Just Foreign Policy News
January 4, 2011
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A House that Votes for Peace: Is There a Path to 218?
On July 1, the representatives of 44 House districts that lean Democratic voted against establishing a timeline for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, even as Speaker Pelosi and 61% of House Democrats were voting in favor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/a-house-that-votes-for-pe_b_802292.html
60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll: Public prefers military cuts to cutting Social Security
In response to "what would you do first," 20% say cut "defense" spending, while only 4% say cut Medicare and only 3% say cut Social Security. (61% say increase taxes on the wealthy.)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/22/60minutes/main7175226_page8.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
CNN Poll: U.S. opposition to Afghanistan war remains high
Sixty-three percent oppose the war, 35 percent in favor. Democrats: 74% oppose, 24% favor; Independents: 63% oppose, 35% favor; Republicans: 52% favor, 44% oppose. CNN finds "Tea Party" supporters the same as Republicans overall: 52% favor, 45% oppose. Poll conducted December 17-19, 2010.
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/03/cnn-poll-u-s-opposition-to-afghanistan-war-remains-high/
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/12/28/rel17m.pdf
Psychologists for Social Responsibility: Open Letter on PFC Bradley Manning’s Solitary Confinement
PsySR, in a letter to Defense Secretary Gates, calls for a revision in the conditions of PFC Manning’s incarceration while he awaits trial, based on the exhaustive documentation and research that have determined that solitary confinement is, at the very least, a form of cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment in violation of U.S. law.
http://www.psysr.org/about/programs/humanrights/gates-manning-letter.php
New Yorker: The Toppling
Peter Maass recounts how U.S. journalists were pressured by their editors to echo Fox and CNN’s triumphalist reporting of the toppling of the Saddam statue.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_maass
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Ridge, a former homeland security secretary, and Frances Townsend, a former national security adviser, all committed a federal crime last month in Paris when they spoke in support of the Mujahedeen Khalq [MEK] at a conference organized by the Iranian opposition group’s advocates, according to the standards for "material support of terrorists" articulated by the Justice Department and upheld by the Supreme Court in June, argues Georgetown Law professor David Cole in an op-ed in the New York Times. [Cole represented the Humanitarian Law project in the case, which unsuccessfully fought the government’s expansive definition of "material support" -JFP] Cole argues that Congress should reform the law to make clear that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activities is not a crime. At the same time, the law should be reformed to protect true humanitarian aid while ending the exemptions for non-humanitarian aid enjoyed by corporations in search of profits.
2) There are people sitting in prison with long sentences for so-called "material support for terrorism" who did little different than what these right-wing advocates did in support of the MEK, argues Glenn Greenwald in Salon. Greenwald notes that Fran Townsend, now a commentator for CNN, praised the Supreme Court decision according to which what she did in Paris was "material support for terrorism": "If you’re thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don’t do it because the government can come down hard on you and the Supreme Court said the government has every right to do so."
3) Iranian President Ahmadinejad sought some kind of nuclear fuel swap deal more than a year ago, but faced internal pressures from hard-liners who viewed it as a "virtual defeat," according to U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks, AP reports. The report also suggested Iran trusted the US more than Russia to follow through with the U.N.-backed proposal. The assessment was given to a top U.S. envoy by Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu. The cable said Turkish officials had asked Ahmadinejad "if the core of the issue is psychological rather than substance." "Ahmadinejad had said ‘yes,’ that the Iranians agree to the proposal but need to manage the public perception," the cable said, adding that Turkish officials consider Ahmadinejad as "more flexible than others who are inside the Iranian government."
4) The Taliban criticized Sen. Lindsay Graham for suggesting the US should establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan, AP reports. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that would be tantamount to a permanent occupation. President Karzai’s spokesman said Monday that while Kabul had discussed a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S. administration, "we have not touched upon the issue of permanent bases."
5) NATO’s role in Afghanistan was established more to give the alliance an excuse to continue to exist than to do anything for Afghanistan, according to a U.S. military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process, reports Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. Porter notes that the NATO operation was sold in other NATO countries as a peacekeeping and reconstruction operation, not a counterinsurgency war, which those countries and their publics never signed up for.
Afghanistan
6) Fewer than 800 insurgents – less than less than 3 percent of an estimated 30,000 militants – have signed up for "reintegration" in the year since Afghan president Hamid Karzai announced the plan, Spencer Ackerman reports for Wired. At that rate, it would take at least 23 years to cut the insurgency in half. The Obama administration hasn’t shown much interest in "reconciliation" – negotiating a deal with the Taliban’s chiefs, Ackerman writes.
