Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Elder of Ziyon
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| Hamas supporters step on a poster depicting a crossed-out portrait of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during a rally in Gaza City against the Libyan leader February 22, 2011. |
Tuesday, February 22, 2011Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, February 22, 2011Elder of ZiyonIn response to growing calls from Turkish society on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to return the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights he received last year, the Prime Ministry said yesterday that “returning the award is out of the question.”Other illustrious past winners include Fidel Castro, Louis Farrakhan, Mahathir Mohamad and Daniel Ortega.
As the growing anti-government unrest in Libya is met by the brutal response of security forces, Turkish civil society has begun calling on Erdoğan to give back the award in protest of the Gaddafi violence in Libya, a demand that was rejected by the Prime Ministry in a statement released yesterday. The refusal to return the award may be linked to the safety of thousands of Turks in Libya who still expect to be evacuated.
The Young Civilians -- a civil society group known for its creative demonstrations in support of democracy -- made an open call to Erdoğan yesterday to return the award. “You showed sensitivity to what happened in Egypt. Take the side of the oppressed against the oppressive Gaddafi as well. Fix this evil act, which you cannot fix with your hand, with your tongue. Immediately give back the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights that you recently received. As long as this award exists on the shelves of the Republic of Turkey’s Prime Ministry, the responsibility for the ongoing massacres in Libya will remain on us,” the Young Civilians said.
...The human rights prize was established in 1988 by Muammar al-Gaddafi. According to its website, the prize is awarded to one of the “international personalities, bodies or organizations that have distinctively contributed to rendering an outstanding human service and has achieved great actions in defending human rights, protecting the causes of freedom and supporting peace everywhere in the world.” Former South African President Nelson Mandela and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez are among the recipients of the award.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also commented on Erdoğan’s silence regarding the Libyan uprising yesterday and argued that “Erdoğan is doing what the award requires.”
Tuesday, February 22, 2011Elder of ZiyonThe Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is currently studying the possibility of establishing a satellite television station and a number of newspapers and magazines, according to leading MB member Essam al-Arian.There is of course nothing wrong with this.
“Freedom of access to information is key to keeping up with the evolution of international media,” al-Arian told Al-Masry Al-Youm, adding that Egyptians "are fed up with biased media.”
“Soon we will begin publishing a monthly magazine called 'Al-Daawa,' in addition to a weekly newspaper,” he added.
Head of the MB's media committee Assem Shalabi said the group was preparing to publish daily, weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines.
“We're expecting amendments to Egypt's press laws that will facilitate the publication of new newspapers," said Shalabi. "This is why we are seeking to issue different publications."
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonFor the first time in memory, change is in the air in Libya. The brittle atmosphere of repression has started to fracture, giving way to expanded space for discussion and debate [and] proposals for legislative reform… I left more than one meeting stunned at the sudden openness of ordinary citizens, who criticized the government and challenged the status quo with newfound frankness. A group of journalists we met with in Tripoli complained about censorship… [b]ut that hadn’t stopped their newspapers… Quryna, one of two new semi private newspapers in Tripoli, features page after page of editorials criticizing bureaucratic misconduct and corruption… The spirit of reform, however slowly, has spread to the bureaucracy as well… the real impetus for the transformation rests squarely with a quasi-governmental organization, the Qaddafi Foundation for International Charities and Development.
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of Ziyon
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonThis is amazing language for a diplomat: “folly,” “illegitimacy,” “devastates,” “corroded,” and so on. It’s hard to recall such a vehement statement against Israel, nor one that contains so many conclusions that are, to say the least, highly debatable. Has construction in and around Jerusalem or in Ma’ale Adumim, for example, “undermined Israel’s security?” Given that the Israelis and Palestinians concluded the Oslo Accords and the numerous other agreements while construction activity was far greater than it is today, what is the basis for saying that it “devastates trust?” No doubt the Administration decided that as it had vetoed it would “make it up” to the Arabs with this statement. But emotive language such as Amb. Rice employed serves no purpose. Arab newspapers will headline the veto—assuming of course that they have space in their pages tomorrow after covering the revolts in Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt—and are very unlikely to cover her speech. Only Israelis and supporters of Israel in the United States will study her language, and remember it.Exactly. In fact, none of the Arab media I can find is even mentioning Rice's tirade and instead are just concentrating on the veto:
So, the Administration emerges having damaged relations with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Decades of American experience at the United Nations proves clearly the “folly” of such diplomatic action, which “devastates trust” in the United States and therefore “corrodes hopes for peace and stability in the region.” Next time, say you’ll veto, veto, and leave it at that. The United States will end up with fewer angry friends and fewer gleeful enemies.
