Just Foreign Policy News
July 19, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan: The Kingdom and the Towers
Summers and Swan review the evidence that Saudi royals gave aid to the 9/11 hijackers, and that the Bush Administration covered up evidence of this involvement, including through classification of the relevant text in the 9/11 Commission report.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/08/9-11-2011-201108
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) A Pakistani photographer has been documenting the aftermath of US drone strikes in Waziristan, the Guardian reports. Noor Behram says far more civilians are being killed and injured than the US or Pakistan will admit. He has managed to reach 60 such sites, in which he estimates more than 600 people were killed. "For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant," he said. [Photographs from 27 drone strikes are being exhibited in London – JFP.]
2) The Israel Navy on Tuesday intercepted, boarded, and took control of the last remaining member of a flotilla of boats which had intended to reach Gaza, after it refused to obey an Israeli demand to change course as it sailed for a Gaza port, Haaretz reports. There was no resistance from those aboard, the military said. The passengers were taken to Ashdod and into custody, the military said.
3) The US has an obligation to investigate allegations that Murdoch’s News Corporation bribed British officials as News Corporation is a US company and such bribes would be violations of the Watergate-era Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, writes Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. Several Members of Congress have called for such an investigation.
4) Americans for Peace Now has called on its supporters to boycott products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Jewish Daily Forward reports. The decision was taken days after Israel’s Peace Now announced its intention to call for a boycott on settlement products, thus openly defying the law passed by the Knesset. APN is "widely seen as part of the Jewish mainstream," the Forward says.
5) Former State Department spokesman PJ Crowley says that claims that Israel plans to attack Iran soon are not credible, the Jerusalem Post reports. "The strategic costs, while not static, still outweigh the prospects of success," he wrote. Crowley said "the Arab Spring has sufficiently complicated Israel’s strategic calculus that it is more likely to show restraint in the immediate term." Crowley’s comments come after senior ex-CIA officer Robert Baer told an LA radio show that Israel will probably attack Iran in September, before the UN Palestine vote.
6) Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue for a major cut in military spending, the Washington Times reports. Some House Democrats are calling for $1 trillion in cuts. Gordon Adams, a defense budget official in the Clinton White House, told the House Budget Committee this month that Obama’s $400 billion number "is a very small step." He endorsed more than doubling that figure.
7) The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says the U.S. military has essentially the same size, force structure and capabilities as it did a decade ago but costs 35 percent more, Reuters reports. The center’s analysis said half of the growth in defense spending over the past decade was unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was attributable instead to a rise in the Pentagon’s base budget.
Afghanistan
8) The spate of high-profile assassinations in Afghanistan is raising questions about whether the Afghan government can survive until 2014, the Guardian reports. The central government is "losing any prospect of wielding authority," said a former British diplomat to Afghanistan.
Bahrain
9) A top Bahraini official blamed Iran for the collapse of talks with the largely Shia Bahraini opposition, the Los Angeles Times reports. No proof for the allegation was advanced, the LAT notes. Opposition activists said the talks were disastrous because the monarchy did not participate in the so-called dialogue, instead dispatching a bunch of toothless intermediaries. "The opposition wants to negotiate with the decision makers, said Nabeel Rajab, vice president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights."We need to address our demands to the people who are in power – to the ruling family."
Libya
10) Libyan rebels are refusing French demands that they negotiate a transition with the Libyan government, the Los Angeles Times reports. The rebels’ refusal to negotiate raises the prospect of a prolonged conflict, the LAT says.
Honduras
11) Honduran President Porfirio Lobo says he has gotten death threats from business owners angered by his plan to raise taxes to fund better security, AP reports.
12) A national assembly of the National Front for Popular Resistance in Honduras has voted to launch a new political party, the Broad Front of Popular Resistance, which will contest the 2013 presidential election, Green Left reports.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) US drone strikes in Pakistan claiming many civilian victims, says campaigner
One man in Waziristan is documenting casualties – and says destruction has been radicalising locals
Saeed Shah in Islamabad and Peter Beaumont, Guardian, Sunday 17 July 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/us-drone-strikes-pakistan-waziristan
For the past three years, Noor Behram has hurried to the site of drone strikes in his native Waziristan. His purpose: to photograph and document the impact of missiles controlled by a joystick thousands of miles away, on US air force bases in Nevada and elsewhere. The drones are America’s only weapon for hunting al-Qaida and the Taliban in what is supposed to be the most dangerous place in the world.
