The Afghanistan War Is Mainly About Pakistan and IndiaActually, it's about the whole region.

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, at 5:51 PM ET

U.S. soldiers in AfghanistanDexter Filkins' article from Pakistan in the Aug. 23 New York Times raises anew the question that has long haunted even many supporters of the U.S. war in Afghanistan: Have we gotten ourselves into something that's way over our heads?

Filkins reports that a much-celebrated triumph of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in combating jihadist terrorism—the joint arrest, earlier this year, of a top Taliban leader in Karachi—was, in fact, a ruse.

It turns out that the arrested Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been engaged in secret peace talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Pakistani security agents used the CIA to help them track down Baradar precisely because they wanted to shut down any peace initiative that didn't involve Pakistan.

In the weeks after Baradar's arrest, Filkins reports, the security forces detained as many as 22 other Taliban leaders, as a result of which the peace talks ended. Filkins quotes a Pakistani security official as saying, "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us."

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This official also told Filkins that they warned the detained Taliban leaders not to conduct any more talks with the Afghan government without Pakistan's permission. A "former Western diplomat with long experience in the region" confirmed to Filkins that the ISI—Pakistan's intelligence service—sent a warning to its Taliban protégés. "The message from the ISI," he said, "was: 'No flirting.' "

So here's the situation: All the top U.S. officials, from President Barack Obama and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down, have said that winning this war will ultimately require making a deal with "reconcilable" members of the Taliban; yet our main ally in this war—whose assistance is necessary for victory by any definition—has been arresting any Taliban members who try their hand at reconciling.

Back when he was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus once asked, "How does this thing end?" He must be asking the same question, with a considerably deeper furrow in his brow, now that he's the commander in Afghanistan.

And Iraq was the proverbial cakewalk compared with Afghanistan. The difference isn't merely that Iraqi insurgents could be co-opted because of the threat from foreign jihadists (whereas the Afghan Taliban are homegrown), or that Iraq's sectarian divisions are basically among Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd (whereas Afghanistan's schisms are multiple and tribal), or that Iraq is a fairly modern, literate nation (whereas much of Afghanistan is nearly medieval).

The main difference—and the difference that's at the core of the Pakistan problem—is that the Iraq war was mainly about Iraq, whereas the Afghanistan war is mainly about Pakistan, and Pakistan's worries are mainly about India.

Pakistani leaders, as is well known, have been reluctant to devote much effort to combating Taliban fighters on the western border with Afghanistan because, in their eyes, the main threat and mortal enemy is the country across their eastern border—India.

As Barnett Rubin, an expert on the region and a professor at New York University, put it in a Foreign Affairs article three years ago:

Pakistan's military establishment has always approached the various wars in and around Afghanistan as a function of its main institutional and national security interests: first and foremost, balancing India, a country with vastly more people and resources, whose elites, at least in Pakistani eyes, do not fully accept the legitimacy of Pakistan's existence. [Italics added.]

 India, meanwhile, has invested $1.2 billion in various Afghan reconstruction projects and has sent 4,000 workers to help build them, as well as 500 paramilitary troops to protect the workers. India sees good relations with Afghanistan as a gateway to trade across central Asia. Pakistan sees these moves as fulfilling a strategy of encircling Pakistan.

In other words, what makes the Afghanistan war almost forbiddingly complicated (as if it weren't complicated enough on its own terms) is that Pakistan and India—the region's main powers and rivals, both armed with nuclear weapons—view it as a proxy war with each other.

Pakistan's military leaders have a term for their policy toward Afghanistan: "strategic depth." Keeping a decisive foothold in Afghanistan is, to them, a vital national-security interest; they see it as crucial to preventing India from encircling their country.

This is why the Pakistani military and intelligence service have blocked efforts by Taliban leaders to seek a separate peace with Karzai. It's not necessarily the "peace" that they mind; it's the "separate."

