Gaza massacres are the price of a Jewish state

As the Israeli army pauses its shelling of neighborhoods, hospitals, and ambulances in Gaza, Ali Abunimah distills the situation to its essence:

Israel cannot exist “as a Jewish state” without violating the rights of all Palestinians to varying degrees... The massacre in Gaza is at the extreme end of the spectrum of abuses necessary to maintain Jewish sectarian rule in Palestine, but it is part of the same policy that requires employment and housing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and outright land theft and ethnic cleansing in the Naqab (Negev) and the occupied West Bank.

If you support Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” in a country whose indigenous Palestinian people today form half the population, then you ... must come to terms with the inevitability of massacres. If you oppose the horrific, repeated massacres in Gaza, then join the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), a movement that aims to decolonize Palestine and restore to all the people all their legitimate and inalienable rights.

Resources: Abunimah's book The Battle for Justice in Palestine. The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation holds its annual conference for organizers September 19-21 (wish it were closer than San Diego). The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. A more recent petition calling for international arms embargo to Israel.

Photo: Shejaiya neighborhood in Gaza 26 July 2014, destroyed this week by Israeli shelling and aerial bombing. Photo via Kate Benyon-Tinker (@katebt3000), Middle East producer for BBC.

Msgr. Oscar Romero: ¡Presente!

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.

Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated March 24, 1980.

How to help Haitians

Partners in Health has been working in Haiti in an exemplary way for years. The literal collapse of many medical facilities in Port au Prince and other areas hardest hit by the quake has made their network of clinics and local health workers an even more important part of the country's sparse medical infrastructure. Please support them today.

Some people consider it unseemly to speak about the political context in which a massive, tragic catastrophe is happening. If you're one of those people, please stop reading this post now.

On February 29, 2004, the U.S. government helped depose the elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Marines forced him onto a plane in the middle of the night and flew him to the Central African Republic. With U.S. and U.N. military and economic support, Haiti's new rulers launched a campaign of assassination, detentions, and intimidation against leaders and activists of Aristide's Lavalas party. The U.N. "peacekeepers" have participated in this campaign, firing on demonstrators, ignoring crimes committed against Lavalas activists by the police (who are being trained by the U.N. troops), and massacring civilians while carrying out sweeps in Lavalas neighborhoods against "criminal gangs".

Lavalas candidates have been prevented from running in subsequent elections. Their exclusion from this past spring's Senate election resulted in a massive boycott; even the government claimed only 11% participation. Now they have been barred again from the general elections scheduled for February 28, the eve of the coup's sixth anniversary.

Through all this, most of the U.S. political class has painted the overthrow and forced exile of Aristide and the reimposition of government for the rich as a good thing, a "transition to democracy". (This piece by Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch is typical.) This is a lie, as big a lie as the claim that the coup against Pres. Manuel Zelaya in Honduras was a legal "democratic transition".

The Obama administration, and the State Department run by Sec. Clinton, are firmly committed to this lie and the policies for which it is a cover story. But suppression of the largest political party in the country is not going to make it, or Haiti's poor, disappear. Haiti can only rebuild and develop if its people drive that development. An organization supporting such work is the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. Your solidarity can make a difference to Haitians struggling for something they need as badly as shelter, food, and water: genuine democracy.

Update: 3:15pm, 19 Jan - Media analyst Danny Schechter forthrightly assesses the near-FUBAR relief effort, which is making the situation even more explosive. [Hat tip to Rupa Shah in comments at A Tiny Revolution.] Mark LeVine has an incisive overview of exactly how the U.S.-imposed economic model has set Haiti up for maximum damage from the recent series of natural disasters.

On the horizon is a prolonged U.S.-U.N. occupation of Haiti, even more comprehensive than the MINUSTAH mission that's been in place for the last five years. The proconsuls of the "international community" will do everything in their power to prevent Aristide from returning, but that demand will be heard again and more often as the crisis deepens.

State spokesman P.J. Crowley, a reliable fount of empire-speak,

says the Obama administration is discouraging visits to Haiti by prominent political figures, including Mr. Aristide. "The last thing that we need is to have someone land and put an additional burden in an already-stressed situation," said Crowley. "We've sent that same message to our members of Congress."

Ass. Aristide wouldn't be jetting in for a "visit" like prominent political figure Secretary of State Clinton (whose arrival caused the U.S. to hold up landings of relief planes for hours), he'd be a citizen of Haiti returning to his country, from which he is illegally being barred.

Update 2: 6:15pm, 19 Jan - People-to-people solidarity ties are the way around our overlords' high-handed approach of creating ever-deeper dependence. The program developed by Haitian popular organizations themselves should be the rebuilding project that we support by word and action, not the kind of "help" our government wants to impose. (Did you know that the International Monetary Fund conditioned disaster relief funds to Haiti on an immediate freeze in public sector wages and a rise in electricity rates? No, apparently there's not a minute to waste in even a fleeting gesture of human compassion; the only thing to do in a crisis on this scale is to press the advantage.)

Beverly Bell puts it well:

Friends: There are ways that your donation, no matter how small, can have a big impact. They are not via the huge bureaucracies, but via the foundations who have long histories of accompanying, trusting, and strengthening the grassroots groups which, in Haiti, are the only ones who have ever made a sustained difference. These are small foundations that know that the only thing that ever works in Haiti is for people to have control over their own rebuilding, over their own communities, and over their own needs and destinies. These are the small foundations who understand that the best that they can do is strengthen those groups' capacities and strength with funding, infrastructure, and technical support.

The need today is of course enormous and overwhelming. Even the UN and Red Cross have no idea how to respond to a calamity of this size. Past the urgency of everyone now getting food and water (which will not happen) and the wounded getting care
(neither), what will be needed is what the Lambi Fund called today "second responders." That involves rebuilding the efforts that were under way to move Haiti "from misery to poverty with dignity," as it is known there. That is the slow, careful work of helping grassroots movements get back on their feet, reclaim what they lost, and move forward - both individually, and as organized movements working for change and justice.

We're not yet beyond the first responder stage, for which Partners in Health is the best "multiplier" channel. But the Lambi Fund and Grassroots International, along with the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, are organizations of integrity that have earned the respect and trust of Haiti's real leaders.
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Honduras: death toll update

For more than a month I haven't been able to bring myself to post; I haven't even done much commenting on other sites following the situation.

But my promise to update the post summarizing murders of resistance activists (Honduras: high price of the struggle) forces me to note a number of additions:

Luis Gradis Espinal, a teacher from the department of Valle, was found dead on Wednesday, November 25 in Las Casitas neighborhood in western Tegucigalpa. He was tied and had been executed. His family reported him disappeared when he didn't return after having left for the capital on Sunday, Nov. 22. During the weeks before the election (and since) there were dozens of police search and captures for resistance participants.

Isaac Coello, 24; Roger Reyes, 22; Kenneth Rosa, 23; Gabriel Parrales; and Marco Vinicio Matute, 39. The five men, active in the resistance from the Victor F. Ardon and Honduras neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa, were massacred [Sp.] on December 7 by men in military and police uniforms. A young woman working with them was also shot, but not fatally; she survived by pretending to be dead.

