By Al Giordano

D.R. 2009 Latuff, Special to The Narco News Bulletin.

Reading the international press wires from Honduras in recent days, too many give the impression that Honduras coup “president” Roberto Micheletti has lifted last Sunday’s decree that suspended constitutional rights of free speech, press, assembly, transit and due process.

No such thing has happened. The decree, in all its repressive brutality, is still in full force.

While a handful of far right wingnut US Congressmen visited the coup regime in Tegucigalpa yesterday blabbering about “democracy” and “freedom,” their favored regime's troops were busting up even the smallest nonviolent expressions of free speech a few blocks away in Tegucigalpa.

Here’s a ground-level report from yesterday by journalist (and Narco News contributor) Diego Osorno, who landed in Honduras this week as correspondent for the daily Milenio of Mexico City:

“One by one they gather until there are nineteen of them. If they become twenty, they would be violating the ‘State of Siege’ decree that has been law here in Honduras since last Sunday. That law punishes, with prison, all public demonstrations and criticisms of the de facto government.

“All of them are women, carring placards with grievances against Roberto Micheletti… This was a symbolic protest at one of the five barricades that the Honduran Army erected around the Brazilian embassy, where President Manuel Zelaya has refuge. Some of the nineteen women are farmers and others are students…

“Ten minutes later thirty police officers, who seemed to be looking for war, interrupted them. They carried firearms, tear gas grenade launchers, bulletproof vests, masks, shields and sticks to combat the modest demonstration.

“’Get out of here,’ the commander ordered.

“There are fewer than twenty of us, you can’t tell us to go,’ said one of the women…

“’Get out already, Señora, out of here.’

“A dozen of the police placed themselves behind the women and began to push them toward the avenue, recriminated for violating the ‘presidential decree,’ a euphemism for the restriction of civil rights throughout the country…”

Providing an example of what else these citizens in civil resistance are up against, the pro-coup media then takes the demonstrators’ attempt to remain within the coup decree’s 20-person limit on public assemblies, and portrays it as a sign that the resistance has lost steam. The daily Heraldo, for example, covered that same demonstration with these dishonest words:

“The security lines remain, and an important number of national and international journalists, and, of course, demonstrations, which are already almost insignificant for the number of participants.

“In yesterday’s case, in the morning hours, about ten members of feminist groups placed themselves in front of the Brazilian embassy, and the National Police asked them to voluntarily leave the area.”

The difference between those two conflicting news reports marks the distinction between a simulating media and authentic journalism. Because we already know the work of journalist Osorno, his faithfulness to the true facts, his attention to detail, his ability to count, and his long experience reporting from conflict zones such as the one outside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, it’s crystal clear to us which of those versions more accurately portrayed what happened.

The daily newspapers owned by the coup-plotting oligarchs - in the daily Heraldo’s case it is owned by Jorge Canahuati Larach, who also heads the same Latin American Business Council (CEAL, in its Spanish initials) that hired US lobbyist Lanny Davis to lie and spin in defense of the coup regime from Washington, DC – every day’s publication brings another sick joke: a new way of distorting the events on the ground. In today’s Heraldo the efforts by members of the civil resistance to stay within the twenty-person limit on public assemblies imposed by the coup dictatorship is thus portrayed as supposed evidence of dwindling opposition.

Got it? A regime limits public assemblies to less than twenty participants, and when participants in the civil resistance attempt to creatively work around that limit, the regime's simulating media portrays their obedience to the letter of the decree as reflective of an alleged lack of support.

And yet the mere existence and continuance of the decree indicates that public opposition to the coup regime is so wide and overwhelming to it that only by suspending basic freedoms is the regime able to hang on to power for a little bit longer.

Most of the international media isn’t much better. Headlines in recent days have implied that the totalitarian decree has already been lifted. BBC: “Honduras Thaw Paves Way for Talks.” AP: “Signs of thaw in Honduras standoff.” Fox: "Honduras Regime Says It Will Restore Rights.” These headlines and many others like them have been going on for five days now, and yet the decree remains in place. As with the doublespeak that shouts "the coup is not a coup," now we have the latest version: "the decree is not a decree." The sheer gullibility of the international media organizations that take dictation from a regime that has over more than three months demonstrated that it almost never does what it says it is doing provides yet another example of why journalism is in a crisis of credibility, and why its official outlets, having lost public trust, are increasingly an endangered species.

