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 He wants the decree suspending the constitution repealed not because it deprives people of their rights of free assembly and free expression, but because issuing the decree "is to accept that we are no longer able to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: beat the clock

Finally, the State Department ends its six-week charade of "legal review":

U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.

This move was heavily foreshadowed in the press backgrounder by two State Dept. officials on Tuesday that accompanied the baby step of suspending non-emergency travel visas:

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: We have said from the very beginning, what we do know is that the legitimate government, the legitimate president, was taken out of office in a way that was not prescribed, in a way that was unexpected and forced. And we call that a coup, a coup to the head of the government.

There are specific ... laws ... that deals with ... the way we can handle assistance and the way we can handle our relationship with a country if there is a military coup, if the person in charge of, leading, and then taking over the government after the coup are the military. And we are examining to determine whether or not that’s the case here.

QUESTION: Thank you. One last question. Just when would you expect to finish that inquiry?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Immediately.

Stories appeared as soon as Tuesday afternoon reporting that the U.S. government was considering the formal coup declaration, and the backgrounder was released yesterday afternoon. On Tuesday the military and police high command huddled with coup backer Jorge Canahuati. Yesterday Cardinal Rodgriguez met with the officials of COHEP, the business council. Micheletti increased the guard around his house. Yet the oligarchs did not seem to have been willing to take the broad hint the U.S. was dropping: to push Micheletti aside. So today, a day before the two-month mark of the coup regime, the other shoe drops. Monday the election campaigns formally begin.

We await news of further meetings in Tegucigalpa and will update.

Update: 4:00pm, 28 August - Twenty-four hours later, and two months into the coup, no action by Sec. Clinton. I've expressed the idea that yesterday's leak was a big signal to the coup backers to act so the U.S. wouldn't have to take this step. Clinton is clearly reluctant to take it, and apparently even a laughable "new" proposal from Micheletti is enough to stay her hand. Don't let her get away with it:

Call* and write the State Department. Urge Sec. Clinton to:

- immediately formally declare the coup a military coup.

- denounce the continuing human rights violations by the coup regime.

- announce U.S. support for an Organization of American States resolution declaring that the November elections will not be recognized unless the Zelaya government is restored by September 1.

*202-647-4000; wait through recordings for operator, ask to leave message. The calls and messages can go on all weekend, so take action and pass this on to friends. Two months is appalling; this shouldn't have lasted two days.

Update 2: 8:00pm, 4 September - Scorecard a week later: 0 for 3, with a lot of gestures and spinning. The glass-half-full perspective, that the government "formally cut off millions of dollars in assistance to Honduras because of the coup that occurred two months ago, and threatened to withhold recognition of the new president who emerges from elections scheduled in November" can only be maintained by ignoring the unpleasant details:

This is the same money that was suspended two months ago, not the much more substantial cutoff that a formal coup designation would require. The non-recognition threat was couched like this: That election must be undertaken in a free, fair and transparent manner. It must also be free of taint and open to all Hondurans to exercise their democratic franchise. At this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the scheduled elections.. Charles of Mercury Rising correctly translates this as: "Put enough lipstick on the pig and we'll kiss it."

Sec. Clinton is demonstrating her formidable capacity for "going deaf." President Zelaya said on Wednesday he intended to focus his talks with her on the severe and continuing human rights abuses of the coup regime. Presumably he did so, but she still hasn't said a single word on the subject. Rep. Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Relations committee and one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic party, forthrightly urged her in an LA Times op ed to formally designate the military coup and invoke the sanctions that go with it. She ignored him.

Berman's op ed is unusually good. He invokes the multiple credible reports of human rights abuses, the impact on the rest of the elected governments in the hemisphere, and decency and common sense against letting the coup stand. Use it and its arguments to get your member of Congress to put pressure on Sec. Clinton, to write letters to the editor, and to continue to needle the State Department.

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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Honduras hopeful signs

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, held hostage by the military since Friday with her children in the town of El Paraiso, 12 miles km from the border, has been allowed to told she can proceed [Sp.] to Las Manos to reunite with her husband. She intends to make it a caravan that will bring food, water, and medicine to supporters who've been trapped in the border zone; the military and police have prevented any supplies from reaching them since Saturday.

In a possibly related development, the U.S. State Department has, at long last, revoked the diplomatic visas of four officials of the coup government and is reviewing the cases of others, as well as family members. [Informative comment on diplomatic vs. tourist visas here.] The U.S. embassy spokesman in Honduras declined to name the officials, citing (unspecified) "privacy laws". Two who have acknowledged the U.S. action are Tomas Arita Valle [Sp.], the Supreme Court judge who signed the order for the military to 'arrest' Zelaya, and José Alfredo Saavedra, president of the Honduran Congress, elected to replace Micheletti in that position. Surely Micheletti himself is one of the other two. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Update: 11:40am, 29 July - Excellent: The third confirmed newly visa-less coup participant is Ramon Custodio [Sp.], former human rights activist turned lying pond scum. He's the the government's Human Rights Ombudsman, who's been publicly fighting with Zelaya since before his election. Custodio immediately supported Micheletti as president on June 28, denied there'd been a coup, said since that he's seen no evidence of media suppression or human rights violations, and insisted that Isis Murillo was shot by other demonstrators at the airport on July 5.

