-stricken al-Megrahi was greeted as an innocent man by his hometown after being freed, this wasn’t the Libyans thumbing their noses at the US as our press has framed it, but their honest (and probably accurate) belief.

Could This Be Why Dick Armey’s Suddenly Made Himself Scarce?

Readers may recall that Dick Armey and his pharmaceutical-industry astroturfing outfit FreedomWorks have been at the forefront of the efforts to shut down the Democratic town halls held during the Congressional recess this month. But late last week, in what was seen as an apparent effort to remove himself as a polarizing figure for observers who noted his role in orchestrating the attacks on the town halls, he abruptly resigned from DLA Piper, a DC-based law and lobbying firm.

The timing is rather interesting, as two days ago Horace M. Cooper, who was one of Armey’s key staffers during his time as House Majority Leader, was indicted for his alleged part in the huge and ever-growing Abramoff scandal.

Now, the GOP/Media Complex’s members can be by and large trusted not to interrupt any TV appearances by Dick Armey with embarrassing questions about Jack Abramoff, but I still somehow doubt we’ll be seeing him on anything other than perhaps FOX News for the foreseeable future.

Honduras coup, Act III, Day 30

Update: According to TeleSur,The Friedrich-Naumann Foundation in Germany, which promotes “free market principles,” has come under fire for providing help to the coupistas.

According to Sergio Rivera, director of one the teachers’ movements and one of the resistance leaders, the resistance is not satisfied with the CIDH report. The Commission did its work quickly, leaving thousands of cases of human rights violations undocumented, including four cases of people who were disappeared between Alauca and the border post at Las Manos.

There will be a concert on Sunday against the coup.
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Fifty five days of resistance: the march yesterday was not marked by any violence

Here’s the official scoreboard, according to the CIDH:

Four deaths and a number of wounded from firearms wielded by agents of the State [no mention of murders without firearms that look like death squad activity]

3,500-4,000 arbitrarily detained

4,000-5,000 denied free movement by military roadblocks, without access to food and water, and harassed by tear gas

Detained people were injured by bullets, police batons, and other implements of rubber, iron, or wood.

Information was controlled through temporary closure of media, by military occupation, and by energy cuts.

There were aggressions and threats against journalists

Childhood education was affected by the teachers’ strike

At least one woman was raped.

Judges seeking to enforce habeas were threatened and abused.

Police official Daniel Orellana denied that the police committed any violations of human rights.

By the way, these official scorecards, as I call them, are important because they allow one to write letters to officials citing specific figures. As long as quasi-official sources like the New York Times claim that only two people have died (and don’t mention the many wounded, detained, and abused), it sounds like nothing is happening in Honduras.

Spain evicted the Honduran ambassador on Zelaya’s request. The Argentine delegation in Tegicigalpa barricaded themselves inside the embassy.

RAJ reports on the Honduran regime’s attempt to dismiss the Director of the Anthropology and History Institute, Darío Euraque, which Euraque will fight in court. The point is that the coup is energetically replacing independent scholars with cronies, compounding the individual injustices by corrupting the integrity of Honduran intellectual life. All genuine scholars must resist this in solidarity.

HCVAnalysis at Honduras Oye reposts a piece by Margaret Thompson of FIRE that appeared on Honduras Solidarity. Here’s an excerpt:

Women’s and human rights groups are receiving reports of escalating sexual aggression against women both in the demonstrations and in detentions, ranging from verbal obscenities and threats, to women being grabbed or beaten with batons on their buttocks, to torture and rape in detentions, noted Adela Coria of the Center for Women’s Studies (CEM). In today’s Forum in Tegucigalpa, Yadida Minero reported that she had just taken a young woman to a radio station to denounce her torture and rape with a rifle while in detention at a police station.

HCVAnalysis also links an article that claims that the National Front Against the Coup wants to file a case in the International Criminal Court, claiming Micheletti is guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide. They’re hoping to persuade the Spanish judge who ordered the arrest of Pinochet, Baltasar Garzón, to support the effort. That blog, The Falcon’s Glance has a lot of interesting stuff,notably a piece analyzing how La Prensa, using material plagiarized from other newspapers and re-contextualized into a completely alien context, is spinning a tale of Hugo Chavez stormtroopers creating an atmosphere of terror.

