The Field on the Narcosphere

By Al Giordano

This photo of Honduran coup “president” Roberto Micheletti rallying his supporters, above, from yesterday’s New York Times includes a creative act of protest against it. In the lower left hand corner of the photo, there are two placards in the crowd that are not in Spanish, but in German: "Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Stimme" and "Arbeit Macht Uns Frei".

Field Hand DK points out in the comments section: “The first was a prominent Nazi slogan (one Reich, one people, one voice); the second (work makes us free) was inscribed at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp.”

(Note: Not being a German-speaker, I can't confirm the commenter's translation, but another Field Hand, Lucidamente, now offers an alternative translation in the comments section that is similar but not an exact match with this one.)

Which only goes to prove that employers can force their workers to attend a pro-coup rally but they can’t control what signs they hold.

Now, on to today’s significant news out of Honduras:

Last night, around 10 p.m. Tegucigalpa time, CNN Español interrupted its sports news programming for a live press conference announcement ("no questions, please") by coup “president” Micheletti.

There, he announced that his coup “government” of Honduras is withdrawing from the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Friday night press conference was meant to preempt this morning’s OAS meeting in Washington (at which various heads of state, including Presidents Cristina Kirchner of Argentina and Rafael Correa of Ecuador deemed important enough to attend) where the OAS will surely expel the Honduras coup regime for its flagrant violations of said Democratic Charter. Thus, the late Friday night press conference to say “You can’t fire us! We quit!”

The Honduras coup’s behavior virtually assures that come Monday, the US government will define it as a “military coup,” triggering a cut off of US aid, joining the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, PetroCaribe, the UN and the rest of the world in withdrawing economic support for the coup regime. (The US had already put all funds on "pause" this week, so the boycott has already begun and merely awaits formal moves to become permanent.)

This is very significant because of Honduras’ annual $3.5 billion budget, $2.3 billion – 65 percent - comes from those foreign sources.

This seemingly suicidal maneuver by the coup government can be partially explained by what I described yesterday as the “shared hallucinatio n” of those in the Honduras oligarchy’s ten owning families and those elites in their orbit.

But something else is at work: Greedy people don’t just cast away 65 percent of their national budget unless they believe they can get it from other sources.

One of the big backers of the coup d’etat has been an international terrorist network of ex-Cubans, who have financed the dirty work of jet plane bomber Luis Posada Carriles over the years and have set up business interests in Honduras. These forces are desperate now that Washington is making the moves to ease and end the embargo of Cuba. Investigative journalist Guy Jean-Allard reports, via TeleSur, that Ralph Nodarse – ex-Cuban owner of Channel 6 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras – and arms-and-drug trafficker Rafael Hernández Nodarse are knee deep behind he coup-plotters in Honduras. The latter aided and abetted Posada Carriles to hide out in Panama in 2004.

There was likewise a strong nexus between the Honduras government and military and the 1980s Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms-for-Nicaraguan-paramilitaries scandal, where much of the illegal covert US cocaine smuggling operation was headquartered during the Reagan and Bush Senior presidencies.

The government of Venezuela has accused that former State Department official and anti-Castro ex-Cuban Otto Reich is involved with the current coup regime in Honduras. Reich, at State during the 2002 coup in Venezuela, was the US official that called ambassadors from throughout Latin America into his office when the coup was taking place to instruct them that the US supported the coup and expected the same from them (that move backfired when Latin American nations delivered the first-ever rebuke to the US via the OAS). He was also at State in the mid-1980s heading up Latin American operations and has been strongly linked to the cocaine-smuggling activities then.

Those who think that when the US cuts off funds, as it will surely do in the coming days, that the sanctions will starve the Honduran coup regime into surrender, are forgetting that in this asymmetrical world there are non-government entities – which is to say, organized crime, terrorist, and narco-trafficking organizations – that seek a safe haven in Central America, so important in the route between the South American coca plant and the noses of North America.

The historic overlap between the ex-Cuban terrorist networks and cocaine trafficking is well documented.

