Just Foreign Policy News
July 18, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Glenn Greenwald: How the U.S. government uses its media servants to attack real journalism
Glenn Greenwald examines the big media response to Jeremy Scahill’s revelation in The Nation that the CIA is operating a "proxy black site" prison in Somalia.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/15/somalia
Robin Broad and John Cavanagh: Like Water for Gold in El Salvador
Salvadorans are fighting US and Canadian mining companies eager to extract gold near the Lempa River, the water source for more than half of El Salvador’s 6.2 million people. Civilians have been killed or are receiving death threats. The communities’ goal: to make El Salvador the first nation to ban gold mining.
http://www.thenation.com/article/162009/water-gold-el-salvador
International Solidarity Movement: Media Activists Needed in Palestine
ISM is seeking a minimum 3 month commitment, and will provide accommodation during your stay.
http://palsolidarity.org/2011/07/19462/
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Longtime CIA officer Robert Baer is predicting Israel will bomb Iran this fall, dragging the US into another major war and endangering U.S. military and civilian personnel throughout the Middle East, former AIPAC official MJ Rosenberg warns for Media Matters. Baer was especially impressed by the unprecedented warning about Netanyahu’s plans by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict," Baer said.
2) Organizers said a French yacht carrying Palestine solidarity activists is expected to approach Gaza Tuesday, Al Jazeera reports. The Dignite Al Karama left the Greek island of Kastellorizo Saturday. At least 16 people are aboard the boat, including three crew members and journalists from Al Jazeera and Haaretz. The crew and seven of the passengers are French, while another three are representing boats which were blocked from leaving Greece.
3) The top Republican and Democrat foreign aid leaders in the House are warning the Palestinian Authority that U.S. aid will be withheld if the Palestinians seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN in September, Josh Rogin writes for Foreign Policy. On July 7, the House passed a resolution opposing the statehood plan by a 407-6 vote. The Senate passed the same resolution unanimously.
4) The State Department has halted a high-school exchange program with Afghanistan because too many of the Afghan participants were fleeing to claim asylum in Canada rather than return to Afghanistan, NPR reports. Last year, half the students on the program fled to Canada to claim asylum.
5) Last week marked the formal end of the Canadian combat mission in Afghanistan, Laura King writes in the Los Angeles Times. Allied nations with forces in Afghanistan have made no secret of their wish to follow suit, particularly in the wake of Obama’s decision to withdraw 33,000 American troops by the end of next summer. French President Sarkozy said he planned to bring home 1,000 of France’s 4,000 troops by the end of next year. Britain said it would bring home 450 troops in the next six months. Years of costly Canadian efforts had little overall military effect in Kandahar, King writes. Kandaharis said they did not expect Canadian projects to leave a permanent mark.
6) Campaigners against US drone strikes in Pakistan are calling for the CIA’s former legal chief, John Rizzo, to be charged with murder for approving attacks that killed hundreds of people, the Guardian reports. British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the campaign group Reprieve said he is confident that Pakistan will approve an arrest warrant, and that Interpol will have to follow suit.
7) A federal judge reacted skeptically Tuesday to the Obama administration’s request to dismiss on national security grounds a lawsuit by an American citizen who says he was held in Africa for four months and allegedly interrogated more than 30 times by U.S. officials, AP reports. Amir Mohamed Meshal says U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia.
Bahrain
8) Human Rights Watch alleged that Bahraini security forces have attacked doctors and nurses, lay siege to hospitals and clinics, detained protesters who sought treatment, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of medical personnel, Al Jazeera reports. Since mid-March, when the government stifled the uprising, the government has arrested more than 70 medical professionals, including several dozen doctors, and has put 48 on trial in a special military court, Human Rights Watch said.
Iran
9) Neocons are escalating their efforts to rehabilitate the Iranian terrorist group MEK as part of their campaign for war with Iran, Ali Fatemi and Karim Pakravan write for Truthout. They note that the MEK is widely seen by Iranians as a militaristic cult that betrayed Iran by siding with Saddam during the Iraqi invasion. They question why a group on the State Department’s terrorist list is so cozy with many Members of Congress.
Afghanistan
10) A close adviser to President Karzai was killed Sunday after two gunmen stormed his home, the New York Times reports. It was the second killing in less than a week of one of the president’s trusted allies, the Times notes.