It’s possible that in the coming days, the coup regime may announce cancellation of the decree, in order to give one last dying gasp push to the illegitimate "elections" it has scheduled for November 29, but the smart reporters – in contrast to the dishonest or gullible ones - will look at the regime's deeds, not its hollow words, when assessing how to report the next media stunt.

Unless that announcement is accompanied by the immediate physical return of the transmitters and equipment of the TV and radio stations that the regime seized last Monday morning, the withdrawal of the police and military troops occupying those media offices, and the release of the political prisoners rounded up in the days since then, any announced cancellation of the decree will likewise be nothing but empty words.

Nothing suggests that the official media outlets will have learned by then to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But – because you make it possible - authentic journalists will still be on the ground, breaking the information blockade, letting you know what is really happening behind the coup regime curtain.

By Al Giordano

US Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), in the right-hand photo, is having a tantrum today, alleging that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), on the left, is blocking him with “bullying tactics” from visiting his pals in the Honduras coup regime.

Truth is, nothing prohibits DeMint from traveling to Honduras on his own dime. It’s the US taxpayer funds - specifically those of the Senate committee - that he can’t use for the propaganda junket, one that DeMint announced in advance would be to advocate for the coup regime's sham "election" process. That he cancelled his scheduled trip to Tegucigalpa tomorrow when it became clear he’d have to purchase his own plane ticket and that of his entourage, he just gave up and decided to put out a press release instead.

“Not a single U.S. Senator has traveled to Honduras to learn the facts on the ground,” said the statement prepared by the Senator’s staff. “And the Obama administration won’t allow Honduran officials or even businessmen to come to the U.S., either.”

This is the same DeMint that invoked Senate rules that allow a single Senator to “block” a vote on confirming various of President Obama’s diplomatic nominees, including those for US Ambassador to the Organization of American States, US Ambassador to Brazil and Undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, because he doesn’t like the White House position against the Honduras coup.

It's the time-worn tale of a schoolyard bully who, when he gets punched in the nose himself, sobs and and accuses his bester of unfair play.

During the years when Republicans were in power in the United States, they would frequently accuse the Democratic opposition of playing as “victims.” And they were sometimes right about that. Politics is hardball, baby, and nobody who enters it should whine when hit cleanly and fairly. Now that they’re in the minority and unpopular with voters they’re whiners, too (which suggests that tantrums aren’t a partisan trait but rather a societal one).

DeMint then reported Kerry to the principal’s office Twitter: “@JohnKerry (Foreign Rel. chair) trying to hide truth to protect Zelaya, blocking our fact-finding trip to Honduras at last minute.”

Everybody say, “awwwwwwww.”

What a big fucking crybaby. If you don’t want to get hit, Jimmy, don’t go out on the playing field throwing punches. Good for Kerry for knocking DeMint on his ass with such a timely, karma-packed punch.

DeMint can still go to Honduras any time he wants. But that he cancels his trip the moment he’d have to pay for it, and instead puts a press release out sort of indicates that he didn’t feel that strongly about it all along. It’s just the usual beltway posturing of partisan politics. And the scoreboard reads: Kerry 1, DeMint 0.

Update 8:29 p.m. ET: In what may be another case of the Obama administration not having its act together regarding speaking with one voice on Honduras policy, ABC News is reporting - with a question mark - that DeMint's office is now claiming that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell intervened and got the Defense Department to pay for DeMint's junket. (Apparently, Secretary Clinton's State Department is on the right side of this battle, denying the funds.)

In that report, Kerry minces no words:

“Thanks to his intransigence, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can’t even hold hearings on our policy in Central and South America. Sen. DeMint is blocking the nominations of two key officials who will implement President Obama’s foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere... When Senator DeMint lifts these holds and allows these individuals to receive an up or down vote on the Senate floor, the Committee will approve his travel to Honduras, a country that is in the middle of delicate, political crisis.”

