Just Foreign Policy News
March 19, 2010
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JFP video: Highlights of the Afghanistan Debate
In 6 minutes of video, we summarize the case made by Members of Congress for a timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Please watch our video and spread it around, to help educate Americans that there is a debate.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/endthewar
Jewish Voice for Peace: Don’t let AIPAC speak for you
AIPAC’s annual Washington DC policy conference takes place next week, and thousands of AIPAC members will tell Congress that the Obama administration is being too hard on Israel, because Obama, Biden and Clinton dared to insist that Israel abide by international law and freeze settlement construction. Tell Congress that AIPAC doesn’t speak for you.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2643
Jonathan Tasini – End the Blockade of Gaza
New York U.S. Senate candidate, invoking his life experience in Israel, supports the Obama Administration’s opposition to Israeli settlement expansion and calls for the blockade on Gaza to be lifted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHp1jPgiv-E&
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Kai Eide, the former top UN official in Afghanistan, said recent arrests of high-ranking Taliban figures by Pakistan have severed important secret communications between the Taliban and the West, possibly delaying peace negotiations and making them more difficult, the New York Times reports. "The Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played," Eide said. "They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing, and you see the result today." Western European countries are pushing hard for a negotiated settlement, essentially pulling in a different direction from the US, the NYT says.
2) The Quartet of Middle East negotiators – the US, EU, UN, and Russia – has demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity and denounced Israel’s plan to build new housing in East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera reports. But Palestinians say the Quartet must monitor and enforce the settlement freeze.
3) The Obama Administration’s campaign to delegitimize Venezuela’s elections has begun, writes Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian. As part of the campaign, General Doug Fraser of the US Southern Command was forced to recant his Congressional testimony that there was no evidence that Venezuela backs terrorist groups, but no-one in the US media seemed to notice.
4) US officials say Al Qaeda and its affiliates have shifted from emphasis on spectacular and complicated attacks against the US to simpler ones that are easier to pull off, the Los Angeles Times reports. A US counter-terrorism official suggested that the dramatic US political reaction to "failed attacks" encourages Al Qaeda to see such attacks as successful.
5) Michael Furlong, the Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by U.S. military commanders, the Washington Post reports. A Reagan-era executive order prohibits contractors from being used for intelligence-gathering.
6) The Dutch prime minister denounced a claim by a retired U.S. general that gay Dutch soldiers were partly to blame for allowing Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, AP reports. [The US had pressed the Netherlands not to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan; presumably Gen. John Sheehan’s remarks just made the Dutch withdrawal more certain – JFP.]
7) Dozens of civil society organisations are demanding greater transparency, accountability and structural reforms in the Inter-American Development Bank as the price of an increase in the IDB’s resources, Inter Press Service reports. "The IDB has been largely ineffective in reducing inequality," the Bank Information Center said.
Honduras
8) The Obama administration is vigorously supporting the coup regime in Honduras, writes historian Dana Frank in The Nation. Under the new Lobo administration, the repression isn’t over; Lobo has reappointed the same military leaders who perpetrated the coup, with the exception of Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was dismissed only to be named head of Hondutel, the state-owned telephone company, which the oligarchs are itching to privatize. Paramilitary-style violence against the resistance has escalated since Lobo’s inauguration on January 27.
Israel/Palestine
9) Israeli authorities would not allow members of a Danish parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee entry into Gaza, the Copenhagen Post reports. The committee had planned to meet with the Red Cross and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
Iran
10) Secretary of State Clinton criticized Russia for announcing that Russia would complete a nuclear power plant in Iran this summer, the New York Times reports. A State Department official said the US did not oppose the Bushehr plant or Russia’s involvement in it, only the timing of the announcement. The plant is not controversial because the Russians plan to provide fuel for it and to remove spent fuel that could be converted for weapons use, the NYT says. "If [Iran] reassures the world, or if its behavior is changed because of international sanctions, then they can pursue peaceful civil nuclear power," Clinton said.
