Just Foreign Policy News
July 12, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Bxxxxxt the Sxxxxxxxxxs! Israeli Knesset Bans Free Speech for Jews
As Bertrand Russell would have observed, the Knesset law barring advocacy of boycotts against the occupation is likely to backfire.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/israel-boycott-ban_b_895661.html
Hollywood takes on military contractors
"The Whistleblower" recounts the sordid history of DynCorp in Bosnia.
http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/29/the_whistleblower_the_movie_the_un_would_prefer_you_didnt_see
U.S. Death Toll in Afghanistan Under Obama Now Tops 1000
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/obamavsbush
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The Israeli Parliament on Monday passed legislation that effectively bans any public call for a boycott against the West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense, the New York Times reports. Critics and civil rights groups denounced the new law as antidemocratic and a flagrant assault on the freedom of expression and protest. The executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said, "Why should Israeli citizens be allowed to boycott Israeli cottage cheese … but be barred from boycotting the occupation?"
2) Thousands of Israelis joined calls to boycott settlement products in response to the new law, Haaretz reports. In the hours following the law’s approval approximately 2,000 people joined the Facebook page opened by Peace Now movement calling for a boycott of products from the settlements. "The first to feel the struggle will be the factories in the territories, which will first the first time feel the economic impact of an ideological boycott," Peace Now said.
3) The killing of Kandahar power broker and U.S. ally Ahmed Wali Karzai underscores the futility of the US counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan, writes Stephen Walt for Foreign Policy.
4) The French Defense Minister said Sunday it was time for Libya’s rebels to negotiate with Gaddafi’s government, Reuters reports. The rebels have so far refused to hold talks as long as Gaddafi is still in power, a stance which before now none of NATO’s major powers has publicly challenged. With no imminent end to the conflict in sight, cracks are emerging inside the NATO alliance, Reuters says.
5) Writing in the Huffington Post, Jeremy Konyndyk of Mercy Corps charges that the US "anti-terror" policy in Somalia is blocking relief efforts from the drought. The U.S. has withheld hunger assistance to nearly 2 million desperately hungry civilians in areas that militants control.
6) The Obama administration on Monday approved a new regulation requiring firearms dealers along the Southwest border to report multiple sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, a rule intended to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain and smuggle weapons from the US, the New York Times reports. The NRA said it would sue the government once it tried to begin enforcing the regulation.
7) The Obama Administration’s failure to prosecute Bush Administration officials who authorized torture reflects a dereliction of responsibility and a disregard for international law, writes Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch in the Washington Post. It treats torture as a policy option – one that can be turned on or off at presidential will. The U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions require that torture be investigated and prosecuted. The U.S. government regularly presses other governments to prosecute their torturers, but it does obvious damage to U.S. credibility when the United States won’t prosecute its own.
Libya
8) The US says it is prepared to support Russia’s mediation efforts in Libya, VOA News reports. Defense Secretary Panetta said some NATO allies operating in Libya could see their forces "exhausted" within 90 days and that the U.S. will be "looked at to help fill the gap." The UN envoy for Libya, Abdel Elah al-Khatib, said he has urged direct talks between Gadhafi’s government and the rebels. The rebels have long rejected any negotiations with the Gadhafi government.
Mexico
9) UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the US must do its part to halt weapons trafficking and drug use behind some of Mexico’s violence and insecurity, AFP reports. Pillay noted that her office found that 70 percent of guns sold in the US border states of Texas, Arizona and California end up in Mexico.
Haiti
10) Haitian students report headaches and other health problems from being in trailers supplied by Bill Clinton’s foundation, The Nation reports. The symptoms are consistent with unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a carcinogen. Air samples collected from one of the trailers discovered levels of formaldehyde at two and a half times the level at which the CDC warned FEMA trailer residents that sensitive people, such as children, could face adverse health effects. The Haiti trailers were manufactured by Clayton Homes, which is being sued in the US for providing FEMA with formaldehyde-laced trailers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Israel Bans Boycotts Against the State
Isabel Kershner, New York Times, July 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/middleeast/12israel.html
Jerusalem – The Israeli Parliament on Monday passed contentious legislation that effectively bans any public call for a boycott against the state of Israel or its West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense.
