The Field on the Narcosphere

By Al Giordano

“Field Hands” are the words that readers of this blog, The Field, used to organize their own social networking site, to be in contact with each other, and to engage in community organizing together. There are currently 729 such readers that have joined that project. One of them, Allan Brauer of Folsom, California (in the photo, above, and a regular participant in the comments section here), posted an appeal last night that I’ll share with you here.

At this hour when we are all watching independent radio and television stations silenced under military coup boots in Honduras, we are offered a sober reminder of why it is so important to support and defend the free flow of accurate information. We can sit back helplessly cursing the darkness and thinking that we can’t do anything about it. Or we can light a candle and remind ourselves that the censorship against some makes our own work of breaking the information blockades that much more urgent and important. We’re still standing, after all, and so much harder for a Honduran coup regime to silence because our servers are literally out of their reach.

Given the emergency situation in Honduras today and the coup regime’s “decree” suspending free speech, press, assembly and due process for the next 45 days, two members of our news team have just cancelled long planned travels to remain at their posts at this hour of moral crisis. They weren’t asked to do that. They volunteered. That’s emblematic of the dedication around this newsroom.

But the truth is, it requires more than our own labor and dedication to keep doing this work, to maintain and protect our Internet servers, to report and translate rapidly and accurately, and to train growing numbers of journalists of talent and conscience to be able to meet the increasing demand for authentic journalism, do more of it, better, faster and more coherently. It also requires some funds.

You’ll notice from the graph in the upper right corner of this page that we’re in the middle of a fundraising drive to keep this ship sailing. Your contributions – no matter how small, they add up when many participate – are literally the wind at those sails that make this voyage possible. Please give Allan’s appeal a read and consider doing your part, too.

Most independent media disappears not from coup regime censors but from lack of the necessary resources to carry on. For more than nine years you, the readers, have been the vertebral column of Narco News and its projects including The Field. The faster you get that fund drive graph up to its $20,000 matching support goal, the sooner we can stop nagging you and devote more time to the real work of reporting.

Allan – a rank-and-file reader, just like you - says it better than I can, here:

Dear Fieldhands and fans of The Field and Authentic Journalism,

Every so often, a story comes along that demands the attention of a writer who is uniquely qualified to report and comment on it. Such a story is the ongoing crisis in Honduras. And the writer who absolutely must cover it is Al Giordano.

Over the past months, I have been eagerly following Al’s dispatches and gained a great sense of enlightenment about the situation, its background, the key players, and how the ongoing story was being spun by various sources to fit their narratives. It was essential that Al bring his focus and personal resources to bear on this unfolding drama. And this week, Al blew the lid off yet another aspect of the story that is creating international repercussions by reporting on the use of tear gas canisters labeled “National Police of Perú” by the Honduran police. I can’t wait to see how this develops!

Still, as much as I appreciate the work Al is doing to shed light on the situation in Honduras, one fact remains: I miss Al’s reporting on US politics! And based on your feedback and comments, and Al’s own observations, I know I am not alone.

Many of us struggled to remain sane without Al’s wise words to still our Chicken Little hearts during the summer of madness, of death panels and socialized medicine, of teabags and townhalls full of Astroturf. It was terrific when he popped back on to the scene to inoculate us, but on some level, this only served to heighten our sense of loss that Al wasn’t on the healthcare reform story every day.

So here’s my pitch for Al Giordano, NarcoNews, and the School for Authentic Journalism. Give because it makes you part of a community doing good work. Give so you can take pride of ownership when Al and his associates break major news that punctures the MSM narrative. Give to support first-rate analysis that digs beneath the headlines to reveal the story underneath. And give to the School of Authentic Journalism if you want to see Al Giordano again!

Al can only be in one place at one time and he can focus his attention on only so many simultaneous world events. When we donate money to fund these important projects, it means that Al and his school can train and empower a new generation of Authentic Journalists deployed on the ground throughout the Americas. These reporters can continue Al’s good work in bringing the struggle for social, political and economic justice throughout the hemisphere to the world’s attention. And they, in turn, can free Al’s time so that he can devote more attention to US politics and give us the Field fix we all crave.

The congressional midterm primary races are beginning to crystallize as various candidates dip their toes into the waters and test their chances for success. The MSM isn’t allowing any facts about the steep decline in favorability of the Republican Party stop them from reaching back to 1994 and predicting a Republican surge. And I selfishly want Al Giordano back on the US politics beat, sorting through the hype and spin, reading the tea leaves and pointing out the important clues that indicate what will really happen in 2010.

So give to the Fund for Authentic Journalism. You’ll get so much in return. You’ll be eligible to create your own reporter’s notebook in the Narcosphere website, where you can share your own reporting and analysis. You’ll know you are part of the solution to today’s corporate and statist media. And because the Fund is an IRS-approved 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization, your contributions are deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Most of all, you’ll help a veteran journalist and community organizer use his talents to cultivate the next generation of journalists who will act as force multipliers and cover the under-reported stories of the Americas. And that, in turn, will free him to devote more time and attention to The Field. What could be a better outcome than that?

You can donate today online via this link.

Or you can send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism

PO Box 241

Natick, MA 01760 USA

In peace and friendship,

Allan Brauer

If you respond to Allan’s call with a donation of your own, use the comments section here to tell what you’ve pledged. That can be contagious in encouraging others to do the same.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming, more urgent today than yesterday….

