Just Foreign Policy News
July 9, 2010
On Afghanistan, Michael Steele Speaks for Me
When DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse accused RNC chair Michael Steele of "betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan" after Steele criticized the Afghanistan war, Woodhouse was attacking every American who is against the war. Enforcing Republican Party discipline on Republicans to support the war in Afghanistan is not in the interest of the majority of Americans and the super-majority of Democrats who oppose the war. If a third, instead of 5%, of the Republicans in the House had supported the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment, reflecting the third of Republicans in the country at large who do not support the war, the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment requiring a timetable for withdrawal would have passed the House. With his attack on Steele, Woodhouse made it less likely that House Republicans will join House Democrats in trying to end the war sooner rather than later.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/on-afghanistan-michael-st_b_640976.html
This afternoon, leaders of several peace groups wrote to the DNC, protesting the attack on Steele, and urging the DNC not to engage in such attacks in the future, nor to present support of the war as the position of Democrats:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/643
FAIR/Peter Hart: What Gets You Fired From CNN
The 19 words that got Octavia Nasr fired, after 20 years at CNN: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot." Errant Twitter messages? CNN recently hired Erick Erickson as a commentator, even though he had called retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester."
http://www.fair.org/blog/#post-15069
South of the Border, scheduled screenings:
Oliver Stone’s documentary shows you the South America the New York Times doesn’t want you to see.
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/
Support the Work of Just Foreign Policy
Your financial support allows us to educate Americans about U.S. foreign policy and to create opportunities for Americans to advocate for U.S. policies that are more just.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate.html
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, President Obama’s pick to lead military operations in the Middle East, told a crowd in San Diego in 2005 that it was "fun to shoot some people" and said that some Afghans deserved to die, the Washington Post reports. "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot ’em." Military ethicists warned that Mattis’s comments had the potential to cause violent events committed either by U.S. military service members or against US troops.
2) Some House Democrats are "furious" with a White House that is prioritizing war funding over spending to create jobs, the Los Angeles Times reports.
3) The Okinawa assembly called on the Japanese and U.S. governments to review the joint bilateral statement promising to move a controversial U.S. Marine base within Okinawa, Kyodo News reports. The resolution adopted by the assembly charges the statement was issued against the consensus of Okinawans opposed to relocating the Futenma Air Station within Okinawa. "The Nago mayor is against it. The only way to overcome it is to employ bulldozers, guns and swords, but I don’t think they can do it," Okinawa Governor Nakaima said.
4) The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard, AP reports. Hollman Morris has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America. "We’re frankly shocked. We feel it’s outrageous," Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said of the visa denial.
Iran
5) As the US imposes new sanctions on Iran, one of the biggest gaps in the US strategy is on full display in Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars in crude oil and refined products are smuggled over the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan every year, the New York Times reports. A senior Kurdish official said the benefits from the trade, which he described as "huge," went to the region’s two governing parties and affiliated companies, and that officials in Baghdad were involved as well.
Yemen
6) Six months after Obama halted all transfers of Guantánamo detainees to Yemen, the moratorium is coming under escalating pressure from federal judges, the New York Times reports. Nearly 60 of the 181 prisoners at Guantánamo are Yemenis who – according to a national-security task force review – present weak cases for continued detention. If the Administration keeps the moratorium, it could face a string of defeats that will undercut its effort to keep holding other detainees, a national-security law specialist said. "The coverage of the Odaini case made them look ridiculous," Robert Chesney said. "Imagine them experiencing some 50-plus individual defeats. By the time they are done, the narrative of the innocent detainee being blindly or stupidly detained by the administration would be so entrenched that there would be real strategic harm to the administration’s case that there are people they actually need to and can justify keeping in military detention." The suspension on transfers meant that habeas-corpus lawsuits that had been frozen since the detainees were due to be released anyway started to move forward, putting the Justice Department in the position of fighting to keep the detainees imprisoned.
Israel/Palestine
7) Organizers said a charity headed by the son of Libyan leader Moamar Kadhafi is sending an aid boat to Gaza this weekend to break the Israeli siege, AFP reports.
Honduras
8) Some of the 15 primary and secondary school officials fired in December for their opposition to the coup and the ensuing elections are on hunger strike, In These Times reports. Those fired include the top education directors of five of the country’s 18 states. By replacing them with coup supporters, the Lobo administration is able to hire and fire teachers based on politics, a way to combat the country’s three powerful teachers unions which have been a major force in the National Front of Popular Resistance, ITT says.
