Just Foreign Policy News
June 3, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
At Long Last, House Debates and Votes on Libya War Powers
The House leadership dodged the Kucinich resolution, but the debate and the approval of the weaker Boehner alternative will increase pressure on the Administration [as indicated by the spin of the New York Times and Washington Post articles, #1 and #2 below, which emphasize "the House is pissed" as opposed to "so it did something toothless."]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/03/981820/-At-Long-Last,-House-Debates-and-Votes-on-Libya-War-Powers-
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The House of Representatives voted Friday to harshly rebuke President Obama for continuing to maintain a US role in NATO operations in Libya without the express consent of Congress, the New York Times reports. The resolution, which passed 268 to 145, was offered by Speaker Boehner to siphon off swelling Republican support for a measure sponsored by Representative Kucinich which calls for a withdrawal of the US military from the air and naval operations in and around Libya.
The resolution criticizing the president passed with the support of 45 Democrats and all but 10 Republicans. The measure from Kucinich failed by 148 to 265, with 87 Republicans voting in favor.
As a legislative matter, the Boehner resolution has no practical effect, the Times says. But as a political matter, the resolution was an unusually blunt confrontation of a president during a continuing military conflict.
The War Powers Resolution says that presidents must terminate hostilities after 60 days if they have not been authorized by Congress; that deadline passed on May 20 without an explanation to Congress from the administration detailing why it thinks it was lawful for the operation to continue.
This lack of explanation, following Obama’s failure to obtain Congressional authorization for the engagement at the outset, angered both the anti-war factions of his own party, and conservative Republicans seeking to rein in executive power and federal spending alike. An intense floor debate ensued Friday over the nature of the conflict in Libya and the role of Congress in authorizing military campaigns. Members on both sides complained of war fatigue in their districts, and the reluctance of constituents to support the opening of yet another conflict.
2) The House on Friday rebuked President Obama for failing "to provide Congress with a compelling rationale" for the military campaign in Libya, but stopped short of demanding he withdraw U.S. forces from the fight, the Washington Post reports. With those votes, the House stepped back from a confrontation over how America goes to war, but perhaps only temporarily, the Post says. Legislators from both parties said they might try more stringent measures if Obama does not make his case in the next two weeks. Their options include cutting funding for the operation, or voting formally to "disapprove" of the war.
3) Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, the top House Democrat on defense and appropriations is warning that President Obama can’t ignore growing "war fatigue" in Congress and must consider steps to accelerate a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Politico reports. "I think the American people would overwhelmingly like to see this brought to a conclusion sooner than 2014," Dicks said.
Dicks’s comments are important because of his long record of support for Obama on Afghanistan and special standing in Congress as the ranking Democrat on both the House Appropriations Committee and its defense panel overseeing the Pentagon budget, Politico says.
It was important last week when Dicks quietly sided with anti-war forces in backing an amendment demanding that Obama come up with plans this summer to accelerate the withdrawal and pursue a negotiated settlement with "all interested parties" in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Democrats appeared to have found some unity in their stance on the war, with only eight voting in opposition. Dicks’s shift was a big part of that picture, Politico says. "I think there are a lot of people changing their minds, and if this thing had had a little more time, it may have well passed," Dicks said.
At the White House on Thursday, the vote on Afghanistan was raised by Democrats with the president. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern made the point that 97 percent of Democrats had backed his language.
4) The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan says billions of dollars worth of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Afghanistan and Iraq could fall into disrepair over the next few years because inadequate provisions have been made to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance, the Washington Post reports. If immediate steps are not taken to address sustainability issues, the commission says, "the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan."
One of the commission’s chairmen said the cost of projects that cannot – or will not – be sustained by the Iraqi and Afghan governments "will make other forms of [contracting] waste pale in comparison."