By Al Giordano

Now they've really done it. On the same day that the Honduran coup regime detained six foreign diplomats from the Organization of American States (OAS) - two US officials, two Canadian, one Colombian and Chilean OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza - for six hours in the Toncontin International Airport, barring their entrance into Honduras, it has made public the following decree, which bans freedom of assembly, transit, the press and orders National Police and the Armed Forces to arrest and detain any person suspected of exercising those rights.

There really really isn't much editorial comment necessary to explain what this means. Read the decree yourself, which we have just translated into English:

Decree:

Article 1. For a period of 45 days beginning with this decree’s publication, the Constitutional rights of Articles 69, 72, 81 and 84, are suspended.

Article 2. The Armed Forces will support, together or separately with the National Police, when the situation requires, to execute the necessary plans to maintain the order and security of the Republic.

Article 3. The following is prohibited:

First: Freedom of transit, which will be restricted according to the parameters established by press releases broadcast on all radio and TV stations by the President of the Republic, which will be in effect in all national territory and during curfews, with the exception of cargo transport, ambulances, and urban traffic in the cities excluded in said communiqués, and medical personell and nurses that in those cities work during curfew hours.

Second: All public meetings not authorized by police or military authorities.

Third: Publication in any media, spoken, written or televised, of information that offends human dignity, public officials, or criticizes the law and the government resolutions, or any style of attack against the public order and peace. CONATEL (the Honduran communications commission), through the National Police and the Armed Forces, is authorized to suspend any radio station, television channel or cable system that does not adjust its programming to the present decree.

Article 4. It is ordered:

First: Detain all persons who are found outside of the established orders of circulation, or that in any manner are suspected by police and military authorities of damaging people or property, those that associate with the goal of committing criminal acts or that place their own lives in danger. All detainees will be read their rights, and at the same time must be brought to be booked in a police station of the country, identifying all persons detained, their motives, the hour of arrest and release from the police station, recording the physical condition of the detainee, to avoid future accusations of supposed crimes of torture.

Second: All persons detained must remain c onfined in the legally established detention centers.

Third: All public offices, national, state and municipal, that have been occupied by demonstrators or have persons inside of them engaging in illegal activities will be cleared.

Fourth: All Secretaries of State, decentralized institutions, municipalities and other state organisms must place themselves at the orders of the National Police and Armed Forces without any equivocation, along with all means at their disposal, for the development of these operations.

Article 5. The present Decree becomes law immediately, being duly published in the Official Daily “La Gaceta” and will be sent to the National Congress to be made law.

Ordered from the Presidential Palace in the City of Tegucigalpa, municipality of the Central District, on the 22^nd of September of 2009.

ROBERTO MICHELETTI BAIN

CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

The four articles of the Honduran Constitution that have been declared suspended for the next 45 days by this decree are:

Article 69: Personal liberty is inviolable and only through law can it be restricted or suspended temporarily.

Article 72: The expression of thought by any media, without censorship, is free. Those who interfere with this right or through direct or indirect means restrict or impede the communication and circulation of ideas and opinions will held responsible by the law.

Article 81: Every person has the right to circulate freely, leave, enter and remain in national territory.

No one can be obligated to move from his home or residence except in special cases in accord with the law.

Article 84: No one can be arrested or detained except  through written order by competent authorities, executed through legal formalities and for motives established by law.

Notwithstanding, open delinquency can be apprehended by any person only to deliver the delinquent to the authorities.

The arrested or detained person must be informed clearly of his rights and the facts of the accusations against him, and, additionally, authorities must permit him to communicate his detention to a family member or person of his choice.

In other words, out of 375 articles in the Honduran Constitution, it is revealing that those most basic liberties are the four that Micheletti and his coup regime have chosen to suspend for the next 45 days.

Those 45 days happen to coincide with more than half of the remaining period until the November 29 "election" that it insists will be carried out fairly and freely. I guess one can theoretically campaign for his or her candidate, but only with a written permission note, according to this decree, from police or military authorities.

The rogue regime that just instituted this decree enjoys the support of some US citizens, including lobbyist Lanny Davis in Washington, DC, a gringo expat on the Honduran island of Roatan named Mitch Cummins who leads a global PR effort by a small group of US expats in Honduras to defend the coup, the cowardly and serially dishonest (and not very bright) anonymous blogger who claims to be a US citizen in the La Ceiba Honduras area that goes by the pseudonym of La Gringa Blogocito, and, now, a new defender of this authoritarian state terrorism: The US public relations firm of Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates has just received, according to US Department of Justice records, a $290,000 dollar contract to advise the coup regime.

Given the irrational and authoritarian move by Micheletti and his regime today announcing this decree - one that is apparently already a week old but was kept clandestine until now - the aforementioned companies and individuals ought to be challenged to clarify if they still support a regime that is capable of the atrocities and war crimes it has just announced, in advance, today. And if they do not loudly proclaim their severance from the regime's latest attack on basic human rights and liberties, they, too, will be judged harshly by history, present and future, as sharing in the responsibility for what happens next, by the freedom loving peoples of Honduras and all of América.