But if DoD is now going to undercut that, it is the White House that will be perceived as equivocating and weak, again, regarding the Honduras coup. Somebody upstairs needs to step in and put all the players on the same page.

Friday update: Well, DeMint and three lower house congress critters from the far right of the Republican Party did go to Tegucigalpa today, met with Micheletti and other golpistas, and left. In doing so, DeMint succeeded in uniting the entire Democratic majority in the House and Senate against the Honduras coup, including those who hadn't paid it any attention at all. Ha ha. Typical Lanny Davis screw up. Meanwhile, South Carolina's other GOP Senator Lindsay Graham chose today to distance himself from the "crazy" faction of his party, in particular the "birthers" and Glenn Beck. He didn't mention his junior senator by name, but with DeMint prancing around with coup dictators, Graham didn't really have to say a word to draw the distinction. In sum: Now the coup supporters have guaranteed their permanent rejection by the Democratic majority House and Senate. Nice work, Lanny! Mil gracias.

By Al Giordano

D.R. 2009 Latuff, Special to The Narco News Bulletin

The layers keep peeling away from "president" Roberto Micheletti's coup d'etat, which began with a consensus of most of upper class Honduras and its political institutions but in recent days has seen Congressional and business leaders begin looking for the EXIT sign.

It was Micheletti's authoritarian decree, announced on Sunday, that blasted away the glue that had previously held them all together, with its prohibitions on Constitutional rights of speech, press, assembly, transit and due process.

Today, the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal joined the growing mob of former unconditional backers of the coup for whom Micheletti's decree went a step too far:

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in its Spanish initials) of Honduras today asked president Roberto Micheletti to cancel the decree that suspended constitutional rights because it harms the electoral process scheduled for November... and thus joined in similar demands made by Congress, presidential candidates and other sectors...

Micheletti said... that he would agree to analyze the request and insisted that the decree will be "cancelled in the opportune moment."

However, he said that he would continue to consult on the matter with the Supreme Court and other State organisms with the goal of making a "consensus" decision.

Those few paragraphs speak volumes about what is happening behind the curtain. Let me translate them.

On Sunday, Micheletti announced the authoritarian decree without having the aforementioned "consensus" of key coup players. Some seemed as surprised as the general public to find out about it. The decree already does not have any "consensus" even among the limited power players between whom the coup was negotiated and implemented. Now he is saying he needs "consensus" to remove it.

What does this tell us? It reveals that Micheletti himself isn't calling the shots here. He specifically mentions the Supreme Court, and his reference to "State organisms" most likely means the Armed Forces: the two real kingpins of the coup, for whom Micheletti is a mere marionette.

In typical style, he fools gullible reporters to repeat claims that he has already backed off the decree, while this morning military and police troops continued attacks on peaceful demonstrators that have maintained government agricultural offices occupied for three months now. Clearly, the real powers behind the decree - the Supreme Court and the military - want to make sure it meets its main goals before having to call it off.

What the electoral commissioners can clearly see that the inner trinity of coup power - the Army, the Court and Micheletti - don't seem to "get" is how the decree has destroyed any hope of convincing Hondurans or the world that the November 29 elections can be made free or fair. It's already too late. Smarter minds are seeing it, while the the Army, the Court and Micheletti push on out of an apparent belief that if they don't keep brutally repressing and silencing speech, the nonviolent civil resistance is going to roll right over the coup.

It's possible that both sectors are right about their analysis in this way: The coup "moderates" understand that their electoral "solution" is now screwed, thanks to the decree. While the "hard liners" understand that if they allow basic constitutional rights, they won't be able to hold back the tide of public opinion much longer. Meanwhile, by stalling on the requests by his former coup allies to cancel the decree, Micheletti is further isolating the Army, the Court and he from the support they previously enjoyed. And this is the part of the movie when the once invincible coup regime begins to divide and fall.