5) Rep. Rosa DeLauro successfully convinced Republican appropriators to reduce a cut to child nutrition, by identifying a program less popular than assistance to the poor: cash payments to Brazilian cotton farmers, The Hill reports. The DeLauro amendment forbids payments under a deal with Brazil meant to satisfy a WTO ruling against U.S. cotton subsidies, which were found to be illegal under international trade rules. DeLauro said she thought the amendment would be attacked; the US cotton lobby supports the payments to Brazil, since they protect the US subsidy to domestic cotton producers.
Israel/Palestine
6) Meir Dagan, the former head of Mossad, says Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions – like an airstrike on Iran, the New York Times reports. Dagan complained that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 lines.
Dagan’s public and critical comments have shaken the Israeli political establishment, the Times says. "It’s not the Iranians or the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night but Israel’s leadership," asserted Ari Shavit on the front page of Friday’s Haaretz newspaper. "He does not trust the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak."
"Dagan is really worried about September," Shavit said, referring to the date when the Palestinians are expected to ask the General Assembly to recognize their state within the 1967 lines. The resolution is expected to pass and to bring new forms of international pressure on Israel. "He is afraid that Israel’s isolation will cause its leaders to take reckless action against Iran."
Iraq
7) Iraqi security forces arrested more than a dozen activists over the past week in a sweep rights groups called a pre-emptive strike to prevent a flickering reform movement from springing back to life, the New York Times reports. Rights groups said the people detained had been denied access to lawyers and visits with their families. Human Rights Watch said several activists had been "detained, interrogated and beaten."
Bahrain
8) Bahrain’s security forces are increasingly targeting women in their campaign against pro-democracy protesters, The Independent reports. There are signs that Bahraini police, riot police and special security are detaining and mistreating more and more women. Many are held incommunicado, forced to sign confessions or threatened with rape, according to Bahraini human rights groups. Bahrain is the first country affected by the Arab Spring where women have been singled out as targets for repression, The Independent says.
Honduras
9) When President Zelaya finally returned to Honduras, the sea of people greeting him at the Tegucigalpa airport and protesting the coup constituted by far the biggest demonstration in Honduran history, Dana Frank writes in The Nation. Even the pro-coup El Heraldo estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million people. TV Channel 11 said 900,000-or eleven percent of the entire Honduran population.
But the accord that permitted Zelaya’s triumphant return does nothing real to address the human rights crisis in Honduras. Repression of the opposition in the past three months has been worse than it was in the period immediately following the coup. Police and military routinely use tear gas canisters as lethal weapons, threats and assassinations of opposition journalists continue and free-range paramilitaries pick off campesino activists in the Aguán Valley.
On May 31, eighty-seven members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary Clinton, sponsored by Representatives James McGovern, Jan Schakowsky and Sam Farr, expressing concern over the human rights situation in Honduras and demanding a suspension of US military and police aid to Honduras – up from 30 signers of a similar letter last October.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) House Rebukes Obama Over Libya
Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, June 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/africa/04policy.html
Washington – The House of Representatives voted Friday to harshly rebuke President Obama for continuing to maintain an American role in NATO operations in Libya without the express consent of Congress, and directed the administration to provide detailed information about the cost and objectives of the American role in the conflict.
The resolution, which passed 268 to 145, was offered by Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio to siphon off swelling Republican support for a measure sponsored by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, which calls for a withdrawal of the United States military from the air and naval operations in and around Libya.
The resolution criticizing the president passed with the support of 45 Democrats and all but 10 Republicans.
The measure from Mr. Kucinich, one of the most liberal members of the House, later failed by 148 to 265, with 87 Republicans voting in favor.
As a legislative matter, the resolution has no practical effect and is little more than an expression of opinion. A decision by the Supreme Court over two decades ago suggested that Congress was not empowered to enforce a resolution or other directive that, unlike a bill, the president has no chance to veto.
But as a political matter, the resolution was an unusually blunt confrontation of a president during a continuing military conflict, and it underscored a bipartisan distaste among members of Congress for being bypassed when American forces are sent into a conflict.
[…] The War Powers Resolution says that presidents must terminate hostilities after 60 days if they have not been authorized by Congress; that deadline passed on May 20 without an explanation to Congress from the administration detailing why it thinks it was lawful for the operation to continue.