Israel/Palestine
11) Israeli general Avi Mizrahi said the yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar harbors "Jewish terror" and must be shut down, Haaretz reports. Yitzhar has become known as one of the most radical settlements in the West Bank. One if its rabbis was detained last year following the publication of his book which called for the killing of non-Jews who seek to harm Israel, but was not charged with any crime.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Former CIA Official: Israel Will Bomb Iran In September
MJ Rosenberg, Media Matters, July 15, 2011
http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201107150010
A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering U.S. military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.
Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organized opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organize Saddam’s assassination.) Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.
Baer is no ordinary CIA operative. George Clooney won an Oscar for playing a character based on Baer in the film Syriana (Baer also wrote the book).
He obviously won’t name many of his sources in Israel, the United States and elsewhere, but the few he has named are all Israeli security figures who have publicly warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.
Baer was especially impressed by the unprecedented warning about Netanyahu’s plans by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. Dagan left the Israeli intelligence agency in September 2010. Two months ago, he predicted that Israel would attack and said that doing so would be "the stupidest thing" he could imagine. According to Haaretz:
‘When asked about what would happen in the aftermath of an Israeli attack Dagan said that: "It will be followed by a war with Iran. It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end."
The Iranians have the capability to fire rockets at Israel for a period of months, and Hizbollah could fire tens of thousands of grad rockets and hundreds of long-range missiles, he said.’
According to Ben Caspit of Israeli daily Maariv, Dagan’s blasts at Israel’s political leadership are significant not only because Mossad chiefs, in office or retired, traditionally have kept their lips sealed but also because Dagan is very conservative on security matters.
Caspit writes that Dagan is "one of the most rightwing militant people ever born here. … When this man says that the leadership has no vision and is irresponsible, we should stop sleeping soundly at night."
Dagan describes the current Israeli government as "dangerous and irresponsible" and views speaking out against Netanyahu as his patriotic duty.
And his abhorrence of Netanyahu is not uncommon in the Israeli security establishment. According to Think Progress, citing the Forward newspaper, 12 of the 18 living ex-chiefs of Israel’s two security agencies (Mossad and Shin Bet), are "either actively opposing Netanyahu’s stances or have spoken out against them." Of the remaining six, two are current ministers in Netanyahu government, leaving a grand total of four out of 18 who independently support the prime minister.
In short, while Congress dutifully gives Netanyahu 29 standing ovations, the Israelis who know the most about both Netanyahu and Israel’s strategic situation think he is a dangerous disaster.
But according to Baer, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict," Baer explained.
The Israeli air force would attack "Natanz and other nuclear facilities to degrade their capabilities. The Iranians will strike back where they can: Basra, Baghdad," he said, and even Afghanistan. Then the United States would jump into the fight with attacks on Iranian targets. "Our special forces are already looking at Iranian targets in Iraq and across the border [in Iran] which we would strike. What we’re facing here is an escalation, rather than a planned out-and-out war. It’s a nightmare scenario. We don’t have enough troops in the Middle East to fight a war like that." He added, "I think we are looking into the abyss."
Masters asked Baer why the U.S. military is not mobilizing to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he’s gone now and "there is a warning order inside the Pentagon" to prepare for war.
[…]
2) French ‘aid ship’ sails towards Gaza
Yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists expected to reach Gaza Strip on Tuesday after leaving Greek waters.
Al Jazeera, 18 Jul 2011 11:00
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/07/201171893938978204.html
A French yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists which set sail from a Greek island at the weekend, is expected to reach the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, organizers said.
The Dignite Al Karama left the Greek island of Kastellorizo late on Saturday following a troubled stay in Greece after Athens imposed a ban on the departure of any ships planning to join an international aid flotilla heading for Gaza.
The flotilla had hoped to break an Israeli naval blockade on the Palestinian territory, despite warnings from the Israeli government.
"The boat should be off the Gaza coast on Tuesday afternoon," Maxime Guimberteau, a spokesman, told AFP news agency by phone from Paris on Monday. "It is traveling slowly, mainly to conserve fuel," he said.
At least 16 people are aboard the boat, including three crew members and journalists from Al Jazeera and Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.
The crew and seven of the passengers are French nationals, while another three are representing boats which had been due to join the flotilla but were blocked from leaving Greece.
