Just Foreign Policy News, December 15, 2011
Falluja’s anger endures; will media let Paul question foreign policy?
Go Straight to the News Summary
I) Actions and Featured Articles
Will the Media Let Ron Paul Question U.S. Foreign Policy?
Will the media let Ron Paul raise serious questions about U.S. foreign policy? Economist and media critic (and Just Foreign Policy board member) Dean Baker recently posed this question in a forum at Politico. It’s a crucial test case not only of the prospects that the media will serve the interests of the 99% rather than the 1%, but of the prospects for a foreign military and economic policy that reflects the values and interests of the 99%, rather than those of the 1%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/ron-paul-foreign-policy_b_1151442.html
Barney Frank: The Emperor has Too Many Clothes: Adjusting America’s Military Spending to Reality
Compelling talk by Rep. Barney Frank on why projected military spending needs to be cut, including nuclear weapons, foreign bases, and the war in Afghanistan.
http://www.cfr.org/us-strategy-and-politics/emperor-has-too-many-clothes-adjusting-americas-military-spending-reality/p26505
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Falluja’s anger toward the Americans seems almost certain to endure long after they leave, the New York Times reports. 16-year-old Mustafa Kamel watched the day’s speeches from a wheelchair. Walking home from school five years ago, he said, he was caught in a firefight between US forces and insurgents and was shot in the neck. His injury left him paralyzed.
2) Barney Frank says we could remove the Marines from Okinawa, Ryukyu Shimpo reports. Frank says the only purpose of the Marines has been to destabilize Japanese politics. Frank doesn’t believe the claim that the Marines are necessary to contain China: "I do not think that China is prepared to commit economic suicide by shutting down the sea lanes."
3) The impact of defense spending on job creation has become a flashpoint in the debate over how to reduce the nation’s debt, National Defense reports. An Aerospace Industries Association-funded study said up to a million jobs will be lost if Congress goes ahead with automatic cuts of half-a-billion dollars to the Pentagon’s budget that are scheduled to begin in January 2013. But a study by economists at the University of Massachusetts found that $1 billion spent on the military will generate about 11,200 jobs. By contrast, spending those funds elsewhere in the economy would create 16,800 jobs for clean energy, 17,200 jobs for healthcare and 26,700 jobs for education. [Thus, spending money on the military rather than these alternative uses actually destroys jobs – JFP.]
4) The UN force in Haiti is looking into new allegations of assault and attempted homicide with three young Haitians claiming to have been beaten and left for dead by eight Brazilian troops, Defend Haiti reports.
5) Human Rights Watch said Obama’s apparent decision to not veto a bill that codifies indefinite detention without trial into US law and expands the military’s role in holding terrorism suspects does enormous damage to the rule of law. "By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law," said Kenneth Roth executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Iran
6) The U.S. military’s exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better position to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, writes Rowan Scarborough in The Washington Times.
7) A senior Iranian defense official said Iran may relocate its uranium enrichment work to more secure locations, the New York Times reports.
Haiti
8) Lawyers representing thousands of cholera victims in Haiti have threatened to take the UN to court in the US, unless the UN responds to a petition for financial compensation, the BBC reports. The UN may be responsible for nearly 7,000 deaths from cholera, the BBC says. The UN is being asked to pay $100,000 to the families of those who died and $50,000 to each of the people who fell sick but recovered. In addition there is a "class action" saying the UN should stop the cholera by rebuilding Haiti’s decrepit water and sanitation infrastructure.
Israel/Palestine
9) A mosque in a village outside Ramallah was defaced and set on fire early Thursday, the third day of extremist Jewish violence, the New York Times reports. The attack came after the Israeli Army moved to remove two structures at an unauthorized settler outpost near Nablus. Inside the mosque, where carpets and chairs were burned, Hebrew graffiti said "war" and "price tag," the name given to a campaign by radical settlers angered by Israeli government policy. Other graffiti referred to the settler outpost, saying, "Regards from Mitzpe Yitzhar." Some commentary in Israel said the government’s response was insufficient because it failed to address the central issue – tolerance of settler violence by rabbinic and other leaders.