This lack of explanation, following Mr. Obama’s failure to obtain Congressional authorization for the engagement at the outset, angered both the anti-war factions of his own party in Congress, and conservative Republicans seeking to rein in executive power and federal spending alike. An intense floor debate ensued Friday over the nature of the conflict in Libya, the country’s importance to American security interests and the role of Congress in authorizing military campaigns.
The Boehner resolution demands that the administration provide, within 14 days, detailed information about the nature, cost and objectives of the American contribution to the NATO operation, as well as an explanation for why the White House did not come to Congress for permission.
Members on both sides complained of war fatigue in their districts, and the reluctance of constituents to support the opening of yet another conflict, although some members stressed the importance of supporting an ongoing operation, even if they did not agree with how it started.
[…]
2) House rebukes Obama on Libya mission, but does not demand withdrawal
David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post, Friday, June 3, 1:21 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-rebukes-obama-on-libya-mission-but-does-not-demand-withdrawal/2011/06/03/AGdrK8HH_story.html
The House on Friday rebuked President Obama for failing "to provide Congress with a compelling rationale" for the military campaign in Libya, but stopped short of demanding he withdraw U.S. forces from the fight.
By a vote of 257 to 156, the House approved a resolution that criticized Obama for not seeking congressional authorization for the 76-day-old campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
The resolution would give Obama 14 more days to convince Congress the attacks against Gaddafi are justified by U.S. interests.
The House rejected, by a vote of 148 to 265, a more drastic measure from one of the fixtures of anti-war sentiment in the House, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio). That resolution would have demanded Obama pull out of the Libyan operation within 15 days.
With those votes, the House stepped back from a confrontation over how America goes to war.
But perhaps only temporarily.
On Friday, legislators from both parties said they might try more stringent measures if Obama does not make his case in the next two weeks. Their options include cutting funding for the operation, or voting formally to "disapprove" of the war.
"This resolution puts the president on notice. He has a chance to get this right," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the author of the resolution that passed. "If he doesn’t … we will make it right."
[…] So far, the campaign has failed to dislodge Gaddafi. But it has done something rare on Capitol Hill: It has angered legislators so much that they considered sticking their nose in the middle of an ongoing military campaign.
"This is not the king’s army," Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) said during the House’s debate Friday. "This is an unconstitutional and illegal war. And I think it sets a very dangerous precedent."
Many legislators said they were concerned that Obama had missed a deadline set by the 1973 War Powers Resolution. That Nixon-era law requires presidents to obtain Congressional authorization for a foreign military operation within 60 days – or withdraw.
Last month, the 60-day deadline came and went. Obama did neither.
[…] "It is part of the trend of an aggrandizing executive, and a derelict Congress," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), during Friday’s debate. He said Congress was not using the powers allotted to it: "We are not legislators, we are not deciders. We inquire, and we advise."
During Friday’s debate, legislators from both parties said Boehner’s resolution was a good alternative to Kucinich’s, since it would not pull U.S. forces out of an ongoing NATO operation. Those who voted for Boehner’s bill included 25 Democrats and 232 Republicans.
[…] But it was clear that some legislators felt this rebuke was not enough: many Republicans voted in favor of the bill from Kucinich, a perennial outlier even within the Democratic party. Kucinich’s bill was supported by 87 Republicans and only 61 Democrats.
[…]
3) Top Democrat Norm Dicks becomes war critic
David Rogers, Politico, June 2, 2011 09:04 PM EDT
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56158.html
With surprising bluntness, the top House Democrat on defense and appropriations is warning that President Barack Obama can’t ignore the growing "war fatigue" in Congress and must consider steps to accelerate a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama’s policy, told POLITICO staying in Afghanistan into 2014, as first outlined by the president, will be difficult now given the budget pressures at home and the erratic performance of the chief U.S. partners in the region: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan.