Micheletti says he hasn't been notified [Sp.] that his visa has been revoked. Uh huh. I'm surer than ever he was first on the list.

Another hopeful sign from yesterday: Nike, Adidas, The Gap, and Knights Apparel wrote an open letter Monday to Sec. Clinton supporting democracy. Adrienne Pine brings the righteous snark:

Micheletti: when these guys start opposing you, you really know you've gone too far. Nike can move its subcontracting to any number of "stable" regimes, and come out as a promoter of human rights. When they beat the U.S. State Department to it, that's just embarrassing.

It goes without saying that this letter from big U.S. businesses with Honduran manufacturing facilities got way more coverage than similar appeals from visiting Honduran members of Congress who oppose the coup. It might have been what finally provoked the long-overdue cancellation of visas.

Update 2: 1:20pm, 29 July - Another visa revoked. (I think this is in addition to the ones announced yesterday, because State Dept. spokesman Ian Kelly seemed to be saying then that the original four targets were all people currently in Tegucigalpa.) This latest loss of visa is doubly significant, as it belonged to Roberto Flores Bermudez, Honduras' ambassador to the U.S. at the time of the coup, who stayed on to represent the coup government. The step makes way for Enrique Reina, the legitimate ambassador appointed since by Zelaya, to take over the office. (Reina was minister of communication at the time of the coup). With continued pressure, maybe this will result in restoration soon.

Update 3: 12:15 pm, 30 July - Zelaya, still in Nicaragua near the border, named Carlos Ortez Colindres as one of the coup officials to have his U.S. diplomatic visa revoked, and called for the U.S. also to freeze the assets of coup participants. Ortez was the ursurper govenment's first foreign minister, whose racist remarks about Obama forced his removal from that office, but not from the cabinet (he's now the minister of government). This may mean that Micheletti still has his visa. At the end of the Tuxtla summit yesterday (where Vice President Mejia stood in for Zelaya), Oscar Arias called for further sanctions on the coup government; take the hint, Sec. Clinton.

There is clearly some level of disunity in the Honduran military. Several reporters and DC think tank types have said that the communique placed on the armed forces web site this past weekend was drafted by two young colonels in Washington with the aides of a Democratic senator or member of Congress. In interviews with Radio Globo Saturday and the BBC Mundo Monday, Gen. Vasquez gave conflicting interpretations of the statement's apparent support for the "San Jose accord". Today, a document purporting to be from dissident officers surfaced, calling on Gen. Vasquez to step down. If genuine, it's another hopeful sign. If not, it's still a very interesting dishing of dirt on the high command.
[Update 3 edited at 1:30pm July 30 to add links and new information.]

Update 4: 2:15 pm, 30 July - Pres. Zelaya did an interview with Amy Goodman that aired on Democracy Now this morning. At the end, he said, "Many thanks; during the thirty days I’ve been in exile, it’s the best interview I’ve had." He's got that right; a must read (or watch).
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Honduras crossroads

Lots of comings and goings.

President Zelaya is on the road in Nicaragua, heading to the border at Las Manos. The military, which does not normally man the crossings, has deployed in strength across all the southern entry points, and has reimposed a 6 pm curfew (11 pm in the rest of the country). Hondurans are trying to reach the border, some on foot because the military has shot out the tires on their vehicles. The Some police are on strike, apparently wanting to make it clear who's in charge of repressing the resistance to the coup. {But see Charles' posts in Update below.]

Coup leader Gen. Romeo Vasquez is headed to Miami to address a Christian Dominionist convention. He's scheduled for a Saturday morning session, from 9:45-10:45, to "release powerful revelation concerning God’s Kingdom in the earth today, and how you can live victoriously in His Kingdom no matter what is happening in the world system." The most optimistic reading of that would be "how you can retire to Miami even if the U.S. government cuts you off". [h/t BoRev]

But here in the real world, despite Gen. Vasquez' thinly veiled death threat today against Zelaya, the U.S. government won't break ties with the Honduran military, revoke visas or freeze the assets of coup leaders, or do anything further to put pressure on the generals or the businessmen who give them their orders. Instead, they'll tut-tut about Zelaya's decision to return "resulting in violence", as if he were the one firing on unarmed citizens. If Obama and Clinton were truly intent on Zelaya's restoration to office, they'd send the ambassador and the commander of the U.S. airbase at Palmerola to the border to welcome and accompany him.

