Just Foreign Policy News, December 8, 2011
Kirk Sanctions Threaten Economy; Gingrich Pledges to Appoint Bolton
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Could GOP Sanctions on Europe Tank the Economy and Elect Romney?
Why are Congressional Democrats – over the objections of the Obama Administration – helping Republicans press sanctions on Europeans who buy oil from Iran – sanctions that would increase unemployment in the U.S. during the 2012 campaign?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/gop-sanctions-europe-economy_b_1137095.html
26 Groups Tell House: Prevent War with Iran, Don’t Sabotage Diplomacy!
25 groups joined FCNL in a letter to the House, urging removal of Sec. 601c of the Iran sanctions bill H.R. 1905. This provision, inserted into the bill during committee markup, after most of the cosponsors had already signed onto the bill, would expressly prohibit contact between U.S. government officials and certain Iranian officials.
http://fcnl.org/issues/iran/fcnl_and_25_groups_tell_house_prevent_war_with_iran_dont_sabotage_diplomacy/
Juan Cole: Gingrich slots MEK terrorists’ supporter John Bolton for State
Newt Gingrich says he would appoint John Bolton as Secretary of State in order to "reform" the State Department.
http://www.juancole.com/2011/12/gingrich-slots-mek-terrorists-supporter-john-bolton-for-state.html
Video: Israeli occupation forces demolish Palestinian home in East Jerusalem
http://youtu.be/OH1BIXTrINY
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the US’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, the New York Times reports. In Iran, among other missions, it is looking for tunnels, underground facilities or other places where Iran could be building centrifuge parts or enrichment facilities. One such site, outside Qum, was revealed by President Obama in 2009. One senior official said recently that "we’ve got nothing of that scale yet," but added "we are looking every day."
In addition to video cameras, independent experts say the drone almost certainly carries communications intercept equipment and sensors that can detect tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes and other chemicals that can give away nuclear research.
[This report suggests that US monitoring is quite extensive, and thus that if Iran had a significant nuclear weapons program or a major secret facility, the US would likely have direct evidence of that – JFP.]
2) Newt Gingrich received a standing ovation at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting for promising to appoint John Bolton to be secretary of state if elected president, NBC reports. Gingrich offered lots of red meat for his pro-Israel audience, also getting a standing ovation for saying he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, NBC says.
3) The House named its conferees to handle negotiations over the defense authorization, AOL Defense reports. [Many supporters of the House McGovern amendment, which like the Merkley amendment pressed for accelerated drawdown from Afghanistan, are among the conferees. The McGovern amendment almost passed the House – JFP.]
4) Obama administration officials are well aware that Europe’s success in dealing its debt crisis is arguably the single most important factor that will determine Obama’s re-election chances, the New York Times reports. Obama’s aides realize that there is no easy way to plan a re-election strategy for one potential body blow: an implosion of the European currency. Such an event, experts say, would undoubtedly send the US unemployment rate higher and possibly induce another recession
5) The Marines will achieve their portion of defense cuts, in part, by shrinking from 202,000 troops to 186,800, The Hill reports. But the Pentagon has not drawn up any plans for how the deeper cuts of the automatic trigger would alter its budget, something former officials say is a mistake, The Hill says. "Many of us don’t think we’ve hit the bottom yet in terms of budget cuts," one former Pentagon official said.
6) Facing sharp criticism from fellow envoys and environmental activists, the chief US negotiator at the Durban climate conference appeared to shift his position on a timetable for a new set of international talks, the New York Times reports. Envoy Todd Stern denied the widespread view that the US opposed any further action to address global climate disruption until after 2020.
Egypt
7) In a briefing apparently aimed at Washington, Egypt’s military rulers said they would control the process of writing a constitution and maintain authority over the interim government to check the power of Islamists who have taken a commanding lead in parliamentary elections, the New York Times reports. The Times interprets the move as an appeal to Washington to back off on demands that the military cede power to the elected parliament, now that the Islamists have won. Human rights activists denounced the move.
