[News] The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3468/second-honduran-coup-came-today-because-first-one-failed
September 28, 2009 at 11:05 am

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 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3465/honduras-coup-leader-micheletti-decrees-45-day-suspension-constitution>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, simultan eously, 
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 at 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. 
<http://www.tiempo.hn/secciones/crisis-politica/4567-pepe-lobo-suspension-de-garantias-dana-la-imagen-del-pais>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 
<https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=31191491&postID=8013457555751217646&pli=1>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 
<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/020156.php>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 
<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/018914.php>endorsed 
the military-backed coup, and a variety of House 
Republicans organized a 
"<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/018969.php>congressional 
coup caucus" in support of the new, unelected government.

Oddly enough, we're not hearing much from this 
GOP crowd anymore. 
<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/76150.html>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!




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