Just Foreign Policy News
July 13, 2010
Vote for Dumbest Mistake in a "South of the Border" Review!
The Oliver Stone documentary, "South of the Border" takes aim at the media for its misinformed and misleading coverage of Latin America. The film includes clips from CNN, network news programs, the New York Times, Fox News, and other media to demonstrate just how bad the coverage can be. But a host of reviews of "South of the Border" serve as additional examples, getting countries and presidents mixed up with each other, confusing democratic elections with coups d’etat, and other errors. What do you think is the dumbest mistake in a "Border" review so far? Vote in the poll!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/13/154938/096
Could a "Great Negotiation" End the War in Afghanistan?
A key obstacle to moving the debate on negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan is that most Americans don’t know much diplomatic history. This ignorance makes us vulnerable to facile slogans: for the neocons, it’s a noun, a verb, and Neville Chamberlain. But Fredrik Stanton has published a corrective: "Great Negotiations: Agreements that Changed the Modern World" shows how U.S. leaders entered successful negotiations with realistic goals for their adversaries. If Obama engages Taliban leaders as Kennedy engaged Khrushchev, we could end the war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/could-a-great-negotiation_b_643147.html
Committee to Protect Journalists urges Secretary Clinton to reconsider denial of visa to Colombian journalist
CPJ: "The denial, based on a ‘terrorist activities’ provision of the Patriot Act, is unsupported by any available evidence and may be based on misleading or inaccurate information provided by Colombian authorities."
http://cpj.org/2010/07/cpj-urges-clinton-to-reconsider-morris-visa-denial.php
Sean Penn: Haiti Six Months After the Earthquake
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/13/sean_penn_on_haiti_six_months
South of the Border, scheduled screenings:
Oliver Stone’s documentary shows you the South America the New York Times doesn’t want you to see.
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan voiced bitterness over US indifference to the fact that a US citizen was killed during a May 31 Israeli attack on a civilian convoy in international waters, and reiterated that Turkey has no intention of letting Israel get away with its "pirate-like" and "barbarous" attack, Today’s Zaman reports. "I’m saying it very clearly: The Mavi Marmara and those on board who were carrying medicine and games for children were subject to a barbarous and pirate-like attack in international waters. We will never give up pursuing this point," Erdoğan said, noting that Ankara has been closely following developments regarding a fact-finding mission to be established by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN secretary-general’s preparations for establishing an international commission.
2) The U.S. military is building four schools in Haiti in an area that wasn’t directly affected by the earthquake, writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. The paltry scale of the Pentagon’s reconstruction endeavor – 1.6 million people displaced and the American military is contributing a few classrooms? – is emblematic of the international response, which seems to have stalled at about 2 percent of what it needs to be. Only 2 percent of promised reconstruction aid has been delivered. Only 2 percent of the rubble has been cleared. And not quite 2 percent of the dislocated have been moved into housing.
3) Arab media reported that the U.S. has threatened to cut financial aid to Jordan, if Jordan continues to develop its nuclear program without coordinating with Israel, Ynet reports. The US threat comes after Jordan rejected Israeli demands to participate in extraction and enrichment of uranium.
4) The U.S. denial of a visa to Colombian journalist Hollman Morris under the "terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act has incensed human rights advocates, who have raised concerns that the Obama administration has been influenced by Colombian President Uribe’s government, a frequent target of Morris’s critical reports, Juan Forero reports in the Washington Post. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said the visa denial appeared to be ideological, because no public information tying Morris to terrorism has surfaced. Jaffer said the Morris case "does raise questions about whether the Obama administration has actually retired the practice of ideological exclusions."
5) Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz says he voted against war funding after consulting the families of three men from his district who have died in Afghanistan, who agreed with his stance, the Washington Post reports. "I can state emphatically that if we continue our present strategy in Afghanistan, we will not succeed, and America will eventually be weakened by loss of lives and the expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), another war opponent.
