The Field on the Narcosphere

By Al Giordano

That poster promotes a talk - Toppling a Coup in Honduras: Civil Resistance, Community Organizing and Online Journalism - that I'll be giving Monday evening, 7 p.m., October 12, at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

Somehow it is fitting that we'll do this 517 years to the date that Columbus reportedly arrived in a country called América.

Greater Big Apple area Field Hands are of course welcome, and the event is free.

Then on Thursday, at noon, I'll be co-leading a discussion on Journalism and Civil Resistance at the Newseum in Washington, DC, with Cardiff University journalism professor Howard Barrell, formerly of the African National Congress. Beltway area Field Hands are also welcome there, just make sure to rsvp to heidid@nonviolent-conflict.org).

Along that Amtrak corridor - from the Capital of Capital to the Capitol of Capital - I'll be doing a little fundraising, too, toward our $20,000 goal to be able to hold our next session of the School of Authentic Journalism next February on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. If you've been considering making a generous contribution toward the $14,000 or so we still seek, will be in one of those cities this week, and a meal or a coffee or a drink with yours truly might help you to get out your checkbook and do so, drop me an email at narconews@gmail.com and I'm sure it will be a conversation worth scheduling.

I do expect to be writing and reporting here on The Field during this coming week - it's not a vacation (although I'm also looking forward to seeing a very special group of lifelong friends in New York on a different night, you know who you are), and the stories we're covering in Honduras and elsewhere are certainly going to heat up in the coming days  - so see you here, too, if not on the road.

By Al Giordano

Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a civilized society, the first and proper response to somebody winning a prize, any prize, is “congratulations, dude.”

But the heads exploding on the US right and the teeth-gnashing on parts of the US left this morning reveal that the United States, although it has made some fast progress of late, does not yet have a civilized society.

Everybody chill. It’s only a prize. And this prize in particular has had some hits (see: King, Martin Luther, 1964) and also some misses (see: Kissinger, Henry: 1973) when it comes to North Americans who have won it.

To those who say, “but, but, but, peace has not been restored to Iraq, Afghanistan or the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world, how can they give it to a guy who hasn’t succeeded at making any peace yet?” I think you have too much reverence for a mere prize. This Nobel is Europe’s way of saying, “thanks, America, for electing this guy and, by doing so, giving us all more maneuvering room to work for peace.”

Prizes go to the winners in this world. Obama got the prize – nominations for Nobel Peace closed ten days after his inauguration - because he won the election and closed a particularly terrible chapter in the United States’ relations with the world. That’s why. And that why isn’t enough for some gringos?

Prizes are also about the self-perpetuation of the prize awarders. They are not given out of altruism, but, rather, self-interest. They don’t pop out of the head of Zeus (or more properly, Odin, in this case). The award to Obama also gives the Nobel committee more relevance in this world. It’s a two-way street.

Let’s look at the Nobel chair’s actual words in awarding the Peace Prize this morning:

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

"Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

"For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"

See? It’s not about him. It’s about us, and about this hour in history, “the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

Envy is an uncivilized emotion. It has for too long governed much North American political thought and deed on the right as well as on the left. Get over yourselves, both of you. The new guy won the Nobel Peace Prize. Europe doesn’t hate you, gringo, anymore. Congratulations to all of you dudes and dames!

The skinny community organizer kid with the big ears in the White House has motivated your multi-racial youth to drag you, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century. Can’t you see why those looking at the United States from the outside in – after so many years of having only feelings of dread and fear over what it might do next to them - might feel a great wave of relief and want to express it in this way?

The Prize is also a challenge to President Obama: Walk your talk. They, too, are trying to organize the President. What could be wrong with that?

By Al Giordano

The coup that can't shoot straight has done it again, as journalist Belén Fernández reports today on Narco News: when military and police troops invaded the studios of Channel 36 on September 28, stealing its transmitters, antennas and other equipment, they forgot to remove the surveillance cameras.

Here, for the first time, you can see for yourself what really happened:

In that first video, National Police enter through the television network's underground parking lot and then up the stairs at 5:20 a.m. when the station is empty. They bring in men wearing masks and bulletproof vests stamped "Policia Nacional" to disconnect the TV station's broadcasting equipment, who then start removing it, piece by piece, from the premises. The police also bring their own videographer, so the regime presumably has its own archive of what exact equipment it stole!