Mexico
8) The Justice Department has determined that an American convicted in Mexico of drug trafficking was tortured by authorities while in Mexican custody, adding weight to charges by human rights groups that abuse is rampant in the US-financed drug war, the New York Times reports. Last week, Human Rights Watch issued a report on Mexico’s conduct of the drug war saying it found credible evidence of the participation of security forces in at least 170 cases of torture, 39 disappearances, and 24 extrajudicial killings.
9) The spent batteries Americans turn in for recycling are increasingly being sent to Mexico, where their lead is often extracted by crude methods that are illegal in the US, exposing plant workers and local residents to dangerous levels of lead, the New York Times reports. 20 percent of spent American vehicle and industrial batteries are now exported to Mexico, up from 6 percent in 2007.
Honduras
10) The murder Wednesday of a radio journalist brings to 17 the number of journalists killed in Honduras since 2010, Reporters Without Borders says. No murders of journalists have been solved since 2010, RSF says.
Haiti
11) The US intends to lift the 18-year arms embargo placed on Haiti following the 1993 military coup against former President Aristide, Defend Haiti reports. "The United States is now open to the idea of providing weapons to the Haitian National Police… under the conditions established by the two governments," said Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield.
Argentina
12) The Obama Administration appears to have reversed its opposition to IDB loans to Argentina, approving a loan to carry out infrastructure improvements in poor neighborhoods, the Buenos Aires Herald reports. Until recently the Obama administration had voted against lending Argentina money because of its government’s "failure to comply" with its international debt.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Drone Crash in Iran Reveals Secret U.S. Surveillance Effort
Scott Shane and David E. Sanger, New York Times, December 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/world/middleeast/drone-crash-in-iran-reveals-secret-us-surveillance-bid.html
Washington – The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort.
Until this week, the high-altitude flights from bases in Afghanistan were among the most secret of many intelligence-collection efforts against Iran, and American officials refuse to discuss it. But the crash of the vehicle, which Iranian officials said occurred more than 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan, blew the program’s cover.
The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say. The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.
In a recent speech, President Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, hinted at secret efforts by the United States to keep watch on Iran’s nuclear program. "We will continue to be vigilant," Mr. Donilon said last month at the Brookings Institution. "We will work aggressively to detect any new nuclear-related efforts by Iran. We will expose them and force Iran to place them under international inspections."
[…] In Iran, among other missions, it is looking for tunnels, underground facilities or other places where Iran could be building centrifuge parts or enrichment facilities.
One such site, outside Qum, was revealed by President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain in 2009, though it appears that Israel played a major role in detecting that site. One senior official said recently that "we’ve got nothing of that scale yet," but added "we are looking every day."
[…] In addition to video cameras, independent experts say the drone almost certainly carries communications intercept equipment and sensors that can detect tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes and other chemicals that can give away nuclear research.
[…]
2) Gingrich says he’d name John Bolton as secretary of state
Carrie Dann and Alex Moe, NBC, December 7, 2011
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9280301-gingrich-says-hed-name-john-bolton-as-secretary-of-state
Newt Gingrich received a standing ovation from the audience at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting on Wednesday for promising to appoint John Bolton to be secretary of state if elected president.
The former House Speaker pledged to appoint Bolton, the controversial former ambassador to the United Nations for President George W. Bush, to the top diplomatic post if he were elected.
Gingrich added that the appointment would be contingent upon Bolton’s agreement to help reform the State Department and overhaul the foreign service to replace it with a more "entrepreneurial" organization.
[…] Gingrich offered lots of red meat for this pro-Israel audience, also getting a standing ovation for saying he would move the U.S. embassy in the region from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
[…]
3) Defense Bill Conferees Meet; Hope Bill Ready By Weekend
Colin Clark, AOL Defense, December 7, 2011
http://defense.aol.com/2011/12/07/defense-bill-conferees-meet-hope-bill-ready-by-weekend/
Capitol Hill: The House named its conferees to handle negotiations over H.R. 1540, as this year’s defense authorization act is fondly known, and lawmakers from the opposite sides of the Capitol met this afternoon to hammer out a final bill. One Hill source said the discussions were, "moving quickly. We hope to have the language locked down by this weekend." This source did concede that might be too hopeful, but…
The main points of contention center on policy issues such as detainee rights and same sex marriages. The White House has opposed the Senate’s detainee language, threatening to veto the defense bill. Rep. Buck McKeon, who leads the House conferees as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has promised to stick by the House ban on gay marriages performed by military chaplains even if it means Congress fails to pass a defense policy bill for the first time in 50 years.
