The Field on the Narcosphere

By Al Giordano

Hondurans in civil resistance surrounded the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet their returning president. This morning, coup regime troops attacked them violently, sending 24 wounded to hospitals. D.R. 2009 Mariachiloko, Chiapas Indymedia.

The Honduran coup regime’s 26-hour martial curfew upon the entire country effectively places 7.5 million Honduran citizens – men, women, children and elders – under house arrest. They are prohibited from going to work, to the store, or to walk down the street to visit a neighbor. Anybody on the street is subject to arrest, for violation of the curfew.

If this happened to you, what would you call it?

The stated pretext for this heavy handed maneuver is nothing more or less than that the regime, its “president,” and its security forces have been embarrassed before their countrymen and the world. Yesterday morning’s claims by coup “president” Roberto Micheletti that news reports could not possibly be true that legitimate President Manuel Zelaya was back in town, that the regime’s intelligence forces had his every step followed and “knew” he was “in a hotel suite in Managua,” became egg on Micheletti’s face when Zelaya appeared from the rooftop of the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet a multitude of citizens that want their elected president restored.

The military curfew has no practical reason. It will not bring the expulsion, anew, of Zelaya from national territory. It will not hasten his capture by the regime. And it does not make the regime any more legitimate. To the contrary, it demonstrates, again, its repressive, anti-democratic and usurper character. It is a desperate act meant to punish the entire Honduran people for, after 86 days, not “getting with the program” and backing the coup. It is a tantrum by the man-child Micheletti to lash out and insist, “I’m in charge, here,” but it only serves to underscore, again, that he is not in control of the country or its people.

Thousands violated the curfew blatantly last night keeping watch outside the Brazilian Embassy. In the morning, the coup’s security forces entered, shot tear gas canisters at the crowd (and over the Embassy wall) and violently attacked the peaceful protesters. Local hospitals report 24 wounded from the invasion. National Police, additionally, waged a separate attack on the human rights organization COFADEH (family members of the disappeared and detained) at 8 a.m. this morning, launching tear gas missiles through its glass windows.

Radio Globo now reports that the same Supreme Court that contorted the Honduran Constitution to create a legaloid curtain around the June 28 coup d’etat is now meeting to cook up its latest kangaroo jump: a court order to invade the Embassy – under International Law, Brazilian territory – to capture (or assassinate) President Zelaya. So large and irrational is the regime’s obsession with the presence of one solitary man in the country that it confines every citizen to his and her home and tears up the Constitution, again.

In a whining attempt to claim victory out of what is the coup regime’s single most stunning defeat to date, Micheletti had his US handler Lanny Davis whip up an op ed column published last night in the Washington Post. Here’s a quick translation from its hurried English to plain talk: “I did nothing wrong and why doesn’t anybody in the world understand me?” It is the speech of a child to mommy and daddy after he is caught stealing from the candy store again. From the first sentence, when he complains that, “Manuel Zelaya has surreptitiously returned to Honduras,” Micheletti seems to think that the world has forgotten that Zelaya very openly attempted to enter his own country twice this summer – announcing where and when in advance – and it was Micheletti who blocked an airport runway and sent troops to the border to keep the elected president out, even as he insisted that he wanted to place Zelaya under arrest.

“The international community has wrongfully condemned the events of June 28 and mistakenly labeled our country as undemocratic,” Micheletti lamented at the very hour he was ordering the 26 hour curfew. How could anybody possibly think that a warden that orders 7.5 million people to remain locked in their homes could somehow be “undemocratic?”

“Coups do not allow freedom of assembly, either. They do not guarantee freedom of the press, much less a respect for human rights,” wrote Micheletti, as his troops readied this morning’s attack on a free assembly and a human rights office, and just hours after he accused independent TV and radio stations of “media terrorism” for having reported the truth that Zelaya had returned (see Belén Fernández’s related report from Tegucigalpa today: Radio Globo and Channel 36 Announce the Return of Zelaya).

Micheletti’s column is easily recognizable to readers in the United States as coming from the same script that his lobbyist Lanny Davis used last year to insist, long after Secretary Clinton had lost the Democratic presidential nomination, that she was, in fact, winning. And it comes off just as pathetically.

Meanwhile, in the regime he calls a “democracy,” seven and a half million people are confined to their homes. Micheletti isn’t a “president.” He’s a two bit warden, coming to grips with the painful reality that he is neither a head of state, nor ready for prime time.