Israel/Palestine
7) Some 100 pro-Palestinian activists, part of an Asian aid convoy, crossed into Gaza from Egypt, the BBC reports. International aid agencies in Gaza say there has been "little improvement" for people in Gaza since nine activists on a Turkish aid ship were killed when Israeli naval commandos stormed their aid flotilla in May.
Egypt
8) Egyptians protesting a terrorist attack on Egypt’s Christians say the Egyptian government is at the root of the problem, the New York Times reports. In a telling moment, a high-ranking state security officer walked over to a row of demonstrators standing vigil and slowly, methodically blew out the white candles they were holding to remember those who died. As protesters marched through Cairo, they chanted "Down with Mubarak" and "Down with the military state."
Colombia
9) Colombian authorities said Monday that they have accused an army major and four other soldiers of killing three civilians and then falsely presenting their bodies as those of guerrillas slain in combat, AP reports. In November, Colombian authorities said they were investigating the extrajudicial killings of 2,650 civilians, and that about 1,100 soldiers were under investigation.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Chewing Gum for Terrorists
David Cole, op-ed, New York Times, January 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03cole.html
[Cole is a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center.]
Washington – Did former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Ridge, a former homeland security secretary, and Frances Townsend, a former national security adviser, all commit a federal crime last month in Paris when they spoke in support of the Mujahedeen Khalq at a conference organized by the Iranian opposition group’s advocates? Free speech, right? Not necessarily.
The problem is that the United States government has labeled the Mujahedeen Khalq a "foreign terrorist organization," making it a crime to provide it, directly or indirectly, with any material support. And, according to the Justice Department under Mr. Mukasey himself, as well as under the current attorney general, Eric Holder, material support includes not only cash and other tangible aid, but also speech coordinated with a "foreign terrorist organization" for its benefit. It is therefore a felony, the government has argued, to file an amicus brief on behalf of a "terrorist" group, to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group’s "terrorist" designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe Mr. Mukasey and his compatriots had every right to say what they did. Indeed, I argued just that in the Supreme Court, on behalf of the Los Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project, which fought for more than a decade in American courts for its right to teach the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey how to bring human rights claims before the United Nations, and to assist them in peace overtures to the Turkish government.
But in June, the Supreme Court ruled against us, stating that all such speech could be prohibited, because it might indirectly support the group’s terrorist activity. Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that a terrorist group might use human rights advocacy training to file harassing claims, that it might use peacemaking assistance as a cover while re-arming itself, and that such speech could contribute to the group’s "legitimacy," and thus increase its ability to obtain support elsewhere that could be turned to terrorist ends. Under the court’s decision, former President Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring team could be prosecuted for meeting with and advising Hezbollah during the 2009 Lebanese elections.
The government has similarly argued that providing legitimate humanitarian aid to victims of war or natural disasters is a crime if provided to or coordinated with a group labeled as a "foreign terrorist organization" – even if there is no other way to get the aid to the region in need. Yet The Times recently reported that the Treasury Department, under a provision ostensibly intended for humanitarian aid, was secretly granting licenses to American businesses to sell billions of dollars worth of food and goods to the very countries we have blockaded for their support of terrorism. Some of the "humanitarian aid" exempted? Cigarettes, popcorn and chewing gum.
Under current law, it seems, the right to make profits is more sacrosanct than the right to petition for peace, and the need to placate American businesses more compelling than the need to provide food and shelter to earthquake victims and war refugees.
Congress should reform the laws governing material support of terrorism. It should make clear that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activities – as Michael Mukasey and Rudolph Giuliani did in Paris – is not a crime. The First Amendment protects even speech advocating criminal activity, unless it is intended and likely to incite imminent lawless conduct. The risk that speech advocating peace and human rights would further terrorism is so remote that it cannot outweigh the indispensable value of protecting dissent.
At the same time, Congress also needs to reform the humanitarian aid exemption. It should state clearly that corporate interests in making profits from cigarettes are not sufficient to warrant exemptions from sanctions on state sponsors of terrorism. But Congress should also protect the provision of legitimate humanitarian aid – food, water, medical aid and shelter – in response to wars or natural disasters. Genuine humanitarian aid and free speech can and should be preserved without undermining our interests in security.
