Your comments on the American anarchist scene circa 1999 are ludicrous, the kind of straw man that Glenn Beck would create. They are also sexist, because more than half the people I know who are Seattle anarchists are womyn.

in this case perhaps destroying the property of US corporations was strategically unwise, immature, opportunistic etc.

but your lumping all property destruction into the same bag, in all struggles, is pig-headed and innacurate. We obviously ascribe different narratives to Seattle 1999, which in my eyes became a significant event in many ways because of the raucous incontrolability of the events. this includes the ransacking of more then a few corporate establishments. There needs to be a dialogue about the strategic use of these kinds of tactics, but far too often it gets degraded into allegations of provocateurs by those who wish to establish liberal hegemony within a protest movement. and frankly the anti-globalization movement was growing and becoming more powerful until September 11 hit and the world bank/IMF mobilization was called off out of "respect." We never recovered. It didnt have anything to do with violence. anyways, cheers to the movement in honduras. may it grow and remain uncontrollable to the political parties (including zelayas) who will seek to recuperate the struggle.

My wife ritualistically contacts her family in Honduras once a week.

Her upper-middle class brother, sister-in-law and abuela support the coup.  Her sister-in-law, Florencia, doesn't like my wife and usually doesn't participate in these weekly computer get togethers.

However, when the coup went down, Florencia jumped in and ranted and raved about how the coup was necessary for this reason or that...I stopped listening because her rant was speeding her delivery up to machine gun speed.

Last weekend, my wife's clearly disheveled brother was starting to discuss the latest events...and he especially focused on the fastfood joint and bus being burned.  For him, these were examples of the anti-Christ, Chavez puppet Zelaya bringing chaos to that society of pristine orderliness: Honduras.

I think it is good to limit any violent actions by anti-coup supporters, but try and remember, La Tribuna and El Heraldo are pumping out huge flows of highly desired propaganda daily for the likes of my wife's brother and his wife.

If Zelaya was demonstrably Jesus Christ and the anti-coup demonstrators were his holy angels, it wouldn't matter.  The oligarch's media of massive disinformation would conjure up some fearmongering images to herd their upper-middle class supporters over the ridge and into the canyon.

These people are like those in the US who are birthers, Obama-is -about-to-take-our-guns, designer mobs attacking healthcare reform gatherings, Obama-is-a-communist/socialist, healthcare-reform- supports-death-panels, etc.

These people want to believe any slogan or negative condemnation distributed by the oligarch's media; long ago, they have given up including the benefits of the thought process to analyze the content of their information. 

They are totally at the behest of the oligarch's scare tactics.  And they are allied to the oligarchy in the hopes that their past spirtual and physical servitude will be rewarded during this period of economic collapse.

Thus they see a mobilised crowd of the wretched-of-the-earth as both dangerous to their oligarchical masters (with whom the upper-middle class have invested their beliefs and support) and they view them as potential competitors for the ever leaner crumbs flicked off the master's dinner table.

Blaming foreign agitators? 

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya clashed with soldiers and police for a second day on Wednesday as street protests over the June 28 army coup turned rowdy.

Zelaya's wife attended another pro-Zelaya protest on Wednesday in the industrial city of San Pedro Sula near the country's Caribbean coast, which was also broken up by police firing tear gas canisters .

Micheletti, in a message broadcast on national television, claimed the clashes were being spurred by "foreign agitators" and promised to respect the rights of those detained at the protests.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12176789.htm

The very isolated act of violence yesterday during the marches is unfortunate, and it is good to see the resistance reject such actions. BUT I think that if the coup regime continues to stubbornly stay in power and continues using the security forces to repress the population, eventually violence will erupt. Micheletti is still insisting on elections in November, with no sign of stepping down before then, and the U.S. has so far completely ignored the state-sanctioned terror taking place. The small events of yesterday might also be a sign that if the coup continues, eventually violence could be a result.

Interesting comments about the Ugly American Diaspora.  What I found interesting about La Gringa's diatribe is the anger and confusion in describing the anti-coup protesters as if s/he (and it feels female to me) can't make up her mind.  "Criminals", "terrorists" and "misunderstood delinquents" are quite different groups and each label provokes a different emotional response.  Anger toward "criminals"; fear toward "terrorists" and the most intriguing label of all - minimizing contempt for "misunderstood delinquents".

In my opinion, La Gringa, like Al, appears to feel the coup is losing.  For example, the authors' statement that the american Ambassador Hugo Llorens met with "Members of the violent Frente Nacional de Resistencia group" but will not meet with members of the "government".  And the authors plea, "Open your eyes world.  Hondurus is being held hostage by terrorist" does not feel like someone who has a lot of faith that the coup government will last.

People have a right to be pissed off. There's a meaning to "no justice, no peace" ... it means "until there's justice, there won't be peace". In Honduras, right now, I agree that the strikes, the work stoppages, the road closures, etc are all effective tactics.

However, keep in mind that there are MANY people who would argue that this is also "violence" and you'll hear the urban myth story of the ambulance that couldn't get to where it needed to go because it couldn't go 2 blocks out of the way of a road closure and blah blah blah.