Sometimes arriving on the scene just minutes after the explosion, he first has to put his camera aside and start digging through the debris to see if there are any survivors. It’s dangerous, unpleasant work. The drones frequently hit the same place again, a few minutes after the first strike, so looking for the injured is risky. There are other dangers too: militants and locals are suspicious of anyone with a camera. After all, it is a local network of spies working for the CIA that are directing the drone strikes.
But Noor Behram says his painstaking work has uncovered an important – and unreported – truth about the US drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal region: that far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit. The world’s media quickly reports on how many militants were killed in each strike. But reporters don’t go to the spot, relying on unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials. Noor Behram believes you have to go to the spot to figure out whether those killed were really extremists or ordinary people living in Waziristan. And he’s in no doubt.
"For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant," he said. "I don’t go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed."
The drone strikes are a secret programme run by the CIA to assassinate al-Qaida and Taliban extremists using remote, wild Waziristan as a refuge. The CIA does not comment on drones, but privately claims civilian casualties are rare.
The Guardian was unable to independently verify the photographs. Noor Behram’s account of taking the pictures appeared detailed and consistent however. Other anecdotal evidence from Waziristan is conflicting: some insist the drones are accurate, while others strongly disagree.
According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalise the population. "There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.
"The youth in the area surrounding a strike gets crazed. Hatred builds up inside those who have seen a drone attack. The Americans think it is working, but the damage they’re doing is far greater."
Even when the drones hit the right compound, the force of the blast is such that neighbours’ houses, often made of baked mud, are also demolished, crushing those inside, said Noor Behram. One of the photographs shows a tangle of debris he said were the remains of five houses blitzed together.
The photographs make for difficult viewing and leave no doubt about the destructive power of the Hellfire missiles unleashed: a boy with the top of his head missing, a severed hand, flattened houses, the parents of children killed in a strike. The chassis is all that remains of a car in one photo, another shows the funeral of a seven-year-old child. There are pictures, too, of the cheap rubber flip-flops worn by children and adults, which often survive: signs that life once existed there. A 10-year-old boy’s body, prepared for burial, shows lipstick on him and flowers in his hair – a mother’s last loving touch.
There are photos of burned and battered Qur’ans – but no pictures of women: the conservative culture in Waziristan will not allow Noor Behram to photograph the women, even dead and dismembered. So he makes do with documenting shredded pieces of women’s clothing.
The jagged terrain, the often isolated location of strikes, curfews and the presence of Taliban, all mean that it is a major challenge to get to the site of a drone strike. Noor Behram has managed to reach 60, in both North and South Waziristan, in which he estimates more than 600 people were killed. An exhibition of his work, at London’s Beaconsfield gallery opening on Tuesday, features pictures from 27 different drone strikes. Clive Stafford Smith, head of Reprieve, the campaigning group, has launched a lawsuit along with a Pakistani lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, seeking to bring to justice those responsible for civilian deaths from drones. "I think these pictures are deeply important evidence," said Stafford Smith. "They put a human face [on the drone strike campaign] that is in marked contrast to what the US is suggesting its operators in Nevada and elsewhere are doing. "They show the reality of ordinary people being killed and losing their homes, not senior al-Qaida members."
[…]
2) Israel intercepts sole remnant of flotilla heading for Gaza
Elite naval troops take control of the Dignite-Al Karame after it refuses to heed calls to change course.
Amira Hass and Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 14:15 19.07.11
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-intercepts-sole-remnant-of-flotilla-heading-for-gaza-1.374038
The Israel Navy on Tuesday intercepted the last remaining member of a flotilla of boats which had intended to reach the Gaza Strip, after it refused to obey an Israeli demand to change course as it sailed for a Gaza port.
Elite troops from Israel’s Shayetet 13 naval commando unit boarded the French yacht Dignite-Al Karame minutes after Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz issued the order to intercept. The commandos quickly took control of the vessel, with no resistance from those aboard.
