Showdown Looms in Honduras: Rival Vows to Arrest Ousted President on His Return

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, June 30 -- The two presidents of Honduras were headed on a collision course Tuesday, as the president ousted by a coup vowed to return and his replacement threatened to arrest him the minute he lands.

Neither side seemed willing to bend in a looming confrontation that is the first test of the Obama administration's diplomacy and clout in the hemisphere.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, removed from office Sunday in a military-led coup, addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and said he would fly back to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the head of the Organization of American States.

But the newly appointed interim president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, warned that if Zelaya returns, he will be arrested, tried and sent to prison for years. Micheletti's claim on the presidency is seen as illegitimate by the international community.

"If he comes back to our country, he would have to face our tribunals and our trials and our laws," Micheletti said in an interview with The Washington Post at his residence in the hills overlooking the capital. "He would be sent to jail. For sure, he would go to prison."

Micheletti said he did not see any way to negotiate with the Obama administration and international diplomats seeking a return of Zelaya to power because, Micheletti insisted, Zelaya was guilty of crimes against the country.

"No, no compromise, because if he tries to come back or anyone tries to bring him back, he will be arrested," Micheletti said.

At the United Nations, Zelaya told the assembly, "I'm going back to calm people down. I'm going to try to open a dialogue and put things in order."

Zelaya, whose politics moved to the left during his three years in office, has become close to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has been the most vocal and belligerent critic of the coup, threatening to "overthrow" the new government.

"When I'm back, people are going to say, 'Commander, we're at your service,' and the army will have to correct itself," Zelaya told the assembly. "There's no other possibility."

Yet other possibilities do exist. Thousands of Hondurans rallied Tuesday in the central plaza of the capital, Tegucigalpa, to support the forced removal of Zelaya and to shout their support for the armed forces.

"It would be a disgrace to have him back in the country," said Emilio Larach, owner of a large building materials company here, who attended the rally to denounce Zelaya. "He created hate among the Honduran people. Everyone in the government was against him."

As the rally was underway, a small, anxious but growing group of Honduran lawmakers sought to build a coalition to endorse a compromise measure to allow for Zelaya's return. According to one participant in the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of derailing the negotiations, the compromise would include a general amnesty for everyone involved, including the coup leaders and members of the military, while Zelaya would have to abandon his plan to hold a referendum that could lead to a change in the Honduran constitution.

Critics have charged that Zelaya in his nonbinding referendum was seeking a change in the constitution that would allow him to serve for more than one term as president.

The lawmakers seeking a compromise, however, have not yet begun to work with U.S. diplomats here, according to U.S. Embassy press officer Chantal Dalton. "They haven't been in contact with us," Dalton said. "This is smoke and signals. Nobody here has heard anything."

At the United Nations, Zelaya said he would agree not to push his referendum. "I'm not going to hold a constitutional assembly," he said. "And if I'm offered the chance to stay in power, I won't. I'm going to serve my four years."

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher and timber baron, said he would go back to his farm after his term ends in January. "I come from the countryside, and I'm going to go back to the countryside," he said.

The streets of Tegucigalpa were calm Tuesday, though the city is awash in rumors that Venezuela is marshaling forces for a possible invasion.

Micheletti cautioned the world that his army was on alert and prepared to defend the country. Honduran reservists have been called to their barracks to donate blood.

"Our army also consists of 7.5 million people prepared to defend freedom and liberty," said Micheletti, who stressed that Hondurans are a peaceful people.

Media outlets friendly to Zelaya have been shut down, and some reporters are hiding -- as are a dozen members of Zelaya's former cabinet. Most Hondurans must rely on newspapers and television stations that support the coup. Cable news outlets such as CNN en Español have occasionally been blacked out, though it is still possible to get outside news via satellite.

Micheletti and his supporters insist that the world does not understand what happened here. They say that Zelaya was found guilty by a Supreme Court tribunal, that his arrest by the military was legal and that Zelaya was attempting to circumvent Honduras's Congress and courts by staging the referendum.

The interim president said he thought his country could hold out long enough for world opinion to turn its way. Venezuela has said it would suspend oil shipments, and Honduras's neighbors -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua -- announced that they would stop overland trade.

"That is why I want to make a call to our allies in the United States, that they should stick with us at this very important moment in the life of the country," Micheletti said. "The economy of our country is completely destroyed -- because of the acts of the former government. If aid [from the United States and Europe] keeps coming, we will show that every little penny that we borrowed will be spent for the people of this country."

Micheletti promised that Honduras would hold presidential elections in November and that a new president would take office in January. Micheletti, who is a leader of the Liberal Party, the same party that Zelaya belongs to, vowed that he would not run for president.

Micheletti also said that Zelaya is a master at bending world opinion his way. Another source in the government here said that Zelaya actually was wearing a crisply ironed dress shirt when he was sent into exile in Costa Rica, but that he changed to a white T-shirt to show how he was hustled out of his official residence at dawn while still in his pajamas.

Senior Obama officials said that an overthrow of the Zelaya government had been brewing for days and that they worked behind the scenes to stop the military and its conservative, wealthy backers from pushing Zelaya out. That the United States failed to stop the coup gives anti-U.S. leaders such as Chávez room to use events in Honduras to push their vision for the region.

Zelaya is an unlikely hero for the left, coming from Honduras's wealthy classes and joining a leftist bloc of Latin American countries several years after he had been elected president. But his ouster has changed the dynamics.

"Zelaya didn't have a strong constituency," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group. "And this has become a recruiting mechanism for Zelaya. It's the best thing that could have happened to Zelaya because it's allowed him to generate support."

Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the OAS, said in a telephone interview that on Thursday he would likely join Zelaya on a flight that would leave from a U.S. airport -- he wouldn't say which one -- and land in Tegucigalpa. "Everyone wants to go," he said, noting that the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, and other leaders would be on that flight.

Correspondent Juan Forero in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

Decisions Indicate Supreme Court Moved Rightward This Term

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

For the Supreme Court, it was the year of living on the verge.

On the verge of declaring the key provision of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, but then stepping back. Looking hard at whether some protections of minorities amount to violations of the Constitution, then leaving the topic for another day. Appearing sympathetic to school officials for their decision to strip-search a 13-year-old student, but shielding them only from any liability for their actions.

The court's term avoided the blockbuster decisions that at one point seemed inevitable. But its path was clear: a patient and steady move to the right led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., one that is likely to continue even if President Obama is successful in adding Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the high court -- and perhaps two others like her.

The court's conservatives made it harder for those pressing civil rights claims to get into court, and the same for environmentalists. Conservative justices raised the bar for those alleging age discrimination, a decision that liberal Justice John Paul Stevens called "an unabashed display of judicial lawmaking." They declined to find a constitutional right to DNA testing for prisoners who say the tests could prove their innocence.

While there were lopsided majorities on some high-profile cases near the end of the term, the court remained extremely divided, deciding nearly a third of its cases by 5 to 4 votes. Liberals won a few, although sometimes in cases where ideology seemed it should not matter.

Over Roberts's strenuous dissent, for instance, the court decided that excessive campaign contributions to a judge create an unconstitutional threat to a fair trial. And justices said drugmakers could not rely on federal regulation to shield them from lawsuits brought under state consumer-protection laws.

The justices' seemingly genial relations -- retiring Justice David H. Souter received a warm send-off Monday, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spoken of their concern after her successful cancer surgery -- come in spite of passionate disagreements.

"It's more divided now than at any point in its modern history -- by far," lawyer Thomas C. Goldstein, founder of the popular Scotusblog.com, said at a briefing yesterday at the Washington Legal Foundation.

It is a familiar ideological split: Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. on one side; Stevens, Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Souter on the other. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy remains in the role of the decider, finding himself in the majority more than any other justice and siding twice as often in 5 to 4 votes with conservatives as he did with liberals.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, sees the incrementalism that marked this term's decisions as a sign of respect from Roberts.

"One thing I think is going on is that the chief justice has a devotion to the institution of the Supreme Court, and not wanting to get it out on a limb in front of public opinion," Shapiro said.

"But Roberts is, after all, a conservative," Shapiro said. "You know what his instincts are."