Still, the idea hasn't been dismissed out of hand. If the Pakistanis see they can make a deal that preserves their foothold in Afghanistan, on the condition that they rupture all ties with—and turn against—al-Qaida, maybe it's a deal that, at some point, they'd take.The Pakistanis have instead been pushing Karzai into making a deal with the Taliban faction led byJalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani, who have led particularly violent incursions into southern Afghanistan from their sanctuary across the border in North Waziristan. U.S. officials are skeptical: The Haqqanis have long had tight links with al-Qaida, and they are thought to be surrogates for the more militant factions of Pakistan's intelligence service. ISI agents say they can "mediate" a deal between the Haqqanis and Karzai; in fact, for all intents and purposes, they are the Haqqanis.

Whatever happens in these or other talks, the main point is that no deal can be made without Pakistan's involvement—and no stable, peaceful deal can be made without some sort of détente between Pakistan and India.

The Obama administration is fully aware of the connections. President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other officials have noted several times that the solution to the conflict must be regional. Barnett Rubin, who wrote the 2007 Foreign Affairs article, is a top adviser to Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Though Holbrooke's relations with Karzai are shaky at best, he is reportedly on good terms with Pakistan's leaders.)

U.S. officials are trying to persuade Pakistani and Indian leaders to ease their tensions and explore common interests. Pakistan, for instance, persists in refusing to let India trade goods with Afghanistan across Pakistani territory. As a result, India is seeking an alternate trade route through the port of Chabahar in southern Iran. By any rational measure, Pakistanis should see an impending India-Iran alliance as a much bigger threat than expanded India-Afghanistan trade; but, in this sense, they're not acting in their own best interests.

Knowing the full nature of a problem isn't the same as knowing how, or having the ability, to solve it—just as, on a more strictly military level, having talented commanders and a smart strategy doesn't necessarily mean the war will be won. In both cases, lots of factors are simply out of any outsider's control. And, in this part of the world, we are realizing more and more just how much we are outsiders.

Why Kosovo Still MattersThe United States and Europe stood up to Serbia. Can they stand up to North Korea and Iran?

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, July 26, 2010, at 2:39 PM ET

Slobodan MilosevicThe impressive decision last week by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—to reject the claim submitted by Serbia thatKosovo's 2008 declaration of independence was unlawful—was mostly either ignored or reported in articles festooned with false alarmism about hypothetical future secessions. Allow this precedent, moaned many, and what is to stop, say, Catalonia from breaking away?

This line of thinking is wrong twice. To begin with, there is no actual or theoretical world in which Kosovo could possibly have continued to be ruled from Belgrade, let alone considered part of Serbia. In the first place, the international treaties that originally recognized Kosovo as a constituent of Yugoslavia did just that: It was a member of a wider post-1918 federation and not a segment of just one province of it. (For the legal details of this crucial distinction, see Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History.) Even the old-style Yugoslav Communists granted Kosovo the status of an autonomous region in their 1974 constitution. It was the great crime—one of the many great crimes—of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to negate both these previous agreements. Almost as soon as he seized power in 1989, he repealed the autonomy of Kosovo. And he went on to destroy the entire Yugoslav federation in a mad and genocidal effort to put a conquering "Greater Serbia" in its place. The independence of Kosovo is the closing act in the defeat of that wicked and crazy scheme. The Albanian majority would no more agree to a restoration of Serbian sovereignty than Poland would seek to fuse itself with Russia or Germany.

As for the question of "precedent," which is constantly and hypocritically brought up by Russia and China, one is forced to ask, "What precedent?" Moscow and Beijing were the protectors and armorers of Milosevic while he sought to bring ethno-fascism to Europe, and both of them have restive minorities within their own borders or territorial claims against near neighbors. Would their line on Tibet or Georgia really change if the ICJ had ruled either way? The question answers itself. It's risible enough that either regime pretends to take any notice of international law.