"In accordance with government directives, after all diplomatic channels had been exhausted and continuous calls to the vessel had been ignored, IDF (marines) boarded the Karame in an effort to stop it from breaking the maritime security blockade on the Gaza Strip," a military statement said.
The Israel Navy began trailing the Karame while it was some 50 miles from Gaza. The boat was asked to state its final destination and disclose if there were any weapons onboard. One of the group of Greek activists on the ship told the Navy that there were no weapons, and that they were heading to Gaza port.
An IDF official confirmed that the Israel Navy contacted the yacht, and warned it that it is nearing a blockaded area. Defense establishment sources stressed that they would not allow any kind of vessels to dock in the Gaza Strip, so any ship trying to break the blockade would be intercepted.
Following the rapid takeover, the vessel was directed to Ashdod port. There the passengers were to be taken into custody and dealt with by immigration authorities.
[…]
3) America’s Murdoch problem
It would be outrageous if the U.S. ignored allegations that an American company used our territory as a haven from which to subvert the laws and democratic processes of Britain.
Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0716-rutten-20110716,0,7517076.column
The Anglo-American democracies owe their durability to many attributes, but two of the most crucial involve restraint: No exercise of authority without accountability; no expression of liberty without limits.
The ongoing meltdown of News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire is providing us with a reeducation on what can happen when those restraints are routinely ignored. Each day’s revelations leave us with a clearer picture of Murdoch newspapers that routinely violated the privacy of Britons, from the sovereign and prime minister to the grieving families of murder victims and war widows. In the process, journalists and others employed by Murdoch’s papers allegedly bribed police officers and officials, intimidated investigators assigned to probe reporters’ misconduct and paid off some of those who cooperated with lucrative consulting and writing contracts.
Eager for the highly partisan Murdoch papers’ support, and fearful of the retribution that seemed to follow anything the company’s editors or executives construed as opposition to News Corp.’s interests, Britain’s Parliament and political establishment cowered while unprincipled journalists attenuated freedom of the press into grotesque malevolence and corrupt officials made public accountability a dead letter. It was a mutually beneficial little arrangement for as long as it lasted, but like any relationship built on fear, it was bound to come apart – with a vengeance. Thursday brought the arrest of another former News of the World sub-editor, Neil Wallis, and Friday the resignations of Rebekah Brooks, formerly the paper’s editor and, most recently, the executive in charge of Murdoch’s British papers, and Les Hinton, chairman of Dow Jones, who ran the British papers from 1997 to 2005.
Here in the United States, the FBI and U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. confirmed that a preliminary inquiry has begun into allegations that News of the World reporters may have tried to enlist a retired New York police officer to assist in obtaining access to the voice-mail accounts of people killed on 9/11. New York Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) first requested that probe, and the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission also should respond to requests from other lawmakers that News Corp. be investigated under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
That law forbids U.S. corporations doing business abroad from bribing foreign officials to further their commercial interests, and it also penalizes companies that make such illicit payments and then fail to report them or attempt to conceal them on their balance sheets. Our own 1st Amendment protections might make payments made in the course of reporting difficult – perhaps even impossible – to prosecute, but not bribes paid to obstruct justice, as allegedly occurred in the News of the World case.
[…] News Corp., despite its global reach, is an American company, headquartered in New York; its shares are traded on our exchange. Murdoch was born in Australia, but he obtained U.S. citizenship so that he could further enrich himself by acquiring broadcast properties here. Having availed himself of American opportunity, he and his subordinates are now accountable to U.S. law, and there is every evidence that the chain of culpability for this scandal extends high up into News Corp. As Niri Shan, a leading London media lawyer, said, given the extraordinary severity of British libel law, "it [is] hard to believe that the editor or other people in the organization didn’t know the provenance of the information" Murdoch’s papers illegally obtained.
We Americans owe our most fundamental democratic traditions and respect for the rule of law to Britain. It would be outrageous if we now stood idly by and ignored credible allegations that an American company used our territory as a haven from which to subvert the laws and democratic processes of our closest cultural and political ally, as Murdoch’s firm allegedly has.