Update 2:46 p.m. Tegucigalpa (4:46 p.m. ET): Further showing his grand commitment to "democracy" and law, Micheletti's security forces are presently reading the search and seizure order through a megaphone to the Brazilian Embassy. It could be a bluff, but if Zelaya doesn't fall for it (and The Field predicts he won't), and the coup troops invade the Embassy, all hell is going to break loose on an international level, just as the United Nations General Assembly begins its most important session of the year in New York.

Brazil's foreign minister, in New York, has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. The US State Department has called on the de facto regime to respect Brazilian territory, as President Obama has just appointed US Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA), leader in the US Congress against the Honduran coup, to the US delegation at the UN session, perhaps an indication of some plans afoot up there.

Is the coup regime that desperate and stupid to commit an act of war against Brazilian territory? (Two words to ponder: Blue helmets.) We'll shortly find out, and report it here.

3:18 p.m.: Micheletti blinks:

Honduras' de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti, said on Tuesday he has no intention of confronting Brazil or entering its embassy where ousted President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge to avoid arrest.

"We will do absolutely nothing to confront another brotherly nation. We we want them to understand that they should give him political asylum (in Brazil) or turn him over to Honduran authorities to be tried," Micheletti told Reuters.

Meanwhile, at least two popular barrios in and around Tegucigalpa have defied, en masse, the curfew order and chased National Police out of their communities: El Pedregal and Colonia Kennedy. They've erected barricades and declared the coup regime and its security forces non grata.

5:57 p.m.: Brazil has now put its request for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council in writing. It clearly considers the hostile actions by the Honduras coup regime of cutting water, telephone and electricity to its Embassy and the physical intervention by regime security forces to prevent food, water or other provisions from entering the building as acts of war.

The Security Council has five permanent member states - Russia, China, Great Britain, France and the United States - and five rotating seats now filled by Costa Rica, Croatia, Libya, Burkina Faso and Vietnam. Do the math. The presidency of the Security Council rotates month by month. In September of 2009 that chair belongs to the United States. The Council will meet tomorrow morning to discuss the situation in Honduras and whatever requests Brazil makes. Perhaps related: US President Barack Obama is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow in New York.

Correction: James Haygood - via the comments section - corrects: The Security Council has 15 member states. Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Austria and Uganda are also current members.

8:03 p.m.: An interesting development today in the popular barrios and colonias of Greater Tegucigalpa: The coup's military curfew - now extended for a total of 36 hours until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning - is causing major hardship for the great mass of Honduran citizens that live day to day. Small shop owners, ambulant street sellers, mercado workers and so many others generally don't have savings. If they don' t work on a given day, they and their families don't have food to eat that night. A great many don't have refrigerators and they shop the same day for the food they will eat. The curfew is causing shortages of food and other basic products of daily life, and preventing many from being able to afford what little they need. And while the general view in the popular (read: poor) barrios has been anti-coup, the curfew has brought forward a rage and a higher level of organization overnight.

Add to that the fact that the National Police have spent last night and today busting into those neighborhoods to enforce the curfew - because many citizens aren't paying it any mind as it interferes with their daily subsistence level survival - and has overreacted with great violence, shooting tear gas canisters into homes, invading people's houses, and such. This has caused a generalized phenomenon throughout the metropolitan area: People have come en masse out of their homes, chased the police out of many of those neighborhoods, and erected barricades to keep them out. They are now organizing to maintain those barricades. The coup regime thus, overnight, has lost any semblance of control of considerable tracts of urban Honduras. Tegucigalpa is beginning to look a lot like the city of Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006.

8:46 p.m.: After a bizarre press conference held in English and translated into Spanish, in which a staffer, Carlos Lopez Contreras, represented coup "president" Micheletti (without Micheletti being present - his handlers have hidden him away for good reason), and in "cadena nacional" (broadcast on all stations by law), the regime has extended the curfew now for 50 hours, until 6 p.m. tomorrow night.