And there's more in the second surveillance camera video:

Here, the masked men of the coup regime rifle through the equipment in another studio from the same Channel 36. At points you can see the National Police video cameraman in view of the surveillance camera. And then you can see them carrying it all down the stairs and out the door, an hour and 40 minutes later, at 6:58 a.m.

There's your Honduran "civilian coup" regime's version of "democracy" and "freedom" at work.

It should be added that this kind of jackbooted censorship is endorsed and defended by the US public relations firm of "Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates on behalf of the Office of the President of the Republic of Honduras," and Washington DC lobbyist Lanny Davis, enemies of press freedom, all. So next time any of those goons in suits and ties try to spin a story angle on you, kind journalists, remember to ask them about the invasion and censorship of Channel 36, in which they, too, are complicit.

Also published today: The Top Ten Reasons to Donate to Narco News and the School of Authentic Journalism.

By Al Giordano

Finally, hard and reliable data - by a legally certified Honduran polling company – provides a clear measurement of how the Honduran people view the June 28 coup d'etat, its “president" Roberto Micheletti, President Manuel Zelaya and the national civil resistance.

The polling data – which we make public for the first time here - shows that Hondurans widely (by a margin of 3 to 1) oppose the coup, oppose coup “president” Micheletti by a margin of 3 to 1 and favor the reinstatement of their elected President Manuel Zelaya by a clear majority of 3 to 2.

On February 9 of this year, the Gaceta Oficial of the government of Honduras published the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s certification of a Tegucigalpa polling company, COIMER & OP (Consultants in Investigation of Markets and Public Opinion), as a legally authorized pollster for the November 29 elections. The Tribunal inspected the company’s polling methodology, its offices, its staff, gave it the stamp of approval and the green light to survey the Honduran electorate.

The Field has obtained the full results of a recent COIMER & OP survey of 1,470 Honduran citizens over 18 years of age at randomly selected homes (no more than one respondent allowed from each home) proportional to national, state and municipal population and matching other demographic measurements (gender, age, etcetera) in the country, from August 23 to 29 of this year. The poll has a margin of error of four percent.

This is the first survey to be made public since a July Gallup poll showed a plurality of Hondurans opposed the coup d’etat and Roberto Micheletti, and a plurality wanted Zelaya back as president. What is interesting from this survey is that opposition to Micheletti and the coup increased between early July and late August from mere pluralities to a punishing majority: evidence that the nonviolent civil resistance movement has worked effectively to strip legitimacy from the coup regime. As of late August, only 17.4 percent of Hondurans favor the coup d’etat, only 22.2 percent believe Micheletti should remain as president, and only 33 percent oppose the restitution of President Manuel Zelaya.

And those were the numbers before Micheletti’s very unpopular “state of siege” decree of September 29 began to divide his supporters even further.

For Spanish-language readers, political reporters and analysts, The Field and Narco News today make available the full survey and all its cross-tabulations for your analysis.

For English speakers, we will translate the survey questions and the results here, adding some analysis:

Are you in favor of the June 28 coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales?

In favor of coup: 17.4 percent

Opposed to coup: 52.7 percent

No response: 29.9 percent

Strip away the “no response” and the percentages among those with an opinion reveal a stunning 75 percent percent against the coup with only 25 percent in favor: an anti-coup margin of 3 to 1.

Meanwhile, coup “president” Micheletti remains a very unpopular man among Hondurans:

Should Micheletti stay in power or leave the current government?

Micheletti should stay: 22.2 percent

Micheletti should leave: 60.1 percent

No response: 17.7 percent

Among those who express an opinion, Micheletti’s opponents outnumber his supporters by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.

A clear majority supports Manuel Zelaya’s return to the presidency – 60 percent of those who express an opinion:

Do you support the return of Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the Presidency of the Republic?

Support Zelaya’s return: 51.6 percent

Oppose Zelaya’s return: 33 percent

No response: 15.4 percent

Even the National Civil Resistance - maligned daily in the pro-coup media, portrayed sensationally as lawless and threatening of the civil order - enjoys a plurality of support from the Honduran population:

Do you agree or disagree with the marches by the national resistance throughout the country against the coup d’etat?