[…]
4) APN Calls for Boycott of Products Made in the West Bank
Nathan Guttman and JTA, Jewish Daily Forward, July 19, 2011
http://www.forward.com/articles/140069/
Washington – Taking protest against Israel’s new anti-boycott law one step forward, a member organization of American Jewry’s primary umbrella group for Israel is calling on its supporters to boycott products made in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Americans for Peace Now adopted a resolution July 19 supporting the call of its sister organization in Israel, Peace Now, to actively resist the new legislation, and joined in its own call for a boycott on settlement products.
The new law, passed July 11 by a majority vote in Israel’s Knesset, allows those hurt by boycotts against Israel or West Bank settlements to sue for damages the groups and individuals who initiated the boycott. It also prohibits the Israeli government from doing business with companies that comply with boycotts of this kind.
The controversial legislation triggered a wide array of critical responses from American Jewish organizations, most of them stressing the potential damage of the law to Israel’s democracy.
But while most groups were cautious not to let their criticism be interpreted as supporting boycotts, APN decided, in a special meeting of its board of directors, to actively challenge the new law. The decision was taken days after Israel’s Peace Now announced its intention to call for a boycott on settlement products, thus openly defying the law passed by the Knesset.
The new law does not criminalize boycotting Israel, but rather makes it a civil wrong that can be remedied by court-awarded financial damages. Breaking the law would lead only to civil action, not to criminal punishment.
Ori Nir, APN’s spokesman, told the Forward that the meaning of the new resolution adopted by the group is that APN is now calling for a boycott on settlement products. However, the group has yet to decide on whether or not to actively launch a campaign calling on its U.S. supporters to join the boycott. "We don’t see it as breaking the law. We are challenging it," Nir said.
He added that APN still calls for investments in the state of Israel and for supporting Israel in all ways, including financially. "The intention of our decision is to strengthen the line separating between Israel and the settlements," he said.
APN, although smaller than the newly founded J Street lobby, is the oldest dovish group and is widely seen as part of the Jewish mainstream. Founded in 1981, it is a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish community’s umbrella group, and participates in communal briefings and discussions.
[…]
5) Crowley: Claims Israel to attack Iran soon are not credible
Former US State Department spokesman tweets that "Arab Spring has made Israel more likely to show restraint in the immediate term."
Jerusalem Post, 18/07/2011
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=229947
Claims that Israel plans to attack Iran soon are not credible, former US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley tweeted on Monday. "The strategic costs, while not static, still outweigh the prospects of success," he wrote.
Crowley also noted that "the Arab Spring has sufficiently complicated Israel’s strategic calculus that it is more likely to show restraint in the immediate term."
The former spokesman’s comments come after senior ex-CIA officer Robert Baer told an LA radio show over that weekend that Israel will probably attack Iran in September.
While Baer didn’t reveal the sources behind his prediction, he referred to former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s warnings of an Israeli attack on Iran as "no bluff."
Baer told the KPFK Radio on Tuesday recent comments made by Dagan that an Israeli attack on Iran could lead to a regional war, "tell us with near certainty that [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is planning an attack, and in as much as I can guess when it’s going to be, it’s probably going to be in September, before a [UN General Assembly] vote on the Palestinian state."
Netanyahu is "also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict – and in fact, there’s a warning order inside the Pentagon to prepare for conflict with Iran," Baer said.
6) Liberals See Opportunity For Big Cuts In Defense
Push for troop, arms levels after Cold War
Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, Monday, July 18, 2011
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/18/liberals-see-opportunity-for-big-cuts-in-defense/
The political left is pressing the White House and Congress to inflict a wave of Pentagon budget cuts not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s.
Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The proposals, including one from the Center for American Progress, go well beyond President Obama’s call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center – run by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Clinton – wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion from what had been projected increases over the next decade.
Some House Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, also have called for $1 trillion in cuts.
"I think this is the time because of a combination of the deficit and the changing way in which we’re going to deal with threats from groups like al Qaeda," said American Progress’ Lawrence Korb, a longtime defense analyst in Washington.
Mr. Korb said the Obama administration has dumped President George W. Bush’s overall war strategy of preemptive attacks against terrorist states, and he cited just-retired Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ warning against any future land wars in the Middle East.