Critics and civil rights groups denounced the new law as antidemocratic and a flagrant assault on the freedom of expression and protest. The law’s defenders said it was a necessary tool in Israel’s fight against what they called its global delegitimization.
Passage of the law followed a string of efforts in the rightist-dominated Parliament to promote legislation that is seen by the more liberal Israelis as an erosion of democratic values.
Some critics argued passage of the legislation against boycotts would further delegitimize Israel, which is facing increasing pressure over West Bank settlements that Palestinians regard as part of the territory for a future state. Continued construction in the settlements has been a major impediment in attempts to resume stalled peace talks.
The bill passed by 47 votes to 38. It relates to calls for economic, cultural or academic boycotts of the state, its institutions or any area under its control, a reference to occupied territories.
Offenders could face lawsuits and monetary penalties. Companies or organizations supporting a boycott could be disqualified from participating in bids for government work. Nonprofit organizations issuing boycott calls risk losing tax benefits.
The so-called Boycott Bill was sponsored by Zeev Elkin of the Likud, the conservative party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu was absent from the vote, as was the defense minister, Ehud Barak, who leads a small centrist faction in the governing coalition.
In an opinion issued earlier on Monday, the legal adviser of the Parliament, Eyal Yinon, determined that elements of the bill bordered on unconstitutionality and struck at the core of political freedom of expression. However, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein gave the bill his approval.
The speaker of the Parliament, Reuven Rivlin of the Likud, tried to introduce moderations in the bill, but they were rejected. Mr. Rivlin abstained from the vote.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and other human rights organizations said they were preparing to challenge the law in the High Court of Justice. The association described the law as "an antidemocratic step, intended to create a chilling effect on civil society."
Ilan Gilon, a legislator from the leftist Meretz Party, said, "I do not know of anything that creates more delegitimization of Israel abroad than these laws."
Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and other opponents of the law have pointed out that Israelis had recently launched their first successful consumer boycott, bringing down the price of cottage cheese. "Why should Israeli citizens be allowed to boycott Israeli cottage cheese, as we have heard and seen in recent weeks, but be barred from boycotting the occupation?" he said in a recent statement.
Last year, Israeli theater artists refused to perform at a new cultural center in the urban settlement of Ariel and in other West Bank settlements, causing a public uproar. They were followed by scores of leftist Israeli academics, writers and intellectuals who said that they would not lecture at the center or in any of the settlements.
A movement of Palestinians and foreign supporters has stepped up calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Their campaigns have led to a number of cancellations by international artists.
[…]
2) Israeli Left launches public campaign against new law banning boycotts
Thousands of people join calls to boycott settlement products in response to the new law, which penalizes people or organizations who call for a boycott on Israel or the settlements.
Jonathan Lis and Tomer Zarchin, Haaretz, 12.07.11
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-left-launches-public-campaign-against-new-law-banning-boycotts-1.372857
Israeli leftist organizations launched Tuesday a series of protests against the boycott law passed in the Knesset the night before.
The Gush Shalom movement took its campaign to the legal level and filed a petition to the Supreme Court claiming the boycott law is unconstitutional and anti-democratic.
"The boycott law is another attempt by the parliamentary majority in Israel to silence any criticism against the government’s policies in general and its policies in the occupied territories in particular, and prevent an open and productive political discourse, which is the backbone of a democratic regime," the petition said.
In the hours following the law’s approval approximately 2,000 people joined the Facebook page opened by Peace Now movement calling for a boycott of products from the settlements. The Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah movement joined that call, and say that so far around 1,500 people have petitioned against the bill.