Egypt
11) The Egyptian government has jailed hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a routine signal that the government’s election campaign is underway, the New York Times reports. What is different this year is that the arrests have begun much earlier than in years past, and that they are aimed at a large number of the group’s leaders. Elections for the upper house of Parliament are set for May and for the lower house in the fall. The arrests began in February.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Arrests of Taliban Figures Ended Talks, Ex-Envoy Says
Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, March 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/world/asia/20afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The former top United Nations official in Afghanistan said that recent arrests of high-ranking Taliban figures by Pakistan have severed important secret communications between the Taliban and the West, possibly delaying peace negotiations and making them more difficult.
Kai Eide, the former special representative for the United Nations secretary general, told the BBC in an interview broadcast Friday that, for the past year, the United Nations had been quietly involved in early discussions with Taliban figures in Dubai. He said those talks were upended by the arrests of senior Afghan Taliban figures, including the group’s second in command.
There is a growing consensus among officials from the United Nations and Western European countries that ending the war in Afghanistan will require internationally supported negotiations with the Taliban.
But Mr. Eide, who stepped down earlier this month, said the effect of the arrests "was negative on our possibilities to continue the political process that we saw as so necessary at that particular juncture."
"The Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played," he said in the interview. "They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing, and you see the result today."
Western European countries are pushing hard for a negotiated settlement, essentially pulling in a different direction from the United States, which is ramping up military pressure on insurgents with campaigns across southern Afghanistan planned for much of the summer. The American approach seeks to weaken the Taliban movement militarily so they are in a weakened position when they come to the bargaining table.
In contrast to a more military-focused approach, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, laid out a road map to negotiations with the Taliban earlier this month in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said the United Nations could serve as neutral ground on which parties who distrusted each other could meet.
Mr. Miliband did not entirely eschew military efforts, but he seemed to suggest focusing instead on setting conditions for negotiation.
Although he ruled out discussions with those committed to Al Qaeda’s brand of militancy, Mr. Miliband strongly endorsed an effort to reach out to almost everyone else, and without any preconditions.
[…] Mr. Eide said that communications with the Taliban had broken off after the February arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, in Karachi by the Pakistanis.
Since then, at least four other senior Taliban figures have been reported to have been detained by the Pakistanis, including two shadow governors. The Taliban had appointed shadow governors in all but one province, who directed Taliban policy and activities such as local courts.
The initial communications between the Taliban and the United Nations were "talks about talks," Mr. Eide told the BBC in the interview from Norway. He said it would take months to build trust with the Taliban.
[…]
2) Quartet calls for settlement freeze
Al Jazeera, Friday, March 19, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/20103198524314112.html
The so-called Quartet of Middle East negotiators has demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity and denounced Israel’s plan to build new housing in East Jerusalem. The Quartet’s comments came at a news conference in Moscow on Friday, following a meeting by the group, which brings together the United Nations, the US, the EU and Russia. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, read a joint statement by the group, saying that the Quartet "urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activities".
In the statement, the Quartet condemned "the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem". Ban also said that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should result in the resolution of the conflict within 24 months, and expressed concern over the situation in the Gaza Strip.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, welcomed the Quartet’s condemnation of Israeli settlement building, but said that the Quartet needed to monitor Israeli activities on the ground. "The Israelis have the choice now, either to continue with settlement activities or to engage with the peace process," he told Al Jazeera.
"We want the Quartet to have the Israeli government, to monitor their actions, to monitor their activities on the ground, because they’re playing many games of deceit on the ground – they say now ‘we’re not going to announce more settlements, but we’re going to continue with settlements’. That is deceit.
"The Quartet must have mechanisms for implementation and monitors on the ground to make sure that the Israeli government complies with its obligations originating from the [2003 peace talks] road map.
[…] Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, speaking from the Qalandiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, said the Quartet’s statement would likely fail to win over Palestinians as it had not included any provision for intervention if Israel failed to comply.
