Coup General: "We're Going After the Protest Leaders"

Thanks for passing along the Serbian organizer's thoughts on the Honduran resistance to the coup, Al; definitely something we couldn't get any other way.

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I realize you're in a near-immersion in Spanish, and have been for a while. But since your first language is English, writing for an English-speaking readership, it would be a good idea to avoid "back translations" like these and stick with idiomatic English, which is also shorter

entire Armed Forces counts with only 9,000 soldiers and officers, and the entire National Police force counts with just 14,000 police.

The civil resistance to the coup counts with hundreds of thousands...

In the first sentence, "has" would be more easily understood.  In the second, "involves" or "includes".

I read this:

"Serbian community organizer Ivan Marovich who was here for three days last week observing and speaking to three different meetings of civil resistance organizations..."

And I suddenly made the connection:  the dreaded "outside agitators" from the 60s were community organizers.  I was just young enough then to fall for the propaganda that the outside agitators were always bad guys.

Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly magazine has an interview with Zelaya.

The military is divided. Many young officers oppose the coup. They could rise up against the military leadership any day.

Also see Honduras Coup Reveals Deep Devisions in Latin America

And Situation in Honduras 'Cannot Be Justified'

There are numerous photos to view at the site also.

Al,

Thank you for your great reporting and insight, especially the focus on learning from the Honduran people's struggles on the ground.

The analogy to Yugoslavia is an interesting one, but an important correction for the record: the United States DID NOT SUPPORT the Yugoslav government until the last three months before the coup. In fact, the United States and NATO BOMBED Yugoslavia over a year and half earlier in the spring of 1999, without UN authorization, just like in Iraq.

I would like to urge you to report on the call to action by the Honduran National Front Against the Coup to people in other countries to enact sanctions such as blocking financial transactions and trade in goods to and from Honduras.

If we truly wish to focus on the battle where the struggle will be won or lost, rather than the "circus" of diplomacy from the top, as you put it, we should listen to what the people on the front lines are asking us to do to support them.

My guess is that the briefing with Crowley is intended to be read by prior administration of large amounts of psychoactive substances.

The US has chosen not to exercise legal issues that it is required by statute to exercise.

US State has condemned the actions of the people running the Honduran government illegally, but not the illegal government.

State wants mediation to continue, even though it hasn't started, and therefore is holding off on taking the steps of applying pressure that might cause it to start.

Jeff, the article by Jens Glusing has got all kinds of basic factual errors, to the point that one wonders whether it isn't another Francisco Jara.  Among the worst statements: a claim that Zelaya was trying to get re-elected, a mischaracterization of the survey as a referendum, a claim that Zelaya turned to Chavez because his popularity was declining, and a statement that the referendum was a constitutional amendment.  Not your fault, of course, but I thought you might want to know.

It would make sense for readers to write to Glusing and his editor to let them know.

What the Glusing article in Der Spiegel is trying to do reminds me of the anti-communist concern trolling of Cold War liberal media back in the '60s.  They couldn't deny that the oligarchies in Saigon and the Dominican Republic and other places sucked.  But they had to portray the popular uprisings against these tyrants as a single, monolithic conspiracy controlled from Moscow.  So no matter how murderous the Diem regime became, these newsmen had implanted the idea of the Domino Theory that overrode all moral considerations.  We just had to hold our noses, replace Diem with another dictator and send the Marines.  The Soviets and Chinese were soon almost at war with each other, shattering the entire myth of a Red monolith, but our war went on.

Personally I think our belief in a monolithic Islamic conspiracy is just as absurd, leading to our ominous course in Afghanistan.  But Mr. Glusing is over the top with his Chavez-as-Hitler assumptions.  He admits that there have recently been improvements for the poor in a "few" Latin American countries - perhaps ones where leftists were also victorious?  He tries the old Cold War trick of dividing a continent-wide movement into those leftists who are merely Chavez's agents (Morales) and those leftists who we won't call leftist at all because we can't deny their legitimacy (Lula).  In fact there is a spectrum of leftism opening up before our eyes, with no clear divisions.

If this is what they're being fed in Germany I hate to think what hyperbolic lies will be told by US media once the Zapatistas can no longer be ignored.

