Just Foreign Policy News
April 11, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action: Urge Congress to Bar Ground Troops in Libya
Despite President Obama’s promise not to put U.S. ground troops in Libya, General Ham, the former U.S. commander of the military mission, said last week that U.S. ground troops in Libya are a possibility. Michigan Rep. John Conyers wants to explicitly prohibit U.S. ground forces from being introduced into Libya. Urge your Representative to support this prohibition. Supporters include: Cohen, Jones, Farr, Grijalva, Honda, Kucinich, McClintock, George
Miller, Stark, Tonko, Woolsey.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/nogroundtroops
Los Angeles Times: High-tech tools and human errors
By the U.S. military’s own admission, excessive faith in high-tech tools contributed to the deaths of civilians in a U.S. airstrike.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-drone-20110410,0,2818134,full.story
Kucinich Responds to Office of Legal Counsel’s Twisted Rationale for Libyan War
Kucinich notes that before they did it, they called it a war.
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=234894
The Israeli Peace Initiative
A group including former top Israeli officials, including a former head of Mossad, accepts the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/IPI-English.pdf
"Friends of the White Intifada" on Facebook
Are you on Facebook? Are you following nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation? Use this page to share information with others.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-White-Intifada-no-violence/199836420048690
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Writing in the Independent, Johann Hari takes on the argument that one should support the Libya war on humanitarian grounds even if one knows that the governments waging it are clearly not driven by humanitarian concerns. Any coincidental humanitarian gain in the short term, he argues, will be eclipsed as soon as the local population clash with the real reason for the war. Then our governments will back their renewed vicious repression – just as the US and Britain did in Iraq, with a policy of effectively sanctioning the resumption of torture when the population became uppity and objected to the occupation. As for the real reason for the war, Bill Richardson, the former US energy secretary, is probably right when he says: "There’s another interest, and that’s energy… Libya is among the 10 top oil producers in the world."
2) Bahrain’s leading human rights activist will be questioned by a military prosecutor, AP reports. The interior ministry accused Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, of tampering with photos of a man who died in custody last week. Rajab claims the man was fatally beaten in custody.
3) Muqtada al-Sadr threatened Saturday to reactivate his militia if US soldiers remain in Iraq beyond this year, AP reports. His statement was read aloud at a huge protest of tens of thousands in Baghdad’s Mawal Square. "What if the invasion forces will not leave our lands?" al-Sadr asked. "What if the U.S. forces and others stay in our beloved lands? … Will you be silent? Will you overlook this?" "No, no America. No, no America," the crowd shouted in reply.
4) Ollanta Humala won the first round of Peru’s presidential election and will likely face Keiko Fujimori in a June 5 run-off, Reuters reports. Both candidates have vowed to raise taxes on miners’ profits to fund welfare programs for the poor, and both candidates say a stronger state could better fight poverty. Both leaders have strong appeal among the poor and voters with indigenous roots. Polls have pointed to a virtual tie between them in a run-off.
Former President Alejandro Toledo, the early front-runner who finished fourth, said Humala’s win showed complacent elites and an inept civil service had failed the poor. "This is a wake-up call," Toledo said. "The economic growth model is not reaching the majority of Peruvians and they have expressed their discontent at the ballot box today."
5) More than 250 of America’s most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting the treatment of Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture, the Guardian reports.
The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America’s foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign. Tribe told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that "is not only shameful but unconstitutional."
Afghanistan
6) People living in areas under Taliban control report a relaxation of the insurgents’ rule over the last year, writes Khan Mohammad Danishju for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Some experts see this as a sign the insurgents are readying themselves to take on a more political role within Afghanistan.
Libya
7) The New York Times’ demands that Obama escalate US military action against Libya recall its advocacy for military confrontation with Iraq, writes Robert Parry for Consortium News. The Times and the Post have essentially argued that Obama be more like Bush, Parry notes.