Support the marches: 45.5 percent

Oppose the marches: 41.8 percent

No response: 12.7 percent

By a more than 2 to 1 margin, Hondurans view the police and military as overly repressive against the national resistance:

Do you think that the Armed Forces and National Police are engaging in repression or not against the National Resistance?

Yes, there is repression: 54.5 percent

No, there is not repression: 21.8 percent

No response: 23.7 percent

When asked their opinion about that repression, an overwhelming majority of Hondurans opposes that repression:

Do you agree with the repression or condemn the repression that the Armed Forces and National Police have engaged in against the National Resistance?

Against repression: 65.4 percent

For repression: 8 percent

No response: 26.4 percent

Strip away the non respondents, and a whopping 89 percent oppose the repression against the civil resistance, including many Hondurans that do not themselves support the resistance marches.

Here’s another interesting question and result:

Who promoted and financed the coup d’etat that toppled President Manuel Zelaya Rosales? Among the political, business, military sectors or foreign capital, which was behind the coup?

All of the above: 23.6 percent

Business sector: 16.8 percent

Political sector: 15 percent

None of the above: 9.5 percent

Military sector: 6.7 percent

International capital: 2.4 percent

No response: 26.8 percent

The COIMER & OP survey also reveals a chilling fact regarding freedom of the press under the coup regime: that the two national TV and radio stations shut down by the coup regime happen to be the most trusted news sources in the entire country, out rating all other media outlets:

Which radio news do you prefer to inform you of events in the country?

Radio Globo: 23.4 percent

HRN: 22.4 percent

Radio América: 13.7 percent

Radio Cadena voces: 0.7 percent

Local station: 10.3 percent

No answer: 29.5

 

Which television news program do you prefer to inform you about the happenings in the country regarding the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales?

Channel 36 Cholusat: 18 percent

Channel 6: 16.9 percent

TNS: 15.7

Abriendo Brecha: 10.7

Hable como Habla: 7.8

TVC: 7.3

Once Noticias: 3.7

Local and regional channels: 9.5

No response: 11.4

The survey also shows that only 53.9 percent of Hondurans read daily newspapers, and that only 55.2 percent prefer any newspaper at all to inform them of happenings in the country:

Which newspaper do you prefer to inform you about the happenings in the country regarding the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales?

No response: 44.8 percent

La Prensa: 22.6 percent

La Tribuna: 12.2 percent

Tiempo: 9.9 percent

El Heraldo: 9.3 percent

El Libertador: 1.2 percent

Interestingly, prior to June 28, the daily Tiempo of San Pedro Sula was the fourth most read paper in the country. Since the coup it has now surpassed the daily Heraldo and is catching up on second place La Tribuna – both of Tegucigalpa – and Tiempo is in striking distance for second position. Tiempo is the only newspaper of the four that has not offered extremely dishonest pro-coup spin.

The results of the next question should indicate why the Micheletti regime keeps talking so loudly about the November 29 elections which the rest of the world has said cannot be recognized as fair or free under the repressive conditions imposed by the coup regime. However, a strong majority of Hondurans still favor those elections:

Should the general elections organized by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for November 19 happen even if the institutional crisis isn’t resolved?

Yes, have elections: 66.4 percent

No, don’t have them: 23.8 percent

No response: 2.9 percent

The 23.8 percent that oppose holding the elections before the crisis is resolved is actually a very high number compared to general public opinion: Elections are like mom and apple pie. Only a very highly politically conscious citizen would make the leap of understanding that elections are not fair and free under a coup regime and therefore openly oppose them happening. I would venture an estimation that that number of 23.8 percent represents participants in the Civil Resistance movements, who have universally argued that the conditions do not exist to hold free elections given what the coup regime has done to censor and violently repress all dissent. That would represent an unusually strong base from which to continue organizing.

Here are some questions about those elections:

What political party do you belong to or sympathize with?

Liberal: 38.5 percent

National: 28.5

Democratic Unification: 1.4

PINU: 1.1

DC: 0.9

Independent Candidate: 2.9

None: 21.5

No response: 5.0

 

Will you vote in the General Elections to elect President, members of Congress and Mayors?

