NATO's propaganda outlet for progressives - The Guardian's board members (tags)
It is completely disingenuous for anyone to suggest that the Guardian reports on Edward Snowden's revelations are much more than a carefully managed propaganda exercise deployed in the internal power struggle of the US-Anglo elite about how best to manage their declining global power and influence. Likewise, it is absurd to suggest that the Guardian editors are implementing a "publish and be damned" policy, as Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald has suggested, when it is inconceivable that their editorial policy on publishing Edward Snowden's material will not have been closely coordinated on the basis of the Board's relations with colleagues in the British government, in British intelligence and in the US-Anglo corporate sector.
Electoral Fraud Proved in Honduras: More than 50 Percent Did Not Vote (tags)
"Freeston today publishes this bombshell report, above, on The Real News that documents definitively that Honduras electoral officials knowingly lied about their claims of more than 60 percent voter turnout. The hard results in possession of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in its Spanish initials) demonstrate only 49.2 percent turnout: That means that a majority - more than 50 percent - of Honduran citizens abstained in the "elections" that the National Front Against the Coup d'Etat had called unfair, unfree and placed under boycott."
Honduras State Employees Forced to Attend Santos Campaign Rally (tags)
"On Saturday November 28 military soldiers raided the offices of small business collective RED-COMAL in Siguatepeque, Comayagua, a city approximately 2 hours north from the capital. The Police Commissioner issued a search warrant 15 minutes after the raid began with the purpose of looking for weapons, posters and any documents that call on the population not to vote. Ricardo Bueso, speaking to Radiodelosmenos.org, reported that the military and police stole four laptops along with money from some of the organization’s sales The National Front Against the Coup d'Etat has called on its participants to remain indoors in a "voluntary curfew" in noncooperation with the fraudulent vote. Should any incidents of violence occur today it won't be from the Resistance, but, rather, the result of the regime's own provocateurs. National presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes withdrew from the ballot last month, as did many Congressional candidates and one major-party vice presidential candidate: Santos' own running mate on the Liberal Party line is among those who reject this fraudulent process as illegitimate."
Next: A Popular Referendum for a New Honduras Constitution? (tags)
"The coup was held on June 28 precisely to stop a non-binding referendum – one that asked if Hondurans wanted the right to vote for or against a new Constitution – but the regime’s own insistence on holding faux “elections” on November 29 inadvertently provides the people with the opportunity to do the very thing the coup was intended to stop: To put up ballot boxes outside of every “official” polling place and survey the people on that original question. Now that the Honduran civil resistance and its diverse social movements are so much better organized in every town and city than ever before, the little bird asked, why not utilize the November 29 date of the regime’s sham “elections” to hold a real referendum? The suggestion is to place a “First Ballot Box” (“primera urna”), outside of every official polling place, that asks the first question anew: “Do you favor convening a national Constituent Assembly to democratically write a new Constitution for the Republic of Honduras?” “Yes” or “No?” That little bird must have likewise carefully listened to the voices from below. We heard it - and reported it to you - from the northeastern cities of Trujillo, Tocoa, and Saba and the nearby farms of Guadalupe Tepayac. We heard it throughout our reporting from coastal La Ceiba and from the Afro-Honduran and Garifuna communities throughout that coast. From the popular barrios of San Pedro Sula and the highway blockades of Comayagua the same central demand was on everyone’s lips: ¡Constituente! From the colonias in resistance throughout greater Tegucigalpa, ¡Constituente!"
Behind the Coup Regime Curtain (tags)
"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."
The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed (tags)
"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." Facusse’s proposal is in effect on behalf of The Third Coup, or at least a trial balloon toward its attempt. But beyond its whacky proposals above, The Third Coup has an even more fatal flaw: It was developed in a back room by rich and powerful magnates, without so much a consulting, much less dialoging with, a single worker, or farmer, or student, much less their organizations that represent the great mass of the mobilized Honduran people. For it is their power from below that has prevented both malicious coups this year from triumphing. No regime - not any more - can hold on to power in Honduras unless it sufficiently satisfies the amalgam of social movements that are now popularly referred to as The Resistance. 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."