Israel/Palestine
8) Palestinian solidarity activists said Monday they are planning to send a new convoy of humanitarian aid ships to Gaza, a year after a raid by Israeli forces on a similar mission, AP reports. Organizers said more than 10 ships are expected to sail in late May in an effort to break Israel’s blockade of the territory. Passengers will include U.S., Canadian, British and French nationals, and include lawmakers and reporters.
Egypt
9) An Egyptian blogger was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military, the New York Times reports. The blogger, Maikel Nabil, 25, had assailed the Egyptian armed forces for what he called its continuation of the corruption and anti-democratic practices of Mubarak. Nabil often quoted from reports by established human rights groups. "It’s pretty stunning in Egypt’s supposed new era of rights to see the military government prosecuting someone in a military court for writing about the military," said Human Rights Watch.
Honduras
10) News reports have appeared claiming that Honduras will be reintegrated to the OAS following a meeting between Hugo Chavez and Porfirio Lobo Sosa, notes a piece in the Honduras Culture and Politics blog. But nothing really has changed, so press coverage claiming a breakthrough would appear to be premature. Zelaya is still in exile in the Dominican Republic, and will not return to Honduras until he is guaranteed immunity from legal action. His return is a condition for the OAS to re-admit Honduras.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) We’re not being told the truth on Libya
Look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in – because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can’t be true
Johann Hari, The Independent, Friday, 8 April 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-were-not-being-told-the-truth-on-libya-2264785.html
Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region’s dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."
Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can’t bear for innocent people to be tyrannised, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different". There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can’t now. The best guide through this confusion is to look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in – because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can’t be true.
Imagine a distant leader killed more than 2,000 innocent people, and his military commanders responded to evidence that they were civilians by joking that the victims "were not the local men’s glee club". Imagine one of the innocent survivors appeared on television, amid the body parts of his son and brother, and pleaded: "Please. We are human beings. Help us. Don’t let them do this." Imagine that polling from the attacked country showed that 90 per cent of the people there said civilians were the main victims and they desperately wanted it to stop. Imagine there was then a huge natural flood, and the leader responded by ramping up the attacks. Imagine the country’s most respected democratic and liberal voices were warning that these attacks seriously risked causing the transfer of nuclear material to jihadi groups.
Surely, if we meant what we say about Libya, we would be doing anything to stop such behaviour? Wouldn’t we be imposing a no-fly zone, or even invading?
Yet, in this instance, we would have to be imposing a no-fly zone on our own governments. Since 2004, the US – with European support – has been sending unmanned robot-planes into Pakistan to illegally bomb its territory in precisely this way. Barack Obama has massively intensified this policy.
His administration claims they are killing al-Qa’ida. But there are several flaws in this argument. The intelligence guiding their bombs about who is actually a jihadi is so poor that, for six months, Nato held top-level negotiations with a man who claimed to be the head of the Taliban – only for him to later admit he was a random Pakistani grocer who knew nothing about the organisation. He just wanted some baksheesh. The US’s own former senior military advisers admit that even when the intel is accurate, for every one jihadi they kill, as many as 50 innocent people die. And almost everyone in Pakistan believes these attacks are actually increasing the number of jihadis, by making young men so angry at the killing of their families they queue to sign up.
The country’s leading nuclear scientist, Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, warns me it is even more dangerous still. He says there is a significant danger that these attacks are spreading so much rage and hatred through the country that it materially increases the chances of the people guarding the country’s nuclear weapons smuggling fissile material out to jihadi groups.
So one of the country’s best writers, Fatima Bhutto, tells me: "In Pakistan, when we hear Obama’s rhetoric on Libya, we can only laugh. If he was worried about the pointless massacre of innocent civilians, there would be an easy first step for him: stop doing it yourself, in my country."
[…] Doesn’t this cast a different light on the Libya debate? We are pushed every day by the media to look at the (usually very real) abuses by our country’s enemies and ask: "What can we do?" We are almost never prompted to look at the equally real and equally huge abuses by our own country, its allies and its corporations – which we have much more control over – and ask the same question.
So the good and decent impulse of ordinary people – to protect their fellow human beings – is manipulated. If you are interested in human rights only when it tells you a comforting story about your nation’s power, then you are not really interested in human rights at all.