Yes: 53.8 percent

No: 18.8 percent

Maybe: 12.5 percent

Don’t know: 9 percent

No response: 3.5 percent

 

What is your opinion of Independent Candidates?

Good opinion: 51 percent

Bad opinion: 16.2 percent

No response: 32.8 percent

 

If the elections were held today for President, who would you vote for:

Pepe Lobo (National Party): 28.2 percent

Elvin Santos (Liberal Party): 14.4 percent

Carlos H. Reyes (Independent): 12 percent

César Ham (Democratic Unification): 2.2 percent

Bernard Martinez (PINU): 1.2 percent

Felipe Avila (Christian Democrat): 1 percent

None of the above: 24.7 percent

No response: 16.3 percent

We can see from those combined numbers that while Zelaya’s Liberal Party remains the most popular, its pro-coup nominee Elvin Santos is rejected by about two-thirds of his own party members. We can also see very low interest in participation by voters, with only 53.8 percent saying they will definitely vote. And – should there be a negotiated solution in time for the resistance movements to participate in clean elections (a very big “if”) – Independent candidate Carlos H. Reyes is very well positioned to supplant the Liberal Party nominee to become one of the top two candidates, the most viable alternative to Lobo, especially if, as has been talked a lot about, the Democratic Unification Party of candidate Cesar Ham joins in coalition behind Reyes.

But, of course, such talk is way premature, since conditions do not at present exist for fair and free elections, and its not clear there is enough time in the next 53 days to fix that.

This chart measures the popularity (“Excelente y Buena opinion”) against the negative rating (“Mala opinion”) along with the middle category of “regular opinion” and “don’t know or no response”):

The most popular political figures in the country are:

President Manuel Zelaya: 44.7 percent (to 25.7 percent negative)

And…

First Lady Xiomara Castro de Zelaya: 42.6 percent (to 17.9 percent negative)

That they enjoy the highest favorability compared to any other national figure - after a massive PR ad campaign all summer long on TV, radio and in the pro-coup dailies to portray Zelaya as a national villain - is also an indication of the pro-coup media's own crisis of credibility with the public.

The least popular political figures in Honduras are those perceived as coup leaders:

Coup “president” Roberto Micheletti: 56.5 percent negative (to just 16.2 percent positive)

Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos: 45.2 percent negative (to 18.6 percent positive)

Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez: 42.6 percent (to 26.1 percent positive)

General Romeo Vasquez: 40 percent negative (to 19.1 percent positive)

National Party candidate Pepe Lobo: 34.1 percent negative (to 30.5 percent positive)

Interestingly, Independent and anti-coup presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes is more popular (24.6 percent) than unpopular (14.1 percent) as are anti-coup media voices like Radio Globo’s Eduardo Maldonado (31.4 percent positive to 23.2 percent negative) and Channel 36’s Esdras Amado Lopez (23.5 percent positive to 17.3 percent negative). They are, along with the Zelayas, the only national public figures to enjoy a significantly more favorable rating from Hondurans than negative.

The bottom line: A majority of the Honduran people oppose the coup, oppose Micheletti and a wide majority oppose the regime’s repression against the national resistance. And a plurality openly support the civil resistance movement.

So when Republican US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen yesterday issued a “Twitter communiqué” claiming that “nobody wants Zelaya back,” she was blowing smoke out of the wrong air hole. All those - from the regime, to the oligarch diaspora to Lanny Davis and the US political consultants they hire, to the spoiled brat class of some (but not all) gringo expats in Honduras that repeated unsupported claims  that a majority of Hondurans favor the coup, or support Micheletti, or oppose Zelaya’s return, now end with egg on their faces, their credibility shot. They just made it up and thought you would be gullible enough to believe them. But here we’ve given you, finally, the hard numbers, now available in full public view.

What’s more is that these results explain why the coup regime and its chambers of commerce and other big business organizations – the forces in the country that can afford to hire pollsters - have not released any of their own internal polling data to the public: Because they, too, know that a majority of Hondurans oppose them, and they are less popular even than the national nonviolent civil resistance movement that they treat with such disdain.