By Al Giordano

Adolfo Facusse – the Honduran business magnate who earlier this month was hauled off an arriving airplane in Miami by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents then deported straight back to Honduras – is one of those fast-and-loose players who, even while deserting the Titanic, will look for some advantage in securing the best lifeboat exclusively for him, or at least stuff whatever silverware he can grab into his pockets on the way out.

And so it was today when Facusse announced his grand plan to solve the problem of a coup that he had supported but that has now demonstrably failed.

Facusse proposes that:

- Coup “president” Roberto Micheletti would step down and be rewarded for his service by the creation of a non-existant post, Congressman for life (“vitalico,” is the word he used, same as that enjoyed by Augusto Pinochet in the Chilean Senate during and beyond his own dictatorship).

- Micheletti and all other coup leaders – including the military brass – would get advance amnesty for all the crimes they committed on and since June 28.

- Elected President Manuel Zelaya would be recognized as such for about fifteen minutes while he signed over all his powers to the Armed Forces and some kind of “civilian” counsel made up of politicians in the current political parties based on their current percentages of seats in the Congress.

- 3,000 “UN Peacekeeping troops” – but only from the the following three right-wing countries: Colombia, Panama and Canada – would be deployed throughout Honduras to enforce this deal. (Because we all know that those fun loving Colombian troops and the paramilitaries they bring along for the joyride are so capable when it comes to protecting the human rights of the citizenry.)

- Zelaya, in exchange for getting to be recognized as president for fifteen minutes more, and a secret decoder ring, would then quietly and powerlessly wait until January 27 when he would face whatever “corruption” charges the coup regime has cooked up for him.

"We set the wheels moving again, although we don't know how far they'll take us," Facusse told reporters, claiming that Micheletti has also signed off on it.

Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, of course, loves, loves, LOVES the plan, gushing:

"I see that we're quickly approaching a solution, which is what we're all waiting for.”

Facusse, head of the National Association of Factories (ANDI, in its Spanish initials), was, only a few weeks ago leading the proposal that all businesses that are members of the Honduran Council of Private Business (COHEP) offer price discounts to voters to encourage them to participate in the November 29 “elections.” It was like a democracy clearance sale, with Crazy Fito shouting "EVERYTHING MUST GO! OUR PRICES ARE INSANE!"

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box. Coup dictator Micheletti – installed in large part due to Facusse’s anti-democracy efforts – two nights ago decreed a 45-day State of Siege, canceling basic Constitutional rights to free speech, press, transit, assembly and due process. I called it The Second Honduran Coup of 2009, and the naked admission that The First Coup had failed to establish control over the country and its people.

The cloak of “democracy” and “constitutionality” fell off the coup regime overnight on Sunday. Leading presidential candidate Pepe Lobo rejected the decree, as did the current president of the coup Congress, and business leaders who saw the new rules would be bad for their wallets told Micheletti that it wasn’t going to work. And now Micheletti is slowly backing away from it, so slowly that he hopes nobody will notice then demand that his jackboots return the transmitters and equipment they stole Monday morning from key TV and radio stations.

All this time over the past three months, Micheletti, Vásquez, Facusse and the rest of their gang of reverse Robin Hoods thought that if they just stalled for time they would be able to run the clock out and impose November 29 "elections" on a fixed playing field as the final solution. But as Mexican pollster Dan Lund noted today, Micheletti's Sunday night decree inverted that dynamic: Now there is not possibly enough time left on the clock to overcome the damage done by Micheletti's decree to the claim that elections so soon after The Second Coup and its authoritarian vices can possibly be free or fair. Lund writes:

"The timing of the elections set for November 29, 2009 is now a straight jacket, especially in the context of current confusion, the emergency decree... the complex media situation (an open and truly fair media being the sine qua non for an election of this significance), and the need for enough reconciliation to give confidence to the whole process."

Furthermore, to attempt to reward Micheletti just two days after he bared his despotic teeth – in effect, betraying his other coup plotters in their lust for portraying this pustch as “not a coup” - with a lifetime unelected post in Congress, as Facusse’s proposal does, indicates a mindset so far removed from the realities demonstrated over the past summer, so profoundly out of touch with the overwhelming sentiment of the majority of his countrymen and women, that it offers a glass window into the mysterious mind of the oligarch, trying one more time to extract advantage over everybody else, even as his best made plans come crashing down all around him.

