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Home/ International Politics of the Middle East/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Erin Gold

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Erin Gold

Erin Gold

Philippines seeks accord on workers - The National Newspaper - 0 views

  • A member of the Philippines’ Congress has called for a meeting between the Minister of Labour and his country’s labour secretary to find ways of better protecting Filipinos working in the Emirates.
  • He called for an agreement between Manila and the Government that would see the UAE more urgently combat the problem of employers withholding the passports of workers from his country.
  • “We will ask our public relations officers to assist our workers in filing a complaint against their sponsors who are holding their passports,” he said.
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  • He also suggested the rules governing accreditation of UAE-based recruitment agencies be more stringent, to prevent cases of contract substitution, sex trafficking and illegal recruitment of Filipino migrant workers.
  • They visited a Dubai shelter that currently houses 119 women, mostly housemaids, who have left their jobs complaining of a lack of food and sleep, maltreatment, overwork or non-payment.
  • Ms Ilagan, of the Gabriela Women’s Party, said Filipinas were generally vulnerable to abuse and were willing to gamble when recruited to work overseas.
  • The shelter occupants told the legislators that their passports were being kept by their employers, preventing them from returning to the Philippines.At least 15 of the women have been asked by their employers to refund recruiting costs.
Erin Gold

Haj pilgrims stranded by floods - The National Newspaper - 0 views

  • he heaviest rainfall in years triggered flooding that wiped out bridges and streets in Mecca province, stranding Haj pilgrims and killing at least 77 people, none of whom were pilgrims.
  • increased worries about the country’s infrastructure as more than a million people made their way through the port city of Jeddah,
  • About 1.6 million pilgrims have come to Saudi Arabia from abroad for the Haj this year
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  • floods forced the closure of a motorway to Mecca, stranding pilgrims who were unable to complete their journey.
  • At least 900 people had to be rescued after being stranded by the floodwaters,
Erin Gold

Gearing up for prevention: The Hajj meets H1N1 - CNN.com - 0 views

  • his year, the Hajj could become an incubator for the H1N1 virus.
  • number of people at the center who are going on the Hajj, also are getting H1N1 inoculations.
  • Dr. Asif Saberi gives them a short lecture on how to prepare and encourages everyone to have their shots at least seven days before traveling. He says the Saudi government is doing a lot to protect pilgrims, but "the magnitude of the problem is the magnitude of the numbers of people who attend the Hajj." When it comes to using hand sanitizer and wearing masks, Saberi says he encounters confusion about religious dictates and flu prevention. According to Muslim beliefs, for example, men in a state of pilgrimage should not wear any stitched items or touch alcohol
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  • Saudi Arabia has been preparing for the influx of millions of pilgrims. It won't turn away anyone who wants to come to the Hajj, but it is urging other countries not to let children younger than 12, people older than 65 or pregnant women make the pilgrimage.
  • The kingdom also is using sophisticated technology -- thermal screening equipment at entry points and mobile devices to document suspected cases of the flu.
  • For those like Fayzah Abu Ayadah, faith outweighs fear. "Even if we die there, it is not important," the Palestinian says. "The important thing is to go for the Hajj."
Erin Gold

Glimpse inside the Guggenheim - The National Newspaper - 0 views

  • The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
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  • he Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • he Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • Investment
  • he Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • he Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, an exhibition hosted by the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) at the Emirates Palace opens tonight with a selection of 50 of the most important paintings from the Guggenheim New York collection.
  • Taking the viewer on a journey from the impressionist works of late 19th century from Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse through to the post-war abstract paintings from Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and beyond to the mid-1960s, the show is intended to to tell the story of how the original museum was founded
  • “We have to admit that the eye is a muscle and the more it is used, the stronger it gets. We are aware that not everyone in the [Abu Dhabi] audience has a long history of looking at this type of art so we want to introduce them gently.”
  • This would be the first in a series of exhibitions from the Guggenheim Foundation leading up to the opening in 2013.
Erin Gold

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Italy convicts CIA rendition agents - 0 views

  • An Italian judge has convicted 23 US secret agents over the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam from a Milan street in an extraordinary rendition by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
  • trial was the first in the world to centre on the agency's controversial programme, in which "terror" suspects are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.
  • case concerned the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and his transfer to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.
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  • All of the Americans were tried in absentia, with 22 sentenced to five years in jail and Robert Seldon Lady, the Milan CIA station chief, handed eight years in prison.
  • Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom on Wednesday that he was acquitting three other Americans.
  • Magi said the men were protected by by state secrecy rules
  • CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar".
  • Some of them [those convicted], including Seldon Lady and Jeff Castelli, the CIA chief of station in Rome, left the country when they were found to be part of the operation and they never came back to Italy. "It is very unlikely they will come now that they have been convicted
  • even if the verdict is upheld, it seems unlikely they will be extradited."
  • Abu Omar, an imam granted political asylum in Italy, was taken from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation allegedly co-ordinated by the CIA and  SISMI.
  • He was released after four years in prison without being charged
  • Abu Omar told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that he was "hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks" during his time in Egypt. "I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too," he told the organisation.
Erin Gold

