White Out USA
Photo by AFP
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Why a prisoner swap is key to peace
| Why a prisoner swap is key to peace | ||||
| By Richard Silverstein | ||||
One never knows what to say about the on again, off again negotiations to free Gilad Shalit, an abducted Israeli soldier, and the seemingly unending media stories announcing an imminent deal. But there are now enough serious signals that a deal is close, that it is worthwhile considering what could happen and its possible impact on Israeli-Palestinian relations. So, what is different now from previous rumors of a deal? Well, first of all, the Israeli military censor has thrown up a complete embargo over coverage of this issue. This is unprecedented in Israeli history and can only mean that Israel realises that any false note introduced into the mix could doom the negotiations. The Israeli far right is opposed to the exchange on tactical and strategic grounds. A new leader?
He is the most respected Palestinian political leader - including Abbas and even Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza - and a potential future leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In today's Palestine, his role and stature is roughly akin to that of Nelson Mandela in apartheid-era South Africa. The current leadership of the PA under Abbas is viewed as exceedingly weak by Palestinians, Americans and Israelis. Neither the PA, Hamas, nor the Obama administration have made any public statements about Barghouti's impending freedom. Such a reconciliation could work one of two ways: Either a consolidated Palestinian leadership under Barghouti could then become a much stronger and coherent partner in any future peace negotiations led by the US; or Barghouti might use his ascendancy to focus inward on Palestinian solidarity and turn away from negotiations with Israel if he judges them to be unlikely to result in any agreement he could sign. While the US has made no statements about Barghouti, I believe that the general pragmatic thrust of current policy would welcome his release and attempt to use it to build a bridge to the Palestinian side and encourage it to join negotiations - with the caveat, of course, that the Palestinians must feel that they have something to gain by doing so, which is not currently the case. I am afraid that the current Israeli government has proven itself adept at outwaiting and outsmarting Barack Obama, the US president, and the PA, so it is doubtful that a PA headed by Barghouti could work any immediate miracles. Still, the Netanyahu government, secure and stable as it now seems, will not be so forever. Indeed, if a strong PA leader comes on the scene - one that Israelis feel could be trusted to deliver on his promises and who could carry Hamas with him - then the electorate might feel more secure in electing a more forthcoming government. Of course, there are many rivers to cross before we get to that point, but in the long term Barghouti's release could produce positive results for peace. Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog dedicated to Israeli-Arab peace. He also publishes at Comment is Free, Alternet, the Huffington Post, Seattle Times, Jewish Forward and Haaretz. | ||||
|
Copenhagen: A lesson in geopolitics
| Copenhagen: A lesson in geopolitics | ||||||||
| By Joanna Kakissis | ||||||||
After two weeks of international deadlock and an all-night marathon negotiating session that produced a thin and toothless accord, the biggest climate talks in history devolved from "Hopenhagen" to "Nopenhagen". The Copenhagen Accord - brokered at the last minute by Barack Obama, the US president, with China, India, Brazil and South Africa - did not receive universal support from the 193 countries participating in the climate summit. It provoked reactions from fury to despair. But longtime observers of climate negotiations never expected a sweeping deal in Copenhagen, especially considering today's polarised and charged geopolitics. The rift between rich and poor countries remains wide, and the chasm paralysed the negotiations.
Wen Jiabao, the premier of China - the world's biggest emitter of CO2 gases - also snubbed 11th-hour meetings with Obama and other leaders, sending low-level aides instead. Cleo Paskal, a fellow in the Energy, Environment and Development Programme at the British think tank Chatham House, says the world's changing political landscape is partly why even Obama's last-minute brokering did not produce something powerful. "Climate change has become part of global politics," Paskal says. "There was a very high expectation from the West that a deal would be pushed through. But what's happened is a real wake-up call to how geopolitics has changed." Environmental groups, developing nations such Venezuela and Cuba, and much of the European media criticised Obama for the deal. But, not everyone was critical of the deal. "Every leader who was there staked political capitol on being able to win," Paskal says. The Copenhagen Accord did have victories, including the first significant climate fund for poor nations. The accord promises to deliver $30bn of aid over the next three years and to raise $100mn in yearly climate financing for poor countries by 2020.
Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, declared that rich countries owe poor countries billions of dollars in "climate reparations" and demanded the creation of a "climate change tribunal" for countries who do not stop polluting. "That framing is never going to fly, at least in the US congress," says Geoff Dabelko, the director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. "The question is whether these initial financial commitments are seen by developing countries as an incremental step that moves towards figures they see as sufficient." The next opportunity for a treaty will be the 2010 UN climate conference in Mexico City. That may be an opportunity to solidify what did not happen in Copenhagen, though many of the same challenges will face leaders there. If there continues to be an international stalemate on a binding climate accord, countries may try to find regional ways to deal with carbon emissions as well as more immediate environmental issues, such as polluted water supplies, says Paskal of Chatham House. She also says countries should consider sharing information and ideas on how to adapt to global warming-induced changes such as rising sea levels and more severe storms. "The developed world is going to suffer way more severe impacts than is being acknowledged," she says. | ||||||||
| ||||||||
Little accord in Copenhagen
| Little accord in Copenhagen | ||||||
| By Alan Fisher in Copenhagen | ||||||
With a wish for "happy holidays" and a bang of a gavel, the marathon Copenhagen summit drew to a close. It had been two years in the planning, there were two weeks of, at times, angry debate, but there was no consensus, only bitterness and anger at the deal done between the US and the world's emerging economies.
In the early hours of Saturday, he sparked anger when in his slow and measured tone, he expressed his view: "You cannot ask Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. "This is devoid of any sense of responsibility, morality and it is a solution based on the values, the very values which in our opinion channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces." The link with the Holocaust was quickly condemned, but later, in the halls of this sprawling centre, one delegate who would never consider himself a friend of the man from Sudan told me quietly: "He was wrong to invoke the comparison, but he's right. Millions will die because of this decision." Margerehe Segervik from Norway summed up the feeling of many. "We believe that one step forward is better than two steps back. That's why we support this document even if it's not perfect," she said. He joked he has slept for only two hours in the past 48, hadn't had dinner and had missed breakfast trying to secure a deal and then talking with delegates. But for him, this was not a bad deal, but a significant step forward. He told the final session: "I know that most developed and developing countries, they are not all happy but I believe that through this adoption of the Copenhagen Accord you will be able to get everything you need."
It creates a fund of billions of dollars to help poor and vulnerable countries fight climate change and it allows an international exchange of information on carbon emission cuts. The summit agreed to try to reach a legally binding deal sometime in 2010, but given this difficulties getting this limited deal, that seems more an aspiration than a genuine hope. Looking forward to the next major meeting in this series, Cop16 he said: "I think we've got to achieve in Mexico what we failed to achieve here." The steps agreed by some will begin to be introduced early next year - and they believe they will make a difference. But there's no doubting the sense of frustration and anger because Copenhagen was hailed as a time and place which promised so much and delivered so little. | ||||||
|
The end of American exceptionalism
| The end of American exceptionalism | ||||||||
| By Mark LeVine | ||||||||
It is no coincidence that the one should happen in the midst of the other. They may seem utterly disconnected, but both reflect the end of an idea of American exceptionalism that for too long has excused and even enabled the violation of the very ideals it was meant to reflect. Woods became the richest athlete in history by creating a persona defined by unprecedented talent coupled with steely invincibility and a sense of "fair play" supposedly peculiar to golf - and to the US as well. Sponsors paid him hundreds of millions of dollars and Americans of all classes and colours flocked to his "brand" in order to identify with such a consummate winner, the epitome of the American dream and its sense of uniqueness and historic mission. No one cared to explore the realities beneath the dream until it could be spoon fed to them in depoliticised, sensationalised tabloid format. Brand Tiger