Honduran government hires fiction writer to hawk coup regime (tags)
"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. The coup regime is now clinging to power illegitimately, threatened on every front by truth and justice, which means it must create an illusion of democratic sanction, and so, it has inked a $292,000 contract with CLSA, calling on the PR firm to “diseñar una campaña de persuasión” [build a campaign of persuasion]."
The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed (tags)
"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 to trick them into a violent confrontation.
Honduran Coup Regime Mocks UN Security Council with Embassy Attacks (tags)
"These evidences and the eye-witness testimonies, including that of the doctor and the priest, demonstrate convincingly that while the Honduran coup regime issues emphatic denials of such attacks on the sovereign embassy of Brazil, it is clearly engaging in them nonetheless. The UN Security Council should not need any high tech apparatus of its own to be able to see and hear what is really going on at ground level, and respond accordingly to the coup regime's mockery of it."
Declaration about the Situation in Honduras by ALBA Member Countries in the OAS (tags)
"We add our voice to the regional, national, and world organisations and institutions that have expressed their rejection of these barbaric acts that the coup leaders and supporters have committed in Honduras. We demand an end to the repression, a definite suspension of the curfew, respect of the inviolability of the Brazilian diplomatic headquarters, and the immediate and unconditional restitution of President Zelaya to his functions as Constitutional and Democratic President of Honduras."
What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras Crisis (tags)
"The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil's diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras." The United Nations isn't likely to ignore Lula's plea. As a body, it owes Brazil heavily for its leadership of UN Peacekeeping forces in Haiti, and also for its unique role as a respected organizer and spokes-country of "developing world" states as a force for global social and economic justice. Wealthier nations, meanwhile, from the US to China to Europe, are greatly dependent (or would like to be more so) on the gigantic consumer market that is Brazil. In eight short years, Lula has greatly risen Brazil's status and respect across the globe by playing these factors upon each other very shrewdly."
Seven Million Hondurans Under House Arrest as Micheletti Writes of "Democracy" (tags)
"This has caused a generalized phenomenon throughout the metropolitan area: People have come en masse out of their homes, chased the police out of many of those neighborhoods, and erected barricades to keep them out. They are now organizing to maintain those barricades. The coup regime thus, overnight, has lost any semblance of control of considerable tracts of urban Honduras."
The President Has Returned: All Hell Breaks Loose in Honduras! (tags)
"This is a textbook example of what we've referred to before as "dilemma actions." It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country's own people - which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) - or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history."
Honduras Resistance Warns of Provocateurs on the Internet (tags)
"A statement by the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat The Communication Commission of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat wishes to correct and reject some messages on the Internet authored by Mr. Georges Francoise Godoy, supposedly an Argentine-French citizen who frequents the information networks on the Internet of the resistance. In a message distributed via Internet dated September 14, Mr. Godoy promotes a website named www.erph.org which makes it appear as if, under the banner of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat, there is a so-called “Revolutionary Army of the Honduran People, Paramilitary Battallion Isis Obed Murillo,” whose commander is said to be President Zelaya. In said website there appears a “Communiqué #1” according to which this supposed organization has decided to attack members of the coup regime and their families militarily. As authorized spokespersons of the Frente, this Communications Commission rejects as false the claims being circulated in respect to the existence of the mentioned armed front. We are going to repeat what we have said for eighty days: The National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat is a public organization that uses only nonviolent methods. Since the beginning our organization agreed to fight against the usurper regime with peaceful methods and without arms. As such: WE DO NOT HAVE ANY ARMED OR PARAMILITARY FRONT. And whoever tries to make it appear to the contrary exposes our leadership to military and police repression. Consequently, we alert all compañeros and compañeras who use the Internet and other media to reject the messages of provocateurs who try to deceive about the essence of our struggle."