[…] The Senate’s group of conferees is simply the Armed Services Committee’s members. The House appointed the following HASC lawmakers today: McKeon, Bartlett, Thornberry, Akin, Forbes, Miller (Fla), LoBiondo, Turner (Ohio), Kline, Rogers (Ala), Shuster, Conaway, Wittman, Hunter, Rooney, Schilling, Griffin (Ark), West, Smith (Wash.), Reyes, Sanchez, Loretta, McIntyre, Andrews, Davis (Calif.), Langevin, Larsen (Wash.), Cooper, Bordallo, Courtney, Loebsack, Tsongas, and Pingree (Maine). There are also a slew of House conferees from other committees, such as intelligence, to advise their colleagues.
4) Eyeing 2012, White House Presses Europe on Debt
Helene Cooper and Annie Lowrey, New York Times, December 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/world/europe/eyeing-2012-race-white-house-presses-europe-on-debt.html
Washington – Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited Prime Minister Lucas Papademos of Greece in his Athens office on Monday. Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, hopscotched across Europe on Tuesday and Wednesday, urging leaders to address the European debt crisis more urgently. And President Obama has been on the phone almost every other week – including on Wednesday – with either Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany or President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
Publicly, Obama administration officials talk only about the economic consequences of a potential debt conflagration in Europe. Privately, though, they are well aware that Europe’s success in dealing with the troubles – and the administration’s success in persuading them to do so – is arguably the single most important factor that will determine Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.
The American economy has shown signs of life recently, with talk of a double-dip recession fading and job growth picking up. The change has raised the prospect that the economy may not be quite the political weight around Mr. Obama’s neck in 2012 that his advisers had feared – unless Europe goes downhill. Mr. Obama’s aides realize that there is no easy way to plan a re-election strategy for one potential body blow: an implosion of the European currency. Such an event, experts say, would undoubtedly send the American unemployment rate higher and possibly induce another recession. Other than lobbying from the sidelines, Mr. Obama and his administration have little control over the situation.
"It’s certainly true that Europe is the gorilla in the room when people look at how the economy could affect the election," one senior Obama adviser said, speaking on grounds of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Added Edwin M. Truman, former adviser to Mr. Geithner: "If the euro comes apart in a messy way – and it’s hard to imagine it will come apart in a nonmessy way – it would make the fall of 2008 look like a clambake."
And so it is, Mr. Truman and others said, that Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy could have far more to say about who will be the next president of the United States than anyone thought.
For Mr. Obama, the change of fortune is stark. This is a president whose election was greeted in Europe with rapture; as a candidate, he visited both Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy in the summer of 2008, where he received welcomes more fitting to World War II heroes – including a speech at the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and an arrival ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris. France would be "delighted" with Mr. Obama’s election, Mr. Sarkozy gushed at the time.
Now, incongruously, it is Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy who could play a part in whether Mr. Obama wins re-election. The president himself has called Europe the "wild card" in the domestic economic recovery and his aides have privately expressed frustration at what they view as a passive response from European leaders to the debt crisis. Obama administration officials say that leaning on European leaders to get their house in order, as the president has been doing, is in best interest of the United States, and not something that Mr. Obama is doing for his own political benefit.
[…] Administration officials say that besides the potential for drying up demand in Europe for American goods and the looming potential of a European bank failure’s setting off another financial debacle, the European crisis could stymie growth not only in Europe, but also in emerging markets.
Anxiety over what could happen across the Atlantic, coupled with earlier undue optimism about the domestic economic recovery, has the White House nervous about trumpeting even modest good economic news for fear of a later downturn.
Democratic campaign strategists concede that a collapse of the euro would transform the political dynamic even as some see the president’s standing improving, enhancing the prospects of other Democratic candidates.
"It is absolutely an important assumption that if the economy really tanks, really tanks, as the result of strong headwinds coming from Europe, it would be a more challenging environment," said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
[…]
5) Marines To Cut Troops, Not Weapons, To Meet 2013 Budget Cuts
John T. Bennett, The Hill, 12/07/11 08:30 PM ET
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/198043-marines-cut-troops-not-weapons-in-2013-budget
The Marine Corps plans to shed troops, not weapons programs, next year in order to meet the budget cuts mandated by the August debt-ceiling deal, a senior service official said Wednesday.