2) Leading conservatives openly support a Terrorist group
Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Monday, Jan 3, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/03/fran_townsend_terrorism/index.html
Imagine if a group of leading American liberals met on foreign soil with – and expressed vocal support for – supporters of a terrorist group that had (a) a long history of hateful anti-American rhetoric, (b) an active role in both the takeover of a U.S. embassy and Saddam Hussein’s brutal 1991 repression of Iraqi Shiites, (c) extensive financial and military support from Saddam, (d) multiple acts of violence aimed at civilians, and (e) years of being designated a "Terrorist organization" by the U.S. under Presidents of both parties, a designation which is ongoing? The ensuing uproar and orgies of denunciation would be deafening.
But on December 23, a group of leading conservatives – including Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend – did exactly that. In Paris, of all places, they appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) – a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be "terrorist organization" – and expressed wholesale support for that group. Worse – on foreign soil – they vehemently criticized their own country’s opposition to these Terrorists and specifically "demanded that Obama instead take the [] group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran." In other words, they are calling on the U.S. to embrace this Saddam-supported, U.S.-hating Terrorist group and recruit them to help overthrow the government of Iran. To a foreign audience, Mukasey denounced his own country’s opposition to these Terrorists as "nothing less than an embarrassment."
[…] There are people sitting in prison right now with extremely long prison sentences for so-called "material support for terrorism" who did little different than what these right-wing advocates just did. What justifies allowing these Bush officials to materially support a Terrorist group with impunity?
Then there’s CNN. How can they possibly continue to employ someone – Fran Townsend – who so openly supports a Terrorist group? Less than six months ago, that network abruptly fired its long-time producer, Octavia Nasr, for doing nothing more than expressing well wishes upon the death of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the Shiite world’s most beloved religious figures. Her sentiments were echoed by the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, who wrote a piece entitled "The Passing of a Decent Man," and by the journal Foreign Policy, which hailed him as "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity." But because Fadlallh had connections to Hezbollah – a group designated as a Terrorist organization by the U.S. – and was an opponent of Israel, neocon and other right-wing organs demonized Nasr and CNN quickly accommodated them by ending her career.
[…] UPDATE: Amazingly, Fran Townsend, on CNN, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision in Humanitarian Law – the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the DOJ’s view that one can be guilty of "material support for terrorism" simply by talking to or advocating for a Terrorist group – and enthusiastically agreed when Wolf Blitzer said, while interviewing her: "If you’re thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don’t do it because the government can come down hard on you and the Supreme Court said the government has every right to do so." Yet "voicing support for a terrorist group" is exactly what Townsend is now doing – and it makes her a criminal under the very Supreme Court ruling that she so gleefully praised.
UPDATE II: In 2008, an Iranian-American woman -Zeinab Taleb-Jedi – was convicted in a federal court of providing "material support for terrorism" based solely on her membership in MEK. She argued that MEK should not be deemed a Terrorist group and that she has the First Amendment right to belong to it, but the judge rejected both claims. While she joined the group as opposed to merely advocating for it (the way these conservatives are doing), the Supreme Court in Huminatarian Law made clear that both can be means of providing "material support." Why should Taleb-Jedi be prosecuted but not Giuliani, Townsend, Ridge and friends?
3) US memo: Iranian hard-liners blocked nuke deal
Brian Murphy, Associated Press, Tuesday, January 4, 2011; 8:05 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010400934.html
The WikiLeaks cable:
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/11/09ANKARA1654.html
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought some kind of nuclear fuel swap deal more than a year ago, but faced internal pressures from hard-liners who viewed it as a "virtual defeat," according to U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
[Here is the full passage from the cable: <Ahmadinejad is facing "huge pressure" after statements from some P5 members to the effect that a nuclear deal would succeed in weakening Iran’s nuclear capability – which is interpreted by some circles in Iran as a virtual defeat.> Presumably the "some P5 members" includes the US, where officials hyped the deal to fend off domestic critics – JFP.]
The report, available on the WikiLeaks website Tuesday, also suggested Iran trusted its arch-foe the United States more than ally Russia to follow through with the U.N.-backed proposal: providing reactor-ready fuel in exchange for Iran giving up control of its low-enriched uranium stockpile.
The assessment was given to a top U.S. envoy by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose nation has a growing friendship with Tehran and is scheduled to host the next round of nuclear talks later this month between Iran and six world powers, including the United States.
The fuel swap proposal is a centerpiece of efforts for greater international controls on Iran’s nuclear program, which the West and others fear could lead to development of atomic weapons. Iran insists it only seeks reactors for power and research.
