JFP 5/17: “Gooaal!” for Lula Against Western Push for Iran Sanctions

Just Foreign Policy News
May 17, 2010

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It’s "Gooaal!" for Lula Against Western Push for Iran Sanctions
AP reports that the fuel swap deal that Iran has agreed to with Brazil and Turkey is substantially the same deal that the US has been promoting. Is the Obama Administration prepared to take "yes" for an answer?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/its-gollllllll-for-lula-a_b_578390.html

Statement by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Iran
Acknowledges efforts made by Turkey and Brazil; says proposal announced in Iran must be conveyed to the IAEA before US can formally respond; says it would be a positive step for Iran to transfer low-enriched uranium off of its soil; notes Iran said it would continue its 20% enrichment, which Iran originally justified by pointing to the need for fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor; says US remains committed to a diplomatic solution.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-white-house-press-secretary-robert-gibbs-iran

Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Iran agreed Monday to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in a nuclear fuel swap deal that could ease the international standoff over the country’s disputed atomic program and deflate a U.S.-led push for tougher sanctions, AP reports. The deal, reached in talks with Brazil and Turkey, was similar to a U.N.-drafted plan the US and its allies have been pressing Iran to accept.

2) Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite concerns about the legality of the operation, the New York Times reports. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan are submitted almost daily to top commanders. The military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.

3) After 40 years, the "war on drugs" has failed, and even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske admits it, AP reports. This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment. But his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget. Kerlikowske says it will take time for spending to match rhetoric.

Israel/Palestine
4) At least 17 businesses in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim have closed since Palestinians began boycotting its products several months ago, the Washington Post reports. Palestinians are looking at the success of their boycott as evidence that a campaign focused on peaceful protest, rather than violent struggle, could finally yield results. The strategy originated at the grass-roots but has increasingly been embraced by the Palestinian leadership. Top officials have shown up at anti-settlement demonstrations led by local activists trying to isolate Israel globally in a campaign roughly modeled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

5) A senior Israeli official told European diplomats a plan by pro-Palestinian activists to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was a "provocation" and would be stopped, AFP reports. The Free Gaza Movement says the Rachel Corrie left Dundalk in Ireland on May 14 and would rendezvous with the rest of what it calls the "Freedom Flotilla" in the Mediterranean.

6) A fierce debate broke out in Israel Monday amid finger pointing and hand wringing over the country’s refusal to permit Noam Chomsky to enter the occupied West Bank, the New York Times reports. Government spokesmen were mortified at the development and issued statements saying that the decision was made by an Interior Ministry official at the Jordan-West Bank border and did not represent policy. But Chomsky said the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was on the phone with other ministry officials during the several hours of questioning on Sunday at the West Bank border and that he was taking instructions from his superiors. "There were two basic points," Chomsky said. "One was that the government of Israel does not like the kinds of things I say… The second was that they seemed upset about the fact that I was just taking an invitation from Birzeit [University] and I had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities…"

Afghanistan
7) Farmers from Marja, the focus of the largest US military operation in Afghanistan this year, are fleeing the area, saying the Taliban are terrorizing the population and US troops cannot protect the civilians, Carlotta Gall reports in the New York Times. the military had seen Marja as a "clear and hold" operation in which the first part, clearing the district of militants, would be wrapped up fairly quickly. In fact, clearing has proved to be a more elusive goal.

8) US generals express doubts that the fight against the Taliban is having any success, writes Patrick Cockburn for The Independent. General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning." Three months after the operation in Marjah, however, local people say that the Taliban still control the area at night. Shops are still closed and no schools have reopened. Education officials who returned at the height of the US-led offensive have fled again. Aid is not arriving. Pentagon officials increasingly agree with the Afghan villagers that the Marjah operation failed to end Taliban control and put the Afghan government in charge. This puts in doubt General McChrystal’s whole strategy.

