Protect and serve ?

Iran: homeless women arrested

The catastrophe of homeless women and those sleeping in the streets in Iran has now reached a point where they are arrested by security agents. Meitham Amroudi, deputy Tehran mayor said in this regard 2,000 homeless people in the summer and 6,000 in the winter are rounded up each day in Tehran alone.
 (State-run Fars news agency – August 5, 2015)

Doctors Refuse to Force Feed Palestinian Prisoner on Hunger Strike

JERUSALEM - Israeli doctors have refused to force feed Palestinian prisoner Mohamed Alaan, who has been on hunger strike for 56 days, on the grounds that it is a form of torture, despite recent legislation in Israel that allows it.

Alaan had already been transferred from Soroka hospital in Beersheva to Barzilai in Ashkelon on Monday after doctors refused to force feed the prisoner for ethical and legal reasons, and the same decision has been taken by the doctors at Barzilai on Tuesday.

While the Israeli Knesset adopted a law permitting the force feeding of hunger striking prisoners in July, many medical associations have condemned the measure and have urged health workers to refuse to comply.

Thus, the director of the Barzilai medical center, Dr. Hezi Levy, endorsed the decision of his colleagues at Soroka and refused to feed the prisoner against his will, as his life is not in immediate danger, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

"Force-feeding is a drastic measure that is incompatible with medical ethics," Dr. Levy said in a statement released on Tuesday, according to The Times of Israel.

"Any treatment carried out without the consent of the patient is reserved for a decline in (his) medical condition and an urgent life-saving need," the hospital director added.

Basel Ghattas, an Arab member of the Knesset, warned the Barzilai administration in a letter that it would turn into an "Israeli Guantanamo, where it is allowed to torture" if it employed force-feeding, Channel 2 reported.

Dr. Leonid Eidelman, the chairman of the Israel Medical Association, said that he would petition the High Court of Justice to ban force-feeding.

13 Wounded in Prison Fight in Mexico

CANCUN, Mexico – Thirteen inmates were wounded in disturbances at the jail in the Mexican Caribbean resort city of Cancun over the weekend, officials said.

Two of the inmates were seriously wounded in the brawl on Sunday, Quintana Roo state Public Safety Secretary Juan Pedro Mercader Rodriguez said.

An attack on the leader of a prison gang led to a second fight as the man was being transported to Cancun General Hospital for treatment, Mercader said.

Security will be tightened on family visiting days, the public safety secretary said.

“The inmates violated the agreement we had with them to avoid any types of disturbances during family visits,” Mercader said.

“What’s going to happen now is that the number of visits and times are going to be restricted. This is the second time this happens. We had a problem before during a soccer game and there were 40 hurt, 30 of whom were hospitalized,” Mercader said.

An investigation has been opened into the incident at the jail, the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office said.

Vigilante Leader Murdered in Southern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – The leader of the vigilante group in Xaltianguis, a town in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, was murdered over the weekend, officials said.

Miguel Angel Jimenez was killed on Saturday near Xaltianguis, located in a rural area outside the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, Guerrero Government Secretary David Cienfuegos said.

Leaders of the UPOEG community self-defense group confirmed the murder, Cienfuegos said.

Jimenez’s body was found inside a taxi, media reports said.

Acapulco and its surrounding area have been plagued by a wave of drug-related violence in recent years, with 4,750 murders reported in the past three years.

Turkey: several lives claimed in a string of attacks

Experts: 6 reasons Congress should reject Iran nuclear deal

The regime in Iran is not a permanent fixture of the Middle East landscape; the false dichotomy of war and negotiation is useful rhetoric but it makes for bad policy, argue Prof. Ivan Sheehan and Emeritus Prof. Raymond Tanter.

"History suggests that cosmetic diplomacy with dishonest partners is a recipe for proliferation not peace," the professorswrote in TownHall.com on Wednesday.

"The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 requires robust congressional oversight of the agreement prior to implementation and affords legislators an unusual opportunity to critique the deal and raise issues that may undermine effective implementation," they wrote.

"The emerging bipartisan opposition to the porous deal centers on six primary concerns:

1. Nuclear Breakout: The preliminary nuclear agreement maintains and legitimizes Iran's nuclear infrastructure, with some caps for the next 10 to 15 years. But it allows the regime to build an industrialized nuclear program with few limitations in about a decade. Under the agreement the time to nuclear breakout is neither reduced nor is the goal of a nuclear weapons free Iran realized.
   
2. Managed Access: The agreement fails to provide unfettered – anytime, anywhere – access to suspect nuclear sites, including military installations. Managed access might work in declared sites but not in secret ones. In fact, two years of negotiations yielded not a single specific arrangement to inspect sites that have already been sought by the UN nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA.
   
3. Research & Development: Neither is the regime prevented from research and development on advanced centrifuges. The managed nature of access that is granted undermines the very purpose of the inspections in the first place. This is like allowing professional athletes with a record of cheating to control the circumstances that govern their testing for controlled substances.
   
4. Sanctions Relief: The enormous infusion of currency that will arrive with the lifting of sanctions will boost Tehran’s support of terror proxies and embolden them to expand their violent arc of influence.
   
5. Weapons and Missiles: The existing agreement provides weapons and missile trade relief in five and eight years respectively, concessions that will consolidate the regime’s influence in the broader Middle East.
   
6. Past Activities: Finally, the regime has not been pressed to account for its past nuclear activities. Verification of future agreements becomes ever more challenging when no credible baseline for weaponization thresholds crossed exists."

The professors pointed out that policymakers concerned by these – and myriad other issues – can use the oversight period to direct questions at White House officials and insist on credible explanations. Questions that they said must be raised and addressed include:

• "In light of Tehran’s record of cheating, how will world powers account for the need to verify Iran’s continued compliance? And since incremental cheating to test the resolve of the powers is more likely than a full-scale race for the bomb, how will the major powers guard against such sneakout?
  
• Will Washington push back on Tehran’s activities in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the region?
  
• Because ballistic missiles are most relevant against populations rather than armies, how will the U.S. address Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities once an agreement is in place and what will this mean for key U.S. allies?
  
• Because Iran has used scarce funds despite falling oil prices and sanctions, how will the White House prevent Tehran from diverting funds to regional proxies and terrorist groups after sanctions are lessened?
  
• Will U.S. officials speak out on behalf of Iranian dissidents – thousands of whom are detained in Iraq at Camp Liberty – and provide for their protection in light of the extraordinary intelligence they have provided on the nuclear front?
  
• When will the American diplomats finally condemn Tehran’s egregious human rights violations?"

They added that as the U.S. Congress digs into the agreement, they should keep in mind that:

• "The regime is not a permanent fixture of the Middle East landscape. The false dichotomy of war and negotiation is useful rhetoric but it makes for bad policy.
  
• History suggests that cosmetic diplomacy with dishonest partners is a recipe for proliferation not peace.
  
• Appeasement and concessions are not the ingredients for a sustainable peace. They only embolden authoritarian leaders and create a more hostile climate."

"Legislators must also not allow the White House to dictate the terms of the public deliberation on the nuclear issue by separating the nuclear accord from simultaneous discussions of the regime’s human rights record, sponsorship of global of terror, and the destabilizing influence Tehran continues to play regionally," they added.

Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is director of the graduate programs in Negotiation and Conflict Management and Global Affairs and Human Security in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.

Emeritus Prof. Raymond Tanter is a former Member of the White House National Security Council staff and Personal Representative of the Secretary of Defense to arms control talks in the Reagan-Bush administration.

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