Santos Corrales García was found dead [Sp.] on Thursday, December 10, near Talanga (50 km east of Tegucigalpa). His body was headless. On December 5 Corrales had been taken away with four others from the Nueva Capital neighborhood of Tegucigalpa by five men dressed in uniforms of the national criminal investigation directorate (DNIC). He was tortured and interrogated about the location of a businesswoman who provided supplies to the resistance during demonstrations. The two men and two women who were taken with Corrales were transported, tied hand and foot, dumped at highway exits far from home and told not to return to their neighborhoods.

Walter Orlando Tróchez, a human rights advocate, member of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual community, and active member of the Resistance Front was assassinated with two shots the morning of December 14, just outside of Larach & Co. in the center of Tegucigalpa. On December 4 Tróchez had been kidnapped outside the "El Obelisco" Park in Comayaguela by four masked men who drove a gray pickup without plates (presumed to be DNIC). They hooded and beat him, and demanded information about resistance activities; Tróchez managed to escape and filed a formal complaint. More from Adrienne Pine and Feminists in Resistance, via Honduras Resists.

There have been several attempted assassinations, and continued police sweeps of homes and offices in which resistance participants have been sought and many taken away. Most of those taken have resurfaced alive, but have been forced to move. Four activists who were taken from the Carrizal neighborhood of the capital on December 5 have not been seen since and are considered disappeared.

Assistant Secretary Valenzuela now freely describes the current regime as a military coup, yet no one in the State Department at any level will acknowledge, much less condemn, these ongoing acts of terror. What a sickeningly familiar feeling.

Update: 7:00 pm, 15 Jan 2010 - Added another couple of entries to the archive post. The last month has seen a wave of murders, kidnapings, and disappearances of both resistance activists and ordinary Hondurans, as well as ongoing violence directed against farmworkers in Aguan by those trying to drive them off their land. A Garifuna radio station was torched. It's difficult to sort out the targeted political killings from the background violence, which is no doubt the point for some of the assassins involved.

[Images from Honduras Resists]

Honduras: figleaf restitution, not real democracy

As expected, an agreement has apparently been reached for a last-minute, highly symbolic restoration of Zelaya to the presidency, now that the U.S. has involved itself directly. A comparison of the points reported in Honduran papers with Laura Carlsen's October 15 summary of agreements reached at that point shows that the only change is the crucial one, restitution -- dependent on a vote of Congress (as Zelaya's delegation proposed at the time).

The only people at any level of the U.S. government who come out of this sorry episode with my respect are the members of Congress who pushed the administration to put more effective pressure on the coup regime and to explicitly condemn the dictatorship's violence. Their most recent letter to Pres. Obama, sent just before the State Dept. delegation left for Honduras, contains two passages that are worth remembering:

While the siege of the [Brazilian] Embassy is a serious violation of the Vienna Convention, more disturbing is the broad assault against the Honduran people unleashed by the coup regime.
...
Free and fair elections cannot take place under these conditions.

Though we commend the administration for having strongly stated their support for the restoration of democracy in Honduras, we are concerned that neither you nor the Secretary of State has denounced these serious human rights abuses in a country where US influence could be decisive.

It is now more urgent than ever to break this silence. It is critical that your Administration immediately clearly and unequivocally reject and denounce the repression by this illegitimate regime. We can say sincerely and without hyperbole that this action on your part will save lives.

Obama and Clinton have not done so, and never will. Message received.

Update: 7:45pm, 30 Oct - The agreement has been signed, but its actual text is unlikely to become public for a while, so the coup regime is already citing obstacles in it that are denied by the Zelaya delegation. There's going to be a difficult, tedious process of implementation; see RNS and Laura Carlsen for good overviews.

So it may well be that Zelaya will not even be restored to office until just before the elections, the "last minute goal" alluded to by OAS snake John Biehl. Even in the best-case scenario, too much time has already been allowed to pass for anyone to feel obliged to respect the legitimacy of the upcoming elections -- presided over by an illegally constituted election tribunal, who will now have nominal command of the murderous armed forces.

Update 2: 3:25pm, 31 Oct - The signed agreement is posted as a PDF at Adrienne Pine's and as plain text in a comment by El Cid at Al Giordano's. RAJ has an English translation. The Honorable Raúl Grijalva does even more to earn that title by hosting a visit to Congress on November 5 by Berta Oliva of COFADEH, the Committee of Families of the Disappeared and Detained.

[Image: Resistance participant beaten by police yesterday when they charged a peaceful demo with tear gas and batons, while the State Dept. delegation met with coup negotiators. Honduras Resists]
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Honduras: too late to pretend there's democracy

Since posting 'Honduras: high price of the struggle' five days ago, I've had to add two more names to the list of those killed by the coup regime since Zelaya's return. I will continue to put any additional names there, so that the post can serve as a reference (and have added a link to the sidebar); pray that there will be no need.

As the Obama-Clinton State Department worms its way toward recognizing elections held under conditions of dictatorship, remember these men and women. As firms like Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates take in hundreds of thousands of dollars for being willing to put a smooth facade of lies on a brutal regime, remember their blood. Remember the courage and commitment for which they were targeted. Look into the eyes of Jairo Sánchez, whose funeral was yesterday; then make our government do the same.
Nothing now can make the November elections any kind of exercise in democracy, whether Zelaya returns to office or not. Presidential candidate Cesar Ham and all the other Unification Democratica (UD) candidates have withdrawn. A hundred members of the social-democratic party PINU, including several of their candidates, have denounced their presidential candidate's support of the coup and will withdraw unless Zelaya is restored. Three weeks ago, 68 Liberal Party candidates announced their withdrawal en masse (Avi Lewis' acclaimed Al Jazeera video shows them taking the vote).

The members of the national tribunal overseeing the elections, the TSE, were selected for their jobs in blatant violation of Honduras' election laws, which bar current elected officials from serving. That's just one of the many reasons why the upcoming elections can't possibly be made free and fair, and should receive no support or recognition, but it's a particularly relevant reason in light of their being invited to visit Congress tomorrow by coup-supporting Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Some administrations would deny visas for such a visit, given that the men are part of and support the coup government. This one won't even rule out meeting with them.

Update: 1:30pm, 21 Oct - If coup paper La Tribuna can be believed, some more coup functionaries had their U.S. visas revoked yesterday -- too little, too late even if true (no announcement from now confirmed by State). The lifting of the decree hasn't changed much for the police, who in addition to assassinating another resistance leader Monday morning used batons and live ammunition to break up a demonstration later in the day in El Progreso, home of Micheletti, and yesterday in San Pedro Sula, home of most of Honduras' industry.

The resistance, and the campaign for a new constitution, is truly national. Getting back on its feet, Ch. 36 showed a big demo from a rural area yesterday [via Charles]. The police and military are concentrated in the cities, and are going to be spread thin if, as appears to be the case, there has been a fair amount of local organizing since the National Front's convention in early September. On tap for today: a big caravan from towns to the west of Tegucigalpa, ending up in the capital. Tomorrow, a gathering in El Paraiso (near the Nicaraguan border). Friday morning, an assembly of popular candidates on the elections, to take place in the national headquarters of the union of the recently martyred Eucebio Fernandez. The OAS meeting going on now is broadcasting live [via Oye], if you feel like sitting through hours of speeches to see how offensive Lew Amselem manages to be this time.