Few fans, never mind the mainstream media, will look beyond the sex to scrutinise the engine that has powered brand Tiger. Serial infidelity can be safely condemned and ultimately forgiven. It would be a lot harder to ignore the implications of the relationships with unsavoury corporations that have made Tiger fabulously wealthy when he inevitably returns to professional golf. But who wants to be reminded of exploited third world labour or toxic oil spills while watching Tiger sink another miracle put? Like the trans-fats or preservatives in fast foods, thinking about them will only detract from the consumer experience. And so while Woods has admitted personal mistakes in order to preserve his brand, the underlying rationale and costs of the system that sustains it (and all those who feed off it, from television networks to tabloids) will not be challenged, or even mentioned. And this is where the Tiger Woods saga intersects with the situation Obama now faces. Brand America Like Woods, America's brand is under threat. Unlike Woods, however, Obama cannot be blamed for the problems that so tarnished the country's image in the last decade. Indeed, as Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Nobel committee, all but admitted, he was awarded the Peace Prize in good measure because of his attempts to re-brand the US as a less bellicose, more cooperative global leader. Read through the "Obama Doctrine" outlined in his Nobel speech, however, and the similarities to the strategy behind the rehabilitation of 'Brand Tiger' are clear. "We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend," the president eloquently intoned. He cannot do so because that would call into question the myth of American exceptionalism that for so long has been used to justify them. As long as the US is a unique, divinely appointed and essentially just power, its mistakes, however costly, do not threaten the core values that have made it exceptional. System of global dominance Obama cannot acknowledge what the rest of the world well understands: that the wars he has inherited, and have now made his own, are the direct result of decades of policies aimed at supporting a system that enabled the global dominance of the US, but at the cost of large-scale violence, oppression and exploitation across the developing world. Rather than challenge or even scrap the system that produced this violence and the periodic blowback it generates, the Obama doctrine will reinforce it. Thus the bewildering continuities between Obama's policies and those of George Bush, his predecessor, emerge: the continued presence in Iraq - which is not close to "winding down" as the president described it, the deepening footprint in Afghanistan, the refusal to support treaties banning land mines and biological weapons, the continued use of private mercenaries, the ongoing detainee abuse at Guantanamo and Bagram prisons, and defence spending higher even than his Republican predecessor's. These are not mistakes; they are inevitable policy choices in a system built on imperial dominance. And like empires past, they are justified by the use of rhetoric and arguments that exalt one's own ideals while misrepresenting and denigrating those against whom the mistakes are committed. But where Bush administration officials readily admitted America's imperial status, Obama has banished the idea from polite conversation even as he shores up the system. And so Obama declared in Oslo that when the US fights it does so as the "standard bearer" of morally justifiable violence, engaging only in "just wars" to pacify otherwise unresolvable conflicts. Good versus evil?
There are, he continued, "limits [to] reason," particularly when one is fighting an enemy that can only be associated, as Obama - like Bush before him - did, to Hitler. Because America's intentions and values are uniquely pure, its sacrifices alone are worthy of mention. The fact that the global security so underwritten was, like that ensured by other empires past and present, derived from the subjugation, exploitation and death of countless people - described by Obama in strikingly imperial tones, as "tribal" and unable to "reason" - cannot be mentioned. Their deaths, in the millions in Vietnam, in the hundreds and tens of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention in Latin America and Africa during the Cold War) are left unremarked. When they must be mentioned, conflicts underwritten by the US, such as that between Israel and Palestine, are historically and morally whitewashed. Instead of condemning a client state continuing to occupy a besieged nation, Obama laments the "hardening" of "tribal lines" between "Arabs and Jews" - a description so devoid of factual relevance that Obama the law professor would have surely scolded any student who uttered them. Seeking new vocabulary At its heart, Obama's Nobel acceptance speech reveals that even this most eloquent and reflective of presidents cannot find a new vocabulary to describe America's relationship with, and role in, the world. The reason is clear: such a vocabulary cannot exist in the geopolitical framework in which Obama, whatever his intentions, feels constrained to operate. Instead, the myth of American exceptionalism must be reasserted; it is the only way the president, and the American people with him, can imagine that the US will not ultimately suffer the same fate as the empires before it; that the iron laws of imperial rise and decay, and the violence attending both, simply will not apply to it. Only then can it be imagined that the "evil in the world" has not touched us; that the "imperfections of man and the limits of reason," as the president described them, apply to other men and ideas, and not to ours. Only then can Obama mention human rights seven times in his speech while leaving unsaid what everyone sitting before him well knew: that US aid and support for regimes that systematically violate these rights would continue the next morning uninterrupted. Voices from below The awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama reads like a desperate attempt to resuscitate the discredited idea of a "Great Man" of history ushering in a new era. It is an understandable fantasy, given the magnitude of