Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 06.28.06

Walid al-Houdaly has first-hand experience of Israel's jails
For Walid al-Houdaly, 46, the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants offers the opportunity that his wife and their 18-month-old child will be freed from prison.

The Palestinian militant factions who captured Cpl Gilad Shalit on Sunday - including the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the ruling Hamas party - have called for the release of all Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons in return for news on the missing soldier.

Israel is believed to have about 100 women and 300 under-18s among the more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

There is one soldier but there have been hundreds of Palestinians kidnapped from their houses
Walid al-Houdaly

Like many Palestinians, Mr Houdaly believes that the world is focussing on the fate of one Israeli soldier when thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained in what they regard as their fight for independence.

"There is one soldier, but there have been hundreds of Palestinians kidnapped from their houses," says the writer, referring in part to his wife who he says was dragged from their Ramallah home by Israeli soldiers early one morning.

"If the world protests about the kidnapping of one soldier, why don't they protest about the Palestinians that have been kidnapped in the last 10 years," Mr Houdaly adds, sitting in his Ramallah office with books scattered across his desk.

'Without charge'

Mr Houdaly says his wife, Ataf, 44, headed a women's organisation dedicated to providing health services for poor Palestinians.

But for the last seven months, Mr Houdaly says, she has been held in Israeli prison under administration detention - imprisonment without charge.

PALESTINIANS IN ISRAELI DETENTION
3,111 held by Israeli army, 741 in administrative detention (without trial)
5,127 held in Israeli prisons, 53 in administrative detention
Source: B'Tselem, January 2006

The mother went on a 16-day hunger strike before the Israeli prison authorities allowed her baby Aesha to be brought to stay with her, in the jail, Mr Houdaly says.

It is women and children such as Ataf and Aesha that the militant factions would like to see released.

But the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned that Israel would not allow itself to become the victim of "Hamas' terrorist blackmail".

"The question of freeing [Palestinian] prisoners is in no way on the Israeli government agenda," Mr Olmert said during a speech in Jerusalem.

"There will be no negotiations, no bargaining, no agreements."

History of exchanges

But the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in return for the release of Palestinians is nothing new.

Israel has always vowed to bring home its soldiers and civilians, whether dead or alive, making kidnapping a top priority for many its enemies.

Palestinians have supported the demand for prisoners to be released

In 2004, Israel released 429 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners and returned the bodies of 59 in return for the release of one Israeli and the bodies of three of its dead.

But Palestinian militants have rarely been successful in kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

The last time was in 1994, when Palestinian militants seized 19-year-old Nachshon Waxman. The soldier was killed with his three captors during a rescue operation by Israeli special forces.

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are an emotive issue for the majority of families in the occupied Palestinian territories, says George Jiacaman, a political science professor at the West Bank's Birzeit University.

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Topic(s): Internet
Date Posted: 06.17.06

From Geert:
(I heard from some in mainland China that the situation for ordinary
Internet users has indeed deteriorated compared to one or two years
ago. The question remains: is the censorship somehow still marginal or
indeed already substantial? Or have we passed that point? /Geert)

http://www.rsf.org

Yahoo! clear worst offender in censorship tests on search engines

Reporters Without Borders said it found Yahoo! to be the clear worst
offender in censorship tests the organisation carried out on Chinese
versions of Internet search engines Yahoo!, Google, MSN as well as their
local competitor Baidu.

The testing threw up significant variations in the level of filtering.
While yahoo.cn censors results as strictly as baidu.cn, search engines
google.cn and the beta version of msn.cn let through more information
from sources that are not authorized by the authorities.

While Microsoft has just said it does not operate censorship, Reporters
Without Borders found that the Chinese version of its search engine
displays similar results to those of google.cn, which admits to
filtering its content. Searches using a "subversive" key word display on
average 83% of pro-Beijing websites on google.cn, against 78% on msn.cn.
By contrast, the same type of request on an uncensored search engine,
like google.com, produces only 28% of pro-Beijing sources of
information. However, Microsoft like Google appears not to filter
content by blocking certain keywords but by refusing to include sites
considered illegal by the authorities.