[Image: Union president Jairo Sánchez, two days after being shot in the head by police Sept. 23, just before the second of five operations. Photo by Mirian Huezo Emanuelsson.]
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Honduras: high price of the struggle

As the hours tick down on the last chance for restoration of the Zelaya government that could provide a fig-leaf of legitimacy for the November 29 elections, the price being paid by those resisting the coup is getting more, much-needed attention.

A recent Reuters story by Frank Jack Daniel, 'Honduran abuses rampant after coup', reinforces the NY Times account mentioned in a previous post:

Suspicious deaths. Beatings. Random police shootings. Life under the de facto government of Honduras at times feels uncannily like Latin America's dark past of military rule..

Via Honduras Oye, an outstanding Al Jazeera video episode makes the point even more vividly. (The interviewer's penetrating questions to all parties are also a startling reminder of how rare real journalism is these days.)

Update: 2:15pm, 16 Oct - Human Rights Watch weighs in, urging the international community to back human rights prosecutors in the Attorney General's office, whose efforts to investigate military and police killings and abuse have been obstructed and threatened by the coup regime and the military. "If anyone questions the damage that the de facto government has done to Honduras’ democratic institutions it’s clearly illustrated by these cases ... by obstructing the investigations, the public security forces are thumbing their noses at the rule of law." HRW also urged support for overturning Micheletti's illegal decree and opposed amnesty for human rights violations as part of any agreement. End update.

Update 2: 4:00pm, 16 Oct - Excellent: "The United Nations human rights chief is sending a team to Honduras on Sunday for a three-week official visit to examine violations of rights in the wake of the coup d’état in the Central American country in June." Not so excellent is that the report is expected to be delivered by ...next March?!. End update 2.

The death toll since Zelaya's return is high. Below are just some of the victims, those for whom I have information [links provided for those not mentioned in previous posts]. In the same period there have been more than a few young men taken away in nighttime sweeps of neighborhoods whose whereabouts are unknown or whose bodies have not been identified.

Update 4: 2:00pm, 15 Jan 2010 - Additions:

Edwin Renán Fajardo Argueta, 22, a member of Artists in Resistance, was found strangled to death in his apartment in Tegucigalpa on Dec. 23. He had received death threats before his murder.

Carlos Turcios, vice-president of the Choloma chapter of the Resistance Front, was kidnapped [Sp.] near his home on the afternoon of Dec. 16. He was found dead the next day in Baracoa, Cortes, with hands and head cut off. There is a report that the body was not Turcios', so he may be considered disappeared. End Update 4.

Update 3: 3:40pm, 14 Dec - Additions:

Walter Tróchez, a human rights advocate, member of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual community, and active member of the Resistance Front was assassinated December 14 with two shots just outside of Larach & Co. in the center of Tegucigalpa. On December 4 Tróchez had been kidnapped outside the "El Obelisco" Park in Comayaguela by four hooded men who drove a gray pickup without plates (presumed to be DNIC). They hooded and beat him, and demanded information about resistance activities; Tróchez managed to escape and filed a formal complaint. More from Adrienne Pine.

Santos Corrales García was found dead [Sp.] on Thursday, December 10, near Talanga (50 km east of Tegucigalpa). His body was headless. On December 5 Corrales had been taken away with four others from the Nueva Capital neighborhood of Tegucigalpa by five men dressed in uniforms of the national criminal investigation directorate (DNIC). He was tortured and interrogated about the location of a businesswoman who provided supplies to the resistance during demonstrations. The two men and two women who were taken with Corrales were transported, tied hand and foot, dumped at highway exits far from home and told not to return to their neighborhoods.

Isaac Coello, 24; Roger Reyes, 22; Kenneth Rosa, 23; Gabriel Parrales; and Marco Vinicio Matute, 39. The five men, active in the resistance from the Victor F. Ardon and Honduras neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa, were massacred [Sp.] on December 7 by men in military and police uniforms. A young woman working with them was also shot, but not fatally; she survived by pretending to be dead.

Luis Gradis Espinal, a teacher from the department of Valle, was found dead on Wednesday, November 25 in Las Casitas neighborhood in western Tegucigalpa. He was tied and had been executed. His family reported him disappeared when he didn't return after having left for the capital on Sunday, Nov. 22. During the weeks before the election (and after) there were dozens of police search and captures for resistance participants. End Update 3.

Eucebio Fernández Suárez, director of the Mateo School in Macuelizo, Santa Barbara, union leader, constant participant in resistance actions, and candidate for vice-mayor, was shot Oct. 19 at 7:10am at the Macuelizo exit of the Virrey highway. [Added 3:00pm, 19 Oct. Name corrected 9:15pm, 20 Oct.]

Jairo Ludin Sánchez, president of the union of workers at the National Institute for Professional Formation, died Oct. 17 in hospital. He had been in critical condition since being shot in the head by a policeman while taking part in a demonstration on the afternoon of Sept. 23 in his neighborhood near Morazan Boulevard in Tegucigalpa. Details. [Added 2:00 am, 18 Oct. More details 3:15pm, 19 Oct.]

Olga Osiris Uclés, 35, died Oct. 4 from effects of the tear gas police used against demonstrators at Radio Globo on September 30. She lived in the La Joya neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, and leaves four children.

Mario Fidel Contreras, a teacher and vice-principal at Instituto Abelardo R. Fortín, was shot twice in the head on Oct. 2 by a man on a motorcycle near his home in the San Angel neighborhood of Tegucigalpa.

Antonio Leiva, a Lenca campesino and resistance leader, who had disappeared some days before, and had been detained previously by security forces, was found dead on Oct. 3 with signs of torture in Canculuncus, a village in Santa Barbara.

Marco Antonio Canales Villatoro, 40, was shot on Sept. 26 by two men on a motorcycle as he was leaving an evangelical church in Tegucigalpa. He was a PINU candidate for suplente (alternate legislator) for Francisco Morazan department, and the nephew of the owner of Radio Globo, Alejandro Villatoro.

Wendy Elizabeth Avila, 24, law student. A resistance activist non-stop since the coup, she died on Sept. 26 from the effects of tear gas used against people in the street in front of the Brazilian embassy on Sept. 22.

Elvis Euciado, a teenager, was riding his bike toward a neighborhood soccer field on Sept. 23 when he yelled 'golpistas' at a police patrol 200 feet away. The patrol stopped; one policeman got out and shot him dead on the spot. [The policeman's since been charged with murder, the sole exception to impunity among these cases.]

Francisco Alvarado, 65, was shot with an M-16 while going out for food on the evening of Sept. 22 (more than 24 hours into a continuous curfew) in the Flor del Campo neighborhood of Tegucigalpa.

Oscar Adán Palacios was shot to death by the military in the Victor F. Ardon neighborhood of Tegucigalpa on the afternoon of Sept. 22 (just short of 24 hours into the curfew).