"The public protests against the destruction of democracy will not stop with polite petitions to the Supreme Court," Peace Now said in a statement, "The first to feel the struggle will be the factories in the territories, which will first the first time feel the economic impact of an ideological boycott."
[…] According to the law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage. The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. The second part of the law says a person or a company that declare a boycott of Israel or the settlements will not be able to bid in government tenders.
3) Murder in Kandahar: What does the killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai mean?
Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 – 10:13 AM
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/12/murder_in_kandahar_what_does_the_killing_of_ahmed_wali_karzai_mean
I don’t know any more than you do about the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the well-connected and notoriously corrupt half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was also de facto governor of Kandahar province and reportedly on the CIA payroll. In fact, I probably know less than some of you. But I’ll offer a few quick reactions to the news nonetheless.
First, unless the killing was some sort of personal vendetta, it seems likely that it was politically motivated and it strikes me as plausible that it was ordered by the Taliban. The killer, a family associate named Sardar Mohammed, was a regular visitor to Karzai’s home, and he must have known that shooting Karzai in his own compound was a suicide mission.
Second, in the short run this has to be a propaganda boost for the Taliban, who have already claimed credit for the killing and called it one of the "great achievements" of the war. From the very beginning, the Taliban’s main appeal was their ability to provide order (albeit of a very brutal sort) and their lack of personal corruption. Wali Karzai, needless to say, was a vivid symbol of the latter. More importantly, the Taliban will undoubtedly use the killing to cast doubt on the Afghan government’s ability to protect even top officials. In a war of perceptions, this is not good news for our side.
Third, to me it merely underscores the continued futility of trying to win a counter-insurgency war in a country where we lack a competent, committed, or fully-legitimate local partner. We’re likely to get a lot of upbeat reports of progress in the months to come, as the Obama administration tries to persuade us that the "surge" worked and that we can start going home. I hope this sleight of hand works, because the war is a running sore and a distraction from more important problems. But spin and PR won’t change the basic reality: Afghanistan’s fate will be determined by the Afghans and not by us.
Heck, our own political system can’t even get a budget deal done without a lot of eleventh-hour hysterics, and yet we think we can reliably reshape the political order of a country of 32 million Muslims, many of them illiterate, and divided into at least five major tribes. Can you say "hubris?"
4) France tells Libya rebels to seek peace with Gaddafi
Lamine Chikhi, Reuters, Sun, Jul 10 2011
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/10/uk-libya-idUKTRE7691FZ20110710
Tripoli – A French minister said on Sunday it was time for Libya’s rebels to negotiate with Muammar Gaddafi’s government, but Washington said it stood firm in its belief that the Libyan leader cannot stay in power.
The diverging messages from two leading members of the Western coalition opposing Gaddafi hinted at the strain the alliance is under after more than three months of air strikes that have cost billions of dollars and failed to produce the swift outcome its backers had expected.
French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet signalled growing impatience with the progress of the conflict when he said the rebels should negotiate now with Gaddafi’s government and not wait for his defeat.
The rebels have so far refused to hold talks as long as Gaddafi is still in power, a stance which before now none of NATO’s major powers has publicly challenged.
"We have …. have asked them to speak to each other," Longuet, whose government has until now been among the most hawkish on Libya, said on French television station BFM TV. "The position of the TNC (rebel Transitional National Council) is very far from other positions. Now, there will be a need to sit around a table," he said."
Asked if it was possible to hold talks if Gaddafi had not stepped down, Longuet said: "He will be in another room in his palace with another title."
[…] With no imminent end to the conflict in sight, cracks are emerging inside the NATO alliance. Some member states are balking at the burden on their recession-hit finances, and many are frustrated that there has been no decisive breakthrough.
[…]
5) Will the U.S. Stand By As Famine Looms in Somalia?
Jeremy Konyndyk, Huffington Post, 7/7/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-konyndyk/famine-looms-in-somalia-w_b_890680.html
[Konyndyk is Co-Director of Policy and Advocacy for Mercy Corps.]