the problems the world confronts. But it distracts from the reality that it will be movements from below, however imperfect and irrational they can be, that will create, in Obama's words, "the world that ought to be," not leaders from above, however audacious their rhetoric. In that regard, perhaps the most historically significant aspect of Obama's speech is its irrelevance on the ground. Around the world people who once looked to the US for inspiration or support are taking matters into their own hands. No one is waiting for the US to save or even support them anymore. The signs are everywhere, particularly in nearby Copenhagen, where smaller nations and a global NGO community is standing up to the US and other powers with unprecedented force. But perhaps the most interesting signs surround the conflict Obama would not name, in the Holy Land. Capital: East Jerusalem
On the ground, Palestinians are slowly taking responsibility for resistance back into their own hands, literally taking apart sections of the Separation Wall piece by piece rather than wait for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to make another ineffectual move. At a closed door meeting I just returned from in Istanbul, Palestinian and Israeli scholars and activists, including those deeply involved in the settlement movement, are beginning the hard but necessary work of envisioning a new architecture of identity that would allow Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to share sovereignty and territory throughout the whole of Israel/Palestine. These and other uncoordinated attempts to change the basic structure of the system Obama is trying to reinforce represent the first stirrings of a new vocabulary, even language of change. When coupled with the burgeoning struggles for democracy and human rights in the Muslim world, and even broader struggles across the global south, they constitute a direct challenge to the system President Obama, like his counterparts in Moscow, Beijing, and other global power centres, prefers to leave unnamed. Such a multi-layered, often disorganised movement will likely remain too amorphous and hard to define ever to award a Nobel Peace Prize. But if history is kind, it just might help usher in the global transformation that Obama and the Nobel committee can only dream of. Mark LeVine is currently visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His books include Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. | ||||||||
|
US health bill passes key hurdle
| US health bill passes key hurdle | ||
After months of compromise and often bitter debate in the US congress a multi-billion dollar healthcare reform bill has passed its first key vote in the Senate. Barack Obama, the US president, hailed the vote as a victory in the battle to push through a far-reaching overhaul of the American healthcare system. But as Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports, the final outcome remains unpredictable. | ||
|
Thai medical tourism on the rise
| Thai medical tourism on the rise | ||
As the US debates multi-billion dollar reforms to its health system, a growing number of Americans are seeking out medical treatment abroad. Many are travelling to Thailand, where they are finding medical care cheaper and with better care than they might receive at home. Al Jazeera's Aela Callan reports on a growing trend of patients from across the world travelling to Thailand for affordable healthcare. | ||
|
Mexico beach project stirs concern
| Mexico beach project stirs concern | ||
Years of overdevelopment and major hurricanes have stripped large parts of Mexico’s Caribbean coast of its sand. In the tourist resort of Cancun, the government has embarked on a multi-million-dollar project to pump sand back onto the beaches. Hotel owners hope the recovery project will bring tourists back, but environmental activists are giving warning it could cause a fresh ecological disaster. Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin reports from the beach. | ||
|
Al-Qaeda speak out at Yemen rally
| Al-Qaeda speak out at Yemen rally | |||
Suspected al-Qaeda commanders have appeared at an anti-government rally in southern Yemen, held at the site of an air raid, reportedly backed by the US, that killed dozens of civilians. Al Jazeera broadcast footage of an unmasked man and his armed compatriot telling the crowd that al-Qaeda's fight was with America rather than the Yemeni military. "We carry bombs for God's enemies," the man said at the rally, which took place on Monday. "Soldiers, you should know that we do not want to fight you. There is no problem between you and us. The problem is between America and its agents. Beware taking the side of America." Yemen's government has been battling al-Qaeda in the country at the same time as dealing with a Shia uprising in the north and rising secessionist sentiment in the south. 'Collateral damage' The al-Qaeda rally took place in the southern Abyan province in an area that was bombed in an air raid last week. The government said at the time that the raid had foiled a planned series of suicide bombings by attacking targets that included an al-Qaeda training centre. But dozens of civilians, including children, are thought to have been killed in the bombing. Abbas al-Assal, a local human rights activist, said at the time that 64 people were killed, including 23 children and 17 women. Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a political analyst based in Yemen, said that the air raids meant civilian casualties were unavoidable, but that the government could take steps to lessen public anger. "Unfortunately collateral damage cannot be avoided in operations like this [as] al-Qaeda live with their families in their bases and training camps, so there's no way of avoiding it," he told Al Jazeera. US support Al-Iryani said the government should announce the names of the al-Qaeda operatives killed in the raid. "There's nothing that the government can do in regards to dealing with al-Qaeda per se, but addressing people's grievances in other issues could increase the credibility of the state," he said. The New York Times newspaper said on Saturday that the US gave military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces to carry out the attack. Supporters of Yemen's so-called Southern Movement, which calls for independence and accuses the government in Sanaa of sidelining the south, participated in the rally which marked the bombing, calling for an investigation into the attack. An explosion disrupted the rally and killed three people. The cause of the blast was unclear, though it has been blamed on a cache of unexploded munitions. Fighters in Yemen and Saudi Arabia earlier this year announced a loose alliance under the name of "al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula", taking Yemen as their base. | |||
|
Bitter weather continues in Europe
| Bitter weather continues in Europe | |||
Bitter weather conditions in Europe are continuing to disrupt travel plans for thousands of people over the Christmas holiday season. Freezing temperatures are expected to disrupt air, road and train travel on Tuesday. However, Eurostar restarted a partial train service between the UK and France from the Gare du Nord station in Paris to London on Tuesday morning. The service had been closed for three days leaving thousands of people stranded. The first train departed at about 8am (0700 GMT) carrying 750 passengers, the majority of whom had been stranded for days. More than 2,000 passengers were trapped inside the trains on Friday and Saturday after five trains broke down and 50,000 people have had their journey's cancelled. Long queues "The queues are big, stretching around the lounges, and they have only got longer this morning," Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, at London's Kings Cross Station, said. "Those travelling on Eurostar today are not people with tickets to travel today but those who were supposed to be travelling on Saturday and Sunday." Ian Nunn, a senior Eurostar executive, told Al Jazeera: "People are bearing with us. We are doing our level best to deal with the backlog. "We are asking people to only turn up if they have tickets for Saturday or Sunday. The priority is to deal with passengers who are stranded and have been so for two or three days. "[To our passengers] we say sorry. We are refunding tickets and trying to be practical." Weather forecasters are expecting snow to continue falling in the UK, northern France and the Netherlands. The low temperatures, which have fallen to as about -30C in Germany and -20C in Poland over past days, and heavy snows are raising fears of further deaths across the continent. At least 80 people have died in Europe, including 42 mostly homeless people in Poland and 27 others in Ukraine. 'Big inconvenience' Warsaw, Poland's capital, has suffered temperatures of -15C below average, while Russia has also been feeling its heaviest snow of the season. Temperatures are expected to rise on Thursday, with westerly wind chills dropping and central European temperatures increasing by 5 or 6C. Some airports, including Frankfurt, are beginning to allow aircraft to take off, but flight disruptions are expected to continue. Flights have been cancelled in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain and main highways were blocked across Europe where some regions had more than 50cm of snow. Challands said: "The weather is still incredibly cold here and its not looking to get any better any time soon. Temperatures are still in minus figures all over the continent. "Mostly people are trying to get back for Christmas to see their families, so it is a big inconveniece for them." The French government has said that it will investigate the breakdown of Eurostar trains, which they believe may be due to more than the unusually dry snow sucked into train engines the firm has blamed. | |||
|
Philippines volcano alert 'high'
| Philippines volcano alert 'high' | |||||
Scientists in the Philippines have said a major explosive eruption could occur at any time as the Mount Mayon volcano in the centre of the country rumbles to life. Almost 50,000 residents living on the slopes of the Philippines' most-active volcano have been moved to emergency shelters, as local officials brace for a major disaster. The evacuees are being told to prepare for an uncomfortable Christmas, with little sign that it will be safe enough to return home before the holiday season. Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said scientists had recorded an "intense level of unrest" at the volcano, with hundreds of small volcanic quakes and large plumes of ash. "The likelihood of an explosive eruption is high," Solidum said, speaking from nearby Legazpi City, although he added it was not 100 per cent certain. Solidum said his team had recorded 1,266 volcanic quakes in the last 24 hours, down from nearly 2,000 the previous day. But he said while the quakes were fewer, they were more powerful. Health fears Volcanologists have put the alert around Mayon at level four on a five-point scale.
