Just Foreign Policy News
October 19, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Adbusters calls for global "Robin Hood tax" march Oct 29
"On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world."
http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/robinhood.html
Food, Farming and Foreign Policy: Interview with Rami Zurayk
Just Foreign Policy talks to Rami Zurayk, author of "Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring," about Palestine, Arabism, rural agricultural development in Lebanon, the "aberration" of U.S. foreign aid, community-supported agriculture, and the Arab Spring.
http://www.truth-out.org/WalkingLikeanEgyptianFoodFarmingandForeignPolicy/1318951270
***Action: Press Congress to Oppose the Bahrain Arms Sale
Rep. McGovern and Sen. Wyden introduced a resolution of disapproval to block the proposed arms sale to Bahrain. Congressional support for this resolution would increase pressure on the Administration to speak up about human rights in Bahrain.
Ask your Rep. and Senators to add pressure on the Administration to change its policy on Bahrain by signing the McGovern-Wyden resolution.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/bahrainarmsdeal
"Convenient" Base Is Unexamined Excuse for U.S. Silence on Bahrain Crackdown
The New York Times called the U.S. naval base in Bahrain a "convenience," but it’s still being used as an excuse for U.S. silence on the crackdown in Bahrain.
http://www.truth-out.org/convenient-base-unexamined-excuse-us-silence-bahrain-crackdown/1318614630
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The State Department said it will consider a special investigation of human rights abuses in Bahrain before moving ahead with $53 million in arms sales, AP reports. The report is due Oct. 30.
2) In a new report, Amnesty International says the U.S. supplied some of the weapons used against protesters in the Arab Spring, AP reports. The report comes as Amnesty urges the Congress to block a $53 million proposed U.S. arms sale to Bahrain. "It’s precisely the wrong signal to send for the Obama administration to be on the verge of sending $53 million in weapons to a Bahrani king whose security forces have already been opening fire on peaceful protesters this year," said Sanjeev Bery of Amnesty.
3) The Pentagon’s general counsel warned against "over-militarization" of the US approach to counterterrorism and said Congress should avoid micro-managing how terrorist suspects are detained and prosecuted, the Washington Post reports. Jeh Johnson criticized a series of detention provisions in the House and Senate versions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. One measure in the Senate version of the bill would mandate the military custody of any member of al-Qaeda or an affiliated organization, or anyone involved in planning an attack on the United States. The provision is not limited to people captured overseas, and Johnson said it could force federal law enforcement officials to turn over suspects to the military.
Bahrain
4) A senior Swiss diplomat has admitted being frustrated at double standards present in the West’s response to the Arab Spring, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation reports. "I am often very frustrated by how the international community reacts in a double standard way," said Peter Maurer, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. "And in response I can only say that the effort is guided by other interests. If I could speculate, I would say that oil plays an important role in how the international community reacts to certain situations."
Maurer was responding to a question posed by Maryam Al Khawaja, a democracy activist from Bahrain. She asked why the international community chose to impose sanctions on Syria but not on Yemen or Bahrain. Al Khawaja said young people in Bahrain felt "completely abandoned by the west". "The situation in Bahrain is not going away, if anything it is getting worse," she said.
Libya
5) Black Libyans driven from their homes by rebel militias say they were chased out at gunpoint and beaten with electrical cables to make them confess to supporting Qaddafi, Reuters reports. It is unknown when they will be allowed to return home.
Iran
6) Iranian gasoline imports have slumped by as much as 95 percent over the last four years, according to official government data, as rising refinery capacity and lower fuel subsidies help neutralize western sanctions, Reuters reports. Thanks to fuel rationing, a four-fold pump price hike and Iran’s increasing ability to refine its own oil, the share of imports in Iran’s gasoline supplies has dipped from around 40 percent a few years ago to less than 5 percent. According to the Iranian government, Iran’s daily gasoline consumption has fallen from around 76 million liters in 2006 to around 60 million liters a day in early October 2011, despite the number of vehicles doubling over the period.
Haiti
7) The UN should provide restitution to Haiti for reintroducing cholera into Haiti, Mark Weisbrot says. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the discovery of new cholera cases in Haiti. Over 6,500 people have died from cholera-related symptoms and over 460,000 have been infected over the past year. "There are no credible experts who doubt that it was UN troops who brought cholera back to Haiti, and are responsible for the deadly epidemic that has followed," Weisbrot said. "Yet the UN stubbornly continues to deny responsibility."
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) State Dept. acknowledges Congress’ concern about Bahrain arms sales, cites human rights probe
Associated Press, October 18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/state-dept-acknowledges-congress-concern-about-bahrain-arms-sales-cites-human-rights-probe/2011/10/18/gIQAb07JvL_story.html
Washington – The State Department said Tuesday it will consider a special investigation of alleged human rights abuses in Bahrain before moving ahead with $53 million in arms sales to the violence-wracked nation.