6) Last week, the IMF told the US it needs to start getting its budget deficit down, putting Social Security cuts at the top of its list, writes Dean Baker at the Huffington Post. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons. The IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place. And while the average Social Security benefit is just under $1,200 a month, and no-one can collect benefits until they reach the age of 62, many IMF economists qualify for benefits in their early 50s. They can begin drawing pensions at age 51 or 52 of more than $100,000 a year.
7) The American Values Network announced that it is suspending a controversial ad campaign in favor of climate legislation that proclaimed, "Iran is making a KILLING," the National Iranian American Council reports. NIAC had protested the ad, arguing that it was insulting to Iranians and Iranian-Americans and recklessly inflamed tensions in a way that could contribute to war.
Israel/Palestine
8) The Israeli Navy warned a Libyan ship steaming toward Gaza on Tuesday to change course, the New York Times reports. According to AFP, a member of the Libyan group said by satellite phone that the Israelis had given the boat until midnight local time (5 p.m. Eastern time) to shift course.
Iran
9) Pakistan said Tuesday that an Iranian nuclear scientist who Iran maintains was kidnapped by the CIA had taken refuge in a section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington that deals with Iranian interests, the New York Times reports. Secretary of State Clinton said Shahram Amiri had been in the US "of his own free will" and could leave when he wished.
Afghanistan
10) The top U.N. official in Afghanistan said 10 individuals or entities with alleged links to the Taliban are being considered for removal from a U.N. sanctions list, AP reports. Staffan De Mistura said the 10 names, submitted by Afghan officials, were being forwarded to the U.N. Security Council, which will decide whether to take them off the blacklist that freezes assets and limits travel. De Mistura said more names could be put forward for de-listing by the end of the month.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Erdogan resents US inaction over Israeli killing of Furkan
Today’s Zaman, 13 July 2010
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-215871-erdogan-resents-us-inaction-over-israeli-killing-of-furkan.html
Belgrade – While openly voicing bitterness over US indifference to the fact that a US citizen, Furkan Doğan, was also killed during a May 31 Israeli attack on a civilian convoy in international waters, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has reiterated that Turkey has no intention of letting Israel get away with its "pirate-like" and "barbarous" attack which led to the death of civilians.
On May 31, Israeli commandos killed one US national and eight Turkish peace activists when they boarded the Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel convoy that set out to challenge the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s attack triggered international outcry and further damaged Israel’s already strained ties with Turkey.
"It is significant that the US administration has not taken action regarding Furkan Doğan. We expect them to follow this case," Erdoğan said, asking, "Are you not defending Furkan’s rights because he was Turkish?"
Erdoğan, speaking at a joint press conference with his Serbian counterpart, Mirko Cvetkovic, has stated once again that Turkey has no intention of letting Israel get away with its "pirate-like" and "barbarous" attack that led to death of civilians. He said he had discussed the issue with US President Barack Obama as well, who, he said, seems to have understood Turkey’s concerns well.
"Obama has made statements which basically mean say that we are justified and that he shares our views," Erdoğan said, referring to a bilateral meeting he held with Obama in late June in Toronto on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
"Obama had told us that he would share these views in his meeting with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu on July 7. I don’t think what the press reported [of the content of the meeting between Obama and Netanyahu] is the truth of the matter," he added.
Erdoğan questioned the accuracy of the media’s account of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, of which it was widely reported that Turkey’s determination to take measures to protect its citizens’ rights if Israel fails to apologize or accept an international inquiry was not put on the agenda of the meeting by the US president.
"I’m saying it very clearly: The Mavi Marmara and those on board who were carrying medicine and games for children were subject to a barbarous and pirate-like attack in international waters. We will never give up pursuing this point," Erdoğan said, noting that Ankara has been closely following developments regarding a fact-finding mission to be established by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN secretary-general’s preparations for establishing an international commission.