8:54 p.m.: From Quotha.net, more detailed info on the neighborhood-by-neighborhood uprising underway in Greater Tegucigalpa today and tonight:

The de facto government, through its violence and denial of constitutional and human rights, has managed what Zelaya alone had not fully succeeded in doing: uniting the entire country in the struggle for freedom. Today, they resistance underwent an important shift: it went local. The following Tegucigalpa neighborhoods are defying the curfew and protesting against the coup d'etat:

1. Arturo Quesada
2. Barrio Morazán
3. Centroamérica Oeste
4. Cerro Grande
5. Ciudad Lempira
6. Colonia 21 de Febrero
7. Colonia 21 de Octubre
8. El Bosque
9. El Chile
10. Flor del Campo
11. Hato de Enmedio
12. Kennedy
13. La Fraternidad
14. Pantanal
15. Pedregal
16. Picachito
17. Reparto
18. Residencial Girasoles
19. Residencial Honduras
20. San José de la Vega
21. Sinaí
22. Víctor F. Ardón
23. Villa Olímpica
24. Villanueva

In some places people have repelled the police, while in others the terrain is in dispute. The police are using live ammunition. Barricades are everywhere. This list was current at 7pm local time in Tegucigalpa.

The latest extension of the curfew just announced - preventing Hondurans from working or shopping all day tomorrow, too - will only exacerbate this situation.

By Al Giordano

The first to break the news in English was the Honduran Campesino blog:

Honduran president Manuel Zelaya is in Tegucigalpa…

The United Nations is protecting Mel…

TeleSur confirms the report, as does Reuters:

"I am here in Tegucigalpa. I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue." he told Honduras' Canal 36 television network.

As occurred during the first hours of the June 28 coup d'etat, the Internet signals of Channel 36 and Radio Globo are blocked, as is cell phone service in the capital (I've yet to confirm that there is any Internet or cell phone access in Tegucigalpa at all right now - it all appears to be jammed - but we do have reporter Belén Fernández reporting right this moment from that city and the information blockade will be broken soon enough.) We can take that extreme of censorship as additional confirmation that the President has indeed returned and the illegitimate coup regime is panicking.

Developing... We'll update here as we're able to report and confirm more...

Update: 12:08 p.m. Tegucigalpa (2:08 p.m. ET): TeleSur confirms that the President is in Tegucigalpa but adds that it cannot confirm reports that he is in the United Nations building there. It anticipates a press conference from Zelaya this afternoon...

12:24 p.m. Tegucigalpa (2:24 p.m. ET): One of our correspondents just got an email message from Tegucigalpa which reports that not all cell phone service is blocked.

12:28 p.m.: Via TeleSur: The Spaniard news agency EFE reports that the President is in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

12:29 p.m.: The US State Department confirms that Zelaya is in Honduras (via AP).

12:39 p.m.: The web page of the coup regime's "president" leads with a loud denial: "Micheletti denies the presence of 'Mel' in the country." Meanwhile AFP reports that the Brazilian government has confirmed Zelaya's presence in its Embassy in Tegucigalpa, according to TeleSur.

12:47 p.m.: TeleSur is showing images of uniformed National Police members, with billy clubs, shields, helmets and guns, surrounding the zone near the Brazilian Embassy, apparently to close access to the area, blocking anti-coup demonstrators from entering or leaving. The network is also broadcasting live images, from Channel 36, of two helicopters circling over the Embassy.

12:51 p.m.: TeleSur reporter Adriana Sívori is now inside the Brazilian Embassy and confirms President Zelaya's physical presence there.

1:57 p.m.: We now have phone contact with Narco News correspondent Belén Fernández, who in Tegucigalpa this morning walked into the Radio Globo headquarters just as the news broke that Zelaya had returned. She's going to have one hell of a story for us later today.

2:04 p.m.: Connecting the dots... The return of Zelaya has all the markings of a very well coordinated operation by the Honduran civil resistance and the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS). The choice of Brazil's embassy - the Latin American country with the largest Air Force - pretty much guarantees that the coup regime can't possibly think it can violate the sovereignty of that space. That the US State Department confirmed, this morning, that Zelaya is in Honduras while the coup regime denied it strongly suggests it had advance knowledge that this would happen today (if not active participation).

This is a textbook example of what we've referred to before as "dilemma actions." It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country's own people - which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) - or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history.

2:24 p.m.: Some other consequences of today's breaking development: President Zelaya today erases any of the talk or speculation that he did not have the courage to put himself at risk in this struggle, which will also have an emboldening effect on every single individual among the hundreds of thousands in the civil resistance. The effect is causing all to think: If he's willing to risk all, then so am I.