The U.N. plan in 2009 called for Iran to ship its low-enriched uranium out of the country and receive nuclear fuel ready for use. Iran balked at the proposal and outlined alternative fuel swaps involving allies Brazil and Turkey. But the six nations – the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany – said the offers fell short of their demands.
In late 2009, Davutoglu told visiting Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon that Iran’s government was willing to work out some kind of fuel swap arrangement, but Ahmadinejad was facing "huge pressures" at home, according to the secret memo.
Davutoglu was quoted as saying that the proposal deal was "interpreted by some circles in Iran as a virtual defeat" by Western pressures.
The cable said Turkish officials had asked Ahmadinejad "if the core of the issue is psychological rather than substance."
"Ahmadinejad had said ‘yes,’ that the Iranians agree to the proposal but need to manage the public perception," the message said, adding that Turkish officials consider Ahmadinejad as "more flexible than others who are inside the Iranian government."
It also noted that it appears the Iranians have "more trust" in the U.S. envoys than British negotiators and "the Iranians would also prefer to get fuel from the U.S. rather than the Russians."
The talks between Iran and the world powers resumed in Geneva last month after an impasse lasting more than a year.
Iran pressed hard to have the second round in Turkey, which has developed close economic and political ties with Iran.
The leaked cable said the U.S. diplomat Gordon noted that Washington believes Turkey can be "helpful as a mediator" with Iran, but he also pushed for a stronger Turkish stance on Iran’s nuclear efforts.
It quoted the Turkish foreign minister as replying: "Only Turkey can speak bluntly and critically to the Iranians … but only because Ankara is showing public messages of friendship."
4) Afghan leader complains of foreign interference
Amir Shah, Associated Press, Tuesday, January 4, 2011; 11:31 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010400835.html
[…] On Tuesday, the Taliban criticized a leading U.S. senator for suggesting the United States should establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an e-mailed statement that would be tantamount to a permanent occupation, and accused Washington of trying to plunder Afghanistan’s natural resources.
Lindsay Graham, a Republican senator from the state of South Carolina, said Sunday that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban and benefit the region. He said he wanted to see the U.S. have "an enduring relationship" with Afghanistan to ensure it never falls back into militant hands.
Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, said Monday that while Kabul had discussed a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S. administration, "we have not touched upon the issue of permanent bases."
5) How Afghanistan Became a War for NATO
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, Jan 3
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54020
Washington – The official line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command in Afghanistan, is that the war against Afghan insurgents is vital to the security of all the countries providing troops there.
In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a U.S. military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process.
"NATO’s role in Afghanistan is more about NATO than it is about Afghanistan," the officer, who insisted on anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject, told IPS in an interview.
The alliance would never have been given such a prominent role in Afghanistan but for the fact that the George W. Bush administration wanted no significant U.S. military role there that could interfere with their plans to take control of Iraq.
That reality gave U.S. officials working on NATO an opening.
Gen. James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003 to 2005, pushed aggressively for giving NATO the primary security role in Afghanistan, according to the officer.
"Jones sold [Defence Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld on turning Afghanistan over to NATO," said the officer, adding that he did so with the full support of Pentagon officials with responsibilities for NATO. "You have to understand that the NATO lobbyists are very prominent in the Pentagon – both in the Office of the Secretary of Defence and on the Joint Staff," said the officer.
Jones admitted in an October 2005 interview with American Forces Press Service that NATO had struggled to avoid becoming irrelevant after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. "NATO was in limbo for a bit," he said.
But the 9/11 attacks had offered a new opportunity for NATO to demonstrate its relevance.
The NATO allies were opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq, but they wanted to demonstrate their support for stabilising and reconstructing Afghanistan. Jones prodded NATO member countries to provide troops for Afghanistan and to extend NATO operations from the north into the west and eventually to the east and south, where U.S. troops were concentrated.
That position coincided with the interests of NATO’s military and civilian bureaucrats and those of the military establishments in the member countries.
But there was one major problem: public opinion in NATO member countries was running heavily against military involvement in Afghanistan.
To get NATO allies to increase their troop presence in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, Jones assured member states that they would only be mopping up after the U.S. military had defeated the Taliban. On a visit to Afghanistan in August 2004, Jones said, "[W]e should not ever even think that there is going to be an insurrection of the type that we see in Iraq here. It’s just not going to happen."
Reassured by Washington and by Jones, in September 2005, NATO defence ministers agreed formally that NATO would assume command of southern Afghanistan in 2006.
But conflicts immediately arose between the U.S. and NATO member countries over the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Britain, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands had all sold the NATO mission to their publics as "peacekeeping" or "reconstruction" as distinct from counterinsurgency war.
