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United States Foreign Policy
Spider Web: The Making and Unmaking of Iran Sanctions
![[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]](/content_images/3/sm_ICGlogoweb.jpg "[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]")
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 25 February 2013.] Spider Web: The Making and Unmaking of Iran Sanctions Executive Summary With war a frightening prospect and fruitful negotiations a still-distant dream, sanctions have become the West’s instrument of choice vis-à-vis Iran. They are everywhere: in the financial arena, barring habitual commercial relations; in the oil sector, choking off Tehran’s principal source of currency; in the insurance sector, thwarting its ability to transport goods. Without doubt, they are crippling Iran’s economy. But are they succeeding? By at least one important criterion (the intensity of Western ...
Keep Reading »The Feb 15 Call for Global Protests for Democracy, Solidarity and Justice
![[Washington, DC protest against the war in Iraq in 2008. Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_nowarweb.jpg "[Washington, DC protest against the war in Iraq in 2008. Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr]")
[The following statement was issued by an international group of activists and scholars on 15 February 2013.] Ten years ago, millions of people around the world said "no" to war on February 15, 2003. Now, we say "yes" to peace; "yes" to demilitarizing, to having decent lives, including economic lives, determined by democratic principles. The invasion of Iraq still began after the 2003 protests, but the violence wreaked by Bush was still more limited than the U.S. government inflicted on Vietnam a generation earlier. Our vigilance was part of the reason for that. Had we acted sooner, we might have been able to avert ...
Keep Reading »Tires over Tyre: US Ambassador Ruins Ruins
![[A screen shot of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir's website, 6 February 2013.]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot_US_Convoy_ruins.jpg "[A screen shot of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir's website, 6 February 2013.]")
Touring Tyre on foot can be tiring, to be sure. But whether US Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly was too tired or too busy to get out of her car to survey these marvelous vestiges of antiquity, nothing excuses her regrettable decision to drive a convoy of vehicles over this ancient site, damaging a stone wall in the process. Ambassador Connelly’s convoy passed near the golden Roman Triumphal Arch through a narrow dirt path that is not designed for cars. Unfortunately, one of the cars in her convoy veered off the “road” and demolished a large section of a supporting stone wall. What has not yet been reported is that to get to this pathway, she also had to drive over a ...
Keep Reading »UN Counter-Terrorism Expert Launches Inquiry into the Civilian Impact of Drones and Other Forms of Targeted Killing
![[Image of MQ-1 Predator Drone, used primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force. Image by David Smith.]](/content_images/3/sm_2139413765_f7b959bd8e_z.jpg "[Image of MQ-1 Predator Drone, used primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force. Image by David Smith.]")
LONDON (24 January 2012) - UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson QC will be formally launching an Inquiry into the civilian impact of the use of drones and other forms of targeted killing, focusing on the applicable legal framework, a critical examination of the factual evidence concerning civilian casualties, with a view to making recommendations to the UN General Assembly concerning the duty of States to conduct effective independent and impartial investigations into the lawfulness and proportionality of such attacks. The Inquiry will be publicly launched at a press conference this ...
Keep Reading »Human Rights Watch Statement on Zero Dark Thirty
![[Human Rights Watch logo. Image from hrw.org]](/content_images/3/sm_hrwlogoweb.jpg "[Human Rights Watch logo. Image from hrw.org]")
[The following statement was released by Human Rights Watch on 11 January 2013.] The movie Zero Dark Thirty, which depicts the hunt for Osama bin Laden, wrongly suggests that torture was an ugly but useful tactic in the fight against terrorism. It also falsely implies that information obtained through torture was critical to finding bin Laden. As the film-makers note, it is a fictionalized account, not a documentary. The use of torture violates US law and the country’s international legal obligations – even when “authorized” by the US government. Its use damaged the reputation of the United States and its ability to promote ...
Keep Reading »Good Taliban, Bad Taliban: Pakistan’s Double Game and the US War on Terror
![[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]](/content_images/3/sm_schmelztaliban11.jpg "[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]")
The start of 2013 brought a fresh upsurge of US drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, killing between twenty-three and forty-four people. Since 2008, when President George W. Bush ordered increased strikes on “militants” and associated “infrastructure targets” in these areas, killings have been a constant occurrence. President Barack Obama not only continued this policy, but escalated it dramatically. Of the 360 total strikes documented by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 308 have occurred since Obama took office. It is no surprise, then, that individual drone strikes no longer cause much of a stir in the international press, ...
Keep Reading »Torture vs. Torture Euphemisms: Language of Torture in U.S. Media 2010-2012
![[Covering Torture logo. Image from coveringtorture.org]](/content_images/3/sm_coveringtorturelogoweb.jpg "[Covering Torture logo. Image from coveringtorture.org]")
[The following infographic was issued by Covering Torture.] Do we call torture by its name? Torture is legally defined by the UN Convention Against Torture and that definition includes acts of abuse that have occurred as part of U.S. and allied interrogation policies. Nevertheless, euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation," "harsh interrogation," or "special techniques" are used widely by U.S. media to describe practices that are more accurately called torture.