"There were no concrete measures, which is what Palestinians want first and foremost. No statement from the Quartet that if the situation doesn’t get better, or if the parties don’t comply, the Quartet will take such-and-such action," she said. "There’s an increasing sentiment here [in the Palestinian territories] that without strong, effective third party intervention there won’t be any movement on the ground.
"And if the deadlock continues politically the tension we are seeing here will only get much worse."
[…]
3) The anti-Venezuela election campaign begins
Venezuela’s election is not until September, but the international campaign to delegitimise the government has already begun
Mark Weisbrot, Guardian, Thursday 18 March 2010 19.00 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/18/venezuela-election
Venezuela has an election for its national assembly in September, and the campaign has begun in earnest. I am referring to the international campaign. This is carried out largely through the international media, although some will spill over into the Venezuelan media. It involves many public officials, especially in the US. The goal will be to generate as much bad press as possible about Venezuela, to discredit the government, and to delegitimise the September elections – in case the opposition should choose to boycott, as they did in the last legislative elections, or refuse to recognise the results if they lose.
There’s no need for conspiracy, since the principal actors all know what to do. Occasionally some will be off-message due to lack of co-ordination. A fascinating example of this occurred last week when Senator John McCain tried to get General Doug Fraser of the US Southern Command to back his accusations that Venezuela supports terrorist activities. Testifying before the Senate armed services committee on March 11, General Fraser contradicted McCain: "We have continued to watch very closely … We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection."
Oops! Apparently Fraser didn’t get the memo that the Obama team, not just McCain, is in full campaign mode against Venezuela. The next day, he issued a statement recanting his testimony: "Assistant Secretary Valenzuela [the state department’s top Latin America official] and I spoke this morning on the topic of linkages between the government of Venezuela and the Farc. There is zero daylight between our two positions and we are in complete agreement.
"There is indeed clear and documented historical and ongoing evidence of the linkages between the government of Venezuela and the Farc … we are in direct alignment with our partners at the state department and the intelligence community."
Well it’s good to know that the United States still has civilian control over the military, at least in the western hemisphere. On the other hand, it would be even better if the truth counted for anything in these Congressional hearings or in Washington foreign policy circles generally. The general’s awkward and seemingly forced reversal went unnoticed by the media.
The "documented and historical and ongoing evidence" mentioned by General Fraser refers to material alleged to come from laptops and hard drives allegedly found by the Colombian military in a cross-border raid into Ecuador in 2008. Never mind that this is the same military that has been found to have killed hundreds of innocent teenagers and dressed them up in guerrilla clothing. These laptops and hard drives will continue to be tapped for previously undisclosed "evidence", which will then be deployed in the campaign against the Venezuelan government. We will be asked to assume that the "captured documents" are authentic, and most of the media will do so.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Venezuela during her trip to South America were one of the opening salvos of this campaign. Most of what will follow is predictable. There will be hate-filled editorials in the major newspapers, led by the neocon editorial board of the Washington Post (aka Fox on 15th Street). Chávez will be accused of repressing the media, even though most of the Venezuelan media – as measured by audience – is still controlled by the opposition. In fact, the media in Venezuela is still far more in opposition to the government than is our own media in the United States, or for that matter in most of the world. But the international press will be trying to convey the image that Venezuela is Burma or North Korea.
[…] The only part of this story that is not predictable is what the ultimate result of the international campaign will be. In Venezuela’s last legislative elections of 2005, the opposition boycotted the national elections, with at least tacit support from the Bush administration. In an attempt to delegitimise the government, they gave up winning probably at least 30% of the legislature.
At the time, most of the media – and also the Organisation of American States – rejected the idea that the election was illegitimate simply because the opposition boycotted. But that was under the Bush administration, which had lost some credibility on Venezuela due to its support for the 2002 coup, and for other reasons. It could be different under an Obama administration.