Japan
9) About 17,000 people formed a human chain around Futenma air station in Ginowan Sunday, calling for the return of the land used by the U.S. Marine Corps facility and protesting plans to move its operations elsewhere in Okinawa, the Japan Times reports. The chain protest was the fifth aimed at the unpopular U.S. base since 1995 and the first since 2005.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Iran to ship uranium to Turkey in nuclear deal
Associated Press, Monday, May 17, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051700243.html

Tehran – Iran agreed Monday to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in a surprise nuclear fuel swap deal that could ease the international standoff over the country’s disputed atomic program and deflate a U.S.-led push for tougher sanctions.

The deal, which was reached in talks with Brazil and Turkey, was similar to a U.N.-drafted plan that Washington and its allies have been pressing Tehran for the past six months to accept in order to deprive Iran – at least temporarily – of enough stocks of enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which claims its nuclear program is peaceful, dropped several key demands that had previously blocked agreement. In return for agreeing to ship most of its uranium stockpile abroad, it would receive fuel rods of medium-enriched uranium to use in a Tehran medical research reactor that produces isotopes for cancer treatment. It was not immediately clear what would happen to the stockpile once the fuel rods were received.
[…] German government spokesman Christoph Steegmans noted that the question remains whether Iran suspends enrichment of nuclear material at home, raising a possible sticking point since the agreement reaffirmed Tehran’s right to enrichment activities for peaceful purposes. [This is an odd objection, since the original US-proposed fuel swap did not require Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium – JFP.]

Iran’s Foreign Ministers spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran will continue to enrich uranium to higher level despite the deal reached Monday. "Of course, enrichment of uranium to 20 percent will continue inside Iran," the official news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.

For months, Iran has haggled over the terms, making counterproposals that were repeatedly rejected by the U.S. and its allies. With the deal announced Monday, Tehran seems to have agreed to almost all of the original terms. However, making the deal with Turkey and Brazil may have been more palatable, allowing Iran to argue that it did not bend to American pressure.

"It was agreed during the trilateral meeting of Iranian, Turkish and Brazilian leaders that Turkey will be the venue for swapping" Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium for fuel rods, Mehmanparast said on state TV.

Washington has cited the Iranians’ intransigence against the original deal as proof of the need for new U.N. sanctions.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the new deal meant Iran was willing to "open a constructive road." "There is no ground left for more sanctions or pressure," he told reporters in Iran, according to Turkey’s private NTV television.

Monday’s deal was announced after talks between Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

The main difference from the U.N.-drafted version is that if Iran does not receive the fuel rods within a year, Turkey will be required to "quickly and unconditionally" return the uranium to Iran. Iran feared that under the initial U.N. deal, if a swap fell through, its uranium stock could be seized permanently.

The U.N. proposal also said Russia and France would process the Iranian uranium to higher levels, then send it back as fuel rods.

The process would begin one month after a final agreement is signed between Iran and its main negotiating partners, including the United States and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran dropped an earlier demand for the fuel exchange to happen in stages and is now willing to ship abroad its nuclear material in a single batch. It also dropped an insistence that the exchange happen inside Iran as well as a request to receive the fuel rods right away.

While kept under international supervision in Turkey, the uranium would still be considered Iranian property until Iran receives the fuel rods, said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, called Monday’s deal historic.
[…] The fuel swap deal on the table since October was touted as a way to reduce tensions and ensure Iran cannot build a bomb in the short term. The material returned to Iran in the form of fuel rods cannot be processed beyond its lower, safer levels. Iran needs the fuel rods to power an aging medical research reactor in Tehran that produces isotopes for cancer treatment.

Under the agreement announced Monday, Iran will ship most of its enriched uranium – about 2,600 pounds, or 1,200 kilograms – to Turkey to be kept under U.N. and Iranian supervision. In return, it will get fuel rods containing uranium enriched to higher levels needed for the research reactor, Mehmanparast said.

Iran first reached out to Turkey and Brazil in its efforts to avoid tougher U.N. sanctions for its refusal to stop enriching uranium altogether. Both countries are non-permanent members of the Security Council. Monday’s deal was signed by the foreign ministers of the three countries.

Mehmanparast said a letter will be sent to the IAEA within a week to pave the way for a final agreement. "Should they be ready, an agreement will be signed between us and the group," he said, referring to the U.S., France, Russia and the IAEA.

