All Notebook Entries

Rampant Corruption at DHS and subordinate agencies: Open Letter to 44th U.S. President Barack Obama and the 111th United States Senate and United States House of Representatives.

Every DHS employee has the right to work in an environment free of corruption, misconduct or mismanagement.

It is imperative that U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, and U.S. House of Representative Bennie G. Thompson get together with all of their Homeland Security Committee and Subcommitte members hold hearings on corruption (criminal and administrative), gross mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse of authority by public employees of DHS who are being paid with american taxpayers' dollars. 

Despite Repression and the Suspension of Constitutional Guarantees, Hondurans Keep Fighting the Coup Government

The anti-coup movement's momentum appears to be building across Honduras, with protests reported across the country.  Meanwhile, international pressure builds against the coup government.

Over the past two days, anti-coup protests were reported in Tocoa, Colon; San Pedro Sula; La Ceiba; El Progreso, Yoro; Tegucigapla; Intibuca; El Paraiso; Olancho; Santa Barbara; and all over President Zelaya's native department of Olancho.  Moreover, the BBC reports that citizens have blocked major highways in Copan and Tocoa.  The BBC's sources on the ground in Honduras say anti-coup protests have occurred in the majority of Honduras' departments.

The June 29 coup in Honduras did not surprise me.

The day before I read in the morning newspaper that General Romeo Vasquez said a coup d’état was “not certain.” He said “we (the military) are seeking the use of reason and not force in order to resolve the conflicts by dialogue.”

As soon as I saw the words, “not certain,” I said to myself immediately that it was one of the options the general was considering. I also felt he was not talking about dialogue but about a monologue that the opposition would present to President Manuel Zelaya.

Latin American Presidents, OAS Secretary General, and Citizen Caravans Will Accompany Him

Ousted Honduran President Manual Zelaya has announced that he will return to Honduras on Thursday.  "I'm going to finish my four-year term, whether or not you coup leaders are in agreement," he stated. 

Zelaya will return to Honduras accompanied by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, and a commission of Latin American presidents.  The Argentine government has announced that its President Cristina Fernandez will accompany Zelaya to Honduras as part of the presidential commission.  In a press conference following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Zelaya stated that Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa will also accompany him.

Report from a contact involved in popular struggle and human rights movement in Tegucigalpa, Honduras received Monday June 29th at 11:04pm.
 
Reportaje de un contacto del movimiento civil y de derechos humanos en Tegucigalpa, Honduras el Lunes 29 de Junio recibido a las 11:04 de la noche. - Español abajo
 
Greetings,
 
 
Today has been a very tragic day for our country. The army's violent repression continues against the demonstrators protesting peacefully for the restoration of constitutional order and democracy in Honduras.

The Wall St. Journal has followed in a tradition of Amercia's mainstream news coverage of Latin American coups against leftists leaders with this opinion piece by Mary Anastasia O'Grady: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623220955866301.html

Unless we support the Marines kicking U.S. Presidents out of the country for the crimes they see fit to enforce and appointing new Presidents, we would be patronizing to conclude that such tactics might be appropriate for Honduras.

Border Closings, Suspension of Aid, and Cutting of Diplomatic Relations Present a Non-Violent Response to a Violent Coup

Mexico and the countries of Central America have announced various political and economic sanctions against the coup government in Honduras as part of a non-violent and non-military strategy to return democratically elected President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya to power.

Member countries of the Central American Regional Integration adopted a resolution earlier today that requires taking "necessary measures in a staggered manner, including measures related to interregional commerce, against Honduras' de facto government until President Jose Manuel Zelaya is reinstated as president and institutional normalcy is reestablished."  In the first direct action against the coup government, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala will close their borders with Honduras for 48 hours.  The border closing means that all cross-border commerce will be shut down for 48 hours.

By Al Giordano

Community Radio “Es Lo de Menos” was the first to report that the Fourth Infantry Battalion has rebelled from the military coup regime in Honduras. The radio station adds that “it seems” (“al parecer,” in the original Spanish) that the Tenth Infantry Battalion has also broken from the coup.

Rafael Alegria, leader of Via Campesina, the country’s largest social organization, one that has successfully blockaded the nation’s highways before to force government concessions, tells Alba TV:

“The popular resistance is rising up throughout the country. All the highways in the country are blockaded…. The Fourth Infantry Battallion… is no longer following the orders of Roberto Micheletti.”