Here is the second page of the decree, from the official coup regime "Gaceta" or gazette, so you can read it an weep for democracy, liberty and justice in Spanish, too:

Finally, a prediction: This will not stand. And even if the coup regime eliminates every newspaper and radio and TV and cable network inside Honduras with the new powers it has granted itself through this decree, this online newspaper, with a server far from its grasp, and a thousand allies and reporters on the ground, will not sleep as we continue to break its attempted information blockade in Spanish and in English both within Honduras and throughout this hemisphere and world.

Monday morning update: Military soldiers entered the studios of Radio Globo in Tegucigalpa this morning by force and took it off the air. Our correspondents throughout Honduras confirm that its signals are silenced today.

Our friend Latuff, the political cartoonist in Brazil, was listening at 5:27 a.m. Tegucigalpa time this morning and recorded the final moments on the air:

The text says, in Portuguese and Spanish: "Exact moment in which Radio Globo of Honduras was taken off the air by coup soldiers, Monday, September 28 of 2009."

9:14 a.m. Tegucigalpa (11:14 a.m. ET): Note that the "gaceta oficial" above has contradicting information about when it takes effect. On the one hand it says "immediately upon publication" and on the other hand it says the text "will be sent to the Congress to be made law." The Honduran Congress has taken no such action. But the coup soldiers went ahead and busted down the doors at Radio Globo anyway. These monsters don't even respect their own make-believe rules and laws.

By Al Giordano

On the website of today’s daily La República – an important newspaper in Perú – a YouTube video by Honduras’ Gremio de Cineastas (a filmmaker’s association) that we published on Narco News on Wednesday - and something we reported from that video - has now launched a national polemic in that Andean country, including a threat of “legal action” by the country’s Government Minister against those of us that reported it.

The video shows Honduran coup regime police invading the Hato de Enmedio neighborhood of Tegucigalpa shooting tear gas canisters clearly stamped, “National Police of Perú.”

This is what your servant wrote at the time:

“We can also see in that video the revelation that the tear gas canisters shot by the National Police yesterday were stamped as property of the government of Perú, suggesting strongly that Peruvian President Alan García is a participant in smuggling arms to the Honduran coup regime. Something he will now have to answer for to the Organization of American States in general, and his neighbor Brazil in particular.”

The story then got picked up by the Brazilian national newsweekly Carta Capital and then by Peruvian dailies La Primera and La República, causing the Congress of that country to launch an investigation and demand that the Government Minister appear at a hearing to testify.

La República reported the story and then asked:

How could these gases arrive in Honduras if they belong to the Peruvian police?

A little while later, after Government Minister Octavio Salazar issued his threat of "legal action," the newspaper put a line through that sentence, like this:

How could these gases arrive in Honduras if they belong to the Peruvian police?

And the newspaper's reporter added this text:

I now publish the denials by the Government Minister about tear gas bombs with the seal of the National Police of Perú used by the government of Honduras:

1. The Perú National Police have not sold, nor donated, nor delivered any kind of material in general nor tear gas bombs in particular to the government of Honduras.

2. Through corresponding channels, the Government Minister solicited official information from Honduran authorities about this matter.

3. The Honduras Security Minister, Mr. Jorge A. Rodas Gamero, has responded in writing that, “at no moment was this kind of material obtained, nor donated, nor in error, by the National Police of Perú.”

4. The Honduran official said that the tear gas materials was obtained by its government from the Honduran business “Representaciones Comercio e Inversiones (RCI),” which had obtained it from the business, “Combined Systems, Inc.” of the United States.

5. Rodas Gamero informed that, while reviewing the tear gas grenades found that “on the original wrapping was a banner with the name of the National Police of Perú, but the sale to our country was covered by another with the grenade’s specifications.”

6. The tear gas grenades mentioned with this ribbon had to do with an order that the business Combined Systems was going to send to the National Police of Perú. The contract between them was signed in August 2007. However, in October 2007, the contract we canceled by the Government Ministry due to noncompliance with the norms of public contracts. As a consequence, the PNP never received the tear gas material.

7. The Government Ministry reserves the right to initiate pertinent legal actions to preserve the image of the country and the police institution.

La República also reports:

“The Congress of the Republic has filed a motion for the Interior Minister, Octavio Salazar, to appear at a hearing and explain the presence of Peruvian tear gas bombs in the hands of the de facto government of Honduras.”

The US company, Combined Systems, Inc., that the Honduran regime says is the source of its gas grenades, is based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. Through its subsidiary website with the ironic name of less-lethal.com, it deals in chemical munitions, impact munitions, flash-bang devices and multi-effect grenades, arms launchers and other such toys, which, whether through Perú or not, seem to have no problem getting into the hands of a coup dictatorship that has fetishized chemical warfare against its own people and even a foreign embassy.

In the comments section under the La República story, reader Mario Antonio Young Rabines made sure to remind the Minister of whom that legal action would properly be directed toward:

“Spacio Libre, if it has the merit of having posted the video last night, wasn’t the first news organization to report the news. The first, if I’m not mistaken, was The Field, from the pen of Al Giordano of the US-based Narcosphere network. In the article… Giordano made reference to different aspects of recent happenings in Honduras that the mainstream media doesn’t pay much attention to, including the ‘curious’ finding in Honduras of a tear gas bomb with the seal of the Peru National Police…

“Here in Latin America, it was a renowned Brazilian journalist, Antonio Luiz M.C. Costa, editor of the weekly Carta Capital, who first reported the information from The Field… and he posted it on his Facebook page at 15:10 p.m. Later, this writer, Frido Martin, had read the wall of the Brazilian journalist and put a link to The Field on his Facebook wall, too, at 16:20 hours. A few minutes later, a journalist from the Peruvian daily La Primera was put in contact with me and received the link to this information. La Primera is thus the first print daily to publish this information. At 16:49, on my own Facebook wall, I linked also to the YouTube video that shows the ‘Peruvian’ tear gas bomb (this video had been in Al Giordano’s article). Hours later, at night, Spacio Libre put the story on its front page. On its Facebook wall, Spacio Libre hung the information at 22:06 which can be proved at this link. Finally, from Spacio Libre, La República published the information.”