Last night, “president” Micheletti made it clear that his regime seeks to run a rogue state, unbeholden to the Democratic Charter of the OAS or international law. He is thus setting up an oasis that will prove irresistible to large narco-trafficking organizations as a protected base of operations, from whom he will extract the funding to make up the significant $2.3 billion shortfall caused by economic sanctions against his coup regime, plus additional “tips” to line the pockets of all who share in his power structure.

This opens up a new chapter not only in Latin American governmental history, but also in the drug war. It was clear that when Plan Mexico began its assault along the US-Mexico border that certain trafficking organizations would simply move to other geographic spaces through which to operate (and thus all the carnage and depravation of human rights cause by Plan Mexico would end up having zero impact stemming the flow of cocaine). The only question - to where? - has now been answered.

Now enters the Honduras coup "government" in its bid to become the cocaine trafficking capital of the hemisphere, the new gangster regime.

Update: This AP report sheds some light on the honesty or dishonesty of coup "president" Micheletti:

Micheletti's government is so eager to find a friend that it announced it had been recognized by Israel and Italy — surprising the governments of those countries. Italy withdrew its ambassador to protest the coup, and Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: "All rumors about Israeli recognition of the new president are wholly unfounded."

And contrary to Micheletti's assertion, Interpol on Friday released a statement saying it had not received any request to issue an arrest warrant for Zelaya.

In other words, he's just making it up as he goes along, apparently unaware that in a world of globalized communications such false claims can be shot down rather quickly. Maybe he was too hasty in blocking Internet access in his own land?

Update II: President Manuel Zelaya just broadcast an audio message to the people of Honduras, aired on Telesur, confirming that he returns tomorrow, Sunday, to his country, and urging the people to go to the international airport in Tegucigalpa to join him in his return (you can watch Telesur's livestream at this link, which has been showing frequent images of the massive marches from distinct points heading toward the airport already). Zelaya also stressed his appeal that the people arrive unarmed and subscribe to "nonviolence," even if coup forces turn violent against them.

Update III: Telesur reports at 12:40 (hour Tegucigalpa) that the mass peaceful march against the coup is now just one kilometer from the airport, its destination.

Update IV: Brazil Press Agency (Agência Brasil) estimates the crowd size of the anti-coup march to be "close to 50,000," and it's still a day before its culmination tomorrow. The television images certainly suggest a crowd of at least that size, too.

The coup regime already has a new problem: whether try to enforce its "curfew" (suspension of constitutional rights) tonight as such a large group of citizens remains surrounding the airport in anticipation of the return of their president. (The Coup "Congress" just extended the state of siege a second time, now through Tuesday morning.)

Update V: Here's a BBC photo of just one of the multitudinous marches arriving and surrounding the international airport in support and defense of President Zelaya's return tomorrow:

(As the umbrellas indicate, they're arriving under some rain.)

Update VI: I've just filed a new report for Narco News:

Honduras Coup General Was Charged in 1993 Auto Theft Ring

Everyone knows he's a thug. Now they know he's a two-bit crook, too.

Update VII: Radio Globo (broadcasting from clandestinity after coup soldiers invaded and destroyed their broadcasting equipment) reports that there are now 200,000 Honduran citizens surrounding the Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa in protest against the coup and awaiting the arrival of their president. This, in spite of a massive military and police operation to block citizens on all roads leading to Tegucigalpa from throughout the country.

By Al Giordano

"Being an ex-governor is sort of like being a community organizer... except you have no actual responsibilities!"

Update: Okay, I'll try to contain my schadenfraude and add some more serious thoughts.

1. Fridays are known as "news dump" days, when you announce something and you want to minimize the attention it gets, since the news cycle slows over the weekend when people aren't paying much attention and have fun things to do. Fridays before holiday weekends are when a politician dumps especially bad news. And the Friday before a holiday weekend that includes Michael Jackson's memorial service is when you must have really, really bad news to obscure.

2. If this abrupt resignation has to do with rumored indictments that Alaskan reporters are speaking of openly, please, lord, let a certain tanning bed be part of it!

3. Okay, I said I'd be serious. But first I'm tempted to say, "This is EXCELLENT NEWS for... Mike Huckabee!" (And, seriously, it is.)

