JFP 10/13: Brazil Should Lead on Access to Essential Medicines

Just Foreign Policy News
October 13, 2010

Brazil Should Lead on Access to Essential Medicines
By the greater use of compulsory licenses, Brazil could lower drug costs not only in Brazil, but in developing countries overall. At a time when the New York Times is reporting that "the global battle against AIDS is falling apart for lack of money," it is absolutely essential that the price of lifesaving medicines in developing countries be driven down to the absolute minimum possible. (Text of a talk JFP delivered in Sao Paulo on Monday.)
http://www.truth-out.org/brazil-should-lead-access-essential-medicines64129

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The number of Afghan civilians hospitalized for serious war wounds has doubled in 12 months in Kandahar, the Guardian reports. In August and September, Mirwais regional hospital admitted almost 1,000 new patients with weapons injuries, according to the Red Cross. The total for the same period of 2009 was 500. The Red Cross reported a "drastic increase" in the number of amputations from war injuries. The Red Cross says a consequence of the increasing violence has been the inability of local people to reach healthcare centers. "The result is that children die from tetanus, measles and tuberculosis – easily prevented with vaccines – while women die in childbirth and otherwise strong men succumb to simple infections," said a Red Cross official.

2) Robert Pape is telling Congress that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation, Laura Rozen reports for the Politico. "We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, … and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign," Pape said. Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Obama added 30,000 more U.S. troops. In Afghanistan, Pape recommends a two-to-three-year plan, that would in the first year freeze the number of U.S. forces in the country while intensifying political and economic development efforts, in particular, in Afghanistan’s Pashtun south and east, followed by a U.S. military drawdown over two to three years – similar to the strategy in Iraq.

3) British aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade thrown by US troops trying to rescue her from Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, the Guardian reports. It had initially been reported that Norgrove died from a grenade explosion, but subsequent reports suggested her rebel captors detonated a bomb vest as US troops attempted to rescue her.

4) 45 Members of Congress are right to urge changes to Haiti’s flawed electoral process, argues IJDH’s Nicole Phillips in The Hill. 14 legitimate political parties that have been excluded from the Parliamentary elections for dubious reasons. One of these parties, Famni Lavalas, is Haiti’s most popular political party. Famni Lavalas was supposedly excluded because in the April 2009 Parliamentary elections, the party’s list of candidates did not contain an original signature from ousted and exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the party’s leader.

5) Responding to a State Department request to make a counterproposal to Israel’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," Palestinians officials asked the US and Israel to define what the borders are of the state that they are supposed to recognize, AFP reports. "We want to know whether this (Israeli) state includes our lands and houses in the West Bank and east Jerusalem," Yasser Abed Rabbo said "If this map is based on the 1967 borders and provides for the end of the Israeli occupation over all Palestinian lands… then we recognise Israel by whatever name it applies to itself in accordance with international law," he said.

6) Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars reveals that if a terrorist attack occurs in the US which can be traced to Pakistan, the US military response will be a "retribution plan" to bomb at least 150 targets in Pakistan, notes Tom Hayden in The Nation. But there is no discussion in the book of what the US plan might be to deal with the consequences of that. Woodward reports that Vice President Biden has asked if it’s not possible "to accommodate the Taliban the same way Hezbollah had been in Lebanon." But Woodward doesn’t tell us what the Administration’s answer to this most important question is.

7) New figures show a record amount of World Bank funding for projects relying on coal power and other fossil fuels, Inter Press Service reports. World Bank figures show 1/4 of Bank energy lending is for coal. The World Bank will be asking Congress for more money, but U.S. officials have expressed misgivings over the mixed history of Bank energy projects.

Afghanistan
8) Writing for CNN, Amitai Etzioni argues that the current war in Afghanistan does not meet just war criteria and the U.S. should withdraw militarily.

Iran
9) Iranian President Ahmadinejad is odious but not dangerous, argues Roger Cohen in the New York Times. Some in the US and Israel do sincerely think him dangerous, but more find him a convenient bogeyman. Israeli estimates of when Iran will have a nuclear weapon have been extended to 2014. Given that various Israeli leaders have predicted that Iran would have a bomb in 1999 or 2004 or just about every year since 2005, that’s a decade and a half of the non-appearing wolf at the door. Obama won’t attack Iran and nor will Israel, not by next July or ever, Cohen predicts. The Iran threat has many uses but a third Western war against a Muslim country is a bridge too far.

