China Matters this week marked, here, the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government’s founding of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp for illegal enemy combattants… China Hand [Peter Lee] wrote in his blog post that “January 2012 marks the 10th melancholy anniversary of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay … Meanwhile, Guantanamo remains open and [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Guantanamo
My Mentor, who shall be known as “Promeneur” until he authorizes otherwise, has sent a correction to a description I wrote about Rosa Luxemburg, in my post on Donor Opium [a film critical of Palestinian dependence on donor aid, which was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation]. He wrote [from London, via email]: “Starved to [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Journalism and Journalists
A child is born… And his father, Alaa, a prisoner of conscience in Egypt, has today been released from detention [while investigations continue]… The Egyptian blogger, Alaa [Abd El Fattah], has been jailed for weeks [54 days, as it happens] by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces [SCAF], for refusing to appear before a [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Egypt, Human Rights
Here is a tale that illustrates a number of things. Nablus, 3:30 pm on a sunny and relatively quiet Friday afternoon, at the entry to the city: an unmarked black SUV-type van, with very dark windows, was parked at 90 degree angle to road. The unmarked black van had a Palestinian Authority [PA] license or [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Because my Israeli Government Press Office [GPO] has not been renewed [wrongly, I am claiming] since 2010, I have been unable to travel to Gaza the way all accredited journalists here can travel, via Israel’s Erez crossing, or “terminal”. Therefore, I have only read about the relatively new phenomena of Hamas press cards. I first [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
This is something I found out quite accidentally, in a discussion yesterday with a Palestinian official in Ramallah about the lack of reciprocity in Israeli-Palestinian relations [including Press accreditation for media]: This year, for the first time since the Israeli conquest in the June 1967 war, it seems journalists holding ONLY Israeli GPO press cards [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Read it for yourself: here below is the full text, in English, of a press release announcing new rules, as transmitted from the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs in conjunction with the Israeli Government Press Office [GPO] which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] currently headed by Benyamin Netanyahu. First, [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists
OK, here we go, in an experiment in new media journalism: I’m going to repost, in chronological order from first to last, my Tweets this morning on a story about Jerusalem. Some related background, by Khaled Abu Toameh, was published on 17 December in the Jerusalem Post here. [Maybe it's a bit rough, this experimental [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
This is a difficult subject for me to write about, but I shall start: On Monday 19 December, the a three-judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court held its first hearing in my petition for restoration of an Israeli press card [which I did have from mid-2007 until 2010]. For the past two years, I [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists
I’ve spent a lot of time on Twitter this year, since the January 25 (#Jan25) demonstrations in Egypt that successfully demanded “Irhal” (Get Out!) the departure of the former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak — who left Cairo for Sharm as-Sheikh on 11 February, but who formalized military rule in his place. Demonstrations flared up again [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Journalism and Journalists