Happy Independence Weekend everyone. Looks like a working weekend for us here, somewhere in a country called América. Check in when you can.

By Al Giordano

One of the bragging points of the Honduras coup defenders is that their rallies, they say, are "bigger" than the anti-coup rallies. The largest crowd count I've seen from the pro-coup side is "65,000," but as the total count of all the rallies held on the same day in all the cities of Honduras. If true, that would be 0.8 percent of the Honduran population of eight million; pretty small potatoes considering that the coup government and business interests have vast resources at their disposal to bus them in, give them time off with pay from work, provide food, etcetera. Me thinks they brag about protest too much.

But what of the coup opponents, who have also had rallies in the tens of thousands, but somewhat less large than those of the coup defenders?

We've seen plenty of footage in recent days of many times when Hondurans have gathered against the coup only to be attacked by military soldiers. Right there is a measure of the passion of the coup opponents: they know when heading out for these rallies that they are risking life and limb. But that keeps most children and seniors away, and others wishing to avoid violence, even if their hearts are there.

The government ordered curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. each night is also aimed at preventing massive protest gatherings. Roads are in bad condition: Honduras' two largest cities, San Pedro Sula and the capital of Tegucigalpa are 178 kilometers (110 miles) apart, but the trip takes four hours even when there aren't military roadblocks and citizen blockades, both of which have been common since Sunday's coup. The curfew virtually assures that such long trips can't be made roundtrip during daylight hours if one is also attending a demonstration in between.

CNN reports on the video above:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (CNN) -- Honduran soldiers shot out the tires of buses headed for a demonstration in support of ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya, a video obtained by CNN shows.

The video, believed shot within the past two days, shows a line of buses stopped on a road in what is reported to be the city of Limones. The city is about 70 miles (112 kilometers) northeast of the capital, Tegucigalpa…

Gunfire is heard and the crowd grows quieter. More shots are heard and then the video shows soldiers shooting out the tires on a yellow bus. Air hissing from a tire can be heard and the video shows a flattened tire.

(The video was obtained by CNN from a citizen journalist, of course.)

At about one minute into the 1:52 video you can clearly see the soldiers shooting at the bus tires. One marvels at the courage of the citizen journalist, Oscar Baron, keeping his head about him as he broke the information blockade amidst gunfire at close range.

Over the past five days there have been many similar reports of soldiers shooting out bus tires (or shooting up entire buses) to prevent a critical mass of coup opponents from gathering in Tegucigalpa or anywhere else. Coup defenders have vehemently denied these reports, accused opponents of inventing them, but now you can see the video with your own eyes and know which were telling the truth.

The use of the Armed Forces, in the media age, has expanded beyond traditional methods of repression. This week it has invaded TV and radio stations, rounded up key dissidents, and has been set to use not only to beat up demonstrators but also to prevent them from traveling to protests.

One wonders what the size of the anti-coup protests would be if not under such constant and violent attack even before they happen. You can be reasonably sure that they would not only be larger than the 65,000 (if we use the coup defenders' own numbers, likely exaggerated) that are part of the show to claim that "Honduras hearts a coup d'etat," but significantly larger and more powerful.

Well, just as the air is out of the tires of those buses in the video, the claims about pro-coup demonstrations being larger than anti-coup ones are now deflated as a propaganda point, thanks to the efforts a brave citizen journalist in the town of Limones, Honduras.

The drama underway in Honduras is, above all, an information war, one in which, as in Iran, the state is using its guns with the singular goal of trying to keep the lid on the fact that a people aren't swallowing its military coup d'etat.

By Al Giordano

In a discussion yesterday at Daily Kos, one commenter – we’ll presume he or she is, as self-described, Honduran or of Honduran descent – typed the following words:

“You obviously do not know us. We may be a poor country but we are very proud and will not be pushed around, even by the ‘great colossus to the North.’ Remember, we went to war over a soccer game...