Apart from the peaceful and uncontested separation of the Czechs and Slovaks in the early 1990s (also conducted within the framework of potential European integration), in recent history I can only think of two actual "secessions" on what you might call European soil. Both were completely fraudulent and lawless. The first was the creation of a Turks-only statelet on the territory of Cyprus in 1983, and the second was the proclamation of a Serbs-only statelet in the territory of Bosnia a decade later. Neither "coup" was in any way the work of the inhabitants: Both were made possible only by the presence of invading and occupying troops. Neither ever secured, or will ever secure, international recognition. So much for "precedent."What, then, of Catalonia and the Basque region and Quebec and Scotland? These are very ancient and complex questions, none of them having anything at all in common with the recent history of the Balkans. Experience seems to teach us that nations within larger nations do not embark on the course of secession lightly. If Spain or Canada or the United Kingdom were now treating their minorities with anything like the violence and bigotry and contempt with which Serbia handled Kosovo, then there is more than enough in the history of the Catalans and Basques and Quebecois and Scots to suggest that they would have rebelled unstoppably by now. What seems to "brake" this nationalism, at least in the European cases, is the continued appeal of membership in a larger European Union that requires member states to respect smaller nations and remote regions. And this opportunity is now available to both Serbia and Kosovo as well, in a way that it could not have been while the Milosevic regime was violating every known principle of law. Meanwhile, the idea of Catalans or Scots rallying for independence under the slogan "Remember Kosovo" is barely even a fanciful one.

There is no need to romanticize the Kosovo state. At least two aspects of it need real and critical attention: its policy toward the Serb-majority enclave around the city of Mitrovica, and its attitude toward the treasury of Serbian religious and national architecture that stays on its soil. But the international community is in a far better position to safeguard and negotiate these matters than any fantasy of restored Serbian "sovereignty."

We lose something important if we forget Kosovo and the harrowing events that finally led to the self-determination of its nearly 2 million inhabitants. Long deprived of even vestigial national and human rights, then forced at gunpoint onto deportation trains and threatened with the believable threat of mass murder, these people were belatedly rescued by an intervention that said, fairly simply, there is a limit beyond which law cannot be further broken and conscience further outraged. There is no oil in Kosovo. The state interests of Israel were not involved. There were no votes to be gained; rather to the contrary, in fact. A large proportion of the victim population was and is Muslim. The least embarrassing way of phrasing this is to say that American and European honor was rather hastily saved, and a horrible threat to the peace of the region removed. Many brave and principled Serbs have good reason to recognize that a menace and an insult to their country, too, was abolished in the process.

That was then. Now it seems incautious to speculate how far a rogue regime can go, and still feel itself immune from reprisal or consequence. The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have sapped and eroded our confidence. The dictators in Iran and North Korea sense this, and probe, and often find only mush. And as in the case of Kosovo then and now, Russia and China can be counted on to provide the protection and the excuses.

Unconditional Love 
Christopher Hitchens Interview

New studies contradict Osborne’s claim the cuts can be “progressive”

by Richard Exell     
August 23, 2010 at 9:05 am

A new study by John Hills shows that the last government’s spending held back rising inequality and that cutting it is likely to be regressive.
At the same time, an evaluation of the 1990s cuts in Sweden and Canada – often cited by the coalition as an inspiration – reveals that they led to significant increases in poverty and inequality.
The first is a report on new research by Prof John Hills of the LSE – so new that, as far as I can make out, it isn’t on the LSE website yet. It looks at the increase in public spending in the first decade of the last government’s existence.
Prof Hills found that this spending boosted the incomes of the poorest more than any other group. He added that a £1,000 a year cut in services would represent 10% of the income of the poorest and 1% of the income of the richest fifth.

Raising the same amount by tax increases, on the other hand, would reduce the final income of the poorest fifth by 3.4 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent for the richest.
Possibly even more important is an article looking at the experience of cutting by Finland, Sweden and Canada. In all three countries cuts in the 1990s caused growing inequality.
Daniel Pimlott reports that:

Sweden – alongside Finland – suffered the sharpest rise in income inequality among developed countries in the late 1990s, a period when both were also carrying out the most aggressive programmes to improve the state of their public finances. In both countries, income inequality rose more than 12 per cent between the mid-1990s and 2000, according to Growing Unequal, a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
…
Budget cuts were not the only factor to boost inequality. Tax changes benefited the rich, wage inequality rose, and much of the pain came through a squeeze on benefits, which hit poorer groups harder.

He produces evidence for a similar story in Canada, and says the aim of carrying out “progressive” cuts in public spending will be hard to achieve. If you don’t have a subscription to the F.T. website it’s worth getting a copy of the paper for these two articles alone.