David Cameron says "just because we can’t intervene everywhere, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t intervene somewhere." But this misses the point. While "we" are intervening to cause horrific harm to civilians in much of the world, it’s plainly false to claim to be driven by a desire to prevent other people behaving very like us.
You could argue that our governments are clearly not driven by humanitarian concerns, but their intervention in Libya did stop a massacre in Ben Gazhi, so we should support it anyway. I understand this argument, which some people I admire have made, and I wrestled with it. It is an argument that you should, in effect, ride the beast of NATO power if it slays other beasts that were about to eat innocent people. This was the argument I made in 2003 about Iraq – that the Bush administration had malign motives, but it would have the positive effect of toppling a horrific dictator, so we should support it. I think almost everyone can see now why this was a disastrous – and, in the end, shameful – argument.
Why? Because any coincidental humanitarian gain in the short term will be eclipsed as soon as the local population clash with the real reason for the war. Then our governments will back their renewed vicious repression – just as the US and Britain did in Iraq, with a policy of effectively sanctioning the resumption of torture when the population became uppity and objected to the occupation.
So why are our governments really bombing Libya? We won’t know for sure until the declassified documents come out many years from now. But Bill Richardson, the former US energy secretary who served as US ambassador to the UN, is probably right when he says: "There’s another interest, and that’s energy… Libya is among the 10 top oil producers in the world. You can almost say that the gas prices in the US going up have probably happened because of a stoppage of Libyan oil production… So this is not an insignificant country, and I think our involvement is justified."
For the first time in more than 60 years, Western control over the world’s biggest pots of oil was being rocked by a series of revolutions our governments couldn’t control. The most plausible explanation is that this is a way of asserting raw Western power, and trying to arrange the fallout in our favour. But if you are still convinced our governments are acting for humanitarian reasons, I’ve got a round-trip plane ticket for you to some rubble in Pakistan and Congo. The people there would love to hear your argument.
2) Bahrain rights activist to face military court
Barbara Surk, Associated Press, Mon Apr 11, 7:47 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110411/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_bahrain_crackdown_12
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Bahrain’s leading human rights activist will be questioned by a military prosecutor, according to the Gulf country’s interior ministry that has been leading the crackdown on Shiite protests against Sunni rulers.
The interior ministry accused Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, of tampering with photos of a man who died in custody last week. A statement posted on the ministry’s official website late Sunday said Rajab posted on his Twitter account a "fabricated image" of a detainee, Ali Isa Saqer.
Rajab claims Saqer was fatally beaten in custody. He told The Associated Press that the photo he had posted on his Twitter account was genuine, showing Saqer’s body covered with bruises and gashes. Rajab said the campaign against him is aimed at preventing him from documenting human rights abuses in Bahrain.
Rajab said he has not been contacted by the interior ministry and only learned of the planned questioning from the ministry’s website. "They want to do their crimes in secret," Rajab said of Bahrain’s government. "I am one of the few human rights activists who has not yet been arrested and the government wants to silence me and prevent me from doing my work."
Authorities claim Sager died on Saturday after struggling with guards. A government photo shows few signs of injuries.
[…]
3) Powerful Shiite cleric threatens to reactivate feared militia if US troops stay past 2011
Associated Press, Saturday, April , 12:31 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/powerful-shiite-cleric-threatens-to-reactivate-feared-militia-if-us-troops-stay-past-2011/2011/04/09/AFTST85C_story.html
Baghdad – A powerful anti-American Shiite cleric threatened Saturday to reactivate his feared militia if American soldiers remain in Iraq beyond this year, after a U.S. offer to keep troops on if they are needed.
Muqtada al-Sadr issued a statement to his followers on the eight anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s ouster that stopped just short of calling for violent action against U.S. forces. He accused "the occupation" of inciting panic, corruption and unrest among Iraqis.
His statement was read aloud at a huge protest of tens of thousands in Baghdad’s Mawal Square, near al-Sadr’s stronghold in an eastern Baghdad slum. The cleric is in Iran, where he has been studying religion for the last several years.