Not far from where Gen. Vasquez is scheduled to impart prophetic anointing is the headquarters of the U.S. military's Southern Command. School of the Americas Watch demonstrators will be there at noon Saturday to condemn the coup and call for an end to U.S. military ties to Honduras.

And at the same time, Rep. Connie Mack, R-Nation of Miami, will be going to Tegucigalpa to meet with the coup regime, conveying the support of the Republican right that so clearly would welcome a coup here.

Update: 2:45pm, 24 July - Good sources for further info: Charles' blog posts at MercuryRising, RealNews video overview of the battle over Honduras in Washington, and Adrienne Pine's reports from friends inside Honduras and Hondurans in DC.

Update 2: 4:30pm, 25 July - Highly recommended: Adrienne Pine's concise and accurate rebuttal of the most common lies/misconceptions surrounding the coup. Do read it all, but this passage is the most urgent:

It is time for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to take a firm stance against the violence being carried out in Honduras by individuals and institutions trained by the U.S. military both in Honduras and at the School of the Americas, by taking concrete measures required by U.S. law in the case of a coup: removing their ambassador, ending all military alliances, and cutting off trade. It is time that we, as Americans, demand they do so. If we accept the lies supporting the violent attack on Honduran democracy, we only weaken our own.

For Sec. Clinton to chastise Zelaya's return to Honduras as "reckless", while saying not a word in criticism of the coup regime's repression and violence -- arbitrary detentions, assassinations, media suppression, suspension of constitutional rights -- sends an unmistakable message to the rest of the hemisphere that the U.S. government is fundamentally allied to the coup supporters, unwilling to apply full pressure to them, and backing Zelaya's return more for appearance's sake than out of any real determination to beat back this threat to democratic governments everywhere.

Update 3: 12:30pm, 26 July - At about the time that the NY Times story about the military's split with the coup government's rejectionism hit the web last night, Gen. Vasquez was interviewed by phone on Radio Globo making the same point, live-blogged by by listeners Al Giordano and Charles. This new media world is a strange and wondrous thing... [Update 7/27: Charles has the remarkable Radio Globo exchange between Xiomara Castro (Zelaya's wife) and the general. An earlier post has more distressing reports from the ground in Honduras. Via a commenter at RAJ's (who's done the tremendous service of translating and analyzing both the 'San Jose Accord' and the military's communique), Gen. Vasqez is now denying [Sp.] that the military supports negotiations or Zelaya's return.] Negotiations seem set to resume in Washington on Tuesday, with the "San Jose accord" (a proposal, not an agreement) as the basis for discussions. [Update 7/27: Nope; Zelaya will probably attend [Spanish] a long-scheduled regional summit, the Tuxtla Group, with the other presidents of Central America, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, that begins today in Tamarindo, Costa Rica; it will focus on the Honduran crisis.] We have today and tomorrow to convey to our government the demand for full restoration of Zelaya's government, including all cabinet ministers, as well as the mayor of San Pedro Sula, whose removal by force has gone uncovered by U.S. media. Amnesty for Zelaya's removal is up to the politicians, but there can be no amnesty for the killings and assaults on coup opponents.

Media and U.S. government silence reigns on these crimes of the coup-makers and their supporters, of which the most recent are: The death-squad-style murder [Spanish] of Pedro Ezequiel Martinez Magdiel Muñoz, a man taken prisoner by the military near the border Friday (along with many others trying to get to Las Manos), who was found by a highway Saturday dead, handcuffed, and with 42 stab wounds. [Update 7/27: El Tiempo coverage of his funeral, attended by thousands.] The same message was sent in the capital Friday, when 15 shots were fired near the airport at a car carrying the son of Rodrigo Trochez, a Liberal Party member of Congress who'd been publicly speaking and lobbying against the coup in D.C. this past week. Juan Trochez and a friend with him were both wounded, Trochez seriously.

Honduras: waiting game is no game

It's sickening enough that there are members of Congress who openly support the coup in Honduras. But Ginger Thompson of the New York Times' Mexico bureau wants you to believe that the squawking of a little splinter group of Republican rightists represents "tiny cracks emerging in the solidarity of the coalition of countries demanding the return of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya."

How else to intepret this passage, as she presents no other evidence for the assertion?

There were also signs of discord in the coalition of countries demanding Mr. Zelaya’s return. At a subcommittee hearing in Washington on Friday, several members of Congress criticized the Organization of American States for suspending Honduras not long after it lifted the suspension against Cuba.

Representative Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, urged the United States to cut its support for the O.A.S., which gets 60 percent of its financing from Washington. He said the organization’s response to the crisis in Honduras proved it was a “dangerous organization,” because it had sided with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a stern ally of the ousted Honduran president, in undermining democracy in the region.

"What has happened in Honduras was not a military coup,” Mr. Mack said. “If anyone is guilty here it is Mr. Zelaya himself for having turned his back on his people and his own Constitution." [my emphasis]

The only way this would represent disunity among the countries pushing for Zelaya's return to office is if Miami were a separate country. Which, well... never mind.