Roberts received praise from more than his usual supporters this term for the court's decision on the Voting Rights Act. It concerned Section 5, which requires political jurisdictions in nine mostly Southern states, and parts of seven others, to have any changes in their electoral procedures and laws approved in advance by federal authorities. It is an unprecedented intrusion into state sovereignty that is also widely acknowledged as the key to the political advancement of minorities since the civil rights movement.

From oral arguments, it seemed clear that the court's conservatives thought that Congress's reauthorization of the law in 2006 was so broad as to violate the Constitution. But a showdown was averted when the court ruled 8 to 1 to make it easier for local jurisdictions to exempt themselves from the law, with only a stern warning to Congress that it was likely to find Section 5 unconstitutional if it was not changed before the next challenge.

Yale law professor Jack M. Balkin, who runs a popular liberal blog on the court, wrote that the court's decision to stop short of finding the provision unconstitutional -- as well as its decision to put aside equal-protection questions about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act -- was due to the country's changing political climate.

"If I am correct, what put the conservative Justices (and especially Justice Kennedy) on the defensive was the assumption that they would risk sacrificing the Court's legitimacy in a climate in which neither the President nor the Congress would support their gambit and would in fact do everything possible to undermine their legitimacy," he wrote.

Roberts's supporters were disappointed that the court did not go further -- especially in the Voting Rights Act case -- but attributed the decision to the chief justice's stated belief in minimalism, the theory that cases should be decided as narrowly as possible, avoiding constitutional questions when possible.

And others see the court's conservatives as merely patient. Roberts is 54, Alito 59, Thomas 61, Kennedy 72, Scalia 73. Stevens, however, will turn 90 during the court's next term; Ginsburg is 76. "The jurisprudence of actuarialism," Goldstein calls it. Even if Obama serves two terms, he may not be able to replace one of the conservative justices with a liberal, the move that would really change the court's dynamic.

"This court can afford to be quite patient," Goldstein said. "It will get there eventually."

And maybe sooner rather than later.

On the last day of decisions, Roberts announced that the court was delaying its ruling about whether a film about former senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton produced by the conservative group Citizens United ran afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act. Instead, the court will take the highly unusual step of hearing oral arguments in September about whether the act's restrictions on corporate and union spending on electioneering in advance of an election is constitutional, as well as revisiting a 1990 decision that upheld a ban on corporate spending on federal elections.

It was a differently composed Supreme Court that decided in 2003 that the McCain-Feingold legislation, known formally as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, met constitutional standards. Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas disagreed at the time.

Since they have joined the court, Roberts and Alito have endorsed each challenge to the act that the court has considered. But they have resisted deciding the broader question until now.

"I think the court will keep going in the same direction," Shapiro said, "and Citizens United will be a good first test of that."

U.S. Says Key to Success in Afghanistan Is Economy, Not Military

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan -- National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict.

The message seems designed to cap expectations that more troops might be coming, though the administration has not ruled out additional deployments in the future. Jones was carrying out directions from President Obama, who said recently, "My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops."

"This will not be won by the military alone," Jones said in an interview during his trip. "We tried that for six years." He also said: "The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed."

Jones delivered his message after a 30-minute briefing by Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, who commands 9,000 Marines here, nearly half the new deployments Obama has sent to Afghanistan.

The day before in Kabul, Jones delivered the same message to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new overall commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal has undertaken a 60-day review designed to address all the issues in the war. In addition, Jones has told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they should focus on implementing the current strategy, completing the review and getting more Afghan forces involved in the fight before requesting additional U.S. troops for Afghanistan.

The question of the force level for Afghanistan, however, is not settled and will probably be hotly debated over the next year. One senior military officer said privately that the United States would have to deploy a force of more than 100,000 to execute the counterinsurgency strategy of holding areas and towns after clearing out the Taliban insurgents. That is at least 32,000 more than the 68,000 currently authorized.

Nicholson and his senior staff, 20 Marine colonels and lieutenant colonels, sat around a table made of unfinished plywood the size of at least three ping-pong tables in a command headquarters that stands where there had been nothing but desert six months ago. The headquarters is located in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, 370 miles from the capital, Kabul, in a region known as the Desert of Death because of its scorching heat and choking fine, dustlike sand. The province is facing a rising and lethal Taliban insurgency.

During the briefing, Nicholson had told Jones that he was "a little light," more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere," Nicholson said.

But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. "At a table much like this," Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, "the president's principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan." The principals -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair -- made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson's Marines.

Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, "oops," we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.

"They then said, 'If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,' " Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.

Now suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?

Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.

Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have "a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF -- which in the military and elsewhere means "What the [expletive]?"

Nicholson and his colonels -- all or nearly all veterans of Iraq -- seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.

Jones, speaking with great emphasis to this group of Iraq veterans, said Afghanistan is not Iraq. "We are not going to build that empire again," he said flatly.

A Question Not Settled

Obama sent Jones last week to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to make an assessment and explain the president's thinking.

As a presidential candidate and as president, Obama stressed that the Afghan war was neglected in the Bush administration. In announcing the first additional 17,000 troops on Feb. 17, Obama said that "the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan" and that al-Qaeda "threatens America from its safe haven" in neighboring Pakistan.

"We don't need more U.S. forces," Nicholson finally told Jones. "We need more Afghan forces." It is a complaint Jones heard repeatedly. Jones and other officials said Afghanistan, and particularly its president, Hamid Karzai, have not mobilized sufficiently for their own war. Karzai has said Afghanistan is making a major effort in the war and is increasing its own forces as fast as possible.

In an interview, Nicholson said that in the six months he has been building Camp Leatherneck and brought 9,000 Marines to the base, not a single additional member of the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) has been assigned to assist him. He said he needed "Afghanistan security forces -- all flavors," including soldiers, police, border patrol and other specialists.

The evening before the Jones meeting, a Marine was killed during a patrol in Now Zad, a town in Helmand where people had fled the fighting.

"If we had several ANA in Now Zad, we might not have lost that Marine," said one civilian official, noting that the Afghan army could supply the "eyes and ears" that were badly needed to sound warnings and scout on patrols. One senior U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan estimated that the military needs one member of the Afghan security forces for every 10 U.S. troops to operate safely and stabilize the area. That would mean Nicholson should have approximately 900 Afghans, and he effectively has none.

At the briefing for Jones, Nicholson pointed to the mission statement, which said that "killing the enemy is secondary." His campaign plan states, "Protect the populace by, with and through the ANSF," the Afghanistan National Security Forces, which makes the absence of the additional Afghans particularly galling to Nicholson.

Though the United States supplies most of the funding for the Afghan army, the force is controlled by the Defense Ministry. Jones said he would press Karzai and others to deploy more of the Afghan soldiers to work here in Helmand.

'The Razor's Edge'

Jones said repeatedly on this trip that the new strategy has three legs, all of which he said had to be dramatically improved: security; economic development and reconstruction; and governance by the Afghans under the rule of law.

"The president realizes it's on the razor's edge," Jones said, suggesting not only a difficult, dangerous time but also a situation that could cut either way. "And he's worried that others don't."

The National Security Council is developing a series of measurements to assess the effectiveness of the strategy and the capability of the Afghan government and Afghan security forces. This is expected to be presented to Congress soon.

Jones made it clear in his visit to Afghanistan that it is a new era and that Obama will not automatically give the military commanders whatever force levels they request -- the frequent practice of President George W. Bush in the Iraq war.

"This is a decisive moment," Jones told U.S. military leaders, diplomats and the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, "a strategic moment, and we better get it right."

In early 2007, when Gen. David H. Petraeus took command in Iraq, he declared that the situation, nearly four years into the war, was "hard" but "not hopeless." Jones and his staff use similar words to describe Afghanistan today.

The U.S. military and the 32,000 other NATO troops are engaged in a robust effort to improve security in Afghanistan, but insurgent attacks have escalated, reaching an all-time high of more than 400 attacks during one week in May.

Though that does not rival the violence in Iraq, which peaked at 1,600 attacks in one week during the summer of 2007, it represents a trend that has alarmed U.S. military leaders.