Finally – definitive evidence that Osborne’s budget is regressive

by Guest     
August 25, 2010 at 8:45 am

contribution by Nicola Smith
Today, End Child Poverty reports on new research, commissioned from the IFS, that shows definitively what many others have highlighted – the cuts announced in the Budget will hit families and the poorest the hardest.
As we showed immediately after the Budget, the Chancellor’s claim that the spending changes he announced were ‘progressive’ has always been contentious – significantly the Treasury’s modelling did not include a third of social security changes, including cuts to Housing Benefit and Disability Living Allowance, and only changes up until 2012/13 were considered.

This IFS research puts the Budget’s regressive impact beyond doubt: the poorest will be hit more than many of the richest in cash terms let alone as a percentage; poor and middle income families with children lose out more than any other household types and the very poorest families with children lose more than any other groups – with 5 per cent of their total income being cut.

(graph from IFS release)
The graph shows the effect of the tax and benefit reforms announced in the June Budget (to be introduced by April 2014) by income decile and household type. It makes the Budget’s impacts absolutely clear: the poorest families lose the most and the wealthiest the least.
And this is before the significant impact of cuts in public services has been considered.
Research undertaken for the TUC by Landman Economics and the Fabian Society has shown that the cuts the Coalition are proposing will lead to an average annual cut in public spending on the poorest tenth of households of £1,344, equivalent to 20.5 per cent of their household income, whereas the average annual cut in public spending on the richest tenth of households will be £1,135, equivalent to just 1.6 per cent of their household income.
Spending cuts on the scale that the Coalition is proposing simply cannot be achieved without the poorest being hardest hit – it’s time for the Government to stop pretending that the steepest cuts since WW2 are compatible with fairness.

On Charity and other guilt-driven processes

by Carl Packman     

     Fair Trade; a noble campaign, not simply serving indifferent middle class westerners to drop a couple of coins in a pot, but a way of addressing some of the pitfalls of our trade system in a way that promotes fair remuneration for hard work in the world’s most impoverished countries.

     A rather simplified version of its history is as follows; somewhere between the start of the yuppie revolution and the bursting of the housing bubble/financial meltdown of September 2008, some very wealthy white men decided to pursue philanthropy rather than fast cars and girls (perhaps, given the type of the people these were, it had something to do with their age).


     The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, whose book Violence (2008) refers extensively to the new age philanthropists or, as they are most ill fittingly called in some circles the “liberal communists”. Proponents include Bill Gates and George Soros the Chief Executives of Google, IBM, Intel and eBay. What is so unique about these characters is that they perceive themselves as philanthropists first and businessmen second, who advocate social responsibility and the breakdown of bureaucratisation, set up humanitarian programs and wax lyrical about the environment, and, hey, maybe even make a little money in the running.
We can see Žižek’s logic here; of course these billionaires can give up their cash for world hunger, it’s no skin off their backs. But Žižek’s particular critique is much more than that. Whether certain figureheads for capitalism have a conscience or not is quite beside the point, what is important here, for Žižek, is that capitalism still has its underlying logic, and that is the ruthless pursuit of profit. The charity element is a way to conceal the truth, a way to appease guilt, or at least to be perceived as appeasing guilt. See Oscar Wilde, 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'


     Michael Edwards, who is the distinguished senior fellow at Demos in New York, and the author of Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World also worries about what effect the new “philanthro-capitalists” will have on future modes of mass movements against poverty. He said on CiF recently:
The philanthro-capitalists’ desire for data and control also directs the lion’s share of resources to the biggest and most accessible NGOs that can absorb large amounts of foreign funding, not the social movements that can pressure their own governments to perform in the public interest and mobilise large numbers of people to defend their rights.
Though we can take a sound guess that charity is often used as a way of deflecting guilt, it also maintains the existing systematic gap between rich nations and poor nations. Though fair trade operates at roughly the same logic (rich corporations paying a poor producer an arbitrary sum now known as a fair wage) it is a way of taking farmers out of their poverty that relies on the mobilisation of interest groups and people, not the guilt-ridden exploration by fat cats, engaged in an ‘alms race’.