The media can say whatever they want if they want to suggest that any form of protest is "bad for people" and if they can focus in on kids unleashing some of the "property destruction"-style of protest that was popular during the ALCA, IMF/WB and Iraq War protests, then sometimes they'll do that, too. Othertimes, it will be spun as a show of greater conviction by the protest crowd. It all depends on the media and what strategy they've got going on in the editor/owner meetings and how that interacts with the reports that actually get filed. What I'm saying is that it's more complicated than just

In Quebec, when we protested FTAA/ALCA, there were 3 zones and people could choose which zone they wanted to be in, based on the intensity of the conflict which would happen there. And I promise that had that protest only been the green & yellow zones, without the Guerre de Gaz that happened in the red zone, where people tore down the fence encircling the summit and waged pitched battles with the riot police for 3 days, that protest wouldn't have had anywhere near the international press coverage that it did.

I'm surprised that, so far, the Honduras movement has been able to contain the anger of young people especially, as they experience (some for the first time) the feeling you get of watching someone you know or someone you could have known very easily being killed without retribution or justice.

The major media is going to say whatever the major media wants to say. And it can be taken in a number of ways -- a successful traffic stoppage (like what happened with the taxis the other day) can easily be ignored or minimized. You can't ignore or minimize burning buildings.

During the 6 months of protests leading up to the Iraq War, it became very clear that every month, International ANSWER would lead a "green zone"-type march and that a group that took a lot of risk on themselves by intentionally forming "breakaway marches" from those larger marches would pursue a more intense form of protest -- nothing big, but it did end up with the trashing of an Army recruiting office, smashing out the windows at the local INS building (it was closed because it was a Sunday) and leaving pro-immigrant graffiti on it, vandalizing the SF Chronicle for their support of the drumbeat of war, and stuff like that.

In this case, it looks to be somewhat of the same -- as you point out yourself, Al, the kids seem to be far away from the main protest and are out on their own venting their anger.

Of course, this is a complicated topic with all kinds of dimensions and there are social struggles of all different degrees all over the world. I think if social movement organizers want to identify these kids and talk to them about their actions in an open way, fine, do so. I -do- have a problem in other situations with the "volunteer do-gooder protest police" who I've seen physically attack people who are engaging in property destruction or, even worse, detain them and hand them over to the police (or snitch on them). And, again, these are in different circumstances and in different protest situations.

I am all for a movement in Honduras that shuts down Honduran society until Zelaya is restored. But the clock is ticking. I was with you, Al, on taking Obama at his word. And I know your opinion has been changing since he decided to call those of us who think the US should do more as "hypocrites," just as the news is breaking that his Secretary of State is involved in privately funding the coup. I'm wondering more and more if Obama is going to find it easier to go along with the business interests on this one.

I guess I'm half-ranting here, partly out of frustration. I was kind of glad to see business-as-usual take a hit in Honduras during the protest. The guy who owns those franchises probably supports the coup.

Finally, I know that ultimately this battle will be won or lost in Honduras, but I want to remind EVERYONE that we are living in historic times -- where Latin America has FINALLY built up a power base that allows it to challenge the traditional oligarchy. I want to live in a future where those types of societies flourish ... I want to spend my life helping to make them better and stronger ... I want my half-redneck/half-Latino kids to grow up in societies where social justice is a value ... instead of growing up amongst the insecurity of industrial decay where everyday the news is telling you how much more power your dad's union lost that day, how many more jobs are going to be lost and how many more people are showing up at homeless shelters this winter.

And I see a risk of these great, post-dictatorship experiments being crushed under the weight of a right-wing that is getting better organized. So, I'm urging everyone -- no matter where they live -- to get involved in applying pressure to this coup regime in Honduras. It matters personally for all of us and especially for those who want to live in the Americas. We are right now working quickly to better organize external pressure on Honduras and I'll post more information here but we aren't the only ones who can do it. More than that, we need to be ready for a region-wide struggle to keep these movements alive. I look around the world and the one place I see hope is in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Cuba, etc.

So, sorry to rant all over the place. I've been fighting this coup however I can every day since it happened and trying to get people where *I* live right now to care and see how it affects them and to be quite honest, I can empathize with these kids' frustration even thought I'm also old enough to understand the need for discipline in any movement for change.

solidaridad..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzkJf2vVnU

It would be interesting to see if the information about the attack in the night of August 11, 2009 (during the curfew) against the offices of Via Campesina in Tegucigalpa will also be reported (and comdemned) by the golpista media, AFP and other la gringa's.

And what about the bomb that went of in the building of the Beverage Workers Union (STIBYS) on July 26, 2009? Did you hear 'them' about that?

Is it a coincidence that both organizations are part of the National Front Against the Coup?

After weeks of seeing nothing at all about Honduras in BigMedia, 'lo and behold the manufactured violence is enough to garner a headline and AP "report" on the Yahoo frontpage

Anti-coup protesters, police clash in Honduras

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090813/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup

It's interesting to compare the AP "report," which unfortunately still sets the dominant storylines in the US public discourse, and what Narconews has been reporting about Honduras.

Imagine not having Narconews around and how ill-informed we'd be about the Honduran coup.  I particularly cringe at the AP's use of "interim President Micheletti."  Oh, and according to the AP there were only 10,000 of the protester thugs, but thankfully the trusted security forces were able to keep the violent little people in check, and protect some Popeye's Chicken grease traps.  Whew!