'The Golden 500'

It is a 25-minute helicopter ride from Camp Leatherneck to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, where Jones met with the leaders of a provincial reconstruction team, a unit of about 160 British, U.S., Afghan and other civilians and military officers working to rebuild the economy, improve security and increase effective government.

In a meeting, the reconstruction team leaders told Jones that there had been 58 makeshift-bomb attacks in the past week in the province. They stressed that the biggest problem was "Afghan capacity" because the government had not provided sufficient Afghan military, police and civilians.

The British, who lead the team, said the key to progress in Helmand, the largest Afghan province with 1.2 million people, has been provincial Gov. Gulab Mangal. They said that in the past 15 months, he had moved on nearly all fronts to modernize, improve governance and launch a war on corruption.

The British have identified what they call "the golden 500" -- government and other officials beginning with Mangal whom they want to stay in their positions in Helmand so progress can continue.

U.S. and British officials believe that Karzai, who is running for reelection in August, plans to replace Mangal. To ensure his reelection, one official said, Karzai is making deals with a number of Afghan politicians.

Jones and the British voiced their distress at the possibility that Mangal would be ousted, and Jones promised to intervene personally with Karzai. As a first step, Jones called in about a dozen Afghan reporters and sat down on a couch next to Mangal for a news conference at team headquarters. Mangal, 52, is a soft-spoken leader with black hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

First, Jones publicly embraced Mangal's leadership and said he was there "on behalf of the president, who is committed to a new strategy. I know of no place in Afghanistan that has more potential."

He said "the cornerstone is the Afghan people, the Afghan military and the Afghan police," adding, "We want to make sure Afghans control their own destiny."

Jones noted that he had been coming to Afghanistan since 2003. He was NATO commander when the alliance took over the Afghanistan war. "I know what to do," Jones said glancing at Mangal.

In a brief interview, Mangal said of Karzai, "He sent me as a soldier to Helmand province." Mangal noted that he had previously been a governor in two other provinces. Did he hope to continue? Mangal nodded yes.

After retiring as NATO commander in 2007, Jones became co-chairman of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. In 2008, the council issued a report that began, "Make no mistake, the international community is not winning in Afghanistan."

Flying back from his three-country trip Friday night, Jones cited the report and said most of its bleak conclusions still apply -- insufficient reconstruction, weak economic development, the continuing "epidemic in opium production" and "disorganized, uncoordinated and at present insufficient" international efforts.

"We are doing the same things well and the same things poorly," he said. It was not mission impossible, he said, causing him to feel "urgency but not panic."

Researcher Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.

Minnesota Supreme Court Declares Franken Winner in U.S. Senate Race

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared comedian-turned-politician Al Franken the winner of the state's U.S. Senate race, ending an eight-month-long election saga and giving Democrats a 60-seat majority that theoretically would allow them to block GOP filibusters.

In a unanimous ruling, the court rejected Republican Norm Coleman's legal arguments that some absentee ballots had been improperly counted and that some localities had used inconsistent standards in counting votes. The ruling led Coleman to concede his Senate seat to Franken, who could be sworn in as soon as next week, when the Senate returns from a recess.

"The Supreme Court has spoken. We have a United States senator," Coleman said in a news conference outside his home in St. Paul. "It's time to move forward."

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) signed the election certificate declaring Franken the winner yesterday evening.

The Democrats now have their largest majority in the Senate since 1978, but their ability to prevent filibusters as they attempt to push President Obama's agenda is likely to prove illusory. A pair of prominent Democrats, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.), have missed a raft of votes this year because of illness and, although Byrd was released from a Washington area hospital yesterday, it is unclear how often either will be present in the chamber.

Efforts to maintain party unity are also hampered by the presence of a clutch of centrist Democrats, such as Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), who have said they oppose the public option in health-care reform legislation that would seek to create a government program to compete with private insurers. A number of Senate Democrats representing states that rely heavily on manufacturing jobs have also expressed concern about the climate-change bill, another Obama priority, that passed the House last week.

"The idea that you've got 60 reliable Democrats for votes for sweeping policy change simply doesn't work; it's not the reality of it," said Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "The larger challenge for [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid or Barack Obama is managing expectations of people who are thinking: When you get 60 votes, you get do to whatever you want. And they most assuredly do not."

In a statement, the White House said Obama looks "forward to working with Senator-Elect Franken to build a new foundation for growth and prosperity by lowering health care costs and investing in the kind of clean energy jobs and industries that will help America lead in the 21st century."

Franken, joined by wife Franni at a news conference in front of their home in Minneapolis, said, "I can't wait to get started." But he played down the importance of his becoming the 60th Democrat in the chamber.

"Sixty is a magic number, but it isn't," Franken said, "because we know that we have senators who -- Republicans who are going to vote with the Democrats, with a majority of Democrats on certain votes, and Democrats that are going to vote with majority Republicans on others. So it's not quite a magic number as some people may say. But I hope we do get President Obama's agenda through."

Although he will be a backbencher in his caucus, he will be thrust almost immediately into one of the summer's highest-profile pieces of political theater, the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Democrats have been holding a seat on the Judiciary Committee for the Harvard-educated Franken, who will also serve on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, a prime perch in the health-care debate.

The longtime Democratic activist is likely to be a reliable vote for the party on nearly every issue and has largely praised Obama's performance thus far. But beyond the Sotomayor hearings, Franken has indicated that he will attempt to keep a low profile in Washington. In an interview this year, he said he would seek to replicate the model of former senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who generally eschewed major speeches in her first few years on Capitol Hill to focus on learning the internal dynamics of the Senate and tried to avoid upstaging her colleagues.

"A lot of people have been sort of saying, 'You should really study Hillary's model of being a senator,' " Franken said. "She worked across party lines, wasn't grabbing the microphone."

Before his Senate bid, Franken had gained a reputation as a sharply partisan and acerbic Democrat who mocked Republicans but sometimes worried Democrats with his fiery commentaries on television and radio. After leaving "Saturday Night Live" in 1995, he wrote books, including "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" and "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," and hosted a show on the liberal Air America network.

But he largely downplayed his humor, temper and partisan background in his two-year campaign against Coleman, whom he repeatedly linked to President George W. Bush. Franken said little publicly during the post-election legal process, with an eye toward winning over the 57 percent of Minnesota voters who backed either Coleman or independent candidate Dean Barkley in the Nov. 4 vote.

A few days after the election, Coleman led the race by 206 votes out of almost 3 million cast, but a statewide recount that lasted until January found that after counting absentee ballots that had been improperly excluded, Franken was ahead by 225 votes.

Coleman filed a formal contest of the election in January, resulting in a two-month-long trial at which more absentee ballots were counted, and Franken emerged with a 312-vote lead. Coleman appealed the district court's decision in April.

Yesterday, Coleman acknowledged that Minnesotans were ready to move past the drama.

"The election of November, that was a long time ago; 2008 is over," he said.

Singapore Dissident: Goh Chock Tong's Fear Is Real

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Yesterday, I had written about Goh Chock Tong's disappointment over the serious brain drain of young educated Singaporeans to Western Countries. In fact the numbers that leave are not just every 2 out of 3 graduates of Singapore high schools going abroad to study. There is ten fold multiplier effect which causes the relatives, families and friends of the overseas Singaporean to join him abroad, thereby swelling the figures that leave ten fold.

This huge brain drain of the talented from Singapore must be quite obvious to Goh Chock Tong and his friend Lee Kuan Yew.

Students born brought up and educated in Singapore would know nothing other than Singapore, a place where they have to cram for their studies, where they fear to speak openly against the government, where their Asian culture of submission to authority makes them incapable of questioning authority and where on the whole they live a cowardly introverted fearful submissive lives.

But when they go to Australia for instance, they suddenly begin breathing a whiff of fresh air. The country is open, the people speak openly without fear of anyone, the newspapers are free to publish the truth, they are free to publicly protest and criticize and where the people are generally happier and more contented. Suddenly, the Singaporean export, falls in love with Australia. If only he had known earlier, he says, he would have left Singapore long ago. But, sadly, he did not know. But better late than never, now he knows. And he begins to hate Singapore for what it is, he begins to hate the tyrant Lee Kuan Yew who made him live like the dummy all these years, and he is glad he is free of that steamy intolerant crowded island.

