Morning Coffee - 6 November 2009

Welcome to Morning Coffee, brought to you by Lindsay Beyerstein with additional links from the UN Dispatch team. Every morning we survey foreign affairs and foreign policy news so you don't have to. We begin with the "Starting Five" items of the day -- these may not always appear on A-1, but they *are* the kinds of stories that will be buzzing in foreign capitals, the UN and wherever foreign policy minds roam.
Starting Five
ARMY MAJOR HELD IN FORT HOOD SHOOTING - An army psychiatrist is in custody after allegedly killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at the Fort Hood army base in Texas yesterday afternoon. Ironically, Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan specialized in treating veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. At the time of the shooting, he himself was facing his first deployment to a war zone. His family says he had hired a lawyer to help him get out of the military. The family describes him as Muslim, but his army paperwork has him down as "no religious preference." Link
IT WAS A GREAT DAY FOR DEMOCRACY, UNTIL IT WASN'T - Honduran President Mel Zelaya says that the vaunted pact between himself and the leader of the coup regime is dead. The last straw? Coup regime leader Roberto Micheletti announced that he would be forming a "unity government" without Zelaya's representatives. The two sides had agreed to form a unity government that included cabinet ministers from both sides. Needless to say, Zelaya is unlikely to be restored to power any time soon. He's still barricaded inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Link
STABBED IN THE BACK - Thousands of German workers held wildcat strikes and demonstrations yesterday after General Motors unexpectedly pulled out of a deal that would have saved 25,000 German auto industry jobs. Chancellor Angela Merkel had announced a multi-billion dollar deal to save GM subsidiary Opel by selling off the company's European operations. Out of the blue, GM decided to keep its European plants after all. GM announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs in the restructuring. Many of those will be at Opel. "Our trust in General Motors is now zero, that's the heart of the problem," Klaus Franz, the head of Opel's workers' council said at a rally yesterday. Link
ATOMIC CLOCK - Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Christiane Amanpour of CNN that he would be stepping down when his term ends at the end of the month. ElBaradei is leaving just as Iran seems poised to reach a deal over refining nuclear fuel. Under a draft agreement supported by the U.S., France, and Russia, Iran would ship low energy uranium to a third country to be processed into fuel rods for nuclear energy and sent back to Tehran to make medical isotopes. ElBaradei explained that Iran wants some of those rods upfront. It doesn't want to send its scarce nuclear material away for processing and trust that it will get it back. Giving Iran a taste of what it's supposed to get anyway seems like a harmless gesture of good faith. Link
EXXON-MOBIL TO DEVELOP IRAQI OIL FIELD - The Iraqi government announced yesterday that it had signed a major deal with Exxon-Mobil to develop an oil field in Southern Iraq. The deal marks the first time that Exxon, a U.S. conglomerate, has been allowed to work on Iraq's oil fields since 1972. The LA Times reports that there has been a "flurry of activity" this week as several major oil companies prepare to resume operations in Iraq for the first time in 6 years. Link
Provocateurs
John Nichols in THE NATION
"Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood army base in Texas -- which have left at least 11 people dead and 31 others wounded -- were of course the "horrific outburst of violence" that President Obama bemoaned and condemned Thursday. But, because a soldier identified as the gunman had a name that led to the presumption that he was Muslim, the incident inspired an all-too-predictable outbreak of Islamophobia. "
Liz Bayer in RH REALITY
"With the first PEPFAR authorization in 2003, the authorizing legislation required that a third of all HIV prevention funding (20 percent of the total PEPFAR funds) be used for abstinence-until-marriage programs, or the “A” part of the ABC approach to prevention. For young people, the B (be faithful), and C (consistent and correct condom use) approaches were emphasized less than abstinence and were stressed mainly as interventions for married couples, commercial sex workers, and “high risk” groups. Fortunately, the reauthorized PEPFAR does not include the earmark for abstinence-until-marriage funding. However, the new law does include a new reporting requirement that requires OGAC to submit an explanation to Congress whenever countries with generalized epidemics utilize less than 50 percent of their funds allocated to prevention of sexual transmission on programs containing abstinence, delay of sexual initiation, fidelity, monogamy, and partner reduction components. "
Tim Padgett in TIME
"As a result, Washington for weeks now has been looking for a way to bless the November balloting with or without Zelaya's restoration. Zelaya had hoped that Shannon would also persuade the leading candidate in the presidential race, Porfirio Lobo, to instruct legislators from his opposition National Party to endorse Zelaya's reinstatement under the new accord. But in an interview with TIME, Lobo made it clear that this would not happen. "Micheletti and Zelaya made a pact, and as long as that pact is carried out the world has to recognize the elections as valid," he says. "So at this point, what does it matter which of them is in office when the election is held?" Lobo also knows that as long as the vote is sanctioned by the U.S., from whom Honduras gets the lion's share of its trade and aid, he needn't lose too much sleep over the fact that the rest of the world will probably still refuse to recognize his election if Zelaya is not restored. "
Water Cooler

Federal investigators have learned that U.S. taxpayer money that was supposed to be spent on emergencies in Iraq was used to buy a $50,000 advertising supplement in a British trade magazine. The supplement touted Anbar Province as "the bridge to the future," encouraging investors to sink their cash into the troubled region. Anbar was "a hot place to invest in," according to the advertorial. The also money helped underwrite a "Global Personality of the Year" award for the governor of Anbar Province, who, as far as anyone knows was the first and only person to be honored thusly.

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