That is why it is so ominous to see this administration mounting an unprovoked, transparently obvious campaign to delegitimise the Venezuelan government prior to a national election. This looks like a signal to the opposition: "We will support you if you decide to return to an insurrectionary strategy," either before or after the election.
[…]
4) Al Qaeda’s New Tactic Is To Seize Shortcuts
U.S. officials believe Al Qaeda and affiliates now favor opportunity over complex, multilayered mass casualty attacks. And that makes prevention tougher.
Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-qaeda19-2010mar19,0,1676434.story
Washington – Al Qaeda and its affiliates have adapted their tactics to emphasize speed and probability of success over spectacle, U.S. intelligence officials believe, a shift in strategy that poses problems for spy agencies that were reorganized in recent years to stop large-scale attacks like those of Sept. 11, 2001.
The new emphasis is seen as a significant departure for a terrorist network that had focused on sophisticated plots involving synchronized strikes on multiple targets, and teams of operatives coordinating across international borders.
An examination of recent plots, including the bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, has convinced U.S. counter-terrorism analysts that Al Qaeda is becoming more opportunistic, using fewer operatives and dramatically shrinking the amount of planning and preparation that goes into an attack.
In interviews and public testimony, U.S. officials have voiced concern that though the more modest schemes are less likely to lead to mass casualties, they are considerably more difficult to thwart.
[…] U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda may have taken the new approach reluctantly, weakened by a campaign of drone strikes on its base region in Pakistan, and frustrated by its inability in the last nine years to orchestrate a follow-on strike of similar magnitude to that of Sept. 11. But if Al Qaeda had misgivings about downscaled ambitions, U.S. officials said, it probably was emboldened by the reaction in the United States to the Christmas Day plot, even though it failed.
The lesson Al Qaeda probably took was that, " ‘Jeez, the damn bomb didn’t go off and the Americans are still going out of their minds,’ " a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said, describing the political fallout for President Obama, as well as finger-pointing among U.S. intelligence agencies.
[…] Similarly, the Christmas Day plot showed how quickly Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen was able to devise an operation taking advantage of the arrival in its midst of a Nigerian with a U.S. visa. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab arrived in Yemen in August, and within a matter of months was on a flight to the United States with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
But Al Qaeda also is running risks by using operatives with less training, said Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and counter-terrorism expert. Farouk fumbled with his device and was subdued by other passengers. "It looks like he panicked," Riedel said, noting that a similar device was used successfully in an attack on a Saudi official last year. "That’s the downside of seizing these moments of opportunity – you can end up with people who weren’t up to the task."
[…]
5) Defense Official Says Afghan Program Was Authorized
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Friday, March 19, 2010; A12 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031805447.html
Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders. According to Furlong, the program, which began in late 2008, was requested by Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and approved by the U.S. Central Command.
In an interview with the San Antonio Express News published Thursday, he said McKiernan asked him to provide information "that would enhance our . . . understanding of the environment" in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones. He denied misusing any U.S. contract funds.
The program was shut down and an investigation begun by the Defense Department’s inspector general late last year after complaints by the CIA and a finding by senior officials under the new Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, that Furlong had stepped outside the boundaries of his contract and the law and "didn’t want to operate within the constraints of how we do business," according to a U.S. military official familiar with the situation who was not authorized to discuss it on the record.
Most of the contractors hired by Furlong for the $24.8 million program – one of the military’s many "information operations" programs in the region – were, like Furlong, Special Operations retirees. Revelations about the program have exposed what the official called a months-long "food fight" between the contractors and some segments of the military on one side and the CIA and military intelligence and Special Operations forces on the other, over the dividing line between intelligence and "information."
[…] The specifics of what Furlong is alleged to have done remain unclear. Although news accounts have portrayed his program as contributing to efforts to target and kill insurgent leaders, several military officials said it never got that far. "Never did he feed information that resulted in any sort of kinetic action," the official said.