This move also makes a laughing stock out of Micheletti and his security forces. Remember our reports about how airfields throughout the country were blocked by buses and other vehicles, so paranoid was the regime about Zelaya's potential return? That Zelaya slipped through the security net demonstrates that the coup regime does not have the control it claims to have. Micheletti - the usurper dictator - has also helped elevate his status as a national buffoon with his early claims today that Zelaya hadn't really returned. He accused the media that reported his return of lying and of "media terrorism." Well, now the same pro-coup newspapers that reported his tantrum have this photo, taken today, of President Zelaya and his cabinet members inside the Brazilian Embassy:

There you have it. Countdown to complete mental breakdown by Micheletti and his dwindling core of supporters (and, yes, that includes a grouplet of US expats that have been blogging constant disinformation from Honduras - their self-delusion and dishonesty to all is now crashing on the rocks of reality, too).

2:56 p.m.: Ivan Marovic - who as a young man played a major role in strategizing the civil resistance that toppled the Serbian dictator Milosevic, and who spent a few days in Honduras this summer at the invitation of the civil resistance - and I just had a chat online about our observations of what is happening and how it changes everything in Honduras.

With his permission, I'll share with you an excerpt:

me: So, let's put ourselves in Micheletti's shoes. What options does he have at this point?

Ivan: It's a tough one. He can arrest Zelaya, but Zelaya said he's here to call for dialogue. That would be bad. Micheletti can enter a dialogue, but then he's screwed.

me: Well, I don't think he can send troops into the Brazilian Embassy, which is sovereign territory. Brazil has the biggest air force in Latin America. Brazil is the coordinating nation of the UN security forces in Haiti...

Ivan: This is important, because with Zelaya in the country, the momentum has shifted. Stalling doesn't work anymore.

me: It's a textbook "dilemma action."

Ivan: Yes.

me: The regime can either leave him there to reassemble his government with broad popular support, or it can unleash a wave of violence and terror, which would provoke all out insurrection. Now that Zelaya has demonstrated he is willing to risk his own freedom and safety, that becomes contagious to hundreds of thousands that will decide to do the same.

Ivan: Yes, this has a big symbolic value. That's why no regime is afraid of the government in exile. But in the country, that's a different thing.

It's a game changer, folks.

3:05 p.m.: Here's transcript from today's US State Department briefing in Washington DC with spokesman Ian Kelly and reporters:

QUESTION: Do we know if President Zelaya has come home? And what does it signal?

MR. KELLY: Well, you know, literally, as I was about to come down, I saw the news report and I was able to talk to my colleagues in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. It does seem to be true that he has returned to Honduras. And the Embassy is still seeking details about what he hopes to achieve and what his next steps are.

I think that at this point, really, all I can say is reiterate our almost daily call on both sides to exercise restraint and refrain from any kind of action that would have any possible outcome in violence, refrain from activities that would – could provoke violence.

QUESTION: How did he come in, and where is he? What --

MR. KELLY: Don’t know.

QUESTION: When did it happen?

MR. KELLY: Like I say, the Embassy is trying to find out these details. But I do know that we have confirmed that he’s in Honduras. Where exactly he is, I don’t know. And we’re just trying to find out more details.

QUESTION: Last time we tuned in, he was under threat of arrest if he came home. Is that still what’s in play right now?

MR. KELLY: I’d have to refer you to the de facto regime in Tegucigalpa. Of course, we believe that he’s the democratic – democratically elected and constitutional leader of Honduras.

I'll ask you, kind readers, the same question I asked Ivan Marovic, above: If you are coup "president" Roberto Micheletti, what is your next move? It's hard to predict, because he's not always a rational player on the field.

3:37 p.m.: The coup regime makes its first move, declaring a military curfew in effect from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. What's not clear is whether it will be obeyed by the crowds converging around the Embassy, and what the regime's next move will be if the public disregards its curfew.

4:21 p.m.: The military curfew began 21 minutes ago, but a multitude of citizens continue to congregate in front of the Brazilian embassy, making and listening to speeches against the coup regime. In other words: What if they called a curfew and nobody stayed home?

4:31 p.m.: Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim says that he doubts very much that the Honduran coup regime would commit "a flagrant violation of International Law" by invading his country's embassy in Tegucigalpa.

4:56 p.m.: The regime is trying everything. Cell phone service is being screwed with again for the past hour. Channel 36 has gone off the air. Radio Globo's Internet site is down. Here is an alternate link to Radio Globo's live stream. Keep storming the gates of the information blockade.