"Between Karzai and Pakistan, I’m looking for a friend in the neighborhood, and I’m having a hard time finding one," Dicks said. "I think the military operation has been more successful recently, but all of a sudden – when you are faced with these incredible cuts we’re making in the domestic programs and the social safety net of this country – you know, to do nation building in Afghanistan? I’m having a hard time."
"I think it’s like $113 billion on Afghanistan, and there’s Pakistan’s situation, where we know on the border, people are coming across into Afghanistan," he said. "It’s a serious problem. I just think that there’s a war fatigue setting in up here, and I think the president is going to have to take that into account."
"We need to start seeing if we can do this a little faster," Dicks said. "I think the American people would overwhelmingly like to see this brought to a conclusion sooner than 2014."
Dicks’s comments are important because of his long record of support for Obama and special standing in Congress as the ranking Democrat on both the House Appropriations Committee and its defense panel overseeing the Pentagon budget. On an issue like the war, his opinions then carry weight with a wide range of Democrats.
"It’s a big indicator. People know him, respect him, know this is his subject area," Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) told POLITICO. "Clearly, we are at a turning point."
"The strongest part of his reputation is that he is an evidence-driven member. You can’t predict what he will do on something, and that is a compliment," said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.). "He doesn’t fall in an ideological box, and therefore, where he goes will have significant gravity."
New 2012 war funding, chiefly for Afghanistan, began moving through Dicks’s subcommittee Wednesday. And the measure is due on the House floor late this month – just as Obama is scheduled to announce his first drawdown of forces July 1.
Within the Democratic Caucus, Dicks doesn’t yet enjoy the same gravitas as his defense predecessor, the late Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a Marine veteran of Vietnam whose combat experience and anti-Iraq-war credentials helped him pull different factions together. But to lose Dicks’s support now would be a serious blow for the White House, and he is an important barometer for the party, given his daily exposure to domestic budget cuts as the top Democrat on appropriations – a post Murtha never held.
In the long and often bitter House debate over Iraq, Dicks never embraced the "anti-surge" posture of many Democrats, and when Obama began in 2009 to greatly expand the U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan, Dicks was bullish, even allowing that other nations would want to partner with the U.S. so as to be on the cutting edge of anti-insurgency tactics.
"I told everyone who would listen, ‘Don’t bet against the surge,’ because I felt, having gone over there, that this surge would work and we ought to be very careful," Dicks said in an interview 15 months ago. "As it turned out, that was correct. I’ve made a lot of other decisions that haven’t always been correct. On that one, I feel good, … and I feel the situation in Afghanistan also has a chance to turn around."
It was important last week when Dicks quietly sided with anti-war forces in backing an amendment demanding that Obama come up with plans this summer to accelerate the withdrawal and pursue a negotiated settlement with "all interested parties" in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.
The White House was largely dismissive, but the amendment only narrowly failed, 215-204, and came within a few votes of being an embarrassing rebuke for the administration.
Twenty-six Republicans joined the effort, and for the first time, Democrats appeared to have found some unity in their stance on the war, with only eight voting in opposition.
Dicks’s shift was a big part of that picture. He did not speak in the debate and ducked press inquiries later but agreed to talk briefly Wednesday off the floor of the House.
"I think there are a lot of people changing their minds, and if this thing had had a little more time, it may have well passed," he said. "The mentality is settling in."
Indeed, at the White House on Thursday, the same vote on Afghanistan was raised by Democrats with the president. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, the chief sponsor, made the point that 97 percent of Democrats had backed his language, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also spoke to the issue.
"I don’t think they’re going to be dismissive," Andrews said, describing the exchanges. Pelosi "mentioned it today pretty emphatically. The 97 percent number is pretty impressive, and people like Norm Dicks and people who are pro-defense-type Democrats, [that’s] pretty impressive."
4) U.S. projects in war zones are unsustainable, study finds
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, June 2
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-projects-in-war-zones-are-unsustainable-study-finds/2011/06/02/AGFRueHH_story.html
Billions of dollars worth of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Afghanistan and Iraq could fall into disrepair over the next few years because inadequate provisions have been made to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance, according to a report to be released Friday by a bipartisan legislative commission.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan says it "sees no indication" that the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are "effectively taking sustainability risks into account when devising new projects or programs."