"The drought has gotten so bad that we have seen camels dying of thirst," recounted a Mercy Corps colleague during my recent visit to Somalia. While crises in Sudan, Libya and Japan may get the headlines, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today — by a long shot — is taking place in the Horn of Africa. Experts in the region say that the drought is the worst the Horn has seen since the 1950s. The U.N. estimates that more than 10 million people face severe food shortfalls. Spanning across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the current crisis could prove to be worse than the far better-known crisis in Ethiopia in the 1980s, which ultimately killed up to 1 million people.
The epicenter of the crisis is Somalia, where nearly 3 million people — more than one-third of the population — face possible starvation. Mercy Corps staff in the country, people with years of experience in humanitarian relief, have told me that this is one of the worst situations they have ever seen.
Yet as Somalia has descended closer to outright famine, the U.S. government has largely stayed on the sidelines, contributing only $14.5 million — a tiny fraction of the need — for food aid this year. The U.S. is the largest global donor to international hunger relief, so when the U.S. fails to show up, there is no one else who can be relied on pick up the slack.
Why is the U.S. doing so little to respond? Politics. In 2008, when most of Somalia’s territory was occupied by Ethiopian troops in support of a U.S.-allied Somali government, the U.S. contributed 10 times more humanitarian aid to Somalia than it has this year. But when the Ethiopians pulled out in early 2009, most of southern Somalia was forcibly taken over by militant movements that the U.S. had designated as terrorists.
The shift in political control of the territory spurred drastic cuts in U.S. humanitarian aid due to overly broad U.S. laws on terrorist financing. As conditions in the country have worsened, U.S. laws on material support to terrorists have become a direct impediment to the drought response: the U.S. has avoided any humanitarian activity that might result in even a small amount of aid leakage to the militants. There is a safety valve for situations like this: a humanitarian exemption that the State Department could request from the Treasury Department. But State and Treasury have shown little interest in going that route.
Avoiding aid diversion is a reasonable goal, and one that humanitarian groups like Mercy Corps share. But the U.S.’s overzealous approach to this challenge now threatens to write off millions of Somalis who face the very real risk of starvation. As things stand now, the U.S. has withheld hunger assistance to the nearly 2 million desperately hungry civilians in areas that the militants control. Even in areas controlled by clans who actually oppose the southern militias, such as hard-hit communities of central Somalia, exaggerated USG fears about aid leakage have resulted in the U.S. providing only very limited support.
[…]
6) New Reporting Rules on Multiple Sales of Guns Near Border
Charlie Savage, New York Times, July 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/us/politics/12guns.html
Washington – The Obama administration on Monday approved a new regulation requiring firearms dealers along the Southwest border to report multiple sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, a rule intended to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain and smuggle weapons from the United States.
Under the rule, dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas will be required to inform the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives if someone buys – within a five-day period – more than one semiautomatic rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and uses ammunition greater than .22 caliber. Such weapons include AK-47s.
Dealers nationwide are already required to report bulk sales of handguns, and the A.T.F. applied to impose such a regulation late last year to help detect bulk "straw buyers" – people who say they are buying weapons for themselves but then transfer them to criminals.
In a statement, the deputy attorney general, James Cole, said the regulation was justified by the need to help the A.T.F. "detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals" and in particular to "help confront the problem of illegal gun trafficking into Mexico."
"The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States," Mr. Cole said, adding that rifles covered by the new regulation "are highly sought after by dangerous drug-trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border."
The proposal has been hotly contested by gun-control advocates, and Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president for the National Rifle Association, said his organization was preparing to sue the government once it tried to begin enforcing the regulation.
[…]
7) The books aren’t closed on Bush’s torture policy
Kenneth Roth, Washington Post, July 11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-books-arent-closed-on-bushs-torture-policy/2011/07/11/gIQA3v0e9H_story.html
[Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.]