“Zelaya has violated the Constitution. The term limits of the Presidency are not subject to referenda and Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”

This comment is fairly representative of many similar ones across the Internet. And it is instructive as to the attitude of what I call the Oligarch Diaspora that drives the deep disconnect between how coup defenders see themselves and how everybody else sees them.

Note the emphatic uses, in the comment, of the words, “we” and “us.”

“You don’t know us… We are very proud… We went to war over a soccer game.”

It’s as if the commenter personally was a combatant in the brief Honduras-El Salvador “Soccer War” of 1969, which I very much doubt. (Interestingly, the intervention of the Organization of American States, or OAS, was required to bring that conflict, which had no military victor, to an end).

And when OAS chairman José Miguel Insulza arrives today in Tegucigalpa for the last-ditch diplomatic effort to persuade the Honduran coup plotters to stand down and let democracy resume with its elected president restored, the attitude expressed is “Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”

The Honduran Constitution of 1982 is a series of 375 Articles – most of them just a sentence or two long - divided into seven sections. It has been amended 22 times since its enactment, and it is the country’s twelfth constitution since 1838.

In that light, the kernel of the coup’s charges against President Zelaya – that his efforts to convene a Constitutional Convention (“Constituent Assembly”) were somehow illegal – are bizarrely extreme in a land where the Constitution already gets rewritten and amended with such rapid-fire frequency.

My point is that it doesn’t require any kind of divine birthright or special genetics to read and understand that document. In fact, two non-Hondurans, North American professor Greg Weeks (“Honduras: Summing Up Some Basic Points”) and Salvadoran attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen ("Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal") have offered, so far, the most astute analyses of how the Constitution applies to the current crisis in Honduras.

Attorney Insulza – widely respected throughout the world for his diplomatic skills and intellectual toughness – is not someone who would have any problem at all reading and analyzing the Honduran Constitution as it applies to the current crisis. The suggestion that he has something to “learn” about the document that can only be provided to him by those the commenter calls “us” reveals more about the commenter than the Constitution.

Insulza, part of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 when it was deposed by military coup, who later spent years of exile in Mexico, could inform many throughout the world, including in Honduras, about the nature of coups d’etat from his unique personal experience. Historic events like that – unlike legal documents – are more difficult to understand without direct lived experience. But, no, coup defenders in Honduras largely view his travels to Tegucigalpa today to be sessions in which, like the commenter said, he has to “learn something about our Constitution.”

The generalized problem with the oligarchies throughout this region is that "we," to them, doesn't include the people they look down upon, which is pretty much everybody that isn’t in their economic-social class. To them, "we" does not mean a nation, but, rather, those who purport to own it.

I think I have already mentioned somewhere the story of the Cuban exile in Miami who said, "Before Castro, everybody had a maid!" Well, unless the maids also had maids, not everybody had a maid. Think about that. “Everybody,” in the oligarchic mind, doesn’t include, well, everybody, certainly not servants and the rest of the working and poor population.

I've witnessed these attitudes first hand in Mexico, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil... It’s widespread among a certain class that is the distinct minority in each population, but that has its hands more firmly on the economic levers of power in each country.

The current behavior of upper class Honduras and its aspirants brings to mind a scene from an episode of the television series, House M.D., in which Dr. Gregory House is on an airplane and a passenger falls ill. The other passengers go into a shared panic as suddenly everybody else on the plane begins complaining of, and even exhibiting, physical symptoms of what they thought – errantly, it turned out – to be a contagious illness.

There is precisely that kind of 30,000-feet-above-sea-level, in a closed and claustrophobic space, hysterical, shrieking tone to the pro-coup defense: That only "we" at these altitudes understand our Constitution; that "we" have to educate the rest of you, etcetera.

And it is from that zone of shared hallucination that their claim - "Zelaya has violated the Constitution" – arises.

They’ve demonstrated that they simply can't believe that anyone but members of their group (the “we” they frequently cite) would dare even try to interpret what only the educated and propertied classes of their milieu "know": in this case the Honduran Constitution.

A wisdom one learns when traveling and reporting in so many different lands: People aren't all that different from country to country. There are good and bad in all of them, and generally the different demographic types resemble each other very well across international borders. I've heard this “we” rap from the educated classes before but more to the point: I've lived alongside their attitude long enough to recognize it rather quickly when it surfaces.