"What if the invasion forces will not leave our lands?" al-Sadr asked in the statement, which was read at the protest by his aide Salah al-Obeidi. "What if the U.S. forces and others stay in our beloved lands? What if their companies and embassy headquarters will continue to exist with the American flags hoisted on them? Will you be silent? Will you overlook this?"
"No, no America. No, no America," the crowd shouted in reply.
[…] Visiting Iraq this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Obama administration is willing to keep troops in Iraq past 2011. After meeting with al-Maliki and other leaders during his two-day visit, Gates signaled that scenario was becoming increasingly likely.
But demonstrator Haidar Nuaman, 25, said al-Sadr’s statement shows that many Iraqis won’t stand for a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.
[…]
4) Leftist Humala likely to face Fujimori in Peru
Marco Aquino and Caroline Stauffer, Reuters, Mon Apr 11, 2011 2:15pm EDT
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE7382VP20110411
Lima – Left-wing former army officer Ollanta Humala won the first round of Peru’s presidential election and will likely face Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a jailed ex-president, in a June 5 run-off, official results showed on Monday.
Humala has softened his anti-capitalist rhetoric, vowing gradual steps to help millions of poor Peruvians left behind by a decade-long boom in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. But his populist rhetoric still rattles investors who fear he will roll back free-market reforms.
Peruvian stocks were down 3 percent on doubts Fujimori, a center-right populist favored by big business, can defeat Humala in June and worries he will tap mining company profits. Peru’s sol currency only weakened slightly.
With 80 percent of Sunday’s ballots counted, officials said Humala had 30.5 percent of the vote, with Fujimori in second place with 23.1 percent.
Former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski trailed Fujimori with 20.1 percent, setting the stage for a polarizing run-off between two candidates with high rejection ratings.
[…] Fujimori, 35, served as her father’s first lady and many voters shun her because of his authoritarian rule, even though he is credited for free-market reforms that laid the foundation for Peru’s economic surge. Annual growth is now running at 9.0 percent. She has vowed to keep the country’s energy- and minerals- exporting economy expanding at a rate of 7.0 percent, reducing business costs and red-tape to promote investment.
Like Humala, however, she has vowed to raise taxes on miners’ profits to fund welfare programs for the poor. Peru’s tax take is only about 15 percent of GDP and both candidates say a stronger state could better fight poverty. Humala also wants to trim the national sales tax for ordinary Peruvians.
Both leaders have strong appeal among the poor and voters with indigenous roots in far-flung provinces. Polls have pointed to a virtual tie between them in a run-off.
[…] Humala, 48, overtook his more market-friendly rivals in the election campaign by recasting himself as a moderate in the vein of former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and distancing himself from his former political mentor, Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez. "I’ve changed a lot," he said last week, vowing to improve conditions for investors.
His rivals sought to hurt his chances by saying he would step up state control over the economy, roll back reforms and jeopardize some $40 billion of foreign investment lined up for the next decade in mining and energy exploration. Such warnings struck a chord with better-off Peruvians who still have fresh memories of the hyperinflation and guerrilla wars that plagued the country in the 1980s and 1990s.
Humala has taken to wearing ties, carrying rosary beads to show he is a devout Roman Catholic and promising to be fiscally prudent while respecting the independence of the central bank and honoring the country’s many free-trade pacts. That has persuaded some on Wall Street and in Peru’s vast mining sector that he has matured and is no longer like his brother and father, two well-known Peruvian radicals.
Moody’s ratings agency said Peru’s investment-grade credit rating would not be threatened by an eventual Humala victory.
Still, Peruvian asset prices have dipped over the past two weeks on fears Humala could hike mining taxes, state subsidies or tighten control of "strategic" sectors like electricity.
Former President Alejandro Toledo, the early front-runner who finished fourth, said Humala’s win showed complacent elites and an inept civil service had failed the poor. "This is a wake-up call," Toledo said. "The economic growth model is not reaching the majority of Peruvians and they have expressed their discontent at the ballot box today."
5) Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at ‘torture’
Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source
Ed Pilkington, Guardian, Sunday 10 April 2011 20.01 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-legal-scholars-letter
New York – More than 250 of America’s most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.