The article as a whole is actually better than the run of recent big-media accounts of the coup and its aftermath. It reports the strikes and roadblocks by the popular movement supporting Zelaya's return to office, and reports the actual results of the CID-Gallup poll in Honduras showing a plurality of opposition to the coup (as compared with Reuters and Juan Forero of the Washington Post, who simply repeated the results as reported by La Prensa. Wild that "journalists" would take their cue from a coup-supporting paper that photoshopped the blood from the now-iconic photo of Isis Murillo (taken by Eduardo Verdugo for AP), shot dead by the military at the airport while waiting for Zelaya's attempted return.

Murillo's father, an anti-logging activist, spoke to the press recently recounting [Spanish] the shootings at the airport last Sunday and holding responsible Billy Joya, a retired Battalion 316 commander who's evaded every effort to bring him to justice for tortures and murders in the 1980s and who was named a ministerial advisor by the coup government. Yesterday Sr. Murillo was taken away by men in plain clothes. He is at serious risk.

Murillo's is one of the many lives at stake if the U.S. government does simply fold its hands and wait for magical results from the Costa Rica "negotiations". It may be that this administration, which is clearly eager to demonstrate that it opposes Zelaya, the Honduran popular movement, and Hugo Chavez, is backing away from its support for Zelaya's restoration. But Miami Republicans spreading pro-coup nonsense in a House hearing is not evidence for that. (For an interesting account of the hearing, see Adrienne Pine's anthropological field notes.)

Update: 12:30 pm, 13 July - All you'll hear about in the U.S. media is that the coup government lifted the curfew, but the repression is actually ratcheting up: Two leaders in the popular movement were assassinated [Spanish] over the weekend, and seven TeleSUR reporters and crew are in the process of being expelled [Sp.]. What will it take to get the U.S. government to cut off the rest of the aid and exert the many other forms of pressure it can bring to bear on the coup-makers?

The victims: Roger Ivan Bados, a labor leader and activist in the Democratic Unification party, killed on Saturday evening by three shots fired by a man on a bicycle near his house in San Pedro Sula. Ramon Garcia, from the province of Santa Barbara in easternwestern Honduras, was forced under off a bus by soldiers and shot; his sister and his nephew's wife were also wounded in the incident. [Updated to correct 11:45am 14 July.]

[Image: Anti-coup demonstration at U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa July 2; Eduardo Verdugo, AP]
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Everything old is new again

Pleasant surprise: A coup is taking place in Central America and the U.S. government is not backing it (now). Nor is anyone else.

Seriously, I was impressed and pleased with the U.S. government response. See my comments here, in response to understandable kneejerk cynicism skepticism of a kind found widely througout the left end of the blogs today.

Not that there's anything wrong with cynicism if it's funny: My favorite post so far is from the guys at BoRev, who take apart the zombie lie of this news cycle (ZOMG the leftist president is trying to make himself dictator for life!).

For coverage of the issues involved, see coup vet Al Giordano and reporter Karen Bricker at NarcoNews.

The rightists' line is that this is all perfectly legal, not a coup, but a "democratic transition." The Supreme Court openly says it ordered the troops to kidnap Pres. Zelaya out of his bed in the early morning -- so it's legal! The usurper Micheletti (Congressional speaker) showed up with a laughably phony "resignation letter" supposedly signed by Zelaya (on Thursday yet), got voted in, and put his hand on the Bible -- so it's Constitutional! The "democratic transition" was made especially smooth because none of the leftish members of Congress showed up, for fear of being taken prisoner. Like the eight members of Zelaya's administration on whom there is little to no information. Oh, and the fake president promptly declared an indefinite period of martial law, because how else would you kick off such a festival of democracy?

Here's hoping the international isolation has the desired effect: a climbdown in which no one is killed, and the return of normal political life, which can be pretty dangerous on its own in Honduras. Via CISPES, a rundown of what's made Pres. Zelaya so unpopular among the ricos he grew up with:

The proposal to draft a new constitution is the culmination of a series of controversial measures undertaken in his presidency, which include a significant raise in the minimum wage, measures to re-nationalize energy generation plants and the telephone system, signing a bill that vastly improves labor conditions for teachers, joining the Venezuelan Petrocaribe program which provides soft loans for development initiatives via petroleum sales, delaying recognition of the new US ambassador after the Bolivian government implicated the US embassy in supporting fascist paramilitary groups destabilizing Bolivia...

You can see why the Washington Post and New York Times editorial staffs are a bit thrown by the Obama administration's failure to accept the gift of this "democratic transition" gracefully. [Hint: It's the tanks; so nineties eighties seventies over.]