The debt-reduction law ordered $350 billion in national defense cuts over a decade. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the 2013 budget plan will propose cutting $260 billion of that in the next five years.
Panetta and other senior military officials have said the Defense Department can absorb the 10-year budget hit without jeopardizing national security, but some congressional defense hawks and analysts have questioned whether weapon programs would fall victim to the cuts.
For now, the Marine Corps is making sure that its hardware programs are off the chopping block. "In terms or procurement, we have protected that," Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said Wednesday.
The Marines will achieve their portion of the cuts, in part, by shrinking from 202,000 troops to 186,800. Officials also have "reduced capacity" elsewhere, Dunford said.
[…] That means the service has found a way to keep on track its plans for high-profile programs like the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft, its variant of the F-35 fighter, a new amphibious personnel craft and several ground combat trucks.
And that is good news for companies like Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35, and the team of Bell Helicopter and Boeing, which manufactures the V-22.
David Berteau of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said recently during a forum in Washington that hardware programs will take a hit.
Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center said procurement accounts "always carry a heavy burden" when there is a decrease in military budgets.
But Adams said the military’s most prized programs likely would only see modest changes – not termination. That means buying fewer models, as well as stretching out development and purchasing schedules.
Smaller programs make up about 60 percent of the Pentagon’s procurement budget, and "that’s the place to look," Adams said.
That’s largely because things like tanks, ammunition and front-end loaders have no constituencies in Congress, Adams said.
But all of this holds, according to Pentagon officials and analysts, only if $600 billion in additional national defense cuts triggered by the failure of the supercommittee are avoided. Many lawmakers, including the House GOP leadership, are pushing for those cuts to be changed.
The Pentagon has not drawn up any plans for how those deeper cuts would alter its budget, something former officials say is a mistake.
Dunford said if the Pentagon is forced to cut nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, it would require "difficult decisions" for the Marines, such as whether to shed more personnel and consider which programs might get killed.
"Many of us don’t think we’ve hit the bottom yet in terms of budget cuts," one former Pentagon official said Wednesday.
6) U.S. Climate Envoy Seems to Shift Position on Timetable for New International Talks
John M. Broder, New York Times, December 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/science/earth/us-climate-envoy-seems-to-shift-position-on-timetable-for-new-international-talks.html
Durban, South Africa – Facing sharp criticism from fellow envoys, environmental activists and one impassioned heckler, the chief American negotiator at a climate conference here on Thursday shifted his position – or at least his language – on a timetable for a new set of international talks.
Todd D. Stern, the Obama administration’s special envoy for climate change, was put on the defensive by a narrative developing here that the United States opposed any further action to address global climate disruption until after 2020, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a primary United Nations climate agreement, and voluntary programs negotiated more recently have run their course.
He firmly denied that the United States was dragging its feet and, somewhat ambiguously, endorsed a proposal from the European Union to quickly start negotiating a new international climate change treaty.
Mr. Stern’s statement to delegates from more than 190 nations at the annual climate conference was disrupted by a 21-year-old Middlebury College junior, Abigail Borah, who told the assembly that she would speak for the United States because Mr. Stern had forfeited the right to do so.
"I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot," said Ms. Borah, who is attending the conference as a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement. "The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty."
[…] Scores of delegates and observers gave her a sustained ovation. Then the South African authorities threw her out of the conference. Mr. Stern smiled as if the applause were for him and then continued with his prepared remarks.
Afterward, at a briefing for reporters, he dismissed charges that the United States was blocking any action on climate change until after 2020.
"It is completely off base to suggest that the U.S. is proposing that we delay action until 2020," Mr. Stern said. He detailed a number of domestic and international actions that the United States has taken and said that he and other administration officials were working on others, like finding ways to raise tens of billions of dollars to help poor nations adapt to a warming planet.
[…] He then seemed to endorse a European Union proposal to adopt a "road map" for future discussions leading to a formal climate change treaty to be completed by 2015 and to take effect in 2020. He had previously given lukewarm support to the plan, saying only that the United States was open to a "process" for a future agreement.