And he transmits this message to all his relative and friends in Singapore. He tells his parents in Singapore to join him in Australia, he tells this to his brothers and sisters, to his relatives and friends. And then the family, the relatives, their friends tell it to theirs and so on, and the chain cumulative effect gets under way.

From the initial student who had gone abroad to study, you now have scores of others who have similarly left Singapore thanks to him.

This is what we call the multiplier effect. And this is what is happening. And this is draining Singapore of it's talent. And this is something Goh Chock Tong or his master Lee Kuan Yew can do nothing to stop.

Lee Kuan Yew can of course turn Singapore into another Cuba or North Korea sealing it's borders to prevent escape. Unfortunately for him if were to do that, it will only precipitate the calamity even further.

He did appear dejected in the picture in the Straits Times. It is quite clear that he has reason to be. This is what happens to all dictatorships. Their arrogance catches up to them.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/

Singapore Promotes First Muslim Malay Army General

Associated Press
June 26, 2009
Singapore

By ALEX KENNEDY


SINGAPORE'S military promoted a Muslim Malay to the rank of general for the first time since the predominantly Chinese city-state broke away from Malaysia 44 years ago.

Army Colonel Ishak Ismail, 46, will become a one-star brigadier general on July 1, the Defense Ministry said in a statement late Thursday, June 25, Ismail is currently commander of the 6th Division.

The government strictly regulates public speech on race and religion, fearing any hint of sectarian conflict could undermine stability and prosperity in the tiny, multiethnic island and strain relations with neighboring Malaysia, where Malays are a majority. Political parties based on race or religion are not allowed.

Malays, who comprise about 14 percent of the 4.8 million population, trail ethnic Chinese in education and income. About 5.4 percent of Malays attend public university compared to 30 percent of Chinese, and Malay households earn a median monthly income of S$3050 (US$2093), a third less than the S$4570 average that Chinese families make, according to the Education Ministry and Statistics Department.

Muslim Affairs Minister-in-charge Yaacob Ibrahim, who is also Environment and Water Resources Minister, told the state-owned Straits Times that the promotion showed that hard work and playing by the rules would bring rewards in a meritocratic society, the newspaper reported.

"No Malays should now feel like they can't do it," Ibrahim said, according to the paper.

Ibrahim declined further comment on the promotion through his spokesman Peer Akbur.

Malays are making strides in the security, education and health care sectors, said Jufferie Rashid, a spokesman for leading Malay association Yayasan MENDAKI.

"The promotion is the armed forces' recognition of his contributions," he said. "We are confident that with the improving educational profile, we will see even more Malay Muslim professionals in the future."

Jitters Over Religion Hard Sell in Singapore

Star, Malaysia
June 20, 2009

INSIGHT: BY SEAH CHIANG NEE


STEREOTYPED as a society that only worships money, Singapore is surprisingly seeing a surge of religiosity – or simply put, too much religion.

This exuberance is, however, confined to a small segment of fundamentalist Christians, and appears out of line with most materialistic Singaporeans.

The Christian community makes up 17% of the people, while Buddhists and Taoists form a majority 51%, and Muslims, 16%.

But in recent years there has been a surge of born-again Christianity. These include bible-quoting evangelists who gather in city squares and MRT stations, persistently striving to convert the public, including followers of other faiths.

Others work in schools, polytechnics and hospitals, even among patients.

A major concern, however, is their targeting of schools, a melting pot of different cultures, races and religions, trying to convert impressionable teenagers.

Young men in their 30s, usually working in pairs, would approach students outside the school compound to talk about God.

The kids would be asked for their cell-phone numbers, and those who comply may find themselves harassed by persistent SMS invitations to attend services.

Another worry is the belittling of other religions, which could spark off friction.

A university lecturer who accompanied her mother, a dementia victim, received more than a blood test at a hospital, when the evangelising nurse asked about her mother’s religion.

When she replied “Buddhist” she was told to go to church because “it’ll be good for you”.

In a recent high profile trial, a Christian couple were jailed eight weeks under the Sedition Act for distributing and possessing anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic tracts.

The two – SingTel technical officer Ong Kian Cheong, 50, and a Swiss bank associate director, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 46 – have appealed against conviction.

The intent was to convince Muslims to convert to Christianity by using inflammatory and misleading information, the court heard.

Bizarrely, they hit Catholics even harder, describing the Pope as Satan.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has named religious divide as potentially one of the biggest threats to social order.

“Don’t mix religion with politics”, warned Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng. He said that the Government would intervene if any activism threatens Singapore’s social fabric.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean has advised people to manage their differences, saying: “If you push your argument too hard, there’ll be others who push back.”

These comments came as emotions ran high over the failed takeover of AWARE, a social body, by members of a small fundamentalist church apparently in pursuit of their religious beliefs.

The vast majority of Christians work within the framework of this multi-religious society, conscious and tolerant of other ancient religions.

They attend church once a week and return home to their families without trying to convert followers of other faiths.

The increasing reports of insensitive evangelism have irked many Singaporeans and have worried the majority of non-activist Christians about a possible backlash.

Evangelism notwithstanding, Singapore remains a stable, tolerant society where any hint of extremism is deeply resented.

Some 85% of Singaporeans profess having a religion, probably including many nominal believers, while atheists make up the other 15%.

There is, however, an anomaly among the younger set.

Singapore is a tightly competitive society and a rat race for its citizens, from a very young age. The result is the emergence of youths who know very little about religion.

From comments in a survey, prominent educator Phyllis Chew said she was surprised to hear such comments about Islam – “their marriages take place in the void deck” – and Buddhism – “it’s about filial piety”.

It was conducted among 2800 students, aged 12-18. Chew said it showed that while 76% were tolerant of other religions, their idea of tolerance was “not talking about it”.

“A lack of knowledge of different faiths is a potentially unstable situation,” she said, calling for a revival of religious teaching in schools.

The recession, one of the worst in Singapore’s history, appears to be making Singaporeans a little bit more religious, too.

“I pray harder in these times, although my job is not affected this time,” said a 25-year-old Singaporean as unemployment rose to the highest in three years.

“I’m praying for my fiance, that his job is safe,” she said. They were planning to wed and feared retrenchment.

Attendance in churches, temples and mosques has generally risen as Singaporeans turn more to religion for comfort.

“People might experience depression and socio-psychological problems worrying about work, Alexius Pereira, sociologist at the National University of Singapore,” told Reuters.

“It is through such worries that they turn to religion.”

How effective is modern evangelism? When it comes to numbers, it is the born again Christians who are proportionately the biggest gainers.

The reason is less their aggressive evangelism than the lure of educated youths by their glitz and modern church operations. The gain has, however, been slow and gradual.

Occasionally followers do switch, and it has nothing to do with educational levels. Neither are changes one-sided.

Chinese have switched to become Muslims, and Hindus to Buddhists. Only the Malays stay largely with their faith.

There is another reason why many adult Singaporeans – especially those who are ageing – turn to religion.

After accumulating sufficient money for retirement, Singaporeans – however materialistic – often begin to turn their thoughts to the after-life.

A bit is kiasuism may be at work, too.

I once asked a housewife who likes to play the jackpot machine, why she had not embraced a religion. Her reply: “I’m waiting till I am older and closer to death.”

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com

Venezuela’s Brain Drain

Saturday, June 27, 2009

By Mac Margolis

When they first elected him in 1998, Venezuelans hoped that Hugo Chávez would be a healer. Instead what they got was a tyrant who seizes private companies and farms, crushes labor unions, and harasses political opponents. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers, and engineers are leaving the country in droves. An estimated 1 million Venezuelans have moved away since Chávez took power, and a study by the Latin American Economic System, an intergovernmental research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor from Venezuela to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007.

The exodus is sabotaging the country’s future, and no industry has been harder hit than Venezuela’s oil sector. A decade ago, Petróleos de Venezuela ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Then Chávez named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA’s top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country’s leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA’s elite staff are now working overseas, and the talent deficit has crippled the company: PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control, but now pumps only 2.4 million, according to independent estimates.