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonAn Israeli Muslim filed a NIS 1.2 billion class action suit against The Central Bottling Company Group Ltd. (the Israel franchisee for Coca Cola) in the Jerusalem District Court today for compensation for mental anguish and infringing the independent choices of the individual.The "secret recipe" story came out last week when a public radio show noticed that one of the pages from Coca Cola's founder's notebook was visible in a 1979 newspaper article. Here's the alleged recipe.
The plaintiff, an Israeli Muslim, filed the suit following publication on the web last week of what is apparently the secret recipe of Coca Cola, and which allegedly contains alcohol. The class action suit was filed by Advs. Hani Tannus, Ofir Cohen, and Mahmud Machjana.
Alcohol is forbidden by Islam, and the plaintiff cites he has been unwittingly drinking alcohol for years. He therefore claims Coca Cola is guilty of misleading consumers, infringing the independent choices of the individual, and causing huge mental anguish.
The plaintiff says that his class action suit comprises NIS 1,000 compensation for each of the 1.2 million Muslims living in Israel.
The suit said, "This is one of the greatest deceptions in the history of consumer affairs, when a company ignores the existence of alcohol as an ingredient despite being aware that the Muslim world abstains from products like these. This is a very serious matter and it certainly won't be the last in the world in light of the fraud.
Coca-Cola has no alcohol in it, said the firm's manufacturer in Malaysia as it rubbished reports that the secret of the way it is prepared is out.
Coca-Cola Malaysia's public affairs and communications director Kadri Taib said alcohol was not an ingredient and no fermentation took place during the manufacture of the drink.
"The precise formulation of the drink is our company's most valuable trade secret.
"The ingredients and manufacturing process are rigorously regulated by government and health authorities in more than 200 countries, including Malaysia, which have consistently recognised the beverage as a non-alcoholic product," he said.
The clarification about alcohol is essential for the beverage manufacturer in the Muslim majority nation since Islam forbids it.
The demand is for compensation of the Muslim Ummah for psychological and religious damages theyh have suffered as a result of drinking Coca-Cola, which contains a proportion of alcohol... and the teachings of the Islamic religion prohibits drinking alcohol.I guess we shouldn't tell them the secret behind Mecca Cola....
Counsel explains that "the Muslim population in Israel, approximately 16%, were drinking Coca-Cola all the time without their knowledge that it contains alcohol, and this is what caused significant psychological damage after discovering the presence of alcohol.
"The Coca-Cola Company is deceiving consumers, particularly Muslims, for the past 150 years, and we demand compensation of 1000 shekels for every Muslim Arab citizen inside Israel, where the number of Muslims in Israel is 1.1879 million, so total of compensation is about 1.2 billion shekels."
If the Jerusalem District Court rules to compensate Muslims inside Israel 1.2 billion shekels, that will open the door to all the world's Muslims, estimated at about one billion Muslims, to bring cases against the Coca-Cola Company, which may have to declare bankruptcy to compensate those affected.
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of Ziyon
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonMore details have emerged of Lara Logan's terrifying ordeal at the hands of a frenzied mob.Even more shocking is that incidents like these are not that rare.
The 39-year-old foreign correspondent for CBS News show 60 Minutes was separated from her film crew in Cairo on February 11 and surrounded by as many as 200 men in Tahrir Square at the height of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations.
According to one source, reported in The Sunday Times newspaper, sensitive parts of her body were covered in red marks that were originally thought to have been bite marks.
After further examination they were revealed to be from aggressive pinching.
It has also been revealed that she was stripped, punched and slapped by the crowd, which was labelling her a spy and chanting 'Israeli' and 'Jew' as they beat her.
And medical sources have revealed that marks on her body were consistent with being whipped and beaten with the makeshift poles that were used to fly flags during the demonstration.
An unnamed friend of the reporter told The Sunday Times: 'Lara is getting better daily. The psychological trauma is as bad as, if not worse than, the physical injuries. She might talk about it at sometime in the future, but not now.'
So, wearing a black headscarf and a loose, long-sleeved red tunic over jeans, I waded through the crowd and started taking notes: on the men throwing rose petals, on the men shouting that they would die for the chief justice, on the men sacrificing a goat.The CPJ blog elaborates:
And then, almost predictably, someone grabbed my buttocks. I spun around and shouted, but then it happened again, and again, until finally I caught one offender’s hand and punched him in the face. The men kept grabbing. I kept punching. At a certain point — maybe because I was creating a scene — I was invited into the chief justice’s vehicle.
At the time, in June 2007, I saw this as just one of the realities of covering the news in Pakistan. I didn’t complain to my bosses. To do so would only make me seem weak. Instead, I made a joke out of it and turned the experience into a positive one: See, being a woman helped me gain access to the chief justice.