     Charity may well be the means by which the rich West pretends to do something in order to sleep at night, but that doesn’t mean it should stop because as a consequence some change is made. Simply giving money isn’t enough, so until the systemic inequality between nations has ended (no date has yet been decided), people-motivated initiatives like fair trade are the only means we have.

U.S. Submits Historic Human Rights Report to U.N., but Seriously Disappoints

By Michelle Movahed and Meredith Zingraff

This week, for the first time, the United States submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, a rotating body of countries that peer-review U.N. member countries’ human rights records.  This submission is historic.  Where the Bush administration spent years criticizing the U.N. and human rights processes, in this report the Obama administration has stressed an end to U.S. human rights exceptionalism, quoting Hillary Clinton’s statement that “[h]uman rights are universal . . . .   That is why we are committed to “holding everyone to the same [human rights] standards, including ourselves.” 

But the euphoria wears off when you read the administration’s report. Once again, a U.S. administration has failed to take women’s reproductive rights seriously. U.N. human rights bodies have repeatedly criticized the U.S. on racial disparities in the availability of reproductive healthcare within the country and the barbaric practice of shackling incarcerated pregnant women during delivery. We raised these issues and the issue of discriminatory government policies that undermine women’s access to abortion with the State Department. But the only reference to reproductive health in the State Department report is a couple of sentences on the high cervical cancer rates in Hispanic women and rates of HIV and AIDS diagnoses.  

In order to make sure that the U.N. Human Rights Council doesn’t make the same mistake when it reviews the U.S. performance on human rights in November, the Center for Reproductive Rights, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, Rebecca Project for Human Rights, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, National Abortion Federation and Women on the Rise Telling HerStory submitted our own report to the Council. We focus on three key issues:

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH: First, women of color are considerably worse off than white women in every aspect of reproductive health. And the government’s continued failure to tackle these issues raises serious human rights concerns. Today, and for the last fifty years, African American women die in pregnancy or childbirth at a rate up to four times that of white women. Just two years ago, the committee that oversees countries’ compliance with the U.N. human rights treaty to eliminate racial discrimination criticized the U.S. for failing to adequately address the high incidence of maternal deaths to no avail.

In addition, women of color contract sexually transmitted infections at much higher rates than the majority white population. And while the overall unintended pregnancy rate has declined over the last fifteen years, it has remained consistently high among poor women of color.  The committee called on the U.S. government to take specific actions to eliminate these disparities, including by increasing access to contraception and sexuality education.  The causes of racial disparities are complex and systemic, and long-term interventions are likely needed to eradicate them, but the U.S. can—and should— do more to improve access to reproductive and sexual healthcare in the short term.   The U.S.’s report claims that healthcare reform will reduce racial disparities, but as we wait to see how healthcare reform will be implemented, the outcome is far from clear.  An important first step would be the inclusion of contraception in the list of benefits that insurance plans must contain, so that the barrier of out-of-pocket costs does not threaten women’s access to contraception.  

LACK OF ACCESS TO ABORTION: Second, the U.S. report is completely silent on the issue of women’s ability to obtain abortion.   Although abortion has been legal in the U.S. for almost forty years, the availability of abortion care has been dramatically reduced. Today 25 percent fewer abortion providers exist than they did in the 1990s. The threat of violence and an ongoing barrage of medically unnecessary restrictive laws severely limit existing doctors' ability to provide services.  And the shortage of providers makes it extremely difficult for women, especially poor and rural women, to access abortion, a legal medical service.  Policies restricting the use of Medicaid funds for abortions in most cases, even where necessary to protect a woman’s health, and restricting the way that private funds can be spent on health insurance coverage on the new exchanges narrow access even further. One of our clients, the owner of abortion clinics, testified to the State Department about abortion providers operating under a constant state of siege, legal and physical. In thirty years of providing services, she’s seen acid attacks, anthrax threats, picketing, and two suspicious fires that effect healthcare providers and ultimately harm patients, frequently preventing them from seeking routine healthcare.