Israel/Palestine
10) The Israeli government moved toward adopting a loyalty oath that would require non-Jewish prospective citizens to swear allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state," the Los Angeles Times reports. At present, no groups in Israel, including soldiers, lawmakers and the prime minister, are required to pledge allegiance to a "Jewish and democratic state."

Ecuador
11) A School of the Americas graduate has been charged in the coup attempt in Ecuador, Lisa Sullivan reports for SOA Watch. This is the second coup attempt led by SOA graduates in a little over a year. A poll indicated that over 50% of Ecuadorians felt that the U.S. had some involvement in the coup.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Afghan civilian war injuries double in Kandahar conflict
Wounded patients flooding into hospitals, says Red Cross, while fighting is stopping the sick getting basic medical care
Peter Beaumont, Guardian, Wednesday 13 October 2010 11.05 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/afghanistan-taliban

The number of Afghan civilians hospitalised for serious war wounds has doubled in 12 months in Kandahar, the focus of an ongoing US-led campaign against Taliban strongholds.

In August and September, Mirwais regional hospital in the country’s second biggest city admitted almost 1,000 new patients with weapons injuries, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The total for the same period of 2009 was 500.

The Red Cross reported a "drastic increase" in the number of amputations from war injuries, reflecting the nature of the violence.
[…] A second consequence of the increasing violence and instability, according to the Red Cross, has been the inability of local people to reach healthcare centres, often with devastating consequences.

[Reto Stocker, the Red Cross chief in Kabul] said the number of people suffering as an indirect result of the conflict far outnumbered those with gunshot and bomb injuries. "Our greatest challenge consists in maintaining access to the areas hardest hit by the fighting, but the increase in the number of armed groups is making this much harder for us," Stocker said. "The result is that children die from tetanus, measles and tuberculosis – easily prevented with vaccines – while women die in childbirth and otherwise strong men succumb to simple infections."

Coalition forces reported a typical incident around Kandahar this week when a joint US-Afghan patrol came under attack in the Zharay district and called in aircraft to retaliate. Several hours later a man brought an injured child to a nearby forward operating base, indicating the child’s wounds were from a mortar strike that day. Two civilians were reported to have been killed in the air strike.

2) Researcher: Suicide terrorism linked to military occupation
Laura Rozen, Politico, October 11, 2010
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/1010/Researcher_Suicide_terrorism_linked_to_military_occupation.html

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprising some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times – the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. Marines.

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, … and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. While there were a total of 12 suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan when the U.S. had a relatively limited troop presence of a few thousand troops mostly in Kabul, since 2006 there have been more than 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan – and they are growing more lethal, Pape said.

Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Barack Obama added 30,000 more U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.

Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.

For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then-Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf "to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their [perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan," Pape said.

Based on his findings, Pape does not advocate a "cut and run," precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan but what he calls "off-shore balancing." In Afghanistan, he recommends a two-to-three-year plan, that would in the first year freeze the number of U.S. forces in the country while intensifying political and economic development efforts, in particular, in Afghanistan’s Pashtun south and east, followed by a U.S. military drawdown over two to three years – similar to the strategy in Iraq.
[…]

3) Aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been killed by US troops
David Cameron reveals General David Petraeus has contacted him to say British hostage may not have died at hands of her captors as thought
Paul Owen, Richard Norton-Taylor, Haroon Siddique, Guardian, Monday 11 October 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/11/aid-worker-linda-norgrove-may-have-been-killed-by-us-troops

British aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade thrown by US troops trying to rescue her from Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, David Cameron said today.

The prime minister announced that a full UK-US investigation was now being launched into the circumstances surrounding Norgrove’s death on Friday.

Speaking at a press conference today, Cameron said that General David Petraeus, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, had contacted his office this morning to say a review of the rescue operation had revealed she "may not have died at the hands of her captors" as originally thought.

It had initially been reported that Norgrove died from a grenade explosion, but subsequent reports suggested her rebel captors detonated a bomb vest as American troops attempted to rescue her.
[…]

4) Members of Congress are right to urge changes to Haiti’s flawed electoral process
Nicole Phillips, The Hill, 10/11/10 09:19 AM ET
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/123601-members-of-congress-are-right-to-urge-changes-to-haitis-flawed-electoral-process

[Phillips is an attorney with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.]