[…] "This ‘little’ boat symbolizes the determination of the international solidarity movement to break the blockade on Gaza and express its support for the 1.6 million Palestinians imprisoned there since 2007," a statement from the boat said. "The fact that the Dignite Al Karama is at sea is a setback for the Israeli government which by force or by pressure is trying to perpetuate an illegal and criminal blockade and to silence civil society movements around the world," it said.
[…] Meanwhile, Israel’s parliament suspended an Arab politician on Monday for sailing aboard last year’s flotilla. The Knesset’s Ethics Committee voted to suspend Hanin Zoabi from most parliamentary debates until the summer recess early next month, while allowing her to take part in any votes held in the current session.
[…] Zoabi, who has denied wrongdoing in the flotilla incident, says she tried to mediate between the activists and Israeli forces. "An automatic right-wing majority should not be permitted to punish me for my political views," she told Israel’s Army Radio.
Zoabi, 42, the only female member of parliament in a party representing Israel’s 20 per cent Arab minority, is a critic of the Israeli government’s Palestinian policies. She was stripped of some of her diplomatic privileges by the Knesset last year.
3) House leaders to Palestine: seek U.N. recognition, forget foreign aid
Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy/The Cable, Friday, July 15, 2011 – 2:24 PM
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/15/house_leaders_to_palestine_seek_un_recognition_forget_foreign_aid
The top Republican and Democrat foreign aid leaders in the House of Representatives are warning the Palestinian Authority (PA) that U.S. aid will be withheld if the Palestinians seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September.
"We write to reiterate our serious concerns about your intentions to pursue recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations," reads a July 11 letter sent to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas by the leaders of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee Kay Granger (R-TX) and Nita Lowey (D-NY), obtained by The Cable.
"It has been the longstanding belief of the United States government that the path to a true and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis will come only as a result of direct negotiations. We write to reaffirm that belief and warn of the severe consequences of abandoning it."
The Obama administration has been clear that it doesn’t support the Palestinian plan to seek a vote on statehood at the United Nations in September, but it so far hasn’t spelled out any consequences for the Palestinians if they should choose to do so. Congress, on the other hand, is doing a lot to make those consequences known. On July 7, the House passed a resolution opposing the statehood plan by a 407-6 vote. The Senate passed the same resolution unanimously.
[…]
4) U.S. Quietly Halts Scholarship For Afghan Students
Quil Lawrence, NPR, July 14, 2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137648917/u-s-quietly-halts-scholarship-for-afghan-students
The U.S. State Department has funded international student exchanges for decades, looking to form lifelong bonds and increase understanding across borders.
One program brought hundreds of Afghan high school students to small communities in the U.S. beginning in 2004.
But this year, the U.S. has quietly suspended the popular youth exchange. The reason? Fear of a dark future in Afghanistan was prompting too many of the students to bail out of the program and seek asylum elsewhere.
When Afghan high school student Sam, whose name has been changed, won a prestigious spot in the U.S. State Department’s Youth Exchange and Study program, known as the YES program, he had no intention of becoming a refugee. Sam was a few months into a school year in San Antonio when the first worried call came from home. "It’s just, my mom … she thought I’d be in danger if I returned to Afghanistan," Sam says.
Sam spoke to NPR at a noisy shopping mall in his new home, Toronto. He left Texas in April 2009 and crossed into Canada, which has a government program for minors seeking asylum.
The calls from home had gotten worse. The local mullah had lectured Sam’s father about allowing his son to be corrupted in the West, and then his family says it started getting threats.
Sam’s family members are Hazaras, a Shiite minority in Afghanistan that in the past were singled out for persecution by the Taliban. With talk of a U.S. troop drawdown, Sam’s family told him to stay in the West, and perhaps help them escape someday.
"I miss my family, especially my mom, because every time I talk to her on the phone she just starts crying. I don’t miss Afghanistan, but I miss my family a lot," he says.
Sam’s case is far from unique, and what started as a small leak of students jumping the program soon became a torrent. Last year, half the students on the program fled to Canada to claim asylum. This winter, the State Department quietly suspended the YES program – with great sorrow, says Matt Lussenhop of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
[…]
5) Canada’s Exit Highlights Afghanistan Challenges
Other allied nations have made no secret of their wish to follow suit, and the withdrawals will place a heavier burden on those troops left behind. Senior U.S. officials have been reassuring wary Afghans, who say violence is still rampant.