In a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and public statements, the department said it shared congressional concerns about Bahrain’s treatment of protesters and would await the results of a special inquiry established by Bahrain King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. That commission’s report to the king is due Oct. 30.
At least 35 people have died since Bahrain’s Shiite-led majority began protests in February seeking greater rights from the ruling Sunni monarchy in the strategic nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
"That’s something we would look at closely," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said of the commission’s report. "We’re going to continue to take human rights considerations into account as we move toward the finalization of this deal."
Wyden and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., have introduced a resolution blocking the arms sale, which includes Humvees and missiles. At least a half-dozen senators, including Wyden, have written to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizing Bahrain’s human rights violations and resistance to calls for reform. They have said completing the arms sale would weaken U.S. credibility amid democratic transitions in the Middle East.
[…]
2) Amnesty: Arms from the US, Europe used against protesters in Middle East, North Africa
Associated Press, October 18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/amnesty-arms-from-the-us-europe-used-against-protesters-in-middle-east-north-africa/2011/10/18/gIQANgzUvL_story.html
New York – The United States, Russia and many European countries that have supported the swell of protests across the Middle East and North Africa this year also supplied some of the weapons used against demonstrators, Amnesty International said in a new report Tuesday.
The report comes as the human rights group urges the U.S. Congress to block a $53 million proposed U.S. arms sale to Bahrain, where more than 30 people have been killed as the ruling Sunni Muslim monarchy has waged sweeping crackdowns against mostly Shiite Muslim protesters who have demanded greater rights.
The London-based group says its findings show the dangers involved in selling arms to repressive countries under a system that makes it difficult to tell who ends up with the weapons and how they are used.
"To the extent that arms transfers are knowingly engaged in and result in the perpetration of crimes against humanity, the transferring state also becomes responsible under international law," Sanjeev Bery, the group’s Washington-based advocacy director for Middle East and North Africa, told The Associated Press.
Amnesty looked at arms transfers since 2005 to key countries rocked by protests this year: Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. It found that the main suppliers of arms since 2005 were the U.S., Britain, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
Amnesty said countries must tighten and increase transparency in arms export controls to avoid the risk that weapons will be used to violate human rights.
"It’s precisely the wrong signal to send for the Obama administration to be on the verge of sending $53 million in weapons to a Bahrani king whose security forces have already been opening fire on peaceful protesters this year," Bery said.
[…] Amnesty argues that the U.S. and others supplying weapons have long ignored the human rights violations under many of the regimes and shouldn’t have sold them in the first place.
"The international community needs to know exactly what’s being given to whom and exactly how it’s being used," Bery said. "If not, the U.S. government should not be in the business of providing those specific weapons to begin with."
3) Pentagon lawyer warns of militarized approach to counterterrorism
Peter Finn, Washington Post, October 18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-lawyer-warns-of-militarized-approach-to-counterterrorism/2011/10/18/gIQAfbnjvL_story.html
The Pentagon’s general counsel warned Tuesday against the "over-militarization" of the country’s approach to counterterrorism and said Congress should avoid micro-managing how terrorist suspects are detained and prosecuted.
"There is risk in permitting and expecting the U.S. military to extend its powerful reach into areas traditionally reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country," Jeh Johnson said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. "The military should not and cannot be the only answer."
Johnson in particular criticized a series of detention provisions in the House and Senate versions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
One measure in the Senate version of the bill would mandate the military custody of any member of al-Qaeda or an affiliated organization, or anyone involved in planning an attack on the United States. It would not apply to U.S. citizens. The provision is not limited to people captured overseas, and Johnson said it could force federal law enforcement officials to turn over suspects to the military.
Johnson questioned whether the FBI or other federal agencies would have to curtail investigations or interviews to "call the Army to take the suspect away." And he cautioned that when "we attempt to extend the reach of the military onto U.S. soil, the courts resist, consistent with our core values and our heritage."
Republicans said this week that the detention provisions will remain in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act. They noted that the measure has bipartisan support, with most Senate Democrats backing it in committee. "We’re not going to change this bill," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on Tuesday.
Johnson objected to a provision in the House version that would force the prosecution of a number of terrorist offenses in military commissions rather than in federal courts.
"Decisions about the most appropriate forum in which to prosecute a terrorist should be left, case by case, to prosecutors and national security professionals," he said. "A flat legislative ban on the use of one system – whether it is commissions or the civilian courts – in favor of the other is not the answer."
Johnson said that the Obama administration remains committed to closing the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that it is "firm policy" not to bring any more detainees to the U.S. military prison. The facility now houses 171 detainees.
