[Peace-discuss] Fw: JFP 6/28: War Vote Expected This Week; NYT Attacks "Border"

Tue Jun 29 08:02:47 CDT 2010

Friends,Johnson is voting no, so I called and asked for Pelosi's office, and -- bad news -- I had no trouble getting thru. (Have we all given up? Why aren't the coffers-minding Repubs voting no for extending unemployment bennies voting no on this?? Rhetorical Qs).Repeating the ph number given below: 202-225-2131.  --Jenifer

--- On Mon, 6/28/10, Just Foreign Policy <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:

From: Just Foreign Policy <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
Subject: JFP 6/28: War Vote Expected This Week; NYT Attacks "Border"
To: jencart13 at yahoo.com
Date: Monday, June 28, 2010, 6:48 PM

        Just Foreign Policy News

June 28, 2010

Just Foreign Policy News on the Web: 

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/632

NYT Attacks "Border" with False Rant of Pro-Coup Reporter 

No reasonable person would have bet serious money that news editors at the New York Times would be huge fans of Oliver Stone's new documentary about South America, "South of the Border." But still, there are supposed to be rules for newspapers like the Times. On Friday, the Times ran an attack on Oliver Stone's documentary by Larry Rohter. Not only was the Times attack inaccurate, more importantly, the Times failed to acknowledge the bias of Larry Rohter in running the article. Rohter covered Venezuela for the Times during the period of the April 2002 coup, and during the coup, on April 12, 2002, Rohter wrote a piece for the Times claiming that the coup was not a coup, but a popular uprising. That should have disqualified Rohter from writing a piece on the film for publication by the Times. At the very least, the paper should have acknowledged Rohter's previous advocacy for the coup - and its own.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/nyt-attacks-border-with-f_b_627984.html

FAIR: NYT Reporter, Playing Film Critic, Pans Film About Himself 

http://www.fair.org/blog/?p=14962

Stone, Weisbrot, Ali Respond to Attack From the New York Times' Larry Rohter 

http://southoftheborderdoc.com/oliver-stone-responds-to-attack-from-the-new-york-times-larry-rohter/

Scheduled screenings: 

http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/

War Supplemental Expected in the House This Week 

For months, the war supplemental has been "expected" in the House. But today, Win Without War and Peace Action reported that it is "likely" that the war supplemental will be voted on later this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday. The Majority Whip sent out a whip question Friday asking Democrats whether they would vote in favor of a) the Afghanistan war money, and b) all the other supplemental funding, a sign that a vote is imminent.

Please contact your Representative, and ask him or her to 1) vote no on the war money 2) co-sponsor the McGovern bill and vote for a corresponding amendment, requiring the President to establish a timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Call:  

The Capitol Switchboard is 202-225-3121. Ask to be connected to your Representative's office. Try to get the Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant on the phone; tell whomever you get to speak with that you urge the Representative to vote no on war funding and to co-sponsor McGovern's bill and vote for McGovern's amendment; try to get them to say how the Representative will vote; report back to us any result of your query at the following link:

http://noescalation.org/2010/05/05/withdrawal-timetable/

Email: 

www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern

Speaker Pelosi, More War Funding This Week is No "Emergency" 

Speaker Pelosi says she is committed to passing an emergency war supplemental before the July Fourth recess. But there is no "emergency" requiring the House to throw another $33 billion into bloody and pointless occupation of Afghanistan before we celebrate the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from foreign occupation. Representatives McGovern and Obey have demanded answers on Afghanistan and teachers' jobs at home before voting on more money for war. If the House wants those answers, it has to be prepared to call the Pentagon's bluff.

http://www.truth-out.org/speaker-pelosi-more-war-funding-next-week-is-no-emergency60800

Support the Work of Just Foreign Policy 

Your financial support allows us to educate Americans about U.S. foreign policy and to create opportunities for Americans to advocate for U.S. policies that are more just.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate.html

Summary:

U.S./Top News 

1) The head of the army said Coalition forces in Afghanistan should open talks with the Taliban "pretty soon" as part of a future exit strategy, the Guardian reports. General Sir David Richards also seemed to cast doubt on whether the coalition would be able to inflict "strategic defeat" on the Taliban, the Guardian says. 