"As politicians, we have to know one thing: We are obliged to rule with justice. We are obliged to protect the rights of the people of our countries until the end. This is true for the US president and this is true for the Turkish Republic’s prime minister. Our people are entrusted to us," he said.
[…]
2) The sad math of U.S. aid in Haiti: 6 months, 2 percent
Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Tuesday, July 13, 2010; A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071204696.html
[…] On Monday, six months after the earthquake in Haiti that killed as many as 300,000 people, the Pentagon hosted a "Bloggers Roundtable" teleconference to release some coordinated and disciplined information about reconstruction in that country. The commander of the U.S. military’s task force in Haiti and his deputies delivered some news that should satisfy Gates’s wish to have only varnished information coming from the Defense Department.
"Incredible humanitarian efforts" are underway in Haiti, where "significant progress" has been made and "a great effort" has been mounted, reporters were told. "The U.S. forces here in Haiti are doing a tremendous job," said the commander, Col. Michael Borrel, and "we are doing some very tangible things here in Haiti and truly helping the people of Haiti."
And what are these incredible and tremendous things? Well, the U.S. military is building four – count ’em, four – schools for the Haitians. Each has two or three rooms and comes with a similar number of latrine stalls. Oh, and the work is concentrated in an area that wasn’t directly affected by the earthquake.
"Are you aware of any other American units in Haiti who are helping with rubble removal or relocating people into permanent structures?" one of the participants in the teleconference asked. "I am not," Borrel replied. "Currently, we’re the only U.S. military force that is in Haiti."
This is not to belittle the efforts of Borrel and his 550 troops, who are honorably executing the mission they were assigned. But the paltry scale of the Pentagon’s reconstruction endeavor – 1.6 million people displaced and the American military is contributing a few classrooms? – is emblematic of the international response, which seems to have stalled at about 2 percent of what it needs to be.
Only 2 percent of promised reconstruction aid has been delivered. Only 2 percent of the rubble has been cleared. And not quite 2 percent of the dislocated have been moved into housing. Others live under fraying tarps and tents in a situation that Bill Clinton, spearheading the reconstruction campaign, calls "horribly frustrating."
Obama administration officials and aid groups point out, correctly, that much of the holdup comes from the Haitian government, which had little competence even before the quake. But that doesn’t diminish the human misery in Haiti, documented in the many six-months-later reports in the media.
"There are camps on median strips of roads; there are camps on very steep hills," Sam Worthington, chief executive of the aid organization InterAction, said at a Haiti conference held Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I’ve witnessed two football/soccer fields with 5,000 people living on them."
President Obama, meeting in the Oval Office on Monday with the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, ignored a reporter’s question about the pace of the rebuilding efforts.
In Foggy Bottom, State Department officials observed the six-month mark by briefing reporters on what spokesman P.J. Crowley called the "enormous response" to the disaster. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, described the successful efforts to prevent starvation and large-scale disease.
"I take your point about the food situation seems stabilized, the medical situation the same," one of the reporters pointed out. "But it seems like the real urgent problem right now is housing."
"There’s a lot more that has to be done," State Department counselor Cheryl Mills allowed. "We really need to be on a pacing of building a fair number of these transitional houses a month, and we’re not on a pace yet to do that."
The military isn’t even trying to pick up the pace. After its heavy response to the earthquake, the Pentagon is devoting all of $1.7 million for its "New Horizons-Haiti" mission to build schools and a few medical facilities.
A reporter on the Pentagon’s teleconference asked why the mission was concentrated in northern Haiti, outside the earthquake zone. "With over a million Haitians still without even a temporary shelter, why are we conducting the mission in the Gonaives area, when there are so many people in the earthquake-stricken zone that could use the support?"
[…] "It seems like the more pressing tasks right now are rubble removal and moving people from their tarps into more permanent structures," another questioner pointed out. "Is this something you plan to do?"