Keep Reading »More Quick Thoughts on Palestine at the United Nations
![[President Barack Obama listens as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responds to a question during a joint meeting with the press in the Oval Office Thursday, May 28, 2009. Image by Pete Souza. From Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_Barack_Obama_meets_with_Mahmoud_Abbas_in_the_Oval_Office_2009-05-28_3.jpg "[President Barack Obama listens as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responds to a question during a joint meeting with the press in the Oval Office Thursday, May 28, 2009. Image by Pete Souza. From Wikimedia Commons.]")
The outcome of a United Nations General Assembly vote on enhanced membership status for Palestine has never been in question. The Palestinians will win, probably handily, because the international community overwhelmingly supports the Palestinian right to self-determination and opposes Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Those openly opposing this vote can easily be counted on the fingers of an amputated hand: Israel; the United States, which is more pro-Israel than Israel itself; Canada, which is more pro-Israel than even the United States; and perhaps one or two Pacific islands casting one of their final UN votes since they will be rewarded for their ...
Keep Reading »Afghanistan: The Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 8 October 2012.] Afghanistan: The Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition Executive Summary Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organising a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening the chances that the present political dispensation can survive the transition. ...
Keep Reading »Letter Concerning US Department of State Decision to Freeze Scholarships for Students from Gaza
![[Logo for Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association. Image from MESA website]](/content_images/3/sm_Image-CAF-MESA.jpg "[Logo for Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association. Image from MESA website]")
[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association concerning the decision by the US Department of State to freeze scholaships for students from Gaza seeking to study in the West Bank.] 13 November 2012 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 Dear Secretary Clinton: On behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), I write to express MESA’s concern about the recent decision by the US Department of State to freeze scholarships in the 2012-13 academic year for ...
Keep Reading »Marketing Agency, Branding Hope: War, Kony, and "Three Cups of Tea"
![[“Three Cups of Tea” co-author Greg Mortenson shows the locations of future village schools to U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in July 2009. Photo by Chad J. McNeeley/AP.]](/content_images/3/sm_Books_Three_Cups_of_Tea_mullen.jpeg.jpg "[“Three Cups of Tea” co-author Greg Mortenson shows the locations of future village schools to U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in July 2009. Photo by Chad J. McNeeley/AP.]")
October seventh marked the eleventh anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, making it by far the longest war in US history. The date passed with little public fanfare. Despite vibrant and unprecedented US and global anti-war movements, as well as broad public opposition within the United States, open-ended war has become the backdrop to US society: it is no longer front-page news. Yet on this somber anniversary, the media was abuzz with Oprah Winfrey’s much-anticipated interview with Jason Russell, Chief Creative Officer/Co-Founder and director of the viral video, KONY 2012. After the stunning spread and then massive political controversy surrounding ...
Keep Reading »اليهودي الجيد: سياسات الهوية في التراث المؤسساتي الأمريكي اليهودي
![[أولاد الصف الثالث يرسمون العلم الإسرائيلي. مصدر الصورة كاتبة المقال]](/content_images/3/sm_goodjes.jpg "[أولاد الصف الثالث يرسمون العلم الإسرائيلي. مصدر الصورة كاتبة المقال]")
من هو اليهودي "الجيد" في التراث الأمريكي المعاصر؟ ما هي العلاقة بين الصهيونية وبين الهوية اليهودية؟ كيف يتعامل اليهود المعادون للصهيونية، أو يقاومون، سوء استخدام إيمانهم في الفكر الصهيوني؟ وهل يمكن للإجابات عن هذه الأسئلة أن تحقق تطوراً في قضية العدالة في إسرائيل وفلسطين؟ يبدو أن الصهاينة يكسبون معركة السيطرة على سياسة الهوية اليهودية في الولايات المتحدة. وكنتيجة لهذا، فإن النقاش العام حول ما الذي يصنع يهودياً "جيداً" أو "سيئاً" يجبر بعض التقدميين من اليهود المعادين للصهيونية، وبضمنهم أنا، على أن نعبر عن معارضتنا للسياسة الإسرائيلية كموقف نابع من فهمنا للديانة اليهودية. بالنسبة للبعض، يشكل النص المقدس والإيمان الأسس لمعارضتهم ...
Keep Reading »US Drones Blow Up Any Hope of Close Ties with Yemenis
Late last year I escorted the US radio journalist Kelly McEvers to Abyan, a governorate in South Yemen. Government troops and local militias had been battling fighters from Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate, and had forced them from the area only two days earlier. There were reports that some had shaved their beards and stayed. If they had known an American reporter was around, they would have had a golden opportunity for a kidnapping. Before we boarded the plane in Beirut, I had told McEvers that ...