I did read all the articles.  I highlighted the interview first because I thought it was the key piece.  I think you noticed it was the only article I quoted from.  I threw in the other links as a convenience so people could see the perception from Germany.  One of the articles was a summary of editorials - often deep in error - but yet also quite condemnatory of the coup.

For the record, I need to clarify what Al wrote, because he heard it from me - the US was supporting Milosevic as the "factor of stability in the Balkans" until late 1998. Then they stopped supporting him (which is another similarity between Milosevic and Saddam). But in 1999, instead of supporting the opposition, they decided to throw bombs on our heads. We haven't seen that as support for us, on the contrary. Milosevic survived the bombing (unlike our infrastructure) and used it to increse repression against us. The US did in the end support us in the last few months of our struggle because they ran out of options so they even supported Kostunica, an anti-american politician when he ran against Milosevic. This is why Al says that "it was only in the last three months before it toppled the regime that US policy changed course and backed the resistance movement."

Re: The Spanglish and El Inglol

I don't care, it's all good. I spend all day in that same confused bilingual soup. I can't remember the right English word half the time as I've been in the Caribbean so long. Al is very understandable to me.

On another level, I appreciate Al's being right at the front and doing the Orwellian thing, but, other than reading and watching the media he doesn't get that close to the typical coup supporter and perhaps later on his trip he can slip into some neighborhood where the coup boyz are considered saviors and get some neat quotes and even photos.

I'm reluctant to get into any details but having been through a three year uprising myself {not in Honduras} there are a lot of facets to these things. Marovich is saying that above. The players, even if they wear funny general outfits, are often not one dimensional. I think it likely that the real concern of the guys wearing the medals right now is to figure out which day to stab the golpistas in the back.

That's my analysis. I think that day is coming pronto.

I am glad a successful and tenacious democratic social activist from Serbia is analyzing the Honduran social movements relative to the coup regime.

He may have an eye for political cues and trends that will help us better understand what is happening.

The corporate controlled MSM hardly covers the news from Honduras as it does, for example, Iran.

The largest problem in comparing the earlier Serbia situation with present day Honduras is that the Honduran oligarchs are complete idiots.  The Serb leadership was light years ahead of the Honduran oligarchy in education, political saavy, cultural knowledge and historical knowledge.

Many members of the oligarchy are semi-educated, uncultivated, ignorant individuals who take their families to heavily guarded US-style malls, to US fastfood joints, the kids listen to rap, hip-hop and heavy metal, and the oligarchal parents buy every new electronic gadget that they see on US TV commercials.

They possess whole legions of household servants to drive, cook for, clean, guard, massage and screw them.

When they vacation, they tend to shop in Miami and visit Disney World in Orlando.

They see Honduras as their personal property that is given them by God to mercilessly bleed of all revenues, resources and benefits.

The impoverished majority are ignored.  Last, the oligarchs have happily participated in the ethnocide of Honduras' culture.  Under their guidance, Honduras has become one of the many bottom-feeders of US commercial culture and consumer crap.

To clarify the situation around the Spiegel Article posted above and German media vovergae in general of Honduras.

First of all, media coverage is marginal if not non existent these days, that's why I'm lurkign around Narco News every day reading what Al and everybody else here is writing about it, even though I am from and currently in Germany.

Second, The Spiegel is not a very good source for news on social movements and popular uprisings. I remember their horrible, when existent coverage of the Oaxaca uprising in 2006, they have a very pro-government spin, whether or not the people recognize it as their government or not. It is far from being authentic people based journalism. Similarily the coverage of the Mexican "War on Drugs" has been quoting the governments point of view all along until very recently, police being on the payroll of cartels was seen as a natural sympton of this kind of conflict and not as one piece of the core problem, the convergence of state and narcos.

Anyway, I read Spiegel, as they bring a wide variety of news from around the globe with a less biased point of view than the rest of the german media, but to get "real news" I go somewhere else, it's more to be aware of what's going on and what am I thought to believe about it.

@Al great work! Keep it up!

And I thought the Honduran military was supposed to non-political and non-deliberating according to the country's constitution.  Why are they expressing their political views to justify their actions?