Although that account reads like instructions to the Peruvian Minister about whom such “legal action” should be taken against – that would be us, Sir, and we can hardly contain our excitement at your threat – it also serves as an excellent diagram of how information moves quickly across the Internet and how stories become internationalized: from independent video makers of the Gremio de Cineastas in Honduras to Narco News to Brazil’s major news weekly, to two daily newspapers and some web pages in Peru… all in a matter of hours… And now the Peruvian Congress wants an investigation into how the Honduran regime got its simian mitts on tear gas canisters with National Police logos on them.

That's fútbol, Narco News style, in which the information ball bounces from Honduras through somewhere in América, ricochets through Sao Paulo then Lima then, GOOOOOOLLLL¡

Reporting for the Peruvian daily La Primera, Raúl Weiner wrote:

“The story is very serious, to have clandestine relations between a government that daily proclaims itself democratic and the coup plotters condemned by the world, behind the backs of all Peru. The situation rarifies even more because a country as important as Brazil has taken a decisive role in the current phase of the Honduran crisis, decisively pushing the return of President Zelaya, and Peru appears to be in the opposing camp, providing the weapons to save Micheletti.”

If what the Peruvian government claims is true (and we will continue our journalistic work to find out) – that weapons made by Combined Systems, Inc. found their ways into the hands of the Honduran coup regime without the help of Perú, but still brandishing its National Police force’s name – it would seem that said “legal action” might be better directed toward whomever is responsible for shipping weapons to an illegitimate regime with the Peruvian National Police name still stamped on them. There can't be much love for Perú or its National Police this week in the barrio of Hato de Enmedio, that's for sure.

This would not be the first time that matters of tear gas and crowd control have caused scandals and polemics regarding the National Police of Perú. On June 20, Kristin Bricker reported for Narco News on the June 5 massacre by those same National Police of unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples, and how those police were trained in “riot control” with US drug war funds.

The new attention to tear gas canisters in Honduras marked “National Police of Perú” also opens up some not-so-old wounds in Peruvian political and police circles. In 2007, Perú’s Comptroller General did indeed nullify contracts signed by the National Police with Combined Systems, Inc. because they did not follow government procedure for such purchases. That led to revelations that the then-Government Minister Luis Alva Castro had lied when he justified the purchases due to a supposed “imminent” situation in which the National Police would have no tear gas left to beat down the country’s indigenous and social movements. But it turned out that the PNP had, at the time, in storage more than 96,000 such canisters. Furthermore, officials alleged the contract with Combined Systems, Inc. constituted an overpayment of $1.5 million dollars based on prices the company had offered Perú for the same products two years prior.

In the wake of the Peruvian tear gas scandal, twenty public officials were fired, including the Logistics Director of the National Police. Unpaid for the gas grenades it did ship to Perú, Combined Systems, Inc. reportedly attempted to pressure the Peruvian government through Washington and the negotiations over a trade agreement between the two countries.

During that scandal, current Government Minister Octavio Salazar – the man who yesterday threatened “legal action” against those who report on the tear gas canisters marked “Perú” in Honduras – was himself an official in the National Police, and at the end of 2007 was promoted by President Alan García as its national police chief. This summer, he was promoted again, to be Government Minister, the top non-elected official in the land, which a former government minister, Remigio Hernani, called a “disgrace” due to open investigations regarding Salazar and 41 vehicles assigned to the National Police and alleged embezzlement of funds.

So, bring on the Congressional investigation. And if Salazar wishes to file a “legal action” against this newspaper, bring that on, too. So much interesting information about Perú and its National Police and its own use of chemical weapons against its own people – as well as how it procures those arms and what happens to them after that - would come out during the discovery process to make Peruvians and people all over the hemisphere and the world better informed about all of it.

Still, it is interesting to note the speed with which Honduran coup officials came to the defense of Salazar and the García government in Perú yesterday to confirm their claims that Perú isn’t helping the coup regime. One wonders whether Honduran coup officials would have been so quick to jump to the aid of governments from Brasilia to San Salvador to Managua to Buenos Aires to Quito to Caracas to La Paz to Santiago to Asunción that nobody suspects could be playing footsie under the table with the Honduran coup regime. It's modus operandi has been, rather, to seek to expel diplomats of those countries, or keep them from entering Honduras, or to engage in chemical warfare against one of their embassies. That the coup mongers in Tegucigalpa so quickly lent themselves to Salazar’s public relations defensive is perhaps a matter that the Peruvian Congressional investigation underway will help sort out. Where there is smoke, there is often tear gas, too.

(Narco News staff reporter Kristin Bricker assisted with the reporting of this story.)