Keep Reading »Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
[The following report was issued by the Open Society Foundations on 5 February 2013.] Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition Executive Summary Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commenced a secret detention program under which suspected terrorists were held in CIA prisons, also known as “black sites,” outside the United States, where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation ...
Keep Reading »Obama's Drone Leaks: New Imminence, Old Tactics
The Senate Armed Services Committee did not mention drones a single time during Senator Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearings last week. That oversight, however, says a lot more about the politics surrounding the hearings than it does about the enduring salience of drone technology to US national security policy. The Department of Justice's "white paper" obtained by NBC on Monday affirms that. The paper, drafted for some members of Congress and a less detailed ...
Keep Reading »List of Children Killed by Drone Strikes in Yemen and Pakistan
[The following list was issued by Drones Watch on 20 January 2013. The names were compiled from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports.] PAKISTAN Name | Age | Gender Noor Aziz | 8 | male Abdul Wasit | 17 | male Noor Syed | 8 | male Wajid Noor | 9 | male Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male Ayeesha | 3 | female Qari Alamzeb | 14| male Shoaib | 8 | male Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male Tariq Aziz | 16 | male Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male Maezol Khan | 8 | female Nasir Khan | male Naeem Khan | ...
Keep Reading »Torture, Drones, and Detention: A Conversation Between Laleh Khalili and Lisa Hajjar
The following is an audio recording of a joint book talk held on 16 January 2013. Laleh Khalili and Lisa Hajjar recently published their Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies and Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights, respectively. The event was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and featured a conversation between the two authors entitled "Torture, Drones, and Detention: The Vagaries of Liberal ...
Keep Reading »Why Chuck Hagel Is Irrelevant
The latest non-scandal scandalizing the American commentariat is whether Barack Obama will be able to nominate former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as his new Secretary of Defense. The narrative is that the Zionist lobby is eager to scuttle Hagel’s nomination because he has uttered one too many words “critical” of Israel, and displayed too many sentiments suspected of being contrary to the agenda of the lobby: namely, destroying Iran. The narrative is true enough. That the lobby does not want Hagel is ...
Keep Reading »A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria (Part 3)
[From Vijay Prashad's three-part series "A Nation of Pain and Suffering: Syria." See Part 1: Refugees here and Part 2 : Neighbors here.] Our enemies did not cross our borders They crept through our weakness like ants. -- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback” (‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967. III. Western Plans. On 12 December, the Friends of Syria (FoS) met for their fourth conference in Marrakech, Morocco. Hilary Clinton could not go because she contracted a stomach ...
Keep Reading »Quick Thoughts on the Significance of the November 2012 Palestine UN Bid
The Palestinian UN bid for non-member observer status will certainly pass today as the majority of UN member states have expressed their support for the initiative. The positive vote will do little to alter the course of Israel's ongoing settler-colonial expansion in the West Bank, or its racially motivated policies aimed at the forced population transfer of non-Jewish Palestinians throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Still, the significance of Palestine's bolstered status is ...
Keep Reading »The Agonies of Susan Rice: Gaza and the Negroponte Doctrine
In the dark of night, on 14 November, the United Nations Security Council met to discuss Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. As elections in Israel are on the horizon, the Israeli Defense Force conducted an extra-judicial assassination of Hamas’ Ahmad Jabari, who only hours beforehand had received a draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel (according to Nir Hasson at Haaretz). A barrage of Israeli aircraft and warships followed Jabari’s assassination. A few rockets were fired from Gaza, but ...
Keep Reading »The UN at ASIL: R2P and the Arab Uprisings
The Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs and United Nations Legal Counsel, Patricia O Brien, recently addressed the American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting at the University of Georgia School of Law. In her representative capacity, O’Brien dedicated her luncheon remarks to a discussion about the still-developing concept of responsibility to protect. (She contributed the full remarks as an IntLawGrrls post.) Also known by its shorthand abbreviation, R2P, the doctrine of responsibility to ...
Keep Reading »Syracuse Event -- NATO Intervention and the People of Libya: Lessons Learnt (19 October 2012)
NATO Intervention and the People of Libya: Lessons Learnt 9 October 2012, 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Maxwell School, Syracuse University Eggers Hall Global Collaboratory, Room 060 Included Speakers: Adonia Ayebare, International Peace Institute Ali Mazrui, Institute of Global Cultural Studoes, Binghamton University Doc Mashabane, Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations Emira Woods, Institute for Policy Studies ...
Keep Reading »Yehouda Shenav's "Beyond the Two-State Solution"
…the Green Line is a cultural myth, harnessed to advance the economic-political and cultural interests of a broad liberal Jewish stratum of society in Israel. This is the source of the paradox: The principle obstacle for a shift in the historical language resides with the liberal classes frequently referred to as 'leftist', who have a significant impact in shaping and offering solutions to the conflict. This liberal “left” offers an outlook on the conflict derived from a cultural and ...
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