Just Foreign Policy News
July 26, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Leave Iraq on Time: Don’t Cut Social Security and Medicare to Pay for Occupation
While some leaders in Washington want to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age for Medicare, the White House and the Pentagon are planning to increase spending on the U.S. occupation of Iraq by extending the U.S. military presence without Congressional approval. Eighty Members of the House have a different idea: withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by December on schedule. Urge your Representative to join them.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/exitiraq
Background:
Leave Iraq on Time: Don’t Cut Social Security and Medicare to Pay for Iraq Occupation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/lee-jones-letter_b_910064.html
SOA Watch: Close the SOA Now!
Urge your Rep. to sign Rep. McGovern’s letter urging President Obama to issue an Executive Order closing the SOA/WHINSEC, the "school of Latin American coups and assassins."
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6974
Glenn Greenwald: The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism"
Greenwald notes that according to the New York Times, the Oslo bombing was "terrorist" until it turned out that Muslims were not responsible.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/23/nyt/index.html
New York Times: In Sierra Leone, Heartening Progress for Pregnant Women
At long last, governments in Africa are eliminating clinic fees for pregnant women – reversing a policy of "user fees" for basic health services previously promoted by the IMF and the World Bank.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/world/africa/18sierra.html
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The debt ceiling debate could come down to a whether the money saved from drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should count as part of a deficit reduction package, Sam Stein reports for the Huffington Post. Senate Majority Leader Reid has put together a proposal that counts $1 trillion in savings from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund — the piggy bank for wars. "It’s legitimate savings," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesperson for Reid. The Congressional Budget Office, which judges future expenditures against their current levels, will "score" the savings regardless, as an Obama administration official noted several weeks ago when the OCO issue first surfaced. As Jentleson notes, when Republicans were putting together their latest plan for deficit reduction, they counted the OCO savings as well. [Counting the savings from less future spending for war would bring war spending into the debt debate, a political advance from the status quo, in which war spending is off the table for discussion – JFP.]
2) A U.N envoy trying to find a way to end the war in Libya said the government and the rebels remained far apart in the drive for an end to the crisis, Reuters reports. Both sides said they wanted to continue to seek an end to the crisis through the UN. Deadlines are approaching for the NATO-led alliance, whose U.N. mandate for military action — granted on the grounds that it would protect civilians — expires in two months, Reuters says.
3) The mass killings in Norway have renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts, the New York Times reports. In the US, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism – withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives – repeated his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.
Daryl Johnson, the DHS analyst who was the primary author of the report, said that after he left the department in 2010, the number of analysts assigned to non-Islamic militancy of all kinds was reduced to two from six. Johnson said about 30 analysts worked on Islamic radicalism when he was there.
4) Amnesty International said Saudi authorities on Monday blocked the group’s website inside the kingdom following criticism of a controversial new anti-terrorism draft law, AP reports. Amnesty said the bill would allow authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.
5) The IMF claimed Sunday that Colombia’s minimum wage is too high and should be reduced, says Colombia Reports. Vice President Garzon vehemently denounced the IMF’s proposal, stating that it was "offensive to workers and the national dignity." Garzon said the IMF was focusing only on Colombia’s exports and ignoring the nation’s domestic economy. "The economy does not grow solely through exports but also with an increase in workers’ purchasing power," said Garzon. The vice president also said lowering the minimum wage would go against the promises of Santos’ presidential campaign.
6) Writing in the Guardian, Raquel Gutiérrez asks why a plane from Mexico to Europe was stopped from entering US airspace because he was on it. Gutiérrez suggests that he is on a US blacklist because he was arrested in Bolivia in 1992 on a charge of belonging to a guerilla organization – along with Bolivia’s current vice-president. Gutiérrez notes that the case was dropped for lack of evidence, and all charges were officially dropped in 2007. A great many commercial flights from Mexico to Europe pass over US airspace, Gutiérrez notes.
Saudi Arabia
7) A bipartisan coalition of 14 senators said Tuesday they were sending King Abdullah a letter urging him to end the Saudi ban on women driving, the Washington Post reports. "The prohibition on women driving motor vehicles, even in cases of emergency, makes it impossible for citizens to exercise a basic human right," the senators wrote. The letter released Tuesday was signed by 14 of the 17 women in the Senate.