No mention of the killing and maiming these same security forces
 have already done to the people of Honduras.  Well, at least the AP is using the word "coup" at times, I suppose.

The world's BigBigMoney controllers all know the game.  Al's been highlighting how much of these people operate around Latin America, and Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell (owner of Chicago Trib/LA Times, and others) are happy to do thier part in the BigGame, which is why they joined the Board of the Associated Press.  It was already happening at AP before then, but we've really seen the AP misinformation functions ramp up since those two liars got involved.

We must all do everything we can to grow Narconews through word-of-mouth/screen marketing and donations.

Violence has already erupted. The massive repression is state terrorism at its worst. If it comes down to it and the mass movement has to go underground and/or arm itself in self-defense, we should all be prepared to continue with our support.

Of course, no one really wants that scenario to unfold except for the dictatorship itself, because then it could ramp up the violence even more, and there is always the possibility of direct intervention by the USA to "prevent civil war".

It's always best to maintain non-violence for tactical and stategic reasons, and it seems like the courageous Honduran resistance is prepared to do just that.

Those of us in the United States need to consider quite seriously the proposition of forming a national solidarity committee to put pressure on the US government and provide material support and accompaniment to the resistance.

This coup might take some time to topple.

Al writes:

"Many come merely for the lower cost of living: they couldn’t afford servants, gardeners and chauffeurs back home, but in the Third World they can live like viceroys. Many have been here for twenty years or more and still don’t speak good Spanish, so immersed in the ex-pat bubble as they are"

Thank you for summarizing my sentiments as well. I am a U.S. native, but live in Mexico, and my wife has family in Tegucigalpa as well. I recently moved from San Miguel de Allende where there is a huge U.S. ex-pat population. These are oligarchist elites who give a rat's posterior about the local populous. They fly their U.S. flags, only speak English, thumb their noses at the natives and support the Calderonistas. And many of them are actually ILLEGALLY in the country. (Despite it all, the locals who are reduced to indentured servants are quite hospitable.) I can only imagine La Gringa reflects their attitude. If she really took the time to understand the culture and "convivir con la gente real," she would support Zelaya and his democratic cause.

If you go to her section on "immigrating" she states:

"Life is hard in Honduras for so many reasons, even when you have the money to live a comfortable lifestyle." That suggests to me she is living it up!

I wish she would follow her own advice on recusing herself on legal advice and apply it to her pathetic blog:

"First, I'm not qualified..."

I'm quoting this mendiga gringa. SHE SAID IT! I DID NOT!

It is obvious by la "gringa's" title she knows little Spanish. Her blog is entitled "La Gringa's Blogicito." Anyone with a little knowledge of Spanish would have properly called it "Bloguecito."

(Folks, please indulge me in some US radical political debate that thankfully has little to do with Honduras, but some of the comments above embody exactly what I am criticizing above. So here goes...)

Judy - You speak as if you were elected spokeswoman (or is it spokeswymyn?) for "the American anarchist scene." That's rich. Which one do you speak for? The social anarchists? Lifestyle anarchists? Anarcho-syndicalists? Eco-anarchists? Anarcho-punks? Anarcho-feminists who spell the word "wymyn"? Anarcho-feminists who spell it "women"? Libertarian communists? Makhnovishnas? Kropotkinists? Proudhounists? Magonistas?

Or do you just speak for that small minority of US anarchists that think there is only one anarchist scene?

What would you prefer I call your grouposcule? "Judyistas?"

Only a very small minority of those who define their tendency as anarchist - you have zero monopoly on the word or the deed, and you should stop behaving as if you do - attempted to hijack the post-Seattle milieu of "summit hopping" demonstrations. An authentic anarchist, though, wouldn't try to impose his or her tactics on a much larger protest group that had already decided it would not engage in, say, property destruction or throwing shit at cops. That was an authoritarian act on your part and on the part of those that did so because you imposed your minority view on a much larger group.

Why couldn't you have picked a different day to have your faux-riots? Why did you have to pick the only day in which thousands more would be protesting, and who declared they would do so nonviolently? I'll tell you why? Because you and your grouposcule are sniveling cowards who sought to hide under the skirts of the larger majority of demonstrators who wanted nothing of your self-glorifying tactics.

And you call yourselves anarchists? What a joke. Anarchists belief in self-management, not self-indulgent tantrums mislabeled as political action. You and your tendency get isolated and contained regularly by the Latin American social movements because they're about winning, whereas you're just about convincing yourself that you're some kind of vanguard to a movement you did not organize.

(More in this series responses regarding developed world protest history...)

Rich - You're damn right there needs to be "dialogue on the strategic use of these kinds of tactics" and the place it should always be held is with the larger movement before they are imposed on everyone by a few.

What crushes dialogue is when some self-appointed mini-group goes out and does this crap without having organized and achieved support from the overall movement for it.

The "anti-globalization movement" did not fizzle out on September 11, 2001. It continued to grow for a while after that. It's zenith was probably Cancun in 2003 when a combination of outside protests and inside maneuvering by Brazil and other developing world countries put the World Trade Organization on pause. And one of the reasons why the action was effective is that there was very little of the "street trantrum" action that had plagued prior and subsequent summit-hop protests. There was also the public suicide of a South Korean farmer that eclipsed press coverage for less savory elements.