Angel Alvarado of Honduras’ Popular Union Bloc tells Radio Mundial:

"Two infantry battalions of the Honduran Army have risen up against the illegitimate government of Roberto Micheletti in Honduras. They are the Fourth Infantry Battalion in the city of Tela and the Tenth Infantry Battalion in La Ceiba (the second largest city in Honduras), both located in the state of Atlántida."

(You can see Tela and La Ceiba on the map, above, along the country's northern coast.)

Meanwhile, defenders of the violent coup d’Etat now have to eat the fact that their favored regime has extended its wave of terror to the press corps, censoring all independent media in the country, including CNN and Telesur. Reuters reports:

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras has shut down television and radio stations since an army coup over the weekend, in a media blackout than has drawn condemnation from an international press freedom group.

Shortly after the Honduran military seized President Manuel Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica on Sunday, soldiers stormed a popular radio station and cut off local broadcasts of international television networks CNN en Espanol and Venezuelan-based Telesur, which is sponsored by leftist governments in South America.

A pro-Zelaya channel also was shut down.

The few television and radio stations still operating on Monday played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.

At the White House this afternoon, US President Obama reiterated his government’s non-recognition of the coup regime. According to the White House pool report by David Jackson of USA Today (obtained by Narco News via email):

Obama criticized the Honduras coup as "not legal," and said it would set a "terrible precedent" for the region. "We do not want to go back to a dark past," he said. "We always want to stand with democracy."

If Rafael Alegría - a serious man who gets serious results - says that the highways of the country are successfully blockaded, I tend to believe him. He likewise is not one to spread rumors about the Fourth Infantry Battalion without having solid information.

It seemed inevitable that once the cat is got of the bag regarding the total international rejection of the coup d'etat that military divisions would revolt and point their tanks in the opposite direction: toward the coup plotters above them. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of a short-lived coup in Honduras.

Keep refreshing the front page of Narco News for more updates, sure to shortly come.

Update: TeleSur TV is reporting that its correspondents in Honduras, as well as those of Associated Press, have been arrested by the coup regime.

Update II: Here is a fuller text of US President Obama's statement at the aforementioned press conference:

President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there. In that, we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.

 

I think it's -- it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections.

The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America.

We don't want to go back to a dark past. The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies. But over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable toward the United States. And that is a tradition that we want to continue.

So we are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected president. And we will work with the regional organizations, like OAS, and with other international institutions to see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way.

(Bold text for emphasis.)

Foreign TV Channels Blocked, Violence Outside Presidential Palace

Honduras' Radio Globo reports that today Honduras' coup president Roberto Micheletti entered the Presidential Palace from which Honduras' legitimate President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was kidnapped early yesterday morning.  Micheletti will hold a press conference from the President's office later today. 

The Informant Interviews Part III: Fast food with a side order of death and betrayal

Heriberto Santillan Tabares, a narco-trafficker connected to the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (VCF) drug organization, was arrested in El Paso, Texas, in mid-January 2004 after being lured into the trap by a U.S. government informant.

The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, as part of the plan, is pulled over by an El Paso squad car while driving in his car on a pre-designated street. Santillan is a passenger in the vehicle, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest Santillan.

The same day, DEA sources indicate, another of Santillan’s associates, a Mexican state police commander named Miguel Loya Gallegos (Santillan’s nephew), executes a man in a pick-up truck in Juarez, Mexico, and seriously wounds the passenger — shot in the mouth and neck. Loya also allegedly shows up at the scene of the murder to investigate the crime. Over the prior five months, at least a dozen other people had been tortured and murdered by Santillan’s VCF cell and buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez.

An unknown number of Hondurans have taken to the streets today in an effort to stop the coup that the military, in league with Congress and the Supreme Court, has carried out against democratically elected President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya.

Due to intermitant power outages and heavy rain, independent media within Honduras has had extreme difficulty transmitting news.  This means that while there's been plenty of news in the mainstream media about the actions people with a lot of political power have been taking--from Chavez and the ALBA nations to the Organization of American States to the United States--there's been very little reported about what rank-and-file Hondurans have been doing to reverse the coup.

However, it is clear that Hondurans are resisting. People are taking the streets in Honduras despite incredibly hostile conditions created by the military. Radio Es Lo De Menos reports that their colleagues on the ground have been fired at by snipers who are positioned in rooftops around the city.  They stress that the gunfire at this point has only been in the form of "warning shots" and no one has been reported injured from gunfire.