Panama
9) Protests by striking banana plantation workers and Panama Canal builders left one dead in clashes with police as labor unrest erupted in Panama, Reuters reports. A strike began last week to protest a new law that weakens unions. The law gives companies the right to suspend the contracts of striking workers and hire replacements.
Venezuela
10) A man recently arrested in Venezuela confessed to having been contracted by Luis Posada Carriles to carry out destabilising acts in Venezuela in the lead-up to the September national assembly elections, Venezuelanalysis reports. Posada Carriles is wanted in Venezuela for his responsibility for the attack on a Cuban plane in 1976 that left 73 passengers dead. He is currently in Miami. The U.S. has refused requests from Venezuela for his extradition.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) James Mattis: ‘It’s fun to shoot people’
Ed O’Keefe, Washington Post, July 9, 2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/07/james_mattis_its_fun_to_shoot.html
President Obama’s pick to lead military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the Middle East is an experienced ground combat commander, but also earned a stern rebuke in 2005 for controversial comments about combat operations.
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, then a lieutenant general, told a crowd in San Diego that it was "fun to shoot some people" and said that some Afghans deserved to die.
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot ’em."
[…] Military ethicists warned that Mattis’s comments had the potential to cause violent events committed either by U.S. military service members or against American troops.
[…]
2) Obama may have worn out his welcome on Capitol Hill
The president’s threat to veto a war funding bill is an ‘unwelcome message’ to House Democrats, many of whom face a tough midterm election after yielding to the White House’s agenda.
Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-war-congress-20100709,0,1045259.story
Washington – The moment has been long in coming, but it may finally have arrived. For the last year and a half, on issues including healthcare, financial regulation and climate change, Democrats in Congress have bent for President Obama. Liberals swallowed hard to accept compromises that fell short of their long-sought goals, and moderates cast tough votes that now threaten their reelection prospects as voters revolt against government overreach.
Then, last week, the president asked them to bend yet again – this time to approve more money for his troop buildup in an Afghanistan war that many Democrats oppose. And once again, lawmakers went to work. On the eve of the vote last week, Democratic leaders compiled a complicated $82-billion package of war funding, disaster aid and domestic spending that achieved the seemingly impossible – meeting the president’s request while accommodating the needs of its politically diverse members.
Obama responded with a one-word message that sent shudders through his party on the Hill: veto. In that exchange, the tension between the White House and the president’s Democratic allies spilled over.
[…] Perhaps no issue illustrates the divide between the president and his party as the troop increase in the Afghanistan war, an escalated military campaign that many Democrats opposed.
Liberals fought President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq. Some Democrats won their seats in the 2006 and 2008 elections doing so. But while many Democrats believe Afghanistan is the right war to fight, Obama’s decision to add 30,000 more troops last winter gave the worried pause.
Because of deepening economic distress at home combined with political and military setbacks in Afghanistan, some Democrats see the war as one without end and one they cannot philosophically or economically support. "I would rather do a little bit more nation-building here at home," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). The $37 billion approved for the war could pay for proposals to extend jobless benefits for the unemployed.
Pragmatic liberal lawmakers, for their part, wanted to use the emergency spending bill as a way to win approval for recession aid that would be difficult to pass otherwise as voters grow increasingly concerned about the national debt.
Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), the flinty antiwar lawmaker and powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, seized on the administration’s interest in saving 140,000 teachers’ jobs nationwide as a way to tack onto the war bill a legislative accomplishment that hews more closely to his caucus’ agenda.
Obey has shepherded one war-spending bill after another through Congress for Bush and Obama. As the administration’s support for the teachers’ aid waned, Obey – in what may be the final war bill before he retires at year’s end – made a passionate stand for the measure. "There is nothing as expensive as ignorance, and ignorance is fed when you have an inadequate number of quality teachers," Obey argued during the floor debate.
Obey devised a complicated legislative strategy that appeased liberal lawmakers by allowing antiwar amendments and pleased moderates by paying for the $10-billion teachers’ initiative without adding to the national debt.