2) British Conservative MP Rory Stewart the war in Afghanistan is a "mission impossible" and Britain and other NATO allies should heavily reduce their presence next summer or risk a Vietnam-style defeat, the Daily News of Pakistan reports. "I do not believe we can win a counterinsurgency campaign. We are never going to have the time or the troop numbers," Stewart said. A member of parliament's influential Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Stewart believes only a few thousand troops - perhaps 1,000 of them British - should remain in Afghanistan after next summer, the paper says.

3) President Karzai held talks with Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of a major anti-government faction, Al Jazeera reports. Haqqani is reported to have been accompanied to the meeting earlier in the week by Pakistan's army chief and the head of its intelligence services. Karzai's office denied the report. 

4) General McChrystal issued a devastatingly critical assessment of the war against a "resilient and growing insurgency" just days before being forced out, The Independent reports. McChrystal warned NATO Defense Ministers not to expect any progress in the next six months. It was this briefing, as much as the Rolling Stone article, which convinced Obama to move against McChrystal, because it undermined the White House political team's aim of pulling some troops out of Afghanistan in time for the US elections in 2012, The Independent says.

5) On Tuesday,, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a  confirmation hearing for Obama's nomination of Mark Feierstein to head USAID programs in Latin America, the Andean Information Network reports. Feierstein, of the firm Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner, served as a political adviser to former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada during his 2002 Presidential campaign.  Sánchez de Lozada resigned and fled to Maryland in 2003 to escape prosecution for the massacre of 60 protesters by troops operating under his orders.  Last year Feierstein and his colleagues again conducted polling in Bolivia to assist the campaign of right wing candidate Manfred Reyes Villa, who lost by a landslide to President Morales. The appointment of Feierstein has increased apprehension in the region that aid programs will continue to be used to support U.S.-favored political actors within the region's democracies, AIN says.

6) USAID's refusal to come clean about who it is funding in Bolivia to do what appears to be the main sticking point preventing the re-establishment of normal diplomatic relations between Bolivia and the U.S., Alexander Main writes for Truthout. Documents obtained under FOIA show that, as early as 2002, USAID funded a "Political Party Reform Project" designed to "serve as a counterweight to [Evo Morales'] radical MAS [party] or its successors." Bolivia has threatened to expel USAID if it continues to fund opposition groups.

Iran 

7) U.S. officials fear that China, which is skeptical of sanctions and hungry for energy, will step up its trade and investment with Iran as other countries scale back to comply with trade restrictions, the Los Angeles Times reports. The concerns point to the possibility new unilateral sanctions could backfire by putting Western firms at a disadvantage while benefiting China and failing to affect Iran's nuclear program. China "has given no commitment not to take up the slack," said a Western diplomat. Many Chinese firms do no business in the US and won't care about U.S. threats to cut off access to the US market. CIA Director Panetta said Sunday the sanctions by themselves would "probably not" deter Iran's nuclear ambitions. 

Jordan 

8) US diplomats are trying to prevent Jordan from getting the necessary technology to build a nuclear reactor unless it agrees to purchase its nuclear fuel on the open markets rather than use its own uranium, writes former Israeli official and peace advocate Yossi Beilin in the New York Times. Jordan is furious and is convinced that Israel is behind the U.S. pressure, Beilin writes. This policy is counterproductive to Israeli interests, given that Jordan is a strong advocate of Israel-Arab peace, Beilin notes.

Israel/Palestine 

9) Turkey has been blocking Israeli military flights from entering its airspace, the New York Times reports. A Turkish official said Turkey would reject Israeli requests to use its airspace "until there would be a change in their treatment of Gaza."

10) The family of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been held captive by Hamas in Gaza for four years, began a march to Jerusalem on Sunday aimed at pressing the government to make a deal for the soldier's release, the New York Times reports. In exchange for his release, Hamas has demanded the release of as many as 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. A weekend poll in Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, found that 72 percent of Israelis polled said they supported a prisoner exchange, even if it included the release of hundreds of terrorists, including killers.

Yemen 

11) The Obama administration has decided to repatriate to Yemen a detainee held at Guantanamo after he was ordered released by a federal judge who cited overwhelming evidence the detainee had been held illegally for more than eight years by the US, the Washington Post reports. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy "emphatically" ordered Mohammed Odaini's release after concluding there was no evidence he had any connection to al-Qaeda.

-

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.

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