A man's world but nothing without a woman or a girl - The National Newspaper - 0 views

  • If the Chinese are right when they say that women hold up half the sky, we may be in for trouble in the UAE.
  • serious gender imbalance in this country, thanks largely to the armies of imported construction workers needed to help build the nation’s skylines.
  • Solid numbers are hard to come by, but according to most population estimates there are roughly three men in the UAE for every woman
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  • This is thankfully starting to change. Women were allowed to vote and run in the country’s first parliamentary elections in 2006.
  • But since a sizeable majority of UAE residents are not citizens, changes to the participatory power of Emirati women in local politics are likely to do little to redress the more immediate consequences of the gender gap on the nation’s economy and society.
  • In many ways, the demographics of the UAE’s economy resemble those of frontier America,
  • But the biggest concern may not be how the global crisis aggravates the surfeit of men; rather how it irritates our shortage of women.
  • Regardless of whether men start fist fights in shawarma stalls or stage riots over parking, no city can be considered civilised without a feminine touch.As Mr Courtwright suggests, men behave much better when there are women about.
  • There is some biological evidence to support this: long-term studies of men have found that single men have higher levels of testosterone, the hormone responsible for male attributes and correlated to aggression, than men who are married.
  • If the Government carries through with big infrastructure projects but offers no support for the service sector and small and medium-sized enterprises, where will women find work?Conversely, as businesses outside of construction cut costs, job losses are likely to fall disproportionately on the already smaller population of women working in the UAE.Economists note that population loss may be one of the biggest risks to the UAE’s economy. It could be argued further that losing one woman has more economic impact than losing one man. Many of the women leaving the UAE, after all, are married to men who have lost their jobs.
Erin Gold

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saudi court jails 'sex boast' man - 0 views

  • A Saudi Arabian man who boasted about his sex life on a TV talk show has been jailed for five years
  • also sentenced to 1,000 lashes by a Saudi court on charges relating to immoral behaviour.
  • Extra-marital sex is illegal in Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative societies in the Arab world.
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  • Abdul Jawad later apologised, saying producers at the TV station had tricked him into some of his accounts.
  • Saudi Arabia uses a strict Islamic law code. People who break the rules face punishment - lashes or imprisonment - for drinking or non-marital sex.
Erin Gold

UN commissioner urges move forward on women's rights - The National Newspaper - 0 views

  • Women around the world are denied fundamental freedoms according to the UN’s human rights chief, citing in particular Sudan, Afghanistan and Gulf states.“Women’s rights continue to be curtailed in too many countries,” and efforts must be made to address this,
  • She highlighted recent positive developments in the Gulf, such as the election of nine women in 2006 to the UAE’s Federal National Council [FNC], the election of four women to the 50-member Kuwaiti parliament, and the recent appointment of the first female deputy minister in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.But, Ms Pillay said, the overall situation of women in the region “falls well short of international standards”.
  • South African legal expert, formerly the top judge on Rwanda’s war crimes tribunal, urged Gulf governments to adopt international conventions and reject home-grown laws that discriminate against women.“A crucial step in the right direction is the ratification and implementation of key human rights conventions, as well as the removal of the numerous reservations expressed by many Gulf countries regarding those human rights treaties they have chosen to accept,”
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  • She described “huge gaps” between the “lofty pledges” made by states and the realities of daily life for many of their inhabitants, pointing out that “no country in the world can claim to be free of human rights violations”.
  • All six members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have been censured for laws that block female nationals from passing on their nationality to their children if the father is a foreigner.
  • Saudi Arabia’s record comes under particular scrutiny, with activists criticising a ban on female drivers and a system of male guardianship that sharply curtails a woman’s right to travel and control her own life.
  • “We’ve raised several concerns about the situation for women in the Gulf, including a report on the system of guardianship in Saudi Arabia and the problems faced by female migrant workers,
  • Emirati and other Gulf envoys have proven responsive to such criticism at past council meetings.
  • Dr Anwar Gargash, the Minister of State for Foreign and FNC Affairs, acknowledged the UAE is “not a perfect society” and listed improving conditions for women as at the top of the Government’s agenda. He said limitations on Emirati women passing on citizenship to their children should be “reviewed and debated” with the focus on liberalising such laws.
Erin Gold