On Tuesday Mayon sprayed volcanic ash over a wide area Tuesday, raising new health fears for thousands living around the volcano. "The main problem of the eruption from a distance is the fine ash which is being generated by the collapse of rock fragments from the lava flow," said Solidum, speaking to Philippines TV. "It's not very thick, just a few millimetres of ash but that is the most dangerous part because it is very fine ash." Health officials have said the tiny particles could cause respiratory problems or skin diseases, and could even affect the thousands of people crammed into evacuation centres outside the eight-kilometre danger zone. In the village of Guinobatan, some 14km from Mayon and well beyond the official danger zone, residents complained of stinging eyes and said they could feel the particles irritating their skin. Volcanic ash from Mayon has proved extremely deadly in the past. During the volcano's last eruption in 2006, the volcano oozed lava and vented No one was killed by the eruption itself, but three months later, a powerful typhoon dislodged tons of volcanic ash creating an avalanche of mud and boulders that crushed entire villages, leaving more than 1,000 people dead. | |||||
|
Israel edges towards prisoner swap
| Israel edges towards prisoner swap | ||||||||||||||
Israel's cabinet has handed its response to a proposed prisoner exchange deal with Hamas to a German mediator, following lengthy debate between ministers. No details of the Israeli response, which could see hundreds of Palestinian prisoners swapped for an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip, were immediately available on Tuesday. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier at the centre of the exchange, was captured in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters in June 2006 and has been held by Hamas ever since. The Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed source close to the negotiations, as saying Israel had passed its decision to the German mediator and it was now up to Hamas to decide whether to accept the Israeli position. Under the terms called for by Hamas, a deal would see Shalit released in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. 'Not compromise' Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the Gaza Strip, said Hamas was standing firm on its demands. "Hamas's position has been re-enforced to us this morning. They will not compromise on the list of demands which includes a full list of prisoners ... They will not accept anything other than that. "From their perspective, the ball is in Israel's court." Some Israeli ministers are reportedly opposed to freeing Palestinians convicted of carrying out fatal attacks in Israel. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said the Israeli cabinet had held five rounds of often tense talks over the past 48 hours, in what had been billed as "make or break" time for the deal. But instead the cabinet released a statement early on Tuesday instructing the team negotiating Shalit's release to continue their efforts to secure his return.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and now head of a US-based think-tank, said it was unclear whether the apparent deadlock in the Israeli cabinet was a case of brinkmanship or a rejection of the deal, or a calculated decision to postpone and drag out making a decision. Speaking to Al Jazeera from New York, he said the Israeli public would most likely support a deal, "but the real question is whether Mr [Binyamin] Netanyahu [Israel's prime minister] is up for making a decision". The issue of Shalit's detention had become a significant factor in the Israeli psyche, Levy said, reviving what he called the "national trauma" over Ron Arad, the now apparently deceased Israeli pilot captured during the Lebanon war. Call for decision Between the meetings, Netanyahu met Shalit's parents, who earlier made an impassioned plea for ministers to agree to a swap. "I hope that they will decide today," Aviva Shalit, the soldier's mother had said. "And that each minister knows that his decision will decide whether Gilad lives or dies."