Laura King, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-exit-20110716,0,1085507.story
Kandahar, Afghanistan – The air conditioning in the cavernous military assembly hall didn’t generate enough of a breeze to flutter the long strings of plastic Canadian flags. Some in the audience squirmed in their seats during a lengthy farewell address by an Afghan general. And with that, it was over.
The formal end of the Canadian combat mission, commemorated in a ceremony last week at NATO’s main base in the south, marked the first battlefield exit by a core member of the U.S.-led coalition. With the departure of 2,850 combat troops, an ally that had deployed forces to Afghanistan in the earliest days of the nearly 10-year-old war bowed out.
Allied nations with forces in Afghanistan have made no secret of their wish to follow suit, particularly in the wake of President Obama’s decision to withdraw 33,000 American troops, about one-third of the total here, by the end of next summer. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, visiting Afghanistan this week, said he planned to bring home 1,000 of France’s 4,000 troops by the end of next year. Qualms about the mission have been growing in France, spurred by Wednesday’s deaths of five French soldiers in a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan.
The German government has also said it wants to pare its presence. Britain said this month it would bring home 450 troops in the next six months.
The pullbacks will place a heavier burden on those troops left behind, most of whom are Americans.
[…] For the Canadians, Kandahar province proved a killing field, and the sustained ferocity of combat here shocked a nation that had primarily envisioned a peacekeeping mission. At home in Canada, the war felt intensely personal; citizens routinely lined a highway bridge to pay respects when the bodies of fallen soldiers were repatriated.
Although Canada’s contingent was only NATO’s sixth-largest, it suffered disproportionate casualties: 157 deaths, according to the independent website icasualties.org, roughly equal to the combined fatalities sustained by larger troop contributors Germany, France and Italy.
Despite an arduous fight, the Canadians were too thinly deployed to break the Taliban grip on strategic districts surrounding Kandahar city. That did not happen until last summer, when American-led forces that had arrived in the Obama-ordered "surge" of troops dislodged the insurgents from key areas in the province.
Many Kandaharis believe the net effect of clearing outlying districts of insurgents has been to make the city itself more dangerous. And while they acknowledge that travel outside Kandahar is safer than it has been in several years, some rural landowners are not yet ready to risk moving their families back to isolated farm villages.
"It’s a cat-and-mouse game with the Taliban," said Ahad Maiwandi, whose family holdings are in Maiwand district, about 30 miles from Kandahar. "And people perceive that the cat is growing tired. So I think the Taliban will be back."
The fact that years of costly Canadian efforts had little overall military effect in Kandahar province lent some awkwardness to the transfer to American forces. U.S. Army Col. Todd Wood, commander of the incoming Task Force Arctic Wolves, paid tribute to their sacrifices but said their departure would make little real difference to the fight.
[…] The Canadians pointed with pride to a stay in Kandahar that produced many development projects, such as schools and clinics. But even some local people who were appreciative of those efforts said they did not expect the Canadian projects to leave a permanent mark. Relations with local and provincial officials were sometimes testy; Kandahar’s governor, Tooryalai Wesa, skipped the farewell ceremony.
[…]
6) Campaigners seek arrest of former CIA legal chief over Pakistan drone attacks
UK human rights lawyer leads bid to have John Rizzo arrested over claims he approved attacks that killed hundreds of people
Peter Beaumont, Guardian, Friday 15 July 2011 15.57 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/15/cia-usa
Campaigners against US drone strikes in Pakistan are calling for the CIA’s former legal chief to be arrested and charged with murder for approving attacks that killed hundreds of people.
Amid growing concern around the world over the use of drones, lawyers and relatives of some of those killed are seeking an international arrest warrant for John Rizzo, until recently acting general counsel for the American intelligence agency.
Opponents of drones say the unmanned aircraft are responsible for the deaths of up to 2,500 Pakistanis in 260 attacks since 2004. US officials say the vast majority of those killed are "militants". Earlier this week 48 people were killed in two strikes on tribal regions of Pakistan. The American definition of "militant" has been disputed by relatives and campaigners.