The Crime Of Being Right

Howard Dean and the DFHs: Right about Iraq, right about Bush’s use of the Department of Homeland Security’s terror alert system for political gain — as even Tom Ridge now finally admits.

Which is, of course, what Bush-loving Villagers like Marc Ambinder can never, ever forgive.

Honduras coup, Act III, Day 29

Update: Robert Naiman, HuffPo (via quotha.net):

On Friday nearly 100 Latin America scholars and experts sent an open letter to Human Rights Watch urging HRW to speak up about human rights violations in Honduras under the coup regime and to conduct its own investigation of these abuses….The Latin America experts note that if Human Rights Watch took action to shine its spotlight on these abuses, it would be more likely that the Obama Administration would put greater pressure on the coup regime to end these abuses and restore democracy….Human Rights Watch is formally independent of the U.S. government, but its reporting on Latin America is often heavily influenced by the agendas of official Washington.

Nell links us to an interview in which Carlos Reina, co-ordinator of Liberals Opposed to the Coup, says that there is an effort to get the OAS on record against legitimating any election. He says that the National Party is unified in favor of the coup. The Liberal Party is 70% in support of Zelaya, while the top leadership is in charge of the coup. There are about 50,000 people running small and mid-size businesses. They’re afraid to speak out, but generally don’t support the coup. Two hundred soldiers and officers are held captive because they won’t join the repression. The people want to dissolve the military.

Reporters Without Borders, normally incredibly slow to notice human rights violations, has protested the violence.

Lula asked Obama to amp up the pressure on the coup. He also wants written guarantees that the Colombian bases will not support operations outside of Colombia. Good luck on that one.
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Our State Department, August 18th:

QUESTION: Do you have any update on the meeting today with the delegation from Honduras with, I think, Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelly?

MR. [IAN] KELLY: Yeah. Craig Kelly is the Acting Assistant Secretary of State. There is — there is a delegation representing the de facto regime, which is in Washington today. They have meetings at the headquarters of the Organization of American States. The primary purpose, as I understand it, for this trip is for them to prepare the ground for a trip that’s being planned of a commission – I believe the foreign ministers from the OAS – that’s going to be going soon to Honduras.

Within the context of those meetings, there’s going to be a group of State Department officials who are going to meet with them again, within the context of trying to move this situation that we have towards a peaceful resolution, towards restoration of democratic and constitutional power in Honduras. So it’s within that context that State Department colleagues are going to be meeting with this group. But it in no way – I’d like to emphasize this in no way is meant to imply any kind of acceptance of the de facto regime in Tegucigalpa.

QUESTION: And it’s going – sorry.

MR. KELLY: Yeah, go ahead. You had a follow up?

QUESTION: It’s going to be for the Arias process?

MR. KELLY: Yes. Yeah.

QUESTION: Nothing –

MR. KELLY: It’s within that context, yeah.

Eighteen of 24 people accused of participating in violence in recent demonstrations were released by judge Esteban Quevedo, according to La Prensa. The other six look to be sentenced to probation. La Prensa’s arithmetic gets confusing as they say that there are 7 people who were sentenced, but I presume this is because the seventh is a Colombian. They were acquitted of charges of robbery, wounding, and sedition and convicted on demonstrating illegally. This is not a very good record for the police.

Friday Cat Blogging

Alexander sleeps very cute.

This Could Be A Game-Changer

Check this out, from NotLarrySabato via Jane Hamsher at FDL:

Terry’s agreed to host a fundraiser with Virginia and national bloggers who are insisting on a public option for the first Virginia Congressman who will take our pledge! This will be an awesome event to highlight and honor any Virginia Congressman who shows leadership on this issue. If you would like to be a part of the host committee for this event, shoot me an email at notlarrysabato@hotmail.com. Lowell and I are already on board, and I’m sure there will be many others!

Wanna know why Rick Scott, who thought he and his buddies’ billions had legitimate reform dead and buried, is suddenly very nervous? It’s because of people like Jane Hamsher and all the people she’s inspired. For a cash outlay of far less than what Scott and Company spend in a single day, Jane’s been able to keep real reform alive and very much kicking. Give her a hand.