10) Palestinians raised their flag at UNESCO headquarters in Paris as the agency’s 195th member, a historic move and symbolic boost for their push for an independent state, AP reports. The US funding cutoff forced UNESCO to scale back literacy and development programs in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the new nation of South Sudan; several countries are lobbying the U.S. to renew its funding.
Honduras
11) Dozens of members of Honduras’ gay and lesbian community gathered outside the Attorney General’s Office to protest the slayings of 58 gays and lesbians this year, EFE reports. Gays and lesbians in Honduras are daily subjected to harassment, discrimination, arbitrary arrest, torture and murder, the protesters said. Honduras, which experiences an average of 20 homicides a day, has become the most dangerous country in Central America in the 2½ years since the overthrow of President Zelaya, EFE says.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) At Iraq War’s End, Wounds Are Still Fresh for Falluja
Jack Healy, New York Times, December 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/falluja-is-left-wounded-by-war.html
Falluja, Iraq – They came on Wednesday to bury the war: clerics and sheiks, children and widows from across this scarred city. In the shadow of an overpass, they waved banners, burned an American flag, displayed photos of their dead and shouted well-worn denunciations of departing American forces. "It’s a festival," said Sheik Hamid Ahmed Hasham, the head of the local council, whose four predecessors were assassinated.
Once an inner ring of Iraq’s wartime inferno, Falluja is only too eager to say goodbye to nearly nine shattering years of raids, bombings and house-to-house urban combat. At least 200 American troops were killed in this city. Untold thousands of Iraqis died, civilians and insurgents who are mourned equally as martyrs.
Today, Falluja is a city desperately seeking normal.
Calls to prayer ring out from minarets where insurgent snipers once perched. In restaurants once obliterated by mortars and airstrikes, waiters skate from table to table with trays of lamb kebabs and fire-roasted tomatoes. Opulent houses rise from fields of rubble, built by sheiks, contractors and anyone else who benefited, illicitly or not, from the vast sums of American money that poured into Iraq during the war.
But amid the rebuilding, Falluja remains stranded between its past and present. American military officials plan to fold up the flags and formally conclude their mission at a ceremony on Thursday at the airport in Baghdad, but Falluja’s anger toward the Americans seems almost certain to endure long after they leave.
That legacy is visible in the concrete walls spangled with bullet holes and shrapnel scars, in apartment buildings still lying in heaps. It is visible in the faces of widows who crowded the stairs outside an Islamic education center at Wednesday’s Day of Resistance and Freedom, waving photographs of dead husbands and sons, asking for money for the loss they have suffered.
"We are full of pain," said Turkiya Fehan. She pointed at a photo of her son Mohammed, 19, who was killed in 2004. "He was in the resistance. He took his RPG and went to face the Americans. He was a hero."
It lives in the face of 16-year-old Mustafa Kamel, watching the day’s speeches from a wheelchair. Walking home from school five years ago, he said, he was caught in a firefight between American forces and insurgents and was shot in the neck. His injury left him paralyzed but the experience left him with a very specific set of goals for the future.
One: To become a doctor. Two: To walk again. And Three: "I’d ask God to let you see what the people of Falluja suffer from. That you suffer as I do."
[…]
2) "We could remove the Marines from Okinawa" suggests U.S. Congressman Frank
Ryukyu Shimpo, December 6, 2011
http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2011/12/15/4216/
Barney Frank, a leading Democratic Congressman was quoted in the U.S. magazine "Foreign Affairs" (December issue) as saying, "I do think we could remove the Marines from Okinawa; whose only purpose has been to destabilize Japanese politics, so when the first alternative government to the conservative regime got elected, we caused them trouble." He is known to have advocated the withdrawal of the U.S. Marines from Okinawa.
The remarks of such an influential congressman, who also suggested that the Marines in Okinawa are a factor destabilizing Japanese politics, may serve to intensify the debate over the necessity of the U.S. Marine Corps being stationed in Okinawa.
The Foreign Affairs Magazine reported on the keynote lecture delivered by Frank, and the question and answers with him, at the Council on Foreign Relations on November 14 in New York.