The attempt to seek an international arrest warrant for Rizzo is being led by the British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the campaign group Reprieve, and lawyers in Pakistan. The lawyers are also building cases against other individuals, including drone operators interviewed or photographed during organized press facilities.
A first information report, the first step in seeking a prosecution of Rizzo in Pakistan, will be formally lodged early next week at a police station in the capital, Islamabad, on behalf of relatives of two people killed in drone strikes in 2009. The report will also allege Rizzo should be charged with conspiracy to murder a large number of Pakistani citizens.
Now retired, Rizzo, 63, is being pursued after admitting in an interview with the magazine Newsweek that since 2004 he had approved one drone attack order a month on targets in Pakistan, even though the US is not at war with the country.
Rizzo, who was by his own admission "up to my eyeballs" in approving CIA use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", said in the interview that the CIA operated "a hit list". He also asked: "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?"
[…] Although US government lawyers have tried to argue that drone strikes are conducted on a "solid legal basis", some believe the civilians who operate the drones could be classified as "unlawful combatants".
[…] Much of the intelligence for the attacks is supplied either by the Pakistani military or the ISI, the country’s controversial intelligence agency.
Both have blocked journalists and human rights investigators from visiting the tribal areas targeted, preventing independent verification of the numbers killed and their status.
While Stafford Smith of Reprieve estimates around 2,500 civilian deaths, others say the number is closer to 1,000. US sources deny large numbers of civilian deaths and say only a few dozen "non-combatants" have been killed.
While killing civilians in military operations is not illegal under international law unless it is proved to be deliberate, disproportionate or reckless, Stafford Smith believes the nature of the US drone campaign puts it on a different legal footing.
"The US has to follow the laws of war," he said. "The issue here is that this is not a war. There is zero chance, given the current political situation in Pakistan, that we will not get a warrant for Rizzo. The question is what happens next. We can try for extradition and the US will refuse. "Interpol, I believe, will have to issue a warrant because there is no question that it is a legitimate complaint."
The warrant will be sought on the basis of two test cases. The first centers on an incident on 7 September 2009 when a drone strike hit a compound during Ramadan, brought by a man named Sadaullah who lost both his legs and three relatives in the attack.
The second complaint was brought by Kareem Khan over a strike on 31 December 2009 in the village of Machi Khel in North Waziristan which killed his son and brother. Both men allege Rizzo was involved in authorizing the attack.
[…] The use of drones has been sharply criticized both by Pakistani officials as well as international investigators including the UN’s special rapporteur Philip Alston who demanded in late 2009 that the US demonstrate that it was not simply running a program with no accountability that is killing innocent people.
7) Judge skeptical of Obama administration arguments in suit by US citizen detained in Africa
Associated Press, July 12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts-law/judge-skeptical-of-obama-administration-arguments-in-suit-by-us-citizen-detained-in-africa/2011/07/12/gIQAUXAKBI_story.html
Washington – A federal judge reacted skeptically Tuesday to the Obama administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by an American citizen who says he was held in Africa for four months and allegedly interrogated more than 30 times by U.S. officials.
At a two-hour hearing in Washington, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan repeatedly said he was required to accept as true at this early phase of the case the allegations by Amir Mohamed Meshal.
Meshal says that U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia.
Meshal became caught up in anti-terrorism operations in the Horn of Africa. He and thousands of other civilians fled Somalia where he says he had gone in 2006 to study Islam. Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with tacit U.S. government backing in support of a weak, but internationally backed, government and Meshal was apprehended in a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the Somalia-Kenya border.
Meshal is suing two FBI agents and 12 other unnamed people working for the U.S. government.
[…] Seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, Meshal, a Muslim man living in Tinton Falls, N.J., said that before he was freed, he was subjected to unlawful rendition from Kenya to Somalia and Ethiopia carried out at the behest of U.S. officials.
The lawsuit says Meshal’s constitutional rights to due process were violated as was his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
U.S. authorities in Washington have said they had interviewed Meshal in Kenya and that they determined he was not a threat and had not violated U.S. law. The State Department also said it formally protested his deportation from Kenya to Ethiopia.
Bahrain
8) Report: Doctors targeted in Bahrain
Rights group alleges medics were beaten and arrested as government sought to stop protesters from receiving treatment.