Update: noon, 30 June - The beginning of the end: Two military battalions have turned against the coup plotters, the popular movement has blockaded major highways, and Honduras' neighbors have sealed the borders for 48 hours, shutting down trade. Micheletti's illegitimate government has blocked international media channels, including CNN and Venezuela's TeleSur, and has arrested AP and TeleSur correspondents.

Update 2: 1:40pm, 30 June - Mexico, Brazil, and Chile have withdrawn their ambassadors. Pres. Zelaya has announced that he will return to Honduras accompanied by the president of the Organization of American States after speaking before the UN in New York (at the invitation of General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto). The UN General Assembly has just unanimously passed a resolution demanding that the coup plotters step down and that Zelaya be returned to his office.

Update 3: 11:45am, 2 July - The OAS has given a 72-hour deadline to the coup government that expires Saturday morning, and Zelaya has agreed to postpone his return until then. Within hours of Zelaya's announcement, the Honduran Congress yesterday afternoon passed a decree suspending indefinitely during curfew hours the five articles of their constitution that most resemble our Bill of Rights. Clearly, they're planning to try to use the night to arrest and intimidate enough popular leaders to prevent a big showing of support for Zelaya's homecoming.

It's remarkably convenient for the Obama administration that these events will be buried in a holiday weekend. More than ten countries and the European Union have withdrawn their ambassadors; the U.S. has not, saying that Amb. Hugo Llorens, a Cuban-born economics specialist who was the State Dept's Andean advisor to the Bush administration during the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela, will be needed to help reach a peaceful solution. Nor has the U.S. government cut off aid, despite being required to do so by the Foreign Assistance Act. (However, the Defense Dept. has suspended all operations with the Honduran military indefinitely and the World Bank has "paused" aid). The administration has put a big emphasis on working through the OAS, so the test will be Saturday: if the coup government hasn't stepped down by then, the U.S. response needs to include an immediate aid cutoff. But don't just wait and watch: call State at 202-647-4000 and leave a message reminding Sec. Clinton that U.S. law requires an immediate end to U.S. aid to Honduras.

Update 4: 4:55pm, 7 July - Negotiations begin in Costa Rica Thursday, with Arias mediating. Restoration looks likely, with Zelaya agreeing to drop effort for constitutional reform. Cracking of ice internally in Honduras has been quite visible: the National Party candidate for President backed Zelaya's return, the head of the Supreme Court has proposed amnesty for the collection of charges against Zelaya, and today even bozo Micheletti toned down the bluster in accepting the negotiations.

Obama and Clinton get to distance themselves politically from Zelaya while getting multilateralist and democratic cred for backing his return to office through regional efforts. The tepid response, the failure to cut off aid ("pausing" it instead), and the indisputable and continuing U.S. role in funding right-wing elites as "democracy promotion" will encourage pessimists to conclude that nothing has changed. But I think the popular movement's pressure for a constitutional assembly provoked the military and the rightists in Congress to overplay their hand badly. The Liberal Party has discredited itself for some time to come as a path to any real reform. Honduras' majority understand that their determined actions helped force the restoration -- although at a high cost.

The distorted accounts in U.S. media and punditry of what led to this crisis are hard to dispel partly because so few people know much of anything about Honduras. Blogger RAJ has stepped into that breach with very useful information. [Update edited and links added at 6:15 pm.]

Update 5: 11:00am, 9 July - Finally! U.S. suspends military aid. That's the right tone to set as Zelaya enters the talks. This will be the last update to this post unless the situation's resolved within a day.
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Snowballs in hell

In a Ha'aretz analysis that by turns examines and displays the cynicism and delusions of all parties to the slaughter in Gaza, this passage actually made me laugh out loud, but not in a good way:

In just 11 days, president-elect Barack Obama will take office. On Tuesday he was asked about the war between Hamas and Israel. He said he was concerned about the civilian casualties on both sides. That concern could turn into anger at Israel in the course of the inauguration ceremony. Washington expects - though it is not saying so out loud - that Israel will end the war before Obama is sworn in as president. [my emphasis]

Anger at Israel in the course of the inauguration ceremony is about as likely as 80-degree temperatures on Inaugural Day. No, there's nothing for the Israelis to fear from the new administration, or from Congress. If the Israeli government ends its assault before Obama is sworn in, it will be for their own internal political reasons.

It certainly won't be because they've run out of bullets, bombs, and shells with which to bury Gazans in the rubble of their houses. Those have our names on them. Anyone who wants to pretend that the current Israeli onslaught wasn't green-lighted by the U.S. government needs to explain the unusually large, irregular, commercial shipments of weapons and ammunition from Sunny Point, NC to Ashdod, an Israeli port 20 miles from Gaza -- 3000 tons in December, another 1000 tons planned for this month.

But the ice is cracking. The discussion of the occupation can no longer be shut down or controlled here as it used to. The spectacle of active political support for Israel's latest atrocities is increasing the disconnect between the American people and our elected "representatives" and media elite.