A month later, the uranium – currently enriched to a level of 3.5 percent – would be sent to Turkey, where it would be stored under IAEA and Iranian supervision, Mehmanparast said. The fuel rods would contain material processed to just under 20 percent. Enrichment of 90 percent is needed to produce material for nuclear warheads.

2) U.S. Is Still Using Private Spy Ring, Despite Doubts
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, May 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/world/16contractors.html

Washington – Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.

Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information – some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.

But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.

The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.

Military officials said that when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in the region, signed off on the operation in January 2009, there were prohibitions against intelligence gathering, including hiring agents to provide information about enemy positions in Pakistan. The contractors were supposed to provide only broad information about the political and tribal dynamics in the region, and information that could be used for "force protection," they said.

Some Pentagon officials said that over time the operation appeared to morph into traditional spying activities. And they pointed out that the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation.

But a review of the program by The New York Times found that Mr. Furlong’s operatives were still providing information using the same intelligence gathering methods as before. The contractors were still being paid under a $22 million contract, the review shows, managed by Lockheed Martin and supervised by the Pentagon office in charge of special operations policy.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the program "remains under investigation by multiple offices within the Defense Department," so it would be inappropriate to answer specific questions about who approved the operation or why it continues.
[…] Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Pentagon has used broad interpretations of its authorities to expand military intelligence operations, including sending Special Operations troops on clandestine missions far from declared war zones. These missions have raised concerns in Washington that the Pentagon is running de facto covert actions without proper White House authority and with little oversight from the elaborate system of Congressional committees and internal controls intended to prevent abuses in intelligence gathering.

The officials say the contractors’ reports are delivered via an encrypted e-mail service to a "fusion cell," located at the military base at Kabul International Airport. There, they are fed into classified military computer networks, then used for future military operations or intelligence reports.

To skirt military restrictions on intelligence gathering, information the contractors gather in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas is specifically labeled "atmospheric collection": information about the workings of militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan or about Afghan tribal structures. The boundaries separating "atmospherics" from what spies gather is murky. It is generally considered illegal for the military to run organized operations aimed at penetrating enemy organizations with covert agents.

But defense officials with knowledge of the program said that contractors themselves regarded the contract as permission to spy. Several weeks ago, one of the contractors reported on Taliban militants massing near American military bases east of Kandahar. Not long afterward, Apache gunships arrived at the scene to disperse and kill the militants.

The web of private businesses working under the Lockheed contract include Strategic Influence Alternatives, American International Security Corporation and International Media Ventures, a communications company based in St. Petersburg, Fla., with Czech ownership.

One of the companies employs a network of Americans, Afghans and Pakistanis run by Duane Clarridge, a C.I.A. veteran who became famous for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal.
[…]

3) U.S. war on drugs has met none of its goals
Martha Mendoza, Associated Press, Friday, May 14, 2010 http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20100514/news/100519749

Mexico City – After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

This week President Barack Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric. "Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We’ve never worked the drug problem holistically. We’ll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction."
[…] "This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive."

His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it’s $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon’s amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

– $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico – and the violence along with it.

– $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

– $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

– $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

– $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

Drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse – "an overburdened justice system, a strained health-care system, lost productivity and environmental destruction" – cost the United States $215 billion a year.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it’s costing the public a fortune."
[…] Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans’ unquenching thirst for illegal drugs. Kerlikowske agrees, and Obama has committed to doing just that.

And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.

"President Obama’s newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush’s, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama’s statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users. About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.

"For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate," said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. "Yet … it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget."

Carnevale said the administration continues to substantially over-allocate funds to areas that research shows are least effective – interdiction and source-country programs – while under-allocating funds for treatment and prevention.

Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a "war" on drugs, frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they’ve found, in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical examinations. That program would get a mere $7.2 million under Obama’s budget.
[…]

Israel/Palestine
4) Palestinians turn to boycott of Israel in West Bank
Janine Zacharia, Washington Post, Sunday, May 16, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/15/AR2010051501492.html

Maaleh Adumim, West Bank – In Mishor Adumim, a bougainvillea-lined industrial zone inside this West Bank Jewish settlement, at least 17 businesses have closed since Palestinians began boycotting its products several months ago.