By Al Giordano

When a little over a week ago, Honduras’ elected president Manuel Zelaya landed in Tegucigalpa at the Brazilian embassy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it an “opportune” moment for the “dialogue” she’d been urging all summer.

Six days later, this past Sunday, US Ambassador Hugo Llorens had convened various Honduran political and business people in Tegucigalpa to talk about how to encourage that “dialogue” to resolve the country’s political crisis. Four presidential candidates were there, as were business magnates Adolfo Facusse and Carlos Flores (a former president), John Biehl (a special advisor to the Organization of American States) and human rights advocate Leo Valladares, who shared with Narco News this account of what happened.

In the middle of that Sunday meeting, Ambassador Llorens’ cell phone rang and he received the news that coup dictator Micheletti had issued the now infamous decree erasing basic Constitutional freedoms of assembly, transit, speech and due process. “The first reaction in the room was that it negatively affected the climate for negotiation,” said Valladares.

Then, at dawn, coup troops invaded Radio Globo and Channel 36 TV, stealing their equipment and transmitters to silence them under the new powers Micheletti had decreed.

A few hours later came an Organization of American States meeting in Washington. The interim (or shall we say “de facto”?) US Ambassador, Lewis Amselem, a Bush administration holdover, focused only negligibly on the coup regime’s “state of siege” decree, instead launching into a tirade against the victims of it.

“Zelaya’s return to Honduras is irresponsible and foolish and it doesn’t serve to the interest of the people nor those who seek the restoration of democratic order in Honduras,” Amselem crowed. “Everything will be better if all parties refrain from provoking and inciting violence.”

According to Amselem, provoking or inciting violence is much worse than actually engaging in violence, as the coup regime had been doing all night and morning long prior to and during Amselem’s tirade. And instead of clearly placing the focus the only place it belonged – on the jack-booted regime’s latest wave of terror, in which Honduran lives were and are actually at stake – Amselem decided to play film critic rather than diplomat, taunting Zelaya: “The president should stop acting as though he were starring in an old movie.”

Amselem’s outburst was quickly picked up by the pro-coup media in Honduras (which translated “foolish” as “idiota”) and it not only served to obscure the more important story, that of the coup decree’s erasure of the Honduran Constitution, but it also boosted the morale of the very forces that had just descended into new levels of authoritarianism and actual violence.

And that was only the latest adventure in lack of message control displayed all summer long by a schizophrenic State Department and its erratic, almost drunken, driving that, time and time again, has given oxygen to a coup regime it says it opposes.

The State Department spent the rest of the day composing the following statement, one that reads like an admission that Amselem screwed up:

The United States views with grave concern the decree issued by the de facto regime in Honduras suspending fundamental civil and political rights.  In response to strong popular opposition, the regime has indicated that it is considering rescinding the decree. We call on the de facto regime to do so immediately.

The freedoms inherent in the suspended rights are inalienable and cannot be limited or restricted without seriously damaging the democratic aspirations of the Honduran people.

At this important moment in Honduran history, we urge all political leaders to commit themselves to a process of dialogue that will produce an enduring and peaceful resolution of the current crisis.

We also urge the de facto regime and President Zelaya to make use of the good will and solidarity extended by President Arias of Costa Rica, the Organization of American States, and other members of the international community to help facilitate, within the framework of the San Jose talks, such a resolution.

In this regard, we remind the de facto regime of its obligations under the Vienna Conventions to respect diplomatic premises and personnel, and those under their protection.  Abiding by these obligations is a necessary component of the dialogue between and among nations, and builds the practices of engagement, tolerance, and understanding necessary for the peaceful resolution of disputes.

But those who have followed Amselem’s diplomatic and military career – especially back in the day that he was political-military officer at the US embassy in Guatemala City (1988-92) and political affairs counselor for the US embassy in La Paz, Bolivia (1992-95) – suspect that Amselem’s sabotage yesterday of stated US policy was entirely predictable, and intentional, given his macabre history in the hemisphere.