The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America’s foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.
He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that "is not only shameful but unconstitutional" as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.
[…] The protest letter, published in the New York Review of Books, was written by two distinguished law professors, Bruce Ackerman of Yale and Yochai Benkler of Harvard. They claim Manning’s reported treatment is a violation of the US constitution, specifically the eighth amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishment and the fifth amendment that prevents punishment without trial.
In a stinging rebuke to Obama, they say "he was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency".
Benkler told the Guardian: "It is incumbent on us as citizens and professors of law to say that enough is enough. We cannot allow ourselves to behave in this way if we want America to remain a society dedicated to human dignity and process of law."
He said Manning’s conditions were being used "as a warning to future whistleblowers" and added: "I find it tragic that it is Obama’s administration that is pursuing whistleblowers and imposing this kind of treatment."
[…]
Afghanistan
7) Taleban Try Soft Power
Allowing schools to reopen and reconstruction projects to go ahead seen as sign of pragmatic attempt to win public favour.
Khan Mohammad Danishju, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 8 Apr 11
http://iwpr.net/report-news/taleban-try-soft-power
Experts in Afghanistan say the softer line the Taleban are taking on issues like education and reconstruction projects are a tactical ploy to win broader popular support.
A Taleban leader was recently quoted by Afghan media outlets as saying the movement was not opposed to education and would protect schools in areas they controlled.
The announcement was welcomed by the education ministry in Kabul, and by President Hamed Karzai, who told university graduates that "if it is proved that [Taleban chief] Mullah Omar has really ordered the Taleban not to prevent children from accessing education, I will thank him".
[…] People living in areas under Taleban control report a relaxation of the insurgents’ strictly-regimented rule over the last year. Some experts see this as a sign the insurgents are readying themselves to take on a more political role within Afghanistan.
When the Taleban were in charge of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, schools and colleges only accepted male students, and women and girls were routinely denied access to education. At the time, the Taleban said they were not opposed to female education, just to mixed-sex classes. After the Taleban were ousted in 2001, insurgent groups often attacked schools, set them on fire and forced them to close down. In recent months, however, schools in areas they where they operate have been allowed to reopen.
Rahimullah, a father in the Andar district of Ghazni province in southern Afghanistan, said he had been forced to move away from the area to get an education for his children after their school was closed by the Taleban. Recently, however, he has been able to return because schools have been allowed to start operating again. "The elders asked the Taleban to reopen the schools," he said. "They agreed late last year that the schools should start working again. Our children are very happy – it’s as if they’ve been handed the happiness of the entire world."
[…] Ali Khan, a teacher in the Tangi high school in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province said he had fled his home for fear of being targeted. Now he has returned to his job. "We don’t know why the Taleban have become so flexible," he said. "I left my home because I was a teacher and I was scared. But now the Taleban are encouraging us to go into school and teach."
The Taleban’s more flexible approach is not restricted to education. Insurgent groups used to obstruct and derail reconstruction projects in many parts of the country, but now they appear to be allowing certain projects to go ahead.
The governor of Kapisa province northeast of Kabul, Mohammad Sharif Hakimzadah, said the Taleban were no longer interfering in projects there.
Romal, who lives in the village of Mirakhel in Kapisa’s Tagab district, said the Taleban used to refuse to let NGO representatives operate in areas they held, and had killed workers and security guards working on such projects.
Over the past year, their approach had changed, he said. "I’m one of the people working for an NGO and building bridges and wells. The Taleban move all around this area, but they don’t bother us," he said.
Other Taleban restrictions included forcing men to grow their beards and banning people from listening to music, but attitudes to these things are changing as well.
Rohullah, from the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, said the Taleban no longer harassed men if they trimmed or shaved their beards. "Look – I’ve cut my beard very short," he said. "Some guys are completely clean-shaven, yet the Taleban leave us alone. They used to be against people listening to music, but now they act as if they’re deaf when they hear it.
[…] Abdul Ghafur Liwal, who heads the Afghanistan Regional Studies Centre, believes the Taleban are making pragmatic choices so as to present themselves as a more viable alternative. "If the Taleban want to prepare the ground for a better political future, they have to build up their authority and win popularity among the people," he said. "That’s the reason they have started becoming more flexible."
Law lecturer Nasrullah Stanekzai agreed with this analysis. "The Taleban’s flexibility is deliberate," he said. "They want to get people behind them to position themselves politically in future, should they come to power either through negotiations or through military action."
Libya
7) NYT Demands Libyan War Escalation
Robert Parry, Consortium News, April 8, 2011
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/040811.html
Neocon editors who increasingly dominate the New York Times want President Barack Obama to deploy A-10 and AC-130 aircraft for close-combat attacks against Libyan government forces in urban areas.
Rather than give serious thought to peace feelers that have come from members of Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, including his son Saif, the Times’ editors – like other key figures in the U.S. mainstream news media – see violent regime change as the only acceptable outcome for Libya.
Thus, the Friday editorial urging the use of the A-10s and AC-130s to attack Gaddafi’s urban strongholds and mow down his loyalist forces.
[…] The Times’ belligerent rhetoric about Libya and its one-sided coverage of the conflict recall the behavior of the Times, the Washington Post and other leading U.S. news outlets during the run-up to war with Iraq in 2002-03, except then they were cheering on President George W. Bush whereas now they are hectoring President Obama to do more.
Last month, as the crisis in Libya was heating up, the Times and the Post criticized Obama for not intervening in the conflict sooner although he acted immediately after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution permitting use of military force to protect Libyan civilians.
The tough-guy posture of the Times’ and Post’s editors was that Obama should have behaved more like Bush in ignoring the niceties of international law and just take out the "bad guy," in this case Libya’s Gaddafi rather than Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The neoconning of the New York Times may lag slightly behind the pace at the Post, but the phenomenon seems to gaining momentum under editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal and executive editor Bill Keller.
In typical neocon fashion, there was virtually no accountability for any of the pro-war editors when they fell for U.S. government war propaganda before the Iraq War, a gullibility that contributed to the deaths of untold thousands of innocent people and the expenditure of some $1 trillion.
Keller, for instance, openly sided with Bush’s plans to invade Iraq, swallowed all the pro-war lies, even boasted about the influential journalists on the war bandwagon with him, and – after the false WMD claims and other lies were exposed – still was appointed to the newspaper’s top editorial job.
Having experienced no adverse consequences for his behavior regarding Iraq – indeed having been richly rewarded for it – Keller has continued on as a neocon advocate for new U.S. confrontations with Iran and now Libya, letting his biases spill into the news columns.
In such a macho U.S. media environment, it seems that trying to understand an adversary’s point of view, objectively evaluating facts or – god forbid – countenancing peace talks are for sissies.
Instead, it’s much easier – and safer, career-wise – to write bellicose editorials demanding that young Americans at the controls of a "Warthog" attack aircraft unleash the plane’s fearsome firepower and slaughter some young Libyans on a city street below.
Israel/Palestine
8) Pro-Palestinian activists planning new Gaza aid ships for May, a year after fatal Israeli raid
Associated Press, Monday, April 11, 9:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pro-palestinian-activists-planning-new-gaza-aid-ships-for-may-a-year-after-fatal-israeli-raid/2011/04/11/AFnNFMKD_story.html
Athens, Greece – Pro-Palestinian activists said Monday they are planning to send a new convoy of humanitarian aid ships to the Gaza Strip, a year after a raid by Israeli forces on a similar mission left nine Turks dead.
Organizers said more than 10 ships are expected to sail in late May in an effort to break Israel’s blockade of the territory. Passengers will include U.S., Canadian, British and French nationals, and include lawmakers and reporters.
Activists in Athens said they are determined to continue with the convoy, despite last May’s fatal raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship and the threat of new violence.
On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for action from EU ambassadors in Jerusalem. "This flotilla must be stopped," he told them.
[…]
Egypt
9) Egypt Sentences Blogger to 3 Years
Liam Stack and Ethan Bronner, New York Times, April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/middleeast/12egypt.html
Cairo – An Egyptian blogger was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military in what human rights advocates called one of the more alarming violations of freedom of expression since a popular uprising led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak two months ago.
The blogger, Maikel Nabil, 25, had assailed the Egyptian armed forces for what he called its continuation of the corruption and anti-democratic practices of Mr. Mubarak. Mr. Nabil often quoted from reports by established human rights groups.
"Maikel is the first prisoner of conscience in Egypt after the revolution," Adel Ramadan, one of his lawyers, said in a telephone interview. "This ruling is a warning to all journalists, bloggers and human rights activists in Egypt that the punishment for criticizing the army is a sentence in a military prison."
[…] The charges against Mr. Nabil included insulting the military establishment and spreading false information about the armed forces. The tribunal charged him with spreading information previously published by human rights organizations like Amnesty International on the army’s use of violence against protesters, the torture of those detained inside the Egyptian Museum and the use of forced pelvic exams, known as "virginity tests," against detained female protesters.
The main evidence against Mr. Nabil, who blogged under the name "Son of Ra," was a CD containing 73 screen shots of entries on his blog and his personal Facebook page, according to Heba Morayef, a researcher in Egypt for Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York.
Human Rights Watch had been calling for Mr. Nabil’s release for days. "It’s pretty stunning in Egypt’s supposed new era of rights to see the military government prosecuting someone in a military court for writing about the military," Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said last week. "This trial sets a dangerous precedent at a time when Egypt is trying to transition away from the abuses of the Mubarak era."
[…]
Honduras
11) Chavez, Lobo, and readmitting Honduras to the OAS
Honduras Culture and Politics, April 10, 2011
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/chavez-lobo-and-readmitting-honduras-to.html
News reports have appeared claiming that Honduras will be reintegrated to the OAS following a meeting between Hugo Chavez and Porfirio Lobo Sosa in Cartagena, Colombia.
AFP’s story probably hews closest to the truth: talks were held, that is true. But nothing really has changed, so press coverage claiming a breakthrough would appear to be premature. As AFP correctly described the situation: "Zelaya is currently in exile in the Dominican Republic, and will not return to Honduras until he is guaranteed immunity from legal action. His return is a condition for the OAS to re-admit Honduras."
What that means is that someone with the ability to do so would have to guarantee that the remaining charges against Zelaya were dismissed. Lobo Sosa, the head of the executive branch of government, cannot make such a guarantee, because the charges are being defended by the judicial branch.
While the most obvious political charges against Zelaya were recently dismissed, there remain charges on which the court still demands Zelaya be tried. Lobo Sosa has made overtures before, and has been briskly pushed back by Honduran factions who want the OAS to back down.
The head of the Honduran Supreme Court Jorge Rivera Aviles, recently reiterated that the judicial branch– which is, we re-emphasize, not controlled by Lobo Sosa– thinks it has done enough to satisfy the international community: "From my point of view all the requirements for Honduras to be in the OAS have already been completed…Honduras should be reintegrated without greater conditions (since it has complied) with the aspects of national reconciliation and government respect for human rights, to give accounts to international organizations and many other activities since Lobo took office."
Speaking specifically to the question of Zelaya still being under threat of trials that, given the extreme nature of his removal from office and the open hostility of the courts to him, we might assume will be somewhat less than fair, the head of the Supreme Court continued: "He can come anytime, he doesn’t have any warrant for arrest pending".
For pro-coup Honduras, this is reality, even if the rest of the world sees things otherwise. A call for charges to be dropped against ex-President Zelaya is reinterpreted: see, we won’t arrest him (at least right away) so why should he be afraid to come back?
So it seems wildly unlikely that Lobo Sosa will shift their position, especially not on the promise that Hugo Chavez– reviled by the Honduran right– would then change his position.
And notice that in fact, Chavez has not changed his position. Santos may have managed a surprise meeting with Lobo Sosa, but the "agreement" is that Lobo Sosa needs to deliver the immunity from prosecution which has always been the requirement for readmission to the OAS.
[…]
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