Announcing 24 Scholarships in Authentic Journalism for February of 2010 (tags)
Today we announce that Narco News will grant 24 scholarships for up-and-coming journalists and communicators to attend a ten-day session of the School of Authentic Journalism on February 3 to 13 of 2010 on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
Amazing Organizing in Honduras (tags)
“Who led the march?” he asked, then answering: “The young people, and also children and senior citizens did. We went into the streets with our drums. Our drums have accompanied this process since the beginning. Last night at this event’s inauguration the energy was high because our culture was here with us, and with us the voices of the ancestors, as we go forward constructing the new nation, the new community. A better future for the community depends on each one of you.”
U.S. Still Supports the Coup! (tags)
"Agency bankrolling “good governance” programs to ensure the “rule of law in the country” The taxpayer-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation has continued to move millions of dollars into Honduras since the June 28 coup d'état, but it is not alone, Narco News has now confirmed. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is slated to provide Honduras with nearly $47 million in funding in fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, 2009. Nearly all of that money (some $43 million) is scheduled to be delivered as previously planned to Honduras — which is now under the leadership of a putsch regime that President Obama has already described as “not legal.”
Juan and Pedro Enter the Honduras Oil Import Business, Coup d’Etat Follows (tags)
"Padre Fausto later chronicled his own share of detentions, which included being kidnapped by paramilitaries in Honduras in 1981 on charges of inciting guerrilla activity based on his concern for campesino and indigenous rights. In captivity, Fausto was subjected to a schedule of sitting in rooms with torture instruments and being removed whenever someone needed to be tortured physically rather than psychologically. He subsequently spent a number of years in exile in Mexico; as for other Hondurans in exile, Fausto boasted that Zelaya had spoken with him and other Hondurans for four hours the previous day in Managua, neglecting a group of visiting European parliamentarians."
Cracks in the Honduran Coup Regime Grow Wider (tags)
"Micheletti is in fact declaring the military a scapegoat for doing just once what Micheletti himself has ordered them to do a second and third time. He doesn’t really want Zelaya to stand trial because, first, the so-called evidence against the President is flimsy and falsified, and, second, because the regime fears that the very people of Honduras might assemble to break down any wall that might hold their elected president."
Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso (Honduras) (tags)
"All of the sudden, Gustavo Cardoza said that a policeman was pointing his weapon at him and immediately reported that other police were coming after him. Our reporter tried to run, and told them that he was a reporter for Radio Progreso. It was then that we heard his cries, and the blows that our reporter was receiving."
Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso (Honduras) (tags)
"All of the sudden, Gustavo Cardoza said that a policeman was pointing his weapon at him and immediately reported that other police were coming after him. Our reporter tried to run, and told them that he was a reporter for Radio Progreso. It was then that we heard his cries, and the blows that our reporter was receiving. The transmission from our reporter was abruptly suspended."
Whose the Real Hypocrite Secretary Clinton? (tags)
"In the context of President Obama’s statement last weekend that those who urge the US to take stronger action against the Honduras coup regime “think that it’s appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate,” calling it “hypocrisy.” The revelation that Clinton and MCC have already sanctioned the elected government of Nicaragua and its private sector in ways that it so far refuses to sanction the illegal coup regime of Honduras and its private backers has revealed one important fact: That Washington has already determined that “it’s appropriate” to deny MCC funds to a country for lighter and more transient reasons than those that exist to sanction a coup regime in another. Didn’t a certain US President, last weekend, speak the word “hypocrisy” in the context of the US and the Honduras coup?"
Too Cute by Half on Honduras, Mr. President (tags)
" I don’t worry or weep for Latin America or Honduras. The people united will never be defeated, and our authentic journalists, myself included, will be there alongside them reporting their every step in community organizing and civil resistance to win back what basic democratic principles establish is rightfully theirs. It really doesn't matter how much money or oxygen Washington gives to the Honduras coup regime: that baby is going down, and will go down hard, at the hands of an organized people."