As with so many things, the change seems to be coming too late to do much good, but you never know where it will end up. The important thing is to push it along when you can.

Launching Qassam rockets over the Gaza border is a war crime. Over a period of years, the rockets have killed dozens of Israeli civilians and a few Palestinians, injured others, caused damage, and fostered a climate of fear and uncertainty.

Years of U.S.-Israeli blockade and economic strangulation, "targeted assassinations", an attempted coup against the elected government, with periodic and ever-more-savage aerial bombing, missile and tank assaults on densely populated areas: these constitute a far greater war crime, one in which we are directly complicit. More than a third of the 800+ killed since December 27 are women and children; well more than half are civilians and noncombatants. It is simply wrong to characterize the Israeli actions as self-defense.

Tell your Senators and your House member how you view their active cheerleading for Israel's assault on Gaza. If you're represented by one of the 27 House representatives who voted 'no' or 'present', please thank and encourage them.

Update: 2:10 pm, 12 January - Rep. Dennis Kucinich speaking [4 min video] in opposition to the House resolution on Jan. 9. David Luban post on the legalities and illegalities of Israel's current assault on Gaza. Pat Lang's comments on IDF ground forces.
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But it wasn't about the oil. Not at all.

On blogs where the Bush administration's proposed "security framework agreement" with Iraq has been discussed, the question has come up of why the July 31st deadline. My answer has been electoral politics: An agreement that extends the U.S. military presence indefinitely is the "victory" and "success" that the regime would like to show for its policy, and that McCain can run on.

But if it's not politics, it's business, Bush's base. Today's New York Times business section brings the news that four oil majors are close to returning to Iraq, having almost wrapped up negotiations on no-bid foothold contracts:

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations. [emphasis added]

So there'll be plenty for President Obama's residual force to do:

Any Western oil official who comes to Iraq would require heavy security, exposing the companies to all the same logistical nightmares that have hampered previous attempts, often undertaken at huge cost, to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

And work in the deserts and swamps that contain much of Iraq’s oil reserves would be virtually impossible unless carried out solely by Iraqi subcontractors, who would likely be threatened by insurgents for cooperating with Western companies.

News from the Ministry of Love

Walter Pincus commits old-school journalism by actually watching what the ruling clique does rather than reporting what they say. In a story that the Washington Post editors place on A11 today, he examines the Iraq-related contracts now being put out and shows how they paint a picture of U.S. occupation stretching far into the future, carried out by contractors with a minimum of overt military presence.

The article deserves to be read in full. But this is the passage that chilled me most (my emphasis added):

Another contract noticed last week previews the opening, apparently in September, of a U.S.-run prison, now labeled a Theater Internment Facility Reconciliation Center, which is to be located at Camp Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The new contract calls for providing food for "up to 5,000 detainees" and will also cover 150 Iraqi nationals, who apparently will work at the facility. The contract is to run for one year, with an option year to follow.

The U.S. holds about 20,000 Iraqis at two facilities today, mostly in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and the rest at Camp Cropper near Baghdad. Along with the facility at Camp Taji, which is expected to hold Iraqis detained in Baghdad, another new reconciliation center, mainly for Sunnis, is being built at Ramadi in Anbar province, where many of these detainees were captured.

In March, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who runs the detainee program, told reporters that, on average. Iraqi detainees remain in a U.S. facility for 11 months.

But that might not be the case for the roughly 9,000 Iraqis whom he described as having "a very rigorous view of an ideology that we would broadly categorize as al-Qaeda." They are headed to the new reconciliation centers for what could be longer stays.

Did the editors remove scare quotes, or does Pincus assume that his ironic use of the new euphemism is clear?

World Bank: If you can't scrap it, shake it up

Who among us wasn't enjoying the Wolfowitz debacle at the World Bank? I'm certainly not saintly enough to resist a spot of schadenfreude. But when the scandal over Wolfo's corrupt favoritism broke, I agreed with Naomi Klein: the real scandal is the Bank itself. Still, I had no illusions that anyone would take her advice to seize this low moment for the institution and ditch it altogether.

Now along come two appealing proposals that could change the Bank's workings for the better in Wolfowitz's wake. Mark Weisbrot recommends uncoupling the World Bank from the International Monetary Fund. Congress, in concert with the Europeans, could make it a condition of continued funding for the Bank that its loans would no longer be contingent on IMF conditions or approval.

Several developments have weakened the IMF's influence over middle-income countries in the last decade, but the "creditors' cartel" that it forms with the World Bank continues to wreak havoc in the poorest countries:

the privatization of water in countries like Ghana and Tanzania, the imposition of user fees on primary healthcare and education in Kenya and other African countries, the privatization of social security systems in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, the destabilization and overthrow of Haiti's democratically elected government in 2004 and, most recently, the cartel's role in deciding that poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa could not spend 70 percent of the desperately needed aid money that they received from 1999 to 2005...