[…] A Reagan-era executive order, designed primarily to enhance the powers of U.S. intelligence agencies, prohibits contractors from being used for intelligence-gathering.
As described by the military official, Furlong’s activities were allowed to get out of hand because of his high civilian rank – he is a DISL, or Defense Intelligence Senior Level, equivalent to a general or admiral – which inhibited more junior officers from challenging him, and because of limited oversight of such activities in the war theater. "Who was in charge of him? That’s the $1,000 question," the official said. "He had a reputation for saying ‘Oh, yeah, McKiernan told me he wants this. I talked to [Adm. Mike] Mullen, and he’s all over this’ " – a reference to the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.
[…]
6) Dutch fuming at retired US general’s gays comment
Mike Corder, Associated Press, Fri Mar 19, 11:17 am ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100319/ap_on_re_eu/eu_netherlands_us_military_gays
The Hague, Netherlands – The Dutch prime minister Friday denounced as "irresponsible" a claim by a retired U.S. general that gay Dutch soldiers were partly to blame for allowing Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. Dutch officials, from the Cabinet to the military, were outraged by retired Gen. John Sheehan’s remarks at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Sheehan claimed that Dutch military leaders had called the presence of gay soldiers in the army "part of the problem" that allowed Serb forces to overrun the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia in July 1995 and kill some 8,000 Muslim men. Dutch troops were serving in the undermanned U.N. peacekeeping force in Srebrenica when they were overrun by heavily armed Serb forces, who went on to turn the surrounding countryside into killing fields littered with mass graves.
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called Sheehan’s comments irresponsible and said at his weekly news conference that "these remarks should never have been made."
"Toward Dutch troops – homosexual or heterosexual – it is way off the mark to talk like that about people and the work they do under very difficult circumstances," he said. Sheehan, a former NATO commander who retired from the military 1997, was speaking in opposition to a proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the U.S. military.
[…] Gen. Henk van den Breemen, Dutch chief of staff at the time of the Srebrenica genocide, called Sheehan’s comments "total nonsense" and denied ever having suggested gays in the army might have played a role in the Srebrenica massacre.
The Netherlands has a long history of accepting homosexuality, and gays have long been welcome in the country’s armed forces – which also allow labor unions. The leader of one such union, Jan Kleian, was incensed by Sheehan’s comments. "The man is crazy," he told Dutch radio. "It sounds hard, but I can’t put it any other way."
7) NGOs Demand Transparency, Reforms in IDB
Emilio Godoy, Inter Press Service, Mar 17
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50699
Mexico City, – Dozens of civil society organisations in the Americas are demanding greater transparency and accountability as well as structural reforms in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), ahead of the multilateral lender’s annual meeting of governors that starts Friday in the Mexican resort of Cancún.
"We want the IDB to commit to evaluating financing based on the assessment of its projects and to demonstrate that civil society input is taken into account," Valeria Enríquez, a Mexican researcher with the non-governmental Centre for Analysis and Research (FUNDAR), told IPS. "We are also calling for a greater commitment to fighting climate change."
FUNDAR is one of the main organisations behind a February letter sent to the Washington-based IDB by more than 100 organisations from 18 countries.
Civil society representatives will meet with IDB head Luís Alberto Moreno and a group of Bank managers in charge of designing the new institutional strategy of the international lender, which has 48 members: 26 borrowing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and 22 lending member countries – Canada, China, Israel, Japan, South Korea, the United States and 16 European countries.
The United States is the single largest shareholder, with approximately 30 percent of the voting power, while the Latin American and Caribbean borrowing countries control 50.02 percent of the IDB’s shares.
"The different civil society initiatives play a complementary role towards the same aim: to keep a bank that has been an accomplice to 50 years of inequality and poverty in Latin America – and which has not yet set forth a different vision – from continuing to do business as usual," Vince McElhinny of the Bank Information Centre (BIC), a Washington-based NGO, remarked to IPS.