"No, it’s not," Borrel said. After the four schools and 10 "med-ready" sites are built, "we will redeploy back to the home station. Our mission is only till the 18th of September."
[…]
3) Report: US threatens to cut Jordan’s aid
Arab media reports Washington demanding Amman coordinate uranium enrichment with Israel
Ynet, 07.12.10
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3918876,00.html
The United States has threatened to cut financial aid to Jordan, if the Hashemite Kingdom continues to develop its nuclear program without coordinating with Israel, the Arab media reported on Monday. The American threat comes after Amman rejected Israeli demands to participate in extraction and enrichment of uranium, and Jordan’s failure to obtain US approval for its nuclear plan, despite talks between the two parties, which lasted six months.
[…] In 2007, at least 65,000 tons of uranium ore was found in the Jordanian desert, making it one of the largest deposits in the world.
The Hashemite Kingdom has claimed its enrichment program was aimed at reducing dependency on petroleum imports. Ninety five percent of Jordan’s energy consumption is supplied by other countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The nuclear reactor would allow Jordan to produce a large amount of its own electricity and export power to its neighbors. However, the kingdom is dependent on American financial assistance, without which its economy will be severely damaged.
According to Jordanian Minister of Planning Jaafar Abdul Hassan, the United States has transferred Jordan some $665 million during the first half of the year, out of which $360 million was financial aid and $300 million military aid.
[…]
4) U.S. denies visa to Colombian journalist Hollman Morris, citing Patriot Act
Juan Forero, Washington Post, Saturday, July 10, 2010; A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070905438.html
Bogota, Colombia – In his work reporting on this country’s drug-fueled conflict, Colombian journalist Hollman Morris has met frequently with high-ranking American officials and been received at agencies from the State Department to the Pentagon.
In January, it was a lunch with State’s No. 2, James B. Steinberg, at the residence of the American ambassador in Bogota. A few months before that, he had met Daniel Restrepo, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, to discuss alleged abuses by Colombia’s secret police.
But when Morris sought a U.S. student visa so he could take a fellowship for journalists at Harvard University, his application was denied. He was ineligible, U.S. officials told him, under the "terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act. The denial has incensed human rights advocates in Washington, who have raised concerns that the Obama administration has been influenced by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s government, a frequent target of Morris’s critical reports.
Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer in New York, said the visa denial appeared to be ideological, because no public information tying Morris to terrorism has surfaced. Jaffer had litigated Bush administration exclusions of two prominent Muslim academics, Adam Habib from South Africa and Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen who teaches at Oxford University. The Obama administration rescinded those denials after judges ruled that the government had not made a case for excluding the men.
Jaffer said the Morris case "does raise questions about whether the Obama administration has actually retired the practice of ideological exclusions." In decades past, under a 1950s-era law designed to limit the entry of communists and their supporters, the United States barred prominent intellectuals including writers Doris Lessing and Pablo Neruda.
[…] Morris and those who support him, including Human Rights Watch and the Nieman Foundation for journalists at Harvard, contend that the Uribe administration orchestrated the denial because of his work. Uribe has frequently accused Morris of ties to Colombia’s largest rebel group, calling him "an accomplice to terrorism" in one speech last year.
Morris, in an interview Friday, said, "If you have proof that I am a guerrilla, then why not put me in jail? Why just this campaign to discredit?"
José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division, said there is evidence to show that Colombia’s intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, "engaged in a deliberate effort to win cancellation of his visa by linking Hollman Morris with the FARC," the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
[…] According to documents prosecutors have made public, the DAS had begun a campaign to discredit Morris by tying him to the FARC. Among the strategies were plans to "press for the suspension of the visa."
The DAS’s possible role in providing the United States with information on Morris has raised concerns among some Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill who work on American policy toward Colombia. A congressional aide who helps shape Latin America policy said that "we have requested, with urgency, a full intelligence briefing on the extremely serious allegations" against Morris.