At a protest outside the prime minister's official residence, dozens of demonstrators carried cardboard cutouts of Shalit and urged the cabinet ministers to wrap up an agreement. If approved, the exchange would be subject to a 48-hour period for opponents to file legal challenges. There was no immediate comment on a potential exchange from Hamas officials, but there has been increasing anticipation of a deal being reached in recent weeks. Negotiations Intermittent negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been conducted indirectly, mainly through Egypt, since Shalit was seized by fighters from Hamas and allied groups. On Sunday, Omar Suleiman, Egypt's intelligence chief, held the latest in a series of talks with senior officials in Israel.
Israel has, so far, been reluctant to meet Hamas's demand for the release of dozens of Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks on Israelis. It also wants Hamas to agree to some of the prisoners being deported to areas other than the West Bank to prevent them from joining groups of Palestinian fighters in the future. Netanyahu is said to be facing pressure from the families of Israelis killed by Palestinian fighters now being held in Israeli jail not to agree to their release. According to Israeli media, the Israeli prime minister favours a plan that would see the prisoners sent instead to the Gaza Strip or into exile in foreign countries. Staggered release The Associated Press news agency quoted a Palestinian source as saying that the Palestinian prisoners would be released in two stages. A first group of 450 are to be freed as Shalit is handed over to the Egyptians, and then returned to Israel. The remainder would be released weeks or even months later. More than 10,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli jails. In October, Israel freed about 20 Palestinian women prisoners in exchange for a video showing Shalit in captivity. The video showed Shalit alive and moving - the first proof of his well-being since he was captured. | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
Obama praises senate health vote
| Obama praises senate health vote | |||||||
A key vote on healthcare legislation in the US Senate is a "major victory for the American people", Barack Obama, the US president has said. The vote late on Monday night overcomes an important hurdle in a far-reaching overhaul of the US health system, which Obama has made a central part of his domestic agenda. The vote follows months of compromise and often bitter debate in the US congress over the multi-billion-dollar health bill. It all but ensures that the senate will approve a bill extending health care to 30 million uninsured Americans before Friday's Christmas holiday. But the final outcome remains unpredictable. Following a final vote in the senate scheduled for Thursday, the bill will still need to be reconciled with a more expansive version passed by the House of Representatives last month. On Monday, Obama sought to refute a key Republican argument against the legislation, saying his critics' frequent charge that the measure will inflate the ballooning US budget deficit and swell the country's debt "does not hold water". 'Tremendous difference' Speaking after the vote, Obama said: "By standing up to the special interests - who've prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now - the senate has moved us closer to reform that makes a tremendous difference for families, for seniors, for businesses, and for the country as a whole." But detractors have said the bill is not strong enough to overhaul the healthcare system after a public option to extend government-backed coverage without insurance was dropped.
It would also reduce other barriers to gaining insurance, with those without work-based cover being given options to buy cover and help prevent people with pre-existing health conditions from being denied insurance. The measure also got the support of the influential American Medical Association (AMA), which represents the interests of nearly 250,000 doctors in the country. "America has the best health care in the world - if you can get it - but for far too many people, access to care is out of reach," said Cecil Wilson, the organisation's president-elect. Three main sticking points - a government-run insurance option, language related to restrictions on federal funds for abortion, and different tax approaches to raise revenue for the changes - are likely to dominate negotiations on reconciling the two versions of the proposed health plan. 'Public' insurance The senate bill will no longer include the "public" insurance option that was in the House version, dropped to appease moderate Democratic opponents. Both the senate and House bills include compromise language designed to ensure federal funds are not used to pay for coverage of abortions. Ben Nelson, a Democrat senator, said he will reject a merged bill that changes his abortion language. The senate plan, negotiated by Nelson, would allow states to opt out of including plans with abortion coverage on the exchange and require anyone with abortion coverage to write two separate premium checks. Despite being low-key the topic of tax revenues is expected to be the thorniest of the three, with both the House and Senate taking different approaches to help raise the money to pay for the bill. The House bill has a tax on the wealthiest Americans while the senate taxes expensive insurance plans, with both raising major objections in each chamber. A few other issues that need to be ironed out include the different penalties for individuals who fail to get coverage and a requirement for big and small employers to provide workers with health insurance cover. Detractors A handful of House and senate Democrats have said they will oppose the combined bill if it drastically changes the language of the original legislation. "The House of Representatives will have to basically back down on virtually everything they passed for this to become law," said Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate minority leader.