Malawi
8) The USG Millennium Challenge Corporation froze a $350 million grant to Malawi after a crackdown on antigovernment protests left 19 people dead, the New York Times reports. The US decision followed Britain’s July 14 suspension of aid to the Malawian government on grounds that it had suppressed demonstrations and intimidated civic groups.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Debt Ceiling Debate Comes Down To Iraq, Afghanistan Drawdown
Sam Stein, Huffington Post, 7/25/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/debt-ceiling-debate-troop-drawdown_n_909097.html
Washington — In the end, the debt ceiling debate could come down to a simple accounting question. Should the money saved from drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan count as part of a deficit reduction package?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has put together a proposal, designed to break through the congressional impasse, that counts $1 trillion in savings from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund — the veritable piggy bank for wars abroad. His logic is straightforward.
"It’s legitimate savings," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesperson for Reid. It’s true that the United States will be spending significantly less money on the wars in ten years than it is today. The Congressional Budget Office, which judges future expenditures against their current levels, will "score" the savings regardless, as an Obama administration official noted several weeks ago when the OCO issue first surfaced. Why not count them as part of the current plan?
More importantly, as Jentleson notes, when Republicans were putting together their latest plan for deficit reduction, they counted the OCO savings as well. Indeed, in his budget plan that passed the House earlier this year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tallied an estimated $1.04 trillion in savings from the OCO based on Congressional Budget Office estimates. When his Republican colleagues, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) repeatedly touted the $5.8 trillion in savings that the Ryan plan achieved, they did not offer rhetorical footnotes about how a good chunk didn’t count because it came from pre-existing policy.
[…] Still, in private negotiations, Democrats have insisted that — on a strictly numerical standpoint — lawmakers should be able to count the so-called peace dividend as a money-saver, especially with the stakes as high as a potential default.
Reid made this very case directly to Cantor during a meeting in early July, but to no avail. Little has changed since then. Republicans are still smarting from the bad press coverage they received after the government shutdown standoff in the spring, when post-deal accounting showed the long-term savings were much less than advertised. On Monday, GOP leadership continued to oppose considering using the OCO as a deficit reduction contributor.
[…]
2) Libya tells U.N. envoy bombs must stop before talks
Missy Ryan, Reuters, Tue, Jul 26 17:34 PM EDT
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE76H06X20110726?irpc=932
Tripoli – A U.N envoy trying to find a way to end the war in Libya said after talks with the prime minister in Tripoli on Tuesday that the government and the rebels remained far apart in the drive for an end to the crisis.
The government told him NATO must end air strikes before any talks could begin and that Muammar Gaddafi’s role as leader was non-negotiable, though rebels and the West insist he step down.
Britain and France, carrying out most of the NATO bombing attacks, dropped their insistence that Gaddafi leave Libya as part of any settlement, in an apparent softening of their line.
[…] The United Nations said in a statement issued in New York that the two sides were still far apart on finding a political solution, but both said they wanted to continue to seek an end to the crisis through the United Nations.
In London, the British and French foreign ministers, William Hague and Alain Juppe, called again for Gaddafi to leave power but, on the matter of whether he could stay in Libya, both said it was up to Libyans to decide.
Britain said it had not changed policy but comments by Hague were interpreted as tacit backing for the proposal, floated last week by France, that Gaddafi could remain in Libya.
A rebel leader this week appeared to endorse the view, which would mark a major shift from previous rebel demands that he be tried for war crimes in The Hague.
Deadlines are approaching for the NATO-led alliance, whose U.N. mandate for military action — granted on the grounds that it would protect civilians — expires in two months.
Hopes an agreement could be reached before Ramadan have faded as the Muslim holy month gets nearer. It begins next week.
[…]
3) Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
Scott Shane, New York Times, July 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/25debate.html
The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.
In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.
His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.
More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an antigovernment militant, have focused new attention around the world on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts.
In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.
[…] In 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security produced a report, "Rightwing Extremism," suggesting that the recession and the election of an African-American president might increase the threat from white supremacists, conservatives in Congress strongly objected. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, quickly withdrew the report and apologized for what she said were its flaws.
Daryl Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security analyst who was the primary author of the report, said in an interview that after he left the department in 2010, the number of analysts assigned to non-Islamic militancy of all kinds was reduced to two from six. Mr. Johnson, who now runs a private research firm on the domestic terrorist threat, DTAnalytics, said about 30 analysts worked on Islamic radicalism when he was there.
The killings in Norway "could easily happen here," he said. The Hutaree, an extremist Christian militia in Michigan accused last year of plotting to kill police officers and planting bombs at their funerals, had an arsenal of weapons larger than all the Muslim plotters charged in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks combined, he said.
Homeland Security officials disputed Mr. Johnson’s claim about staffing, saying they pay close attention to all threats, regardless of ideology. And the F.B.I. infiltrated the Hutaree, making arrests before any attack could take place.