The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly comment, said the lawmakers suspect "that the DAS blackballed him because he dared to investigate DAS abuses, which now have been verified and are widely known."
[…] American officials, meanwhile, have had only good things to say about Morris, at least publicly. After Human Rights Watch named Morris the "Human Rights Watch Annual Defender" of 2007, R. Nicholas Burns and Paula Dobriansky, both high-ranking State Department officials, met with him and issued a news release expressing "great admiration for the courageous work" he had undertaken.
5) Freshman lawmaker Jason Chaffetz goes against Republican grain on Afghan war
Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post, Tuesday, July 13, 2010; A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071205394.html
As the House neared a vote this month on funding for the war in Afghanistan, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) wanted reassurance. The lawmaker had criticized the surge of 30,000 troops President Obama authorized, saying that the United States does not have a clear policy or exit strategy. But he had not yet cast a vote against war funding.
He knew such a move would isolate him in the Republican Party; most GOP lawmakers strongly support the war effort even as they rail against almost everything else Obama has done. And Chaffetz is no moderate: He won his seat in 2008 running to the right of the conservative incumbent, has called for cutting federal employees’ pay since taking office and has openly discussed a "tea party"-style challenge to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R) in 2012.
On the eve of the vote, Chaffetz called families of the three men from his district who have died in Afghanistan since he was elected and told them he was considering opposing the funding. "This was one of the toughest votes I’ve had in Congress," Chaffetz said. "So I asked their opinion. And to a T, they all agreed with me."
So Chaffetz joined a tiny bloc in Congress: Republicans opposed to the Afghan war. Chaffetz, 43, voted for a measure that would bar the administration from funding anything other than withdrawals [the Lee bill – JFP] and another that would require Obama to present a plan by April for the "safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment of U.S. troops." [the McGovern bill – JFP] Only nine House Republicans backed either measure.
"It may be slow, but if we continue to have votes like this, I think you will see a lot of Republicans shift to this point of view," Chaffetz said. "When you have people like George Will [opposed to the war], I’m not an isolated incident."
The House eventually passed the funding measure, and the Senate is likely to do the same in the coming weeks. But in a show of frustration, Democrats insisted on holding votes on two antiwar resolutions before authorizing the $33 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. Both measures failed, as expected, but 153 Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), supported having a withdrawal plan by April.
Most Republicans not only voted against the resolutions but also attacked them as setting up an artificial timetable that would weaken the military’s hand.
But an eclectic mix of Republicans joined the Democrats. Some of them, such as Reps. Ron Paul (Tex.) and Walter B. Jones (N.C.), have long criticized the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others, such as Chaffetz, are newer to the position.
"I can state emphatically that if we continue our present strategy in Afghanistan, we will not succeed, and America will eventually be weakened by loss of lives and the expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), another war opponent. "What works in Afghanistan is what has worked in Afghanistan: Let the Afghans pay the price. Let them do their fighting."
For now, those views, if not isolated, are firmly in the minority in the GOP. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele recently cast doubts on the war effort, leading party figures such as Liz Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney and founder of a conservative foreign policy organization, and Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol called for him to resign. The chairman quickly retracted the comments.
A June Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 48 percent of Democrats thought the United States was losing the war in Afghanistan and 66 percent didn’t think it was worth continuing to fight. But 60 percent of Republicans said the nation was winning and almost two-thirds said the battle was worth fighting.
[…] But Chaffetz said he thinks his stand on Afghanistan could help his political future. "Nobody wants to be seen as cut and run, but I think this is a good conservative position," he said. "I think it is what the majority of my district and what the state of Utah wants to see happen."
6) The Attack of the Real Black Helicopter Gang: The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security
Dean Baker, Huffington Post, July 12, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-attack-of-the-real-bl_b_643506.html
A few years back, there was a fear in some parts about black UN helicopters that were supposedly taking part in the planning of an invasion of the United States. While there was no foundation for this fear, there is basis for concern about the attack of another international organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons.