This reform would simply reduce the harm done. As Weisbrot says,

Realistically, so long as developing countries have no significant voice within the World Bank, it cannot be expected to pursue an agenda that benefits poor countries or poor people generally.

That's where the second proposal comes in: the candidacy of Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize-winning founder of the Grameen Bank, for President of the World Bank.

Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy makes an entertaining case for this campaign. World Bank votes are proportional to shares held, so that countries with 12% of the world's population have 57% of the votes. Looks unlikely, eh? But

just because it’s one dollar, one vote, does not mean you cannot have a food fight ... If those [other] 43% were committed to Yunus, we’d just have to split off 7% from the G7 vote to beat the Bush candidate, [Robert] Zoellick. Suppose that the UK, France, and Japan vote with the U.S., but Germany (whose development minister said the future president of the World Bank should be selected with a “maximum involvement of all shareholders, especially the developing countries,”) Canada, and Italy voted with the rest of the world. Then Yunus would win.

Objection: But the rest of the world, that 43%, will never vote as a bloc. To which the answer is: let the client states stand up and be counted.

This food fight campaign is a prospect that delights me no end, for reasons large and small. The large reasons should be obvious. The small ones have to do with Bob Zoellick, who's a neocon and a bit of a pill (an impression I got while in college with him, recently strengthened by some press reports since his nomination).

Lessons we pretend we never learned

Groundhog Day: The U.S. military writes a new counterinsurgency manual, and the reporter covering it pretends that such a thing hasn't happened since Viet Nam:

The distaste for counterinsurgency can be traced, like so many other things in the military, to the residue of Vietnam. After more than a decade of crushing failure, the generals vowed, more or less, never to get mixed up again in a guerrilla war. Hoffman says war colleges across the country literally purged their libraries of books on fighting guerrilla warfare ... Then came 9/11.

I've written about this phenomenon before:

[George Packer:] "the Army’s most recent field manual on the subject is two decades old."

That would be the manual with which they ran the counterinsurgency war in El Salvador. By the mid-1980s, the United States funded 90% of the Salvadoran national budget. U.S. military "advisors" (many more than the 500 legally allowed or acknowledged, and many of whom were in combat) directed that war in detail. That level of involvement lasted for a decade.

The Newsweek writer is even more dishonest or clueless than Packer, who at least acknowledged that there was a counterinsurgency manual in use twenty years ago (though he was no better at drawing any inferences from that fact).

The recurring pretense that nothing like this has ever happened before, where 'this' is torture, or counterinsurgency, or domestic repression, makes me crazy. If a search for 'El Salvador' comes up empty in an article on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, even just reading it makes me feel as if I'm participating in airbrushing history.

Maybe I should institute a regular feature like the "Letters We Never Finished Reading" fillers in the New Yorker of old. Well, maybe not; a better move would be to maintain the one regular feature already promised. This Monday, garden blogging for sure...

La flor mas linda de mi querer

It's election day! Not here -- in Nicaragua. And the Bush regime, filled with operatives from the illegal, terrorist war waged during the 1980s by our government to undermine the twice-elected Sandinista administration, is taking a little time away from efforts to stave off electoral disaster here to do the same thing there. Their idea of disaster is the re-election of Daniel Ortega.

Now, I'm a Jarquin supporter myself (hey, if some norteamericanos get to side publicly with a candidate in another country's elections, we all do). Since being voted out in 1990, Ortega's shown himself to be much more of a politician in the worst sense than any kind of progressive leader. His recent co-governing deal with the right wing proved every bit as corrupt as the (U.S.-blessed) administration it replaced.

But the menacing gestures by our government -- "visits" by Rumsfeld and Ollie North, open threats by the U.S. ambassador of sanctions and blockades like those that hobbled Nicaragua twenty years ago -- are just shameless bullying. And the Bush regime's favored candidate? Ortega's partner in the scummy co-governing pact.

Festivals of democracy.

First strike

Gary Farber, in comments to the previous post, took issue with my characterization of this administration's adoption of a first-strike nuclear policy as new:

[This] actually goes back to every National Security Directive since the invention of the bomb. ... There was never a credible threat against the Soviet Union without it, was the rationale. Thus, without it, no deterrence against their going through the Fulda Gap....

This is not the understanding of many professional observers of U.S. nuclear and military doctrine. It is true that U.S. national security policy since the 1940s has continuously given a central place to the possession of nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them in retaliation against attack. That stated willingness is what was supposed to give credibility to the deterrent effect of our nuclear arsenal. However, U.S. national security doctrine has never, until recently, officially countenanced the use of nuclear weapons against countries or entities that have not attacked us.

Key members of the Bush administration, in particular Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, came into office intending to change the U.S. nuclear and conventional security strategy in the direction of first strike. Donald Rumsfeld has advocated "missile defense" and weaponizing space for most of his career, in order to give the United States first-strike capacities not available to any other country. The 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document, drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby at the request of then-Defense Secretary Cheney, and the Project for a New American Century's 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' paper of 2000 both argue for this change. The spring 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (mandated by Congress in 2000) was written by adherents of the Cheney-Rumsfeld viewpoint.