Similar stories emerge from the media. Venezuela once had a combative and unfettered press, but no longer. In 2007 Chávez canceled the broadcast license for leading station RCTV, and now he’s threatening to shut down the only remaining independent network, Globovisión. The charge? Globovisión dared to break a story on an earthquake in Caracas ahead of the government press. Scientists have fared little better. Early on, Chávez diverted money from university science centers to official projects controlled by political allies. Now the country’s most respected research institutes are falling behind—the number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals has fallen by 15 percent in just the past three years.

It’s much the same elsewhere in the Axis of Hugo, the constellation of states that have followed Chávez on the march toward so-called 21st-century socialism. Leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media, and stoking class and ethnic conflicts. The result? More flight: a recent study by Vanderbilt University, for example, showed that more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index. Fitch Ratings, which analyzes credit risk, recently demoted the debt of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador to junk status. These states may be commodity-rich, but their biggest export is no longer minerals or oil. It’s the one resource best kept at home: talent.

Twittergasms

by Alexander Cockburn

How much easier it is to raise three--or 3 million--rousing tweets for the demonstrators in Tehran than to mount any sort of political resistance at home! Here we have a new Democratic president, propelled into office on a magic carpet of progressive pledges, now methodically flouting them one by one, with scarcely a twit or even a tweet raised in protest, aside from the gallant efforts of Medea Benjamin, Russell Mokhiber and their comrades at the healthcare hearings in Congress.

At the end of June US troops will leave Iraq's cities, and many of them will promptly clamber onto military transports and redeploy to Obama's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There's been no hiccup in this smooth transition from the disastrous invasion of Iraq to Obama's escalation farther east. The Twittering classes are mostly giving Obama a pass on this one or actively supporting it. Where are the mobilizations, actions, civil disobedience? Antiwar coalitions like United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War (with MoveOn also belatedly adopting this craven posture) don't say clearly "US troops out now!" They whine about the "absence of a clear mission" (Win Without War), plead futilely for "an exit strategy" (UFPJ). One letter from the UFPJ coalition (which includes Code Pink) to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in May laconically began a sentence with the astounding words, "To defeat the Taliban and stabilize the country, the U.S. must enable the Afghan people..." These pathetic attempts not to lose "credibility" and thus attain political purchase have met with utter failure, as the recent vote on a supplemental appropriation proved. A realistic estimate seems to be that among the Democrats in Congress there are fewer than forty solid antiwar votes.

Not so long ago Sri Lankan government troops launched a final savage onslaught on the remaining Tamil enclaves. In the discriminate butchery of Tamils, whether civilians or fighters, estimates of the dead prepared by the United Nations ran at 20,000 (the report was suppressed by the current appalling UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon). I don't recall too many tweets in Washington or across this nation about a methodical exercise in carnage. But then, unlike those attractive Iranians, Tamils tend to be small and dark and not beautiful in the contour of poor Neda, who got out of her car at the wrong time in the wrong place, died in view of a cellphone and is now reborn on CNN as the Angel of Iran.

About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience.

Iran's New Revolutionaries

Comment

By Babak Sarfaraz

June 24, 2009

Supporters of Mousavi, as they listen to his speech at a demonstration in Tehran on Thursday June, 18, 2009.

Tehran

For those steeped in the arcane art of Khamenei-watching, June 19 holds a special significance. On that day, after issuing his much-anticipated ultimatum to the people of Iran, the Supreme Leader showed a side of himself never before seen in public: while finishing his blood-soaked sermon with a vow of martyrdom, instead of looking bold and defiant, he looked weak and pathetic. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man whose mien has inspired fear and awe in millions of people, actually had a lump in his throat. He fought back tears before tens of millions of bemused and perplexed viewers because in less than three weeks' time, a system he had helped perfect--rule by a supreme religious leader--was showing signs of unraveling.

Pressure had been mounting as accusations swirled that Khamenei and the top brass of the Revolutionary Guards--working in concert with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--had perpetrated a vast election fraud aimed at defeating reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi and simultaneously purging the government of recalcitrant elements, beginning with the faction led by longtime Khamenei nemesis Hashemi Rafsanjani. Apparently confident of success, the alleged conspirators did not foresee the huge popular movement that took up Moussavi's cause. On June 15 close to 800,000 people marched peacefully through the streets of downtown Tehran. The numbers kept swelling for two days, until Khamenei ended the brief Tehran Spring with his ultimatum and a massive show of force.

In the past few weeks, millions of Iranians have voted with their feet, marched peacefully, experienced mass catharsis, fought pitched street battles and defied the government's edicts with increasing confidence. Before the crackdown, they got a taste of freedom and personal empowerment, and they won't soon forget it.

Khamenei's anguished sermon on June 19 was not provoked simply by the popular uprising in the streets. According to a well-placed source in the holy city of Qom, Rafsanjani is working furiously behind the scenes to call for an emergency meeting of the Khobregan, or Assembly of Experts--the elite all-cleric body that can unseat the Supreme Leader or dilute his prerogatives. The juridical case against Khamenei would involve several counts. First, he would be charged with countenancing a coup d'état--albeit a bloodless one--without consulting with the Khobregan. Second, he would stand accused of deceitfully plotting to oust Rafsanjani--who is the Khobregan chairman and nominally the country's third-most-important authority--from his positions of power. Third, he would be said to have threatened the very stability of the republic with his ambition and recklessness.

Rafsanjani's purported plan is to replace Khamenei's one-person dictatorship with a Leadership Council composed of three or more high-ranking clerics; this formula was proposed and then abandoned in 1989 by several prominent clerics. Rafsanjani will likely recommend giving a seat to Khamenei on the council to prevent a violent backlash by his fanatic loyalists. It is not clear if Rafsanjani will have the backing of the two-thirds of the chamber members needed for such a change, though the balance of forces within the Khobregan could be tipped by the events unfolding in the streets. As a symbolic gesture, Rafsanjani is said to favor holding the meeting in Qom--the nation's religious center, which Khamenei has diminished--rather than in Tehran, where it has been held before.

If there is one iconic image that has emerged from the extraordinary recent events, it is that of the masked young men and women who have appeared at all the major flashpoints. The Green Wave--the name chosen by Moussavi for his movement--is a multigenerational, multiethnic and multiclass phenomenon, though with a strong urban, middle-class accent. It is also composed of men and women in roughly equal numbers.

However diffuse the Green Wave, it has a critical component that is the linchpin of the entire movement: a class of young revolutionaries who have sustained it through difficult times. Many of these young men and women are between 18 and 24; they sport green armbands and masks, and they are fearless. Before the Revolutionary Guards stepped into the fray on June 20, the young militants of the Green Wave withstood days of unrelenting attacks by the fanatic Basij militia and the regular riot police.

What powers this new militancy? The Islamic Republic is not a dictatorship in the normal sense of the word. Its practitioners believe they are doing God's work on earth. Guiding the wayward by persuasion and coercion is among their chief tasks. Nearly every young person in Iran, particularly young women, can recount dozens of stories of humiliation and discrimination at the hands of government agents and supporters. For them, each rock thrown at the police, each hand-to-hand combat with the militiamen and vigilantes, each confrontation with the heavily armed Revolutionary Guards is not just an act of political defiance but a cathartic experience of personal liberation.

Unlike their wide-eyed parents with their utopias and romanticization of revolutionary violence, the new young revolutionaries are sophisticated and canny. They have few illusions about the magnitude of the problems facing their country or the complexities of living in a highly traditional and religious society. For example, despite the fact that they are overwhelmingly secular, their slogans mingle political and religious themes to avoid alienating the faithful. Their response to Obama's initially measured rhetoric is another sign of a new political sophistication at work: everyone understands that US meddling would be the proverbial kiss of death to the opposition's cause.

In the days and weeks to come, this infant movement will face difficult challenges. It may suffer some setbacks and reversals, but what matters is the experience it has gained. At this stage, it is doubtful that fear alone can contain the rising tide of discontent or return things to the status quo ante.