SHACKLING PREGNANT INMATES: Finally, the U.S. report totally ignores the outrageous practice of shackling pregnant incarcerated women.  Pregnant women who are detained in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigration facilities continue to be shackled during transportation to medical appointments and while giving birth.  Human rights experts have expressed concern about this barbaric practice, and the treatment of detained women generally, calling on the government to prohibit the practice.  Disappointingly, while the U.S. report’s section on “dignity and incarceration” discusses the government’s efforts to address sexual assault in detention facilities, it doesn’t mention shackling.   

It’s now even more important that the U.N. Human Rights Council raises these issues on November 5, when it discusses the U.S. report with U.S. government representatives.  A woman’s right to make fundamental decisions about her life and her family, her right to access reproductive health services and her ability to decide when and whether to have children are strongly rooted in a number of fundamental human rights. And the U.S. government is obliged to respect, protect, and fulfill those rights.

A GOOD DAY FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

G20 charges dropped at mass hearing

Betsy Powell and Amy DempseyStaff Reporters

• More on the G20
• Charges dropped at mass hearing
• Anatomy of the protest
• Montreal police could face lawsuit
• Secret G20 change rushed
• Duelling G20 probes
• PDF: Photos of suspects
• 'Officer Bubbles' gains web notoriety
• G20 Blog
• Video: A chaotic G20 weekend
• Photo blog: Arrests, releases and rain
• Arrests at U of T
• Your G20 photos

Chris Miller was so angry over how Toronto police handled arrests during the G20 summit he grabbed a nugget of charcoal from his barbecue and headed for police headquarters.

“Shame on you,” he scrawled on the sidewalk. Soon after, Miller found himself handcuffed and in the back of a patrol car. The 29-year-old man was strip-searched at 52 Division and charged with mischief under $5,000.

But on Monday, Miller and nearly one-third of the 303 people facing charges for alleged criminal acts during the G20 summit had their charges dropped, according to estimates from local activists and lawyers representing the accused.

Outside court, Miller said he was happy his charge was withdrawn but feels it never should have been laid in the first place.

“I have a problem with the criminalization of dissent,” he said, adding that a good rain would have washed away what he did.

The attorney general’s office said it couldn’t provide an exact number of people whose charges were dropped until Tuesday. Estimates by a legal support group Monday morning were close to 100.

At a Monday night rally against G20-related charges, activist Mohan Mishra addressed a crowd of about 100people outside police headquarters.

“Over 75 people are no longer facing charges, an admission by the Crown that the charges are bogus,” he said.

The demonstrators stood in the drizzling rain and chanted “Free our friends!” in a protest that called on the attorney general to drop all charges. Most there weren’t charged in the June riots, but showed up to support those who were.

While the group was peaceful, their words were filled with anger, much of it directed at police.

“We need a police service that acts a lot differently than how they acted at the end of June,” said Anna Willats of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition. The crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

“We’re not going to stop until every one of those charges are dropped!” activist Brook Thorndycraft yelled into a microphone. “We’re not going to shut up.”

Rachelle Sauve, out to show her support after a long day at court, said she refused to accept the offer of a $50 donation to charity in exchange for dropped charges. Sauve was charged with obstruction and wearing a disguise during the G20.

“I have no urge to go to court and waste my time and theirs,” Sauve said. “But I believe it’s my job to fight for our civil liberties.”

By the end of the G20 summit, more than 1,100 people had been arrested in Toronto. More than 800 were released unconditionally or never booked.

Of the 200 or more people whose charges were still pending Monday, many were instructed to return to court at a later date, including the 17 alleged ringleaders whose cases were put over until the end of September.

Peter Rosenthal, lawyer for prominent activist Jaggi Singh, said he expects there will be a number of lawsuits for false arrests in the coming months.

“I think that it was obvious the police were way too active in arresting and detaining people during that weekend.”

With files from Brendan Kennedy and Liam Casey

Romania, EU Concerned About Gypsy Deportations From France

Stefan Bos | Budapest20 August 2010

Photo: AP

Romanian gypsies are escorted by French police officers to the check-in desk at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, near Paris ,20 Aug 2010

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Romania has expressed concern about the deportations of Gypsies, or Roma, from France, saying it could lead to "xenophobic reactions". Friday's statement came as French authorities put some 100 Roma, on a charter flight headed to their native Romania after expelling scores of others on Thursday. 