The analysis of that 2002 NPR by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation was that "it suggests a shift in U.S. nuclear use doctrine":

The role of nuclear weapons has always been to deter an attack by a nuclear-armed adversary, and to retaliate as a last resort. Furthermore, the U.S. pledges not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPR reflects a noticeable shift in these long-standing policies. First, it suggests that nuclear weapons could be used in a pre-emptive first strike "against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, (for example, deep underground bunkers or bio-weapon facilities)."

Second, the NPR requires the U.S. nuclear force to be able to respond to immediate or unexpected contingencies involving North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, all of which are members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (although some of these countries are not members in good standing.) These contingencies suggest that the U.S. may be the first country to use nuclear weapons in a future conventional conflict. [my emphasis]

Contrast this with the analysis of the Center for Defense Information of a previous Nuclear Posture Review, in September 1994, which emphasizes the deliberate ambiguity about occasions for use, but cites no language at all that envisions a situation in which the U.S. employs nuclear weapons as anything other than a reaction to an attack (though not necessarily a nuclear attack).

The current administration's September 2002 National Security Strategy document is an explicit statement that U.S. war policy now includes "preventive" war, military strikes against a perceived threat rather than in response to any actual attack. This policy was put into effect in the invasion of Iraq.

Now, there is clear evidence that this aggressive approach to conventional military action is broadening to include the use of nuclear weapons. William Arkin, a veteran defense reporter, wrote in June 2005 for the front page of the Washington Post Sunday opinion section:

In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements.

Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons. The official U.S. position on the use of nuclear weapons has not changed.

This passage implies that up until now, U.S. nuclear posture has been defensive, not first strike (preventive/preemptive). The main point of Arkin's opinion piece was his call for open discussion of this new policy, exactly because it was new, before it became official and permanent.

And that official U.S. position on the use of nuclear weapons is in the process of changing. Walter Pincus reported last September:

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002. The strategy was outlined in more detail at the time in classified national security directives.

Pincus' story ran on the front page, so the Post clearly considered it news, i.e., a change from existing nuclear doctrine. I have not seen anyone report since that Rumsfeld has signed off on the new nuclear posture, to make it technically official. But in practice the new posture has already taken effect, since Bush has refused to rule out nuclear weapons use in a first-strike attack on Iran.

Finally, the reaction of physicists around the world reinforces the view that something is changing:

A proposed change in U.S. nuclear weapons policy has exploded into a controversy between the Bush Administration and physicists worldwide. Sixteen faculty members of the MIT physics department have joined over a thousand physicists in signing a petition repudiating a Pentagon proposal that would “foresee pre-emptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries.”

Everyone quoted in the article, including people who have declined to sign the petition, sees the Bush policy as a significant departure. Theodore Postol articulates the nature and implications of the change:

Postol said he believes the new policy “tremendously stimulates” states to develop nuclear weapons. “It will cause countries to reconsider their nuclear status. “The only way to prevent preemptive attacks is to develop arms” to deter these attacks, Postol said. ... He pointed out differences in perception towards attacking Iraq and North Korea as proof that possessing nuclear weapons can deter U.S. preemptive attacks.

Postol said that the U.S. has always been ambiguous about its nuclear first-strike policy because it serves the purpose of a deterrent.

Of course this country has always had the ability to launch a nuclear first strike. We are the only country ever to use nuclear weapons at all. But since the end of World War II, it has never been our stated policy to strike first.

Until now.

In the service of power

As U.S. destabilization of Iran continues to unfold, the New Yorker features an archived 'Letter from Iran' from December 1978 (via Laura Rozen).

The opening paragraphs were enough to confirm that I'd read it when it first appeared, and that I'll have to put it aside for now. Should I feel old, or young again? Lunchtime near Dupont Circle... a brisk walk past the usual dozens of young men in masks screaming about torture by SAVAK. Wince, sighing, try to put it out of mind long enough to eat. Open up the magazine... oh, look. Oh. The old master of the field of courtier reporting, Joseph Kraft, at pains to make clear that his interview with "our kind of Shah" is not that of a journalist but an advisor:

There had been demonstrations in many parts of the country, and strikes, but Teheran, apart from the university, seemed calm, and the Army was in thorough control. Moreover, the opposition was headed by the Moslem clergy, and they were clearly divided. Surely, I said, the factions could be played off against each other.
...I further noted that, while there was obvious unrest in the country, the Shah himself had lifted the lid by easing up on security and initiating reforms. Maybe all that was required was a slower pace and more publicity for the changes he had made.

Much more of the same if you'd like to recreate the atmosphere of official Washington back then. Excuse me; I need something to settle my stomach.