His language was somewhat convoluted, but he said that the European Union had called for a road map "that the U.S. supports."
"We are strongly committed to promptly starting a process to move forward on that," Mr. Stern said, although he immediately qualified that statement by saying that any resulting agreement may or may not be legally binding.
The Europeans and a large majority of smaller nations are adamant that any future accord be legally binding, while China, India, the United States and several other major emitters of greenhouse gases have attached some difficult conditions to participation in any mandatory agreement.
Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, said she was encouraged by Mr. Stern’s change in tone.
[…]
Egypt
7) Military Flexes Its Muscles As Islamists Gain In Egypt
David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, December 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/world/middleeast/egyptian-general-mukhtar-al-mulla-asserts-continuing-control-despite-elections.html
Cairo – Egypt’s military rulers said Wednesday that they would control the process of writing a constitution and maintain authority over the interim government to check the power of Islamists who have taken a commanding lead in parliamentary elections.
In an unusual briefing evidently aimed at Washington, Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla of the ruling council asserted that the initial results of elections for the People’s Assembly do not represent the full Egyptian public, in part because well-organized factions of Islamists were dominating the voting. The comments, to foreign reporters and not the Egyptian public, may have been intended to persuade Washington to back off its call for civilian rule.
"So whatever the majority in the People’s Assembly, they are very welcome, because they won’t have the ability to impose anything that the people don’t want," General Mulla said, explaining that the makeup of Parliament will not matter because it will not have power over the constitution.
He appeared to say that the vote results could not be representative because the Egyptian public could not possibly support the Islamists, especially the faction of ultraconservative Salafis who have taken a quarter of the early voting.
"Do you think that the Egyptians elected someone to threaten his interest and economy and security and relations with international community?" General Mulla asked. "Of course not."
The military’s insistence on controlling the constitutional process was the latest twist in a struggle between the generals’ council and a chorus of liberal and Islamist critics who want the elected officials to preside over the writing of a new constitution.
Just three weeks ago, Cairo erupted in a week of bloody protests set off in part by the military’s attempts to claim permanent powers to intervene in civilian politics and to enshrine in the constitution protection from public scrutiny. Under intense pressure, the military appeared for a time to back down.
But the setting of the general’s remarks – an extraordinary question-and-answer session for an invited group of eight American journalists and one British journalist, without any Egyptian news organizations – indicated that he was also talking to Washington. The Obama administration joined the calls of Egyptian activists for the generals to turn over power "immediately" to a civilian government, and the generals have expected that the threat of an Islamist takeover at the polls might now give Washington pause.
It was unclear if the council planned to ever deliver such a message to the Egyptian public or political parties. Egyptian activists were as incensed that the council laid out its plans to foreigners first as they were by its reassertion of control.
"This is an attempt to stage a coup, and nobody wants it – even the people who are against the Islamists," said Negad el-Borai, a human rights activist in Cairo.
He accused the military council of playing liberals and Islamists against one another in an effort to preserve its own power. "This is madness," he said. "They are deciding to push the country toward a broad civil war."
[…] Although the military’s previous plans for the transition had called for Parliament to pick 100 members of a constituent assembly that would draft the constitution, General Mulla made clear that the military council no longer intended to allow that.
"The majority of the People’s Assembly will not be the only one represented in the constituent assembly," he said, at times questioning the essential premise that an elected body could represent the general public. "We have a lot of other factions such as workers, farmers, engineers and doctors who are not in Parliament."
[…] Asked if the military would eventually submit to public parliamentary oversight of its budget, General Mulla appeared to find the idea ridiculous, saying he knew of no military whose budget was public.
[…]
Mexico
8) U.S. Says Mexico Tortured American in Custody
Nicholas Casey, Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204903804577082564243718648.html
The U.S. Justice Department has determined that an American convicted in Mexico of drug trafficking was tortured by authorities while in Mexican custody, a move that immediately freed him from prison and added troubling official allegations of abuse in Mexico’s drug war.