Babak Sarfaraz is a pseudonym for a journalist in Iran

Obama's Stonewall

Comment

By Richard Kim

In 1996, when Barack Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, he was asked in a survey by Outlines, a gay community newspaper in Chicago, if he supported same-sex marriage. Unlike most candidates, who merely indicated yes or no, Obama took the unusual step of typing in his response, to which he affixed his signature. Back then not a single state permitted same-sex marriage, and sodomy was a crime. Nonetheless, Obama took a position on the progressive edge of the Democratic Party, and he did so with unmistakable clarity: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

Since then, as Obama traced his dazzling arc to the presidency, his stance on gay rights has become murkier, wordier, less courageous, more Clintonian. During his 2004 US Senate bid, he stated that he supports domestic partnerships and civil unions instead of same-sex marriage. When speaking to gay audiences, he explained his new position as "primarily just...a strategic issue." But on bigger stages he cited his Christian faith as grounds for his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, a view he reiterated during the 2008 presidential election even while he also asserted, inconsistently, that religion should not dictate a state's approach to gay rights.

As president, Obama has made similar equivocations on gay rights. As a senator and as a candidate, he won the vocal support of the vast majority of gays and lesbians by calling for the repeal of both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the miserable failure that is "don't ask, don't tell," and by supporting full federal partnership rights (but not same-sex marriage) and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would make it illegal to fire someone because of his or her sexual orientation. But he has so far spent no political capital to turn these promises into reality. Quite to the contrary, Obama's slide hit what one hopes will be a nadir on June 12 when his administration filed a brief defending the legality of DOMA by comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia.

It is impossible to accept that a president who owes so much to movements for civil rights and social justice, never mind the Obama of 1996, believes in such right-wing bigotry; the only plausible explanation can be one of political calculation. The memory of Bill Clinton's early failure to integrate the military, as well as the aftermath of the 2004 election, when same-sex marriage was blamed for John Kerry's loss, looms large in the minds of top Democratic strategists. Guided by veterans of the Clinton-era culture wars like chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the prevailing wisdom in the White House seems to be that a forward push on gay rights can only endanger what the Democratic Party hopes will be a lasting majority and would squander precious political capital better used on issues like healthcare and economic reform.

Such logic, however, is quickly becoming obsolete. Six states have legalized gay marriage. Democrats like Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine have renounced support for civil unions and embraced same-sex marriage, with Corzine having done so as a centerpiece of his re-election bid. Gen. John Shalikashvili, Clinton's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a cadre of military leaders have publicly called for an end to "don't ask, don't tell." Huge majorities of Americans, 89 percent in a 2008 Gallup poll, support workplace rights for gays and lesbians. Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager, and former Vice President Cheney have announced their support for same-sex marriage; and Utah's Republican governor, Jon Huntsman, came out in favor of civil unions, a switch that has not eroded his popularity in Mormon country one bit. At this rate, Obama is in danger of being outpaced on gay rights not just by the American people but by the nonsuicidal wing of the Republican Party.

There is still time for a course correction. In the wake of an uproar from gay activists and progressives, Obama signed a memo extending limited benefits to partners of gay federal employees (but not healthcare or inheritance rights); reiterated his intent to repeal DOMA; and voiced support for legislation that would, in the interim, give healthcare to same-sex partners of federal workers. But words are no longer enough. Now is the time for Obama to act with the full authority of his office and his character to pass a gay rights agenda that, in the end, will be seen as neither particularly radical nor particularly partisan but as a simple matter of fairness under the law.

A promising first step would be to fast-track passage of ENDA. A previous version passed the House by a vote of 235 to 184 in 2007, with thirty-five Republicans in favor, before dying under the threat of a Bush veto. Congressman Barney Frank introduced a stronger version that includes protections for transgender people on June 24, just before the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, which ignited the modern gay rights movement.

In those forty years, and especially in the past decade, the arc of the moral universe, as Obama is fond of saying on other matters, has bent toward justice. So much so that the question is no longer, Can the Obama administration afford to support gay rights with full-throated passion--but rather, Can it afford not to?

Deadly Ambush in Tribal Region Could Indicate Looming Threat to Pakistan's Army

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 29 -- The Pakistani military is at war with the Taliban, but the ambush that killed 16 soldiers in the tribal region of North Waziristan on Sunday was still somewhat unexpected.

"There is no operation which was either planned or being conducted in North Waziristan," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman, told reporters Monday. "This attack was completely unprovoked."

The Taliban assault on an army convoy passing through the village of Inzar Kas was one of the deadliest incidents for the military during its two-month-old offensive against the insurgents. But to some analysts, it also served as a warning of a bigger threat -- the possibility that disparate Taliban factions might be closing ranks to battle the army in Pakistan.

The group that has asserted responsibility for Sunday's ambush is led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, one of the many militant commanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan who fight -- sometimes against each other -- under the banner of the Taliban. In early 2008, Bahadur's group struck a peace deal with the local administration in North Waziristan, a mountainous tribal region along the Afghan border where the Pakistani government exerts little control. But a spokesman for his group announced Monday that because of U.S. drone bombings and Pakistani military activity, that peace has been shattered.

"We will carry out attacks on the security forces," Hamdullah Hamdi told reporters.

The failure of the accord in North Waziristan is a blow to the government as it plans a major operation in neighboring South Waziristan, home of Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's main Taliban foe and the man blamed for multiple suicide bombings and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The region to the north is important because military strategists expect to use it as a transit route for ground troops and supplies.

Bahadur's call to arms followed another announcement by a formerly pro-government Taliban commander in South Waziristan, Maulvi Nazir, who last week warned that his fighters intend to target the military in response to its offensive and the drone strikes.

"These two, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, they were focused on Afghanistan," said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired Pakistani army brigadier with experience in the northwestern tribal areas. "What we've heard is they've called back their fighters from Afghanistan and are bringing them to Pakistan."

Earlier last week, the government suffered yet another setback to its efforts to turn other fighters against Mehsud, when Taliban commander Qari Zainuddin, an enemy of Mehsud's, was killed by one of his own security guards.

"It was too naive to think he could defeat Baitullah Mehsud," Shah said of Zainuddin.

The string of developments suggests that the government's new efforts to take on Mehsud in South Waziristan could prove more challenging than its recent push into the Swat Valley, where military officials say they have nearly regained the territory from the Taliban. For the past two weeks, aircraft have strafed Mehsud's territory in preparation for a ground assault against his thousands of followers.

"The militants' attacks on military convoys and installations in North Waziristan are part of a well-thought-out Taliban strategy to expand the war to other territories from South Waziristan, where the army is currently operating," said Talat Masood, a defense analyst and retired general. "We will see more such attacks in coming days."

Special correspondents Haq Nawaz Khan and Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.

Iran's Guardian Council Affirms Vote Result

By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

TEHRAN, June 29 -- A top supervisory body reviewing Iran's disputed June 12 election formally dismissed all opposition complaints of fraud Monday and affirmed a landslide victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting off shouts of protest from Tehran's rooftops but leaving opponents with few options amid an intensifying government crackdown.

The decision by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists who oversee elections and certify results, was announced about 10 p.m. Tehran time after a partial recount was conducted in an effort to mollify political opponents who charge that Ahmadinejad benefited from massive vote-rigging.

Before the announcement, security forces, including members of the pro-government Basij militia, deployed in large numbers to prevent street protests, witnesses said. But that did not stop people from taking to their rooftops to chant "Allahu akbar" (God is great) and "Death to the dictator" in a form of protest used by the popular movement that ultimately deposed the shah of Iran three decades ago. Witnesses said the chanting Monday night was louder than usual, as Tehran residents vented their anger at a government that has largely crushed street demonstrations after declaring them illegal and threatening their organizers with execution.

In a letter to Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli, the head of the Guardian Council said members reached their "final decision" on the election results after an extended review, Iran's state television and radio network reported.

"The Guardian Council held numerous sessions and agreed that the complaints were not valid and has now approved the soundness of the 10th presidential election," said the letter from Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati. He said that "most of the complaints were not cases of vote-rigging or electoral violation or were minor violations that might happen in every election and can be ignored." He called the election "a golden page . . . of Iran's democratic history," according to an official translation.