For the Israelis, it’s "an insufferable situation," according to Avi Elkayam, who represents the settlement’s 300 factory owners. But for Palestinians, it might be the strategy they have been looking for.

For more than 40 years, Palestinians have sought to end Israeli occupation and gain statehood. International terrorism, nearly two decades of negotiations and two major waves of mass revolt have all failed to bring measurable progress toward those goals.

Now Palestinians are looking at the success of their boycott as evidence that a campaign focused on peaceful protest, rather than violent struggle, could finally yield results.

The strategy originated at the grass-roots level but has increasingly been embraced by the Palestinian leadership. Top officials have shown up at anti-settlement demonstrations led by local activists trying to isolate Israel globally in a campaign roughly modeled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

"We are definitely committed to a path of nonviolent resistance and defiance in the face of the settlement enterprise, and we are defiantly expressing our right to boycott those products and I believe it is working," Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has attended bonfires of settlement products, said in an interview last week. "We will continue to do more."
[…] Dealing in settlement goods has technically been illegal under Palestinian law since 2005, but Fayyad has pushed for enforcement only since the start of the year. The hope is that the boycott will encourage the international community to adopt a stronger stance against settlements while helping end the Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israel.

A dispute over settlement construction paralyzed peacemaking efforts for the first year of the Obama administration, which views such activity as illegitimate. Israel, under U.S. pressure, has agreed to a 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank – but not East Jerusalem – that expires in September.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed a law last month making it a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison and a $14,000 fine, to sell settlement products. For Israel, the value of settlement products sold in Palestinian markets constitutes a small fraction of its $200 billion annual gross domestic product. Still, officials worry about the campaign morphing into a broader boycott of all Israeli goods.

In addition to forcing factories in West Bank settlements to shut down or relocate inside Israel, the campaign is deterring other Israeli businesses from moving to the West Bank industrial zones, which were originally set up to be closer to Palestinian laborers, many of whom are denied permits to work in Israel proper.

The Palestinian Authority has so far confiscated and destroyed $5 million worth of settlement products; by the end of the year, it will be illegal for Palestinians to work in the settlements. The Authority has established a national "empowerment" fund to help create other jobs for the roughly 25,000 Palestinians who now work in the settlements, but that remains a long-term proposition.
[…]

5) Israel tells diplomats it will stop Gaza aid boats
AFP, May 17, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hVSwju4eSsR7kch8wt1kkWznYhAw

Jerusalem – A senior Israeli official told European diplomats on Monday that a plan by pro-Palestinian activists to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was a "provocation" and would be stopped.

The Free Gaza Movement, an international group seeking to ship humanitarian goods and activists into the coastal strip, aims to send three cargo ships and five passenger vessels to Gaza from Ireland, Greece and Turkey.

"This is a provocation and a breach of Israeli law," Naor Gilon, a foreign ministry deputy director general, told the ambassadors of Greece, Ireland, Turkey, and Sweden, whose nationals the ministry said were involved. "Israel has no intention of allowing the flotilla to enter Gaza," a ministry statement quoted Gilon as saying.

The website of the Free Gaza Movement says the 1,200-tonne Rachel Corrie left Dundalk in Ireland on May 14 and would rendezvous with the rest of what it calls the "Freedom Flotilla" in the Mediterranean.
[…]

6) Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/middleeast/18chomsky.html

Jerusalem – A fierce debate broke out in Israel on Monday amid finger pointing and hand wringing over the country’s refusal to permit the linguist Noam Chomsky, an icon of the American left, to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan.

Front-page coverage and heated morning radio discussions asked how Prof. Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could pose a risk to Israel and how a country that frequently asserts its status as a robust democracy could keep out people whose views it found offensive.

Professor Chomsky, who is Jewish and spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s, is an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy. He has objected to Israel’s foundation as a Jewish state, but he has supported a two-state solution and has not condemned Israel’s existence in the terms of the country’s sharpest critics around the world.

The decision Sunday to bar him from entering the West Bank to speak at Birzeit, a Palestinian university, "is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies," remarked Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in his Monday column. "Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion."