If immediate steps are not taken to address sustainability issues, the commission says, "the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan."
One of the commission’s chairmen, Christopher Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut, said in an interview that the cost of projects that cannot – or will not – be sustained by the Iraqi and Afghan governments "will make other forms of [contracting] waste pale in comparison."
In a report issued in February, the commission estimated that those other forms of waste, including fraud and abuse, amounted to tens of billions of dollars of the $177 billion obligated by Congress since 2001 to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[…] High on the contracting commission’s list of concerns is the U.S. effort to build a new Afghan army and police force, which will cost an estimated $8 billion a year to maintain. That is a sum far beyond the means of the Kabul government, whose annual domestic revenue is about $2 billion.
Without a clear plan for paying for ongoing costs, the commission says, army bases, police stations, border outposts and other facilities built by the United States at a cost of $11.4 billion since 2005 could be at risk.
The Pentagon has received $35 billion from Congress to train and equip the Afghan security forces. The Obama administration is seeking an additional $12.8 billion for fiscal 2012 to continue that effort, which involves expanding the total force to 352,000 personnel.
Senior U.S. government officials have said that the United States will have to foot much of the bill for sustaining the Afghan forces. They maintain that doing so, even at a cost of $8 billion a year, is far cheaper than keeping large numbers of U.S. troops on Afghan soil.
But the commission’s other chairman, Michael Thibault, former deputy director of the Defense Department’s contract audit agency, warned that the military command responsible for training Afghan forces has not established an adequate oversight plan to ensure that U.S. funds will not be misspent once American troops step back from combat operations in 2014.
"Who is going to audit and award these contracts? Who is going to protect the interests of the American taxpayer to ensure these billions and billions of dollars are awarded appropriately?" Thibault said. "We believe the potential for waste is much more significant going forward."
[…] The commission also cited a $300 million power plant, completed last year by USAID near Kabul, that sits idle most of the time because the Afghan government has been able to buy electricity from neighboring Uzbekistan at a fraction of the cost. The plant, the commission writes, stands "as an example of poor planning and waste."
[…]
5) Democrats get creative to prevent deep cuts to anti-poverty programs
Erik Wasson, The Hill, 06/02/11 05:50 AM ET
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/164313-democrats-get-creative-to-prevent-deep-cuts-to-anti-poverty-programs
A Democratic appropriator this week successfully convinced Republican appropriators to reduce a cut to child nutrition, but Democrats have only faint hope that the rare victory can be repeated.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) was able late Tuesday to convince her colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee to restore $147 million to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food assistance program, which otherwise would have been cut by $832 million, or 12 percent, in the 2012 agriculture bill.
With a voice vote, DeLauro fought off the cuts by identifying a program less popular than assistance to the poor: cash payments to Brazilian cotton farmers.
The DeLauro amendment forbids payments under an Obama administration-negotiated deal with Brazil meant to satisfy a World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. cotton subsidies, which were found to be illegal under international trade rules.
"None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act may be used to provide payments (or to pay the salaries and expenses of personnel to provide payments) to the Brazil Cotton Institute," the DeLauro amendment states.
In an interview, DeLauro said she fears the victory could be both short-lived and one of a kind. "I don’t think they will let it stand. I think they will attack it on the floor," she said of Republicans.
[…] Not making the Brazil payment could open the U.S. to WTO-sanctioned trade retaliation by Brazil. The WTO has found U.S. export credit guarantees and cotton subsidies to illegally distort world trade. The U.S. altered the export guarantees but has been allowed to maintain the cotton subsidies pending the next farm bill, so long as the Cotton Institute payments are made.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
6) Former Spy Chief Questions Israeli Leaders’ Judgment
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, June 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/middleeast/04mossad.html
Jerusalem – The man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and that anticipated pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions – like an airstrike on Iran.
The former intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, who stepped down after eight years, has made several unusual public appearances and statements in recent weeks. He first made headlines a few weeks ago when he asserted at a Hebrew University conference that attacking Iran militarily would be "a stupid idea."