Al Jazeera, 18 Jul 2011 08:47
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/07/2011718674562571.html
Bahraini security forces attacked doctors and nurses, lay siege to hospitals and clinics, detained protesters who sought treatment, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of medical personnel after unrest hit the island kingdom in February, a prominent human rights organization has alleged.
Since mid-March, when the government stifled the uprising, the government has arrested more than 70 medical professionals, including several dozen doctors, and has put 48 on trial in a special military court, Human Rights Watch alleged in a 24-page report released on Monday.
The organization called on Bahrain to stop harassing medical personnel, withdraw all security forces from health centers and release all those facing minor charges, while providing due process to those accused of more serious crimes.
The report also called on the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation into the government crackdown.
"The Bahraini government’s violent campaign of intimidation against the medical community and its interference in the provision of vital medical assistance to injured protesters is one of the most egregious aspects of its brutal repression of the pro-democracy protest movement," the report stated.
[…] Since the crackdown, hundreds of detainees, including doctors, remain in custody facing politically motivated trials, Human Rights Watch said. Around 30 people are believed to have died during the uprising, while more than 500 were injured.
[…] Attacks on medical personnel began almost as soon as demonstrations did, according to Monday’s report. On February 17, police moved in on the Pearl Roundabout protesters without warning, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and pellets.
Though a team of medical volunteers, some of them wearing Red Crescent jackets, identified themselves as medics, they were beaten by police.
[…] After the Gulf Cooperation Council force moved into Bahrain to quash the uprising, the crackdown on medical personnel entered a new phase, according to the report.
On March 15 and 16, security forces surrounded a health centre in Sitra, one of the country’s larger Shia towns, and then commandeered the SMC. Men armed with pistols and automatic rifles, some of then masked, effectively put the SMC into "lockdown," the report said, and began ordering many of the injured protesters to the sixth floor, where they had control.
The Bahraini military began "calling all the shots", a doctor told Human Rights Watch. The situation was much the same at other clinics in the country.
Security forces wrote down the names of doctors who helped protesters, entered operating theatres to confiscate phones and other recording devices, decided when some of the injured would receive surgery, and removed or beat those they suspected were involved in demonstrations.
[…].
There are 48 medical professionals on trial for protest-related crimes. Human Rights Watch says they have had little to no access to lawyers and family members.
Iran
9) War With Iran? US Neocons Aim to Repeat Chalabi-Style Swindle
Ali Fatemi and Karim Pakravan, Truthout, Friday 15 July 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/war-iran-us-neocons-aim-repeat-chalabi-style-swindle/1310659549
[Fatemi and Pakravan are members of the board of the National Iranian American Council.]
In 1991, Iraqi exiles set up the Iraq National Congress (INC) with funding from the CIA. Under the leadership of Ahmad Chalabi, and flush with tens of millions dollars in US government funding, the INC allied itself with the neoconservatives in Washington and unceasingly beat the drums of war, presenting itself as the popular democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein and feeding faulty intelligence to an eager media and Bush administration. Eventually, they succeeded in dragging the United States into disastrous war that cost Americans and Iraqis their lives and caused incalculable damage to American prestige and power.
Now, history may be repeating itself.
A segment of our political establishment that is chafing at the bit for a military attack on Iran has found their INC, in the form of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (also known as the MEK, or MKO), a radical Islamic terrorist group with Iranian roots that has been designated a terrorist organization since the State Department created the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in 1997.
Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 24, John Bolton, the former ambassador to the UN under President Bush, reiterated his calls for military action against Iran and openly expressed his support for the MEK. Weeks later, former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey appeared before the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee and called for the US to delist the MEK. Mukasey was even photographed prior to the hearing receiving counsel from the leadership of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the MEK’s political wing, which is also designated as a terrorist organization.
Bolton and Mukasey are not alone in their avowed public support for this known terrorist group. They have been joined by a number of former senior Bush administration officials, other hawks and advocates of the whatever-it-takes war on terror – luminaries such as Rudy Giuliani, former CIA director James Woolsey, and former head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as a number of Republican and Democratic legislators.
Why would some of the most vocal advocates for prosecuting the war on terror now take an Islamic terrorist group under its wing and persistently lobby the State Department and the US Congress to have the group removed from terrorist list? Simply put, they say the enemy of the enemy is our friend. Maryam Rajavi, the MEK leader and self-proclaimed president of Iran, is their new Chalabi.