Regarding the strategic objective of the Marines in Okinawa, Frank said, "I mean, they don’t know what – so I guess the strategic purpose we’re told is we have to contain China. And I think we overdo that." He questioned to the need for Marines being stationed in Okinawa, stating, "Again, I do not think that China is prepared to commit economic suicide by shutting down the sea lanes." In addition, with regard to the U.S. military presence in Asia, he suggested that there is a legitimate strategic interest in deterring North Korea and in providing Taiwan with some assurance, but he added, saying, "I think the current presence is at least as much as we need, maybe a little more ."
With regard to the new Hatoyama administration’s policy which had the place for the relocation of the Futenma Air Station to be outside the prefecture or out of the country, he said, "One of the biggest problems they had was that they had promised to ask America to leave Okinawa, and the American government refused and very much destabilized that government." This leading congressman suggested, "I think if we did it in the right way and noted the 7th Fleet was still there, that they might be a little bit upset but it would certainly have no negative consequence on us."
Frank has a strong influence on the U.S. government’s monetary policy. To look for more ways to trim the military budget, in May 2010 Frank set up "The Sustainable Defense Task Force" convened by a bipartisan group in Congress, and identified nearly $1 trillion in potential cuts, including a reduction plan for U.S. forces in Asia over the next decade. In July that same year, he adopted the stance that the Marines being stationed in Okinawa is unnecessary. "We don’t need 15,000 marines in Okinawa – they’re a hangover from a war that ended 65 years ago," Frank says.
3) Debate Over Defense Industry Jobs Escalates
National Defense, 12/14/2011
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=616
The impact of defense spending on job creation has become a contentious flashpoint in the debate over how to reduce the nation’s debt and still maintain a strong military.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and industry leaders have stood behind estimates that cuts to military spending will ratchet up unemployment. An Aerospace Industries Association-funded study concluded that up to a million jobs will be lost if Congress goes ahead with automatic cuts of half-a-billion dollars to the Pentagon’s budget that are scheduled to begin in January 2013.
The notion that defense cuts should be averted for fears of fueling unemployment has been contested by another study conducted by economists at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst. They surmised that $1 billion spent on the military will generate about 11,200 jobs. By contrast, spending those funds elsewhere in the economy would create 16,800 jobs for clean energy, 17,200 jobs for healthcare and 26,700 jobs for education.
Now comes Marion C. Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, offering another rebuttal to the PERI UMass study.
Blakey dismissed the professors’ job math as academic hogwash. "It takes an ivory tower to come up with a study like that," Blakey said Dec. 14 at AIA’s Year-End Review and Forecast Luncheon, in Washington, D.C.
Blakey said it the debate over jobs is about the need to sustain critical defense and aerospace skills, not about transferring resources from one sector of the economy to another. The AIA study, conducted by George Mason economist Stephen Fuller, estimated that more than a million jobs would be lost in 2013 alone if the Pentagon’s budget is cut by $100 billion, $45 billion of which would be taken from weapon-procurement accounts. Of those million jobs, 352,000 would be high-wage skilled positions, and the rest would come from other sectors that would be affected by shutdowns of weapon manufacturer plants.
The PERI Umass study, meanwhile, contends that if the goal is to create or save jobs, defense spending is not the most efficient way to do it.
Blakey said the PERI findings are "completely hypothetical." She specifically challenged the economists’ assertion that government spending could create green-energy jobs. "Where do they think they’re going to create green jobs when solar panels are made in China?" Blakey asked. "Theoretical is always interesting if you’ve got the time for it."
Robert Pollin, one of the authors of the study, said the university’s research is credible, as it was based on U.S. government data. "Of course it’s an academic study," he said in an interview. "If you want to say that anything done by professors is automatically stupid because it’s done by professors, then we are guilty as charged."
Pollin’s team used data from the U.S. Commerce Department, he said. Based on surveys of U.S. businesses, Commerce can calculate how many jobs result from a given amount spent on any activity in the economy. "It’s a very useful, neutral technical tool for evaluating the relative employment index of one type of spending versus another," Pollin said.