Felix Murillo was found dead with signs of torture after apparently being hit by a vehicle in Talanga, Francisco Morazan department (near Tegucigalpa) on Sept. 20, the day before Zelaya reappeared in the capital. His body entered the morgue at the Escuela hospital as an unknown. He was a resistance activist and witness in the case of the death of Roger Vallejo, a fellow-teacher shot to death while taking part in a demonstration on July 30.

Whatever happens by the end of today, the next phase has begun: fighting for a national assembly to write a new constitution. These and all the martyrs of the resistance to the coup since June 28 will be present in the struggle. ¡Presente!

[Image: The body of Elvis Euciado, from newspaper Tiempo]
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Honduras: farmworkers freed, Micheletti meltdown

Good news (if accurate; will post another source when I find it): The farmworkers imprisoned for their long occupation of the National Agrarian Institute have been released. The down side is that they'll supposedly be subject to house arrest. That sounds sinister, but how easy or likely is it to be enforced against several dozen farmworkers scattered around the country in remote rural locations?

What this account doesn't note is that the campesinos driven forcibly from the Institute a week ago had been held together in a single cell, and had launched a hunger strike. Their release is a small but real victory won by their own struggle.

Not good news, but not a real surprise: Micheletti continues to be intransigent. Speaking to the press last night after the "dialogue" had ended for the day, he went into a tirade against the OAS delegation [video, via Doug Zylstra in comments at RAJ's]. No one from this government seems inclined to say a word about the continuing illegal state of siege, or to do anything else that might provide a reality check for the coup crew.

Update: 3:50pm, 8 Oct - Over the weekend the body of a Lenca resistance leader, Antonio Leiva, was found in a village in Santa Barbara province, murdered and with signs of torture. He had disappeared earlier. Yesterday twelve men, women and children from the indigenous organization COPINH sought and were granted political asylum in the Guatemalan embassy. They denounced the wave of repression happening under the state of siege, directed especially at ethnic minorities who participate in the resistance. The Guatemalan foreign ministry put out a statement announcing that the group was being granted asylum and demanding that the coup government respect human rights and stop acts of repression against its citizens.
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Honduras: majority supports Zelaya, siege goes on

On one hand, the news [Sp.] is the same as it's been for a while:

Today Honduran soldiers and police repressed supporters of deposed president Manuel Zelaya in front of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, at the moment that a dialogue was beginning in search of a solution to the political crisis.

Some 150 demonstrators chanted Mel, hold on; the people are rising up and Mel, friend: the people are with you as they gathered near the embassy. Lines of police protected with shields and wielding batons threw tear gas grenades and dispersed the demonstrators, who ran into other streets.

The demonstrators "were violating the decree" that restricts constitutional liberties and "were violating the rights of others" to free circulation, said Captain Daniel Molina, head of the police detachment, to local media. Tegucigalpa is virtually militarized today as the dialogue begins between representatives of Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti, supervised by the Organization of American States.

So Micheletti's illegal decree continues to be enforced, there's still no formal publication of repeal, and the capital is in virtual lockdown. What an excellent climate for dialogue and negotiations. And what a mood it sets for the World Cup qualifying game versus the U.S. in San Pedro Sula on Saturday; dictatorship's no obstacle to a good football match, eh, FIFA?

On the other hand, the resistance demonstrators' chant that the people are with President Zelaya is now solidly grounded in polling data. An opinion research company chosen by Honduras' election tribunal to do official election polling conducted a large-sample nationwide survey just over a month ago; the results and all the internals were obtained and posted by Al Giordano. Go read; the results are encouraging, though they shouldn't surprise anyone but those who've drunk the coup-makers' Kool-Aid. [4:05pm, 8 Oct - Paragraph rewritten for accuracy.]

Zelaya says there's no chance for elections November 29 unless he's restored to office by October 15. At least 68 Liberal Party congressional and mayoral candidates from eleven different departments announced [Sp.] late last week that they'll withdraw from the race en masse unless Zelaya and the constitutional order are restored. The poll mentioned above shows Liberal Party presidential candidate Elvin Santos only a few points ahead of independent resistance candidate Carlos Reyes (though Reyes, naturally enough, draws a much larger proportion of "unknown/no opinion" responses).

The U.S. government uses the excuse of "delicate negotiations" to avoid applying any further pressure to Micheletti, Gen. Vasquez, and their paymasters. But the dictators are giving the finger to the world with their continuing state of siege. Tell Sec. Clinton to declare a military coup, and let her know about the poll results: Supporting full restoration of Zelaya's government is the right thing to do and good politics.
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Honduras: human rights violations actually news

At long last, after 100 days, a major media outlet takes a straightforward look at the violence of the coup regime. Elisabeth Malkin talked with survivors and with the human rights groups, and "balances" with only a touch of coup propaganda.

The militarized police direct their weapons against not just those who demonstrate against the coup regime, but those who might:

Since Mr. Zelaya’s return, security forces also have been rumbling through poor neighborhoods that are the base of his support. “They are going into neighborhoods in a way to intimidate people,” said Mr. Acevedo, the lawyer. In that time, the center has documented an increasing level of violence. Investigators have seen more than two dozen people with bullet wounds in hospitals, and some detainees have had their hands broken and have been burned with cigarettes, he said.

While the police and soldiers are looking for the activists who have been organizing resistance, the sweep seems to pick up anyone who gets in their way.

Yulian Lobo said her husband was arrested in the neighborhood of Villa Olímpica and accused of having a grenade. “It came out of nowhere,” she said, adding that her husband, a driver, had not been to pro-Zelaya marches.

A most welcome development in New York Times reporting. Of course, nobody's perfect:

...Mr. Micheletti lifted the decree [suspending constitutional rights] Monday.

Not so fast. The repeal supposedly doesn't take effect until published in Honduras' federal register, La Gaceta. As of the end of today, still no publication.

Update: 10:30 pm, 6 October - Olga Osiris Uclés died [Sp.] yesterday from effects of the tear gas police used against demonstrators at Radio Globo on September 30. Via Charles.


[Image at top: boy beaten by police at demonstration at the Mercado Belen in Tegucigalpa, 30 July. Photo from Via Campesina.]

Mercedes Sosa

Via Otto at IncaKolaNews, the sad news that Mercedes Sosa is in critical condition. Listen to her here with Leon Gieco and reflect some of that warmth and strength back to her now.

Update: 6:00pm, 4 October - She's gone. As a commenter at this clip said: Gracias a la vida ... que nos dio la oportunidad de escucharte. (Thanks to life ... that gave us the chance to listen to you.)
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Honduras: siege goes on behind coupmakers' theater of dissent

This morning at dawn, hundreds of riot police surrounded and invaded the National Agrarian Institute, arresting at least 50 farmworkers who had been occupying the building since the coup. The campesinos acted to prevent the coup regime from destroying or altering land titles that were in the process of being registered as part of land reform under the Zelaya administration.

Today's arrests are just the latest brutal crackdown under Micheletti's decree suspending the constitution for 45 days -- the one he issued in secret on September 22 but didn't publish in the government register until September 26, over the names of 16 functionaries of his usurper cabinet. When reaction to the decree began to sink in, further shredding the already tattered legitimacy of the widely unrecognized elections, even some of the coup backers distanced themselves. Micheletti, wanting to appear to respond and to spread the responsibility around to his co-conspirators, promised to repeal the coup "as soon as possible", pretending that doing so would require action by the Supreme Court and Congress. That's transparent b.s.: he could repeal the decree by the simple act of issuing another to cancel it.