At the Mar. 19-23 assembly of IDB governors, finance and planning ministers, central bank presidents and other senior officials from member countries will discuss a new increase in the Bank’s capital, initially set at 180 billion dollars, although wide criticism has driven down the amount requested.
In their February letter to the IDB board of governors, the NGOs questioned the Bank’s eligibility for a capital increase and criticised the multilateral lender’s public consultation process on the proposed recapitalisation, held from October 2009 to January 2010.
The NGOs complained that the IDB has refused to share a draft of its replenishment proposal and has failed to provide responses to recommendations for reforms.
The capital increase would be the first since 1994 and the biggest by far since the IDB was founded in 1959.
[…] The NGOs suggested initiating a public consultation on a "more comprehensive" climate change strategy, while they recommended the phasing out of fossil fuel lending and the adoption of a strategy focused on protection of indigenous peoples’ rights and a reduction in deforestation.
"I haven’t seen any evidence justifying an increase in capital," said McElhinny, who will be in Cancún along with Enríquez. "I haven’t seen a response to a series of concerns we have raised since last June. The financial crisis as an argument to boost capital is simply not sustainable."
In Medellín, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined six performance evaluation principles for a hike in IDB capital: a sufficient focus on the poor, achieve results and show innovation, governance and risk management, flexibility in balance sheets, cogent, defensible demand-side analysis, and a clear division of labour with other multilateral lenders.
Of the six, the IDB only satisfied one, needs improvement on two and failed on three, according to "A Serious Crisis Should Never Go to Waste", a press release issued by the BIC in October.
"Despite half a century of lending and a stated commitment to combating inequality, the IDB has been largely ineffective in reducing inequality. Income inequality for Latin America as a region has not improved since the 1990s and in some countries has actually worsened," the statement added.
[…]
Honduras
8) Hondurans’ Great Awakening
Dana Frank, The Nation, March 18, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100405/frank
[Frank is a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America.]
Powerful forces have swept through Honduras since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya: one magnificent, the other truly horrible. The first is the resistance movement that rose up to contest the coup, surprising everyone in its breadth, nonviolence and resilience. The second is the new regime’s brutal repression in response. "It’s been terribly painful, and a great awakening," reflects Ayax Irías, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
While the conflict continues to escalate, the Obama administration is vigorously supporting the coup regime under Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa. "We believe that President Lobo and his administration have taken the steps necessary to restore democracy," declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on March 4. But the resistance movement itself, with its demand for a reconstitution of Honduran society from below, is a vivid testament to the country’s need for real democracy. As the resistance faces off against the US-backed oligarchs and military, there’s no question that this is the most important moment in Honduran history, even more important than the immense general strike of 1954, from which all modern Honduran history flows.
[…] What unites the resistance is not just opposition to the coup regime but a positive vision of a new Honduras, to be enacted through a national assembly that would, in turn, produce a new Constitution. The slogan I saw everywhere, "Por un constituyente no excluyente" (For a constitutional convention that doesn’t exclude), captures widespread hopes that the new Constitution, modeled after ones recently passed in Bolivia (2009), Ecuador (2008) and Venezuela (1999), could guarantee and expand basic rights of the sectors that make up the resistance, such as land rights for campesinos and indigenous peoples, women’s rights and basic labor rights.
[…] No one really knows how deep all this popular politicization runs. Many Hondurans are keeping their heads low, quietly cheering on the resistance. Others still believe the mainstream media and are grateful that the government is "restoring order." We do have a few crude quantitative measures. While the government keeps revising its initial figures downward, it appears that the November 29 election, boycotted by the resistance, had only a 35 or 40 percent voter turnout. For another measure, 450,000 to 600,000 Hondurans, a very low estimate, participated in demonstrations on the two biggest days of protest: July 5 and September 15. As a percentage of the population, that’s the equivalent in the United States of more than 20 million people.