By Al Giordano

Anti-Semitism has historically fallen harder on Jewish peoples than against Semitic non-Jews, and its English-language use is commonly understood as anti-Jewish, which is what I mean when I use the term in this essay.

I try very hard to avoid touching what I call the “third rail” of international geo-politics in what I publish – specifically, the debates over Israel-Palestine – precisely because to do so, no matter what one’s position is, no matter how sensitively or not one offers an opinion, the entire matter has become akin to blowing on a gigantic dog whistle that brings out all the haters on all sides and makes rational conversation impossible.

I am also admittedly very sensitive to anti-Jewish slurs and other forms of anti-Semitism. I have high contempt for those like Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who run around denying that the holocaust happened, while violently repressing civil resistance movements against their authoritarian regimes. Even though I am not Jewish, I take such attacks personally, as do many Jews and non-Jews alike.

Perhaps it is because I grew up in New York, where so many of my best and most worthwhile cultural influences were Jewish. Perhaps because when as an early teen the local Catholic Church officials kicked me out of the guitar group for the Sunday “folk mass” after they caught me teaching, ahem, unchristian songs to the other kids there, I was able to convince my mom to let me attend the Temple youth group instead. Perhaps because the director of that youth group, a heroic Jewish-American named Richard Zoffness, went to bat and fought and won his battle that I be allowed in that Temple youth group. That’s when I learned an important lesson in Jewish political concepts of solidarity, an example I strive to adhere to each day.

In that Temple youth group, I received benefits that would not have been available to me as a Catholic kid, including sex education classes at 13. In those formative years I marched down Central Park West in support of Soviet Jewry – the Jewish population in what is now known as Russia and surrounding countries – that, just like our anarchist forbearers, was persecuted so brutally by that government.

I’m a bit older now, but I still carry with me the understanding that the Nazi holocaust was the worst single atrocity upon the greatest number of people among all the horrible things that have happened in the time while anybody alive today was still alive.

And yes I know that capitalism is terrible and destructive, and there have been and continue to be other genocides - to say one was the worst is not to say that the others aren't also evil - and that it’s been no picnic to be Palestinian over the past century, or a member of many other national, ethnic, religious, racial or other groups either. Still, the Nazi holocaust and the systematic extermination of millions of people because they were of a certain faith is, to me, the single worst example of what mobs of people can be whipped up to support when blinded and manipulated by hatred and the ill urges to make scapegoats.

If you try to argue with me against that point, if you try to lecture me that any worse crime was committed over the past century, I will not take you seriously. I will not even apologize for not taking you seriously. My respect for you will probably lessen. Because I believe when something that terrible happens to so many people at the hands of others that, after all, were of the supposedly evolved European continent, that it is vital work to inoculate society against such a mass psychosis ever happening again. And that requires generations of education and of, in sum, rebuilding an entire culture around making sure that history shall not repeat itself, not against anybody, but specifically not against those and the descendents of those to whom it did happen, who bore the brunt of it for all peoples: Jewish peoples.

I know many other native New Yorkers and many from other places, and many Jews and non-Jews, who feel exactly as I do about that holocaust and the importance of two words: “never again.” Interestingly, all of us have very different opinions about Israel-Palestine and how to address that conflict. But we are united in making sure a mass violent psychosis such as that pulled off by the Nazis must never happen again.

And so when real anti-Semites run around saying things like "I believe it should have been fair and valid to let Hitler finish his historic vision,” I don’t care who it comes from – right or left – that guy is asking me to open up a big can of whoop-ass on him, because of the legitimate fear and trauma such statements cause good people, while also riling up other haters like him do do violence against Jews.

And sad to say, although Nazism itself is the pinnacle of right wing ideology, there are some confused and sick people who identify themselves as on the left who make statements like that. One who did make that exact despicable statement last week on Radio Globo in Honduras - a couple days before it was occupied and shut down by coup military troops (for reasons unrelated to Romero's statement, which the regime was not aware of until after it seized the station and its tape archives) - was its managing director, David Romero.

I reject and condemn Romero's words and him for mouthing them. If anybody ever said such a thing via this publication, he’d be fired in a New York minute.