And really, I was lucky. A few gropes, a misplaced hand, an unwanted advance — those are easily dismissed. I knew other female correspondents who weren’t so lucky, those who were molested in their hotel rooms, or partly stripped by mobs. But I can’t ever remember sitting down with my female peers and talking about what had happened, except to make dark jokes, because such stories would make us seem different from the male correspondents, more vulnerable. I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me at home the next time something major happened.
Here are some of the cases of sexual violence against journalists CPJ has documented:A 2007 article from Columbia Journalism Review has more:
Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya was raped, kidnapped, and beaten in May 2000 after reporting on far-right paramilitaries while on assignment for the Bogotá daily El Espectador: "Floating in and out of consciousness, Bedoya was taken to a house across the street from the prison," wrote CPJ's Frank Smyth that same year. "The kidnappers bound her hands and feet, taped her mouth, and blindfolded her eyes. Then they drove her to Villavicencio, where she was savagely beaten and raped. During the assault, the men told her in graphic detail about all the other journalists who they planned to kill."
In 2006, we reported on a plot to kidnap and rape Mexican journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro. Cacho was arrested on December 17, 2005, and released on bail the next day in connection with a case against her for defamation and slander, which CPJ found was brought in retaliation for her reporting on a child pornography and prostitution ring. Tapes of telephone conversations between several people, two of whom were the governor of the state of Puebla, Mario Marín, and a local businessman, were delivered to the Mexico City offices of the daily La Jornada. Media reports said the recordings were made before and during Cacho's detention. In the tapes, obscene language was used to describe plans to put Cacho behind bars and assault her. In one conversation before Cacho's arrest, a man who was identified by the Mexican press as Hanna Nakad Bayeh, a Puebla-based clothing manufacturer, asked businessman José Camel Nacif Borge to pay someone to rape her in jail. According to the transcriptions published in La Jornada, Nacif replied, "she has already been taken care of."
The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers.
“My first thought was my cameras,” recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. “Then it was, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be raped.’˺” With her faced pressed into the soil, she couldn’t shout for help, and no one would have heard her anyway above the mob’s taunts. Suddenly a Good Samaritan in the crowd pulled the photographer by the camera straps several yards to the feet of some policemen who had been watching the scene without intervening. They sneered at her exposed chest, but escorted her to safety.
Alone in her hotel room that night, the photographer recalls, she cried, thinking, “What a bloody way to make a living.“ She didn’t inform her editors, however. “I put myself out there equal to the boys. I didn’t want to be seen in any way as weaker.”
Women have risen to the top of war and foreign reportage. They run bureaus in dodgy places and do jobs that are just as dangerous as those that men do. But there is one area where they differ from the boys–sexual harassment and rape. Female reporters are targets in lawless places where guns are common and punishment rare. Yet the compulsion to be part of the macho club is so fierce that women often don’t tell their bosses. Groping hands and lewd come-ons are stoically accepted as part of the job, especially in places where western women are viewed as promiscuous. War zones in particular seem to invite unwanted advances, and sometimes the creeps can be the drivers, guards, and even the sources that one depends on to do the job. Often they are drunk. But female journalists tend to grit their teeth and keep on working, unless it gets worse.I am certainly not going to criticize victims of sexual assault for not going public. However, the news industry as a whole has a responsibility to report on the topic, without naming names.
Because of the secrecy around sexual assaults, it’s hard to judge their frequency. Yet I know of a dozen such assaults, including one suffered by a man. Eight of the cases involve forced intercourse, mostly in combat zones. The perpetrators included hotel employees, support staff, colleagues, and the very people who are paid to guarantee safety–policemen and security guards. None of the victims want to be named. For many women, going public can cause further distress. In the words of an American correspondent who awoke in her Baghdad compound to find her security guard’s head in her lap, “I don’t want it out there, for people to look at me and think, ‘Hmmm. This guy did that to her, yuck.’ I don’t want to be viewed in my worst vulnerability.”
The only attempt to quantify this problem has been a slim survey of female war reporters published two years ago by the International News Safety Institute, based in Brussels. Of the twenty-nine respondents who took part, more than half reported sexual harassment on the job. Two said they had experienced sexual abuse. But even when the abuse is rape, few correspondents tell anyone, even friends. The shame runs so deep–and the fear of being pulled off an assignment, especially in a time of shrinking budgets, is so strong– that no one wants intimate violations to resound in a newsroom.
Rodney Pinder, the director of the institute, was struck by how some senior newswomen he approached after the 2005 survey were reluctant to take a stand on rape. “The feedback I got was mainly that women didn’t want to be seen as ‘special’ cases for fear that, a) it affected gender equality and b) it hindered them getting assignments,” he says.
Caroline Neil, who has done safety training with major networks over the past decade,
agrees. “The subject has been swept under the carpet. It’s something people don’t like to
talk about.”