On February 17 I was interviewed on Radio Uno by Pedro Brizuela, a wily and witty veteran communist in his 70s, who for many years has been working with the Garífuna along the Atlantic coast. Exactly one week later, assassins gunned down his 36-year-old daughter, Claudia, as she opened her front door in San Pedro Sula. It was a clear message to Pedro and to anyone else in the movement: keep fighting, and we’ll kill your children.
Under the new Lobo administration, the repression isn’t over, and it’s getting more insidious. Lobo has reappointed the same military leaders who perpetrated the coup, with the exception of Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was dismissed only to be named head of Hondutel, the state-owned telephone company, which the oligarchs are itching to privatize. Paramilitary-style violence against the resistance has escalated since Lobo’s inauguration on January 27. On February 15, two masked men on a motorcycle gunned down Julio Fúnez Benítez, of the sanitation workers’ union. On March 14, two vehicles shot forty-seven bullets into the car of Nahún Ely Palacios Arteaga, news director of Canal 5 in the Aguán Valley, killing him instantly. Both men had protested the coup government.
The government, military and media want to pretend that this is all common crime, which is, in fact, rampant in Honduras-violence has touched both sides. On March 1 one outspoken pro-coup journalist was shot at, and her driving companion, a TV reporter, was killed. But no one in the movement believes there is anything random about the recent murders of resistance members, including one campesino activist, two trade unionists and a rank-and-file activist, which appear clearly intended to terrorize the grassroots resistance.
[…].
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has swiftly recognized Lobo’s new government and is pretending everything’s just fine in Honduras. US aid, both military and humanitarian, is flowing once again, shoring up an unstable government with little legitimacy. Inside our own media fence, Honduras has largely dropped from the headlines.
Progressives in the United States need to make sure the Obama administration doesn’t get away with shoring up the coup regime of the Honduran oligarchs and military. We need to demand that the United States withdraw its recognition of the Lobo government; halt all aid, as the Frente has explicitly requested; cut ties to the Honduran military, including ongoing training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas); and close the US base at Palmerola. Obama and Clinton should denounce the ongoing human rights abuses and the outrageous impunity granted the Honduran armed forces, police and paramilitaries-along with the Congress members and Supreme Court justices who backed the coup. If we’re going to achieve any of these goals, though, we need to build our own movimiento amplio in support of the Honduran people. We can begin by building up grassroots pressure on members of Congress, district by district, working through our own unions, faith communities, immigrant organizations, GLBT and women’s groups.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) Politicians denied entrance to Gaza
Torture organisation criticises Israel for refusing politicians entry to Gaza to visit community projects
Copenhagen Post, Tuesday, 09 March 2010 http://www.cphpost.dk/component/content/48456.html?task=view
Israeli authorities would not allow members of a parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee entry into the blockaded Gaza Strip via Israel earlier this week, according to public broadcaster DR. The committee had planned to meet with the Red Cross and Palestinian organizations such as the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme as part of the planned trip to Israel, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon this week.
Israel did, however, grant permission for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton to enter Gaza via Israel, prompting the Copenhagen-based Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT) to strongly criticise the refusal of the Danish politicians. ‘It is unfortunate that Israel has refused the politicians entry into Gaza on their visit of Israel and the Palestinian territories,’ said Tue Magnussen, coordinator for RCT. ‘It is important that Western politicians see the consequences of the terrible blockade of Gaza with their own eyes.’
Iran
10) Rift on Iran Emerges as Clinton Visits Moscow
Mark Landler, New York Times, March 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/world/europe/19diplo.html
Moscow – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russia’s foreign minister clashed publicly Thursday over an announcement that Russia would complete a nuclear power plant in Iran this summer.
Mrs. Clinton said the announcement, made during her visit, sends the wrong signal at a time when the West is trying to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, countered that construction on the plant would go ahead.
[…] When Mrs. Clinton was asked about the announcement at the news conference, she said, "We think it would be premature to go forward with any project at this time, because we want to send an unequivocal message to the Iranians." Mr. Lavrov responded unequivocally, saying, "The project will be completed."