Congressman Cesar Ham is a Zelaya Ally and Organizer of the Opinion Poll on a New Constitution

Correction: News reports translated by Narco News on Monday that Honduran political leader Cesar Ham had been assassinated appear not to be accurate. This report says otherwise, that Ham is alive and well. We apologize for any confusion caused by our first report, and share in the world's relief that the reports we initially translated were inaccurate.

"The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the coup in Honduras in the following statement:

The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue. Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago.

US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens said in a press conference from the US Embassy today, "The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."

Lloren's statement is particularly significant because it means that the US refuses to recognize the man Congress has sworn in as Honduras' interim president, Roberto Micheletti.  Micheletti was the President of Congress before being sworn in as interim President.

School of the Americas-Trained Military Detains and Expels Democratically-Elected President Zelaya

Early this morning approximately 200 Honduran soldiers arrived at President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya's residence, reportedly fired four shots, and detained the President.  Zelaya told TeleSUR that the soldiers took him to an air force base and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.  

Zelaya told TeleSUR from San Jose, Costa Rica, "They threatened to shoot me."  Honduras' ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Sosa Coello, reports that the president has been beaten up.

A "Tense Calm" Settles Over the Country Amidst Media Spin Campaigns and Threats to Imprison Voters and Poll Workers

The situation in Honduras was tense but calm today as citizens prepared to vote in a national public opinion poll that will ask them if they wish to include a referendum on a new Constitutional Convention in the country's November elections.  The tension is exacerbated by the partisan Honduran media, which, with few exceptions, has mounted a confusion and spin campaign against President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya.

Civil society organizations and UN General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto have warned of a possible coup attempt by the Honduran military. D'Escoto's spokesperson said that the Assembly President “clearly and strongly condemns the attempted coup d’etat that is currently unfolding against the democratically elected Government of President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras.” Fears of a coup stem from a military deployment around the Presidential Palace and the Toncontín airport on Thursday.

David Castro killed, buried at Juarez home after bungled kidnapping

In the spring of 2005, then U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton announced that he had cut a plea deal with Heriberto Santillan Tabares, the narco-trafficker who orchestrated the carnage at the now infamous House of Death in Juarez.

US Government Trained the Police Department that Participated in the Operation and Invested "Heavily" in the Killer Helicopters

On June 5, the Peruvian National Police (PNP) massacred up to fifty unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous people in Bagua who had blockaded roads in protest of land reforms related to a recently implemented US-Peru free trade agreement. Witnesses report that the PNP shot live ammunition from the ground, rooftops, and police helicopters.  Anywhere between 61-400 people are reported missing following the attack.

Narco News has discovered that US drug war money is all over the massacre.  The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the PNP in "riot control."

             The Venezuelan newspaper I bought this morning in Caracas carried two pictures of demonstrators in Iran yesterday.

Subcomandante Marcos' 2006 Visit to Imprisoned Loxichas Inspired a New Movement; One Prisoner is Already Free

On February 9, 2006, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos entered Oaxaca's Santa María Ixcotel jail to visit indigenous political prisoners from the state's Loxicha region.  When he left the prison, he called upon Other Campaign adherents in Oaxaca to launch a national campaign to demand freedom for the political prisoners.

That national campaign never happened.

However, a Oaxacan group called the Zapatista Collective stepped up.  As adherents to the Other Campaign, they took Marcos' words to heart and made political prisoner accompaniment a central focus of their organization's work.  Soon after Marcos' prison visit, the collective approached one of the Loxicha political prisoners, a woman named Isabel Almaraz, and asked her how they could help her fight for her freedom.  They worked with her for over two years, with her fighting from within the prison walls and the Zapatista Collective fighting from outside.  On July 17, 2008, Almaraz won her freedom.

Original publico en inglés por Kristin Bricker 31-05-09 - Traducido del inglés por Delia Beatriz Martinez

El gobierno Mexicano utilizo la guerra en contra del crimen organizado para desmantelar la radio rebelde del barrio popular; los magnates de la radio celebraron

El pasado 12 de Marzo, el líder comunitario Dr. Hector Camero de Monterrey se presento en la Procuraría General de la Republica para dar su testimonio en cuanto a un operativo en la radio de la organización Tierra y Libertad, Radio Tierra y Libertad, en Junio del 2008.  Sin embargo, cuando Camero se presento le informaron que ya no era considerado un testigo del caso; que era el sospechoso principal, acusándolo de “uso de los bienes nacionales sin permiso previo.”