The Department’s Parole Commission, an agency that sets release dates for Americans convicted of crimes abroad and transferred home, said that Shohn Huckabee, 24, was "tortured in foreign custody" after Mexican soldiers said they discovered marijuana in his car. Mr. Huckabee denies the charges.
[…] The Dec. 1 finding could raise tensions between Washington and Mexico City over how Mexico is pursuing the drug war. Under terms of the Merida Initiative, the $1.4 billion aid package given to Mexico and Central American governments to fight drugs, Mexico could lose 15% of the aid if there is evidence of human-rights violations.
A spokesman for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R., Texas), warned Tuesday that the State Department "should be very carefully vetting Merida funding in order to ensure that it is being used for its intended purposes," and asked that it "investigate the reported torture of Shohn Huckabee."
The finding adds credibility to mounting accusations by rights groups that the Mexican army and police forces have resorted to tactics like torture and disappearances in pursuing drug cartels and trying to stop the country’s spiraling violence. Some 46,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón took power in December 2006.
Last week, Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, issued a report on Mexico’s conduct of the drug war saying it found credible evidence of the participation of security forces in at least 170 cases of torture, 39 disappearances, and 24 extrajudicial killings.
[…] The Mexican military, who stopped the men just as they were reaching a border bridge, said they found two suitcases of marijuana in their vehicle. After briefly questioning the men at a barracks, the pair was taken to be booked by civil authorities, the military said at the time.
The Americans offer a different account. They say the military planted the marijuana in their vehicle after stopping them. The men say they were then taken to the military base, where they were beaten, subjected to electric shocks and threatened with death.
During the trial, three window washers who witnessed the arrest testified that they had seen the army put suitcases into their vehicle; a doctor’s report indicated that they had been bruised while in military custody. Nonetheless, a Mexican civilian court convicted the two men and sentenced them to five-year prison sentences.
[…] More than 5,000 complaints from Mexicans have been filed to Mexico’s human rights commission against the military, many of them alleging torture.
Nik Steinberg of Human Rights Watch says Mr. Huckabee’s account of torture is similar to these. "What Huckabee went through on the military base-electric shocks, beatings, death threats-fits a pattern of torture that we’ve documented in scores of cases across Mexico," he said.
The decision also raised concerns by officials in Texas concerned for the safety of locals who cross the border. "These abuses are something that at the local level everybody knows is happening," said Susie Byrd, an El Paso City Councilwoman. "We’ve been struggling to get our congressmen and federal government to recognize the human rights abuses and act."
9) Spent Batteries From U.S. Put Mexicans’ Health at Risk
Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, December 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/science/earth/recycled-battery-lead-puts-mexicans-in-danger.html
Naucalpan de Juárez, Mexico – The spent batteries Americans turn in for recycling are increasingly being sent to Mexico, where their lead is often extracted by crude methods that are illegal in the United States, exposing plant workers and local residents to dangerous levels of a toxic metal.
The rising flow of batteries is a result of strict new Environmental Protection Agency standards on lead pollution, which make domestic recycling more difficult and expensive, but do not prohibit companies from exporting the work and the danger to countries where standards are low and enforcement is lax.
Mexican environmental officials acknowledge that they lack the money, manpower and technical capacity to police a fast-growing industry now operating in many parts of the country, often in dilapidated neighborhoods like the one here, 30 miles northwest of Mexico City.
Batteries are imported through official channels or smuggled in to satisfy a growing demand for lead, once cheap and readily available but now in short global supply. Lead batteries are crucial to cellphone towers, solar power arrays and the exploding Chinese car market, and the demand for lead has increased its fluctuating price as much as tenfold in a decade.
An analysis of trade statistics by The New York Times shows that about 20 percent of spent American vehicle and industrial batteries are now exported to Mexico, up from 6 percent in 2007. About 20 million such batteries will cross the border this year, according to United States trade statistics, and that does not take into account batteries smuggled in as mislabeled metal scrap or second-hand goods. In September, more than 60 18-wheelers full of old batteries crossed the border each day, American trade records show.
[…] A sample of soil collected by The Times in the schoolyard showed a lead level of 2,000 parts per million, five times the limit for children’s play areas in the United States set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In most states, that would rate as a "significant environmental lead hazard" and require immediate remediation, like covering the area with concrete or disposing of the soil.