You are correct that "recuperation" (in Situationist terms) is something all social movements and civil resistances have to inoculate against: the cooptation of their movements by electoral, spectacular or other forces (including the media). But I'll tell you this: the Latin American social movements are miles and years ahead of the North American and European movements on resisting cooptation.

Ahhhhh c'mon - Now it's your turn.

Please don't look at Latin American movements as a canvass upon which to fight battles that are internal to North American movements. It's like apples and oranges. The Honduran civil resistance, for example, is aeons ahead of the Answer Coalition in popular support and the community organizing that brought it. Applying one country's movement squabbles to another's doesn't make progress in either.

As for "young people" in the Honduran movement, it's not so much a matter of the movement "containing" them as it is the different nature of most young people in a country where most are parents and in the workplace before their teen years are done. Only a very small minority get to go to university or enjoy the creature comforts - iPods, laptops, their own cars... - that most in the US and European milieus routinely possess. In general, they're more serious than their First World counterparts, in large part because they personally have more on the line.

I do encourage your emphasis on organizing and outreach where you are to topple the Honduras coup. On that, we wholeheartedly agree.

Nancy - Bravo for this quote: "In my opinion, La Gringa, like Al, appears to feel the coup is losing."

I share your sense of that. There is a certain despair emanating from the pro-coup camp even now, a week after a splattering of "Honduras won" headlines from right wing sources. They don't frankly know how to define victory or what they really want to happen next and they're flailing around looking for a script to the second act that they didn't consider when they embarked upon the first.

Meanwhile, the civil resistance knows exactly what it wants: a new constitution.

The side that is more coherent in fewer words is usually the side that wins any struggle!

Al -- like I said in my post, a lot of that was ranting from a lot of different directions and I made sure to qualify what I was saying by noting the differences between organizing in the US vs. organizing in Latin America. I couldn't agree with you more regarding how far advanced the social movements are in Latin America vs. something like ANSWER.

That said, it should be recognized that "globalization" is something we could and should strategize around to our advantage ... from my background, which is from a place in the US where NAFTA destroyed my best possibility at a good-paying job and now that area routinely competes with Detroit as the poorest metropolitan area in the United States, my life has evolved such that I'm married and creating a family with a socialist from Latin America. Twenty years ago, that wasn't as common. But with the internet and international organizing and with governments in Venezuela and Brazil doing unbelievable things to bridge the digital divide, cross-cultural socializing like that is only going to increase and increase at an amazing rate.

I also agree that people in countries like Honduras are more serious than their counterparts -- not only in the US, but also more wealthier Latin American countries like Brazil or Argentina, where I see some of the same sort of half-assed commitment to social revolution or slapstick anarchist nonsense having become popular. Looking long-term, as more and more of the US population are first-generation Latino immigrants, and more and more people throughout the Americas form social bonds, I want to see how we can export the Latin American values that has led to this regional social movement to the US, while at the same time making sure that the American elite (who are CERTAINLY hooked up with each other ... you can bet that in Otto Reich's social scene, they are already globalized and strategizing for the Americas as a whole).

Anyway, I think we mostly agree -- the only difference being that looking to the future, "where we are" will become more and more fluid and our strategizing should take that into account. "Where I am" is really three different places, in two different countries, north and south, and no one involved remotely comes from a wealthy or even upper middle-class background. So, I'm interested in a long-term, life-long strategy that takes this growing cultural mix into account.

The debate that's cropped up here about the justifiability of violent tactics in the midst or at the culmination of a primarily nonviolent movement for justice or freedom started more than 100 years ago, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks dynamited a civil resistance movement against the Tsarist government that was on the verge of creating a genuine parliamentary democracy in Russia in 1905.  The Bolsheviks tried to do exactly what Al describes the anarchists as having done to the anti-globalization movement:  they tried to hijack a broad popular resistance which they had not themselves organized, in order to assume ideological control of its direction, and thereby pole-axed its effectiveness.  Workers and yes, liberals, had joined together through strikes, protests and noncooperation -- which triggered over a hundred military mutinies -- to force the Tsar to embrace the most significant reforms in the history of imperial Russia. But when the Bolsheviks sparked violent street battles against Tsarist troops in December 1905, the hard-liners in the regime prevailed and a general crackdown ensued, and true democracy was still-born.  Lenin was particularly obtuse when it came to how he expected the Tsar's soldiers to react to violence.  He predicted that when soldiers saw armed citizens, they would throw down their guns and join them.  The opposite happened:  The soldiers ruthlessly mowed down the revolutionaries.   Since then there has not been a single decisive historical instance of a regime's soldiers defecting when shot at.  In contrast, senior officers or entire military units defected to nonviolent movements or refused to fire on them in the Philippines in 1986, in Chile in 1988, in Russia in 1991, in the Ukraine in 2005 and in many other nonviolent transitions.

"Nonviolent discipline" has actually been the watchword of civilian-based movements since Gandhi's organizing of Indians against British rule, because he realized that the general public wouldn't participate in the movement once violence started.  In the 1920s he called off campaigns in which free-lance violence began to give the British the justification for repression, and said, "How can we expect to rule our own nation when we cannot rule ourselves?".  When he organized tens of millions of Indians to boycott British products and engage in civil disobedience in the early 1930s, the British raj was shaken to its foundations and never recovered the ability to maintain the international legitimacy of its occupation of India or extract the same value from its imperial control of the subcontinent.