This week Mr. Dagan, speaking at Tel Aviv University, said that attacking Iran "would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program." He added, "The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible."
Mr. Dagan went on to complain that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 lines. He worried that soon Israel would be pushed into a corner.
On Thursday he got more specific, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but this time through a leaked statement to journalists. It had to do with his belief that his retirement and those of other top security chiefs had taken away a necessary counterforce in decision making.
In recent months, the military chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, also stepped down. Mr. Dagan was quoted in several newspapers as saying that the three of them had served as a counterweight to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak.
"I decided to speak out because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure," he was quoted as saying. "Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak," he added, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.
Journalists recalled that Mr. Dagan, who had refused contact with the media during his time in office, called a news briefing the last week of his tenure and laid out his concerns about an attack on Iran. But military censorship prevented his words from being reported.
"Dagan wanted to send a message to the Israeli public, but the censors stopped him," Ronen Bergman of Yediot Aharonot, said by telephone. "So now that he is out of office he is going over the heads of the censors by speaking publicly."
Mr. Dagan’s public and critical comments, at the age of 66 and after a long and widely admired career, have shaken the political establishment. The prime minister’s office declined requests for a response although ministers have attacked him. He has also found an echo among the nation’s commentators who have been ringing similar alarms.
"It’s not the Iranians or the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night but Israel’s leadership," asserted Ari Shavit on the front page of Friday’s Haaretz newspaper. "He does not trust the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak."
It was Mr. Shavit who interviewed Mr. Dagan on stage at Tel Aviv University this week. And while Haaretz is the home of the country’s left wing, Mr. Shavit is more of a centrist.
"Dagan is really worried about September," Mr. Shavit said in a telephone interview, referring to the date when the Palestinians are expected to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize their state within the 1967 lines. The resolution is expected to pass and to bring new forms of international pressure on Israel. "He is afraid that Israel’s isolation will cause its leaders to take reckless action against Iran."
Nahum Barnea, a commentator for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, wrote on Friday that Mr. Dagan was not alone. Naming the other retired security chiefs and adding Amos Yadlin, who recently retired as chief of military intelligence, Mr. Barnea said that they shared Mr. Dagan’s criticism.
"This is not a military junta that has conspired against the elected leadership," Mr. Barnea wrote. "These are people who, through their positions, were exposed to the state’s most closely-guarded secrets and participated in the most intimate discussions with the prime minister and the defense minister. It is not so much that their opinion is important as civilians; their testimony is important as people who were there. And their testimony is troubling."
This concern was backed by a former Mossad official, Gad Shimron, who spoke Friday on Israel Radio.
Mr. Shimron said: "I want everyone to pay attention to the fact that the three tribal elders, Ashkenazi, Diskin and Dagan, within a very short time, are all telling the people of Israel: take note, something is going on that we couldn’t talk about until now, and now we are talking about it. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and that is the decision-making process. The leadership makes fiery statements, we stepped on the brakes, we are no longer there and we don’t know what will happen. And that’s why we are saying this aloud."
[…]
Iraq
7) Iraq Arrests Seen As Effort To Squelch More Protests
Jack Healy and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times, June 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html
Baghdad – Iraqi security forces arrested more than a dozen activists here over the past week in a sweep that rights groups called a pre-emptive strike to prevent a flickering reform movement from springing back to life.
Elsewhere in Iraq, in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province west of Baghdad, a series of explosions on Thursday aimed at security forces killed 15 people and wounded 20, local officials said.
The detentions in Baghdad came just days before the government faces a self-imposed deadline to demonstrate improvements in services and government reforms. Some analysts have said that if this date passes without significant reforms, there could be new rounds of reinvigorated demonstrations.
By Thursday, security forces had released most of those detained, according to an Iraqi human rights activist, who said that four remained in jail.
The Baghdad Operations Command, the capital security force controlled by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, denied it had arrested anyone for demonstrating. In a statement on its Web site, the force said the four men still being detained had been arrested for carrying fake identification cards, an allegation their family members dismissed as ludicrous.