By Al Giordano

After today’s emergency session of the United Nations Security Council in New York, US Ambassador Susan Rice emerged to read a warning to the Honduras coup regime:

"We condemn acts of intimidation against the Brazilian embassy and call upon the de facto government of Honduras to cease harassing the Brazilian embassy.”

The wording is unequivocal. After investigating the claims (and the de facto regime’s denials) of constant technological and chemical attacks on the diplomatic seat in Tegucigalpa, and illegal impediment of ingress and egress to and from the embassy, where legitimate President Manuel Zelaya and at least 85 aides, supporters and some members of the news media are sheltered, the UN Security Council has concluded that said harassment i s real and it is ongoing.

If the coup regime believed that its use of chemical and sonic devices would render its attacks less visible, it has already lost that gamble.

Article 31 of The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 is titled “Inviolability of the consular premises,” and states:

“Consular premises shall be inviolable to the extent provided in this article… The authorities of the receiving State shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of the sending State… the receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity… The consular premises, their furnishings, the property of the consular post and its means of transport shall be immune from any form of requisition for purposes of national defence or public utility.”

Article 33 states: “The consular archives and documents shall be inviolable at all times and wherever they may be.”

Article 34, titled “Freedom of movement,” states: “the receiving State shall ensure freedom of movement and travel in its territory to all members of the consular post."

Article 35, titled “Freedom of communication,” states:

“The receiving State shall permit and protect freedom of communication on the part of the consular post for all official purposes. In communicating with the Government, the diplomatic missions and other consular posts, wherever situated, of the sending State, the consular post may employ all appropriate means, including diplomatic or consular couriers, diplomatic or consular bags and messages in code or cipher… The official correspondence of the consular post shall be inviolable. Official correspondence means all correspondence relating to the consular post and its functions… The consular bag shall be neither opened nor detained.”

In light of those international laws, the device you see in the photograph up top, deployed by Honduran coup regime security forces at the gates of the Brazilian Embassy, offers a smoking gun of proof that the regime is violating the Vienna Convention.

Narco News and its team of technical engineers and counter-surveillance consultants has identified the apparatus as the LRAD-X Remote Long Range Acoustic Device, manufactured by the American Technologies Corporation.

The instrument is an offensive weapon, used on US Navy warships and by other nations, which can emit sounds that, “Through the use of powerful voice commands and deterrent tones, large safety zones can be created while determining the intent and influencing the behavior of an intruder.”

The LRAD-X machine can shoot sounds of up to 151 decibels. According to the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders sounds less loud than those it produces can cause Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL): “Sources of noise that can cause NIHL include motorcycles, firecrackers, and small firearms, all emitting sounds from 120 to 150 decibels. Long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss. The louder the sound, the shorter the time period before NIHL can occur.”

The front of the device looks like this:

And this is the back of the device:

In other words, the LRAD-X is the source of the high-pitched and pain-inducing sounds that have been fired both at those inside the Brazilian Embassy and turned around when anti-coup demonstrators have tried to come close to it. As such, it interferes with the Vienna protected inviolability of the Embassy and its free communications.

Under international law, this violation already serves as sufficient justification for intervention by UN Peacekeeping Forces of the multinational kind that the country of Brazil has led in Haiti.

But that’s not all: Narco News has received the following photos of a C-guard LP Cellular telephone jamming device designed for low power indoor use.  The black out range can be set to cover an area of 5 to 80 meters. The device was found inside the premises of the Brazilian embassy yesterday. Here it is, front:

And back:

(On Monday a large multitude of people, including journalists, including some from pro-coup news agencies, were able to enter the Brazilian Embassy to welcome or interview President Zelaya. It is possible that the cell phone jamming device was placed inside the premises then.)

Sold by Netline under the product category of "Counter Terror Electronic Warfare," the device, the company boasts, "C-Guard LP cellphone jammers block all required cellular network standards simultaneously: GSM, CDMA, TDMA, UMTS (3G), Nextel, 2.4 GHz and more."

The deployment of a cell phone jamming device is in direct violation of the Vienna Convention articles above protecting the inviolability of embassy and consular communications. What’s more, sources inside the embassy that are in constant direct contact with Narco News testify that prior to locating and removing the device, cell phones of the President, his aides and others in the building were impeded by much interference.

Additionally, around noon today, President Zelaya called a press conference inside the embassy, during which a medical doctor testified that two of the people staying inside the embassy displayed symptoms of bleeding from the nose or the stomach, and that a larger number of them displayed symptoms of nausea, throat and sinus irritation and related problems that can be caused by neuro-toxic gases used in chemical warfare that are also prohibited by international treaties.

Zelaya said, calmly and deliberatively, that upon awaking at 7:30 a.m., he had felt an unfamiliar irritation, “first in the mouth, next in the throat, and later a small pain in the stomach. I drank water and milk. And I came out to find others feeling sick. Since then we’ve been trying to figure out where it is coming from.”

Understanding the dramatic nature of this kind of warfare and its capacity to generate panic, fear and anger, Zelaya urged members of the anti-coup civil resistance, “Please, do not attack the police. Maintain yourselves at a respectable distance. Don’t come near enough to be beaten. Protest your grievances peacefully.”

Displaying the cell phone jamming device, President Zelaya said, “This apparatus is installed to interfere and practically act against all telephones inside the Embassy. We practically have a sonic intervention that could also be affecting the health and nerves of people inside."