If you want to see the real facts of the success rate of violent vs. nonviolent tactics in insurrections, take a look at this paper, it's stunning:  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/summary/v033/33.1.st...

Many commenters here are criticizing the Obama Administration for not having more decisively backed the restoration of Zelaya.  How does it help that objective for a photograph of a pro-Zelaya protester kicking the ass of the vice president of the Honduran legislature, to become the prime image today in the Washington Post of the resistance to the coup?  That photograph has done more damage to the political cause of the resistance to the coup this week than anything that Lanny Davis or Hillary Clinton have done.

However cathartic it may feel to break a store window, kick a vice president in the ass, or even shoot a uniformed defender of a regime, it's strategically self-destructive.  The Honduran resistance will succeed in triggering tougher international sanctions against the regime, and crippling the regime's ability to use repression, once the scope of participation by ordinary citizens becomes an undeniable reality visible not only in Washington but also to all those Hondurans who are sitting at home or sitting on the fence or are still supporting the regime but don't want to go down the drain with it, if they think it's going to fail.  And that level of mobilization won't be reached unless the movement is nonviolent and is seen as nonviolent. Even the international media can't pretend that there hasn't been a general civil insurrection when they see grandmothers in the street and soldiers refusing orders.  And if you think the media won't cover it, just go to Google Images and type in "civil resistance" -- you'll get 10,000 pictures, many of them from the mainstream media, many showing highly propulsive nonviolent resistance actions.  The media love to cover the climax of nonviolent revolutions as much as violent conflicts.

The movement against the coup in Honduras may or may not succeed for several reasons.  But if it turns violent, it will certainly fail.

Al i applaud your keen intellect and journalistic integrity. I couldnt agree with you more in your critique of these so-called "anarchists". You are absolutely correct in that they only show up during protests and are NEVER around the communities that are organizing. As we would say in The Bay---they who-ridin' on our shit. For example, these self-serving "anarchists" and their tactics were key to discrediting the Oscar Grant protests here in Oakland, Ca. Can someone tell me why these bozo's ripped to pieces a corridor on 17th st in Downtown Oakland that was home to nothing but local mom and pop operated businesses? Because they were NOT FROM OAKLAND and had no clue of about the neighborhood they were trashing! Not only that, the protests were aimed at police brutality and the murder of Oscar Grant by a white PIG. What was the purpose of trashing our city? We have enough problems as it is and these actions oly served the media to divert attention fromthe real problem at hand (police misconduct and terrorism in our communities of color) and instead the media focused on the local businesses that were trashed; thus higlighting the antics instead of the message and turning a supportive community into a doubtful one.

For all of the so-called anarchists that come from privelege, i say this: it is easy to simulate "struggle" by moving into a hood, helpng speed genrification in big cities and displacng those they supposedly are trying to "help" or be in "solidarity" with, ironically enough, but it is much more difficult and an authentic struggle if they would stay in their priveleged cmmunities to help the rest of their neighbors, families, and friends understand their own immediate priveleges and struggles. For example, helping other folx become anti-racists, helping others understand their whiteness and white priveleges as well as class privelege that contribute to their ignorance of "other" poeples. Just as you stated, "Especially if its dominated by the Ugly American Diaspora that isn’t persuaded by anything but its own racial bigotries and class prejudices. (Cue up the predictable chorus of “but, but, but, I’m married to one, and some of my best friends are my servants!”)"---unfortunately, we have TOO MANY of those types in the Bay Area as well that claim to "not be racist" yet have no clue that there is a huge difference to saying "im not racist" and being ANTI-RACIST. And for the record, San Francisco is the MOST racist city ive been in; mainly because many of the folx that live there feel as though they are absolved from any type of accountability simply because they live in a "progressive" city. Its like me putting on a a SF Giants hat to make others assume im a Giants fan when in reality my team is the Oakland Athletics. It dont mean shit! And thats a huge problem for these so-called "anarchists"  because they think that if we dont look like them, then we are not "down" like they are.

Our many thanks to you again Al...

Your dedication to telling the truth of the Honduran Coup is unequalled...

Thank you for exposing the ExPat Coup Movement...

The Resistance fighters did not torch the restaurant or bus...

Michelletti needed a way to return the curfew...

And he wanted to stop the marches...

For every Resistance fighter Michelletti beats down...

10 more are taking his place...

The Resistance is growing...

Not deminishing...

Michelletti and his US cohorts' truly believed the Coup would be over in days...

Reminds me of a US prez standing on a battleship...

With a banner behind him - "Mission Accomplished"...

All the beatings...

All the tear gas...

All the jail cells...

The assassinations...

Will not stop the Resistance...

Viva la Resistencia Revolucion!

A view from the inside on the horrific violence unleashed against demonstrators yesterday as a result of an ugly, undisciplined incident on the plaza in front of the National Congress.

Adrienne Pine's correspondent has participating and sending daily reports since the coup, which she translates.  Recommended reading for anyone who'd like to see this through the eyes of an active member of the popular movement; please look at the last week of dispatches for perspective on today's.

Tom - Two thoughts for you.