But the White House was not pleased with the arrangement, threatening late Thursday to veto the package if it contained any antiwar provisions or cut programs favored by Obama to pay for the teachers’ salaries. The antiwar provisions failed – though one measure to halt the troop buildup won 100 votes. But the House pressed forward to save the teachers’ jobs even in the face of the White House’s objections, ensuring funding for not just guns, but butter too.
The bill now heads to the Senate, and House Democrats were furious at an administration that many see as tone deaf to the political realities facing lawmakers in a November electoral climate that is not expected to be friendly to incumbents. "The White House needs to be more engaged with the House’s agenda," said Rep. Steve Cohen, an antiwar Democrat from Tennessee. "The House is where its friends are."
As Obama turns to these friends in the weeks ahead, he may find it increasingly difficult to persuade them to yield to his remaining legislative priorities. "I don’t give a rip about the administration," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Atwater), whose Merced-area district in Central California faces one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. "The administration can decide to be with us or not. I’m all about jobs for my district."
[…]
3) Okinawa resolution calls for review of Japan-U.S. Futenma statement
Kyodo News, July 9, 2010
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100709p2g00m0in049000c.html
Naha, Japan – The Okinawa prefectural assembly on Friday called on the Japanese and U.S. governments to review the joint bilateral statement promising to move a controversial U.S. Marine base within the prefecture largely in line with a previous agreement between them.
The opinion sheet and resolution adopted by the assembly charge that the statement was issued "over the heads of" the people in the prefecture, against their consensus that they oppose relocating the Futenma Air Station within Okinawa.
The opinion sheet, addressed to Cabinet ministers including Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and the resolution, addressed to several others like U.S. President Barack Obama, note that the April mass rally in which organizers say 90,000 people protested the planned relocation "clearly shows" that the islanders want the prefecture to be free of U.S. military bases.
Of the resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last month thanking the Japanese, especially those in Okinawa, for continuing to host U.S. forces, the documents say, "That was an act borne out of their insufficient understanding of the feelings of the people in the prefecture and has enraged them."
At a news conference on the same day, Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima suggested that the base should not be forcibly relocated over the opposition among local people, noting that Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine opposes Futenma’s relocation from Ginowan to a coastal area of his city under the bilateral agreement.
"The Nago mayor is against it. The only way to overcome it is to employ bulldozers, guns and swords, but I don’t think they can do it," Nakaima said, referring to the United States’ construction of military facilities in Okinawa while it was under U.S. control.
[…]
4) US denies visa to Colombian journalist
Frank Bajak, AP, July 8, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hgl6QDMsRPSO9Wa32a9Az-rEpdQAD9GR91280
Bogota, Colombia – The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.
Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news program called "Contravia," has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America.
The curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which has offered the mid-career fellowships since 1938, said Thursday that a consular official at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota told him Morris was ruled permanently ineligible for a visa under the "Terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act.
[…] "We were very surprised. This has never happened before," said the Nieman curator, Bob Giles. "And Hollman has traveled previously in the United States to give speeches and receive awards." He said he had written the State Department to ask it to reconsider the decision.
[…] "We’re frankly shocked. We feel it’s outrageous," Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said of the visa denial. He said the committee had discussed its concerns with State Department officials but was not provided with an explanation. "They told us they discussed this with Hollman and that’s just not true," Simon said.
[…] Morris was also among journalists, judges and opposition politicians whose phones were illegally tapped by Colombia’s DAS state security agency. Nearly two dozen former DAS officials have been arrested on criminal conspiracy charges in the scandal and are awaiting trial.
Morris is listed in a 2005 DAS memorandum obtained by prosecutors someone being under surveillance for showing "opposition tendencies to government policies."
Reached by the AP, Morris would neither confirm nor deny that he had been turned down for the visa. "Things are in motion," he said, adding that he had obtained a DAS document that described a campaign to discredit him internationally, including by stripping him of a visa.
Giles said the U.S. consular official cited Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Patriot Act as the reason for the visa denial. It renders ineligible for a U.S. visa anyone who engages in terrorist activities, belongs to a terrorist organization or endorses terrorist activities.
[…]
Iran
5) Smugglers In Iraq Blunt Sanctions Against Tehran
Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/world/middleeast/09kurds.html
Penjwin, Iraq – Even as the United States imposes new sanctions on Iran, one of the biggest gaps in the American strategy is on full display here in Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars in crude oil and refined products are smuggled over the scenic mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan every year.