“They have also aimed frequencies of high intensity against the Embassy. This is also to affect our psychological state. Other machines are installed in the neighboring houses, where the owners have been kicked out and the military has occupied them.”

Hortensia “Pichu” Zelaya, also inside the embassy, sent out this photograph, below, taken earlier today of a device, partly covered by a green plastic bag, that security forces erected from one of the neighboring properties in clear view and air stream of the Brazilian embassy. “As soon as we discovered it,” she wrote, “they immediately took it down.”

Father Andrés Tamayo, also inside the embassy, told reporters at the press conference that he witnessed that device first hand. It is not yet known what exactly it is, or why it was accompanied by a plastic bag, or whether some kind of substance or chemical agent or gas was inside the bag and aimed at the Brazilian embassy.

These evidences and the eye-witness testimonies, including that of the doctor and the priest, demonstrate convincingly that while the Honduran coup regime issues emphatic denials of such attacks on the sovereign embassy of Brazil, it is clearly engaging in them nonetheless. The UN Security Council should not need any high tech apparatus of its own to be able to see and hear what is really going on at ground level, and respond accordingly to the coup regime's mockery of it.

Update 5:08 p.m. Tegucigalpa (7:08 p.m. ET): The coup regime held a "cadena nacional" (mandatory broadcast on all radio, TV and cable channels) this afternoon to deny having engaged in any chemical warfare and to say it would allow the international Red Cross and Dr. Andres Pavon, a human rights leader, into the embassy to check the health of those inside. A group of doctors, including Pavon, just emerged from the examinations and reported the following:

That the symptoms were definitely caused by some kind of "contaminant." Upon review of the photos of the unidentified device in the final photograph above, Pavon concludes that it is a humidifier and that the plastic bag contained some kind of liquid to put where water usually goes, and that it was the likely cause of the contamination of the embassy. It was not concluded whether the contaminant weapon was chemical or biological.

The doctors also confirmed, for Radio Globo, that UN officials had entered the Embassy with them to participate in the investigation.

The coup regime has just called a military curfew for most of the country's population from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. tonight.

5:32 p.m.: We've just confirmed independently from a source inside the building that UN officials have entered the Brazilian embassy.

By Al Giordano

When they ask us on a day not very far from our own, “What was a newspaper, Gramps?” we will take them to a building in Washington DC called The Newseum, along the National Mall, across from the Smithsonian, and reminisce about times gone by when the day for a majority of citizens would begin with coffee and something once called newsprint.

And we’ll wipe a tear from our eye and explain, “This was a front page, Sonny… And this was a newsstand, Missy… And Buster, that statue represents a news boy!” And our grandchildren will tug on our coats and say things like, “When are we going to see the original dinosaur bones, Grandma, the ones across the Mall?”

Or maybe there will still be newspapers then. But that can only happen if the public begins to see, as it once did, that journalism serves its interests, and not somebody else’s. And until newspapers and other media stop being so damn mercenary and turn themselves over to the people, they’ll continue to be our own era’s wooly mammoths, flailing about in the tar pit.

Just as an offensive began today at the United Nations to make what should be extinct – such as military coups d’etat like that being attempted in Honduras – extinct, and what should be alive – such as authentic democracy, like that which grew into a civil resistance in Honduras – alive, a similar initiative has been launched from somewhere in a country called América. It’s our international teach-in on authentic journalism, which will make an evolutionary leap this coming February of 2010 on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula with The School of Authentic Journalism. (If you’d like an application to be part of it, send an email to app@narconews.com.)

All summer long while we were reporting from Honduras about its vibrant and historic civil resistance movement, the daily newspapers there kept printing headlines, over and over again, that urged the readers not to worry about the international sanctions against their coup regime. They reminded, again and again, that the United Nations was continuing to fund their sham “elections” planned for November 29. Multiple times they repeated this, usually in giant headlines on page one.

But on this day in history, September 23, 2009, something historic actually happened. Brazilian President Lula da Silva – his country’s embassy in Tegucigalpa under attack in recent days by soldiers and National Police of an usurper regime, with attempts to cut water and electricity, block food and medicine, and the use of a “weird sonar apparatus” to cause mental pain and anguish to Honduras’ legitimate president and his legitimate government, huddled inside – went to the United Nations in New York and called for an emergency session of its Security Council to defend its sovereign territory.

A few hours later, UN General Secretary Ban ki-Moon announced that the United Nations has suspended its aid to the faux-elections in Honduras because they are, quote, “not credible.”

And if that development surprises you, kind reader, it might be perhaps because you found yourself dependent on commercial media – or other kinds of mercenary spinners - for information about the Honduras crisis that turned out, likewise, to be “not credible.”

Maybe you heard such confusing claims as “the coup is not a coup,” or, “Constitutional rights must be suspended to save the Constitution,” or, “a neighborhood that organizes to defend itself from military invasion is not an organized people, but a ‘riot,’” or, “what happens in Honduras is really about Caracas,” or, “what happens in Honduras is really about Washington,” or, “war is peace” or other such yarns.

Of course, if you’ve been following these pages here all summer long you know better than that. And you have a better grasp of the real story because authentic journalists went out and listened and looked and took notes of what was inside all these things. And they didn’t just tell you. They showed you what was going on down below, while most of the others tried to keep your attention up on the circus of power up above.

And if you supported that authentic journalism, you are likely proud to be part of it. (And you can become even prouder now, that it might clone, replicate, reproduce and plant new strong trees with your continued support.)