If, as Romero did today in that AP story, that person apologized and said they didn’t mean what they said, I’d still fire them indefinitely while sorting it all out. And I’d tell that employee or freelancer or co-publisher that unless he was willing to now go, alone, to synagogues, temples or other gatherings of Jewish people and apologize face to face, and listen to everything they have to say to inform and educate him and express their legitimate horror over calls to violence like that, he wouldn’t have a chance at getting his job back.

In fact, here’s probably exactly how I would handle it: I’d call up some friends from a local Temple or Jewish organization and say, “It’s your call on whether you think this guy’s apology was sincere or not and whether you feel safe ever having him as part of this media again. Frankly, he creeps me out. But maybe you can educate him. If you're willing to try, I'll tell him he can only have a job back if you tell me he can. Otherwise, he's gone."

Mind you, I’m just saying how I would handle it at my own media organization. But if the owner of Radio Globo does something similar, he’ll get big applause from me, and from his other employees, many of whom have shared with Narco News their outrage and disagreement and embarrassment and feelings of betrayal caused by Romero’s statement. Nothing like that was ever said at Radio Globo before or since Romero did that. And people around the station have been in a state of shock over it, frustrated that he is their immediate superior and has tarnished its cause at the very moment that the station is fighting for its life against jackbooted coup regime censorship.

Thankfully, out of 469 co-publishers of Narco News, out of all of its diverse number of journalists and students and professors, nobody has ever written anything as stupid and hateful at this publication as what Romero said, and I hope that will always be the case.

But here is the other side of the dog whistle. There are others out there that look to pounce upon and exacerbate such legitimate fears and traumas every chance they get. And they are often over there on the right, trying to divide liberals and Jews, the left and Jews, because Jews have generally been more progressive than right-wing in most countries, and a vital part of most victorious progressive coalitions.

There has been a cottage industry in recent years trying to create fear of movements and individuals that are not, like Romero, harbingers of anti-Semitic thought, and that Jewish and other peoples would not be afraid of or distrustful of based on what they actually say or do. Rather, the cottage industry exists to distort their words, take them out of context, to try and smear them as something they are not: Anti-Semitic.

The dishonest manipulator that got this whole dog whistle blowing regarding Honduras was Miami Herald “journalist” Frances Robles.

In a September 24 story, headlined “They’re Torturing Me, Zelaya Claims,” Robles typed the following lead paragraph:

“It's been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He's sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and ‘Israeli mercenaries’ are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.”

Normal journalistic procedure when lifting a sensationalist quotation like that reference to “Israeli mercenaries” in a first paragraph is to then, in a later paragraph, provide the full quote in its full context so that readers can judge for themselves what really was said.

Robles did not do that, which raised the first red flag about her intentions.

Asked six times by a reader, via email, to provide the full quote in its context, Robles kept replying via email to that reader with lengthy self-important defenses while still refusing to provide the exact quote from which she extracted the words “Israeli mercenaries" and put other words, not quoted, around them.

Narco News has obtained the full email exchange between Robles and that reader, in which Robles seems to confuse the reader’s request for the full quotation with a debate over whether Zelaya said the only two words she quoted from the undisclosed full statement:

“…anyone who thinks this was made up is obviously not with him, because he says it OVER AND OVER again. I can't explain why no one else reported it. I guess it sounded so off the wall other people chose to ignore it.”

She then invokes the name of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - another Latin American leader that the cottage industry keeps trying to portray as somehow anti-Semitic, one that has joined delegations organized by Jewish organizations to concentration camp sites and who has prosecuted invaders of a synagogue in Caracas - and what she says is his support for her article. Robles wrote:

“Yesterday at a press conference in NY someone asked Hugo Chavez what he thought of the article and he said, "I send the Miami Herald reporter a big kiss for finally telling the truth."

And then, either confused or trying to obfuscate, she ignores the request for the full quote and seeks to debate a different issue:

“I have been a journalist for 20 years and did not get where I am by making up quotes. I have nothing to gain from that.”

Except perhaps front page placement of her oft-buried stories in the Miami Herald.

When the reader asked, again, for the full quote, Robles replied:

“I am very busy and not really interested engaging in email debate. I will answer this email but to be honest, I haven't even completely read it because I just do not have time. I am not going to comb through my notes to find quotes for you…

“I have a lot of interviews and work to do and I simply cannot respond to every reader who wants to haggle over lines in my stories.”