1. You write, "However cathartic it may feel to break a store window, kick a vice president in the ass, or even shoot a uniformed defender of a regime, it's strategically self-destructive."

I think those are three quantitatively different kinds of events with different levels of backlash. The scenario of "shoot a uniformed defender of the regime" is in the category of deadly violence against people. That of "break a store window" is in the category of destruction of property. And that of "kick a vice president (of Congress) in the ass" is, in the context of that AP photo in the Washington Post (the second in the slide show at this link) is something that concerns me a lot less because it has the endearing added quality of humor.

If it had been a photo of a mob attacking the Congressman in a manner that could cause physical harm, that surely would have done damage to the cause. But the photo - of one guy delivering a kick to the ass of a rotund guy in a suit - doesn't conjure a sense that the politician was in any real danger. And although watching slapstick movies we might feel a bit guilty laughing when a guy steps on a rake and it hits him in the forehead, people still tend to laugh out loud.

It was precisely an incident like that which catapulted Lech Walesa to national leadership of the Polish civil resistance during the Gdansk shipyard strike. A shipyard bureaucrat had stood up on a wall with a megaphone telling the strikers to go home. Walesa stood up on the wall and punched the guy in the nose in front of thousands. He had been, until that point, a fairly marginalized union organizers who had been called "anarchist," "terrorist" and more by the regime. The people, though, responded to his act of what might be called "theatrical violence" - that which does not wound or maim or kill.

The big danger of course with theatrical violence is that things can more quickly get out of hand. It can provoke a more serious violent response in which the resistance has already lost the moral high ground even from an act of non-wounding theatrical violence.

I think that photograph demonstrates, again, like the one atop this page, that the incident was not that of a "hoard" or a tactic decided on by the resistance as a whole, but of some isolated guys. I frankly think people will find it less threatening than the image up above. And thankfully I don't think the image of the kick in the butt was really that harmful. It actually looks less threatening than the strictly text accounts of the same incident made it seem.

2. Just as there is what might be called a social democrat critique of Lenin's actions in 1905, there is, from the left, an anarchist critique that has some common ground. (After all, what is an anarcho-syndicalist other than one who wants to democratize aspects of life and work beyond the strictly governmental sector?) When the Russian revolution succeeded twelve years later in 1917, one of the first tasks undertaken by Lenin and company was to brutally stamp out the anarchists that were arguing for decentralization and government from the bottom up through workers' councils.

The province of Ukraine had during the tumult self-organized an "anarchist federation" that governed that huge geography for 18 months. The early Soviet went after its primary writer and strategist, Nestor Makhno, brutally, imprisoning then exiling him, and the Makhnovishnas, as they called themselves, also received the bottom end of that boot.

My point is that folks can disagree about what the final goal might be - whether social democracy or decentralized anarchist federation or any other number of options and tendencies - to still agree on the central point: Those that do not do the heavy lifting of organizing a movement are acting in a fundamentally authoritarian fashion when they attempt to hijack that movement to their own goals, and the regimes that flow out of such "vanguardist" actions when they've been successful begin with that authoritarian DNA built in them. There are many that were sympathetic to the original goals of the Russian Revolution who became quickly disillusioned with it, including many of its principal organizers (see Trotsky, Leon, or Goldman, Emma or the writer Reed, John!).

It is up to the Honduran people to design their new constitution and determine whether they go the path of social democracy, democratic socialism or other options. But the freedom that comes out of it or not is really not so dependent on which path they take, but how they achieve it. If achieved through democratic means, it will be more democratic and less authoritarian whatever path they take.

I add my voice to your long list of well-deserved congratulations. Not only is Narco News accurate, but you also publish and tolerate opposing viewpoints. That is demonstrated by the opinions published by various posters on this topic.

On the opposite side is the gabacha(0)/gringa(o)/yanqui de m@#^&!*-- whichever term you prefer -- who operates "La Gringa's Blogicito." I have attempted to leave some fair, but critical comments about the blog on numerous occasions, and to date, have never seen them posted. I only find pro-golpista comments and tainted, third person accounts from "La Prensa."

Keep up the authentic journalism!

Thanks to you and your site English speaker people  are well informed about the reality of what's happening in Honduras. I'm an Honduran living in the US and my husband introduced me to this site where I can see the reality of what's going there and not just that, you bring up very good analysis of the situation. Thanks also to an Honduran friend who lives in Spain I have found some Spanish sites that bring the reality not like the Honduran media like la Tribuna, El heraldo and most of the media there except for radio Globo. By the way in one of this Spanish sites I just read one of the articles you posted originally in this Narco News site. For the ones who can read Spanish this is a very recommended site: www.voselsoberano.com

Thanks Al

"The movement against the coup in Honduras may or may not succeed for several reasons.  But if it turns violent, it will certainly fail."

Just to provoke some discussion & thought, since I think this topic is interesting and important and we've been discussing it here in person, let me continue this topic here ...

Tom Paine, how does your opinion reconcile with the history of the Cuban revolutionary movement? A follow-up question is: what enabled the tiny island of Cuba to continue being a regional socialist leader all these years while other governments, like Chile, were susceptible to foreign sabotage? If Chile had been more security-conscious, like Cuba has been, would the Allende government have been able to leave a different legacy?