There is something about elites – and its especially visible in this hemisphere – that demonstrates a kind of superiority complex wrapped around an inferiority complex, and all the while dripping with absolute bloody hatred and resentment toward "those people," the ones that don't see things as they and their demographic group see them in their shared hallucination. That's true of elites in the United States, in Honduras, the whole world over.

Insulza – who walks into that snake pit today – has also seen and heard people like that before, and lived the consequences of when their frenzied and shared hallucinations inflict upon society in brutal and violent ways. I’m fairly certain he has no illusions about changing the coup leaders’ minds with facts and reason: oligarchies are too often caught up in those shared hallucinations to be influenced by facts they perceive as external. Today’s visit is more likely to simply demonstrate that there will be no back-room deal from the OAS, that the return of the elected president is a non-negotiable demand, and perhaps to lay out explicitly what the consequences beyond Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS will be for continued intransigence by the coup.

The coup “president” Roberto Micheletti continues to labor under the illusion that he can negotiate a solution, which is why he is loudly proposing early elections and other trial balloons. But the nations of the hemisphere – and a significant swathe of the Honduran population – are not going to fall for such tricks by which an illegitimate coup government administrates an “election.” Nobody believes that such a vote could be fair or free, and to agree to such a scenario would only embolden other aspiring coup-plotters in other countries of America to then adopt the Honduran model to derail elected governments.

From the standpoint of the hemisphere, anything short of the unconditional return of Zelaya to the presidency would unleash a domino effect of coup attempts in other lands.

And, so far, in the shared hallucination of the coup defenders, they seem to believe they can bluff their way into forcing a negotiation still.

And this touches close to another misconception in some other circles that is being spoken: that if only the United States would cut off all aid to Honduras, the coup would instantly fall. (A related spin is that if only the United States had instructed the coup plotters in advance that said aid would be cut off – something that may have well occurred anyway - the coup would never have happened.)

That kind of analysis falls short for two reasons:

One, the hallucinatory nature of how the Honduran elites see themselves includes a willingness to destroy their own economy in a blazing attempt to assert their hallucination upon Honduras and the world. True or false, the pig-headed coup adherents really seem to believe they can survive and remain in power without that aid, or at least they seem willing to try for a while.

Secondly, Washington’s announcement that it has already put all but humanitarian aid “on pause” - the flow of money is already cut off - pending a decision on whether to legally define the regime in Honduras as a “military coup” isn’t having that effect.

From this vantage point, it’s strange to see people who I thought opposed the concept that Washington should dictate events in the hemisphere basically insisting that Washington should now dictate them. They seem to disregard the advances of the last decade that have made it impossible for the US to rule the hemisphere by decree anymore, something we should all celebrate.

And all this leads to the coming weekend – Sunday, to be exact – when President Manuel Zelaya says he will return to Honduras, and the coup regime says it will mobilize 25,000 people plus an arrest warrant to stop him.

This big game of chicken awaits one side or the other to blink. If neither side blinks, Zelaya will return and be imprisoned, sparking a rapid escalation of the conflict inside Honduras that might turn extremely violent. And Washington will certainly, in response, trigger the full cut-off of all US aid.

If Zelaya blinks, and doesn’t return to Honduras this weekend, he will lose popular support much in the same way that other legitimate presidents denied in this hemisphere - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas after 1988, Al Gore after 2000, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador after 2006 - lost popular steam from perceptions among their own supporters that they did not resist the electoral frauds against them with sufficient force.

If the coup blinks, it won’t be because of the penalties from OAS or the US, but, rather, because of internal divisions, specifically from two groups: the Armed Forces, and/or the commercial media. The first group, to me, seems a more plausible source of mutiny than the second, because the Honduran military – which, importantly, is not made up of members of the economic elite (and therefore is not caught up in the shared hallucination), but, rather, has long struck a deal to service them in exchange for certain privileges and powers – does, unlike the civilian coup plotters, know that it is Washington that pays its rent and bar tab.