It's a perfect theatrical setup for the coupmongers: Headlines give the dictatorship credit for "relenting", rightist presidential candidate Porfirio Lobo gets international credit for opposing the antidemocratic decree, but the actual state of siege remains in effect as a cover for not only Monday's military shutdowns of Radio Globo and Channel 36 television, but threatened shutdowns of radio stations in Choluteca and Valle, the removal and arrest of the farmworkers, and assaults on whatever other targets remain on the golpistas' hit list.

And we enter the fourth month of the coup. Barack Obama was one of only two presidents in the hemisphere to make no mention of Honduras in his address to the UN. Thanks so much for all the change, Mr. President.

Update: 1:15 pm, 1 Oct - Even Ramon Custodio gets a role in the theater of dissent, though apparently the script he picked up was not that of the nation's human rights ombudsman. He wants the decree suspending the constitution repealed not because it deprives people of their rights of free assembly and free expression, but because issuing the decree "is to accept that we are no longer able to maintain public order, peace, and is a tacit acceptance which does not reflect the situation in which we are living." Okaaay then...

The illegal decree continues in force, now in its second week. For the first time since the coup, the riot police actually completely prevented the resistance from conducting a march in the capital. Looks like a military dictatorship from here. The people responded last night by holding a pot-banging, horn-blowing show of support for Zelaya in the area around the Brazilian embassy. Take your hands off your ears, Sec. Clinton.

Update 2: 4:15 pm, 1 Oct - Stories running next to each other in Tiempo: The election tribunal wants the decree repealed immediately because it puts the credibility of the elections at risk. The state prosecutor promises the election tribunal he'll send to jail anyone who boycotts or advocates against participation in the elections. Carlos Reyes confirms that he'll withdraw his candidacy for president unless Zelaya and the constitutional order are restored. Hmmmm.....

Image: riot police at National Agrarian Institute.
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Honduras: saying my piece

The news is very bad, and I can't be on the computer much more today.

This was my email letter to the State Department this morning (links added here; the previous post has more on the embassy attacks and rejection of negotiations):

Subject: Honduras

What will it take to get the U.S. government to do the right thing? How many dictatorial, murderous, and outlaw acts must the coup regime take before this department utters one single word of condemnation?

Since Friday morning alone, the regime has:
- mocked the UN Security Council by renewing its attacks on the Brazilian embassy, assaulting those inside with chemicals and sonic cannon (LRAD).
- detained, searched, and harassed diplomatic and medical personnel entering and leaving the embassy.
- deported from the country OAS ministers arriving to help facilitate negotiations.
- rejected negotiations of all kinds, including those previously agreed to (including feeble, obvious time-wasters like the 'consultations' suggested by the U.S. as announced by spokesman Ian Kelly on Thursday).
- issued a decree suspending basic human and constitutional rights, paving the way for even more deadly repression.
- decreed the closure of the only two broadcast media reporting on the regime's crimes and giving air time to the majority of citizens who support the restoration of the legitimate, elected government.

Lives are at stake. The credibility of the U.S. government, and this administration in particular, is at stake. The future of elected democracies in the hemisphere is at stake.

Don't delay: Immediately denounce the undemocratic, vicious repression of the Micheletti regime. Freeze the U.S. accounts of those participating in and backing the coup; you know who they are. Formally declare this a military coup, at long last, now that the masks are completely off, and follow through by ending all U.S. aid -- including the so-called "democracy promotion" money that goes exclusively to the coup-supporting organizations in the Union Civica "Democratica".

The two-faced policy must end today. Stop encouraging the dictators in Honduras by remaining silent while they assault and murder citizens, by encouraging their run-out-the-clock-to-elections strategy with fake negotiations, and by continuing to send money while mouthing support for restoration of the constitutional order.

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[Image: Wendy Elizabeth Avila, a law student in Tegucigalpa who died Saturday from the effects of tear gas.]

Honduras: reality sinking in?

The vicious and hysterical response of Micheletti and his regime to Pres. Zelaya's return has, understandably, made a negotiated settlement even less appealing to people who have been actively resisting the coup for three months. But the talking has begun. Gen. Vasquez visited the Brazilian embassy on Wednesday night (purely routine! no meeting with Zelaya! Uh huh.). Yesterday the four coup-supporting candidates and the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa openly visited with Zelaya. La Prensa's pictures of the hugs and handshakes have elicited resentful grumbling among the resistance, but also, I have to think, deepened cracks among the coup-makers.

The UN's action of withdrawing political and material/technical support for the elections has had a real effect (hence the candidates' meeting); it's a direct blow to the coup regime's strategy of pretending that the elections will be a "reset button" magically returning the country to democracy. Today the UN Security Council meets [Sp.] in a special session on Honduras (requested by Brazil on Tuesday).

Update 2: 4:00pm, 25 Sept - Yikes. On the very morning that the UN Security Council met and condemned the coup regime for harassing the embassy, the military and police launch tear gas and high-decibel sound attacks at it. First Lady Xiomara Castro de Zelaya reports by phone that the gas is forcing those inside to wear cloths to cover their mouths and noses, that some are vomiting blood and bleeding from the nose, and that they have severely irritated throats. Medical personnel are being prevented from getting in, as are deliveries of supplies. This is via Radio Globo, and photos appear to confirm; I'm not sure what, if any, media correspondents are inside the embassy this morning.

A mission led by OAS chief Insulza will arrive today or tomorrow; it was planned for Tuesday but the coup regime prevented it with their lockdown of the country, which involved a 42-hour curfew, suspension of constitution, closure of all airports, and sealing of the borders.

Update 1: 3:00pm, 25 Sept - Nope. Micheletti still trying to run out the clock, per this AP report from two hours ago:

Honduras' coup-installed government plans to block the arrival of a commission of foreign ministers heading to the country this weekend to help resolve the country's political standoff, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said Friday [on the Costa Rican radio program Nuestra Voz].

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate who moderated previous talks between Honduras' opposing factions said the government of interim President Roberto Micheletti has told the Organization of American States not to send the ministers because they will not be allowed into the country.
...
His announcement signaled a setback just as the two sides appeared to be edging toward possibly restarting talks to end the turmoil sparked by the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28.

Micheletti's government spokesman Rene Zepeda said interim leaders want Arias to visit Honduras first so they can explain the situation to him, and that the ministers would be welcome next week.

Arias said he has no immediate plans to visit Honduras.

The curfew, illegally imposed to begin with, has been arbitrarily lifted and reimposed several times since, and is still in effect in five departments and the border areas with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. There are only 9000 troops in Honduras' military; as they and police from outlying areas have been deployed to the capital to put down demonstrations and any sign of resistance (which became explosive in the many poor neighborhoods after the regime's violent crackdown and extended curfew), they're leaving behind towns and villages without much of any presence by government forces. Oscar reports that local resistance organizations have announced that they will take control of their own areas and declare them liberated.