President Obama’s policy toward the Bush administration’s use of torture has been one of splitting the difference – Obama ordered an end to further torture but largely avoided investigating, let alone prosecuting, what Bush administration officials had done. For the Obama administration, the calculation was political: Stopping ongoing criminality by U.S. officials was non-negotiable, but delving into the criminality of his predecessor was deemed too costly. Obama had other priorities – fixing a devastated economy, enacting health-care reform – so dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed.
So the president adopted the mantra that he would "look forward and not backwards." Under Obama’s watch, U.S. interrogators would not torture suspects or send them abroad for others to torture. There would be no more twisted legal justifications for torture, no more cheap euphemisms such as "enhanced interrogation techniques." But there would also be no investigations into this ugly chapter of American history.
The sole exception was a narrow investigation entrusted to special counsel John Durham, which examined interrogators whose cruelty had exceeded authorized interrogation techniques. That inquiry ended last month with a decision to investigate two deaths of terrorism suspects in CIA custody but not some 100 other cases of alleged abuse. The crux of the problem, however, was never excessive torture; it was authorized torture. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, for example, was ordered subjected to "waterboarding" – a form of mock execution by drowning – 183 times. That was the issue – not that some freelancing interrogator might have added a 184th.
Obama’s deliberate suppression of this shameful past is wrong. It reflects bad policy, a dereliction of presidential responsibilities and a continuing disregard for international law.
It treats torture as a policy option – one that can be turned on or off at presidential will. Obama prohibited the practice, but by refusing to underscore its criminality through prosecution, he leaves the door open for future presidents to resume torture when the next security challenge arises. Indeed, far from "moving on," Obama’s critics in Congress have attacked his decision to reject torture; some have proposed exempting the CIA from Obama’s order that all U.S. interrogators abide by the U.S. Army’s interrogation manual prohibiting such techniques.
Obama has also adopted an unduly narrow view of his duties toward criminal law. It’s not enough for a president to respect that law; he is also responsible for enforcing it. Through his attorney general, a president is prosecutor in chief, but Obama has ordered Eric Holder not to pursue the Bush administration’s serious and systematic crimes against detainees. That tacit acceptance of the past weakens this essential criminal prohibition.
Indeed, Obama’s inaction places the United States in violation of its international legal obligations. The U.N. Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States and 146 other countries, as well as the Geneva Conventions, do more than prohibit torture at all times, even in war. They also require that torture be investigated and prosecuted. The duty to prosecute is no more optional than the duty not to torture. Yet Obama is picking and choosing among these legal mandates.
That serious breach of international law has consequences well beyond America’s shores. The U.S. government regularly presses other governments to prosecute their torturers, but it does obvious damage to U.S. credibility when the United States won’t prosecute its own. That refusal also endangers U.S. service members or intelligence agents who might be captured by a hostile government, since the United States undercuts its ability to insist on prosecution of anyone who subjects them to waterboarding or other torture techniques.
There is no shortage of evidence that senior Bush officials, including the former president, ordered torture. Human Rights Watch is releasing a report Tuesday collecting the voluminous evidence, including admissions by Bush and others. It is time to act on this evidence. That may be politically difficult, but the viability of the fundamental prohibition of torture is too important to be cast aside for political convenience.
Libya
8) US Backs Russian Mediation in Libya
VOA News, July 12, 2011
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Backs-Russian-Mediation-in-Libya-125401633.html
The United States says it is prepared to support Russia’s mediation efforts in Libya, as France signals its frustration with the lack of progress in reaching a political solution to the crisis.
U.S. President Barack Obama thanked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for his country’s negotiation efforts in Libya, and said the United States supports talks that lead to a democratic transition and the departure of leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Medvedev has joined Western leaders in urging Gadhafi to step down, and Russian envoys have traveled to Libya to meet with government and rebel representatives.