The administration’s efforts to repatriate or resettle detainees in third countries have ground to a halt. Although dozens were slated for transfer, no one had left the facility in a year because of what Johnson called "rigid" reporting requirements imposed by Congress.
"After living with it now for almost a year, I will tell you that this provision is onerous and near impossible to satisfy," he said.
[…]
Bahrain
4) West confronts double standards in Arab response
Sophie Douez, Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, Oct 19, 2011 – 13:46
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/specials/the_arab_spring/West_confronts_double_standards_in_Arab_response.html?cid=31383238
A senior Swiss diplomat, Peter Maurer, has admitted being frustrated at double standards present in the international community’s response to the Arab Spring.
Speaking at the Foreign Ministry’s annual human security conference in Bern on Tuesday, Maurer, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said it was fair to question the "unequal response" of the international community to events in different countries.
"I am often very frustrated by how the international community reacts in a double standard way," Maurer told the more than 800 people who attended the conference titled "Uprisings in the Arab world: between hope and fears".
"And in response I can only say that the effort is guided by other interests. If I could speculate, I would say that oil plays an important role in how the international community reacts to certain situations."
Maurer was named president of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday and will take up the position in July 2012. He was responding to a question posed by Maryam Al Khawaja, a 24-year-old democracy activist from Bahrain. She asked why the international community chose to impose sanctions on Syria but not on Yemen or Bahrain.
Al Khawaja told the conference that young people in Bahrain felt "completely abandoned by the west".
"The situation in Bahrain is not going away, if anything it is getting worse," she said.
[…]
Libya
5) Displaced black Libyans tell of beatings, expulsion at gunpoint
Brian Rohan, Reuters, Mon, Oct 17 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/17/us-libya-displaced-idUSTRE79G2CY20111017
Benghazi, Libya – After weeks on the run, thousands of black Libyans driven from their homes during the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi have resurfaced across the country, finding refuge in a squalid camp they hope is only temporary.
Once residents of Gaddafi’s stronghold of Tawergha, the families now wander a dusty compound ringed with garbage and staffed by a handful of volunteers from the city of Benghazi struggling to prevent the spread of disease as numbers swell.
The group’s eastward flight began last summer, when anti-Gaddafi forces overran
Tawergha and vengeance-seeking crowds ransacked it, leaving a ghost town behind.
"They chased us with guns and knives," said Ibrahim Med Khaled, a 24-year-old taxi driver recently arrived at the former construction site after spending weeks dodging hostile crowds across the country’s west before being captured by armed men.
"They brought me to a house and beat me with electrical cable to make me confess I worked for Gaddafi, even though I told them I never carried a gun," he said, lifting his shirt to reveal shoulders criss-crossed with fresh wounds from flogging.
Throughout the uprising against Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, his opponents have accused him of hiring fighters from neighboring African countries which led to reports of mistreatment of blacks, including Libyans.
The camp has grown since opening from 400 to nearly 3,000 people in just two weeks, despite disrepair and lack of sufficient sanitation and electricity evidenced by raw sewage pooling behind some of the housing blocks. Aid workers say overcrowding is forcing hundreds to set up makeshift settlements near by.
[…] "We have a big heath problem here," said Randa Muftah Salem-Oun, a 23-year-old medical student now head doctor at the site, where her day begins at dawn and ends after midnight. "We need many supplies, wound dressings and medicine," she said, adding that many at the camp suffered from gastroenteritis – a telltale sign of contaminated food or water – and that hepatitis was also discovered among the sick.
However dire the conditions may be, the camp’s residents say they are torn between desire to return, and fear of reprisals from heavily armed locals still bitter from one of the bloodiest episodes in Libya’s civil war.
Many accuse men from Tawergha of committing atrocities in the siege of the city of Misrata, and tales of raping sprees by sub-Saharan African mercenaries – fueled in one version by Viagra doled out by Gaddafi – abound in Libya, leaving dark-skinned people suspect to some of their countrymen.
Another former Tawergha resident, a 38-year-old mother of four named Rabha Mouftah, said there was no doubt as to the intentions of the mob that stormed into her town last summer. "They came to kill black people," she said in a room with no lighting she now shares with her family off an alley strewn with debris. "We were scared to go outside, so we hid in different houses for seven weeks, then came here."
The Tawergha displaced add yet another delicate task to the growing workload of Libya’s interim rulers, the National Transitional Council, (NTC) as they try to reunify the country and impose the rule of law amid renewed opposition from Gaddafi loyalists, who launched attacks in the capital Tripoli last week for the first time since it fell in August.
It also highlights a potential future division in the post-Gaddafi era as leaders strive to integrate a legion of factions, such as the Tuarag, a black tribe of nomads some of whom still support the ousted leader.