The green-jobs estimate does not include manufacturing of equipment, he said. "Seventy percent of what we call green investments are not manufacturing but energy efficiency, such as retrofitting buildings, upgrading the electrical grid system and the transportation system." A green-building jobs initiative announced last week by the White House to upgrade government facilities was based on the UMass study, said Pollin.
"One can argue the merits of defense spending on whether we need it to defend the United States," he said. "It doesn’t matter if it creates a single job because we have to defend the United States. But if the industry says we must spend this money because it’s good for jobs, that’s not an accurate statement. It’s not as good relative to other ways to spend money in the economy."
[…]
4) Haiti: Victim of UN Peacekeeper Abuse Audio Testimony
Defend Haiti, Thursday, 15 December 2011 14:32
http://www.defend.ht/politics/articles/defense/2228-haiti-victim-of-un-peacekeeper-abuse-audio-testimony
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – The United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti is looking into new allegations of assault and attempted homicide with three young Haitians claiming to have been beaten and left for dead by eight of its Brazilian peacekeepers.
On Thursday morning, Spokeswoman for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, told Defend Haiti that the institution had learned of the crimes through the media and were looking to establish the facts "as soon as possible."
The victims, three young men, claim that on Tuesday evening a vehicle they were traveling in had begun making noise so they stopped on the side of the road. A group of soldiers, eight, from a Brazilian contingent of MINUSTAH arrived on the scene where the gentlemen were tending to their car.
The civilian men say they were frisked by the soldiers and told to lay stomach down on the ground and it was in these positions that the peacekeepers began to beat them.
[…] "After checking us, they asked us to lie down. The soldiers kicked us with their boots while we were lying on the ground."
[…] "Then they took us to a banana plantation located on Route 9 before reaching Titanyen (Northern Port-au-Prince). At this point, the soldiers told me to remove my t-shirt and hit me with a machete. "
"After mistreating me, they took the other two guys to beat them. "
"The soldiers took off our pants. After they took everything we had on us, our telephones, our money, our papers, my driver’s license, and our clothes."
"What we have, these clothes on us, it was a neighbor in the area who gave it to us."
[…]
5) Refusal to Veto Detainee Bill A Historic Tragedy for Rights
President Decides to Sign Ill-Conceived National Defense Authorization Act
Human Rights Watch, December 14, 2011
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/14/us-refusal-veto-detainee-bill-historic-tragedy-rights
Washington, DC – US President Barack Obama’s apparent decision to not veto a defense spending bill that codifies indefinite detention without trial into US law and expands the military’s role in holding terrorism suspects does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. The Obama administration had threatened to veto the bill, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), over detainee provisions, but on December 14, 2011, issued a statement indicating the president would likely sign the legislation.
"By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law," said Kenneth Roth executive director of Human Rights Watch. "In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side."
The far-reaching detainee provisions would codify indefinite detention without trial into US law for the first time since the McCarthy era when Congress in 1950 overrode the veto of then-President Harry Truman and passed the Internal Security Act. The bill would also bar the transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo into the US for any reason, including for trial. In addition, it would extend restrictions, imposed last year, on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to home or third countries – even those cleared for release by the administration.
There are currently 171 detainees at Guantanamo, many of whom have been imprisoned for nearly 10 years. As one of his first acts in office, Obama signed an executive order [4] for the closure of Guantanamo within one year. Instead of moving quickly to close the prison and end the use of the discredited military commissions, he supported modifications to the Military Commissions Act.
"It is a sad moment when a president who has prided himself on his knowledge of and belief in constitutional principles succumbs to the politics of the moment to sign a bill that poses so great a threat to basic constitutional rights," Roth said.
The bill also requires the US military take custody of certain terrorism suspects even inside the United States, cases that previously have been handled by federal, state and local law enforcement authorities. During debate over the bill, several senior administration officials, including the secretary of defense, attorney general, director of national intelligence, director of the FBI, and director of the CIA, all raised objections that this provision interfered with the administration’s ability to effectively fight terrorism. In the last 10 years over 400 people have been prosecuted in US federal courts for terrorism related offenses. Meanwhile during that same period, only six cases have been prosecuted in the military commissions.