This isn't only about Zelaya, but about the way politics functions in Honduras. It's a long struggle to achieve genuine, participatory democracy. The organizing that's happened in response to the coup has changed the equation since the first weeks after June 28. Pres. Zelaya grasps, I hope, that the coup-makers are not the only ones with cards to play in the negotiations that have begun may lie ahead.

Update 3: 4:15pm, 25 Sept - Given the two depressing updates above, it's clear to me that the embassy visits and "dialogue" was all for show, to buy time and unearned benefit of the doubt, while the repression continues and increases. Just how much will the U.S. government tolerate? The current U.S. ambassador to the UN got where she is by being willing to look the other way while hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions, were slaughtered. We have to put the current atrocities in their faces, and in that of the public, to have the slightest hope that this administration will do enough and in time. There's a demo on Monday in DC; it's time to enlist the "respectables" to help bring more visibility to those speaking for the Hondurans under assault.

Update 4: 8:15pm, 25 Sept - Perhaps thanks to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' publicizing Xiomara Castro's reports, the coup regime went on the national broadcast system this afternoon to offer up lame, lying explanations for the symptoms of those suffering inside the embassy ("routine street cleaning, loud machinery"). Red Cross medical staff and Andres Pavon of the human rights organization CODEH were allowed inside; they were accompanied by UN investigators. See Al Giordano for more of the sickening story.

Maybe this will be the last straw for some who might be heard by our government. I don't fool myself that anyone in power cares about poor Hondurans tortured and stabbed to death, or a left-wing Congressman beaten by twelve policemen right in front of the legislature in broad daylight. But the protection of embassies -- unfettered communications, entry and exit, and immunity from police or military force -- is such a fundamental basis of international law and international relations that this dirty and spiteful assault might actually shock the conscience of some elites.

Update 5: 5:15pm, 26 Sept - It's hard to overpraise the work of The Real News' Jesse Freeston over the last three months. Someone who hasn't been following the situation could get up to speed just by watching the collection of his video reports on the Honduran coup, and even someone who's been paying close attention would be likely to learn things. He deserves an award. [As Charles notes in comments, in the meantime, you can express your appreciation with a contribution to The Real News Network.]
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[Image: men and women among the nearly 200 taken prisoner when police violently cleared the street in front of the Brazilian embassy 22 September; photo by Paul Carbajal]
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Honduras: over the edge

The best summary of the roller coaster of events over the last two days is by Laura Carlsen. Her post yesterday, when Zelaya returned to the capital and connected with his cabinet and his supporters in and outside the Brazilian embassy, conveyed clearly the hopeful possibilities of the development.

The coup regime has responded by dropping even the facade of constitutionality, declaring a curfew beginning at 4 pm yesterday with no legal process whatsoever. Since then they've extended the illegal curfew, declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, and have begun attacking coup opponents both at the embassy and throughout the country. Carlsen has the cogent summary and the vivid details.

The shameful silence of our own government is now intolerable. If it continues through the end of this day, no one will be able to deny our complicity. There's already a lot of blood on our hands; please read and act to prevent more. Update: 5:30pm, 22 Sept - This inadequate, equivocal crap is only a baby step up from tacit endorsement of the coup regime's response. There is no mention -- much less condemnation -- of the illegal curfew, the assault on peaceful protestors, and the suspension of the constitution. Instead, the State Department "appreciates" Micheletti's "promise" to respect the Vienna convention protecting diplomatic sites, even after the coup regime has already violated it by cutting power, water, and phone to the Brazilian embassy.

State Department 202-647-4000. Demand that the U.S. government publicly recognize and condemn the coup regime's abuses against peaceful political expression, media, and diplomatic integrity, and that stronger actions be taken to sanction the coup participants.

Update 2: 6:15pm, 22 Sept - One ray of optimism: Giordano says (no source) that the administration has invited Rep. Bill Delahunt, sponsor of the strongest anti-coup resolution in Congress, to join the UN delegation in New York. He's certain to be a voice for effective measures; good on whoever had that idea. Brazil has asked for a Security Council session on the crisis; another good idea.

News reports from those in touch with Hondurans and on-the-scene observers as well as the now-intermittent internet transmissions from Radio Globo and other media under siege:
RAJ/RNS, Adrienne Pine, Al Giordano, DailyKos posters 1 2, 9/24 UN, 9/24 OAS, and Charles the indispensable.
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Honduras elections in the U.S.

From Prensa Latina; my translation:

Coup government continues with illegal elections

Tegucigalpa, 19 August (PL) - Despite rejection internally and by the international community, the de facto government of Honduras continues to prepare for the general elections scheduled for this November.

Members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the National Registry of Persons (RNP) are in the United States to process voter registration for Hondurans living there. Reports in local media reveal that the delegation now in the U.S. is headed by the director of elections, Carlos Humberto Romero, and that his intention is to get help from associations of Honduran emigrants to promote the expatriate vote, for which they lack the support of the consular offices.

These diplomatic offices reject elections conducted under the de facto government, installed here by the [mob] military on June 28. According to the daily El Heraldo, the group headed by Romero dismisses the possibility of going through the consular offices.

The technical deputy director of the RNP, Luis Fernando Suazo, said that their presence in the U.S. is for the purpose of processing changes of address, taking applications for identity cards for youths who will vote for the first time, and preparing the infrastructure for setting up voting locations. The coup government is trying to organize voting in the North American cities of Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Washington, New York, and New Orleans, Honduran papers reported.

The National Front Against the Coup reiterated in several communiques its complete opposition to recognizing any election taking place under current conditions. The international community maintains a similar position, according to statements by the United Nations, the countries belonging to the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Organization of American States (OAS).

On Tuesday [8/18] the foreign ministers of Argentina, Jorge Taiana, and of Mexico, Patricia Espinosa, said that Latin America would not recognize any government created under the de facto regime in Honduras.

The OAS has not, as far as I know, made an official joint declaration that they will not recognize the results of elections taking place under the coup government. Our government could exert some real pressure and walk its multilateral talk by proposing such a resolution, which would be all but certain to pass unanimously if it had U.S. support.

Latin Americanist blogger Boz says there's nothing stopping one of the other OAS governments from introducing that proposal. What may be stopping them is the fear that the U.S. would block or abstain, making any resolution considerably less meaningful and risking the exposure of divisions in the organization (Canada, Colombia, and/or Peru might take the opportunity to follow the U.S. lead).

That concern isn't imaginary, to judge from recent State Department briefings and Amb. Llorens' response to a visiting U.S. delegation that asked about a possible election boycott. The official line appears to be that U.S. rejection of the Honduran election results now (or any other actual pressure on the coup government) would "harm the climate for negotiations" -- as if any real negotiations were happening now or are likely to in the absence of such pressure.

Deadlines are approaching: Official campaigning begins August 31, and the ballots are to be finalized for printing on September 5. If our government doesn't clearly state in the next few days that it won't recognize the results of elections conducted under the coup regime, then one of the OAS member governments that has already taken that position will have to force the issue in the OAS to get the U.S. on the record.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission will have completed its investigative visit to Honduras by August 22. In the face of their preliminary findings [Sp. link added 24 Aug, Eng. 20 Sept.], the Amnesty International report, and the report of the earlier independent international human rights observation mission, it should be impossible to avoid recognizing that the conditions for legitimate elections don't exist, and cannot exist unless Zelaya is restored to office.