(I only mention the commercial media – such as the pro-coup daily newspapers in Tegucigalpa and their owners - because they are so mercenary and corrupt that they could likely be bribed into temporarily turning on the coup regime. That’s an option that, if I were the OAS and its nations, I would carefully consider. They come relatively cheaply. The problem is, with them, that as an important sector of those elites, they are caught up in the shared hallucination, too, and thus if a higher bidder then comes forward, they are capable of switching allegiances on alternate days. The Armed Forces would be, if secured, a more reliable alliance of convenience.)

What Zelaya needs to land in Honduras on Sunday without being arrested is an airfield or border entry point that is sufficiently protected either by large crowds or a sector of the Armed Forces loyal to him (which means, practically, both, since one will follow the other). If he can pull that off, he’ll quickly be president again, and the coup plotters will be seeking exile in other lands.

If he doesn’t have that, Zelaya still has to go and subject himself to arrest, which will spark another chapter in this saga that could turn more violent yet. But not to do so would ensure a much greater and permanent violence: the maintenance of an illegitimate coup regime that has already proved its contempt for the most basic of freedoms, ripping up the very Constitution that it claims it has rallied around.

Whatever happens this weekend, I'm certain of this: it will be no soccer game that comes next.

By Al Giordano

The Oligarch Diaspora shouts, again and again, in its flailing attempt to convince the Honduran people and the world that its coup d’etat was somehow legitimate, “we want democracy!”

Well, here’s a powerful example of the kind of “democracy” they apparently want.

In November of 2008, the voters of San Pedro Sula – with a population of one million, it's the second largest city in Honduras – elected Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunseri (right, in the photo above) to be their Liberal Party candidate for mayor, with 63 percent of the vote.

Another candidate in that contest – William Hall Micheletti (left, in the photo above, and doesn't that last name sound familiar?) – garnered just 16 percent, coming in third.

Padilla went on to win the mayoralty.

But when your uncle Roberto Micheletti is the newly installed dictator of your country, coming in third is good enough!

At 11 a.m. this morning, workers and citizens in and near San Pedro Sula City Hall heard gunshots and explosions, while riot police attacked a crowd that was demonstrating outside against the coup. More than 50 citizens were reportedly arrested. And nobody has seen Mayor Padilla ever since.

So who is now “mayor” of the city? Telesur reports: the coup “president’s” nephew, William Hall Micheletti.

Ain’t their version of “democracy” grand?

By Al Giordano

Edgardo Dumas, publisher of the pro-coup daily La Tribuna in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and the country’s former Defense Minister, is saying that he speaks for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA where he sits on one of 13 committees) to claim there is no media censorship under the coup regime in Honduras.

(This would not be the first time that the IAPA and its newspaper owners acted in ways contrary to their stated mission in Latin America.)

Well, of course his newspaper isn’t being censored: It spouts only the authorized propaganda of the coup regime.

Dumas said, in this interview today with W Radio in Bogotá, Colombia:

Dumas: Right now, today, July 2, I don’t see any limit on freedom of the press. The four newspapers are putting out the impartial and true news… No TV or radio station has been interfered with.”

Q. Are you sure that the press is functioning normally today in Honduras?

Dumas: I am absolutely certain... I have no doubt about it.

Q. So the rumors that are coming about censorship aren’t true.

Dumas: They are totally and absolutely false.

Q. You are a representative of the IAPA, no?

Dumas: Yes

Q. And as representative of IAPA you support the coup?

Dumas: I don’t support a coup because there has been no coup…

Q. The cutting of CNN was a coincidence?

Dumas: There were no cuts… right now the press is working independently without any restriction… That CNN is badly informing, I have no doubt… CNN is broadcasting on the payroll of the dictator of Venezuela Hugo Chavez.

Q. It pains me to ask this question. Should a representative of IAPA, who represents journalists like us, take sides in a situation like this?