On November 28, Haiti faces some of the most important presidential and legislative elections since its first ever democratic election in 1990, as they will provide the political foundation and accountability for the use of earthquake recovery funds. While Wyclef Jean’s run for President brought a few weeks of limelight to these crucial elections, they will, sadly, likely be flawed. As Representative Maxine Waters and 44 other members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on October 7,the United States may pay millions of dollars to fund illegitimate elections that could plunge the country into even greater chaos. It was easy to get wrapped up in the celebrity hype around Wyclef’s candidacy. He even released a song called Prison for the CEP, protesting the decision of Haiti’s Electoral Council (the CEP) to exclude him from the candidate list. But Wyclef was kept off the ballot for legitimate reasons – his failure to meet Haitian residency requirements, unlike the 14 legitimate political parties that have been excluded from the Parliamentary elections for dubious reasons. One of these parties, Famni Lavalas, is Haiti’s most popular political party. It has won every election it has contested, and if allowed to participate in the coming election, it would likely beat current President René Préval’s party, Inite.

The reasons for excluding the other 13 parties are unclear, as the CEP, which was hand-picked by President Préval, lacks any transparency and shrugs its obligations to explain its decisions. Famni Lavalas was supposedly excluded because in the April 2009 Parliamentary elections, the party’s list of candidates did not contain an original signature from party leader President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The CEP created this requirement at the last minute, knowing that President Aristide was in exile in South Africa and unable to deliver a signature. What does this have to do with November 28, 2010, you ask? The CEP just carried over its decision to exclude from April 2009; Famni Lavalas need not apply to run in November.

The CEP also fabricated a new requirement to disqualify Famni Lavalas from the Presidential elections. The head of each party must now register presidential candidates in person. President Aristide has been kept out of Haiti since 2004 and cannot personally deliver the candidate list. The exclusion of eligible political parties that rival Préval’s government is intentional and makes it impossible to have fair or credible elections.

The international community has shown an incredible commitment to rebuilding Haiti, but is turning a blind eye to the vital role a free and fair democracy must play in the effort. Donors pledged $11 billion to invest in Haiti’s reconstruction; former President Bill Clinton heads the Haiti Interim Recovery Commission approving all major development projects; and one out of two Americans gave money to a charity to help Haitians after the earthquake. But the effectiveness of these investments is threatened by sham elections.
[…]

5) Palestinians call on US, Israel to set borders
Nasser Abu Bakr, AFP, Wed Oct 13, 10:54 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101013/wl_afp/israelpalestinianspeaceus_20101013145445

Ramallah, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – The Palestinians on Wednesday called on the US administration and Israel to define borders in response to Israel’s demand for recognition as the Jewish state. "We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise," senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo told AFP.

His remarks came after the US State Department asked the Palestinians to extend a counter-proposal to Israel’s call for recognition as a "Jewish state" in exchange for a possible extension of restrictions on settlement building. The Palestinians rejected the offer, saying recognition of Israel’s Jewish identity had no relation to the peace process.

They instead demanded that the US administration set the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations about final borders. "We want to know whether this (Israeli) state includes our lands and houses in the West Bank and east Jerusalem," Abed Rabbo said, referring to Palestinian lands occupied during the 1967 Six Day War.

"If this map is based on the 1967 borders and provides for the end of the Israeli occupation over all Palestinian lands… then we recognise Israel by whatever name it applies to itself in accordance with international law," he said, without elaborating. "We are awaiting a response from Tel Aviv and Washington," he added.

When asked about Abed Rabbo’s comments, senior Israeli cabinet minister Silvan Shalom said it was "unacceptable to return to the lines of June 1967."
[…] Netanyahu’s proposal was criticised in Israel on Tuesday, with the left-leaning Haaretz calling it a "major diversionary ploy" and the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot accusing him of trying to "torpedo" the talks.

The direct negotiations ground to a halt on September 26 after the expiry of a 10-month moratorium on the construction of new settler homes in the West Bank. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has refused to hold further negotiations while settlement construction continues and last week Arab League foreign ministers gave US negotiators a month to resolve the impasse.

6) ‘Obama’s Wars’ Reveals the US Is Living ‘On Borrowed Time’
Tom Hayden, The Nation, October 11, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/article/155314/obamas-wars-reveals-us-living-borrowed-time

Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars should scare the hell out of you. It is essential reading – between the lines – for anyone seeking a map out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here’s an example: If and when a terrorist attack occurs in the United States which can be traced to Pakistan, the American military response will be a "retribution plan" to bomb at least 150 targets in Pakistan. The plan is "one of the most sensitive and secret of all military contingencies," Woodward writes. There is no discussion of The Day After in this scenario of saturation bombing. That’s another secret.