Government spokesmen were mortified at the development and issued statements saying that the decision was made by an Interior Ministry official at the Jordan-West Bank border and did not represent policy. "There is no change in our policy," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The idea that Israel is preventing people from entering whose opinions are critical of the state is ludicrous; it is not happening. This was a mishap. A guy at the border overstepped his authority." Mr. Regev suggested that if Mr. Chomsky tried to enter again, he would succeed.

But Mr. Chomsky said in a television interview from Jordan with Al Jazeera that the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was on the phone with other ministry officials during the several hours of questioning on Sunday at the West Bank border and that he was taking instructions from his superiors.

"There were two basic points," Mr. Chomsky told the interviewer. "One was that the government of Israel does not like the kinds of things I say – which puts them into the category of I suppose every other government in the world. The second was that they seemed upset about the fact that I was just taking an invitation from Birzeit and I had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities, as I have done many times in the past, but not this time."

Some conservative members of Parliament said they had no objection to the decision.

"This is a decision of principle between the democratic ideal – and we all want freedom of speech and movement – and the need to protect our existence," said Otniel Schneller, of the centrist Kadima party, on Israel Radio. "Let’s say he came to lecture at Birzeit. What would he say? That Israel kills Arabs, that Israel is an apartheid state?" In another three months, Mr. Schneller went on, some Israeli would be standing over her son’s grave, the victim of incitement "in the name of free speech." People like Mr. Chomsky, he added, do not have to be granted permission to enter.
[…]

Afghanistan
7) Taliban Hold Sway In Area Taken By U.S., Farmers Say
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, May 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/world/asia/17marja.html

Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan – Farmers from the district of Marja, which since February has been the focus of the largest American-led military operation in Afghanistan, are fleeing the area, saying that the Taliban are terrorizing the population and that American troops cannot protect the civilians.

The departure of the farmers is one of the most telling indications that Taliban fighters have found a way to resume their insurgency, three months after thousands of troops invaded this Taliban stronghold in the opening foray of a campaign to take control of southern Afghanistan. Militants have been infiltrating back into the area and the prospect of months of more fighting is undermining public morale, residents and officials said.

As the coalition prepares for the next major offensive in the southern city of Kandahar, the uneasy standoff in Marja, where neither the American Marines nor the Taliban have gained the upper hand and clashes occur daily, provides a stark lesson in the challenges of eliminating a patient and deeply rooted insurgency.

Over 150 families have fled Marja in the last two weeks, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Marja residents arriving here last week, many looking bleak and shell-shocked, said civilians had been trapped by the fighting, running a gantlet of mines laid by insurgents and firefights around government and coalition positions. The pervasive Taliban presence forbids them from having any contact with or taking assistance from the government or coalition forces. "People are leaving; you see 10 to 20 families each day on the road who are leaving Marja due to insecurity," said a farmer, Abdul Rahman, 52, who was traveling on his own. "It is now hard to live there in this situation."

One farmer who was loading his family and belongings onto a tractor-trailer on the edge of Lashkar Gah last week said he had abandoned his whole livelihood in Sistan, Marja, as soon as the harvest, a poor one this year, was done. "Every day they were fighting and shelling," said the farmer, Abdul Malook Aka, 55. "We do not feel secure in the village and we decided to leave. Security is getting worse day by day." "We thought security would be improving," he said.

Those who remain in Marja voiced similar complaints in dozens of interviews and repeated visits to Marja over the last month. "I am sure if I stay in Marja I will be killed one day either by Taliban or the Americans," said Mir Hamza, 40, a farmer from Loye Charahi.

Combat operations in Marja ended at the end of February and the military declared the battle won. But much of the local Taliban, including at least four mid-level commanders, never left, stashing their rifles and adopting the quiet farm life.

A Taliban resurgence was not entirely unexpected, especially now as the poppy harvest ends, freeing men to fight, and as the weather warms up. But the military had seen Marja as a "clear and hold" operation in which the first part, clearing the district of militants, would be wrapped up fairly quickly. In fact, clearing has proved to be a more elusive goal.
[…]

8) ‘Nobody is winning,’ admits McChrystal
The weakness of the Kabul government is hindering attempts by US and Nato forces to gain much ground from the insurgents
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Sunday, 16 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/nobody-is-winning-admits-mcchrystal-1974697.html

Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in London yesterday as US generals express doubts that the fight against the Taliban is having any success.