John D. Cohen, principal deputy counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security, said Ms. Napolitano, who visited Oklahoma City last year for the 15th anniversary of the bombing there, had often spoken of the need to assess the risk of violence without regard to politics or religion. "What happened in Norway," Mr. Cohen said, "is a dramatic reminder that in trying to prevent attacks, we cannot focus on a single ideology."
4) Amnesty’s website blocked in Saudi after group leaked kingdom’s draft law on arrests
Associated Press, July 25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/amnestys-website-cut-off-in-saudi-after-group-published-kingdoms-draft-law-on-arrests/2011/07/25/gIQA4goaYI_story.html
Cairo – Amnesty International said Saudi authorities on Monday blocked the group’s website inside the kingdom following criticism of a controversial new anti-terrorism draft law.
The London-based group said the bill, which was reviewed by a Saudi government committee in June and has yet to be passed, allows authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.
Amnesty on Friday posted on its website the full Arabic text of the anti-terrorism draft law along with an internal review of the law by a Saudi security committee.
Hours after the website was blocked Monday, Amnesty moved the text of the bill to another Amnesty-administered website called "Protect The Human Blog", which could be accessed by residents in the kingdom.
"Although the Saudi authorities have blocked our main international site, they haven’t yet blocked any Amnesty U.K. site, as far as we know. So we’re hosting the Arabic version of the release for all to see," the group said in an online statement.
[…] Amnesty did not say how it obtained the draft bill, which labels offenses such as harming the reputation of the state and endangering national unity as terrorist crimes. Such language is typically used to prosecute political opponents of the Saudi monarchy, which has minimal tolerance for dissent and bans political activity.
The law, if passed, would carry harsh punishments, including a minimum prison sentence of 10 years for challenging the integrity of the king, Amnesty said.
[…] Saudi authorities are particularly wary of attempts by the country’s minority Shiite residents to emulate Bahrain’s protests. Revolts in Tunisia and Egypt inspired a handful of Shiite-led protests in eastern Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
[…]
5) IMF says Colombian minimum wage not creating jobs
Matt Snyder, Colombia Reports, Monday, 25 July 2011 11:04
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/economy/17848-imf-says-colombian-minimum-wage-not-creating-jobs.html
The IMF claimed Sunday that Colombia’s minimum wage is too high and not creating new employment.
The agency said that the minimum wage is a factor in unemployment and informal employment and was driving up the cost of labor.
The IMF argued that the wage should be decreased, closer to the current rate of inflation.
In 2010 President Juan Manuel Santos raised the minimum wage by 4% after the inflation rate unexpectedly jumped to 3.1%. The wage currently stands at about $300 a month.
Vice President Angelino Garzon vehemently denounced the IMF’s proposal, stating that it was "offensive to workers and the national dignity."
Garzon further criticized the suggestion as focusing only on Colombia’s exports and ignoring the nation’s domestic economy. "The economy does not grow solely through exports but also with an increase in workers’ purchasing power," said Garzon.
The vice president also said that lowering the minimum wage would go against the proposals of Santos’ presidential campaign.
[…]
6) Why is the US so afraid of me?
Am I on a blacklist? I was astonished when the plane I was travelling in was turned out of US airspace because I was on it
Raquel Gutiérrez, Guardian, Tuesday 26 July 2011 14.30 BS http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/26/us-airspace-blacklist-raquel-gutierrez
On Wednesday 20 July 2011 at 10.35pm, I boarded Aeroméxico flight 033 in Mexico City to go to Barcelona. I was to connect from there to another Alitalia flight to Italy, where I was meeting friends to share experiences of Latin American struggles. The flight was going normally until a little after midnight, when the captain said we would be returning to Monterrey in Mexico because United States airspace had been closed off.
To my extreme surprise, when we landed at a little after 1am, a flight attendant asked for my identification and then asked me to collect my things and accompany her off the plane. When I got to the door a few Mexican federal police and two or three employees of Aeroméxico asked me to identify myself again, and to leave the plane. I told them I was not leaving until they explained what was going on. They said that "the United States government has refused the plane because you are on it".
I was astonished. A nice Aeroméxico person from Monterrey told me that they, too, were very surprised, and said they would see what could be done. I had no choice but to get off the plane. The federal police asked me to hand over a copy of my passport. I think the young women from Aeroméxico were as amazed as I was. We waited in the airport for an hour and a half until they were finally able to send the plane on its way. After that, they took me to a hotel. I was scared and very angry. I asked them to get me a seat on the first flight returning to Mexico City, which they agreed to do. I felt a kind of shock, a deep vulnerability, and I desperately wanted to get home to safety.