The bottom line is that the center wants projected increases ended and the overall arms budget reduced to $500 billion by 2016, which would be $111 billion below the Pentagon’s already pared-down projection.
"Gates said we don’t have to go back to Cold War levels," Mr. Korb said. "Well, we’re above Cold War levels. And that’s part of the problem."
Gordon Adams, a defense budget official in the Clinton White House, told the House Budget Committee this month that Mr. Obama’s $400 billion number "is a very small step." He endorsed more than doubling that figure.
The Pentagon has not heard such rhetoric since the Berlin Wall fell and Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush squeezed as much as 35 percent out of intelligence and defense spending.
[…] The Center for American Progress also proposes a list of weapons terminations and troop cutbacks.
The number of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft would be stopped at about 150. The next-generation workhorse jet fighter, the F-35 – which is mired in big cost overruns – would be bought only for the Air Force, not the Navy or Marine Corps.
The Navy’s 11 carriers – a key way America projects immediate air power overseas – would be trimmed to nine, and with it other surface ships. A full third of 150,000 troops in Europe and Asia would be ordered home.
[…]
7) U.S. Pays A Third More For Defense As In 2001: Analyst
David Alexander, Reuters, July 18, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/u-pays-third-more-defense-2001-analyst-232734116.html
Washington – The U.S. military has essentially the same size, force structure and capabilities as it did a decade ago but costs 35 percent more, an independent public policy think tank said on Monday in an analysis of the 2012 defense budget.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in a 75-page report, also said the Defense Department had spent some $46 billion over the past decade developing weapons systems that were ultimately never fielded, either due to cost overruns or technical challenges.
[…] The center’s analysis said half of the growth in defense spending over the past decade was unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was attributable instead to a rise in the Pentagon’s base budget.
Personnel costs grew by 19 percent, even as overall personnel numbers remained relatively flat, the report said. The cost of peacetime operations rose 10 percent, even as the pace of operations declined. And acquisition costs rose 16 percent, even as the inventory of equipment aged and shrank.
"The base budget now supports a force with essentially the same size, force structure and capabilities as in FY (fiscal year) 2001 but at a 35 percent higher cost," the analysis found. "The department is spending more but not getting more."
Obama has asked for about $690 billion for military spending in the 2012 fiscal year beginning in October — about $558 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and $118 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The remainder is for nuclear weapons programs and military construction.
[…]
Afghanistan
8) Afghanistan government under threat after second assassination in a week
Questions raised over whether Hamid Karzai’s power structure could collapse before western combat troops depart in 2014
Julian Borger and Lianne Gutcher, Guardian, Monday 18 July 2011 19.32 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/18/afghanistan-government-assassination-hamid-karzai
The assassination of a close ally and mentor of Hamid Karzai a week after the killing of the president’s powerful half-brother has raised new questions over whether Afghanistan’s precarious power structure could collapse even before the departure of western combat troops in 2014.
Jan Muhammad Khan was killed when two gunmen stormed his walled compound in Kabul on Sunday night, holding off Afghan security forces until Monday morning. The attackers also gunned down an MP from Khan’s home province, Uruzgan, before being killed themselves.
The assassinations of the two powerful warlords, who once seemed unassailable, have caused widespread shock.
Ahmed Shah Behsad, an MP from Herat, said: "These killings show the weakness of failure of Karzai’s politics. The situation is crisis. Karzai has lost control of the country."
[…] Thomas Ruttig of the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network wrote on Monday: "With his rivals, [Jan Muhammad Khan] dealt ruthlessly. He labelled them Taliban, and sent the special forces after them – who misinterpreted their mandate to support the ‘central government’ as supporting one man against his personal rivals and who appreciated his qualities as an effective Taliban hunter."
[…] The spate of high-profile assassinations has come amid a string of other killings of figures within the country’s informal power structure – a network of establishment figures, warlords and drug-runners. Cumulatively, observers say, the killings have sapped Hamid Karzai’s political strength and undermined his ability to withstand a Taliban onslaught when western troops leave.