First, the IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place. The IMF is supposed to oversee the operations of the international financial system. According to standard economic theory, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries to finance their development. In other words, the United States should be having a trade surplus, which would correspond to the money that we are investing in poor countries to finance their development.
However, the IMF messed up its management of financial crises so badly in the last 15 years that poor countries decided that they had to accumulate huge amounts of currency reserves in order to avoid ever being forced to deal with the IMF. This meant that capital was flowing in huge amounts in the wrong direction. One result of this reverse flow was that the United States ran a huge trade deficit instead of a trade surplus.
The trade deficit in the United States was a big part of the story of the housing bubble. The trade deficit cost millions of workers their jobs. This was one of the main reasons that economy was so weak coming out of the 2001 recession. This weakness led the Fed to keep interest rates at 50-year lows, until the growth of the housing bubble eventually began to generate jobs in the fall of 2003.
The IMF both bears much of the blame for the imbalances in the world economy and then for failing to clearly sound the alarms about the dangers of the bubble. While the IMF has no problem warning about retired workers getting too much in Social Security benefits, it apparently could not find its voice when the issue was the junk securities from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup that helped to fuel the housing bubble.
The collapse of this bubble has not only sank the world economy, it also destroyed most of the savings of the near retirees for whom the IMF wants to cut Social Security. The vast majority of middle-income retirees have most of their wealth in their home equity. This home equity largely disappeared when the bubble burst. Maybe the IMF doesn’t have access to house price series and data on wealth, because if they did, it’s hard to believe that they would advocate further harm to some of the main victims of their policy failure.
The other reason that the IMF’s call for cutting Social Security benefits is infuriating is the incredible hypocrisy involved. The average Social Security benefit is just under $1,200 a month. No one can collect benefits until they reach the age of 62. By contrast, many IMF economists first qualify for benefits in their early 50s. They can begin drawing pensions at age 51 or 52 of more than $100,000 a year.
This means that we have IMF economists, who failed disastrously at their jobs, who can draw six-figure pensions at age 52, telling ordinary workers that they have to take a cut in their $14,000 a year Social Security benefits that they can’t start getting until age 62. Now that is real black helicopter material.
7) Steadfast Efforts by Iranian-American Community Lead to Suspension of Insulting Ads
National Iranian American Council, Monday, July 12, 2010
http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6620&security=1&news_iv_ctrl=-1
Washington, DC – The Iranian-American community’s call for the suspension of an insulting advertising campaign has succeeded. Following a public campaign by the National Iranian American Community that received national attention and was reported on by CNN and Voice of America, the American Values Network announced that it is suspending a controversial ad campaign that proclaimed, "Iran is making a KILLING."
NIAC publicly called on AVN to terminate the ad campaign in May, arguing that the ads carelessly fueled national security tensions and were insulting to Iranians and Iranian Americans. NIAC’s Policy Director Jamal Abdi met with AVN to discuss NIAC’s concerns.
In a VOA report featuring Abdi, as well as an official from AVN, it was reported that AVN had "quietly" decided to suspend their controversial advertising campaign.
NIAC welcomed the suspension of the ads and believed that this was an important moment for the Iranian-American community to set a precedent. NIAC had made clear that no action short of replacing the ads would be acceptable, including half-measures or semantic fixes.
[…] NIAC also expressed concerns that the ads carelessly fueled political tensions and exploited serious national security tensions, helping support calls for war with Iran in order to promote an environmental agenda.
"We take issue not with your ultimate goal of combating climate change, but rather with the destructive manner in which your message is being delivered and the unintended consequences it may help produce," NIAC’s open letter to AVN read. "Therefore, we strongly urge you to acknowledge the consequences of your ad campaign and to take immediate action to remove the ads in question."