When the Bush administration sought to merge the U.S. and NATO commands in Afghanistan, key allies pushed back, arguing the two commands had different missions. The French, meanwhile, were convinced the Bush administration was using NATO troops to fill the gap left by shifting U.S. troops from Afghanistan to Iraq – a war they strongly opposed.
The result was that one NATO member state after another adopted "caveats" that ruled out or severely limited their troops from actually carrying out combat in Afghanistan.
Even as the Bush administration was assuring its NATO allies that they would not have to face a major Taliban uprising, U.S. intelligence was reporting that the insurgency was growing and would intensify in spring 2006.
[…] Eikenberry acknowledged in testimony before Congress in February 2007 that the policy of turning Afghanistan over to NATO was really about the future of NATO rather than about Afghanistan. He noted the argument that failure in Afghanistan could "break" NATO, while hailing the new NATO role in Afghanistan as one that could "make" the alliance. "The long view of the Afghanistan campaign," said Eikenberry, "is that it is a means to continue the transformation of the alliance."
The Afghanistan mission, Eikenberry said, "could mark the beginning of sustained NATO efforts to overhaul alliance operational practices in every domain." Specifically, he suggested that NATO could use Afghan deployments to press some member nations to carry out "military modernisation".
But Canadian General Rick Hillier, who commanded NATO forces in Afghanistan from February to August 2004 and was later chief of staff of Canadian armed forces from 2005 to 2008, wrote in his memoir "A Soldier First", published in 2009, that NATO was an unmitigated disaster in Afghanistan.
He recalled that when it formally accepted responsibility for Afghanistan in 2003, NATO had "no strategy, no clear articulation of what it wanted to achieve" and that its performance was "abysmal".
Hillier said the situation "remains unchanged" after several years of NATO responsibility for Afghanistan. NATO had "started down a road that destroyed much of its credibility and in the end eroded support for the mission in every nation in the alliance," Hillier wrote. "Afghanistan has revealed," wrote Hiller, "that NATO has reached the stage where it is a corpse decomposing…"
Afghanistan
6) A Year In, Amnesty Deal Lures Only 3 Percent Of Taliban
Spencer Ackerman, Wired/Danger Room, January 3, 2011
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/a-year-in-amnesty-deal-lures-only-3-percent-of-taliban/
The White House says the best chance to end the Afghanistan war is to compel low-ranking insurgents to lay down their guns, one at a time. But at the rate this so-called reintegration project is going, it could take as long as a decade to bring the fighters in from the cold.
Fewer than 800 insurgents have signed up in the year since Afghan president Hamid Karzai announced the plan. That’s less than 3 percent of an estimated 30,000 or so militants. And most of those fighters come from the calmer parts of the country, says British Maj. Gen. Phil Jones, the NATO official in charge of enticing low-ranking insurgents not to fight. Very few of them have actually finished a 90-day "demobilization" process – after which the hard work of keeping them out of the war begins.
The Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program is straightforward: Insurgents volunteer to stop fighting in exchange for amnesty, something that U.S. military leaders have championed for years. The hope is to mimic the "Anbar Awakening" in Iraq that saw thousands of former insurgents switch to the government’s side. But that effort is now showing decidedly mixed results, four years later. Previous reintegration efforts in Afghanistan over the past decade have failed.
"This program has got risks all over the place," Jones concedes in an interview with Danger Room. "We’ll only judge success over time if the vast bulk of fighters don’t go back to the fight."
Of the 800 fighters who’ve signed up for the program, most aren’t hardcore Taliban, Jones says, but "low-level community-defense forces." They’re from the north and west, far from the Taliban’s southern and eastern strongholds. (Although the north is getting increasingly dangerous.) And they don’t particularly trust the government to make good on its pledges.
Most credible observers believe that there’s no purely military solution to the Afghanistan conflict. Instead, the war will end with a series of political deals. In theory, there should be two tracks to these political efforts: bottom-up "reintegration" of foot soldiers and top-down "reconciliation" with the insurgent leaders.
But the Obama administration hasn’t shown much interest in negotiating a deal with the Taliban’s chiefs. None of Jones’ approximately 30 staffers work on reconciliation. The priority is peeling off insurgent foot soldiers with job offers or reconstruction projects.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
7) Gaza blockade: Asia 1 aid convoy reaches Palestinians
BBC, 3 January 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12108592
Some 100 pro-Palestinian activists, part of an Asian aid convoy, have crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The convoy’s $1m (760,000 euros) worth of cargo was due to arrive separately by boat later, organisers said.