In the cases that I know of, the journalists did nothing to provoke the attacks; they behaved with utmost propriety, except perhaps for one bikini-clad woman who was raped by a hotel employee while sunbathing on the roof in a conservative Middle Eastern country. The correspondent who was molested by her Iraqi security guard is still puzzling over the fact that he brazenly crept into her room while colleagues slept nearby. “You do everything right and then something like this happens,” she says. “I never wore tight Tshirts or outrageous clothes. But he knew I didn’t have a tribe that would go after him.”
That guard lost his job, but such punishment is rare. A more typical case is of an award winning British correspondent who was raped by her translator in Africa. Reporting him to a police force known for committing atrocities seemed like a futile exercise.
Like most foreign correspondents who were assaulted, those women were targets of opportunity. The predators took advantage because they could. Local journalists face the added risk of politically motivated attacks. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example, cites rape threats against female reporters in Egypt who were seen as government critics. Rebels raped someone I worked with in Angola for her perceived sympathy for the ruling party. In one notorious case in Colombia in 2000, the reporter Jineth Bedoya Lima was kidnapped and gang-raped in what she took as reprisal for her newspaper’s suggestion that a paramilitary group ordered some executions. She is the only colleague I know of who has gone on the record about her rape.
The general reluctance to call attention to the problem creates a vicious cycle, whereby editors, who are still typically men, are unaware of the dangers because women don’t bring them up. Survivors of attacks often suffer in lonely silence, robbed of the usual camaraderie that occurs when people are shot or kidnapped. It was an open secret in our Moscow press corps in the 1990s that a young freelancer had been gang-raped by policemen. But given the sexual nature of her injury, no one but the woman’s intimates dared extend sympathies.
Even close calls frequently go unmentioned. In my own case, I never reported to my foreign editor a narrow escape at an airport in Angola in 1995. Two drunken policemen pointing AK-47’s threatened to march a colleague and me into a shack for "some fun." We got away untouched, so why bring up the matter? I didn’t want my boss to think that my gender was a liability.
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonIran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted "cancerous" Israel Monday, a day after its premier Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the planned passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal.Iran regularly hurls insults at Zionists, but this is a field of diplomacy that we have pretty much ceded to Iran.
"The fake Zionist government is a cancerous tumor and the cause of different diseases and political, economic calamity in the region," the commander-in-chief of Iran told officials while marking the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed which in the Shiite calendar fell on Monday.
"The arrogance (Iran's standard term of abuse for the United States) is doing its best to preserve this warmongering tumor, but today the hatred of regional nations towards this cancerous tumor is more evident," state television quoted him as saying.
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of Ziyon
Monday, February 21, 2011Elder of ZiyonIn January 163.282 tons of strawberries, 2,693,430 carnations and 5.05 tons of bell peppers were exported.So the question is, is anyone calling for a boycott of Gaza flowers, strawberries and peppers?
Since the beginning of the season (28 November 2010) 315.27 tons of strawberries, 3,064,638 carnations and 6 tons of bell peppers were exported to European markets.
Under the severe conditions of Israel's illegal blockade which have brought Gaza imports and exports to a near halt, Agrexco has exploited its close relationship with the Israeli occupation authorities in order to secure a monopoly-like status in the export of Palestinian produce from Gaza, whenever a trickle of Palestinian products is granted to pass the blockade, often for Israeli public relations purposes. In the previous season, for instance, only a few tons of strawberries were allowed out of Gaza. While this season may see a larger quota of exports, the total number of Palestinian farmers involved is less than one thousand. Experts also predict that many of those can switch to producing items that are needed in the local Gaza market, if denied gateways to export strawberries and flowers. All claims that Agrexco operations benefit Palestinian farmers are no more than a fig leaf to cover up its complicity in Israel's violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.... Instead, we call for intensifying pressure against Agrexco through a systematic and full boycott of all of Agrexco’s products and services.Produce from the West Bank as well as Gaza are marketed by Agrexco under the brand name "Coral." They need to use Agrexco in order to pass all the certifications needed to get into the European market.
Um Hajjar Al-Ghalayini, 46 years old, owns half an acre of sandy Gaza land that produces two tons of strawberries every season. Since her husband died two years ago, the crop is the sole means of support for her nine children, mother-in-law and widowed sister, so every one of the bright red berries counts.
Last year, she had no choice but to sell her produce to the local market. That filled the Gaza markets with fruits and vegetables to the benefit of consumers, but for growers like Um Hajjar it was a disaster. Her earnings dropped by more than half and the family had a tough year economically. This week, as Israel took another step in easing its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, Um Hajjar delivered her strawberries to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border, their first leg of a journey to the more profitable markets in Europe.
“Now I can say that things are getting back to normal, if not on the right track,” she told The Media Line.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