5:06 p.m.: Radio Globo reports that a caravan of more than 2,000 vehicles filled with coup opponents is en route from the state of El Paraiso to the national capital. Also reports massive traffic jams in Tegucigalpa now, an hour after curfew took effect.

5:21 p.m.: Coup "president" Micheletti just spoke on a "cadena nacional" (in which all TV, radio and cable stations are required to broadcast his message). He confirmed that Zelaya is in the country, insisted that the June 28 coup was "legal," said Zelaya will have to face charges against him, insisted that the country is in complete calm (if so, then why the military curfew?), attacked the government of Brazil for protecting Zelaya in its Embassy, and told everyone that the National Police and the National Army are behind him. He ended with shouts of "Viva Honduras" to a small group of coup functionaries. He sounds frightened, but is digging in his heels.

Upon the termination of his broadcast, a woman on Radio Globo mocked him mercilessly, saying "no one owes obedience to an order by a de facto regime," and noted that the curfew was called just ten minutes before it took effect, leaving millions of Hondurans to have to get home from work but without enough time to do it. "Nobody is obeying the order," she said. "Nor should they."

5:30 p.m.: I'll be live on Flashpoints radio (available at the KPFA website), hosted by Dennis Bernstein, at the top of the hour (8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. PT) to talk about the situation in Honduras. There will also be a report from Tim Russo - professor at the upcoming Narco News School of Authentic Journalism - who was in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa today when President Zelaya appeared from the balcony to greet the crowd, and took audiotape of the moment.

5:42 p.m.: Leaders of the Liberal Party bloc that turned against the coup have now signed a public letter calling on party members "in all the popular barrios" of Tegucigalpa and throughout the country to converge on the Brazilian Embassy to protect President Zelaya. Radio Globo just read the letter live on the air.

5:50 p.m.: The coup regime has just cut electricity to entire neighborhoods surrounding the Brazilian Embassy and Channel 36 TV. How long do you think it will take the people to install a generator in each place? The same will happen when the regime cuts the water, the next likely step coming from that form of logic. And the people will usher in water trucks to refill the tanks. Hell, they'll bring it cup by cup if they have to! This is a losing gambit by the Micheletti regime because it does not have control of the street.

6:52 p.m.: As predicted in the previous update, the regime's attempt to cut electricity to the Brazilian Embassy is already an epic fail. Tim Russo just reported live on that Flashpoints radio show from inside the Embassy as the electric power went back on! A discussion about a half hour prior, on Radio Globo, included a call for generators and a pledge by the head of the electrical workers union to send technicians to set them up. A half hour later, there was light. An organized people can never be beat. That is the lesson of Honduras.

8:17 p.m.: The coup regime has just extended the military curfew until 6 p.m. tomorrow evening, which means nobody goes to work on Tuesday, not even during daylight hours, and all stores will be closed. (Schools were already out as the teachers unions called a national strike and for their members to come to the Brazilian embassy.) Meanwhile, the US State Department has recommended that US citizens avoid all non-essential travel to Honduras. It's as if there's a general strike without it even being called for!

By Al Giordano

You know who (in addition to perhaps some Field readers when I turn my attention back to US politics) is smiling today? Teddy Kennedy, from wherever his boat now sails.

The political press is abuzz with stories that say that the White House has told New York Governor David Paterson that he ought to do the dignified thing and get out of the 2010 Empire State gubernatorial campaign.

Paterson is the accidental governor. He came to power in March of 2008 after then-governor Eliot Spitzer fell in a high-class hooker scandal. And everybody rooted for Paterson, who is a nice enough guy, to excel at his new job. And he was doing okay until last winter when he had to appoint a successor to fill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seat in the New York Senate.

It was at that moment that Paterson’s particular quality of hubris uncloaked. He called the various aspirants up to Albany, treated them like children, his staff leaked conflicting signals to the press about various of them, he told attorney Caroline Kennedy to do a press tour upstate and then had his aides whack her for it. And then he prolonged the waiting game a few more agonizing weeks because he loved the national limelight that much.