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Topic(s): "War on Terror"
Date Posted: 06.13.06

How racism has invaded Canada

The Independent - United Kingdom; Jun 10, 2006
ROBERT FISK

This has been a good week to be in Canada - or an awful week, depending
on your point of view -to understand just how irretrievably biased
and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the
arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on "terrorism" charges, the Toronto Globe
and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have
indulged in an orgy of finger pointing that must reduce the chances of
any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the
country's more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian
Muslim right now, I'd already be checking the airline timetables for
a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?

First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked
of a plot to storm the parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop
off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the
"facts" or casting any doubt on their sources - primarily the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police or Canada's leak-dripping Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS) - reporters have told their readers
that the 17 were variously planning to blow up parliament, CSIS's
headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other
targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused
has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages.

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Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.12.06

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: THE REBEL WHO STRIKES A CHORD WITH IRANIANS
By Iason Athanasiadis

Newhouse News Service
June 8, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran -- It is 1977 in the Iranian city of Shiraz. Four young
men arrange themselves by height and lean on a wall to pose for a
photo. Two of them sport American-style T-shirts and three are wearing
flared jeans -- the uniform of the '70s fashion-conscious. But the
shortest man sticks out for his lack of style and conformity. Wearing a
nondescript shirt tucked into his trousers, the man who is now Iran's
president cuts a plain figure in one of the earliest photos of him
to enter the public domain.

"We headed down to Shiraz and Esfahan for six days in my car,"
recalls Hassan Beheshti, a childhood friend of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
who has stayed in touch with the president. "We went to the cinema,
watched films, had a good time."

The sequence of 10 photographs -- obtained during recent interviews
with the president's friends -- is well-thumbed and suffering from
light-corruption around the edges. But the scuffed shoes, ordinary
brown jacket and conservatively parted hair on the young, beardless
Ahmadinejad reveal a young man as obstinately dowdy and ordinary as
he remains today, 10 months into his term as president.

"He was religious at that time, more religious than us," adds Beheshti,
who went on to join a conservative militia after the 1979 Islamic
revolution but wore Levis and a flashy, imported leather jacket in some
of the photos. "We used to bet on the football (soccer) but Ahmadinejad
wouldn't. Even as of then, he was faithful to his religion."

Now the slight, out-of-place man in the old photos finds himself on
the world stage, playing a game of chicken with U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice over demands that Tehran cease its uranium
enrichment activities.

To Middle East watchers -- not to mention the other men in the old
photos -- the verbal volleys Ahmadinejad has been firing are hardly
surprising.

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Topic(s): Border
Date Posted: 06.02.06

Web users to 'patrol' US border

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/5040372.stm

A US state is to enlist web users in its fight against illegal immigration by offering live surveillance footage of the Mexican border on the internet.
The plan will allow web users worldwide to watch Texas' border with Mexico and phone the authorities if they spot any apparently illegal crossings.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said the cameras would focus on "hot-spots and common routes" used to enter the US.

US lawmakers have been debating a divisive new illegal immigration bill.

The Senate has approved a law that grants millions of illegal immigrants US citizenship and calls for the creation of a guest-worker programme, while beefing up border security.

But in order to come into effect, the plan must be reconciled with tougher anti-immigration measures backed by the House of Representatives, that insist all illegal immigration should be criminalised.

The issue has polarised politics and US society. Right-wing groups have protested against illegal immigrants, while millions of people marched in support of them last month.

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Topic(s): Bangladesh
Date Posted: 06.02.06

Shipbreakers of Bangladesh:
Dirty Ships, Dangerous Work and Global Labor
by Naeem Mohaiemen

"It is brutal and primeval. One of many injustices in Bangladesh,
dressed up as a success story by a deceitful elite." - Farid Bakht,
journalist

In 1992, The Economist revealed a memo written by the World Bank's
former chief economist Lawrence Summers. The memo discussed the
economic rationale for "encouraging more migration of dirty
industries" to Less Developed Countries (LDC):

"The measurements of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends
on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From
this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should
be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country
with the lowest wages."