Russia abstained from voting on a U.N. Security Council resolution earlier this year that authorized international involvement in Libya and has since criticized the scale and intent of the NATO-led campaign.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told a French radio station Tuesday the Libyan government has sent envoys to several countries to say Gadhafi is "ready to go."
France has said it sent messages to the Libyan government saying Gadhafi must step down as part of any political solution to the five-month conflict with opposition forces fighting to end his 42-year rule.
France has also given direct aid to the rebels and is taking part in NATO airstrikes against Libyan government forces. But because of concerns about the mounting cost of the military campaign, France wants opposition fighters to do more to end the conflict.
The rebels have long rejected any negotiations with the Gadhafi government while he remains in charge.
[…] U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking in Iraq Monday, said some NATO allies operating in Libya could see their forces "exhausted" within 90 days and that the U.S. will be "looked at to help fill the gap."
He did not say which countries he was referring to, or what the U.S. response would be to any request for increased military assistance.
Also Monday, the United Nations envoy for Libya, Abdel Elah al-Khatib, said he has urged direct talks between Gadhafi’s government and the rebels, but acknowledged the two sides remain far apart.
Khatib said one of the key issues is agreeing on an institutional body to manage a political transition. He said any such group would have to be "all-inclusive and involve representatives from all political and social groups, as well as a wide range of factions, regions and tribes."
Mexico
9) US must do more to halt Mexico violence: UN official
AFP, July 9, 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5itsZl5JbnIIUhJtLHxNJWp0tsWuw
Mexico City – The United States must do its part to halt weapons trafficking and drug use behind some of Mexico’s violence and insecurity, the top UN rights official said Friday.
"I do call on the United States of America, indicated as the principal consumer of drugs and supplier of weapon of Mexico, to do something else in order to provide more security to the people of this country," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in Mexico City. "The magnitude of the challenge is enormous and some of the roots of the problem are beyond the borders of Mexico."
Pillay, who was concluding a visit to Mexico, noted that her office found that 70 percent of guns sold in the US border states of Texas, Arizona and California end up in Mexico.
[…]
Haiti
10) The Shelters That Clinton Built
Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet, The Nation, July 11, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/161908/shelters-clinton-built
When Demosthene Lubert heard that Bill Clinton’s foundation was going to rebuild his collapsed school at the epicenter of Haiti’s January 12, 2010, earthquake, in the coastal city of Léogâne, the academic director thought he was "in paradise."
The project was announced by Clinton as his foundation’s first contribution to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which the former president co-chairs. The foundation described the project as "hurricane-proof…emergency shelters that can also serve as schools…to ensure the safety of vulnerable populations in high risk areas during the hurricane season," while also providing Haitian schoolchildren "a decent place to learn" and creating local jobs. The facilities, according to the foundation, would be equipped with power generators, restrooms, water and sanitary storage. They became one of the IHRC’s first projects.
However, when Nation reporters visited the "hurricane-proof" shelters in June, six to eight months after they’d been installed, we found them to consist of twenty imported prefab trailers beset by a host of problems, from mold to sweltering heat to shoddy construction. Most disturbing, they were manufactured by the same company, Clayton Homes, that is being sued in the United States for providing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with formaldehyde-laced trailers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Air samples collected from twelve Haiti trailers detected worrying levels of this carcinogen in one, according to laboratory results obtained as part of a joint investigation by The Nation and The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund.
Clayton Homes is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company run by Warren Buffett, one of the "notable" private-sector members of the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the initiative’s website. ("Members" are typically required to pay $20,000 a year to the charity, but foundation officials would not disclose whether Buffett had made such a donation.) Buffett was also a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter during the 2008 presidential race, and he co-hosted a fundraiser that brought in at least $1 million for her campaign.
By mid-June, two of the four schools where the Clinton Foundation classrooms were installed had prematurely ended classes for the summer because the temperature in the trailers frequently exceeded 100 degrees, and one had yet to open for lack of water and sanitation facilities.