Such an attack already has been attempted this year, when Faisal Shahzad, who was funded and trained by the Pakistani Taliban, placed a car bomb in Times Square on May 1. Last year the FBI arrested an AQ operative, Najibullah Zazi, for planning to blow up New York subways with 14 backpack bombs, and also nabbed Chicago resident David Coleman Headley for planning an attack in Europe. Both individuals were trained in Pakistan.

In addition, Woodward reveals that a May 26, 2009 secret presidential briefing headlined "North American al Qaeda trainees may influence targets and tactics in the United States and Canada" announced that at least twenty Al Qaeda with Western passports were training in Pakistan safe havens to return to the West for high-profile actions. Elsewhere Woodward says Al Qaeda is recruiting and training people from the 35 countries who don’t need visas to enter the US.

The reader is left with the impression that another massive and traumatic assault is to be expected in the US in the near future. We are living "on borrowed time," according to one adviser.
[…] As we await "the game changer," we learn that the Pentagon already is protecting us by a top-secret war in Pakistan, the new "center of gravity," plus an expedited escalation in Afghanistan featuring nightly raids by special forces. Between 2004-7, there were only nine drone strikes; in 2008, the number rose to 34; in 2009, 53; there have been eighty so far this year. Night raids in Afghanistan have risen from one hundred per month, to 1,000 per month. The savagery is kept secret from the American people, but not the Muslim world.

That’s not all. Woodward neglects to describe, at least for this book, the secret long war already unfolding in at least nineteen countries, under a classified order signed by Gen. David Petraeus last year. But he does quote Petraeus saying, "This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives." Even more disturbing is the strategic thinking behind the policy, as described by National Security Adviser James Jones in an interview with Woodward. The Jones "theory of the war" consists, first, of asserting that "the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war," a classic Machiavellian maxim. Second, according to Jones, the war is "certainly a clash of civilizations…a clash of religions…a clash of almost concepts of how to live." If the US is not successful, NATO, the European Union and the United Nations "might be relegated to the dustbin of history." (Last Friday Obama replaced Jones with Tom Donilon as national security adviser, an official more attuned to civilian domestic politics.)

Vice-President Biden is the sanest voice in the closed circle, though his own counterterrorism plan also depends on secrecy and relentless killing by drones and Special Forces. Obama pushes Biden to keep raising questions, and most important, Biden wonders if it’s not possible "to accommodate the Taliban the same way Hezbollah had been in Lebanon." For a moment, we see the startling possibility of a rational exit plan, though it would require accepting a meaningful role for the Taliban in Afghanistan’s future. Biden’s question is not pursued, at least not on the record.
[…]

7) World Bank Pressured over Record Fossil Fuels Lending
Matthew O. Berger, Inter Press Service, 12 Oct
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3327

Washington – With new figures showing a record amount of World Bank funding for projects relying on coal power and other fossil fuels, the issue of reforming the institution’s energy lending was once again a hot topic at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, which concluded over the weekend.

The figures, released by the Bank in mid-September, show it lent 3.4 billion dollars to coal projects, or one quarter of all its energy lending. If a transmission project meant to connect coal-powered stations to the grid in India is included, that number rises to about 4.4 billion dollars, according to an analysis by the NGO Bank Information Center (BIC).

This higher total also means that lending for coal-based power rose 356 percent from the fiscal year 2009, largely due to a June loan for a 4800-megawatt plant to be built in South Africa. That one loan, to utility giant Eskom, amounted to over three billion dollars.
[…] Between fiscal years 1999 and 2008, the proportion of Bank lending in the "very high impact" category shifted from five to 11 percent and that in the "substantial impact" category increased from 37 to 51 percent, while lending deemed to have a "low impact" dropped from 40 to 18 percent, the Sep. 23 report said.

The Eskom loan awarded earlier this year is seen by many groups as belonging in that high or very high impact category. The U.S. and several other countries abstained from voting on the loan after concerns were raised about its potential negative impacts, including the emissions from burning coal, a purported lack of impact on increasing energy access in southern Africa, the air and water pollution to be caused in the local area, and fears the loan repayment would weaken the South African rand.

In August the U.S. once again expressed its reservations over the Bank’s continued funding of fossil fuel-powered projects.