The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning". His only claim now is that the Taliban have lost momentum compared with last year.
[…] Equally worrying for the American and British governments is the failure so far of General McChrystal’s strategy of using his troops to seize Taliban strongholds and, once cleared, hand them over to Afghan forces. He sold this plan, under which he was promised an extra 30,000 US troops, last November but all the signs are that it is not working. Starting in February, 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops started taking over the Taliban-held area of Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand province. Dozens of embedded journalists trumpeted the significance of Operation Moshtarak, as it was called, as the first fruits of General McChrystal’s new strategy which was meant to emulate the supposed success of the "surge" in Iraq in 2007.

Three months after the operation in Marjah, however, local people say that the Taliban still control the area at night. Shops are still closed and no schools have reopened. Education officials who returned at the height of the US-led offensive have fled again. The local governor says he has just one temporary teacher teaching 60 children in the ruins of a school. Aid is not arriving. The Taliban are replacing mines, the notorious IEDs, removed by US troops and often use the same holes to hide them in.

Pentagon officials increasingly agree with the Afghan villagers that the Marjah operation failed to end Taliban control and put the Afghan government in charge. This puts in doubt General McChrystal’s whole strategy which also governs the way in which 10,000 British troops are deployed. He is being held to account for earlier optimism such as his claim at the height of Marjah offensive that "we’ve got a government in a box ready to roll in". Three months later, people in Marjah say they have yet to see much sign of the Afghan government.

Lack of success in Marjah is feeding doubts about the promised US-led offensive in Kandahar, parts of which are under Taliban control. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned against destroying the city in order to save it. There has been an attempt by the US military to rebrand the attack "Co-operation for Kandahar". Local elders have lobbied against it on the grounds that it will bring nothing but ruin to their city.

So far the much-heralded attempt to turn the tide in Kandahar has simply terrified local people about what is to come. US and Nato supply columns thunder through the narrow streets, the soldiers guarding them gesturing menacingly to Afghan vehicles not to get too close. "An atmosphere of terror is hanging over Kandahar," Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president’s much-criticised brother who is also head of the local council, is quoted as saying. "People are breathing terror here."

The Taliban are putting more effort into thwarting General McChrystal’s strategy than the Afghan government is doing to implement it. In Kandahar the Taliban have stepped up a campaign of assassinations against local officials and people who co-operate with the Americans or the Kabul government. Most of the UN’s international staff has left the city.

When General McChrystal’s plan was adopted by President Obama it promised a quick turnaround on the ground in Afghanistan and this is demonstrably not happening. Local people say the Taliban are stronger and more active in Kandahar than they were three months ago. Veteran Taliban fighters are reported to be planning to avoid heavy losses in fighting to come while untrained teenage insurgents are gathering to battle foreign forces regardless of casualties.
[…]

Japan
9) U.S. air base surrounded by human chain of protesters
Kyodo/AP, Monday, May 17, 2010
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20100517a1.html

Naha – About 17,000 people formed a human chain around Futenma air station in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, on Sunday, calling for the return of the land used by the U.S. Marine Corps facility and protesting plans to move its operations elsewhere in the prefecture.

Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha and Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine were among those braving strong winds and rain for the demonstration and read out a joint statement calling on the central government to give up on its plans to move it to the Henoko district in Nago.

The chain protest was the fifth aimed at the unpopular U.S. base since 1995 and the first since 2005.

The base, situated in a crowded area of Ginowan, is drawing increasingly vocal complaints about the constant noise created by its aircraft and higher crime linked to troops in the area.

A demonstration on April 25 drew about 90,000 residents and politicians who protested its continued presence in the island prefecture.

In Sunday’s protest, the demonstrators, many dressed in ponchos for the rainy weather, lined up along barbed-wire fences and streets on the base’s perimeter to raise their linked arms and shout slogans, including "We are against moving the base inside our prefecture."

The demonstration was timed to coincide with Saturday’s celebration of the anniversary of Okinawa’s return from U.S. to Japanese control in 1972.
[…]
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.