The youth protest movement, in which demonstrators thronged the streets of major cities last winter, demanding better government services and an end to corruption, had quieted to a near whisper lately, its momentum sapped by harsh security measures, dozens of arrests and a gradual ebb in public interest.
[…] Rights groups said the people detained had been denied access to lawyers and visits with their families, and criticized the arrests as a ploy to stifle any dissent in the streets, even if it was peaceful and relatively low-key.
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that several activists had been "detained, interrogated and beaten," and that there were signs that security officials had been tracking the movements of the protest organizers.
After large protests in February, Iraq’s leaders tried to offer constructive responses by cracking down on corrupt officials and wasteful government programs, and by increasing fuel and food subsidies. But the security forces, who are ultimately under Mr. Maliki’s authority, also swept up dozens of demonstrators, journalists and intellectuals after large-scale marches, drawing criticism from American officials.
Parents and friends of the four men still in jail in Baghdad described them as students who had been inspired by the calls for better government, more honest leaders and functioning public services, and who spent most of their free time updating their Facebook pages, or huddling together to discuss the next demonstration.
[…]
Bahrain
8) Locked up for reading a poem
Ayat al-Gormezi, the woman who symbolises Bahrain’s fight for freedom
Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Thursday, 2 June 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/locked-up-for-reading-a-poem-2292032.html
Bahrain’s security forces are increasingly targeting women in their campaign against pro-democracy protesters despite yesterday lifting martial law in the island kingdom.
Ayat al-Gormezi, 20, a poet and student arrested two months ago after reading out a poem at a pro-democracy rally, is due to go on trial today before a military tribunal, her mother said. Ayat was forced to turn herself in when masked policemen threatened to kill her brothers unless she did so.
She has not been seen since her arrest, though her mother did talk to her once by phone and Ayat said that she had been forced to sign a false confession. Her mother has since been told that her daughter has been in a military hospital after being tortured.
"We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery," a film captures Ayat telling a cheering crowd of protesters in Pearl Square in February. "We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice." She addresses King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa directly and says to him: "Don’t you hear their cries, don’t you hear their screams?" As she finishes, the crowd shouts: "Down with Hamad."
Ayat’s call for change was no more radical than that heard in the streets of Tunis, Cairo and Benghazi at about the same time. But her reference to the king might explain the fury shown by the Bahraini security forces who, going by photographs of the scene, smashed up her bedroom when they raided her house and could not find her.
There are signs that Bahraini police, riot police and special security are detaining and mistreating more and more women. Many are held incommunicado, forced to sign confessions or threatened with rape, according to Bahraini human rights groups.
Bahrain is the first country affected by the Arab Spring where women have been singled out as targets for repression. Human rights groups say that hundreds have been arrested. Many women complain of being severely beaten while in custody. One woman journalist was beaten so badly that she could not walk.
A woman doctor, who was later released but may be charged, says she was threatened with rape. She told Reuters news agency that the police said: "We are 14 guys in this room, do you know what we can do to you? It’s the emergency law [martial law] and we are free to do what we want."
[…] Despite the lifting of martial law, imposed on 15 March, there is no sign of repression easing. Some 600 people are still detained, at least 2,000 have been sacked, and some 27 mosques of the Shia, who make up 70 per cent of the population, have been bulldozed.
[…] The targeting of women by the security forces may, like the destruction of mosques, have the broader aim of demonstrating to the Shia community that the Sunni elite will show no restraint in preventing the Shia winning political power. Shia leaders complain that the state-controlled media is continuing to pump out sectarian anti-Shia propaganda.
[…] The government has been detaining and beating local reporters. The one international journalist based permanently in Bahrain was ordered out this month. Even foreign correspondents with entry visas have been denied entry when they arrive in Bahrain.