The MEK is an Islamic radical organization that was formed in the 1960’s as an urban guerilla movement against the shah of Iran. During the 1970’s, the group targeted and successfully killed US military personnel and American civilians based in Iran. It played a major role in the overthrow of the shah in 1979, eventually fell out with the Khomeini regime and fled to Iraq. There, they regrouped under the patronage of Hussein, and fought alongside him against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. As documented by the CIA, the MEK was later used by a beleaguered Hussein to crush the Kurdish rebellion that came immediately after Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf war. Following Hussein’s ouster, the Iraqi government has been working to try to expel the reviled group from Iraq.
Over the course of the last two decades, a well-funded MEK has developed a powerful propaganda machine that has sought to depict the group as a formidable military force, as well as the genuine democratic representative of the Iranian people. These claims have been proven to be groundless. The naked reality is that the MEK are neither a force nor a democratic representative of Iranians, but simply a well-funded militaristic cult with shadowy leaders. They are widely despised by Iranians for having betrayed Iran by siding with Hussein. These facts have been extensively documented, as can be seen in a recently released FBI report that presents evidence of ongoing terrorist activities by the MEK.
Despite their claims to the contrary, the MEK had no role in the popular uprising of June 2009. The leaders of the Green Movement, the Iranian democratic movement, have nothing to do with this traitorous cult. In fact, the MEK claim to a role has helped enable the Islamic regime to tar the whole Green movement with a treasonous label.
Pressure to remove the MEK from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list is a cynical ploy by the neocons that can have only negative consequences for both the United States and Iran. It would allow an Islamic radical terrorist group to operate freely in the United States and eventually get funded by the US taxpayer, courtesy of a clueless Congress. The proponents of war with Iran simply want another INC, and another Chalabi, to promote and start a military conflict with Iran. This country does not need another war, and we need not make that mistake once again.
Instead of legitimizing the MEK, we call on the law-enforcement agencies to investigate the illegal activities of this group, their funding and their allies. After all, they are still on the US State Department terrorist list. So, why are they allowed to lobby our lawmakers in the Senate and the House? The FBI should treat the MEK like all others terror-listed groups, and help protect the American people from these terrorists in our midst – and from another attempt to hijack the country and steer us into a disastrous war of choice.
Afghanistan
10) Karzai Adviser Is Killed At Kabul Home
Jack Healy and Abdul Waheed Wafa, New York Times, July 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/world/asia/18afghanistan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai was killed on Sunday night after two gunmen stormed his walled home here. It was the second killing in less than a week of one of the president’s trusted but controversial political allies.
The aide who was killed on Sunday, Jan Mohammed Khan, served as governor of Oruzgan Province until 2006, when he was removed at insistence of Dutch officials over concerns that he was linked to drug rings. Since then, he had been a regular presence at the presidential palace.
He was killed alongside Mohammed Hasham Watanwal, a member of Parliament from Oruzgan.
The killing was another potentially heavy blow for Mr. Karzai, whose powerful half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was assassinated on Tuesday by a close associate in southern Afghanistan. It also heightened concerns that militants were trying weaken the president’s standing and unravel the tenuous security gains in the still-violent south after months of intensified fighting by NATO and Afghan forces.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
11) IDF officer: Yeshiva in West Bank settlement harbors ‘Jewish terror’ and must be shut down
GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi says Yitzhar yeshiva leaders’ views not consistent with democracy.
Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 17.07.11
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-officer-yeshiva-in-west-bank-settlement-harbors-jewish-terror-and-must-be-shut-down-1.373694
GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi said Saturday that the yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar must be shut down since it functions as a source of terror that must be dealt with.
Speaking to ‘Meet the Press’ on Channel 2 television, Mizrahi stated that several of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva leaders hold views that are not "consistent with democracy", although they represent only a small minority of the settler community.
Mizrahi went on to characterize settler attacks on Palestinian residents of the West Bank as "Jewish terror", and implored the courts to do more in order to support security forces in deterring such events from occurring.
[…] Yitzhar has become known as one of the most radical settlements in the West Bank. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, one of the heads of Od Yosef Chai, was detained last year on suspicion of incitement following the publication of his book, "Torat Hamelech," which called for the killing of non-Jews who seek to harm Israel, but was not charged with any crime.
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