Not only did attorney Kennedy – evidently disgusted with the circus – withdraw her name from consideration, but almost half the Democrats in the New York Congressional delegation who had let on that they, too, were interested in the Senate seat were aghast to find out that Paterson would elevate the back bencher and poster-gal for mediocrity Kirsten Gillibrand to share the title of Senator from New York with previous titans named Burr, Van Buren, Seward, Fish, Wagner, Dulles, Lehman, Javits, Kennedy, Moynihan and Clinton.

The way that Paterson turned his first moment in the national spotlight into a Roman coliseum, sending the aspirants out onto the field while whipping up the crowd's bloodlust from the judge’s podium, laurels placed over his ears, was an attempt to co-brand the Paterson name with that of the lions. It was an effort to mask what Paterson knew about himself but could not reveal: that he is no lion. He is, rather, the slow zebra of New York politics, and right now various feral cats are circling for his carcass.

One is New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who in stark contrast to Paterson and his leaky press shop has demonstrated great discipline in waiting for the slow zebra to trip before pouncing by entering the governor’s race.

Another is former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who, if Paterson does become the Democratic nominee, will sprint from his lair, roaring, with a clear shot at delivering to the Republican party a giant of a state that some errantly consider a safe one for the Democrats. And he’d grab it at the precise moment when US Congressional seats are to be redistricted in a game of musical chairs – as the state has lost population and is about to lose some representation – with maximum partisan mischief-making powers to whomever will be governor that hour.

And let us not ever forget that a certain lioness of stature in New York state may herself be bored pacing the cage at Foggy Bottom.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a slow zebra to whip the cats all into a frenzy.

That the no-drama Obama administration has now moved from private to public gestures to save the Democratic flock from the harm a slow zebra can bring upon it probably indicates that Paterson is playing the same game he did with the Senate appointment: Small minded men and women will often take the attitude of “who are they to tell me what to do? I’ll show them!”

Sometimes they get shown back. And I just smile. Me, and Teddy… beaming… from the outside, looking in.

By Al Giordano

September 15 anti-coup protest - Day 80 - in Tegucigalpa, D.R. 2009 Rights Action.

A sure sign that the Honduran people’s resistance against the June 28 coup d’etat continues to enjoy massive public support comes from the continued disinformation campaigns against it. After all, if the coup regime really had, as its defenders claim, won the battle for Honduran hearts and minds, it wouldn’t need to persist in its overstated PR and disinfo campaigns against coup opponents.

Yet Honduran TV and radio airwaves are still daily bombarded by slick advertisements that seek to legitimize the coup regime and demonize its opponents. Pro-coup newspapers – owned by the same few families that control most of the country’s economic means of production – serve up similar daily fare.

And what drives the coup mongers battiest is that after 84 days of constant and massive dissent against the illegitimate coup regime – even after more than 3,500 arbitrary arrests of coup opponents, brutal beatings, torture and even some assassinations by the regime, its police and its military – the resistance remains nonviolent.

Coup defenders have thus tried to seize upon isolated images of youths tossing tear gas canisters back at police, or the early August incident in which three unidentified men, a few blocks away from a protest march, set fire to a Popeye’s Chicken restaurant with a Molotov, as somehow representative of the resistance. They’ve tossed in a few photos of graffiti on the walls of Honduran cities as further supposed evidence of the unruly nature of the resistance. But that dog hasn’t hunted and so now the deceit and trickery has sunk to a new low: the invention, out of thin cyberspace, of a supposed guerrilla army and its website which claims the armed organization (one that doesn’t exist) is sponsored by the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat, the umbrella organization for many organizations and individuals that oppose the coup.

The National Resistance Front is having none of it and this week fired off a statement that hits back against such disinfo peddlers and sets the record straight. I’ll translate it in its entirety:

A statement by the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat

The Communication Commission of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat wishes to correct and reject some messages on the Internet authored by Mr. Georges Francoise Godoy, supposedly an Argentine-French citizen who frequents the information networks on the Internet of the resistance.

In a message distributed via Internet dated September 14, Mr. Godoy promotes a website named www.erph.org which makes it appear as if, under the banner of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat, there is a so-called “Revolutionary Army of the Honduran People, Paramilitary Battallion Isis Obed Murillo,” whose commander is said to be President Zelaya. In said website there appears a “Communiqué #1” according to which this supposed organization has decided to attack members of the coup regime and their families militarily.