Journalist Jeremy Bigwood, who was reporting from Guatemala during Amselem’s tenure there, remembers the diplomat for the same kind of outrageous behavior and statements over the years that he displayed yesterday in Washington. Amselem, according to Bigwood, “would put a positive spin on the extermination of a couple hundred thousand Guatemalan Indians. The guy should be sent to the International Criminal Court for abetting war crimes. He even arranged illegal supplies and airlifts to the Guatemalan Army after US military assistance had been banned.  I can't believe that he would be representing the Obama administration in the OAS.”

Most amazing is that Amselem’s current boss, Secretary Clinton, should already know that he’s a loose cannon because she was, as First Lady in the 1990s, involved with one of Guatemala’s most notorious human rights abuse cases, that of Ursuline nun Dianna Ortiz, who was kidnapped and tortured there in 1989.

In 1995, a US federal judge ordered Guatemalan General Hector Gramajo to pay $47 million dollars in damages to Sister Ortiz and other plaintiffs for those crimes.

Human rights champion Kerry Kennedy has written, “Ortiz’s raw honesty and capacity to articulate the agony she suffered compelled the United States to declassify long-secret files on Guatemala, and shed light on some of the darkest moments of Guatemalan history and American foreign policy.”

Well, guess who pops up in Sister Dianna’s memoirs? Lewis Amselem: and not in a good way. Ortiz wrote:

“…after a U.S. doctor had counted 111 cigarette burns on my back alone, the story changed. In January 1990, the Guatemalan defense minister publicly announced that I was a lesbian and had staged my abduction to cover up a tryst. The minister of the interior echoed this statement and then said he had heard it first from the U.S. embassy. According to a congressional aide, the political affairs officer at the U.S. embassy, Lew Amselem, was indeed spreading the same rumor.

“In the presence of Ambassador Thomas Stroock, this same human rights officer told a delegation of religious men and women concerned about my case that he was ‘tired of these lesbian nuns coming down to Guatemala.’ The story would undergo other permutations. According to the Guatemalan press, the ambassador came up with another version: he told the Guatemalan defense minister that I was not abducted and tortured but simply ‘had problems with [my] nerves.’”

So yesterday was not the first time that Amselem revealed a mean-spirited streak to blame the victims of human rights violations. Most disturbingly, Secretary Clinton – who met with Sister Dianna in the 1990s and expressed sympathy and solidarity – should already know this history.

That Clinton sends such a shady character to represent the US at the Organization of American States only guarantees such sabotage for as long as he is there. Amselem may object to what he terms Zelaya’s “acting as though he were starring in an old movie,” but it is precisely Amselem who is a B-actor in an even older fright flick: that of US policy in Latin America and previous military and coup regimes. And this sordid tale demonstrates that now more than ever is the hour to disinfect the State Department from the bad actors – like Amselem – who haunt like ghouls from horror films past.

Up next: Faux-journalist Frances Robles of Oligarch's Daily The Miami Herald, who thinks harming Hondurans with chemical weapons is a big funny joke...

Update: From today's US State Department press briefing:

QUESTION: I would like to come back to the statement by your ambassador to OAS yesterday about Honduras. He said that Zelaya’s return to his country had been foolish and irresponsible. It seems that this statement has raised some questions, especially because Zelaya is still under siege in the embassy.

MR. CROWLEY: Who said that? I’m sorry.

QUESTION: Sorry?

MR. CROWLEY: Who made that statement yesterday?

QUESTION: Your – I mean the U.S. ambassador to the OAS.

MR. CROWLEY: Sure. Lew Amselem.

QUESTION: Lewis Amselem.

MR. CROWLEY: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmmm?

By Al Giordano

D.R. 2009 Latuff, special to The Narco News Bulletin

On the morning of June 28, coup regime soldiers stomped into the offices of Radio Globo and Channel 36 in Tegucigalpa and silenced their transmitters. The two networks filed court orders to be able to get back on the air. And for the past three months they’ve each been subject to written orders from the Honduras regime to cease broadcasting (the journalists, in turn, refused to be censored) and to paramilitary attacks that poured acid on their transmitters, and yet they and their journalists heroically got themselves back on the air rapidly.