[…]
Honduras
9) Zelaya Returns to Honduras, But Justice Is Still Not Done
Dana Frank, The Nation, June 2, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/161102/zelaya-returns-honduras-justice-still-not-done
When President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya finally returned to Honduras on Saturday, May 28, almost two years after he was deposed in a June 2009 military coup, the sea of people in red t-shirts greeting him at the Tegucigalpa airport and protesting the coup extended so far out into the streets that no one could really count them. It was by far the biggest demonstration in Honduran history. Even the pro-coup El Heraldo estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million people. TV Channel 11 said 900,000-or eleven percent of the entire Honduran population.
But what did Zelaya’s triumphant return really mean? Certainly not that justice has been restored to Honduras, repression ended or social justice addressed. The accord with current de facto President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, offers nothing beyond dropping the trumped-up charges against Zelaya, permitting his re-entry.
Zelaya’s return does have enormous popular significance. Even for those who are quite critical of him, he is the grand symbol of resistance to the military coup and of constitutional order. His return offers a brief gleam of hope and dramatically changes the political landscape in Honduras.
But supporters of the ongoing coup regime are happy, too. Up north, the US mainstream media was quick to declare that "the crisis is now over." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s been desperately seeking Zelaya’s return in order to create the semblance of two-party democracy, immediately announced that Honduras could now be readmitted to the Organization of American States. The fix was in: on Wednesday, June 1, the OAS indeed readmitted Honduras, with only Ecuador dissenting.
But the pact does nothing real to address the human rights crisis in Honduras. As a statement issued by twenty prominent groups-representing Honduran judges, ministers, women, indigenous, gay people, Afro-Hondurans and human rights activists-underscored, the original conditions for readmission to the OAS, including prosecution of the coup perpetrators, have by no means been met. "Innumerable violations of human rights" were committed during the coup, they note, but the accord "doesn’t record these facts; nor does it establish an effective mechanism for their investigations, sanction, and adequate reparation."
Repression of the opposition in the past three months has in fact been worse than it was in the period immediately following the coup. Lobo’s police and military now routinely use tear gas canisters as lethal weapons, threats and assassinations of opposition journalists continue (including two murders in May) and free-range paramilitaries pick off campesino activists one by one in the Aguán Valley, where four people were killed in May alone. Two days after the accord, Lobo’s police used tear gas and live bullets against a group of high school students protesting their math teachers’ dismissal.
The judiciary system, moreover, is largely nonfunctional. Complete impunity reigns for the over thirty-six politically-motivated assassinations and over 300 suspicious murders of opposition members since Lobo took office, according to COFADEH, the leading independent human rights group in the country. The same military officers who perpetrated the coup are in charge of the armed forces and the state-owned telephone company.
Lobo-himself elected in a fraudulent November 2009 election, controlled by the army and boycotted by the opposition and international observers- weakly promises in the accord to pay attention to human rights. But with nothing concrete in the text, it’s merely the fox swearing he’ll guard the chicken coop even more carefully. "Human rights are not subject to political negotiation," COFADEH emphasized, in response to the accord.
A large and growing segment of the US Congress, fortunately, isn’t fooled. On May 31, eighty-seven members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary Clinton, sponsored by Representatives James McGovern, Jan Schakowsky and Sam Farr, expressing concern over the human rights situation in Honduras and demanding a suspension of US military and police aid to Honduras-up from 30 signers of a similar letter last October.
And what about the Honduran resistance, which has already paid such a terrible price?
It’s pivoting to deal with the new reality of Zelaya’s presence and his accord with Lobo. Internally, a ferocious debate is raging, between those who support the entrance of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) into electoral politics right now-which could translate into formal political power, but risks patronage opportunism and slippage into a revived version of the old oligarchic Liberal Party-and the social movement base within the opposition, which wants to build a horizontal base more slowly and is concerned about decision-making processes within the frente.
In this new, rapid-fire political context, the question is how to seize the moment and translate that mass of politically-engaged Hondurans in red t-shirts into fundamental social, economic and political change. As Eugenio Sosa, a prominent Honduran intellectual, queried on the radio as Zelaya’s plane was about to land, "This multitude-for what?"
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