As authorized spokespersons of the Frente, this Communications Commission rejects as false the claims being circulated in respect to the existence of the mentioned armed front. We are going to repeat what we have said for eighty days: The National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat is a public organization that uses only nonviolent methods. Since the beginning our organization agreed to fight agains the usurper regime with peaceful methods and without arms. As such: WE DO NOT HAVE ANY ARMED OR PARAMILITARY FRONT. And whoever tries to make it appear to the contrary exposes our leadership to military and police repression.

Consequently, we alert all compañeros and compañeras who use the Internet and other media to reject the messages of provocateurs who try to deceive about the essence of our struggle.

From the city of Tegucigalpa, MDC, on September 17, 2009

Communication Commission of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat

Again, I’ll bypass the matter of whether the Internet source mentioned by the Resistance Front’s statement is some kind of regime agent or just another misguided foreigner who out of frustration – or the fetishization that comes from an inexperienced view of armed struggle as some kind of romantic notion that can erupt spontaneously without years of organization and public education preceding it – goes doing the regime’s job for it by treating a phony web site as real. All of that is secondary to the real battle over what is true and what is false.

But what is certain is that 84 days into the resistance, the opponents to the coup regime maintain themselves steady on a nonviolent path – even when provoked daily with the violence and disinformation of the regime – because they keep their eyes on the prize (a new Constitution) and hold on.

By Al Giordano

Today we announced the availability of 24 scholarships to attend an intensive ten-day session of this newspaper's School of Authentic Journalism, February 3 to 13 of 2010 on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The application for scholarships is ten pages long and includes an essay requirement.

The video above appeared on CNN last summer but was not filmed by the network. A citizen who had been on a bus to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to attend a protest against the military coup d'etat there took out his cell phone camera and began filming after soldiers stopped a caravan of buses and ordered everyone out of them. The soldiers - as the video discloses - then shot out the bus tires with their rifles.

In other words, the world would never have known this story had a regular citizen not videotaped it and then gotten the video to the network. This one scene represents the future of authentic journalism; a citizenry armed with its "weapons" (in this case a cell phone camera) and a will to break the information blockades. That's a big part of what we teach, in more advanced ways, at the School of Authentic Journalism: how to do this kind of work better, faster and with greater coherence.

Since the School is part of a larger international public teach-in on authentic journalism, I'd still like to share the application's essay description and its questions here, and invite you to add your own comments and thoughts on the questions it raises.

Essay Requirement

In June of 2009, in two different countries – Iran and Honduras - civil resistance movements emerged. The first against what many perceived as electoral fraud and the second against what many perceived as a coup d’etat. The regimes in both countries denied the charges and set about repressing, often violently, the protests. Both regimes engaged in heavy-handed press censorship and accused the resistance and also critical reporters of being the agents of foreign powers.

Reporters from BBC Persian and other media were deported from Iran. Reporters from TeleSur and other media were deported from Honduras. Internet access was often blocked or slowed inside both countries, as TV, radio and print media critical of the regimes saw their facilities seized, blocked or sabotaged.

And yet despite those efforts of censorship, images and words of the protests and their grievances succeeded in breaking the information blockade. Videos surfaced on YouTube and other online sites. People used cell phones to send text messages onto the Internet via Twitter and other portals. Bloggers and independent media narrated the story in spite of violent repression and threats against them.

And the international cable networks and other commercial media – unable or unwilling to report, many without reporters on the ground in these lands – ended up dependent on videos and images and audio recordings produced by citizens or independent media to tell the story. Without that work by media from below, the stories would not have been as fully seen or heard across the globe or inside those countries.

Your essay should answer two categories of questions:

1. If something like this happened in your country or another one while you were visiting, how would you apply your skills as a journalist or communicator to reporting the story? What media would you use? And what skills that you don’t have would you wish you had to do it most effectively?
2. The response of some news organizations – both corporate and independent - to these back-to-back events was to intensely report the resistance in Iran in glowing and positive terms while ignoring or attacking the resistance in Honduras. Others ignored or attacked the resistance in Iran while highlighting the Honduras resistance positively. In those cases, many cited their view that the Honduras resistance was somehow a tool of the Venezuelan government, or that the Iran resistance was somehow a tool of the US government. As a journalist, how do you sort that out? And does a civil resistance movement become illegitimate, or less legitimate, if it happens to resist against a regime that is also opposed by a foreign government?

Write your essay using as many or few words as it takes you to answer those questions.

If you'd like to apply for one of the scholarships, just send an email request to app@narconews.com (if you'd like the application in Spanish send it to sol@narconews.com).