Gerard Russell, a former British diplomat to Afghanistan, said: "The balance of power is being radically destabilised, and central government is losing any prospect of wielding authority. The targets are really the linchpins of the post-2001 security settlement, and they are being pulled out one by one. So it’s even more serious that it looks. Afghanistan has been built on building blocks like these."
Khan’s killing coincided with departure of General David Petraeus, the architect of Nato’s military strategy in Afghanistan, to become CIA director in Washington, and came a few hours after a ceremony on Sunday to mark the start of transition from Nato to Afghan-run security in the first Afghan province, Bamiyan. A similar handover will be marked this week in Lashkar Gah, the British-garrisoned administrative centre of Helmand province, where seven Afghan policemen were killed at a checkpoint on Monday.
The transition is due to be completed by the end of 2014, when all western combat troops are due to have left. However, several observers said that the spate of killings of Karzai relatives and lieutenants raised doubts that the president’s authority would hold up that long.
"The biggest thing is the psychological impact on Karzai losing two people very close to him and to the family," Ruttig said. "In a system here that is very patronage-based, that he is not able to protect his closest allies will have consequences. People will hedge their bets, in case the Taliban come back one day. They will make deals so they can survive that. With the first western soldiers leaving there is an atmosphere of concern and fear. People sending their sons out of the country to study or giving money so smugglers can take them abroad … they don’t trust that the institutions are sustainable enough to survive."
Bahrain
9) Iran’s Khamenei sabotaged dialogue talks, official claims
Roula Hajjar and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2011 | 10:23 am
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/07/bahrain-official-claims-khamenei-sabotaged-dialogue-talks.html
Beirut – A top Bahraini official accused Iran of scuttling a potential deal between the government and the opposition during a weekend dialogue that went nowhere.
Fahad Ebrahim Shehabi, a spokesman for the Bahraini parliament, said the talks were going well until the main Shiite Muslim opposition, Wefaq, pulled out because of Iran, which opposes Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy.
"The withdrawal of Wefaq came early in the negotiation process, whereas other opposition figures who have been supporters of Wefaq stayed in the negotiation process," he told Babylon & Beyond in an interview. "This is because the decision is not in their hands; it is in the hands of the Wilayet Faqih," a reference to Iran’s concept of theocratic rule by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Wefaq has a different agenda," he said. "They want an Islamic state under Wilayet Faqih and they received a green light from Tehran to withdraw from the negotiations."
Shehabi did not cite proof. And opposition activists said the talks were disastrous because the entrenched Sunni monarchy of King Hamad Khalifa did not participate in the so-called dialogue, instead dispatching a bunch of toothless intermediaries.
Shehabi’s comments may show a paranoid world view by the Bahraini government or be another attempt to paint the opposition as a tool of the country’s large and unpopular northern neighbor, casting the ongoing repression against activists and dissidents as an attempt to stamp out an Iranian plot.
Wefaq has strenuously denied that it is a puppet of Iran. Opposition activists criticized the absence of top government officials, including representatives of the monarchy.
"We didn’t participate in dialogue because we knew that it would neither end the political turmoil nor be productive in any way," said Nabeel Rajab, vice president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, an opposition group. "The problem is between the people, the ones who are protesting, and the ruling family, the king, the prime minister. So then how can a negotiation that does not include one of the parties involved in the conflict be productive?"
Instead of bringing the country’s principal players together, "the regime invited civil society organizations to attend who have in the past legitimized the regime to participate. The regime hides behind these civil society groups but aren’t themselves present. What good is that?"
He added, "The regime set the agenda, set the timeframe, set everything, but they themselves were not present. The opposition wants to negotiate with the decision makers not the NGOs. We need to address our demands to the people who are in power – to the ruling family."
[…]
Libya
10) Rebels Say No To Talks With Kadafi
Convinced that their battlefield strategy will work, the rebel forces are refusing France’s demands that they negotiate with the Libyan leader to peacefully end their uprising.
David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-rebels-strategy-20110719,0,2636430.story
Benghazi, Libya – As the Libyan war grinds on across three fronts and rebel forces find themselves pinned down on their own territory outside two strategic eastern oil cities, the rebels’ most resolute European ally, France, is insisting that they negotiate with Moammar Kadafi to peacefully end their 5-month-old uprising.
