VOCR Gazette 070913

Tuesday July 9th 2013

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Egypt unrest: Brotherhood rejects Mansour poll decree

Senior officials in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood have rejected a timetable for new elections laid out by interim president Adly Mansour.

Leading Brotherhood figure Essam al-Erian says the plan for constitutional changes and a vote next year "brings the country back to square one".
President Mohammed Morsi was ousted by the army last week after mass protests.
The decree came hours after at least 51 people were killed at a Cairo barracks where his supporters say he is held.
The Muslim Brotherhood - Egypt's main Islamist movement, which Mr Morsi belongs to - says its members were fired on at a sit-in for the ousted leader. The army says it responded to an armed provocation.

Mr Morsi was Egypt's first freely elected president. His removal last Wednesday followed protests by tens of thousands of people who accused him of becoming increasingly authoritarian, pursuing an Islamist agenda, and failing to tackle Egypt's economic woes.

The Brotherhood has denounced the military's action as a coup.

Lebanon Blast: Explosion Rocks Hezbollah Stronghold As Ramadan Begins

BEIRUT — A car bomb rocked a stronghold of the Shiite militant Hezbollah group south of the Lebanese capital Tuesday, setting several cars on fire and wounding 37 people in a major security breach of a tightly-guarded area, security officials said.
The powerful blast in a bustling commercial and residential neighborhood came as many Lebanese Shiites began observing the holy month of Ramadan, and is the worst explosion to hit the area in years – likely direct fallout of the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.
A group of about 100 outraged Hezbollah supporters marched in the area after the blast, carrying pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and shouting in support of their leader and sectarian slogans.
Hezbollah operatives fired in the air to disperse people who attacked the interior minister with stones after he inspected the scene of the blast, trapping him for 45 minutes in a building before he was escorted through a backdoor.
"The Shiite blood is boiling," the Hezbollah supporters shouted.
Minister Marwan Charbel is seen by some Shiites as sympathetic to hardline Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir, who was agitating against Hezbollah for months and is now on the run.
With skirmishes between Shiites and Sunnis on the rise around the country, religiously mixed and dangerously fragile Lebanon is increasingly buffeted by powerful forces that are dividing the Arab world along sectarian lines. Some Syrian rebel groups, which are predominantly Sunni, have threatened to strike in Lebanon after Hezbollah joined Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops in their battle against opposition fighters.

Afghan army says soldier opens fire on Americans

The Afghan army's commander in southern Afghanistan says one of his troops opened fire on American soldiers at Kandahar airfield but did not cause any casualties.

Gen. Abdul Hamid said the shooter was taken into custody after the Tuesday morning incident and is now being questioned.
The NATO-led coalition says it can confirm an attack in southern Afghanistan, but says the Afghan army is taking the lead in securing the scene and is referring any other questions to them.
It appeared to be the latest in a string of so-called "insider attacks" in which Afghan forces open fire on their comrades or international forces. The attacks threaten to shake the confidence of the two sides as the 2014 withdrawal of most of the international troops approaches.

Turkish Police Bring In Water Cannons To Clear Gezi Park

ISTANBUL -- An Istanbul park that was at the center of weeks of anti-government demonstrations opened for a few hours Monday, but Turkish authorities quickly closed it and fired a water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters heading to the area for a planned rally.
The attack – the second by police on protesters since Saturday – occurred on a main pedestrian road leading to Istanbul's landmark Taksim Square and adjacent Gezi Par.
On Monday afternoon, Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu declared Gezi Park reopened to the public, but warned he would not allow it to become a point for more demonstrations. About three hours later, police asked the public to leave the park and closed it.
An Associated Press journalist at the scene said police used shields to push some laggards out of the park, fired tear gas at a few protesters who struck a police shield, and detained a dozen people. Some protesters were seen hurling stones at a police water cannon.
The Istanbul Bar Association said around 30 demonstrators were rounded up, including members of a group opposed to Taksim's redevelopment who had called Monday's Gezi protest. The Istanbul Medical Association said several people were injured.
Mutlu said on his Twitter account that the park was shut down again because there were "many calls to turn Gezi Park into an area of unlawful demonstrations and occupation."
Gezi had been cordoned off since June 15, when police forcibly evacuated thousands of environmentalists who occupied it amid widespread protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
The park is one of a few green areas in the center of Istanbul. Government plans to redevelop Taksim and build a replica Ottoman-era military barracks at Gezi sparked the protests. But they quickly turned into an outpouring of discontent with Erdogan's government.

Pakistan 'incompetent' on Bin Laden

Incompetence and negligence allowed Osama Bin Laden to live in Pakistan undetected for almost a decade, a leaked government report suggests.