Honduras Coup Dictator Micheletti Calls Out the Geezer Patrol or "a country for old m (tags)
"At the celebration a group of war veterans attended from Honduras’ 1957 conflict with Nicaragua and with El Salvador in 1969… “I don’t know if the war veterans want to consider me part of them because I – here is the proof, dated August 4, 1969, that shows that I participated in the defense of the sovereignty of our country, here it is, nobody can deny it, and we will do the same as long as we are alive,” said President Micheletti…"
Coup General: "We're Going After the Protest Leaders" (tags)
"The clock is ticking on this coup regime. And on television this morning, one could see the fear in the eyes of the macho generals that try so hard to show a fearless face. Their days are numbered, not because the other countries of the hemisphere and the world reject the coup, but so much more importantly, because the Honduran people are organizing to put a stop to it all by themselves. The coup generals don't have an end game. The civil resistance does, and is unanimous in it: The toppling of the coup regime, the reinstatement of the elected government, and a Constitutional Convention to remake their nation in a more authentically democratic form."
AFP in Honduras Hung By Its Own Photograph (tags)
Honduran Democracy Can Only Be Asserted from Below (tags)
"Democracy, however, can always be asserted from below, when an organized people stand up. That is the next chapter in Honduras, its best - and probably its only - hope. Update: Arias' efforts to convene, today, eleventh hour last chance "talks," are officially not happening
Peaceful Blockades vs. Coup Paralyze Honduras (tags)
"Support the Honduran people in this important struggle to beat back the coup. Obama is sure not going to do it. "
Lobbyist Lanny Davis Seeks a Rematch with Obama over Honduras Coup (tags)
"And Zelaya is right. Playing along with such talks with an illegitimate coup regime any longer than they've gone on already would be folly. Diplomacy is for dealing with legitimate governments, not for criminals and terrorists. And, Mr. President, even if that story blows over in the news media, because Honduras is a relatively small country, you just know that if the Honduras coup succeeds in remaining in power that other military generals in other Latin American countries are going to take it as a green light to do the same. And when that happens, the next coup - in Bolivia, perhaps? El Salvador? Nicaragua? Or completing the circle from 1955, Guatemala, Señor Presidente? - will be known far and wide as “Obama’s coup,” because your administration will then be accurately perceived as having not lowered the boom – in all the economic, political and judicial ways that everybody knows you can and must do - on its predecessor. Worse, they’ll say you got beat by Lanny Davis. They’ll even say that kooky Lanny fellow was right about you in 2008. Those are his chips on the card table. Now show us yours. ----- Most Damning: Many will come to see that that (facilitate the coups) was what you were "hired" to do?" General Joe
It’s Still a Military Coup in Honduras (tags)
"We’ve already praised the singular work of TeleSur, and also of the courageous Hondurans who have broken the information blockade from below, filming coup abuses and the massive protests against them on their cell phones and uploading important videos to YouTube. And we’ve cheered as many corporate media organizations have become dependent on those reports-from-below in their own coverage. I’d like to add another media that deserves such recognition: Few have done the heavy lifting that Chiapas Indymedia has done, mainly in Spanish, to publish the communiqués, photos and videos that document the massive and organized nature of the Honduran grassroots movements with which it has worked and supported for years. (While the world mostly ignored Honduras in recent years, Chiapas Indymedia was shipping community radio transmitters and organizing communications workshops among Catrachos; that planting and cultivating bears significant fruit today in the information that does break out from behind the walls of censorship and simulation)."
Honduras Newspaper Impressed that Daughter of Pinochet Backs Coup (tags)
"No, it's not parody. Rather, it's instructive of the state of mind of the coup defenders. (You can see it in repeated online comments on Twitter and elsewhere attacking Organization of American States chairman Jose Miguel Insulza because he was part of the elected Allende government before Allende was assassinated by Pinochet's forces.) They see the Pinochet coup of 36 years ago as a heroic act, and long for the bad old days when they could simply stamp out democratic will by rounding all dissenters into a stadium and assassinating more than 3,000 in a single week, which is what happened after September 11, 1973 in Santiago de Chile. It is another proof positive that they are trying to start that ball rolling all over again throughout the hemisphere. And it demonstrates exactly why not a single government in América or in the entire world recognizes their illegitimate regime."
Zelaya Doesn't Blink: Two Airplanes Heading South Today (tags)
As president, I am going to accompany my people, and I appeal for calm… To the Honduran people: stay peaceful… nobody should use any weapon. Our weapon is democracy.”