"President Obama cannot even justify this serious threat to basic rights on the basis of security," Roth said. "The law replaces an effective system of civilian-court prosecutions with a system that has generated the kind of global outrage that would delight recruiters of terrorists."
Iran
6) U.S. Will Leave Iraqi Airspace Clear For Strategic Israeli Route To Iran
Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, Wednesday, December 14, 2011
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/14/us-will-leave-iraqi-airspace-clear-for-strategic-i/
The U.S. military’s fast-approaching Dec. 31 exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better place strategically to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iraq has yet to assemble a force of jet fighters, and since the shortest route for Israeli strike fighters to Iran is through Iraqi airspace, observers conclude that the U.S. exit makes the Jewish state’s mission planning a lot easier.
Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Iraqi military will maintain radars to monitor the country’s airspace, but it has not taken possession of American F-16s to guard that space.
"The country has a capable and improving capability to see the airspace, a viable system to provide command and control, but no system to defeat incoming air threats until it gets either the F-16s or ground-based systems or, optimally, some of both," Gen. Buchanan told The Washington Times.
Iraq made the first payment in September for 18 F-16s that will not arrive until next fall at the earliest. This means Israel would have a theoretical window of about 12 months if it wants to fly over Iraq unimpeded by the Iraqi air force.
[…]
7) Iran Says It May Move Uranium Enrichment To ‘Safer Places’
Rick Gladstone, New York Times, December 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/iran-may-move-some-nuclear-work-to-safer-places.html
Iran may relocate its uranium enrichment work to more secure locations, a senior Iranian defense official said Wednesday, an acknowledgment of increased concern that Iran’s suspected nuclear program could face a military attack from Israel or the United States.
The official, Gholamreza Jalali, who is the director of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, did not cite a particular threat or specify when the relocation might take place. But his statement came against the backdrop of sharply increased tensions with the West over the nuclear program, which Iran contends is solely for peaceful purposes.
"Our vulnerability in the nuclear area has reached the minimum level," Mr. Jalali said in remarks reported by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. "If circumstances require it, the uranium enrichment facilities will be relocated to safer places."
[…]
Haiti
8) Haiti’s cholera row with UN rumbles on
Mark Doyle, BBC News, 14 December 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16180250
Haiti – Lawyers representing thousands of cholera victims in Haiti have threatened to take the United Nations to court in the United States, unless the international body responds to a petition for financial compensation.
It is part of a campaign that centers on the extraordinary possibility that the UN – widely seen as a force for good around the world – may have brought cholera into Haiti and as a result may be responsible for nearly 7,000 deaths from the disease.
The UN is being asked to pay $100,000 (£65,000) to the families of those who died and $50,000 (£32,500) to each of the people who fell sick but recovered.
In addition there is a "class action" saying the UN should stop the cholera by rebuilding Haiti’s decrepit water and sanitation infrastructure.
If met in total, the claims could cost the international body many billions of dollars.
Cholera is a disease that spreads through human waste and infected water.
Victims can die within hours of the disease taking hold if they don’t get treatment. The main symptom is catastrophic dehydration through diarrhoea and vomiting.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) Settlers Attack After Demolitions at Outpost
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, December 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/middleeast/settlers-attack-after-demolitions-at-outpost.html
A mosque in a village outside the West Bank city of Ramallah was defaced and set on fire early Thursday, the third day of extremist Jewish violence that has prompted widespread condemnation and new law enforcement steps by the Israeli government.
The attack came after the Israeli Army moved in overnight to remove two structures at an unauthorized settler outpost of six families near Nablus.
Inside the third floor of the mosque, where carpets and chairs were burned, Hebrew graffiti said "war" and "price tag," the name given to a campaign by radical settlers angered by Israeli government policy. Other graffiti referred to the settler outpost, saying, "Regards from Mitzpe Yitzhar."
On Tuesday, rumors that illegal outposts were to be removed prompted dozens of settlers to attack an Israeli Army base, a move that hardened the resolve of Israeli leaders to contain right-wing militants.
Israeli officials condemned the mosque attack. President Shimon Peres, meeting with settler leaders over the tensions, said such attacks were "pouring oil on the flames" of regional anger at Israel.