On this morning, three months later, it was déjà vu all over again, as those same military troops reenacted the battle of June 28, busting down the doors of both broadcasters and this time removing their transmitters and equipment. And soldiers have surrounded both houses of media to prevent the people from retaking them.

This time, due to yesterday’s coup decree, there is no legal recourse for the journalists. Under the decree, if a judge even looks at a motion from those media, he, too, can be rounded up, arrested and detained. And if another media reports what happened, it, too, can be invaded and silenced by force.

Today’s “do over” of the June 28 Honduras coup proves two big truths.

First: that the original coup failed to establish control over the country and its people. More than 90 days of nonviolent resistance have demolished what little support the coup regime had inside and outside of Honduras, and left them only with their small core of oligarchs and security forces to defend their putsch against the majority.

And second: That despite all the regime’s Orwellian talk of how it was a “legal” coup, how it was executed to defend the Constitution, and how the continued broadcasting of critical media proved it was not a dictatorship, its intention all along was far more sinister: to erase democracy and its most basic freedoms in order to establish autocratic control by a few over 7.5 million Honduran citizens and the lush natural and human resources in that land.

A significant portion of the Honduran population has gone underground overnight. Tipped off that last night their homes would be raided and they would be hauled off to the soccer stadium in Tegucigalpa where the regime already holds at least 75 citizens incommunicado – reports of the use of torture are all the more credible because the regime won’t allow any attorney, doctor or human rights observer inside the stadium to inspect – other rank-and-file Hondurans opened their homes to resistance organizers throughout the country. They are hiding from the regime, but they are in constant contact with each other, and with our reporters.

Another part of last night’s wave of state terror came in the form of this provocation: Key human rights leaders and attorneys were notified anonymously of an alleged roundup of dissidents at a particular police station in the capital. They rushed down to look for the detainees, only to be greeted by the very nervous and heavily armed station police who had, simultaneously, received an anonymous phone call telling them that a mob was on its way there to burn down the station. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed and once the human rights attorneys explained to the police the message they had received, both sides figured out it was an attempt trick them into a violent confrontation.

That the regime has to try and fool and manipulate its own police forces provides an indication that not all of them are thrilled with the latest decree and events.

This is what the coup plotters always wanted: the prohibition of constitutional rights and total authoritarian power in their hands. They tried to have it both ways for three months – defending themselves to the world with their absurd “the coup is not a coup” doublespeak – but that failed. Now they’ve gone to Plan B, which unmasks them for what they are: terrorists, and enemies of democracy and freedom.

Their first coup failed in only three months. That’s why the date of September 28 now enters the history books as the second coup attempt in Honduras of 2009. The second resistance is out there, regrouping, figuring out its next moves, and when those moves come, probably soon, we’ll be reporting their words and deeds, despite the fact that the coup regime has also just made that reporting illegal, too.

Similarly, our longtime friend and colleague, the Brazilian cartoonist Latuff, author of the image above, doesn't take orders from golpistas either. Today he makes public his email address - carlos.latuff@gmail.com - and offers support and his talents at image-making to all members of the Honduran resistance as the next phase of the struggle begins.

The second coup - today's - came because the first one failed miserably, as this one will, too.

Update 11:26 a.m. in Tegucigalpa (1:26 p.m. ET): And another few rings fall away from the coup regime "onion" of support. The daily Tiempo reports that National Party presidential candidate Pepe Lobo - who leads in all polls for the November 29 "election" - has now spoken out against yesterday's coup decree and its 45-day suspension of constitutional rights and liberties:

The National Party presidential candidate, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, lamented what has happened in the political crisis and after calling upon Manuel Zelaya Rosales and Roberto Micheletti to sit down and dialogue, he criticized the Executive Decree published in the Gaceta that restricts various freedoms inherent to human beings.

Lobo made those statements after leaving a meeting that four presidential candidates, a former president of the nation and various businessmen had with US Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

The presidential frontrunner confirmed that, in addition to him, candidates Elvin Santos, Bernard Martínez and Felicito Avila of the Liberal, the Innovation and Unity, and the Christian Democratic parties, respectively, were also present in the meeting.