A version of the report leaked to al-Jazeera says the killing of Bin Laden by US forces was a "criminal act of murder" ordered by the US president.
It also reveals details of the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts and day-to-day life after fleeing Afghanistan in 2001.
Bin Laden was killed by US forces in north-west Pakistan in May 2011.
US suspicions about Bin Laden's location had previously been dismissed by Pakistan. However, his discovery in a compound in Abbottabad and subsequent killing in a US Navy Seal operation put a strain on US-Pakistan relations.
'Humiliation' Shortly after the raid, the Pakistan parliament called for an independent enquiry - the Abbottabad Commission - to establish whether the failures of the government were due to incompetence or colluding with al-Qaeda.
It was also commissioned to investigate the Pakistani intelligence services' failure to detect CIA activity on its soil in the run-up to the raid "that culminated in the avoidable humiliation of the people of Pakistan". 

South Sudan 'sliding towards instability, conflict and crisis'

A group of influential US-based activists has said that South Sudan, which celebrated the second anniversary of its independence on Tuesday, faces an "increasingly perilous fate" and is sliding towards "instability, conflict and a protracted government crisis" due in part to rampant official corruption and abuse of power.
The warning, in an open letter to South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, and his deputy, Riek Machar, comes amid rising alarm about ethnic violence and alleged atrocities in eastern Jonglei state.
Hilde Johnson, the UN special envoy to South Sudan, told the security council this week that over-stretched peacekeepers needed surveillance drones and helicopter gunships to deal with the crisis.
The group of activists, known as the Friends of South Sudan, includes Roger Winter, a former US state department special envoy, John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, and Professor Eric Reeves, a noted Sudan scholar. The group became known as the "midwives" for their successful lobbying of the Bush administration and the UN in support of an independent South Sudan and for their backing for the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, which ended the civil war.
In their letter they assure Kiir of their goodwill, then launch into a fierce attack on almost every aspect of his government's record.
"Over the past several years – but the last six months in particular – South Sudan government security forces have engaged in a campaign of violence again civilians simply because they belonged to a different ethnic group or they are viewed as opponents of the current government," the letter states.

Tibetan monks fired on for marking Dalai Lama's birthday

Police in a restive Tibetan part of southwestern China opened fire on a group of monks and others who had gathered to mark the birthday of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, seriously injuring at least two of them, a rights group said.
The incident, in Ganzi in Sichuan province, happened on Saturday at the gathering on a sacred mountain to make offerings and burn incense to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 78th birthday, the US-based International Campaign for Tibet said.
"Large numbers of armed police and soldiers were deployed, with one source reporting at least seven army trucks and police vehicles at the scene," the group said in an e-mail on Tuesday.
"The security forces attempted to prevent Tibetans from making their offerings and gatherings, but according to two Tibetan sources in exile, some Tibetans present argued that burning incense was not a crime," it added in the statement.

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"Without warning, according to several Tibetan sources, police opened fire on the unarmed crowd and used tear-gas."
Two monks were shot in the head and several others seriously injured, the group added.
While Chinese security forces often use heavy-handed tactics to stop protests in Tibetan regions, they rarely use guns.
Officials reached by telephone in Ganzi said they had no knowledge of the incident.

Chinese troops enter Ladakh again, vandalise Indian posts

LEH: In another incursion, Chinese troops intruded into the Chumar sector in Ladakh — the same area which had sparked off tensions in April — and smashed some bunkers besides cutting wires of cameras installed at the border post.

Official sources said on Tuesday the intrusion took place on June 17 when the troops of China's People's Liberation Army(PLA) entered Indian territory in the Chumar sector and started vandalising the observation bunkers, besides cutting the wires which overlook the Chinese territory.

Chumar, located 300 km from here, has always been an area of discomfort for the Chinese troops as this is the only area along the Sino-Indian border where they do not have any direct access to the Line of Actual Control(LAC).

The 21-day face-off between the two sides in the remote Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) sector on April 15 was triggered by construction of an observation tower in Chumar division which had to be subsequently dismantled by the Army on May 5 before the crisis was defused.

The Chinese side, according to the minutes of the flag meetings in the last week of March this year, had been objecting to the construction of the watch tower along the LAC Chumar.

Congress delaying military aid to Syrian rebels

WASHINGTON - Congressional committees are holding up a plan to send US weapons to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad because of fears that such deliveries will not be decisive and the arms might end up in the hands of Islamist militants, five US national security sources said.
Both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees have expressed reservations behind closed doors at the effort by President Barack Obama's administration to support the insurgents by sending them military hardware.
None of the military aid that the United States announced weeks ago has arrived in Syria, according to an official from an Arab country and Syrian opposition sources.
Democrats and Republicans on the committees worry that weapons could reach factions like the Nusra Front, which is one of the most effective rebel groups but has also been labeled by the United States as a front for Al-Qaida in Iraq.
Committee members also want to hear more about the administration's overall Syria policy, and about how it believes its arms plan will affect the situation on the ground, where Assad's forces have made recent gains.
Funding that the administration advised the congressional committees it wanted to use to pay for arms deliveries to Assad's opponents has been temporarily frozen, the sources said.