In approving additional funding for some Bank’s International Development Association as part of a broader foreign operations bill, the U.S. Senate included language warning that the Bank should develop a strategy that both increases its support for clean energy and phases out its support for fossil fuel projects, with the exception of those projects specifically aimed at providing energy access for the poor.

Whether a project meets this increased energy access criterion, though, is not always clear, as illustrated by the Eskom case.

A report released by the advocacy group Oil Change International ahead of last week’s meetings argues that none of the Bank’s oil- or coal-related lending in the past two years has prioritised energy access.

"World Bank officials justify massively polluting coal and oil projects by saying that they increase energy access for the poor – but that’s just not true," said Oil Change International’s Elizabeth Bast. "Not only do the poor suffer the climate impacts of increased fossil fuel emissions and impacts from local pollution, but they are also not receiving the energy from the same projects that damage their livelihoods."

The Bank will be asking the U.S. Congress for more money as part of the general capital increase Bank president Robert Zoellick announced at the institution’s spring meetings in April, but U.S. officials have expressed misgivings over the mixed history of Bank energy projects.
[…]

Afghanistan
8) Withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan
Amitai Etzioni was Israeli commando, son served in U.S. 1st Armored Division
Etzioni says U.S. goal, to rid Afghanistan of al Qaeda, has been met; only 100 remain
Etzioni says people should not die for fraudulent elections, corrupt regime
Afghanistan must resolve Taliban issue itself, he writes, and U.S. should pull out
Amitai Etzioni, CNN, October 12, 2010
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/10/12/etzioni.bring.them.home/

[Etzioni is professor of international relations at George Washington University and the author of "Security First." He was a senior adviser to the Carter administration.]

[…]

I abhor war and believe we should fight only when there is a clear and present danger, when all other means for resolving a conflict have been truly exhausted and to protect the innocent. Those are the three criteria of a just war. The war in Afghanistan used to meet these criteria. It no longer does.

We invaded Afghanistan to stop it from serving as a base for terrorists of the kind who attacked us on 9/11. This goal has been accomplished. Fewer than 100 members of al Qaeda are in Afghanistan. There are many more in Yemen and Somalia, which we are not planning to invade.

The Taliban has no designs on us, beyond making us leave. After that, the people of Afghanistan can duke it out over which kind of regime they want. If the majority of the Afghan people don’t want the Taliban to rule, they should fight for their rights, as they have shown they can when they defeated the Taliban in 2002 with limited help from us.
[…] The metrics that the U.S. Army keeps inventing to show progress are pitiful. Having committed 100,000 troops and a similar number of "private" contractors against rag-tag, poorly equipped, illiterate locals, we captured a few scores of square miles, opened a few markets and a local government or two. But large and growing areas of Afghanistan are under Taliban control. We should neither die nor kill for an illusion.
[…] A recent report from an embedded reporter for GlobalPost shows a 19-year-old American soldier getting shot in the head – his helmet saved him from death – as his unit traveled through Kunar Province in late August. They were surveying polling sites for the upcoming elections. Also, a homemade bomb, called an IED, damaged and set afire the lead vehicle of this small convoy and severely wounded its driver.

It seemed absurd to risk lives of Americans, our allies or Afghans to support faux elections.
[…] To encourage our president and Congress to withdraw the troops, let’s fasten to our lapels white ribbons (for peace) with black letters (mourning those who died) that read "Bring them home." The time has come to organize teach-ins and antiwar groups. Instead of another march on Washington, let there be rallies across America. Bring the troops home.

Iran
9) Iran, the Paper Tiger
Roger Cohen, New York Times, October 11, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12iht-edcohen.html

London –
[…] Ahmadinejad is odious but I don’t think he’s dangerous. Some people do of course find him dangerous, especially in the Israel he gratuitously insults and threatens, and yet others – many more I’d say – find it convenient to find him dangerous.
[…] I read with interest in a recent piece by my colleagues John Markoff and David Sanger that "in the past year Israeli estimates of when Iran will have a nuclear weapon had been extended to 2014." Given that various Israeli leaders have predicted that Iran would have a bomb in 1999 or 2004 or just about every year since 2005, that’s a decade and a half of the non-appearing wolf at the door.
[…] Cool heads are needed. Untenable Nazi allusions, rampant in the case of Iran, demean victims of the Holocaust and lead to disastrous wars. A bloody war has been fought in Iran’s western neighbor. So let’s recall that Saddam Hussein told his captors he had cultivated nuclear ambiguity as a deterrent even though his program was precisely zilch.