Yet the rebels are sticking to their guns – literally.
They’re convinced that victory is inevitable and adamantly refuse to negotiate directly with Kadafi even as the French government contends that the Libyan leader is seeking ways to relinquish power.
After the United States formally recognized the rebel Transitional National Council on Friday as the country’s legitimate government body, the rebels again insisted that Kadafi must go before negotiations begin.
"Our position remains: no negotiations until Kadafi, his sons and his inner circle are gone," said Habib Ben Ali, media liaison for the council.
In the rebels’ de facto capital, Benghazi, commanders lay out a battlefield strategy that seeks to allay concerns in Western capitals over the failure of the four-month NATO air campaign to topple the Kadafi regime. But the unorthodox approach relies more on faith and bluster than proven military tactics, and raises the prospect of a prolonged conflict.
Rebel commanders say they plan to strangle Kadafi by cutting off Tripoli, the capital, from three directions. They predict that government troop defections and low morale, combined with fuel and supply shortages, will open the way to the city soon.
But rebels on each front are devising their own strategies, with only limited direction from headquarters in Benghazi, said Abdul Jawad, a senior rebel commander. "We are not a traditionally structured military organization," Jawad said, a profound understatement given the rebels’ haphazard formations.
Rebel forces are poorly trained and equipped, with little central command and scant grasp of military tactics. For months, their commanders have promised the imminent "liberation" of Tripoli, only to find themselves mired in a protracted battlefield stalemate.
[…]
Honduras
11) Honduran president says he got death threats
AP, July 18, 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5huDU4StVltFXPQt4HNDb-jvghvmQ
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – Honduran President Porfirio Lobo says he has gotten death threats from business owners angered by his plan to raise taxes to fund better security.
Lobo is giving no specifics on what he says are threats "from a high level." Officials said Monday they are heightening security at his residence and offices.
Honduran legislators in June approved a 5 percent tax on bank accounts of more than $5,000 along with taxes on cellphone sales, mining exports and casinos. It aims to raise $400 million over five years to equip police, the army, prosecutors and the Supreme Court to fight organized crime.
A council of 58 prominent businesses is challenging the law in court, arguing the taxes will be used to fund political campaigns.
12) Honduras: Resistance launches political party amid repression
Felipe Stuart Cournoyer & John Riddell. Green Left, Sunday, July 17, 2011
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48197
A national assembly of the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP), uniting more than 1500 delegates from across Honduras, voted on June 26 to launch a new political party, the Broad Front of Popular Resistance (FARP).
The FNRP is the main coordinating body of popular struggle since a right-wing coup overthrew the democratically elected government of president Manuel Zelaya two years ago, on June 28, 2009. One of its key demands is for a constituent assembly to draft a new democratic and pro-poor constitution.
The new party will function as an electoral arm of the front and will contest the 2013 presidential poll.
[…] Zelaya stressed that Honduras needed deep structural reforms. The resistance, pressing forward in every field of activity, was capable taking political power and winning a constituent assembly, he said.
A July 10 report by the Nicaraguan site Radiolaprimerisima.com said: "The president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, has initiated a discussion with a number of political parties on convening a Constituent Assembly. This proposal is similar to the one advanced by ex-President Manuel Zelaya, which caused his ouster on June 28, 2009."
Zelaya took part in this discussion. He insisted that it was the people who have the sovereignty to convene a constituent assembly, not the state authorities. The Cartagena Accord, signed between the FNRP and the Lobo regime, accepted a framework in which the people must be consulted, Zelaya said.
[…] Zelaya returned to Honduras as part of the accord, which included provisions to rein in the coup regime’s campaign of terror against resistance and social activists. This repression included almost 100 political killings in 2010.
However, the accord did not stop death-squad activity.
Bertha Oliva from the Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras said that only a few days after the accord was signed, a death squad struck down a close associate of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife and political partner, along with another victim. "Security forces can torture, and nothing will happen," Oliva told Todd Gordon and Jeffery Webber in a July 6 The Bullet article. "They can detain and assassinate their opponents, and nothing will happen."
On June 5, three peasant activists were assassinated near their San Esteban cooperative, Oliva said.
[…]
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