I was furious. How can these "United States authorities" behave with such despotism? How do they have the power to force a passenger off a plane that belongs to a foreign airline travelling to a country that is not theirs, leaving her in the middle of northern Mexico at dawn?
The US authorities should explain the danger that would have been caused if I had flown 30,000ft above America. I have flown over the US various times in the past few years without any problem, so is this a change in US policy? I want these authorities to explain how or why they decided what they did, because their decisions are not only foolish but also arbitrary. And do foreign airlines always submit passenger lists to the territories over which they fly, or just to the US, and since when? And is this sort of thing a frequent occurrence – how many others have been turned back in this way?
I think I am on a US blacklist, though I have never been told. Presumably I am blacklisted because I was arrested in Bolivia in 1992 as a result of my political activism. I was tortured and imprisoned and charged – together with Bolivia’s current elected vice-president, Álvaro García – with belonging to a guerrilla organisation. The case was dropped due to the lack of evidence, and all charges against me were officially dropped in 2007.
Those of us who are on a US government "blacklist" – for a wide variety of often absurd reasons – are not asking that they let us into their country. It is aberrant to not let a plane through the air when we are travelling.
A great many commercial flights from Mexico to Europe pass over US airspace; is it to be the case that any Mexican the US chooses to blacklist has to find alternate routes? My concern is not just for me. Anyone – man, woman or child – who travels should be able to do so in the knowledge that they will not be arbitrarily stopped from reaching their destination.
Saudi Arabia
7) Senators to Saudi king: Lift ban on women driving
Jason Ukman, Washington Post, 03:01 PM ET, 07/26/2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/senators-call-on-saudi-king-to-lift-ban-on-women-driving/2011/07/26/gIQATeFAbI_blog.html
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton might be reluctant to interfere in Saudi Arabia’s affairs, but the women of the U.S. Senate are more than happy to tell the king what they think.
A bipartisan coalition of 14 senators said Tuesday that they were sending King Abdullah a letter urging him to end the Saudi ban on women driving in the conservative kingdom, the only nation in the world that prohibits women from driving or obtaining a driver’s license.
"The prohibition on women driving motor vehicles, even in cases of emergency, makes it impossible for citizens to exercise a basic human right," the senators wrote. "We strongly urge you to reconsider this ban and take an important step toward affording Saudi women the rights they deserve."
Following a social media campaign by rights advocates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last month that she supported Saudi women who have been fighting for the right to drive but that the "effort belongs" to those behind it, signaling that the United States would not push further. The State Department has said that Clinton has also engaged in "quiet diplomacy" on the issue.
The letter released Tuesday was signed by 14 of the 17 women in the Senate. Other lawmakers, including House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, have also offered their support to the Saudi campaign.
Malawi
8) U.S. Freezes Grant to Malawi Over Handling of Protests
Celia W. Dugger, New York Times, July 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/world/africa/27malawi.html
Cape Town, South Africa – In a sharp blow to Malawi’s international standing, an agency of the American government on Tuesday froze a $350 million grant to the nation after antigovernment protests there last week left 19 people dead.
The American decision followed Britain’s July 14 suspension of aid to the Malawian government – which has in the past gotten almost half its budget from international donors – on grounds that it had suppressed demonstrations and intimidated civic groups.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and its president, Bingu wa Mutharika, 77, a former World Bank economist, had been widely credited with successful efforts to reduce hunger by subsidizing small farmers’ fertilizer use. But human rights activists and academics have been sounding alarms in recent months about his increasingly authoritarian tendencies, reminiscent, they said, of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the dictator who ruled the country for 40 years until the advent of multiparty elections in 1994.
A senior American official, Sheila Herrling, said Tuesday that the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency, was "deeply disturbed" by accusations that the police had fired live rounds on unarmed people last week, and by claims that press coverage of the two-day demonstrations had been suppressed. The $350 million grant from the corporation, which was announced only in April and was to be disbursed over five years for electricity generation, is a large amount of money for Malawi, whose annual budget is about $2 billion.
[…] Kondwani Munthali, a political reporter for The Nation and a former Neiman Fellow at Harvard, said photographers, as well as radio, freelance and newspaper journalists – including himself – were beaten by the police with gun butts, whips and sticks. He wrote on his blog that the police took turns beating Mr. Mwakasungula, one of the protest’s chief organizers, "one after another whipping him with gun butts."
[…]
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