A senior American official sought to play down this latest dispute, saying he did not believe that Mr. Putin intended to embarrass Mrs. Clinton. "It’s not about her visit," the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said to reporters. "It’s about the potential for a mixed message, as we are working to put pressure on Iran."
He added that the United States did not oppose the Bushehr plant or Russia’s involvement in it, only the timing of the announcement. The plant is not controversial because the Russians plan to provide fuel for it and to remove spent fuel that could be converted for weapons use.
[…] Mr. Lavrov said the plant would help guarantee that Iran’s nuclear program remained peaceful because it would be subject to regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Russia also views projects to build nuclear plants abroad as a potentially lucrative industry.
While Mrs. Clinton said Iran was entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, she said it had not dispelled suspicions of a military program despite its assertions that it needed nuclear fuel solely for power generation. "If it reassures the world, or if its behavior is changed because of international sanctions, then they can pursue peaceful civil nuclear power," she said.
Egypt
11) Political Levers Lock Into Gear in Election Year
March 14, 2010
Michael Slackman, New York Times, March 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/middleeast/15egypt.html
Cairo – Egypt’s parliamentary elections are still months away, but the arrests have already started. The authorities have locked up hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a routine signal that votes will soon be counted. However, what is different this year is that the arrests have begun much earlier than in years past, that they are aimed at a large number of the group’s leaders and that they follow a series of steps by the national leadership to limit the development of a strong political opposition, said independent analysts, human rights groups and members of the Brotherhood.
"We see this as a continuation or intensification of a crackdown on dissent that started in 2007," said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a nonpartisan human rights organization in Cairo.
The Muslim Brotherhood is officially outlawed in Egypt but has always been tolerated. Its goal is to transform a state whose laws are based on the Koran to one that is more closely ruled by Islamic law.
The group has public offices, a large following and 88 members serving in the 454-seat Parliament, and it provides social services across the country – all evidence of the state’s ambivalent approach.
Until election time. On Friday, the Egyptian police swept through six governorates, arresting about 300 Brotherhood members, nearly doubling the number detained since last month alone. In total, about 350 are still behind bars.
"It is the same continuous campaign that is trying to keep them away from the political arena before the elections and prevent them from nominating their supporters," said Salama Ahmed Salama, who is in charge of the editorial board of an independent newspaper, Shorouk.
Five years ago, the government allowed the Brotherhood’s members who were running as independents to campaign under the group’s slogan "Islam Is the Solution." But they began to win a number of seats in Parliament, alarming the government, and the thaw ended. The police were called in, polling places were surrounded, people were shot by the police and the Brotherhood’s gains were rolled back.
[…] The state plays a complicated game with the Brotherhood, giving it room to operate and grow, all the while warning Western nations that if the governing party of President Hosni Mubarak were to lose power, the Brotherhood might take control. At the same time, the government restricts the group’s ability to control the institutions of state.
[…] Elections for the upper house of Parliament are set for May and for the lower house in the fall. The arrests began in February.
[…] In recent years, there have been repeated arrests of journalists, editors, bloggers and opposition figures, intended to stifle opposition, Mr. Bahgat said. While the government allows for the appearance of democratic practices, it makes sure to control the levers of authority to preordain the outcome, analysts and human rights groups charge.
But if it is nearly impossible for the Brotherhood to muscle its way into the presidential race, that has done little to calm officials, especially after the emergence of Mohamed ElBaradei, the former chief international nuclear watchdog and a Nobel laureate. Dr. ElBaradei has criticized the constitutional restrictions on political life here, and there is a grass-roots push to draft him to run for president.
After returning to a hero’s welcome here last month, Dr. ElBaradei insisted that political reform was the first step toward improving Egypt’s economic and social problems. Dr. ElBaradei said he supported allowing the Brotherhood to form a political party, and the Brotherhood said it supported Dr. ElBaradei.
[…]
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.