Some groups have reported arbitrary arrests across the country on suspicion of collusion with the former leader, believed to be somewhere in Libya’s vast southern desert.
While the NTC favors the return of Tawargha’s residents, it admits this will take time.
But resolving the issue remains a test of its leadership to come. Much of the city lays in ruins and people in neighboring Misrata say tensions are still too high to allow a return that could spark more violence.
[…]
Iran
6) Iran gasoline import slump softens sanctions blow
Daniel Fineren, Reuters, Tue, Oct 18 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/iran-gasoline-imports-idUSL5E7LI2G620111018
Dubai, Oct 18 – Iranian gasoline imports have slumped by as much as 95 percent over the last four years, according to official government data, as rising refinery capacity and lower fuel subsidies help neutralize western sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of fuel.
Iran’s inadequate refinery infrastructure and rampant internal demand intensified Iran’s gasoline import dependency until 2007 — a vulnerability that western governments have targeted by blocking fuel supplies to pressure Tehran over its disputed nuclear programme.
But gasoline imports have fallen from 204,000 barrels per day (bpd), or 32.47 million litres a day in June 2007 to at least a 10-year low of 10,000 bpd (1.59 million litres) in June 2011, according to Joint Data Initiative (Jodi) figures, while seasonal peak imports were down nearly 70 percent in January 2011 from highs of 244,000 bpd in January 2007.
Thanks to fuel rationing, a four-fold pump price hike and Iran’s increasing ability to refine its own oil, the share of imports in Iran’s gasoline supplies has dipped from around 40 percent a few years ago to less than 5 percent, putting pressure on Washington and Brussels to find new ways to squeeze Tehran economically.
[…] According to the Iranian government, Iran’s daily gasoline consumption has fallen from around 76 million liters in 2006 to around 60 million liters a day (376,931 bpd) in early October 2011, despite the number of vehicles doubling over the period.
"Despite increasing the number of vehicles of the country … gasoline consumption has fallen considerably," Shana quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying on national television in early October, adding that had he not slashed subsidies daily gasoline consumption could now be around 127 million liters.
[…]
Haiti
7) On One-Year Anniversary of Cholera’s Return to Haiti, CEPR Co-Director Calls for Restitution from United Nations Troops
Cholera Cases on the Increase Again, According to Medical Groups
Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 19, 2011
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/mark-weisbrot-calls-for-restitution-from-un-troops-for-cholera-in-haiti
Washington, D.C.- The United Nations should provide restitution to Haiti for reintroducing cholera into the country, according to Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Today marks the one-year anniversary of the discovery of new cholera cases in Haiti. Previously, the disease had been unknown in Haiti for over 100 years. Over 6,500 people have died from cholera-related symptoms and over 460,000 have been infected over the past year.
"There are no credible experts who doubt that it was UN troops who brought cholera back to Haiti, and are responsible for the deadly epidemic that has followed," Weisbrot said. "Yet the UN stubbornly continues to deny responsibility. If the UN Mission is in Haiti to provide safety and security to the Haitian people, the least it can do is offer to make amends for causing one of Haiti’s deadliest disease outbreaks in its history."
The one-year anniversary of the cholera outbreak comes as medical groups such as Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) have warned that cholera cases are spiking yet again, following a decrease earlier in the summer. Haiti’s Health Ministry reports that there are as many as 700 new infections each day. Despite this, some providers are cutting back on cholera [PDF] and sanitation assistance, due to a lack of funding. The current budget for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is close to $1 billion USD per year, almost nine times the $130 million that the international community has disbursed to fight cholera.
Despite statements from UN officials over the past year, several scientific studies have matched the cholera strain now infecting Haitian patients with one endemic to Nepal, and the first cholera infections in 2010 were located downriver from a MINUSTAH base of Nepalese troops. An Associated Press visit to the camp in October 2010 documented the waste from the base contaminating the Artibonite river, and photographs also corroborate eyewitness testimony that MINUSTAH troops have dumped sewage into the river.
"Considering the lack of safe drinking water in many parts of Haiti, the MINUSTAH troops’ dumping sewage into rivers was an act of clear criminal negligence," Weisbrot said. "The susceptibility of the Haitian population to a cholera epidemic, in the aftermath of the earthquake, was already a serious concern for health professionals months before the outbreak began.
"The MINUSTAH authorities should be held responsible for this negligence. This is a disaster of proportions on par with Union Carbide’s gas leak disaster in Bhopal, but much worse in terms of the human impact."
Weisbrot also noted that the UN’s own recommendations for responding to the cholera epidemic include prioritizing "investment in piped, treated drinking water supplies and improved sanitation throughout Haiti."
–
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