Another question to provoke thought: what about the revolutionary strategy of "entrenchment" and citizen militias developed by Cuba and recently adopted by Venezuela (for which Chavez purchased 100,000 AK-47s from Russia)?

I know that Fidel Castro has publicly stated that he believes that the era of guerrilla insurrectionary struggles as a strategy is over. On the other hand, the 21st-century socialist movement does have official relations with armed socialist groups, most notably the Zapatistas and, less overtly but still officially, FARC. How does that fit into the overall regional strategy? Is there a sudden difference for the place of violence once a "movement" takes the reins of a nation-state?

Beyond that, it's clear that building more traditional armed defensive capabilities outside of the entrenchment strategy is a priority for Venezuela. And, during Brazil's last election, Lula DID make "regional stability" part of his campaign, insinuating that US/Colombian militarism represents a threat to regional stability. Development of Brazil's Tucano light attack aircraft has continued under Lula's administration.

And, all of these questions can be practically examined by looking at the regional crisis when Colombia invaded Ecuador's airspace to bomb FARC positions, killing Raul Reyes (ironically, Colombia used one of their Super Tucanos for that operation). Chavez responded with strategic troop movements towards his border with Colombia and he has recently talked about the "winds of war," in reference to the planned expansion of US military bases in Colombia. 

Now, I realize that all of this is drifting off-topic of the Honduran anti-coup & constitutional reform movement -- SORT OF.

Let's say, for instance, that the Honduran constitutional reform movement succeeds and Zelaya or someone like him starts to bring revolutionary change to Honduras? Or, let's hypothesize the opposite, that the coup government declares a state of emergency and drives this entire movement underground?

If the regional movement becomes sufficiently powerful enough, you can be sure that the right-wing business elite will respond with cold-blooded terror campaigns. I'm often suprised that many people don't know the extent of the terror campaign waged against Cuba by the CIA and Miami-based terrorist groups. This campaign included poisoning the milk of school children, attacks on ships in the Havana harbor to discourage trade, bombing civilian airliners in the 1970s and bombings of tourist hotels as recent as the 1990s -- it isn't something that ended 50 years ago with the Bay of Pigs failure.

I have my own opinions but I'm more interested in provoking reflection on these issues. Within the context of the current movement in Honduras, disciplined non-violence appears to be a coherent, viable strategy (although, I'm not exactly sure how the movement would ever control people who want to use violence in response to homicidal state repression). But, within the broader regional context and towards the future of the movement in Honduras, I think that the issue of violence is more complicated than a simple analysis that "any violence is contrary to the regional movement's objectives" ... what has already happened within the region, the armed groups that have always been a part of the regional movement and the inherent historical threat of violence from the right-wing and their paramilitary thugs makes this topic more complicated.

I'm interested in hearing people's opinions on these topics and I'm interested in Al's informed analysis.

The fact is that the 'theatrical violence' did immediately precede  the police and military unleashing massive non-theatrical violence on hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.

That picture is not being used to inspire ordinary Hondurans who might appreciate seeing Nazzar getting a kick in the butt, but to screen the U.S. public and policymakers' view of the large-scale violence against coup opponents -- and to justify it in the few cases where it becomes visible. 

(I'm on dialup and unable to see the photoshow, but I'll be fairly surprised if it shows Marvin Ponce, a member of the Honduran Congress who was beaten savagely and today is undergoing surgery for his arm, which was broken in three places.)

Nell - What more have you got on Congressman Marvin Ponce and the circumstances of the attack upon him?

Here:

"Among those beaten by the riot police was Marvin Ponce, a legislator belonging to the left-wing Democratic Union party (UD), who required surgery for a double fracture to his arm and a damaged tendon, according to the medical report from the private clinic where he was treated."

Sorry, I've been away from the computer since I posted; glad you found it, Al.  There's also this from La Tribuna.

This more and more raises the question of how the U.S. govt can possibly think that elections will magically wipe the slate clean, and they'll be able to recognize the winner as if nothing has happened. 

Presidential candidate Carlos Reyes underwent surgery for his broken arm resulting from police violence (July 30 at the roadblock at Durazno) Tuesday a week ago, and can't go out on the streets for at least another month.  Police won't guarantee his safety, or that of anyone opposed to the coup.  What kind of climate is that for elections?  That's something no amount of observers can make safe or sanitize.

Lobo and the Nationalistas, as the front-runners in the elections, have the most to fear from the delegitimizing effect of an election boycott, which is already under discussion.

The U.S. government could join the UNASUR countries, who declared on Monday that they wouldn't recognize the winner of elections held under any government but the legitimate government of Pres. Zelaya, in that pledge; it would be completely appropriate to work for an OAS-wide pledge.  Combined with freezing the Canahuatis' accounts and yanking their visas, that might help bring a swift end to this horror.   Then the popular movement could put their energies to building as strong a vote as possible for Reyes as a base for further agitation on a constitutional assembly.

I agree that it's possible to debate the question of whether the act of kicking a legislator in the butt is really violent, and yes, it's sort of funny.  But the problem with any nonviolent movement sanctioning acts that could injure people, or even sabotage to property (and this stuff has been debated for decades, as you know), is that it tends to suggest to bystanders and neutral media either that (a) the nonviolent movement can't control its participants, and/or (b) it will permit itself to be situationally violent.  The latter tends to lessen or give up one of the biggest advantages of declaring that one's movement is nonviolent, namely, the moral high ground in comparison to a violently repressive regime (a point you alluded to). There is always a contest for legitimacy going on between a movement and regime, as perceived by external and internal supporters whose support is still up for grabs or might shift to the other side.  These struggles aren't entirely ideological, they also involve perceptions of regime and movement character. 