Dumas: I’m not taking sides. I’m trying to be the most objective and impartial I can be…

Q. Pardon me. You say CNN is at the service of Chavez, isn’t that taking sides?

Dumas: …It is not informing the world of what is happening in this country

Q. Mr. Dumas. Are you saying that as a representative of the IAPA?

Dumas: I am vice president of the committee of Press Freedom of the IAPA in Honduras.

Q. Is what you are saying, has it been consulted with the IAPA or is it your personal opinion?

Dumas: It’s my personal opinion.

="MsoNormal">Q. A vice president…

Dumas: For three years I’ve been informing with the IAPA… about freedom of expression in our country…

Q. It’s clear. For you there is no repression, there has not been a coup, there is no disinformation, what is happening is of total normality, and it is CNN and the international press that is disinforming?

Dumas: Exactly.

Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Dumas.

Every board member of the IAPA must be made to watch these following videos, demonstrating the brutal closure of TV and radio stations under the coup regime in Honduras.

Watch the coup's soldiers taking Channel 36 TV off the air:

Watch the coup's soldiers force Radio Progreso 103.3 FM to cease broadcasting:

That scene is from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, after the station had reported that a coup d’etat had taken place. Spontaneously, listeners of the station in the nearby neighborhood gathered outside its gates to find out what happened. That turne d into a demonstration in defense of the radio station, with chants of “People! Unite!”

At seven minutes into the video, a radio station employee comes out and says “we’ve decided to stop broadcasting.”

Here’s what happened next:

A radio station employee explains how they were convinced by the soldiers to stop broadcasting. A local citizen then addresses the crowd: “Radio Progreso is the voice of all the people of Progreso…. They are informing us that to avoid confrontations… they have decided to close operations... They are going to close the radio frequency… Radio Progeso asks that the people organize ourselves.”

Then a group of soldiers leaves, heading for one of the various trucks they arrived in, as people yell “get out, get out.”

Even the Miami Herald, publishing from the city where IAPA is based, has reported the true facts about massive media censorship under the coup regime, so the IAPA can’t claim to be unaware of it:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- At the close of the one of this week's nightly news broadcasts, Channel 21 news anchor Indira Raudales made a plea: ``We have a right to information! This can't be happening in the 21st century!''

If Raudales offered more details, viewers did not hear them: the screen briefly went to static.

Her on-air appeal for freedom of the press came as the newly installed Honduran government kept several news outlets closed, detained international reporters, and periodically interrupted the signal of CNN en español.

Reporters for The Associated Press were taken away in military vehicles and Venezuela's Telesur network -- and any other station supportive of toppled president Manuel Zelaya -- are still off the air.

Stations that are broadcasting carry only news friendly to the new government. Several local papers have yet to publish information about Zelaya's international support in neighboring countries.

''They militarized Channel 36, which is owned by me,'' said Esdras López, director of the show, ''Asi se Informa.'' ``They brought more than a battalion -- 22 armed men -- took the channel and said nobody could come in and nobody could come out...

The dishonest statements made by Dumas, in the name of the Interamerican Press Association, are an outrage.

All too typical of so many IAPA member newspapers - it is a trade association for industry owners, after all - they are pro-regime in their own land, and therefore do not provoke the censorship and repression that authentic and independent journalists incur, so they are willing to go to the extreme of lying to cover up repression against the more journalistic competition.

I call upon the IAPA to denounce his statements, correct them through its own public statement, and summarily remove Edgardo Dumas from all positions within the organization.

If you’d like to do the same, here is an online form at its website where you can send them a message.

Or you can call (305) 634-2465.

If you get a response out of IAPA, write me at narconews@gmail.com so we can share it with all.

Update: IAPA executive director Julio Muñoz thanked me for passing along this information, and shortly thereafter sent us this statement:

Complaints of restrictions on the press continue

Miami (July 2, 2009)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today repeated its call for full respect for press freedom to the new Honduran authorities. The call came as the organization's ongoing monitoring of the situation in the Central American country compiled complaints from news media and journalists that they are still restricted, intimidated and attacked while they attempt to report.

IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón declared, “To guarantee to the people their right to receive full information the government should not only cease any limitations on the work of the press but also protect and ensure that all media, no matter what their editorial policies, can work freely and in safety.”