[…]
Israel/Palestine
8) Israel Sends Warning to Gaza-Bound Libyan Vessel
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, July 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/middleeast/14flotilla.html
Jerusalem – The Israeli Navy radioed a warning to a Libyan ship steaming toward Gaza on Tuesday to change course, an Israeli military spokesman said. "We hope they will go back or to El Arish," the spokesman said, referring to an Egyptian port. "We made radio contact with them when they were about 100 miles off shore in the past couple hours. We will take over the boat if necessary. What I can tell you is that it will not reach Gaza."
The potential for a violent encounter comes six weeks after Israeli naval commandos boarded a Turkish flotilla that had sought to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza and ended up killing nine men on board, although the Navy has stopped a number of other boats without incident.
According to the French news agency, Agence France-Presse, a member of the Libyan group, Mashallah Zwei, said by satellite phone that the Israelis had given the boat until midnight local time (5 p.m. Eastern time) to shift course. "Otherwise they are threatening to intercept the boat with the navy," the agency quoted him as saying.
Mr. Zwei, like most of the other 14 activists on board, is Libyan and associated with the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation headed by Seif Al Islam Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader. On its Web site, the foundation said the boat, Al Amal, was being "intercepted" by an Israeli gunboat but there was no independent confirmation of that. The site said the boat’s sole destination was Gaza and its goal was to deliver 2,000 tons of aid. In addition to the activists, a crew of about a dozen is aboard.
[…]
Iran
9) Scientist Seeks to Return to Iran From U.S., Pakistan Says
Salman Masood and Alan Cowell, New York Times, July 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html
Islamabad, Pakistan – In the latest twist in a murky tale, Pakistan said Tuesday that an Iranian nuclear scientist who Tehran maintains was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency had taken refuge in a section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington that deals with Iranian interests.
Iranian officials were "making arrangements for his repatriation," said Abdul Basit, a spokesman at the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, but no details were made public.
The scientist, Shahram Amiri, 32, vanished during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June 2009, and Iran accused the United States of abducting and torturing him. He had worked at Iran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guards.
Confusion over his whereabouts rose in June, after two conflicting videos emerged, one publicized by Iran that portrayed him as a prisoner in the United States, the other as a free man who was working on an advanced degree there.
If the Iranian version is true, it is not clear how the man was able to reach the Pakistani Embassy section. If the second version is accurate, it is not clear why he would want to take refuge there.
Until Tuesday, the United States had made no official comments on the case, though as it was building its ultimately successful case for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program last month, a Western official said Mr. Amiri was "one of the sources" for new information on the program.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton finally broke the American silence on Tuesday, responding to reporters’ questions by saying that Mr. Amiri had been in the United States "of his own free will" and could leave when he wished, according to an unofficial transcript of remarks made a news conference with Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, at the State Department.
[…]
Afghanistan
10) UN: 10 could be lifted off Taliban sanctions list
Deb Riechmann, Associated Press, Monday, July 12, 2010; 8:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071202867.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The names of 10 individuals or entities with alleged links to the Taliban are being considered for removal from a U.N. sanctions list, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan said. Staffan De Mistura said the 10 names, submitted by Afghan officials, were being forwarded to the U.N. Security Council, which will decide whether to take them off the blacklist that freezes assets and limits travel.
The list includes names of 137 individuals and entities – businesses, groups and organizations – with alleged ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida.
President Hamid Karzai has pushed for the removal of some Taliban figures from the blacklist as a way to encourage militants to stop fighting or enter peace talks.
De Mistura would not give the names. He said Monday more names could be put forward for de-listing by the end of the month. "I cannot comment on the names because that’s up to the Security Council who will look and see what the evidence is that could lead to the de-listing," de Mistura told reporters during a news briefing about an upcoming international meeting on Afghanistan in Kabul. "The de-listing process has been extended to July 31, which means we still have some time to add names. One-by-one, they will be examined, but the movement is taking place."
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
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