"If we export, we should only be sending batteries to countries with standards as strict as ours, and in Mexico that is not the case," said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, a San Francisco group devoted to reducing lead exposure.
[…]
Honduras
10) Journalist Killed, Paper Attacked As Violence Against Media Grows
Reporters Without Borders, Thursday 8 December 2011
http://en.rsf.org/honduras-journalist-killed-paper-attacked-08-12-2011,41532.html
The murder yesterday of Luz Marina Paz Villalobos, a journalist with the radio station Cadena Hondureña de Noticias (CHN), in Comayagüela on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, brings to 17 the number of journalists killed in Honduras since 2010.
Paz was test-driving a car when two men on a motorcycle opened fire, instantly killing her and a mechanic who was accompanying her.
[…] Paz was known to have views that were hostile to the present government. She had worked for almost 10 years at Radio Globo, an opposition station sympathetic to former President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a coup in 2009. Investigators believe the attack may be related to her work.
Noting that no murders of journalists have been solved since 2010, Reporters Without Borders said: "We deplore the disgraceful impunity enjoyed by those who order and carry out these crimes.
[…] The press freedom organization noted there had been an unprecedented increase in attacks on the press. The day before Paz’s murder, the newspaper La Tribuna was the target of an armed attack by gunmen who fired several shots at its office in Tegucigalpa. A security guard was taken to hospital suffering from serious stomach wounds.
The newspaper’s editorial team believes the attack could have been in reprisal for the publication of an article on 22 November accusing members of the police of killing the son of Julieta Castellanos, the director of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, and one of his friends.
The attack on La Tribuna followed many death threats and assaults against its journalists, who have been prepared to expose the criminal excesses of the police force.
"What is the future of journalists who show courage and concern for the right of citizens to be informed? Judicial indifference, a product of the highly polarised media climate since the coup, gives the military and police a free hand to take it out on news organizations that dare to draw attention to the abuses and misdemeanours of public authorities," Reporters Without Borders concluded.
Haiti
11) U.S. Government Intends to Lift Arms Embargo on Haiti
Defend Haiti, Friday, 02 December 2011 08:18
http://defend.ht/politics/articles/international/2127-us-government-intends-to-lift-arms-embargo-on-haiti
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – The United States intends to lift the 18-year arms embargo placed on Haiti following the 1993 military coup d’etat against former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
The announcement came during the visit of the Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, William Brownfield, who made the announcement alongside Director General of the Haitian National Police, Mario Andresol.
"The United States is now open to the idea of providing weapons to the Haitian National Police… under the conditions established by the two governments," said the U.S. official at the joint press conference. According to AlterPresse, Brownfield said the U.S. initiated "dialogue with the Government of Haiti" on the subject.
For Brownfield, the first step toward lifting the blockade was the establishment of a professional and well-trained police force. "The Haitian police has reached this level," he said.
[…]
Argentina
12) US backs IDB loan for Argentina
Buenos Aires Herald, December 7, 2011
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/86743/us-backs-idb-loan-for-argentina
Argentina will receive a loan worth US$400 million, or 1.7 billion pesos, from the Inter-American Development Bank to carry out infrastructure improvements in poor neighbourhoods, the government said yesterday. The decision follows an about-turn made by the US to approve credits to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government after several refusals to do so.
According to the Planning Ministry, which announced the new loan, the programme will help the urban and social inclusion of households living in precarious conditions. "Up to 70,000 families will benefit from infrastructure improvements including the provision of drinking water, sewers, gas, lighting for streets and homes and public spaces," it said in a statement. That means that around 280,000 people who live in shantytowns or irregular housing will be affected for the better by the investment which will finance phase three of the so-called Neighbourhood Improvement Programme (PROMEBA).
The funds are part of a line of credit which were earmarked for investment projects by the bank in 2007 and will begin to be repaid in 2016 over a 25-year period and have a five-year grace period. The loan’s interest rate is based on Libor.
The loan is complemented by an additional US$45 million which will be funded by the Argentine government, the IDB said.
The US$400 million credit approval reflects a change in the US’s stance, given that even up until recently, Barack Obama’s administration had voted against lending Argentina money because of its government’s "failure to comply" with its international debt.
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