Update: 4:30am, 20 Aug - Late night thought: No visa problems for functionaries of a coup government that our government supposedly doesn't recognize, who come here to arrange election infrastructure explicitly designed to bypass the offices that represent those voters' legitimate government. This really is a free country.

Update 2: 7:30pm, 20 Aug - Carlos Reina, Zelaya's minister of government and head of Liberals Against the Coup, mentions in an interview [Sp.] a UN resolution being discussed this week that would put the General Assembly on record as not recognizing the elections unless Zelaya is restored to office by September 1. Excellent if it happens; every little bit helps.

Update 3: 11:40am, 24 Aug - Support for my speculation about the OAS maneuverings from Mark Weisbrot. Noting the existing resolutions against recognition of the elections, he projects:

The next step would be for the Organization of American States, where all countries in the hemisphere – except Cuba – are represented, to take this position. But it operates mainly by consensus, and the United States is reportedly blocking that move. Of course, Washington can’t be seen to be the sole opposition, so it has recruited some right-wing governments, according to sources involved in the OAS discussions: Canada and Panama, along with a couple of other small country
governments that can be bribed or bullied into joining Washington’s rapidly shrinking regional coalition of the willing.

I'd much rather be proved wrong by a unanimous OAS vote this week...
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August 11: Global Day of Action for Honduras

Since last Wednesday, thousands of Hondurans have been walking along the highways toward Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. Tomorrow the plan is for them to converge into demonstrations against the coup in the country's two largest cities.

They've called on supporters everywhere to join in by making tomorrow, Tuesday, August 11, a global day of action for Honduras. The resistance on the part of grassroots Hondurans has been tireless for the last month and a half, a phenomenal achievement in the face of assassinations, mass arrests, beatings, and commercial media lies and silence. Support them tomorrow by attending local actions where they exist (as in DC and Boston [added 9:20pm, 10 Aug]), and by demanding that our government back up its words with action.

It's not just Hondurans' democracy that's at stake. The integrity of every elected government in the region is at risk if this coup is allowed to stand. Letting the clock run out, pretending as if November's presidential elections will erase this violent step backward into the dark but not distant past, sends the clear message that grassroots pressure for real change is "off the table," in the United States as well as Honduras. Our government is sending that message by its inaction.

President Obama has twice recently made what he thinks is a clever dig at those who call for more pressure on the illegal coup regime, noting "the irony that the people that were complaining about the U.S. interfering in Latin America are now complaining that we are not interfering enough." "Interference" is what fake president Micheletti and the coup supporters call Obama's verbal backing of Zelaya's presidency. To equate following our own laws (which forbid continued foreign aid to countries that have undergone a military coup) with our past active support for coups -- real and lethal interference -- isn't clever. It's insulting.

The President and Secretary of State claim to be dealing with the problem of the coup regime "in an international context", but they're referring to Arias-mediated negotiations that they set up, that failed, and that now exist only in their imagination. The Organization of American States' biggest member is not actively supporting that body's efforts to get the coup regime to face reality, and as a result Micheletti feels free to jerk them around.

The economic pinch, which of course falls most heavily on the Honduran majority, the poor and workers who form the basis of the resistance, is beginning to be felt by the coup's backers. The economic slowdown is the result of a combination of pressures: the resistance's strikes and road blockades, brief trade shutdowns by neighboring countries, the "pause" of World Bank and Inter-American Development lending, the cutoff of Venezuelan oil with its favorable payment terms, and a severe drop in tourism resulting from the recession and the coup. Cracks are forming in the coup coalition, as some of the businessmen and politicians try to distance themselves from the military. [Update: 9:30pm, 10 Aug - More cracks appear: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on the illegality of the military's actions on June 28. It could be more delaying tactics, or the beginning of a way out for the coupmakers.]

Now is the moment when action can make a difference.

Email the State Department [link fixed 7:35 pm, 11 Aug; click 'email a question/comment' tab] and White House to tell them to:

- Recognize and condemn the human rights violations being committed by the coup regime in Honduras.

- Formally declare it a military coup to trigger the Foreign Assistance Act: cut off U.S. economic aid and withdraw Ambassador Llorens.

- Revoke the diplomatic visas of all coup participants and supporters.

- Freeze the U.S. assets of all coup officials and funders.

- Join with other governments in the hemisphere to pledge not to recognize the results of the November elections unless they're held under the legitimate elected government headed by Pres. Zelaya.

[A different version of the above is guest-posted at A Tiny Revolution].
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Media suppression: a human rights abuse

The coup regime in Honduras has just ordered the shutdown [Sp.] of Radio Globo, which has consistently provided the most complete coverage of the resistance to the coup. Honduran media that have managed to keep functioning have done so by extensively self-censoring.

This is an outrage, a crime, and a violation of human rights.

Venezuela's attorney general has recently proposed a new media law whose broad language would allow the government to shut down hostile broadcasters and publications; it's to be introduced to the Venezuelan legislature sometime this fall. Yesterday, a group of Chavez supporters attacked the offices of Globovision, a private television broadcast channel that is, like most of the private media there, anti-Chavez. This, too, is an outrage.

Media suppression is bad, mkay? It's bad when legislated by elected governments, bad when it's done by thugs purportedly acting on their own, and bad when done by military-installed, illegitimate regimes whose police are beating up and arresting peaceful protestors. It would be bad at any time, but it's particularly damaging at this moment. People inside and outside Honduras are working hard to make public the abuses on the part of the Honduran coup regime, including media suppression, and to get some acknowledgement and criticism of the repression by U.S. government spokespeople. The silence has been deafening so far.

Actions to intimidate and shut down media by leaders who've provided concrete support for Zelaya's restoration threaten both to overshadow the Honduran coup regime's actions and provide a ready distraction for right-wing U.S. coup supporters in Congress who already see Zelaya and coup opponents as Chavez pawns. A recent LA Times feature on Daniel Ortega's attacks on press enemies will come in handy for others who insist on framing this military coup as a regrettable but understandable defense of "democracy" against the spreading menace of "socialist strongmen" in Latin America.

The situtation in Honduras is not about Hugo Chavez or Daniel Ortega. It's about the attack on an already seriously weak democracy there in the face of popular demands for real participation. It's about the determination of a tiny stratum of rich business families and their military henchmen to maintain their traditional monopoly on power. They can't stop the protests, they can't stop the news from getting out to the world on the internet, but they will do whatever they can to keep Hondurans, most of whom do not have internet access, from hearing what's going on in their own country.

I have to go; will add links later, but wanted to post the urgent news about Radio Globo. Update: 8:30pm, 4 Aug - Edited and links added.

Update 2: 6:00pm, 5 August - Radio Globo is defying the order to shut down, which was produced by the military and executed by a military judge. Good for them, and good news for Hondurans. Al Giordano has the details along with another piece of good news: The mayor of San Pedro Sula, who was driven out by coup supporters on July 2, is safe in exile, and the municipal workers have since that day prevented the attempted usurper, Micheletti's nephew William Hall Micheletti, from taking office. National marches are planned for San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa early next week.