And if you know any up-and-coming journalists or communicators of talent and conscience, please let him and her know about the scholarships and encourage him and her to apply.

Finally, you can see in the upper right hand corner of The Field our autumn fundraising drive graph. Even if you can't attend the school yourself, your help is needed to make sure that others can. It's an investment in a new generation of authentic journalists that will tangibly increase the quantity and quality of the news and commentary you read here at The Field, through Narco News and all the other publications that its alumni go forward to report from.

As Field Hands, you'll have a front row seat to the School, too, as for the first time we'll be videotaping its classes, lessons and discussions and making the highlights available for the global public, so everyone can literally tele-commute to its classrooms from wherever you are.

The School of Authentic Journalism, which held its first session in 2003, has always had a very skilled and experienced faculty, but this year we've outdone ourselves. Let me introduce you to the 2010 j-school professors, and tell you a little bit about them, too, at that link.

And now you know what I've been so busy with these weeks while I've been a little more quiet than usual here. It's great to be back, though, and I look forward to your comments, as always.

By Al Giordano

"Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."

- Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

The late television anchorman Walter Cronkite was eulogized this morning at Lincoln Center in New York, including by President Barack Obama, who quite mistakenly praised Cronkite for “his passionate defense of objective reporting.”

But what made Cronkite “the most trusted man in America” for decades was not an adherence to the rigid concept of objectivity that corporate media and its official journalism schools preach, but, to the contrary, that he would from time to time disclose his views and explain them to the public; for Civil Rights, against the Vietnam war, and later in life against the war in Iraq, and against the drug war. Cronkite fought unsuccessfully to force TV networks to provide free airtime for political candidates, and issued harsh criticism of Fox News, calling it “a far right organization.” Cronkite signed fundraising appeals for Danny Schechter’s The Media Channel and for the Drug Policy Alliance, among other causes.

And not just in retirement: In February of 1968, Cronkite returned from a reporting mission in Vietnam and told the nation:

“…for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”

That's clearly not the kind of frank talk we've heard in recent years from the national TV anchors and reporters.

It was not “objectivity” that made Cronkite so beloved and trusted, but, rather, his lack of slavish devotion to it: the honesty to tell us when he had a strong opinion based on the facts that he and his team were reporting.

Interesting, too, is how his memorial service today became a metaphor for the death of the news media industry and its own crisis of credibility, and a mourning ceremony for it.

Read between the lines on the President’s remarks there, and the cat is out of the bag:

“We also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced -- a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers.  It's a standard that's a little bit harder to find today.  We know that this is a difficult time for journalism.  Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing.  Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.

“And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed.  ‘What happened today?’ is replaced with ‘Who won today?’  The public debate cheapens.  The public trust falters.  We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should –- and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation.  We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society.  Which price is higher to pay?  Which cost is harder to bear?

“’This democracy,’ Walter said, ‘cannot function without a reasonably well-informed electorate.’  That's why the honest, objective, meticulous reporting that so many of you pursue with the same zeal that Walter did is so vital to our democracy and our society:  Our future depends on it…

“Our American story continues.  It needs to be told.  And if we choose to live up to Walter's example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle, but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it and resolve to value it once again, then I'm convinced that the choice between profit and progress is a false one -- and that the golden days of journalism still lie ahead.”

As a working journalist who runs an online newspaper and a journalism school, I must correct the president: the choice is between profit and progress. The news organizations of the advertising model that exist primarily to make money for investors are precisely those that are either already dead, are dying or are cheapening their content to the extreme that what they produce can no longer honestly be called journalism or news. And the solution to "rekindle" journalism is coming from media that do not have that profit motive as its reason to exist.

If the golden days of journalism lie ahead, they will come from below, and faster still when the dead wood of dead tree journalism is finally brushed aside: from a journalism that is of the people, by the people and for the people.

In the coming days we’re going to, in the process of announcing two dozen scholarships in authentic journalism, while making the applications available and recruiting the best and brightest talents of our profession from throughout América and the world, begin an international months long teach-in to redefine journalism and take it back from the commercial media – which has plagued the word with a crisis of credibility – returning journalism from the hands of a few to the hands of all.

And you, kind reader, will be invited along for the ride every mile of the way. And when it happens Walter Cronkite, wherever he's broadcasting from now, will be able to say, again: "And you were there."