[…] The Palestinian Authority described the mosque burnings as "hate crimes," and in a statement called on the international community to hold the Israeli government responsible for the attacks.
On Wednesday, reacting to the attack on the Israeli base, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a set of steps to be applied to right-wing Israeli extremists. The measures include the use of detention without charge and trial through military courts.
Such methods had until now generally been restricted to treatment of Palestinian suspects. Some left-wing Israelis worried that the new steps would also be used against their activists in the West Bank. Other commentary on the new approach said the changes were insufficient because they failed to address the central issue – tolerance of the violence by rabbinic and other leaders.
Mr. Netanyahu decided not to label the Jewish extremists terrorists, which would have given still more powers to security forces.
[…]
10) Palestinians raise flag at UNESCO after membership approval that prompted US funding cut
Associated Press, December 13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-raise-flag-at-unesco-after-membership-approval-that-prompted-us-funding-cut/2011/12/13/gIQAhqWSrO_story.html
Paris – Palestinians raised their flag at the headquarters of the U.N. cultural agency in Paris on Tuesday as the agency’s 195th member, a historic move and symbolic boost for their push for an independent state.
Cheers rose as the red, black, white and green flag went up in pouring rain under the gaze of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. She welcomed Palestine without mentioning the U.S. funding cutoff that its membership prompted and that is hobbling the organization.
"This is truly a historic moment," Abbas said later at an indoor ceremony, his speech punctuated by rousing applause and standing ovations. He said he and the Palestinian people were deeply moved that their flag could join the 194 others at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, headquartered in a massive concrete structure on Paris’ Left Bank.
"We hope this will be a good auspice for Palestine to become a member of other organizations," he said.
The Palestinians plan to join all international organizations it is entitled by UNESCO membership to enter, Abbas said later at a news conference, putting the number at 16.
[…] Abbas also said the Palestinians are closely evaluating the status of their application for U.N. membership and the decision to seek a Security Council vote "could come at any moment."
The council must recommend any application for membership, but it is divided over the Palestinian bid. The United States has promised to veto a resolution recommending membership if the Palestinians get the required nine "yes" votes in the 15-member council – which diplomats say they don’t have at the moment.
Palestine was admitted as a member of UNESCO in an Oct. 31 vote that prompted the United States to cut off funds to the agency – $80 million annually in dues, or 22 percent of UNESCO’s overall budget. With the U.S. 2011 contribution not yet paid, UNESCO was immediately thrown into crisis.
Two U.S. laws required the halt in the flow of funds to the agency, forcing it to scale back literacy and development programs in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the new nation of South Sudan.
[…] Several countries are lobbying the U.S. to renew its funding, and Bokova was traveling to the United States on Wednesday to meet with members of congress over the funding cuts, UNESCO spokeswoman Sue Williams said. UNESCO would like to find a way to get the laws revamped or get around them to restore precious U.S. funds.
The U.S. remains a full member of UNESCO and was even elected to the executive board after the funding cut.
UNESCO is known for its program to protect cultures via its World Heritage sites, but its core mission also includes activities such as helping eradicate poverty, ensuring clean water, teaching girls to read and promoting freedom of speech.
[…]
Honduras
11) 58 Gays, Lesbians Slain This Year in Honduras
EFE, December 15, 2011
http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=452296&CategoryId=23558
Tegucigalpa – Dozens of members of Honduras’ gay and lesbian community gathered outside the Attorney General’s Office in this capital to protest the slayings of 58 gays and lesbians this year.
The community wants to see "the murders solved and justice done," spokesperson Jose Zambrano told reporters.
Human rights continue to be violated in Honduras, where "there is no respect for sexual diversity" and an absence of genuine democracy, Zambrano said.
Gays and lesbians in Honduras are daily subjected to harassment, discrimination, arbitrary arrest, torture and murder, the protesters said.
An association representing AIDS patients and people infected with HIV has recently held demonstrations to publicize the killings of some of its members and to demand that President Porfirio Lobo’s government find and prosecute the perpetrators.
Honduras, which experiences an average of 20 homicides a day, has become the most dangerous country in Central America in the 2½ years since the overthrow of President Mel Zelaya.
[…]
–
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