The issue of discipline of a movement's participants is very meaningful to two indigenous audiences:  the military, which is always impressed by a disciplined movement, and the yet-to-be-mobilized citizens who are often needed in big public numbers at critical times.  The citizens who are hardest to mobilize are those worried by getting caught up in a mob; thuggish acts by apparent activists keep people at home.  That's why ordinary Tibetans didn't join the protests against Chinese repression there last year.  As for the military or police, they almost always have an order/disorder criterion that is quite rigid.  The number one reason why the Ukrainian security service and army disregarded orders to crack down on the Orange Revolution protesters is that they admired their amazing discipline and organization.  The military officers realized that these really were ordinary, law-abiding people who had been sincerely driven to protest, and that they presented no threat to soldiers personally.  I doubt that one observed ass-kicking would have countered that effect.  But of course the real problem with any one such act is that if it gets filmed or photographed, it can become the image of the movement (just like the shooting of Neda became the image of the Iranian regime).  And that's why effective nonviolent movements have contingency plans to deal with free-rider violence.  Quick disavowals of violent acts can work, and if they don't, sometimes nonviolent campaigns have been temporarily suspended by their leaders; Gandhi did that occasionally, annoying his more political colleagues like Nehru (who at first didn't get this strategic point as readily).

As for the value of Lech Walesa's nose-punching of a factory official during the Gdansk shipyard strikes that led to the creation of Solidarity, my assessment would be that the strikes succeeded despite and not because of that.  Walesa was a pugnacious guy (I met him once and can testify to that), and I think the incident helped his followers realize that they were being led by a fighter, which they liked -- so it did have a positive tactical effect.  But I don't think it was the pivotal moment.  That's my view, but I respect where you're coming from.  This is one of those debates in which an easy answer isn't obvious.

Thanks for your thoughts and question.  In regard to Cuba or any other successful revolution in which violent action was chosen as the method of struggle, obviously armed struggle worked.  That nonviolent struggle has worked in lots of instances (in 50 of 67 transitions from authoritarian to democratic governments, from 1970 to 2005, according to one study) doesn't mean that violent struggle can't succeed. 

There are, however, almost no instances in which mixed violent/nonviolent struggles succeed.  The debate on that usually involves South Africa.  There are stout defenders to this day of the armed actions of the ANC.  But there are equally passionate veterans of that struggle who maintain that it was the hundreds of strikes, boycotts and nonviolent township protests -- combined with international sanctions by governments and even corporations who more easily aligned themselves with nonviolent leaders of the struggle like Desmond Tutu -- that split the ruling party and forced the apartheid regime to negotiate its own dissolution.  The reasons that mixing violence with nonviolent action usually fails are many; I offered a few in my foregoing comment in reply to Al.

The main thing to keep in mind when you evaluate the benefits of using violent or nonviolent tactics in a struggle is the core dynamic of resistance to an oppressive ruler or system.  First you have to win the contest for legitimacy with the regime, in the eyes of the people and of the international community, to the extent that the latter is influential.  Will violent or nonviolent struggle best do that?  Second, what will most effectively raise the regime's cost of holding control?  In a nonviolent struggle, you can disperse tens or hundreds of thousands of resisters, all engaging in acts of defiance and civil disobedience that make it very difficult for the security apparatus to maintain the perception that they've got everything under control, and that costs the regime in terms of keeping the security forces working overtime and demoralizing the latter by making them take action against ordinary people instead of those they perceive as criminals.  This is a strategy of exhausting the state psychologically and economically rather than trying to pulverize it.  Third, what will more rapidly divide the loyalty of all those who would be called upon to fight for the regime?  If you shoot at them, they will rally round the regime.  If you make them doubt that the regime is going to maintain control indefinitely, they will start making their own calculations about what they should do -- a process which is often not very visible to outsiders, who are then surprised when a regime seems to implode suddenly.  Again, it's a strategy of liquefying the ground on which a regime stands rather than tearing it down physically.  Would that have worked in Cuba?  I can't claim expertise on Cuba, so I'll leave that analysis to others.

Here is a post made that goes a bit deeper into the Honduran Living Groups Chief Admin

http://www.hondurancampesino.org/wordpress/?p=390

Thank you Al for the article above.

Meno

Al,

Thinking about this one -- and taking into account some of the comments here-- do you believe that the golpistas might have sent in some "agents provocateur" to instill violence, and later blame *them*? Sure, it would be easy to sacrifice a couple of fast food restaurants for the "patria," right?

Just look at what happened at the Mexican Tlalteloco massacre in 1968 and the famed Brigada Olimpia. It began a nasty dirty war under Diaz Ordaz.  Or take the grenades launched in Mexico's "Grito de Independencia," last September in Morelia. It could have been an excuse for the President to get into the internal politics of that state. I could go on with examples.

Sure, we are talking a different country here, but the motives are the same: place someone else into harm's way for the "cause" and make political hay out of it.

Your thoughts?