University of Minnesota Human Rights Library - 0 views

  • No one shall be tried twice for the same offence.
    • Erin Gold
       
      does this mean that they may only be tried for the specific crime once?
  • No citizen shall be expelled from his country or prevented from returning thereto.
  • Free choice of work is guaranteed and forced labour is prohibited. Compelling a person to perform work under the terms of a court judgement shall not be deemed to constitute forced labour.
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  • The State shall ensure that its citizens enjoy equality of opportunity in regard to work, as well as a fair wage and equal remuneration for work of equal value.
  • Citizens have a right to live in an intellectual and cultural environment in which Arab nationalism is a source of pride,
Erin Gold

Memo From Cairo - Egypt Ponders Failed Drive for Unesco - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, failed in his bid to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Egyptian newspapers and government officials presented the defeat as a sign of Western prejudice against Islam and the Arab world,
  • For days after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, failed in his bid to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Egyptian newspapers and government officials presented the defeat as a sign of Western prejudice against Islam and the Arab world, the product of an international Jewish conspiracy.
  • “America, Europe and the Jewish lobby brought down Farouk Hosni,” read a headline
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  • Mr. Hosny himself helped stoke those sentiments, saying, “There was a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position.”
  • All of Egypt, indeed all of the Arab world, was talking with one voice of outrage and insult.
  • While no one here would argue that Israel and its supporters played no role in Mr. Hosny’s defeat to a Bulgarian diplomat, many people said that his failure was at least as much a sign of Egypt’s long, slow slide as the center of Arab culture, thought and influence. They said the defeat might represent a rejection of Muslims and Arabs, but perhaps more importantly a rejection of their authoritarian leaders.
  • Mr. Hosny, a favorite of President Hosni Mubarak, was roundly despised by many members of the nation’s cultural elite
  • pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi wrote that Mr. Hosny’s loss “comes as yet another confirmation of the Arab world’s — and Egypt’s in particular — backslide on the international arena,
  • considering the charges of anti-Semitism that derailed his candidacy, he has never been known as a strong opponent of normalizing ties with Israel.
  • Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Hosny struggled to mute the charges of anti-Semitism, efforts that caused many people in Egypt to wince as they watched a stalwart of the state apologize, to Israel no less. And they winced again, when he blamed a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy for his loss.
  • “The moment he lost he came back and started saying some of the most foul anti-Semitic statements against the Jews, confirming what the West had said about him.”
  • Mr. Hosny lost his bid for Unesco, but tried to turn that into a victory at home, returning as a victim, and for the state-run media a hero.
  • When it comes to domestic politics, she said, Egyptian officials often try to present themselves as anti-Israeli, even while serving as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
  • Writing in the English-language Daily News, the chief editor, Rania al-Malky, suggested that Mr. Hosny might have done as well as he did because he was Arab and Muslim, not because he was qualified. His defeat, she wrote, should not surprise anyone.
  • she wrote, “you must admit that the Egyptian administration did not deserve to win this bid. How can a 22-year minister of a country where culture, education, health and science have regressed to the Dark Ages become the head of Unesco?”
Erin Gold

Yemen's North Hit by Bloodiest Fighting in Years - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • emeni Army fought back a major offensive by rebels in the northern city of Sadah early Sunday morning, killing dozens of insurgents,
  • The battle appears to have been the boldest rebel attack yet in five weeks of renewed fighting in Yemen’s remote and mountainous Sadah Province,
  • Houthi rebels have been clashing intermittently with Yemen’s government for five years
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  • latest round of fighting, which erupted last month after a yearlong cease-fire, has been the bloodiest so far.
  • eports of the death toll varied, with some news agencies saying more than 140 rebels had been killed. There was no word on whether any Yemeni soldiers died
  • The Sadah conflict has displaced tens of thousands of people, international monitors say, leaving many refugees stranded without adequate food or water.
  • The Yemeni government says the rebels are preventing civilians from leaving the conflict zone, and has accused them of using civilians as human shields.
  • Despite their geographical isolation, the rebels have acquired an increasingly sophisticated arsenal, largely by capturing or buying government weapons.
  • Yemeni government has accused the rebels of receiving unofficial support from Iran, but the Houthis deny it.
  • he Houthis are Zaidis, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that is fairly common in Yemen, and the government has used radical Sunni militants as proxy forces against them.
  • government has accused the Houthis of trying to restore the traditional Zaidi-led imamate that largely ruled Yemen until 1962. The Houthis deny it, saying they merely want more autonomy in Sadah and restitution for war damages.
Erin Gold