Do your part to support them: If you're in Boston or Chicago, attend and/or promote the events of the Honduran speaking tour. Wherever you are, call on Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama to do more to increase the pressure on the coup regime: freeze U.S.-held assets of coup backers and participants, revoke more diplomatic visas, start withdrawing U.S. military from the base at Soto Cano (Palmerola), denounce the regime's media suppression and the beatings and arrests of peaceful protestors, and make clear that the U.S. will not recognize a government resulting from elections held under the coup regime. Get your representative to sign the Congressional letter to Pres. Obama with the same message.

Soldiers today attacked students and administrators at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, in the capital, using batons, tear gas, and live bullets. Hundreds may be wounded. [Update 3: 4:00pm, 13 August - Dozens, in the event, but the rector of UNAH, who had been keeping the university neutral on the coup, is suing the police over the invasion of the campus, where she was one of those beaten.]

Update 4: 4:50pm, 13 August - The Venezuelan legislature will not be taking up the legislation proposed by the Attorney General anytime soon. This news is at the end of a hostile item on the legislature by AP reporter Christopher Toothaker. The people who wreaked havoc in the Globovision offices were arrested (via bloggingsbyboz.com, no link). The people who ordered the shutdown of Radio Globo in Honduras continue to severely beat [Sp.] members of Congress and others peacefully demonstrating against the coup, and no one in the U.S. executive branch seems to be a bit bothered. Huh.

[Image: Eduardo Maldonado, director of Radio Globo.]
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Honduras - massive crackdown

Yesterday the resistance to the coup took the form of many tomas, or highway blockades, across the country. The army and police responded with violent mass arrests in at least four locations. Read about it via Al Giordano, who's now reporting from Honduras, and Adrienne Pine and her correspondents (one of whom was arrested yesterday). Hundreds of people were arrested, including popular movement leaders Juan Barahona and Carlos Reyes, the independent presidential candidate, who was beaten badly enough to break his arm. In Tegucigalpa, the police fired into a crowd of demonstrators, flooding hospital emergency rooms; a shot to the head has left one man in critical condition [Rodrigo Roger Vallejo, in image above by Arnulfo Franco, AP]. [Update: 2:55pm, 1 August - Vallejo died early this morning. As with the murders of two other demonstrators, a golpista mouthpiece claimed he'd been killed by fellow opponents of the coup. There are really no limits to their deranged lies.] Police assaulted anti-coup reporters, seizing and smashing their equipment.

Meanwhile, U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens met with Pres. Zelaya yesterday afternoon at the U.S. embassy in Managua. That should have happened a week ago, but it's still a good thing. Llorens restated that the U.S. recognizes only Zelaya as president. The meeting was a signal to the coup regime, but at this point much stronger pressure is needed: freezing the U.S. accounts and revoking visas of the coup funders, Lanny Davis' employers Camilo Atala and Jorge Canahuati, and the military high command. It's long past time for Sec. Clinton to take note of and criticize the repression that the coup regime is inflicting on the population. Silence, after a crackdown on the scale of yesterday's assault, is consent.

Maybe this violence is the snarling response of a cornered, desperate coup that's about to implode. Help make it so by calling on the administration to speak up and to put the pressure where it's needed. Get your member of Congress to cosponsor H.Res.630, Rep. Delahunt's bill calling for an end to the coup and restoration of the legitimate government of Honduras. [Update: 3:15pm, 31 July - More urgently, have him/her sign Rep. Grijalva's letter to Pres. Obama urging the U.S. government to do more to put pressure on the coup-makers. (Edited 3:50pm for clarity.)]

A U.S. speaking tour of Hondurans opposed to the coup has been organized by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC). Tonight they're in Philadelphia [from comments]:

Direct from Honduras: Voices of Resistance to the Coup d'Etat
7pm, Friday July 31, Calvary Church (48th & Baltimore Ave.)

Dr. Juan Almendares - internationally known Honduran medical doctor, human rights activist, environmental leader and alternative medicine practitioner; recipient of the 2001 Barbara Chester Award for his ground breaking efforts with prisoners, victims of torture, the poor, and indigenous populations; torture survivor himself, has been targeted by death squads on several occasions.

Abencio Fernandez Pineda - coordinator of the non-governmental Center for the Investigation and Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CIPRODEH)

and three more Honduran speakers.

The tour will continue to New York. Tomorrow, Saturday, August 1, the speakers will hold a community forum at 4:00pm, 1184 Fulton Ave., Bronx. [Update: 3:30pm, 31 July - Event added: Sunday, Aug. 2, 7:00pm, Bluestockings, 172 Allen St.] A press conference is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 3, at 11:00am. at UN Plaza, 1st Ave. and E. 44th St. The tour will also go to Boston and Chicago.

An emergency delegation to Honduras for August 2-9 is being organized by the Quixote Center. See here for more information (post also includes address through which contributions can be made to support the popular resistance). [H/t Charles.]

Update 1: 6:15pm, 31 July - Police and military violently broke up a road takeover near Santa Rosa de Copan, in western Honduras. Many people including women and children are reported wounded, over 50 arrested. Report from COPO, the Committee of Western Popular Organizations [Spanish] here, backed up by observations from John Donaghy, an English-speaking lay religious worker in the area. The COPO report makes a number of references to threats against Father Fausto Milla; an earlier report from Donaghy about Fr. Fausto is useful background.

Update 2: 5:10pm, 1 August - In the dark 1980s, the U.S. government converted the Honduran countryside into a gigantic base for its regional war against the left. The U.S.-trained and -funded military and its special squads kidnaped, tortured, and killed anyone who might be sympathetic with the left, who might offer resistance to the presence of camps of armed men everywhere, and who might form the seeds of a popular movement like those the U.S. right and the Honduran upper class were determined to crush. Very few people were brave enough to speak out against this terror. One of the loudest and bravest voices was that of Ramon Custodio, who helped build the Honduran Human Rights Committee (CODEH) into the respected organization it remains today.

Custodio himself, however, has destroyed the respect he earned then. Caught up in a political spat with Zelaya since before the 2005 presidential election, he increasingly abandoned his responsibilities as governmental human rights ombudsman. By June 28, he was one of the most enthusiastic participants in the coup (which he denied had taken place, calling it a "democratic transition"). He's continued to promote lies: pretending that the coup government has committed no human rights violations, that there's been no media suppression, and even that Isis Murillo, shot and killed when soldiers fired on the crowd at Toncontin airport waiting for Pres. Zelaya's plane on July 5, had been shot by other demonstrators.

On Tuesday, he was one of the coup officials whose diplomatic visa was revoked by the U.S. State Department. Yesterday, he was stripped of his membership by the International Federation of Human Rights. The Federation called for an investigation into Custodio's recent actions and omissions, which have so completely discredited him. Such appropriate sanctions are satisfying, but it's impossible not to be saddened by the sorry spectacle: a man who has turned his back on everything for which he once fought and for which he was so deservedly admired. [Update: 4:00pm, 30 Aug - 'Rubber Man', essay on Custodio by Allan MacDonald, Honduran political cartoonist who was one of the first targets of repression after the coup.]