As hundreds of deported Roma, were expected to arrive in Romania from France on Friday and the coming days, Romanian President Traian Basescu expressed concern about the situation.

In a statement, he said Romania "understands the position of the French government." But Mr. Basescu stressed Romania also supports "unconditionally the right of every Romanian citizen to travel without restrictions within the European Union" as his country is an EU member state.

These concerns are shared by the EU's executive body, the European Commission said spokesman Matthew Newman.

"We are obviously, very concerned about any form of discrimination, our policies is always to promote full integration of the Roma population in Europe. Let me just remind that Roma people are just like any Europeans people, they are full European citizens, they have the right to free movement anywhere in the EU," said Newman.  "...These are the rights that they have and they need to be respected. And all member states need ensure that these rights are respected."

The Vatican, rights groups and the Council of Europe have also criticized the massive expulsions of Roma. Authorities in France say the deportations are part of an effort by conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy to dismantle what they call "illegal" Roma camps.

They have pledged to give each adult $386 and each child $128 to help them get back on their feet in their home country, if they leave without resistance.

With no signs of France backing down, Romanian President Basescu has offered to send police to help in the careful repatriation of Roma, who have been described as among Europe's most discriminated and impoverished people.

Talking to reporters, expelled Roma expressed concerns about their future in Romania.

One man explained that he studied for 10 years and has a diploma. Yet, he claimed, he will only earn 250 euro, about $317 (U.S.) per month.

Roma are also expected to be expelled to Bulgaria.

Although Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, the French government says Roma should show work permits and prove they can support themselves if they stay in France for more than 90 days.

Christian Indoctrination in America's Military

24 AUGUST 2010

Christian Indoctrination in America's Military

By Diana Hsieh

I heard about this disturbing case via the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Here's part of the initial report posted to Truthout:

Pvt. Anthony Smith is the type of guy who stands up for what he believes in. That's why he decided to hold his commanding officers accountable for punishing him and fellow soldiers after they refused to attend an evangelical Christian rock concert at the Fort Eustis military post in Virginia.

After a day of training at Fort Eustis, Smith and other trainees were normally released to have personal time, but on May 13, Smith and dozens of others were "required" to march in formation to a concert headlined by an evangelical Christian rock band. Smith spent six months training at Fort Eustis before moving to Arizona to serve on active duty with the National Guard.

"No option was presented to us off the bat," Smith told Truthout about the required concert.

The Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert that Smith and others were told to attend was headlined by BarlowGirl, a "band of tender-hearted, beautiful young women who aren't afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God," according to the group's web site.

Even worse, soldiers were discouraged from filing a complaint about the incident. Even apart from the coercion of these soldiers, why oh why is our military hosting and paying for a "Spiritual Fitness Concerts" promoting evangelical Christianity? Here's a bit on that:

The brainchild of Maj. Gen. Chambers, the Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert series was created at Fort Eustis when he was the commanding general there. In June 2008, Chambers brought the Christian concert series to Fort Lee, when he became its commanding general.

The point behind the concert series was to connect to young soldiers. "The easiest way to get to Soldiers today is through a phone or music," Chambers told Fort Lee Public Affairs back in 2008. "Through those means, you can change behavior, and that's what I'm looking forward to more than anything else."

There isn't much doubt that the concert series promotes religious belief. Chambers admitted as much to Fort Lee Public Affairs. "The idea is not to be a proponent for any one religion," he said. "It's to have a mix of different performers with different religious backgrounds."

But Smith says he hasn't heard of any act performing who wasn't Christian. "I never once heard of a Muslim event or an atheist event," he said. "The vast majority of them have to be Christian events."

According to MRFF, the DoD has spent at least $300,000 on Christian musical acts for these events. For instance, since 2008, the DoD has paid $125,000 to the Street Level Artists Agency, which describes its mission as "Christian radicals ... bringing the Gospel into the rock 'n roll vernacular of the common man," for performances at Forts Eustis and Lee since 2008, according to records on USASpending.gov. The agency represents Christian performers like David Phelps and Phil Keaggy, both of whom have played the concert series.

I hate to say it, but our military seems to be operating under the motto of "onward Christian soldiers." That's seriously disturbing.