Egypt refused visas to some Iranians and Jordanians travelling with the convoy, which left India on 2 December. Activists had planned to reach the Hamas-run Gaza Strip by 27 December, the second anniversary of Israel’s 22-day Cast Lead offensive on Gaza.
[…] According to the United Nations, the Israeli military campaign left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties and 200 schools damaged or destroyed.
The Asian aid convoy – dubbed Asia 1 – included a boat carrying 300 tonnes of medicine, food and toys, as well as four buses and 10 power generators for hospitals, Palestinian officials have said.
[…] In May 2010, nine activists on board a Turkish aid ship were killed when Israeli naval commandos stormed their aid flotilla, sparking an international outcry.
Since then, the Israeli authorities have eased some of the restrictions on imports into Gaza, but international aid agencies working there say that there has been "little improvement" for people in Gaza.
[…]
Egypt
8) Clashes Grow as Egyptians Remain Angry After an Attack
Liam Stack and Michael Slackman, New York Times, January 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html
Cairo – Thousands of angry rioters broke through police lines, pelting officers with rocks and bottles and beating them with makeshift wooden crosses in a third day of unrest set off by a bomb blast outside a church after a New Year’s Mass, which killed 21 and wounded about 100.
The fighting broke out late Monday in the densely packed neighborhood of Shoubra, home to many of Cairo’s Christians, when a crowd of hundreds of angry protesters suddenly swelled into the thousands and surged through the winding streets. Eventually, the throng – chanting "Where were you when they attacked Alex?" and "Oh Mubarak, you villain, Coptic blood is not cheap," referring to President Hosni Mubarak – began battling with the police, who dropped their batons and shields to throw rocks and bottles back at the protesters.
It was the second time in two nights that the police in Cairo, outnumbered and overwhelmed by protesters, broke ranks and attacked the crowd. Even before the outbreak on Monday night, at least 39 riot police officers, including four high-ranking officers, had been injured trying to contain the protests.
[…] But many Egyptians said that the state’s oppressive security apparatus was itself the cause of much of the trouble. "The government is the reason this happened," said a demonstrator, Mamdouh Mikheil. "They are the terrorists who attack us every day."
At one point earlier in the day, as a small group of protesters marched through the center of Cairo, a high-ranking state security officer walked over to a row of demonstrators standing vigil and slowly, methodically blew out the white candles they were holding to remember those who died.
It was a small yet telling moment for a Christian community that feels increasingly victimized and marginalized, first by a series of deadly attacks and then by a government that resists acknowledging that the nation is torn by growing conflict between its Muslim majority and its Christian minority, according to political experts here.
[…] As protesters marched through downtown Cairo toward Talat Harb Square, where they were vastly outnumbered by riot police officers in black uniforms wielding truncheons, they chanted "Down with Mubarak" and "Down with the military state." But they also carried signs with slogans like, "Egyptians are one people" and "Citizenship is the way out from the slide into sectarianism."
[…] "So far Mubarak’s televised speech seems to have been retrieved from a database in the ’90s where this is portrayed as an individual criminal act, without offering any context," said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. "The message the Coptic community has been trying to send very loudly over the past few days is that they are angry as much about the attacks on New Year’s Day as about the injustices they have been subjected to."
Colombia
9) Colombian soldiers accused of killing 3 civilians
Associated Press, Monday, January 3, 2011; 12:32 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010302098.html
Bogota, Colombia – Colombian authorities said Monday that they have accused an army major and four other soldiers of killing three civilians and then falsely presenting their bodies as those of guerrillas slain in combat.
Maj. Juan Carlos Del Rio Crespo and four other troops were charged in the 2002 killings of three members of the Agudelo family in Antioquia state, about 180 miles (290 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Bogota, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Investigators determined the three were defenseless when they were slain, but that the soldiers later said the deaths happened during combat against the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the attorney general’s office said.
It said troops under Del Rio’s command seized the three men from a sugarcane field where they were working. Their bodies were found with two shotguns.
Del Rio and three soldiers have been jailed, while one other soldier is wanted in the killings.
In November, Colombian authorities said they were investigating the extrajudicial killings of 2,650 civilians, and that about 1,100 soldiers were under investigation.
At least 272 soldiers have been convicted and 58 have been absolved in a series of similar cases since 2008, when scandal erupted in Colombia over mounting accusations that soldiers were regularly killing civilians.
–
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