Lobo Sosa questioned the military curfews and the emission of the Executive Decree against individual rights and news organizations because "they damage the image of the country abroad and directly harm the population."

The meeting with the US Ambassador from which Lobo emerged to make his first-ever public criticism of the coup d'etat and its repressive maneuvers was also attended by former Honduran President Carlos Flores Facussé, and business magnate Adolfo Facussé - both who had been original backers of the June 28 coup attempt. If either of them follow Lobo into denouncing the coup and its decree, the "coup onion" would lose one or more of its most inner and powerful layers of support.

12:12 p.m.: Meanwhile, the anonymous pro-coup blogger who calls herself La Gringa and personally approves each and every comment she allows to be published, has just gone to the illegal extreme of publishing an open call to assassinate both President Zelaya and US Ambassador Hugo Llorens. The violent call is also revealing in its racist and misogynist language directed at US President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, as well as homophobic fantasies about Zelaya and the Ambassador. I'll post that comment here because at some point "La Gringa" may realize that she has just made herself a party to a crime and may attempt to erase the evidence:

How long will it take the Constitutional Government to finally expell Llorens? And tell the monkey and she-dog in Washington to go to Hell. If Honduras must go down, then for History the patriots must kill Zelaya and his long-time LOVER Llorens.

May the US Secret Service take notice at what that supposedly American citizen has just involved herself in: an open call to assassinate the US Ambassador and a foreign elected head of state. We strongly denounce and reject her complicity in such illegal plots.

3:08 p.m.: Steve Benen at Washington Monthly makes note of another layer of the coup onion that seems to have gone silent today: US Congressional Republicans:

WHERE'S THE CONGRESSIONAL COUP CAUCUS NOW?.... In July, a variety of conservative Republican lawmakers were outraged by the official U.S. government opposition to the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Honduras. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) officially endorsed the military-backed coup, and a variety of House Republicans organized a "congressional coup caucus" in support of the new, unelected government.

Oddly enough, we're not hearing much from this GOP crowd anymore. I wonder why that is...

When DeMint endorsed the coup, her heralded those responsible for ousting Zelaya as "guarantee[ing] freedom." House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) hosted a private meeting for her Republican colleagues to "discuss how the U.S. can now work to support the democratic institutions and rule of law in Honduras."

All of a sudden, these GOP lawmakers don't seem to be bashing the Obama administration's position anymore. Interesting.

Indeed!

4:46 p.m.: Radio Globo is now broadcasting over the Internet from a clandestine location, at this link (click "listen").

There are also reports that the coup regime, unable to sell this 45-day suspension of the Constitution to the National Congress, is talking about withdrawing the decree. However, unless that includes returning the equipment to Radio Globo and Channel 36, and releasing political prisoners, any reporter who reports it as such would be a fool. Coup dictator Micheletti reportedly asks "forgiveness" for having executed the decree. No se olvide, ni perdón.

5:44 p.m.: Micheletti really seems to be losing it, mentally speaking. Today he handed out another ultimatum, this time to the governments of Spain, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico (Mexico?!!):

"In the case of those countries that unilaterally decided to break diplomatic relations with Honduras... the situation of Argentina, Spain, Mexico and Venezuela, I'll let them know that the government will not receive diplomatic agents from those countries."

He gave them "ten days" to obey. I'm sure they're quaking in their shoes, crying and contemplating suicide because that silly little petty tyrant Micheletti threatened them. Not.

6:25 p.m.: Radio Globo - via its Internet broadcast - is calling on its listeners to go to its seized studios on Bulevar Morazan tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 8 a.m.

11:05 p.m.: Regarding the aforementioned threats - already having the attention of the US Secret Service... and Blogspot, as well - on the Gringa blog cheering political assassination and magnicide... They were (as we predicted they would be) removed late tonight, but reflecting the cowardice of the person who approved them for posting, no explanation nor denouncement was offered. It's that those people really believe in those things. You just can't get any lower than that.