Video of the week:

 Texas Governor Rick Perry to retire

Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced he will not seek a fourth term in office next year.

The 63-year-old Republican, who is the state's longest-serving governor, said at a news conference in San Antonio that he planned to retire.
He has built a reputation as a job creator, and as a defender of Christian conservative values and states' rights.
But he will also be remembered for forgetting one of his own policies at a 2011 presidential debate.
Gov Perry was briefly the front-runner in the Republican race for the White House when he entered the fray in August that year.
But his candidacy disintegrated spectacularly after he muttered "oops" as he forgot the third of three federal departments he had pledged to close, while debating with his rivals live on television.
Gov Perry later endorsed the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, who failed in his attempt to derail Democratic President Barack Obama's bid for a second term.
Gov Perry's announcment on Monday that he would retire has sparked speculation that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott may run to replace him.

Group: IRS mistakenly posted thousands of Social Security numbers on website

The IRS mistakenly posted the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of Americans on a government website, the agency confirmed Monday night. One estimate put the figure as high as 100,000 names.
The numbers were posted to an IRS database for tax-exempt political groups known as 527s and first discovered by the group Public.Resource.org.
The California-based group said it learned of the "privacy breach" Tuesday while working on an unrelated audit of an “improperly vetted shipment” of IRS data on DVDs and promptly informed the agency, which shut down the site the next day.
An IRS spokesman told FoxNews.com on Monday the agency was alerted about a "substantial number" of Social Security numbers posted on the site and removed web access to the information "out of an abundance of caution." The spokesman also said the IRS is now "assessing the situation and exploring available options."
A message on the agency’s 527 homepage asks visitors to check back Monday, but the site was still down Monday evening.

Obama Suspends the Law 

Like King James II, the president decides not to enforce laws he doesn't like. That's an abuse of power.

President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.
Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.
This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."
To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons."
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.

Condition of Kerry’s Wife Is Said to Improve

WASHINGTON — Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Secretary of State John Kerry, who was hospitalized over the weekend after apparently suffering a seizure, was upgraded to fair condition from critical on Monday, the State Department said.

“She is undergoing further evaluation and Secretary of State John Kerry, her son, and other family members remain with Mrs. Heinz Kerry at the hospital in Boston, as they have been since she became ill,” Glen Johnson, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said in a statement. “The family is touched by the outpouring of well wishes.”

Mrs. Heinz Kerry, 74, grew sick while staying at the family’s vacation home on Nantucket on Sunday. An ambulance was summoned to the house around 3:30 p.m. and left shortly afterward for Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

By Sunday evening, doctors had stabilized her, but her condition was judged too serious for the small facility on Nantucket. She was flown along with medical personnel on her own private plane to Boston and transported to Massachusetts General Hospital. Mr. Kerry, who had arrived on the island a few days earlier after a long overseas trip, accompanied her to Boston.

State Department retracts denial that John Kerry was yachting off Nantucket during Egypt coup

WASHINGTON _ Secretary of State John F. Kerry is in the headlines over the Fourth of July holiday for a decidedly unwelcome reason: questions over whether he went sailing off Nantucket as Egypt descended into chaos.
Turns out he did, at least for a little while -- despite his spokeswoman’s initial insistence to the contrary.
The spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, on Wednesday denied a CBS News report on Twitter that Kerry had been seen boarding his yacht, Isabel, for a sail off Nantucket just hours after Egypt’s first democratically elected leader was overthrown.
“Any report or tweet that he was on a boat is completely inaccurate,” she said, clearly trying to quell any impression that the nation’s top diplomat was not on the job.
But the State Department reversed course Friday when Psaki issued a statement correcting the record on Kerry’s whereabouts off Nantucket.
“While he was briefly on his boat on Wednesday, Secretary Kerry worked around the clock all day including participating in the president’s meeting with his national security council,” she said.
A Kerry aide who was not authorized to speak publicly said the denial on Wednesday was the result of “confusion,” saying Kerry had apparently taken his grandson out for an hour-long sail.
Kerry’s aides bristled at the suggestion that he is simply lounging around, saying he has been working the phones while on vacation with world leaders and participating in White House meetings about the situation in Egypt and a series of other pressing foreign policy challenges.
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