And what of Iran’s program? Iran remains a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are at Natanz; the number of centrifuges being used to make low-enriched uranium (far from weapons grade) has dropped 23 percent since May 2009 and production has stagnated; U.S. intelligence agencies hold that Iran has not made the decision to build a bomb; any "breakout" decision would be advertised because the I.A.E.A. would be thrown out; the time from "breakout" to deliverable weapon is significant.

I’m with Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who this year told the Washington Post: "Iran will muddle along building its stockpile but never making a nuclear bomb because it knows that crossing that line would provoke an immediate military attack." The Islamic Republic is a study in muddle but lucid over a single goal: self-preservation.

So there’s time. Yet the foreboding industry is in overdrive, with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic declaring that the Obama administration "knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program" and setting "a better than 50 percent chance" Israel will strike by next July.
[…] Yes, Ahmadinejad is the bogeyman from Central Casting. One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president.
[…] And here are two more predictions: Obama won’t attack Iran and nor will Israel, not by next July or ever. Iran is a paper tiger, a postmodern threat: It has many uses but a third Western war against a Muslim country is a bridge too far.

Israel/Palestine
10) Israel’s Cabinet approves controversial loyalty oath
The proposed law would require Palestinians and other non-Jewish prospective citizens to swear allegiance to Israel. A critic says it ‘pokes an unnecessary finger in the eye of the Arab minority.’
Edmund Sanders and Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-1011-israel-loyalty-oath-20101011,0,212691.story

Jerusalem – The Israeli government moved Sunday to adopt a controversial loyalty oath that would require Palestinians and other non-Jewish prospective citizens to swear allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state."

Supporters said the proposed amendment to Israel’s citizenship law, approved Sunday by the Cabinet and expected to be adopted by the Knesset, would strengthen Israel’s identity as the homeland of the Jewish people.

But critics called the measure anti-democratic and discriminatory because it would not apply to Jewish immigrants seeking Israeli citizenship and it appeared to be chiefly aimed at Palestinians applying for Israeli citizenship after marrying Arab Israelis.

At present, no groups in Israel, including soldiers, lawmakers and the prime minister, are required to pledge allegiance to a "Jewish and democratic state."
[…] The proposed law mirrors Netanyahu’s recent efforts to seek formal Palestinian recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" as part of the peace process.

Palestinians worry that the designation would open the door to state-sanctioned discrimination against Arab Israeli citizens, and affect the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land they fled during Israel’s war for independence in 1948.
[…] Even among Jews, the language is controversial. Secular Jews worry that a "Jewish" state might lead to the adoption of more religious laws. "It is liable to turn the country into a theocracy like Saudi Arabia," wrote Haaretz newspaper columnist Gideon Levy in a piece titled "The Jewish Republic of Israel."
[…] Because the proposed law would not apply to Jewish immigrants who come to Israel under the country’s "law of return," constitutional expert Suzie Navot said the proposal may be regarded as discriminatory.

Ecuador
11) SOA Graduate Involved in Coup Attempt in Ecuador
Lisa Sullivan, SOA Watch, Sat Oct-09-10
http://www.soaw.org/presente/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=328&Itemid=74

A School of the Americas graduate has been charged for last Thursday’s unsuccessful coup attempt in Ecuador. Colonel Manuel E. Rivadeneira Tello, a graduate of the SOA’s combat arms training course, is one of three police officials being investigated for negligence, rebellion and attempted assassination of the president.

Rivadeneira was the commander of the barracks where President Correa was attacked by protesting police. The injured Correa was taken to a police hospital were he held hostage by police who threatened to kill him if he escaped. After 12 hours, 500 elite forces stormed the hospital and organized a fiery rescue. By the end of the day 4 people lay dead and over 200 wounded.

This is the second coup attempt led by SOA graduates in a little over a year. The June 2009 in Honduras led by SOA graduates General Vasquez Velasquez and General Prince Suazo was successful in overthrowing President Manuel Zelaya. At the time, President Correa expressed concern that this opened the possibility of future coups in the continent acknowledging that he might be a possible target.
[…] Ecuadorians, however, were not convinced that the U.S. was an innocent bystander. A poll indicated that over 50% of Ecuadorians felt that the U.S. had some involvement in the coup based, perhaps, on experience in their country where evidence has pointed to past U.S. involvement in coups and presidential deaths.
[…]

–
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.