Palestine – Breaking News

Friday’s Terror Nonsense

By Yvonne Ridley

(source: Information Clearing House)

We are in the grip of yet another so-called terror plot designed to terrify the wits out of everyone.

Anyone of a nervous disposition was sent in to a tailspin of panic over the increasingly dramatic news coverage … this manifested itself in a tsunami of 911 calls in America which paralysed parts of New York, Maine and Philadelphia for several hours. Mercifully in Britain the majority of us refuse to get caught up in this bloody nonsense for many different reasons. The primary one being we had already endured more than three decades of this during the height of the IRA activities in London.

Virtually every single day for 30 years there would be some terror alert in the English capital – it was called shoestring terrorism. One telephone call could bring a halt to a section of the London Underground. The police would make their necessary checks, the media would ignore it and we all got on with our lives refusing to be intimidated by Irish terrorism.

And that is exactly how we should have treated Friday’s terror nonsense – that does not mean to say people should be reckless or less vigilant but governments should stop trying to impose a fear factor on its citizens.. We can not sacrifice our freedoms and liberties just because America wants to impose its own neurosis, hysteria and paranoia on the rest of the world.

Read More »Us intelligence trades on fear

By Iqbal Jassat

Has the American dream of permanent supremacy in the oil-rich region of the world been shattered?

It’s a question that not only haunts influential institutions that function as pillars of power in America’s global hegemony; but also torments a wide array of rightwing think tanks masquerading as ‘impartial analysts’.

In addition, Israel, America’s foremost regional ally and partner in policing the Arab world is also in agony! The Zionist entity that for far too long had played roughshod over the lives of its victims is suddenly gripped with misery, distress and wretchedness.It’s a scenario that a few weeks ago would have been dismissed as unthinkable. Yet, as36unfold in dramatic and drastic ways across the entire Middle East and North Africa, it has become clear that politics governing the Arab street will not be the same ever again.

The ouster from power of Tunisia’s autocratic leader Ben Ali commenced the opening of a new chapter of popular revolts. And against all odds, the inspiring success of Egypt’s ‘intifada’ leading to the toppling of the region’s highly prized trophy Hosni Mubarak reinforced the fact that the face of geo-politics had changed.

As Bahrain and Yemen remain gripped with mounting pressure from street protests demanding fundamental human rights coupled with regime change, the Saudi kingdom’s long-suffering populace has now demonstrated that they too have overcome the threshold of fear and taken to the street to challenge the King’s police state!

While full-blown revolutions intensify against American-backed dictators and monarchs – many of whom are in power for decades without any accountability, Libya and its maverick ‘brother leader’ dominate the current concentration of news, analysis and policy debates.

Read More »New reality of arab streets demands torment dictators their american backers

By Sipho McDermott

(source: Mail & Guardian, Friday,11-03-2011)

Former Constitutional Court Judge Kate O’Regan opened the Regulations and Rights conference at the University of the Witwatersrand on Wednesday with a warning that the media need to be reflexive in applying their important role in keeping society democratic, and that the judicial landscape is working to ensure their freedom.

The conference, hosted by Wits Journalism and the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef), is focused on interrogating the rights and responsibilities of African media.

“The press, like all institutions critical to democracy, needs to be reflexive,” she said. While warning that this powerful institution needs to wield its power carefully, she pointed to its importance for a healthy constitutional democracy: “Democracies are noisy places because of freedom of expression, whereas authoritarian societies are silent. What is slightly disconcerting about South Africa is we get worried by how noisy we are.”

Recent rulings internationally have made it clear that protection of privacy is of critical importance the closer one gets to the intimate life of an individual, but of decreasing importance the closer one moves to state institutions, she said. This freeing of reporting on the government is an “important constraint on the power of the state”.

In cases where people have brought libel and defamation cases against the media, O’Regan said there is an increasing legal trend towards accepting the importance of the professional codes of ethics that guide journalists’ work, with judgements’ primary criterion being if the journalist has worked with these codes. In such cases the journalist needs to prove that they did everything to ensure their information was correct and the story fair.

But in cases where the journalist does get it wrong, “The apology is a very important part of undoing damage,” she said

Read More »The media cannot should not be complacent

A Cairo court on Tuesday overruled the Egyptian government’s decision to allow exports of natural gas to Israel and said the constitution gave parliament the right to decide on sales of natural resources.

But Israel expressed confidence that the Egyptian government would not allow any interruption to gas deliveries under the deal despite the court order.
 
A senior Egyptian official said the verdict did not require immediate implementation and the government would appeal against it. Cabinet spokesman Magdy Rady said the government respected the judiciary but could not comment until it receives the ruling.

Judicial sources said the government could ignore the ruling, as it has done in many past cases, or postpone action by filing a countersuit challenging the decision.

Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructure said it was confident the political agreement covering the gas between the Egyptian and Israeli governments would remain in effect.

"The … ministry has no doubt that deals between the Egyptian gas company and its customers in Israel remain valid.

The ministry is convinced that the supply of gas from Egypt to Israel will continue as usual," it added.

Former diplomat Ibrahim Yussri, along with some members of the opposition, brought the case against the government several months ago.
 
Judicial Wrangling

Gas started flowing to Israel through a pipeline for the first time in May under an agreement signed in 2005 for the supply of 1.7 billion cubic meters a year over 20 years.

The group of lawyers who filed the suit against the government said the Israelis were buying the gas at prices below the international level. The Egyptian government is reluctant to reveal the price it receives for natural gas exports.

The government never submitted the gas deal with Israel to parliament, arguing it was a private arrangement between EMG and the state-owned utility company Israel Electric Corp. and therefore outside the court’s jurisdiction.

The court, however, ruled that "national resources belong to current and future generations, and the executive must first get parliament’s approval" on gas export deals, a judicial source told AFP.

"(Parliament) is the body best qualified to monitor the actions of the administration with regards to granting concessions to exploit natural wealth," the court said, quoted by the Egyptian state news agency MENA.

Some Egyptian leftists and Arab nationalists oppose in principle the sale of gas to Israel, which fought four wars with Egypt between 1948 and 1973 before making peace in 1979, though relations are not “normalized.”

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood opposition, which controls a fifth of seats in parliament, has opposed exporting gas to Israel because of what it calls the country’s punishing blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
 
THE PALESTINE CHRONICLE

Read More »Egypt court orders freeze on Isarael gas exports