Day after day, without formal authorization from Baghdad, more than a thousand tankers snake through this town on Iraq’s border with Iran, not only undercutting recent American sanctions but also worsening tensions with the Iraqi government over how to divide the country’s oil profits.
The scale and organization of the trade has raised concerns among American officials here, said one senior American official in northern Iraq, who would speak about the Iran oil trade only anonymously, following diplomatic ground rules. They fear that proceeds from the sales could be flowing to corrupt Iraqi politicians and benefiting the Iranian government, even as the United States has approved new unilateral sanctions against Tehran, imposing penalties on foreign entities that sell refined petroleum products to Iran.
A senior Kurdish government official said that the benefits from a business he described as "elaborate" and "huge" went to the region’s two governing parties and affiliated companies, and that officials and politicians in Baghdad were involved as well.
[…]
Yemen
6) Rulings Raise Doubts On Policy On Transfer Of Yemenis
Charlie Savage, New York Times, July 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/us/09gitmo.html
Washington – Six months after President Obama halted all transfers of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen, the moratorium is coming under escalating pressure from federal judges – raising doubts about its sustainability.
In an order issued Thursday, Judge Paul L. Friedman told the Obama administration to release a Yemeni detainee, Hussain Salem Mohammed Almerfedi, saying there was no legal basis to keep him in prison after he has been held for about eight years without trial.
That ruling follows by two weeks the Obama administration’s quiet decision to repatriate another Yemeni detainee, Mohamed Mohamed Hassan Odaini. He was ordered freed in May by Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., who issued a scathing opinion denouncing the effort to keep imprisoning him despite "overwhelming" evidence that he was innocent of Qaeda ties.
The victories by the two Yemeni detainees could be just the beginning. Nearly 60 of the 181 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are Yemenis who – according to a national-security task force review – present weak cases for continued detention.
[…] Robert Chesney, a national-security law specialist at the University of Texas, said the Yemeni moratorium had created a difficult policy dilemma.
If the administration lifts the moratorium to avoid losing those cases, it could be attacked by conservatives for sending detainees to Yemen whom it had not been ordered to release, he said. But if it keeps the moratorium, it could face a string of defeats that will undercut its effort to keep holding other detainees.
"The coverage of the Odaini case made them look ridiculous," Mr. Chesney said. "Imagine them experiencing some 50-plus individual defeats. By the time they are done, the narrative of the innocent detainee being blindly or stupidly detained by the administration would be so entrenched that there would be real strategic harm to the administration’s case that there are people they actually need to and can justify keeping in military detention."
The suspension on transfers meant that habeas-corpus lawsuits that had been frozen since the detainees were due to be released anyway started to move forward, putting the Justice Department in the position of fighting to keep the detainees imprisoned.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
7) Charity led by Kadhafi’s son to send aid boat to Gaza
AFP, Fri Jul 9, 10:32 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100709/wl_mideast_afp/israelconflictgazagreecelibya_20100709143255
Athens – A charity headed by the second son of Libyan leader Moamar Kadhafi is sending an aid boat from Greece to Gaza on Friday to break the Israeli "siege", the organisers said. The Moldova-flagged cargo ship Amalthea will depart from Lavrio, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) southeast of Athens, the vessel’s agents said.
The 92-metre (302-foot) freighter has a 12-man crew and will carry up to nine passengers, a representative of Piraeus-based agents Alpha Shipping said. "The ship is expected to sail this evening," he told AFP.
But a member of crew later said the departure could be delayed for Saturday. "We expect to reach Gaza in four or five days without stopping," crew member Oussama Almahamid from Syria told AFP. "It all depends on the weather, there are strong winds at the moment," he added.
The Libyan organisers of the initiative had earlier said the 25-year-old ship, owned by Piraeus-based ACA Shipping Corporation, was called Hope. The Tripoli-based Gaddafi International Charity and Development Association said the cargo ship was "loaded with about 2,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid in the form of foodstuff and medications."
[…]
Honduras
8) Fired for Opposing Coup, Honduran Educators Go on Hunger Strike
Kari Lydersen, In These Times, July 5, 2010
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/print/6175/honduran_educators_on_hunger_strike/
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – As thousands of marchers converged on the plaza outside the national Congress building on the anniversary of the coup in Honduras June 28, a handful of famished, exhausted but determined educators looked on from tents-on the 35th day of a hunger strike.
