Day: October 20, 2002

Mugabe Blocks Food Aid to Opponents

Late last week the United Nations confirmed what had been rumored for the past couple weeks — Zimbabwe has ordered Oxfam and Save the Children to stop distributing food aid in areas that Robert Mugabe’s ruling party believes are hotbeds of opposition support.

In a Mail & Guardian (Johannesberg) story”>http://allafrica.com/stories/200210170594.html”>story, UN FAO representative Tony Hall is quoted as saying,

This is political obstruction of desperately needed food aid at a crucial point. If people do not get food now, many will die . . . Government officials confirmed they will not allow those NGOs to distribute food aid for political reasons, because the government views them as loyal to the opposition party. I said that is unacceptable. They are major international organisations with fine reputations for non-partisan activity.

I guess that puts Zimbabwe up to stage 7 in Genocide Watch’s warning of Zimbabwe’s path to politicide.

Source:

Zim Bans Food Aid Charities. Andrew Meldrum, Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), October 18, 2002.

Did Iraq Expel UN Inspectors?

FAIR correctly points out that many networks and newspapers have been reporting that in 1998 Iraq expelled United Nations weapons inspectors. In fact, after Iraq pretty much ended all cooperation with the inspectors in October of that year (there was a brief attempt in December 1998 at weapons inspections, but Iraq’s idea of full cooperation was much different than the UN’s), UNSCOM pulled out its inspectors in December 1998. This was done in part to protect UN workers against military strikes planned by the United States and Great Britain to punish Iraq for its noncompliance with UN Security Council resolutions.

This particular myth probably was started due to two reasons. First, in 1997 Iraq did expel American weapons inspectors claiming they were spies. Second, many news reports of the 1998 withdrawal contained vague language like “UN weapons inspectors today were ordered out of Iraq” which was probably misunderstood by reporters later as implying that the orders to leave the country came from Iraq rather than UNSCOM (though, there’s not much excuse for such sloppiness).

The withdrawal, however, was clearly Iraq’s fault. Beginning in July 1998, Iraq actively interfered with the weapons inspectors. At various points it refused to allow them to videotape inspections, refused to allow inspectors to photocopy incriminating documents they uncovered, and blocked access to facilities that weapons inspectors had every right to enter.

Death Penalty Doomed in a Democratic Congress? Doubtful

Criminal lawyer Jeralyn Merritt fills in for Eric Alterman at Alterman’s MSNBC weblog and tries to pass off this bit of nonsense about the importance of voting for Democrats in the upcoming election,

I have a legislative wish-list that will be dead in the water if the Republicans get control. HereÂ’s the short version: A moratorium on the death penalty now, abolition in the future. Passage of the Innocence Protection Act

If a Democratic Congress meant a moratorium on the death penalty, I’d go in and vote striaght Democratic on November 5.

But, of course, Congress cannot impose a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty. A moratorium on the federal death penalty perhaps, but Congress does not (and should not) have the authority to create a moratorium on state death penalties (anymore than it could or should be able to force states like Michigan to adopt a death penalty).

More importantly, though, the Democratic Party showed how committed it was to death penalty reform in the early 1990s when for two years the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. That was a period when Bill Clinton proposed all sorts of radical actions that backfired in the 1994 House elections, but death penalty reform/abolition was nowhere to be found as an issue.

And it won’t be if the Democrats end up with control of the House and Senate again this year. In fact, I doubt the Democratic Party as a whole wants such legislation to succeed. It is better served politically by having members of very liberal districts introduces such legislation and let it die in committee.

This way candidates in heavily liberal districts can say they’re trying to do something but keep running into obstacles from Republicans, while at the same time the Republicans can’t bash them over the head with the soft-on-crime label. If a Democrat-controlled Congress took up this issue, it would be a tailor-made issue for the Republican president going into the 2004 presidential elections. (I.e., it will never happen).

Source:

The Elections. Jeralyn Merritt, MSNBC.Com, October 18, 2002.