U.N. Finds Signs of War Crimes on Both Sides in Gaza - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • A United Nations fact-finding mission investigating the three-week war in Gaza issued a lengthy, scathing report on Tuesday that concluded that both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.
  • also concluded that neither Israel nor the Palestinian groups had carried out any “credible investigations” into the alleged violations.
  • did not change within six months
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  • possible prosecution
  • Israel reacted quickly, saying in a statement issued by its diplomatic mission in Geneva that it did not cooperate with the investigation but had opened many of its own
  • The report found the Palestinians at fault for rocket fire into southern Israel, which “caused terror in the affected communities of southern Israel as well as loss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians and damage to private houses, religious buildings and property.”
  • The report, the bulk of which focused on the Israeli violations, said that during the war, Israeli forces engaged in a deliberate policy of collective punishment in furtherance of “an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population”
  • also found that the Israeli forces used disproportionate force against the Palestinian civilian population. In a number of cases, it said, Israeli forces launched “direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome,” even when the facts indicated no justifiable military objective.
  • “civilians were shot while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags and in some cases, following an injunction from the Israeli forces to do so.”
  • Israeli forces also intentionally attacked civilians in aiming a missile strike at a mosque during the early evening prayer
  • Palestinian armed groups, the group found, fired repeated rockets and mortars into southern Israel. By failing to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population, those actions also “constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity,”
  • Responding to Israeli allegations that Palestinian fighters used civilians as human shields, the panel found that Palestinian armed groups did launch rockets from urban areas
  • he mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants “mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack,” the report said
  • The mission was tasked by United Nations Human Rights Council in April to investigate all violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law that might have been committed during the conflict.
Erin Gold

Agencies Say Iran Has the Nuclear Fuel to Build a Bomb - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Accurate intelligence about the progress of Iran’s weapons programs has been notoriously poor.
  • Both the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate and the recent updates for Mr. Obama, according to officials familiar with their contents, are filled with caveats that Iran could be conducting uranium enrichment or weapons design work at remote locations
  • By the last count of the international inspectors, Iran has installed more than 8,000 centrifuges — the machines that enrich uranium — at its main underground facility at Natanz, the primary target the Israelis had in their sights. At last inspection, Iran was using only a little more than half of them to enrich uranium.
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  • to create a bomb it would have to convert its existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium into bomb-grade material. International inspectors, who visit Natanz regularly, would presumably raise alarms. Iran would also have to produce or buy a working weapons design, complete with triggering devices, and make it small enough to fit in one of its missiles.
  • The official American estimate is that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015, probably later rather than sooner. Israel’s official estimate is close:
  • head of the Mossad, Israel’s main spy agency, told the Israeli Parliament in June that unless action is taken, Iran will have its first bomb by 2014,
  • Israeli officials believe Iran could create a bomb much more quickly. They cite the murky evidence surrounding two secret programs in Iran, called Project 110 and Project 111. Those are the code names for what are believed to be warhead-design programs
  • Israeli officials say privately that the Obama administration is deluding itself in thinking that diplomacy will persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. The Obama administration says it believes Iran is on the defensive — fearful of more crippling sanctions and beset by internal turmoil.
Erin Gold

Agencies Say Iran Has the Nuclear Fuel to Build a Bomb - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In the first public acknowledgment of the intelligence findings, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Wednesday that Iran now had what he called a “possible breakout capacity” if it decided to enrich its stockpile of uranium, converting it to bomb grade material.
  • Iran has maintained its continuing enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, that the uranium is solely for electric power
  • But in a 2007 announcement, the United States said that it had found evidence that Iran had worked on designs for making a warhead, though it determined the project was halted in late 2003.
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  • It is unclear how many months — or even years — it would take Iran to complete that final design work,
  • he United States and its allies would likely have considerable warning time if Iran moved to convert its growing stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to make it usable for weapons.
  • At the core of the dispute is the “breakout capacity” that Mr. Davies referred to on Wednesday in his first presentation as ambassador to the I.A.E.A., the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.
  • The Israelis have argued that there could be little or no warning time — especially if Iran has hidden facilities
  • As American and Israeli officials expected, Iran turned over to European nations on Wednesday what it called a new set of “proposals” for negotiations over its nuclear program.
  • The White House has given Iran a late-September deadline to begin substantive negotiations, or face additional sanctions.
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