Narco News then wrote to Robles to ask for the full quote, which she has refused to disclose. But the question remains: If the Miami Herald reporter had the time to answer the reader in multiple emails about why she didn’t have the time to answer his question, doesn’t that seem a bit too cute by half? In much less time, she could have just answered his question!

What Robles did do, though, panicked after being informed that her simulation would reach these pages that have exposed so many US correspondents for their dishonest dealings in Latin America, and cost more than a few their sinecures, was contact aides to Zelaya asking them to confirm that he had used the term “Israeli mercenaries.”

Narco News has obtained copies of the Zelaya organization's email responses to Robles, telling her that he mentioned “rumors” of “alleged mercenaries” but never said that such “alleged” parties were responsible for the high tech sonic and chemical weapons used on the Brazilian Embassy, which was the untrue claim made in Robles’ September 24 story.

Like disgraced NY Timeswoman Judith Miller before her, Robles made light of a matter of chemical weaponry - in this case, against the Brazilian embassy, now confirmed by the government of Brazil and the United Nations - to try and portray Zelaya as somehow crazy because he was one of the victims of those now-documented chemical attacks.

It was the very next day after Robles blew the dog whistle that David Romero made his anti-semitic statements, barking to the tune blown by Frances Robles. Nobody at Radio Globo or anywhere else expected him to behave that way. But the sonic pitch of that kind of weapon unleashed that demon from him.

The other thing the aforementioned AP story, by Benjamin Fox, neglected to mention was that Zelaya had already condemned Romero’s words on September 29, when he issued a statement that said:

“Many people in society are wrong, including some of my opponents and also some of my supporters, falling victim to anti-Semitism,” said Zelaya in a public statement. “I reject all anti-Semitic postures and attacks and call on the Honduran people to do the same.”

Fox never even asked Zelaya for comment.

Fox was apparently ignorant that Zelaya was the elected Honduran president who appointed a Jewish-Honduran, Yani Benjamin Rosenthal, as his presidential chief of staff, Leo Starkman as his minister of foreign investment, Moises Starkman as his energy minister. And Zelaya put Jacobo Regalado Weitzembluth at the helm of the state owned telephone company, an institution now seized by military troops.

David Romero is a vicious anti-Semite that deserves contempt from you and me, and had been publicly rebuked by President Zelaya days before this matter became a media campaign in this "open letter" he released on September 29.

Mel Zelaya was attacked by such anti-Semites when he appointed so many Jewish-Hondurans to top positions in his government, in representation much larger than in the population at large.

You decide, kind reader, who are the anti-Semites here? And who is blowing the dog whistles to get them riled up and provoking fear and trauma.

What professional simulators like Frances Robles do to blow those dog whistles and rile up real anti-Semites like David Romero is beneath contempt, does not serve the eternal and just cause against anti-Semitism, and is intended to accomplish quite the opposite.

After all, the manipulation of mobs and generation of mass psychosis attempted by Robles was not something she invented, but, rather, the trademark of a certain evil holocaust and its propagandists not very long ago. When the dogs start barking, deal with the dogs, of course, but also look for the ones blowing the dog whistles.

By Al Giordano

We take this brief break from our comprehensive coverage of the civil resistance to the Honduras coup and other matters in this hemisphere to look behind the scenes at the locale of the other major civil resistance going on in this world in 2009, that in Iran, against the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and today's big scoop from the Telegraph of London:

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior...

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch.

Oy vey! Where's Katie Halper when we need her to make sense of this for us?

It just makes me want to schlep over to Tehran and shmooze with this shlemiel about his schlocky spiel, or maybe just say, "Shalom, schmuck," as he's increasingly coming off like a schlimazel.

The high clerics of the Iranian theocracy may just now have to peek up his pants to inspect as to whether Mahmoud still counts with a schmendrick on his shvantz.

Somehow I'm not surprised. I always saw him as a frustrated Borscht Belt Bahdkin who, when nobody laughed at his jokes, went all meshugenah on the world.

Anyway...

Mazel Tov, Mahmoud! L'chiam!