The educators are just one of the many faces of the Honduran resistance movement that has blossomed in the past year, uniting unionists, indigenous people, feminists, LGBT activists, campesinos and other factions who previously had little contact.
The hunger strikers were among 15 primary and secondary school officials fired in December for their opposition to the coup and the ensuing elections that a majority of the population see as illegitimate. Those fired include the top education directors of five of the country’s 18 states.
By replacing them with coup supporters, the administration of president Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo is able to hire and fire teachers based on politics, a way to combat the country’s three powerful teachers unions which have been a major force in the National Front of Popular Resistance.
Along with their politically motivated firings, the strikers are also protesting the Lobo administration’s moves to privatize education and revise a strong Teacher’s Statute that was won through years of struggle. The government still owes teachers millions of lempiras (hundreds of thousands of dollars) in back pay, even after funding from the World Bank helped pay some of the huge salary backlog. And in January the government tried to make teachers go back to work a month early for special training.
Likely in hopes of winning the teachers unions over, Lobo named former union leader Alejandro Ventura minister of education. But the ploy apparently did not work, as teachers have continued to be a vocal and militant part of the resistance.
Hunger strikes have been a key way to gain attention from an international community that has largely treated Honduras as if things are back to "normal" since Lobo’s election, despite widespread human rights abuses including assassinations and rampant death threats. Campesinos and judges fired for political reasons have also been on hunger strikes in recent weeks.
[…]
Panama
9) One dead as Panama labor unrest erupts
Sean Mattson, Reuters, Thu Jul 8, 2010
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6675TG20100708
Panama City – Protests by striking banana plantation workers and Panama Canal builders left one man dead in clashes with police and dozens injured on Thursday as labor unrest erupted in Panama, authorities said.
At least one man died as riot police firing tear-gas battled banana plantation workers in western Panama who had blocked roads in a strike near the town of Changuinola. The labor stoppage began last week to protest a new law that weakens unions.
Hospital authorities in Changuinola said 54 people were treated for injuries following the clashes.
In a separate incident, 48 striking workers on a $5.25 billion project to widen and deepen the Panama Canal were fired and at least six were arrested after refusing to return to work, said Luis Ernesto Carles, a deputy minister of labor.
The unrest follows a bill signed by President Ricardo Martinelli last month that dents union power and gives companies the right to suspend the contracts of striking workers and hire replacements.
[…]
Venezuela
10) Posada Carriles Associate Confesses Was Paid to Destabilise Venezuela
Tamara Pearson, Venezuelanalysis.com, Jul 9th 2010
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5483
Merida – Francisco Chavez Abarca, who was recently extradited to Cuba, confessed to having been contracted by Luis Posada Carriles to carry out destabilising acts in Venezuela in the lead-up to the September national assembly elections.
Chavez Abarca, on arriving at Caracas international airport last Thursday, was transported to the SEBIN (Bolivarian Intelligence Service) headquarters for questioning.
Footage obtained by Telesur shows Chavez Abarca’s arrival at the airport then it shows him being led away by airport officials after his passport was discovered to be false and that there was an Interpol code red on him by Cuba.
Telesur footage also shows the suspect responding to questions by SEBIN. When asked who was his superior, Chavez Abarca replied, "Luis Posda Carriles."
"Where does he give orders from? Where is he?" The officer asked.
"I don’t know because I haven’t talked with him since ’97."
"How do you receive instructions?"
"Through Daniel."
Daniel Barrundia, according to Radio Mundial, is connected to the Counter-revolutionary Cuban-American Foundation, located in Miami.
The officer then asked Chavez Abarca how he knew there was contact between Barrundia and Posada, and Chavez Abarca responded, "I know how he talks, I know how he acts, I know how he thinks. I know what he could say and what he wouldn’t."
Chavez Abarca allegedly came to Venezuela to study what disturbance he could cause in order to sabotage the government’s chances in September’s parliamentary elections. In response to a question about what sort of actions he was planning, he said, "Riots. Riots… tire burning… riots in the street…the other thing that could be done is attack one political party… so the (pro-Chavez) parties start fighting."
[…] Posada Carriles is a nationalized Venezuelan who is wanted for his responsibility for the attack on a Cuban plane in 1976 that left 73 passengers dead. He is currently in Miami where he is being protected by the U.S government, which, going against international law, refuses to extradite him.
[…]
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.