As Judith Seide, a student in Lubert’s sixth-grade class, explained to The Nation, she and her classmates regularly suffer from painful headaches in their new Clinton Foundation classroom. Every day, she said, her "head hurts and I feel it spinning and have to stop moving, otherwise I’d fall." Her vision goes dark, as is the case with her classmate Judel, who sometimes can’t open his eyes because, said Seide, "he’s allergic to the heat." Their teacher regularly relocates the class outside into the shade of the trailer because the swelter inside is insufferable.
Sitting in the sixth-grade classroom, student Mondialie Cineas, who dreams of becoming a nurse, said that three times a week the teacher gives her and her classmates painkillers so that they can make it through the school day. "At noon, the class gets so hot, kids get headaches," the 12-year-old said, wiping beads of sweat from her brow. She is worried because "the kids feel sick, can’t work, can’t advance to succeed."
Word about the students’ headaches has made it all the way to the Léogâne mayor’s office, but like the students, their teachers and parents, Mayor Santos Alexis chalked it up to the intense heat inside the trailers.
But headaches were not the only health problems students, staff and parents at the Institut Haitiano-Caribbean (INHAC) told us they’ve suffered from since the inauguration of the classrooms. Innocent Sylvain, a shy janitor who looks much older than his 41 years, spends more time than anyone in the new trailer classrooms, with the inglorious task of mopping up the water that leaks through the doors and windows each time it rains. He has felt a burning sensation in his eyes ever since he began working long hours in the trailers. One of his eyes is completely bloodshot, and he said, "They itch and burn." He’d previously been sensitive to eye irritation, but he says he’s had worse "problems since the month of January"-when the schoolrooms opened their doors.
Any number of factors might be contributing to the headaches and eye irritation reported by INHAC staff and students. However, similar symptoms were experienced by those living in the FEMA trailers that were found by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to have unsafe levels of formaldehyde. Lab tests conducted as part of our investigation in Haiti discovered levels of the carcinogen in the sixth-grade Clinton Foundation classroom in Léogâne at 250 parts per billion-two and a half times the level at which the CDC warned FEMA trailer residents that sensitive people, such as children, could face adverse health effects. Assay Technologies, the accredited lab that analyzed the air tests, identifies 100 parts per billion and more as the level at which "65–80 percent of the population will most likely exhibit some adverse health symptoms…when exposed continually over extended periods of time."
Randy Maddalena, a scientist specializing in indoor pollutants at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, characterized the 250 parts per billion finding as "a very high level" of formaldehyde and warned that "it’s of concern," particularly given the small sample size. An elevated level of formaldehyde in one of twelve trailers tested is comparable to the formaldehyde emissions problems detected in about 9 percent of similar Clayton mobile homes supplied by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina. Maddalena explained that in "normal" buildings, you’ll see rates twelve to twenty-five times lower than 250 parts per billion, "and even that’s considered above regulatory thresholds."
According to the CDC, formaldehyde exposure can exacerbate symptoms of asthma and has been linked to chronic lung disease. Studies have shown that children are particularly vulnerable to its respiratory effects. The chemical was recently added to the US Department of Health and Human Services’ "Report of Carcinogens," based on studies linking exposure to formaldehyde with increased risk for rare types of cancer.
"You should get those kids outta there," Maddalena said. The scientist emphasized that Haiti’s hot and humid climate could well be contributing to high emissions of the carcinogen in the classroom. Indeed, months before the launch of the Clinton trailer project, the nation’s climate was widely cited as a key problem with a trailer industry proposal to ship FEMA trailers to Haiti for shelter after the earthquake. The proposal was ultimately rejected by FEMA, following a critical letter from Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, who argued, "This country’s immediate response to help in this humanitarian crisis should not be blemished by later concerns over adverse health consequences precipitated by our efforts."
Yet several months later, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Clayton Homes had been awarded a million-dollar contract to ship twenty trailers to Haiti, for use as classrooms for schoolchildren.
[…]
–
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