Delegado Zero on Brad Will (tags)
The full text of Al Giordano's story on Brad Will, who he knew, is below the comments on Will from Delegado Zero / Subcomandante Marcos...
May 1: Zapatistas/ La Otra 2 March on US Embassy in Solidarity with Migrants (tags)
"It was there that Marcos decided to drop an information bomb on two governmental powers: the Mexican federal government and 'the Yankee Embassy' of Washington and Wall Street:
Help Protect Your Journalists at an Hour of Moral Crisis (tags)
"This is an hour of moral crisis from Bolivia to the Border. Our journalists – your journalists – at Narco News are in the line of fire. Yet they are there, at the front, with smiles on their faces and a passion for reporting the truth in their hearts. I know you agree, as we do, with the philosopher Dante Alighieri when he wrote: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.” Today I plead with you to not be neutral at this hour when authentic democracy and Authentic Journalism in Latin America are flexing their muscles at the very moment when the powers long accustomed to imposing their will on our América are losing their grip: No one is more dangerous than a tyrant when he realizes that the jig is up. And that makes this very hopeful moment also a precarious one."
Al Giordano interviews Latuff (tags)
Exclusive interview with Brazilian cartoonist Latuff for Al Giordano's Big, Left, Outside.
some words from the NarcoNews journalist Al Giordano that could inspire us today to reclaim the Media and specially the TVs:
Oil coup-strike-lockout is for the rich. Help President Chavez! Search Venezuela news. (tags)
In 1974 80% of oil income went to the state. Today 80% of Venezuelan oil income goes to the rich, and to "operating costs." Only 20% goes to the state. Chavez reforms will help reverse this in January 2003. This is why the coup-plotters, "strike"-promoters, and corporate media are in such a hurry to overthrow the fairly-ELECTED Chavez government. They want to prevent these reforms, and reverse others already-implemented. Reforms that help the poor and lower middle class. Massive corporate-media disinformation, destabilization campaign going on inside Venezuela. Support President Chavez! Please forward widely.
Venezuela: Class Conflict and US Intervention (tags)
The upper class and US CIA are a problem in many countries. Combined with a corrupt media they use protest tactics to cause disruption and chaos with staged media events and lock-outs masquerading as popular general strikes.
Narco News Offers Journalism Scholarship (tags)
The Narco News website is offering a journalism class to several aspiring journalists.
Becas en el Periodismo Auténtico de Narco News (tags)
Buscamos algunos cuantos buenos provocadores...
Committee to Protect Journalists is a Fraud (tags)
I hope everyone reads this...
Open Letter To Committee to Protect Journalists (tags)
I write to inform you of specific acts and immediate threats against journalists in Venezuela, and to ask you 12 questions, as a journalist, about your organization's previous statements regarding press freedom issues in that country. I hope that your organization will take immediate action to defend these journalists at risk, and that you will offer full and honest answers to the 12 questions.
Revolution Against the Media-Al Giordano (tags)
On the previous post("Storm the Media"), we have one option against media corporate tyranny. Now, thanks to Al Giordano(Narconews.com), we have two!
Bush Administration Poised to Escalate US Involvement in Colombia's Civil War (tags)
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with investigative journalist Al Giordano, publisher of the online magazine Narco News, who takes a critical look at the Bush admin's plan for deeper involvement in Colombia's four-decade-long civil war.
Finally! Someone Defends IndyMedia! (tags)
Finally! Someone defends IndyMedia against the attacks by Alternet's Don Hazen. According to this report by journalist Al Giordano on NarcoNews.com, Hazen is in no position to throw stones: Hazen's been caught now in corrupt activity himself.
Quick reference guide for Latuff's art on Web (tags)
Compiled in January 03, 2002
‘Narco News’ Ready for Libel Suit in New York (tags)
According to statements made in 2000 by Al Giordano, publisher of the Mexican-based NarcoNews.com, Hernández has also been called a money launderer and a drug dealer. Giordano says he has reviewed published photos and testimony suggesting that Hernández has shared his Yucatán beachfront with the boats and planes of the cocaine trade.