“Freedom of the press and of expression is a shared asset belonging to all within a society,” Santos Calderón stated. “And nobody has the right to claim he has the legal authority to decide what the people or society can or must receive as information.” He cited Principle 1 of the Declaration of Chapultepec, which reads “The exercise of this freedom (of the press) is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people.”

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, added that “we cannot allow ourselves to be misguided by the existing polarization and permit discrimination against the media, reporters and columnists who might be on one side or the other politically.” He recalled that the basis “of press freedom is plurality and diversity” and that “in this conflict we are seeing that all reporters and editors are being affected in one way or another by the conflicting groups.”

IAPA concern is based on numerous actions and complaints in the wake of last Sunday’s coup d’etat, especially incidents, restrictions and censorship that the broadcast media have been subjected to. Although some television channels have returned to the air following Sunday's suspension, including state-run Canal 8and  privately-owned Canal 6 and Canal 11, there have been complaints about control of the information being put out; international television channel Telesur, meanwhile, remains off the air.

In another offense, correspondents from The Associated Press (Esteban Félix, Nicolás García and two of their assistants) and Telesur (Adriana Sivori, María José Díaz and Larry Sánchez) were arrested on Monday while sending video and photos from a hotel room in the Honduran capital when armed members of the military burst in and took them to the Immigration Service office. They were released after it was found they were in the country legally.

Reporters, photographers and cameramen from various news media have filed complaints of attacks by the Common Crimes Unit of the Attorney General’s Office. Among them were three reporters with the Canal 42program “Entrevistado” (Interviewed) who were attacked on Sunday with sticks and stones by demonstrators yelling insults who then seized and smashed their cameras. A similar situation was reported by Radio Globoin Tegucigalpa, from where journalists were temporarily taken to the local Attorney General’s Office, whileRadio Progreso in El Progreso, Yoro province, was “invaded by a contingent of around 25 soldiers” according to a press release issued by the station.

Another TV station not allowed to broadcast was Canal 66 Maya TV. In statements to the San Pedro Sula newspaper Tiempo, Eduardo Maldonado, a former presidential candidate and host of the radio and television program “Hable como Habla” (Say What You Will), reported that on Sunday “They shut us down and locked us out, saying it was on orders.” He added that although broadcasts were resumed on Monday “We didn’t put out full information, only the official line.”

 

Print media, while less hindered in its efforts to report the news in both its print editions and its online versions, was nonetheless not exempt from restrictions and hostility by the warring groups. Some editors, after receiving constant threats against themselves and their journalists -- in their newsrooms and in cell phone messages -- have decided to protect their families by moving them out of their hometowns or out of the country.

Among other developments, the San Pedro Sula newspaper La Prensa reported that on Monday a mob threw sticks and stones at the front of its building and painted slogans in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. News photographer Juan Ramon Sosa of La Tribuna was beaten up, insulted and had his camera taken by members of the federal police in Tegucigalpa while covering a demonstration. Meanwhile, several newspapers saw their distribution facilities damaged, from vending kiosks to delivery trucks.

Carlos Mauricio Flores, editor of the Tegucigalpa daily paper El Heraldo, confirmed to the IAPA that its reporters have received phone threats and he also revealed that last Saturday (June 27) “a self-styled People’s  Commando sent to several e-mail addresses a message with degrading photos and text about at least eight journalists from independent media and called on the public to punish them.”

On a final note, the IAPA officers pointed out that many of the attacks on the Honduran press, especially those encouraged by the government, have been criticized by the organization for years now. It cited, in particular, discrimination in the placement of official advertising and the use of state resources to reward or punish journalists, as well as payments to reporters, the constant damaging remarks made about journalists and media by senior officials, the use of public media outlets as organs of propaganda, and the limitation and manipulation of official information.

In recent years a number of Honduran journalists have been forced to leave the country and there is still a high level of impunity in the unsolved cases of the murders of two journalists and two news media consultants.

That's quite the opposite version of events as that forwarded by Mr. Dumas.

IAPA made no direct comment in response to my questions about his standing to make such statements for the organization.