The recount of 10 percent of ballot boxes went ahead over the objections of two opposition presidential candidates, who demanded that the election be annulled on grounds of massive vote-rigging.

The two -- Mir Hossein Mousavi, 67, who served as prime minister for eight years in the 1980s, and Mehdi Karroubi, 71, a Shiite cleric and former speaker of parliament -- refused to participate in a special committee set up by the council to examine their complaints. Their spokesmen said that the committee would be biased and that its review would not be sufficiently broad.

A final attempt by the Guardian Council to bring Mousavi before the committee Monday also failed, for unspecified reasons, said Abbas Ali Kadkhodai, a council spokesman.

Kadkhodai later said the recount, based on a random sample of ballot boxes, took seven hours and revealed no irregularities.

"As of today, the case of the . . . election is closed in the Guardian Council," he said.

Before the council announced its findings, Karroubi, a Mousavi ally who finished last among four candidates in the official count, reiterated his call for the vote to be annulled as "the only way to regain the people's trust."

But there was no doubt that the council would reject the demand, especially given that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had already ruled out annulling the result, declared the voting clean and endorsed another four-year term for Ahmadinejad.

At a small gathering in the house of an Iranian writer, people appeared resigned about the news.

"What difference was the council going to make?" one young woman asked a group of depressed-looking friends. No one offered an answer. Instead, people listed colleagues who have been arrested since the election.

"Why would they bring him in?" one man said of a journalist who was picked up in recent days. "I don't care if I am next," another man said defiantly. "What will they do to me?"

The uncertainty of the future dominated the conversation in the smoke-filled room. Some talked about spending time in the countryside. Others were thinking of leaving Iran altogether.

"There is no future here for independent-thinking, cultured people," the writer said. "Things are going to change very rapidly from now on, for the worse."

Iranian state media say more than 650 people are detained in connection with "riots" after the election. But the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights says that more than 2,000 people have been arrested and that hundreds are missing.

On Sunday, nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy were picked up on accusations of involvement in street protests. Iranian authorities said Monday that five were released and that the others were still being questioned. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the arrests "unacceptable" and "unjustified."

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said of the Guardian Council's action, "Obviously, they have a huge credibility gap with their own people as to the election process, and I don't think that's going to disappear by any finding of a limited review of a relatively small number of ballots." She added that "these internal matters are for Iranians themselves to address, and we hope that they will be given the opportunity to do so in a peaceful way that respects the right of expression."

Asked if the United States would recognize Ahmadinejad as the democratically elected president of Iran, Clinton told reporters, "You know, we're going to take this a day at a time. We're going to watch and carefully assess what we see happening."

Results released by the Interior Ministry on June 13 showed Ahmadinejad with nearly 63 percent of the vote, followed by Mousavi with less than 34 percent.

In an early indication Monday that the recount was unlikely to show anything other than an Ahmadinejad landslide, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said that when the ballots were counted again in one Tehran district, the incumbent had more votes than in the initial tally.

Branigin reported from Washington.

International Court Under Unusual Fire

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

UNITED NATIONS -- When Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with war crimes last year, the International Criminal Court prosecutor was hailed by human rights advocates as the man who could help bring justice to Darfur.

Today, Moreno-Ocampo appears to be the one on trial, with even some of his early supporters questioning his prosecutorial strategy, his use of facts and his personal conduct. Bashir and others have used the controversy to rally opposition to the world's first permanent criminal court, a challenge that may jeopardize efforts to determine who is responsible for massive crimes in Darfur.

At issue is how to strike a balance between the quest for justice in Darfur and the pursuit of a political settlement to end an ongoing civil war in the western region of Sudan. In recent months, African and Arab leaders have said the Argentine lawyer's pursuit of the Sudanese president has undercut those peace prospects.

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Gabon's Jean Ping, the two leaders of the African Union, are mounting a campaign to press African states to withdraw from the treaty body that established the international tribunal. "The attacks against the court by African and Arab governments in the last nine months are the most serious threat to the ICC" since the United States declared its opposition to it in 2002, said William Pace, who heads the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, an alliance of 2500 organizations.

Moreno-Ocampo defended his work in a lengthy interview, saying that his office offers the brightest hope of bringing justice to hundreds of thousands of African victims and halting mass murder in Darfur. "It is normal: When you prosecute people with a lot of power, you have problems," said Moreno-Ocampo, who first gained prominence by prosecuting Argentine generals for ordering mass murder in that country's "dirty war."

The International Criminal Court was established in July 2002 to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, building on temporary courts in Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

Since he was appointed in 2003, the prosecutor has brought war crimes charges against 13 individuals in northern Uganda, Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan, including a July 2008 charge against Bashir of orchestrating genocide in Darfur. Pretrial judges approved the prosecutors' request for an arrest warrant for Bashir on March 4 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but rejected the genocide charge.

The Bush administration initially opposed the court, citing concerns of frivolous investigations of American soldiers engaged in the fight against terrorism. But President Obama -- whose top advisers are divided over whether Sudan continues to commit genocide -- has been far more supportive of the court.

The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when rebel movements took up arms against the Islamic government, citing discrimination against the region's tribes. The prosecutor has charged that Bashir then orchestrated a campaign of genocide that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Darfurian civilians from disease and violence, and driven about 2 million more from their homes.

Bashir has openly defied the court, saying that it has only strengthened his standing. "The court has been isolated and the prosecutor stands naked," said Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad.

The prosecutor's case "has polarized Sudanese politics and weakened those who occupy the middle ground of compromise and consensus," said Rodolphe Adada, a former Congolese foreign minister who heads a joint African Union-U.N. mission in Darfur.

In remarks to the U.N. Security Council in April, Adada challenged Moreno-Ocampo's characterization of the situation as genocide and said that only 130 to 150 people were dying each month in Darfur, far fewer than the 5,000 that Moreno-Ocampo says die each month from violence and other causes. "In purely numeric terms it is a low-intensity conflict," Adada said.

African leaders with abysmal human rights records seek to discredit Moreno-Ocampo because "they fear accountability" in their own countries, said Richard Dicker, an expert on the ICC at Human Rights Watch. Dicker concedes that Moreno-Ocampo has made missteps that have played into the hands of the court's enemies.

In September, Human Rights Watch raised concern in a confidential memo to the court about low staff morale and the flight of many experienced investigators. It also cited the prosecutor's 2006 summary dismissal of his spokesman after he filed an internal complaint alleging Moreno-Ocampo had raped a female journalist.

A panel of ICC judges, after interviewing the woman, concluded that the allegations were "manifestly unfounded." Then an internal disciplinary board recommended that Moreno-Ocampo rescind the dismissal, arguing that the prosecutor had a conflict of interest in firing the spokesman.

An administrative tribunal at the International Labor Organization ruled that while the spokesman's allegations were ultimately proved wrong, he had not acted maliciously because he believed his boss had engaged in improper behavior. It required a settlement payment of nearly $250,000 for back pay and damages.

Moreno-Ocampo, in the interview, declined to respond to the criticism of his personal reputation, saying, "I cannot answer unfounded allegations."

The case against Bashir rankles many African leaders, who say it is hypocritical. They note that the Security Council, which authorized the Sudan probe, has three permanent members who never signed the treaty establishing the court: the United States, Russia and China. "The feeling we have is that it is biased," said Congo's U.N. envoy, Atoki Ileka.

Alex de Waal, a British expert on Darfur, and Julie Flint, a writer and human rights activist, maintain that Moreno-Ocampo is the problem. They recently co-wrote an article in the World Affairs Journal citing former staff members and prominent war crimes experts who are critical of the prosecutor for not conducting witness interviews inside Darfur and for pursuing a weak charge of genocide against Bashir.

"It is difficult to cry government-led genocide in one breath and then explain in the next why 2 million Darfuris have sought refuge around the principal army garrisons of their province," Andrew T. Cayley, a British lawyer who headed the prosecutor's Darfur investigation, wrote in the Journal of International Criminal Justice last November.