The memo provoked outrage from the press, environmental groups, and
LDCs. Brazil's Secretary of the Environment, Jose Lutzenburger,
called it "a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation,
reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and arrogant ignorance of
many conventional 'economists'." Summers quickly disavowed the memo,
explaining that the remarks were meant to be an ironic aside to
illustrate that free trade would not necessarily lead to environmental
improvements for LDCs.

Whatever the provenance and intention of the memo, some of Summers'
prescriptions have indeed been implemented -- not by the Bank, but
rather through the logic of global markets. A prime example is the
shipbreaking industry, which has migrated from Northern to Southern
nations over the last three decades. Until the 1970s, the majority of
ship cutting was done in the US and Europe, using heavy machinery on
salvage decks. But increasing environmental regulations and labor
costs resulted in the transfer of this work to countries like Korea
and Taiwan. By the 1980s, as these fast-developing Asian "tigers"
also started turning away from this work, the industry migrated again
-- this time to India and Bangladesh.

Rusting Hulks Out At Sea
The statistics of the shipping industry are staggering in their
long-term implications. There are approximately 45,000 ships in the
world's seawaters. These include cargo ships, tankers, cruise ships,
and military vessels. Every four years, these carriers are required
to get a sea-worthiness certificate. After 25-30 years, the cost of
reinvestment to acquire this certificate is no longer profitable. As
a result, about 700 ships (15-25 million deadweight tonnes) are sold
every year to one of the Asian scrap yards. The exceptions are
military ships, which are not sold through the international brokerage
system. Over the next few decades, the number of ships that will need
to be decommissioned will increase dramatically. The reasons are
threefold: the glut of post-1980s built ships, most of which are
nearing the end of their sailing life; the increase in container
ships, which has reduced the use of general cargo ships; and new
maritime regulations that require double hulls for tankers, making
many existing tankers obsolete.

A majority of the world's ships are built in countries like Japan,
South Korea and China. These constructions fill orders placed by
industrialized nations, including Japan, UK, Greece, USA, Norway,
Singapore, and Denmark. But when it comes to scrapping obsolete
ships, there is a dramatic concentration in South Asian nations. Two
decades ago, 79 countries engaged in some ship recycling activity.
Today, 90% of that work is completed in India, Bangladesh or Pakistan.
Ship-breaking yards in Bangladesh alone dismantle about 90 giant
ships, mostly oil tankers, every year.

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Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 06.02.06

Between immigrants and natives

By Meron Benvenisti

It's been less than two weeks since the High Court of Justice
issued its ruling maintaining the deprivation of the rights of
Palestinians to reunify their families, and we already have the
decision that Palestinian MPs from Hamas, living in Jerusalem,
will be expelled if they don't resign within 30 days.

The suspicious will find a connection between the two decisions
and wonder if the government is deliberately attempting to try the
public and legal system's patience for evil acts bordering on
racism, as preparation for even more brutal steps. According to
the reactions so far, there have been no firm demands for an end
to this cruelty and the government can continue on its merry way;
the security excuse serves as an effective fig leaf from any
domestic criticism and foreign criticism can always be rejected as
forms of anti-Semitism.

Seemingly, there is no connection between the prevention of family
unification and the threat of expulsion; but the two matters touch
on basic perception of the status of Palestinians in their
homeland: It's no accident that both issues fall within the realm
of "entry to Israel," whether preventing it or stripping it.

The Israelis, children of immigrants, who in the best case are
only separated by a generation from the status of refugees -
uprooted and expelled - impose on native Palestinians the status
of foreigners, of living in a country to which they do not belong,
forcing them to fight for the right to live in their home, and
exposing them to an expulsion decree or banning their "entrance"
on the grounds that they "do not belong."

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