Asked about the likely difficulty of agreeing on a final bill, Harry Reid, the Democratic senate majority leader, told reporters "we'll worry about the next steps at a later time". "Right now we're focused on what we're going to do this week," he said. "We're going to finish this bill before Christmas." Linda Douglass, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Health Reform, said there were members with "very strong feelings" about some of the provisions in the bill. "We're going to be going through a process where we're going to have to work through their issues," she said. Both chambers of congress will then have to vote on the merged bill again before it can finally be passed to Obama for signing into law. The legislation would see the biggest changes in the US healthcare system since the Medicare programme for elderly people was installed in the 1960s. | |||||||
|
Opec ministers gather in Angola
| Opec ministers gather in Angola | |||
Members of the oil producers' body Opec are meeting in Angola's capital, Luanda, but analysts expected the group to leave its production quotas unchanged. Tuesday's meeting is the first time ministers from the 12-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) have met in the African nation, which only recently emerged as an oil power. Traders will be watching the meeting with interest after the group brought in emergency quotas a year ago in the midst of the economic crisis to stabilise oil prices. Speaking on Monday, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi Arabian minister, whose nation is Opec's most influential, said only that crude prices were now "excellent". "We will look at the market, that is all," he said. Price rise Oil prices have risen since the group imposed its restrictions but experts say the resulting stockpiles of crude could weaken the market when demand falls in the spring. Abdullah El-Badri, Opec's secretary-general, said that raising production levels next year is "not on our radar at this time". "But if you look at fundamentals, especially inventory ... the stocks, they are a bit high," Badri said. "So we have to do something about this." Opec ministers are also likely have one eye on Iraq's recovering oil industry and its ambitious plans to ramp up its production to levels that could rival Saudi Arabia. But Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, said that he did not expect to tackle the question of production allowances for Iraq, which he said was a special case as it was recovering from war. "I don't expect any discussion on setting quotas or even discussing till we reach the point when there is a significant increase of Iraqi production," he said. That increases is not expected for another two or three years. International profile Iraq is currently exempt from the cartel's system of quotas, which seek to limit production by members in order to stabilise prices. El-Badri also said a discussion of quotas for Iraq was unlikely to be on Tuesday's agenda. "It will come, but not now," he said. "One day ... we will discuss it and surely we will accommodate them." Angola raised its international profile by joining Opec in 2007 and the country overtaken Nigeria as Africa's biggest crude producer, according to the International Energy Agency. But the country still suffers from the legacy of three decades of civil war and millions of Angolans still live in poverty and hunger with little access to clean water. | |||
|
Deaths in Peshawar press club blast
| Deaths in Peshawar press club blast | |||
At least one person has been killed and several others injured after a suicide bomber attacked a club for journalists in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar. The attacker blew himself up on Tuesday when stopped by police, an official said. "It was a suicide attack. The bomber wanted to get into the Press club and when our police guard stopped him he blew himself up," Liaqat Ali Khan, a city police chief, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying. The city's main Lady Reading Hospital said the victims included a policeman and a press club employee. "We have received two dead bodies and 12 injured, including one woman," Zafar Iqbal, a doctor at the hospital, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying. The force of the explosion blew out the windows in the red brick press club building, damaging the guard hut outside and nearby vehicles. Peshawar has been a frequent target for bomb blasts. Pakistan has seen a series of attacks across the country in recent months, attributed to fighters retaliating to the army's offensive against the Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal region. | |||
| |||
Mexico City passes gay marriage law
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