En estos días se anticipa que el gobierno federal presentara una orden de aprehensión contra de Camero ya que el Procuraría General de la Republica anunció que tiene suficiente evidencia para tomar accion penal. Camero esta en riesgo de cárcel de 2 a 12 años y hasta 500,000 pesos de multas.

From a Quixote Center announcement:

At dawn on Friday, June 5th, 600 Peruvian police in helicopters and on foot opened fire on thousands of peaceful indigenous protesters blocking a road near Bagua in the Peruvian Amazon. Conservative estimates indicate that 60 indigenous and police have been killed.   Police are accused of burning indigenous bodies, throwing them in the river and removing wounded from the hospital to hide the real number of casualties.

For two months, over 30,000 indigenous have sustained nonviolent protests along the roads and waterways of the Amazon.  These protests are in response to a series of Presidential decrees issued under the U.S.-Peru FTA implementation law that violate indigenous rights and open the way for an unprecedented expansion of new transnational petroleum, mining, logging and mono-cropping in the Amazon rainforest.

Rainforest Action Network asks for letters to the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia.

Below are some photographs of the attack from Amazon Watch (CAUTION: graphic images). Very high quality versions of these photos can be obtained from a link in AmazonWatch's report and press release on the attack.

Today's San Antonio Express News contains an article descibing the kidnapping and torture of a Mexican defense attorney in rather gruesome detail.

Read it here:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/mexico/Lawyer_makes_plea_to_save_his_own_life.html

Informant claims his U.S. handlers ignored carnage because it occurred “on Mexican soil”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas, were made aware of multiple torture and death houses used by narco-trafficking cells in Juarez but failed to follow-up on the information or report it to the Mexican government, according to an informant who was employed by the federal law enforcement agency between 2000 and 2004.

“[ICE] was aware these people [in the Juarez drug organization] were ruthless and powerful,” the informant told Narco News during a recent telephone interview. “If they say kill someone, you do it, or you get killed. I explained that to Customs [ICE], that those are the conditions I would have to work under, and they [the informant’s ICE handlers] said ‘Yes,’ and I began to infiltrate the cartel.”

The article linked below was published recently by Exonline (Mexico City).

http://www.exonline.com.mx/diario/noticia/primera/pulsonacional/el_chapo...

Hypocrisy has never reached these heights. The people that complain about the murder of one doctor are the same ones being totally content with the murders of zillions of fetuses. Have you been following "the news"? Well, it's causing a big fuzz and showing the disparity between FOX, the right wing channel vs. MSNBC, the left one. On this isolated instance, I'm going to have to agree with the right wing... I believe that is human life in the womb. I don't think it's goo.

Mexican Government Used the Drug War to Raid a Rebelious Poor Neighborhood's Radio; Radio Magnates Rejoice

This past March 12, Monterrey community leader Dr. Hector Camero arrived at the Mexican Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) to provide witness testimony regarding a June 2008 raid on his organization's radio station, Radio Tierra y Libertad.  When he arrived, government officials informed him that he was no longer considered a witness in the case; he was the main suspect, accused of "use of national assets without prior permission."

Within the next few days, the government is expected to issue a federal warrant for Camero's arrest because the Federal Prosecutor's Office has announced that it has enough evidence to charge him.  Camero faces 2-12 years in prison and up to MX$500,000 (USD$37,920) in fines.

Just when the Obama administration showed signs of rethinking the disastrous "war on drugs" at home, Congress decided to export it big-time to Mexico. On foreign land, this monument to wrong-headed policy takes a particularly bloody and bellicose form.

A little-known measure buried in the U.S. 2009 Supplemental Bill would provide millions of dollars to corrupt Mexican security forces engaged in an unwinnable drug war. Disguised as a way of "helping" our beleaguered neighbor, the measure goes beyond even what the Bush administration planned. The aid package will push Mexico closer to a Colombia scenario and create a new quagmire to suck up scarce U.S. public resources.

If you thought electing Barack Obama president would bring an end to the disaterous war on drugs, think again.

Here's a link to an article appearing at the Huffington post outlining an increase in funding dedicated to the Mexican military.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-carlsen/congress-sends-drug-war-s_b_206145.html

An excerpt: