Just Foreign Policy News
April 14, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action: Call Congress in support of the "People’s Budget"
Progressive Democrats of America and Peace Action report that the Congressional Progressive Caucus "People’s Budget" will be in the floor of the House Friday as a substitute amendment to Rep. Ryan’s budget plan. The People’s Budget would end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. PDA and Peace Action urge a yes vote; PDA and Peace Action are urging phone calls to the House. You can use the message: "Vote for the Congressional Progressive Caucus substitute amendment that ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reduces the Pentagon budget."
The Capitol Switchboard is 202-225-3121.
[Some folks may be confused by the fact that a budget was approved in the House Thursday. That debate was on the budget for the current fiscal year; Friday’s debate is on the budget for the future.]
More:
A Vote on the People’s Budget is a Vote on the Wars
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/a-vote-on-the-peoples-bud_b_849351.html
The list of Progressive Caucus Members is here:
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=71§iontree=2,71
Democracy Now: While Obama Touts Compromise with GOP, Progressive Lawmakers Unveil "People’s Budget"
People’s Budget discussion begins at 11:50.
http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/4/14/while_obama_touts_compromise_with_gop
Matt Southworth: Libyan Civil War: Peace or Protraction?
FCNL supports the African Union peace initiative.
http://fcnl.org/blog/2c/libyan_civil_war_peace_or_protraction/
Rethink Afghanistan: War Tax Calculator
How much are you paying for the war?
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/iou
Walking the wall: Comedian Mark Thomas interviewed
English "activist-comedian" Mark Thomas walked the circumference of the "Apartheid Wall" and wrote a book about his experiences.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11913.shtml
"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) The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa said all the parties in Libya should resolve their differences through peaceful means, at a summit intended to showcase their growing global clout, AFP reports. The five countries represent more than 40% of the world’s population. The countries have expressed concern that the NATO-led military campaign is causing civilian casualties and is beyond the mandate approved by the UN Security Council, on which all five countries currently sit.
2) President Obama proposed reducing the military budget by $400 billion from current plans over 12 years, the New York Times reports. This is twice what Defense Secretary Gates told Congress was the largest cut he could recommend.
3) The Defense Department will begin a "comprehensive review" to find $400 billion in spending cuts as part of President Obama’s plan to reduce the federal deficit, Bloomberg reports. Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said reaching that level of savings will require "making hard choices about force structure, pay, benefits and modernization programs." Defense contractors were among the biggest decliners yesterday in U.S. markets, Bloomberg says.
"Holding defense below inflation is a huge problem," House Armed Services Committee Chairman McKeon said.
Two of the biggest areas of weapons spending that might be reviewed are the $14 billion the Navy plans to spend annually on shipbuilding and Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet. The GAO said the F-35 is anticipated to require "unprecedented demands for funding," averaging about $11 billion a year.
4) New CIA drone strikes in Pakistan drew a sharp rebuke from the Pakistani government, the New York Times reports. "Pakistan strongly condemns the drone attack," according to the Foreign Ministry, which said it had lodged "a strong protest" with the US ambassador. On popular Pakistani television talk shows in the past several weeks, commentators have railed against the US drone campaign in unusually strong language. Some have suggested that Pakistan should shoot at the drones to stop them.
5) Germany’s Parliament says its human rights committee is protesting the conditions in which Bradley Manning is being detained, AP reports. A statement from Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday said committee members appealed in a letter to President Obama for him to ensure "humane" conditions for Manning.
Bahrain
6) Silence has prevailed at the White House over the crackdown in Bahrian, suggesting to many observers that Obama is effectively acquiescing in, if not condoning, what is taking place, writes Jim Lobe for Inter Press Service. But some analysts say this could backfire on the US: as repression intensifies and with no prospect for meaningful political reform that would given them a share of power, Bahrain’s Shia population, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of the country’s citizenry, is being radicalized. Others say Saudi Arabia’s US-backed is driving Iraq closer to Iran.
Israel/Palestine
7) Three members of the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza war have accused Richard Goldstone of misrepresenting facts in order to cast doubt on the credibility of their joint report, the Guardian reports. The statement will set back any attempt by Israel to have the Goldstone report revoked, the Guardian says.
Iran
8) Some in the US view current developments in the Arab world as little more than a temporary lull in the long-running contest for influence between the US and Iran, Radio Liberty reports. The New York Times crystallized the trend by reporting on April 2 that the Obama administration regarded events in Libya as a "sideshow" and that it "sees the region through a Persian lens." Under the headline, "The Larger Game In The Middle East: Iran," the paper wrote, "Containing Iran’s power remains their [administration officials’] central goal in the Middle East. Every decision – from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria – is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy."
"In my own conversations with administration officials in regard to what is happening in the region, it’s been very clear that the frame through which they are looking at these things consistently is: ‘How does this affect the competition between the United States and Iran?’" Trita Parsi says. "When looking at what was happening in Egypt, the real question was not what was best for the Egyptian people or democracy. It was: how will this affect the geopolitical rivalry between Iran and the United States? Will any of the decisions the U.S. make[s], or any of the developments, undermine Iran’s position in the region?"
Yet the portrayal of Iran as "the biggest show in town" rankles some specialists, who believe it runs the risk of blinding policymakers to underlying currents in the region. Scott Lucas, an Iran analyst at Birmingham University in Britain, describes it as a "terrible approach."
"The U.S. is applying a relatively old strategy of linking up with elites in the region to a new situation and I don’t think they’re really thinking through the consequences," argues Lucas. "The issue of political legitimacy is the one that people are pushing. It’s not the U.S.-Iran contest, it’s not even the question of economic factors and if you are seen in any way as basically not really being on board with that question of political legitimacy, if you are seen as in effect trying to impose this Iran question on top of it, I think it’ll bite you on the backside."
"What Egypt should have proven to us is that the old way of looking at this as some kind of "Great Game", where these countries are just pawns in the Great Game and the people are just pawns, [is] absolutely out of date," Lucas says.
Colombia
9) Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, has pledged to try to stop the murders to persuade Congress to approve a trade agreement, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard writes on Alternet. But the Colombian government has had four years since the agreement was signed to move to protect trade unionists. It has failed to do so. Instead, the murders increased.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Emerging nations against use of force in Libya
Marianne Barriaux, AFP, Thu Apr 14, 7:22 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110414/ts_afp/bricssummitchina_20110414112236
Sanya, China (AFP) – Leaders of five of the world’s major emerging powers said Thursday the use of force in Libya and the Arab world should be avoided, at a summit intended to showcase their growing global clout.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also warned in a joint statement that volatile commodity prices could slow the global economic recovery and that huge capital flows could hurt the developing world.
Chinese President Hu Jintao chaired the wide-ranging morning talks in the southern China resort city Sanya with South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The leaders were seeking to present a united front as they push for their countries to have a bigger say on the world stage, particularly within the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and other global institutions.
The five nations — which together represent more than 40 percent of the world’s population — said their unusual joint presence on the UN Security Council in 2011 offered an opportunity to work together on Libya.
"We are of the view that all the parties should resolve their differences through peaceful means and dialogue in which the UN and regional organisations should as appropriate play their role," the leaders said in the statement.
"We share the principle that the use of force should be avoided. We maintain that the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of each nation should be respected."
South Africa was the only BRICS nation to approve a UN Security Council resolution establishing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorising "all necessary measures" to protect civilians, opening the door to coalition air strikes.
The other four countries have expressed concern that the NATO-led campaign — which aims to thwart Moamer Kadhafi’s assault on rebels seeking to end his 41-year rule — is causing civilian casualties.
Medvedev later told reporters that the bloc was "absolutely united" on the idea that the resolution did not endorse the use of military force. "We essentially have got a military operation. The resolution says nothing about it," the Russian leader said, warning that any efforts to exceed a UN mandate in any situation represented a "very dangerous tendency".
On the economy, the five countries — whose combined GDP accounted for 18 percent of the global total in 2010, according to the IMF — expressed concerns about risks to the global recovery.
[…] Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill first coined the term BRIC in 2001 to describe the growing influence of the world’s four largest emerging economies. South Africa was invited to join the group at the end of last year. "The BRIC economies are increasingly the major story for the world economy — they have lifted the world economy’s growth trend from 3.7-4.5 percent in my view," O’Neill was quoted as saying by the official China Daily newspaper.
The five nations called for "comprehensive reform" of the United Nations, including the Security Council, "with a view to making it more effective, efficient and representative".
[…]
2) Obama’s Debt Plan Sets Stage for Long Battle Over Spending
Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear, New York Times, April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/politics/14obama.html
Washington – President Obama made the case Wednesday for slowing the rapid growth of the national debt while retaining core Democratic values, proposing a mix of long-term spending cuts, tax increases and changes to social welfare programs as his opening position in a fierce partisan budget battle over the nation’s fiscal challenges.
After spending months on the sidelines as Republicans laid out their plans, Mr. Obama jumped in to present an alternative and a philosophical rebuttal to the conservative approach that will reach the House floor on Friday. Republican leaders were working Wednesday to round up votes for that measure and one to finance the government for the rest of the fiscal year.
Mr. Obama said his proposal would cut federal budget deficits by a cumulative $4 trillion over 12 years, compared with a deficit reduction of $4.4 trillion over 10 years in the Republican plan. But the president said he would use starkly different means, rejecting the fundamental changes to Medicare and Medicaid proposed by Republicans and relying in part on tax increases on affluent Americans.
The president framed his proposal as a balanced alternative to the Republican plan, setting the stage for a debate that will consume Washington in coming weeks, as the administration faces off with Congress over raising the national debt ceiling, and into next year, as the president runs for re-election.
[…] Mr. Obama said he would meet his $4 trillion deficit-reduction target by cutting spending across a range of government programs, from farm subsidies to federal pension insurance.
He called for cutting $400 billion more in military spending – twice what his defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, told Congress was the largest cut he could recommend.
[…]
3) Gates Sets ‘Comprehensive Review’ To Find $400 Billion In Cuts
Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg, Apr 14, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-13/pentagon-will-begin-review-to-determine-400-billion-in-cuts-1-.html
The U.S. Defense Department will begin a "comprehensive review" to find $400 billion in spending cuts as part of President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce the federal deficit.
The Pentagon will evaluate "missions, capabilities and America’s role in the world" and "identify alternatives for the president’s consideration," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters yesterday. "This is not just a math exercise."
Making reductions of that scale through fiscal 2023 is an "ambitious goal," he said.
The review ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who in January proposed $78 billion in reductions for the next five years, will take months and would have its first impact on the fiscal 2013 budget, Morrell said.
"This process must be about managing risks associated with future threats and identify missions the country is willing to have the military forgo," he said.
Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst for the Washington- based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which studies defense expenditures and national security strategy, said reaching that level of savings will require "more than just efficiencies."
"It will require making hard choices about force structure, pay, benefits and modernization programs," Harrison said. "There are no magic bullets."
Defense Stocks Drop
Defense contractors were among the biggest decliners yesterday in U.S. markets. Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) fell 2.6 percent, Raytheon Co. (RTN) was down 2.9 percent, General Dynamics Corp. (GD) fell 1.5 percent, Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) dropped 2.1 percent and Boeing Co. (BA) was down 1.3 percent.
[…] A White House fact sheet said the administration wants to achieve deeper reductions in security spending by holding growth in "base security spending below inflation."
The fact sheet didn’t specify whether the Defense Department would bear all of the $400 billion goal or whether some cuts would fall on other security agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security.
"Holding defense below inflation is a huge problem," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, a California Republican, said in a statement.
[…] Two of the biggest areas of weapons spending that might be reviewed are the $14 billion, on average, that the Navy plans to spend annually on shipbuilding and Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet. The U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report said the F-35 is anticipated to require "unprecedented demands for funding," averaging about $11 billion a year.
[…]
4) New C.I.A. Drone Attack Draws Rebuke From Pakistan
Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/asia/14pakistan.html
Washington – C.I.A. drones fired two missiles at militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas on Wednesday, two days after Pakistan’s spy chief threatened to curtail the drone strikes and demanded more information about the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations there.
The strikes drew a sharp rebuke from a Pakistani government that is increasingly public in its criticism of the C.I.A.’s covert role in its country.
"Pakistan strongly condemns the drone attack," according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad, which said it had lodged "a strong protest" with the United States ambassador there, Cameron P. Munter. "We have repeatedly said that such attacks are counterproductive and only contribute to strengthen the hands of the terrorists."
[…] After the meeting, American and Pakistani officials said that Pakistan’s request for advance notice of C.I.A. missile strikes, for fewer strikes over all, and for a fuller accounting of C.I.A. officers and contractors working in Pakistan "is being talked about." The American official added: "The bottom line is that joint cooperation is essential to the security of the two nations. The stakes are too high."
But the timing of the strikes on Wednesday served only to infuriate Pakistani officials and raised the question of whether Pakistan would retaliate by shutting down American supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan, which it had done in previous disputes.
The drone attack was widely interpreted by Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, as a deliberate effort by Washington to embarrass the country. "If the message was that business will continue as usual, it was a crude way of sending it," a senior Pakistani intelligence official said.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment. But an American official familiar with the operations defended the timing and targets, which came after a 27-day gap since the last strike on March 17, the day after Mr. Davis was released from Pakistani custody.
"These operations are consistent with the U.S.-Pakistan agreements that have been in place for some time," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the drone program. "This was about protecting Americans in the region. This is not about sending a signal to Pakistan."
[…] "It may have been for a very good reason and a quality target, but the politics of it look a little insensitive," said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of "Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of Global Jihad."
[…] Pakistani officials have grown more alarmed at the frequency of the drone attacks – 117 last year, more than all previous years combined – and the fact that the targets are now largely low-level fighters and junior commanders, not top operatives. Wednesday’s strikes bring this year’s number of attacks to 20, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On popular Pakistani television talk shows in the past several weeks, commentators have railed against the American drone campaign in unusually strong language. Some have suggested that Pakistan should shoot at the drones to stop them, an extreme measure that more moderate voices have said could result in American retaliation. The leadership of the Pakistani military knew that the drones could not be stopped by force, said Talat Masood, a retired lieutenant general and military analyst in Islamabad. "The army knows it can’t stop completely the main counterterrorism tool of the United States," he said.
Moreover, as unpalatable as the drones are, the Pakistani Army does not want to see a possible alternative: American soldiers fighting against the militants on Pakistani territory, General Masood said. General Masood said that the most that Pakistanis could expect from the Americans was more limited use of the drones.
Some American experts on Pakistan, however, offered a counterexplanation to the Pakistani fury over the attacks. They say Pakistani protests may be part of a complicated political theater in which Pakistani officials angrily protest some affront to their sovereignty to whip up already fervent anti-Americanism in the country, and then use the tumult as leverage to extract concessions from the Americans.
"The Pakistanis are masterful at creating these imbroglios which become enormous domestic issues, which they then use to try to reset the relationship with the United States more on their terms," said Christine Fair, a political scientist at Georgetown University who has worked and traveled widely in Pakistan.
5) Germany: An Appeal to Obama Over a U.S. Prisoner’s Treatment
Associated Press, April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/europe/14briefs-Germany.html
Germany’s Parliament says its human rights committee is protesting the conditions in which a United States Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks is being detained. A statement from Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday said that committee members appealed in a letter to President Obama for him to ensure "humane" conditions for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning. Private Manning’s defense lawyer has complained that his client is being held under unjustifiably restrictive conditions, including being largely isolated in his cell 23 hours a day and being stripped of his clothing each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed.
Bahrain
6) US Keeps Quiet over Repression
Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, 13 Apr
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3621
Washington – If President Barack Obama wanted to place Washington "on the right side of history" during the ongoing "Arab Spring", his reaction to recent events in Bahrain will likely make that far more difficult, according to a growing number of analysts and commentators here.
While his administration has become ever more outspoken against repression in Syria and Yemen – not to mention Libya, where Obama has called for regime change – it has remained remarkably restrained about the escalating crackdown by the Sunni monarchy against the majority Shia population and prominent pro-democracy figures.
The strongest criticism in weeks came from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday night at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum here when she appealed for a "political process that advances the rights and aspirations of all the citizens of Bahrain" and asserted that "security alone cannot resolve the challenges" facing the government.
More than two dozen people have been killed by security forces since the government declared martial law Mar. 15, while more than 400 others have been arrested or are otherwise unaccounted for, according to international rights groups. Three detainees have died in custody, at least one apparently from "horrific abuse", Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday.
Last weekend, HRW accused the regime of creating a "climate of fear", particularly in Shia neighbourhoods and villages where night-time raids appear designed mainly to instil terror among the mostly poor residents.
Professionals, including doctors, lawyers, and human rights activists, have not been immune from the repression. Media critical of the government have been effectively muzzled, bloggers arrested, local journalists hauled into court, and foreign journalists expelled. Even star football players have been booted off the national team and arrested for taking part in peaceful protests.
"Things are getting worse, both quantitatively and qualitatively," according to Toby Jones, an expert on the Gulf states at Rutgers University. "It seems that across the board – from allegations of torture to reports of sweeping arrests – the regime has not just continued its crackdown, but intensified it."
"And while it has justified it as restoring law and order, what it seems to be doing is pursuing a vendetta; that’s the only way to explain the severity of the situation," he added.
At the White House, however, silence has prevailed, suggesting to many observers that Obama is effectively acquiescing in, if not condoning, what is taking place.
That impression got a big boost when Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Saudi Arabia last week in an apparent effort to mend ties that were badly frayed by Washington’s support for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February and by its initial opposition to the deployment Mar. 14 – that is, on the eve of the martial-law declaration – of some 1,500 Saudi and Emirati troops to Bahrain with the apparent intention to strengthen the resolve of King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa to crack down hard against the pro- democracy movement.
Emerging from a meeting with King Abdullah, Gates claimed for the first time to have "evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain."
That remark stood in sharp contrast to his dismissal during his last trip to the Gulf three days before the martial law declaration of Saudi and Bahraini charges that Tehran was behind the unrest.
Moreover, when asked whether the presence of Saudi troops to Bahrain had been discussed with the king, Gates replied with a curt "No."
[…] But that perception, and Washington’s apparent acquiescence in it, risks backfiring on a number of different levels, according to analysts here who expressed hope that this week’s trip to Saudi Arabia and the UAE by Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, will convey a very different message than that delivered by Gates’s comments last week.
As repression intensifies and with no prospect for meaningful political reform that would given them a share of power, Bahrain’s Shia population, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of the country’s citizenry, is being radicalised, according to Jones.
"I don’t think we’re past the point of no return yet where the radicalisation of the Shia is permanent, but we’re not far from there," he told IPS. "Donilon’s trip might be the moment when the White House becomes a bit more insistent, but the message needs to be delivered more urgently than it has been."
Beyond Bahrain, however, the crackdown and the Saudi and UAE intervention in support of it could also undermine other U.S. interests in the Gulf, notably in Iraq where key elements of the ruling coalition government and even the clerical establishment in Najaf have mobilised in support of Bahrain’s Shia community.
The intervention "gives Iraq, newly dominated by Shiites with close ties to Iran, an excuse to make common cause with Iran in supporting Shiite insurrection in Bahrain," retired U.S. Amb. Chas Freeman warned in a recent talk to the Asia Business Council in Riyadh.
"Outright alliance between Baghdad and Tehran to this end would have far-reaching adverse implications for Gulf security. The strategic stakes Bahrain are higher than many outside the region appreciate," he added.
Finally, Washington’s failure to strongly denounce the repression and its apparent efforts to appease the Saudis undermine its pose as a champion of human rights and democracy in region, exposing it instead as a cynical player of realpolitik, according to Chris Toensing, director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).
"There is a strong and rising current of disgust in the region at the Saudi role in the season of Arab revolts where, at every turn, they have encouraged the harshest repression possible," he said. "And, if you look at the timing of Gates’s past two trips (to the region), people assume that the U.S. is being solicitous of its strategic partner and acquiescing in Saudi efforts to mount counter- revolutions."
"There’s a strong suspicion that at least tacit consent was given to the Bahrainis and Saudis to do their worst in exchange for Arab League support for the no-fly zone in Libya," he added.
Israel/Palestine
7) UN Gaza report co-authors round on Goldstone
Three mission members say calls to recant UN report disregard the rights of Palestinian and Israeli victims
Ed Pilkington and Conal Urquhart, Guardian, Thursday 14 April 2011 08.19 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/14/un-gaza-report-authors-goldstone
Full statement:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/14/goldstone-report-statement-un-gaza
New York/Jerusalem – Three members of the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza war of 2008-09 have turned on the fourth member and chair of the group, Richard Goldstone, accusing him in all but name of misrepresenting facts in order to cast doubt on the credibility of their joint report.
In a statement to the Guardian, the three experts in international law are strongly critical of Goldstone’s dramatic change of heart expressed in a Washington Post commentary earlier this month. Goldstone wrote that he regretted aspects of the report that bears his name, especially the suggestion that Israel had potentially committed war crimes by targeting civilian Palestinians in the three-week conflict.
The three members – the Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani; Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics; and former Irish peace-keeper Desmond Travers – have until this moment kept their silence over Goldstone’s bombshell remarks. But their response now is devastating.
Though they do not mention Goldstone by name, they shoot down several of the main contentions in his article and imply that he has bowed to intense political pressure.
They write that they cannot leave "aspersions cast on the findings of the [Goldstone] report unchallenged", adding that those aspersions have "misrepresented facts in an attempt to delegitimise the findings and to cast doubts on its credibility".
In their most stinging criticism, the three joint authors say that "calls to reconsider or even retract the report, as well as attempts at misrepresenting its nature and purpose, disregard the rights of victims, Palestinians and Israeli, to truth and justice". They point to the "personal attacks and the extraordinary pressure placed on members of the fact-finding mission", adding that "had we given in to pressures from any quarter to sanitise our conclusions, we would be doing a serious injustice to the hundreds of innocent civilians killed during the Gaza conflict, the thousands injured, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives continue to be deeply affected by the conflict and the blockade".
The four-person fact-finding mission was set up to look into allegations of war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during the war in which 1,400 Palestinians – at least half of whom were civilians – and 13 Israelis died. The Goldstone report concluded that some Israelis could be held individually criminally responsible for potential war crimes.
[…] The three authors cite the final UN report into the Gaza war, written by a follow-up committee led by Judge Mary McGowan Davies, that criticised Israel for the slow pace with which it conducted its investigations and for its refusal to address some of the most serious allegations about its conduct. "The mechanisms that are being used by the Israeli authorities to investigate the incidents are proving inadequate to genuinely ascertain the facts and any ensuing legal responsibility."
The statement of Jilani, Chinkin and Travers will set back any attempt by Israel to have the Goldstone report revoked. The UN human rights council, which commissioned the fact-finding mission, has already made clear that the report could only be withdrawn if all four of its authors unanimously made a formal written complaint or if the UN general assembly or human rights council voted to drop it.
[…]
Iran
8) Is Iran Still Center Of Middle East’s ‘Great Game’?
Robert Tait, Radio Liberty, April 13, 2011
http://www.rferl.org/content/is_iran_still_center_of_mideast_great_game/3556457.html
From being the most assertively visible actor in the Middle East, it has seemingly become quiet and unnoticed, almost the forgotten country. Yet three months into what has become known as the "Arab awakening," non-Arabic-speaking Iran remains the giant elephant in the living room for foreign-policy makers in Washington.
Indeed, some view current developments as little more than a temporary lull in the long-running contest for influence between the United States and the Islamic regime, an interpretation that appears to be shared by senior officials in Tehran.
The New York Times crystallized the trend by reporting on April 2 that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama regarded events in Libya, where Western powers have sided with rebels trying to unseat Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, as a "sideshow" and that it "sees the region through a Persian lens."
Under the headline, "The Larger Game In The Middle East: Iran," the paper wrote, "Containing Iran’s power remains their [administration officials’] central goal in the Middle East. Every decision — from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria — is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy."
Trita Parsi, head of the Washington-based National American Iranian Council, says the preoccupation is evident in conversations with U.S. officials as well as in administration decisions, including its hesitation over whether to back the mass protests that ultimately ousted the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.
"In my own conversations with administration officials in regard to what is happening in the region, it’s been very clear that the frame through which they are looking at these things consistently is: ‘How does this affect the competition between the United States and Iran?’" Parsi says. "When looking at what was happening in Egypt, the real question was not what was best for the Egyptian people or democracy. It was: how will this affect the geopolitical rivalry between Iran and the United States? Will any of the decisions the U.S. make[s], or any of the developments, undermine Iran’s position in the region?"
[…] Yet the portrayal of Iran as "the biggest show in town" rankles some specialists, who believe it runs the risk of blinding policymakers to underlying currents in the region. Scott Lucas, head of the EA World View website and an Iran analyst at Birmingham University in Britain, describes it as a "terrible approach."
"The U.S. is applying a relatively old strategy of linking up with elites in the region to a new situation and I don’t think they’re really thinking through the consequences" argues Lucas, who says the approach is unsuited to an "asymmetrical battle" that is being waged. "The issue of political legitimacy is the one that people are pushing. It’s not the U.S.-Iran contest, it’s not even the question of economic factors and if you are seen in any way as basically not really being on board with that question of political legitimacy, if you are seen as in effect trying to impose this Iran question on top of it, I think it’ll bite you on the backside."
The regime in Tehran has mirrored the tendency to view the Arab revolts in geostrategic terms, portraying them as rebellions, inspired by Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, against unpopular U.S.-backed governments.
The difference, Lucas says, is that Iran’s approach is driven by propaganda purposes stemming from a need to distract its own discontented population still smarting over Ahmadinejad’s bitterly disputed reelection in 2009. The U.S. policy, by contrast, is being shaped by "mistaken conceptions" about Iranian power that overlook the country’s internal weakness.
"What Egypt should have proven to us is that the old way of looking at this as some kind of "Great Game", where these countries are just pawns in the Great Game and the people are just pawns, [is] absolutely out of date," Lucas says. "It also completely wipes out the internal considerations regarding Iran. This is a country which has serious internal issues. All you do by projecting this Iran game in the Middle East is ignore those issues. The U.S. made this mistake in 2009 when it went with a nuclear-first approach to Iran and missed what was happening. It’s making the same mistake in 2011."
And according to Parsi, fixating on the time-honored Washington-versus-Tehran policy frame obscures the emergence of new contests in the region.
"The inherent weakness of all frames is that they may not be capable of incorporating completely new and unforeseen developments," Parsi says. "The competition between Iran and the United States is still there but it’s not the only competition. There are new developments taking place in the region and the major question going forward is going to be how the relationship between Egypt, Turkey, and Iran will change the picture."
Colombia
9) Colombia FTA: Rewarding Promises Instead of Performance
Leo Gerard, Alternet, April 12, 2011
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/04/12/colombia-fta-rewarding-promises-instead-of-performance/
[Leo Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers union.]
Tragically, the government of Colombia exhibits the behavior of an addict. And, just as regrettably, the United States is co-dependent, so addicted to so called free trade that it plans to award Colombia an agreement based solely on promises.
Addicts always promise. They’ll stop, they pledge. Their co-dependents desperately want to believe, so they cooperate with the addicts’ demands.
Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, has pledged to try to stop the murders to persuade Congress to approve a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Promises, promises.
And the United States has agreed to accept those promises rather than demand performance before signing an FTA. American’s Wall Street banks and multi-national corporations crave another FTA so badly they will believe anything.
When the Colombia FTA was first proposed, Congress refused to approve it because so many trade unionists are assassinated each year by the Colombian military and paramilitary forces that the murders exceed the number of unionists killed in all other countries of the world combined. In 2007, the year that former President George W. Bush completed the agreement, 39 Colombian unionists were slain.
The Colombian government knew why Congress denied approval. It could have responded four years ago by protecting trade unionists and preserving their lives. It did not.
Instead, the murders increased. In 2008, 52 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated, one a week. In 2009, the number declined by 5 to 47, but it was back up to 52 last year. Six have been slain so far this year, including Hector Orozco and Gilardo Garcia, members of the agricultural union known as Association of Peasant Workers of Tolima, who were threatened by the Colombian military just before they were assassinated. Promises, promises.
In response to the concerns expressed by Congress about the murders, the newly-proposed FTA requires Bogota to improve safeguards for workers by April 22, and to develop a plan by May 20 to enhance the capacity of regional judicial offices because the murders of trade unionists go unpunished by the Colombian government – giving the killers an impunity rate of approximately 95 percent. And by mid-June, the Colombian government promises to increase penalties for threatening workers.
The government of Colombia could have completed all of those steps four years ago. It didn’t bother.
To this point, Congress has taken the moral high ground by refusing to approve the trade deal. It said, basically, as long as Colombia continued to countenance the slaughter of its community and labor leaders, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, America would not give it special treatment for trade purposes.
In addition, Congress recognized the FTA’s potential to devastate Colombian farmers. The FTA would speed forced displacement of Afro-Colombians and indigenous people by encouraging increased exploitation of their land by business interests, such as palm oil companies, half of which are owned by paramilitary groups. Expelling these farmers from their land would further swell Colombia’s internally-displaced population – the largest in the world at 4.3 million.
Making matters worse for Colombian farmers, the main U.S. beneficiaries of the FTA would be big agricultural companies which would be permitted to dump cheap, subsidized food stuffs into Colombia duty-free. This would result in farmers’ impoverishment and land loss because small growers would not be able to compete with the low-cost American produce. In Haiti and Mexico, domestic food production was wiped out by similar free trade agreements. It’s likely that Colombia would follow the path of Mexico, where, as the ability to grow legitimate crops became economically impossible, farmers turned more and more to producing illicit drugs. Colombia already produces as much as 80 percent of the world’s cocaine.
[…] Bogota wants the FTA because it believes the deal will be good for Colombian business interests. One immediate bonus, for example, is that the FTA would eliminate tariffs on 80 percent of Colombia’s exports to the U.S.
To get what it wants, the Colombian government is willing to say anything. Just like an addict. Promises, promises. The Colombian government’s past performance shows its pledges to protect workers from assassination are empty.
America must reject the role of co-dependent. It must demand the proof of performance before rewarding the government of Colombia with an FTA.
Without proof of performance, the government of Colombia will get away with murder. It will export more of its goods – crude oil, coffee, fruit and flowers – to the U.S. And unwitting Americans will buy more blood red Colombian roses.
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