And just as some folks somewhere in a country called América had to go to New York today to set the record straight, and turn things around again so that history will soon become right side up anew, we’re going to Washington on October 15 with an equally ambitious task: to show (not just tell) that journalism ain’t dead yet. It’s just flailing about in the tar pit, its bones auditioning for a future Smithsonian exhibit, and it needs more than a helping hand, but, rather, the hard work of many hands, organized, to have any hope of survival at all.

(If it's hard to read the poster up above, here's the short version: Dr. Howard Barrell and I will dissect recent media coverage of civil resistance movements from Honduras to Iran on October 15, from noon to 2 p.m., at that very same Newseum building, and you can RSVP with an email to heidid@nonviolent-conflict.org)

The future of journalism – if it has one – is one of civil resistance.

Wouldn’t this be the right time and place to finally try to understand what civil resistance is, since, if you're a journalist, your survival now depends on it?

Fellow and sister journalists: If you want our craft to survive, if you want our children and grandchildren to respect what you did in this vocation, or maybe even continue with it, you had better learn to look below and understand how civil resistance really works. Because if you don’t fast come to understand things like the primacy of listening, the superiority of strategic planning, the necessity of public support and participation, and how those things are constructed, organized and maintained collectively, that tar pit that is currently up to your and your industry's neck will soon consume you, and it, too.

By Al Giordano

D.R. 2009 Latuff.

When Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva addressed this morning's UN General Assembly in New York, he said:

"Without political will, we will see more coups such as the one that toppled Manuel Zelaya in Honduras."

I don't know what is so hard for some observers to understand about that statement, which comes from the elected president of a country that itself was victimized by a military coup d'etat in 1964. Brazil, like every other democracy on the planet, has a legitimate self interest in making sure that no military coup succeeds, especially in its own hemisphere.

Like the 2009 coup in Honduras, the 1964 putsch had a "civilian" gloss when Brazil's vice president ascended to the presidency but under terms dictated by the military. (Much like the top Honduran military lawyer told the Miami Herald in July that "It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That's impossible." That was a smoking gun that demonstrated how the Honduras coup regime's claims to be a "democracy" led by civilians are utter rubbish: When the Armed Forces dictate that the people can't elect a government of the left, or it will always risk a violent coup - which is exactly what that military official said - they are dictating the terms. That's where the word dictatorship comes from.)

Fair and free elections are impossible under such a regime. In recent days, the Honduran coup of "president" Roberto Micheletti has demonstrated, again, that it is incapable democratic governance. Peaceful Hondurans came to the Brazilian Embassy to greet their only elected President, Manuel Zelaya, and they were violently driven away with water cannon tanks, tear gas, billy clubs, and rubber bullets. National Police then followed the dispersed crowd into the popular barrios to wound and maim them, and invaded homes that provided them refuge. That led to scenes like this one in the neighborhood of Hato de Enmedio, and in more than 20 heavily populated slums in and around Tegucigalpa yesterday:

Clueless desk editors like those at the New York Times titled these conflicts "Riots in Honduras." But you don't need to be able to understand Spanish to see and hear, in this video, that, distinct from rioters, the young people of the neighborhood that came out and violated the military curfew to defend their neighborhood from this police invasion know and have memorized complicated political slogans and rhymes which they chanted in unison. "Riots" are disorganized explosions. This neighborhood, and others like it, however, have been forced by the realities of the coup to organize themselves to a greater extent than ever before.

In neighborhoods like Hato de Enmedio, where a majority of Honduras' citizens live, you can also see in the video see that not even the main street in the barrio is paved. Many of the homes have dirt floors as well. And if a citizen is harmed by a robber or predator, you can call the police, but they won't come. People who live in neighborhoods like this only see the police when they invade, like they did yesterday, to enforce an unenforceable curfew on people who, if they obeyed the curfew, would starve of hunger. A curfew is unsustainable on a people that live hand to mouth, day to day.

We can also see in that video the revelation that the tear gas canisters shot by the National Police yesterday were stamped as property of the government of Perú, suggesting strongly that Peruvian President Alan García is a participant in smuggling arms to the Honduran coup regime. Something he will now have to answer for to the Organization of American States in general, and his neighbor Brazil in particular.

But back to Lula of Brazil. At the UN today, he said:

"The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil's diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras."

The United Nations isn't likely to ignore Lula's plea. As a body, it owes Brazil heavily for its leadership of UN Peacekeeping forces in Haiti, and also for its unique role as a respected organizer and spokes-country of "developing world" states as a force for global social and economic justice. Wealthier nations, meanwhile, from the US to China to Europe, are greatly dependent (or would like to be more so) on the gigantic consumer market that is Brazil. In eight short years, Lula has greatly risen Brazil's status and respect across the globe by playing these factors upon each other very shrewdly.

So when Reuters publishes, as it has, what it calls an "analysis" titled "Brazil's risky role in Honduras may backfire," its author, one Raymond Colitt, doesn't know his ass from his elbow. It's a pure propaganda piece, based on the faulty presumption that Brazil's goal is to mediate some kind of negotiated solution in Honduras. "Analysts" like that can only be called such, with a straight face, by adding quotation marks. Any fool can see that the Honduran crisis has moved to a level of dysfunction that is beyond a negotiated solution. It is a raw power struggle now between a coup regime trying desperately to hold on to power and an increasingly organized people that is peeling away the layers of its support.