Christine Chung, a former federal prosecutor and senior trial attorney for the prosecutor until 2007, dismissed the piece as "character assassination" and said the prosecutor's decision to stay out of Darfur was "in the end correct. The Sudanese government indeed detained and tortured persons believed to be cooperating with the ICC."

Moreno-Ocampo said he remains convinced that Bashir is committing genocide. "I have 300 lawyers, all brilliant people, with different opinions, but then I make the decision," he said. "I still think it's genocide, and I will appeal."

To Israelis, It's a Suburb, Not a Settlement; To Palestinian Villagers, It Means a Barrier on Their Land

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank, June 29 -- Chaim Hanfling knows a lot about this settlement's population boom. Six of his 11 siblings have moved here from Jerusalem in recent years to take advantage of the lower land prices, and at age 29, he has added four children of his own.

Located just over the Green Line that marks the territory occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the booming ultra-Orthodox community, home to more than 41,000 people, shows why the settlement freeze demanded by the Obama administration is proving controversial for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and also why Palestinian officials are insisting on it.

Amid their gleaming, modern apartment buildings, with Tel Aviv visible on the horizon, residents say they have little in common with the people who have hauled mobile homes to hilltops in hopes of deepening Israel's presence in the occupied West Bank. But they are having lots of babies -- and they expect the bulldozers and cement mixers to keep supplying larger schools and more housing, a typically suburban demand that the country's political leadership is finding hard to refuse.

"We don't feel this is a settlement," said Hanfling. "We're in the middle of the country. It's like Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan," another Israeli city.

Across a nearby valley, residents of the Palestinian village of Bilin have watched in dismay as Modiin Illit has grown toward them and an Israeli barrier has snaked its way across their olive groves and pastureland. Two years ago, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the fence relocated, but nothing has happened. A weekly protest near the fence, joined by sympathetic Israelis and foreigners, has led to a steady stream of injuries, with protesters hit by Israeli fire and Israeli troops struck by rocks. One villager, Bassem Abu Rahmeh, died in April when a tear gas canister hit him in the chest.

"The court said, 'Move the fence,' so why is he dead?" villager Basel Mansour said as he surveyed the valley between Bilin and Modiin Illit from his rooftop. "Why hasn't it been moved?"

Amid a dispute with the Obama administration over the future of West Bank settlements, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak left for the United States on Monday for talks with White House special envoy George J. Mitchell. Local news reports say he may propose a temporary construction freeze of perhaps three months, though Netanyahu's office said it is committed to "normal life" proceeding.

Of the nearly 290,000 Israelis who live in West Bank settlements, nearly 40 percent reside in three areas -- Modiin Illit, Betar Illit and Maale Adumim -- where the impact of a settlement freeze would probably be felt most deeply.

Debate over West Bank settlements is separate from discussion of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their national capital. The Obama administration has also asked Israel to freeze construction in Jerusalem neighborhoods occupied after the 1967 war.

"The goal is to find common ground with the Americans," said Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev. "Israel is willing to be creative and flexible."

Palestinian officials said Monday that they will not restart peace talks with Israel until a full settlement freeze is declared.

A trip across the valley outside Modiin Illit shows why the settlements remain a central Palestinian concern.

When the Israeli barrier was built around Modiin Illit, it looped into Palestinian territory -- too far, according to the Israeli Supreme Court, whose 2007 decision said that the route went farther than security needs required in order to make room for more building in the settlement.

Planned additions to the community have since been canceled by the Defense Ministry, which is in charge of construction in the West Bank. Israel Defense Forces Central Command spokesman Peter Lerner said the military has designed a new route for the fence that will return land to Bilin, but has not received funding.

The lack of an agreed-upon border, Palestinian officials and human rights groups said, figures into a variety of problems -- such as the violence that flares regularly between Palestinians and settlers, as well as larger policy matters. The rights group B'Tselem said in a recent report that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is taking clear responsibility for wastewater treatment in settlements or Palestinian towns and villages -- putting local drinking water at risk.

Facing U.S. demands, Israel has said it will take no more land for settlement and has agreed to remove more than 20 unauthorized outposts. But even that has proved slow going. The government recently proposed dismantling the outpost of Migron, a settlement of about 40 families that is under legal challenge for being built on private Palestinian land, by expanding another settlement nearby.

"The individuals in outposts shouldn't be rewarded" for building illegally, said Michael Sfard, an attorney for the group Peace Now who helped prepare a lawsuit against Migron.

In the City Hall of Modiin Illit, such struggles seem part of a different world. Pointing from a hillside to bulldozers busy in one part of town and graded sites ready for building in another, Mayor Yaakov Guterman said the city has 1,000 apartments under construction but is running out of room.

Modiin Illit can't expand to the west, back over the Green Line, he said, because that is a designated Israeli forest area. He said the community should be allowed to spread to the surrounding valley because, in his view, Modiin Illit "will be on the Israeli side" of the border under any final peace deal.

Meanwhile, he said, local families are having dozens of new babies every week, a boom that a construction freeze would "strangle."

"It'd be a death sentence," he said.

Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

U.S. Condemns Coup in Honduras but Makes No Firm Demands

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

Clinton's statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the situation presented a dilemma for the United States and other countries. Zelaya is "fighting with all the institutions in the country," Hakim said. "He's in no condition really to govern. At the same time, to stand by and allow him to be pushed out by the military reverses a course of 20 years."

U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sheltered one of Zelaya's children to prevent him from being harmed, according to Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the Organization of American States.

But the Obama administration has had cool relations with Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chávez. While U.S. officials say they continue to recognize Zelaya as president, they have not indicated they are willing to use the enormous U.S. clout in the country to force his return.

Asked whether it was a U.S. priority to see Zelaya reinstalled, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."

John D. Negroponte, a former senior State Department official and ambassador to Honduras, said Clinton's remarks appeared to reflect U.S. reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.

"I think she wants to preserve some leverage to try and get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum," he said.

Zelaya clashed with the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military in recent weeks, particularly over his promotion of a referendum that might have permitted him to run for another four-year term. The Congress and Supreme Court said the referendum was illegal.

The Congress overwhelmingly voted to depose Zelaya after he had been forcibly removed. Lawmakers then named a new president, Roberto Micheletti, from the same party.

Obama repeated yesterday that the United States viewed Zelaya as Honduras's president and that "the coup was not legal."

"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," he told reporters after a meeting with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Clinton told reporters that the situation in Honduras had "evolved into a coup" but that the United States was "withholding any formal legal determination" characterizing it that way.

"We're assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be," she said. "Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome."

The Obama administration has pledged to work more closely with Latin America and not dictate policy in its traditional back yard. But the United States has several points of leverage: It is Honduras's biggest trading partner, and President Obama has requested $68 million in development and military aid for 2010. Portions of that aid, which are provided directly to the government, would be cut off in the event of a coup. Congressional officials said last night they were not sure exactly how much that amounted to. Honduras also is a recipient of a five-year, $215 million Millennium Challenge grant that is conditioned on the country remaining a democracy.

The United States also has a close military relationship with Honduras. Hundreds of Honduran officers participate in U.S. military training programs each year, more than most other Western Hemisphere countries.

Among those who have attended such training is the senior military officer of Honduras, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who was dismissed by Zelaya prior to the coup. After that dismissal, other senior Honduran military leaders resigned, including the Air Force commander, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Vasquez attended the Pentagon-run School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, and Suazo attended in 1996, according to Army records of graduates obtained by a watchdog group. A spokesman for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which replaced the School of the Americas in 2001, said the records of graduates obtained by the group, School of Americas Watch, are accurate.

"We have a strong military relationship with them and in . . . military exchange training that takes place, we emphasize civilian control of the military" as well as human rights and the rule of law, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

A contingent of about 600 U.S. military personnel is based at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force Bravo, which mainly supports disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.

The Organization of American States has summoned the hemisphere's foreign ministers to Washington to discuss the crisis. Clinton said the United States is pushing for a delegation to be sent to Honduras after the session.

The United States has been a strong backer of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document signed by OAS members in 2001 that commits them to observe the "right to democracy." Violators can be suspended from the organization.

OAS members issued a statement calling for "the immediate, safe and unconditional return" of Zelaya to the presidency.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.