A similarly clueless "analysis" came from Sara Miller Llana and Andrew Downing of the Christian Science Monitor, titled, "Did Zelaya Snub Hugo Chávez for Brazil?" Here's the first clue: when reporters speak of "snubs" they are merely gossip columnists, not journalists. What is far more likely is that Brazil has emerged as the interlocutor between Venezuela and the United States, whose intelligence agencies would not work together, but could be effectively coordinated so they don't trip all over each other by a party that is friendly with both of them and has, similarly, its own top shelf intelligence agencies, that being Brazil. If that is what we're witnessing here - all sides would deny they had any role in the impressive operation that returned Zelaya to Honduras while fooling the coup regime into thinking he was in Nicaragua, of course - then nobody's feeling "snubbed," except perhaps the leaders of Mexico and Colombia, who in the past had been the interlocutors between Washington and Latin America.

From that perspective, Brazil has already triumphed in this equation. It has emerged as the community organizer among nations in the hemisphere: the one country that has enough trust from so many different sides that don't really trust each other that it can coordinate them effectively.

The Honduras coup regime now has to come to terms with the reality that it can't touch the Brazilian Embassy, or it may become an unwilling host of some of those UN Peacekeeping forces that have Brazil as one of their leading nations.

And as that reality sinks in - that Micheletti and his Simian Council are powerless against this equation - the regime will continue to shed layers of support. The simple presence of President Zelaya, day in, day out, in Tegucigalpa, protected by the Brazilian Embassy, strips the regime of any pretense of inevitability or claim to be the eventual winner.

As with last night's regime press conference - held embarrassingly and hastily in English, as if there wasn't time to translate the incoherent drivel that US lobbyist Lanny Davis wrote for them to recite - the Honduras coup regime is now in flail mode. All it can do is attempt pathetic media stunts like that and turn up the brutality of its repression of its own people: a formula for continued repudiation and total self-destruction.

Update 2:23 p.m. Tegucigalpa (4:23 p.m. ET): Here's a sanction that will have a huge psychological impact in Honduras, where futbol is just about the only respite left from the coup's horrors:

The Oct. 10 World Cup qualifying match between Honduras and the USA may not take place in Honduras. In political turmoil after the military's ousting of President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras is cordoned off to most visitors. It has closed airports, implemented a curfew and set up roadblocks so that a roadway from El Salvador serves as the only entrance into the country. The crisis has raised doubts about the safety of playing the USA's scheduled World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula, Honduras's second largest city and industrial center.

"We are obviously monitoring the situation closely and are in discussions with the appropriate officials with Concacaf and FIFA, who will determine if the location of the match will be moved outside of Honduras," Neil Buethe, a spokesman for the United States Soccer Federation, told the New York Times. A final decision will be made by FIFA  and Concacaf officials.

If it decides to move the game, FIFA will likely opt for a neighboring Central American host, perhaps Guatemala. As another possibility, FIFA could move the game to the United States while considering it a home game for the Honduran soccer federation.

Really, what can the coup regime say? That it will close airports and impose martial law but the FIFA should still hold soccer games there?

The bottom line: A country that can't even host a soccer game successfully certainly can't hold a fair or free election.

3:20 p.m.: Another layer of the onion rings around the coup regime begins to cry:

Honduras’s nationwide curfew is costing the Central American nation’s economy $50 million a day, said Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the nation’s chapter of the Business Council of Latin America.

The country’s $14.1 billion economy has lost up to $200 million in investment since the military ousted Manuel Zelaya from office on June 28, Canahuati said in a telephone interview today.

“Those are numbers that aren’t sustainable in Honduras,” Canahuati said from San Pedro Sula. “We’re a poor country, and many people won’t eat if there’s no work.”

Poor babe. Maybe Canahuati should have thought about that before helping to orchestrate the coup, put Micheletti in power, and then have his organization hire Lanny Davis to screw it all up in Washington! Yo, Sherlock; it's like that old flower child poster: Curfews are not healthy for oligarchs and other living things. If the poor can't go out on the street to slave in your sweatshops or buy the junk produced there, it hits you, too.

5:35 p.m.: The coup regime - after two days of blocking Hondurans from traveling on all the roads to Tegucigalpa, after imposing curfews night and day, after beating up anybody it could lay a nightstick on who came to welcome the legitimate president or redress their grievances - has just called a pro-coup demonstration for tomorrow in the capital. You can bet there won't be any blockades or curfews or repression and the coup soldiers may even encourage the provocation of incidents outside the Brazilian Embassy.

But the resistance isn't stupid. Already the call has gone out via Radio Globo to the nation: Since the coup plotters have urged their protesters to dress in the color red, the members of the resistance should do the same, rent buses, and travel the highways to the capital, telling the cops at the roadblocks - if they even put them up tomorrow - that they're coming to join the pro-coup rally. And that will get them into the capital, for events on the following days once the "march of the perfumados" has gone back home.

This, again, points to how this regime is incapable of holding fair and free elections. When one side assembles, it brings out the blockades, the cops, the tear gas and billy clubs. When the others side does it, the regime rolls out the red carpet and even pays for it. Anybody that claims fair elections can be held in that climate of violence, intimidation and cheating is not really a friend of democracy, no matter how many times they mouth the word.