Israel moves closer to freeing captive soldier

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer – 52 mins ago

JERUSALEM – Israel and Hamas militants announced a deal Wednesday that will see Israel release 20 Palestinian women from prison this week in exchange for a videotape proving that a captive Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip is still alive.

The decision was the first tangible sign of movement in more than three years of talks over the release of the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who has not been seen since he was captured by Hamas-linked militants in a cross-border raid in June, 2006.

Schalit's release, which does not appear imminent, would defuse a central point of contention and could help ease a crippling Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that it expects Schalit's Hamas captors to release a recent videotape of the soldier. The deal is to be carried out on Friday.

The statement said Israel's Security Cabinet accepted the deal, put forward by Egyptian and German mediators, as a "confidence-building measure." It quoted a senior official in Netanyahu's office as saying the negotiations are still "expected to be long and difficult."

The deal was carried out, the statement said, "ahead of the critical stages in the negotiations for the release of Gilad Schalit and based on Israel's commitment to work with determination to bring him home quickly."

Hamas is demanding that Israel release hundreds of prisoners, many of whom are serving lengthy sentences for violent attacks on Israelis, in exchange for the soldier. Israel has balked at many of Hamas' demands.

In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman using the pseudonym Abu Obeidaconfirmed that 20 female prisoners were expected to be released in the coming days. He made no mention of a videotape of Schalit, saying only that Hamas would respond by "clarifying" the soldier's condition.

"This simple deal is a precursor, God willing, to a comprehensive deal," he said.

He said the prisoners would come from various Palestinian factions, including Hamas, the rival Fatah movement and Islamic Jihad, and that one was from Gaza while the rest were from the Fatah-controlled West Bank.

Israel says that while the women were jailed for security-related offenses they were not directly involved in killing Israelis and are all within two years of the end of their prison sentences. Their names were to be published Wednesday, allowing a legally mandated 48-hour period for court appeals against their release before the deal is carried out.

A senior Egyptian official involved in the mediation said the move was designed to create "an atmosphere of trust."

"There is no doubt that this step will support the efforts of all sides to solve the problem," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity under security guidelines.

Egypt has been trying to mediate a prisoner swap since Hamas-linked militants tunneled into Israel in June 2006 and attacked an Israeli tank, killing two crewmen and capturing Schalit.

The Israeli soldier has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been allowed to visit him. But several letters and an audio recording have been released by his captors.

Netanyahu believes it is important that the world know Schalit is alive and well and that his safety is Hamas' responsibility, according to the statement from his office.

Both Hamas and Israel appear eager to wrap up a deal.

For Israel, the return of Schalit would end a painful chapter. In a country where military service is mandatory, Israelis have rallied behind the soldier and his family, holding protests calling for his release and decorating their cars with bumper stickers bearing his name. One news anchor even ends his broadcast each night by mentioning how long Schalit has been in captivity.

Hamas, meanwhile, wants to end a painful Israeli-led economic blockade of Gaza that has caused widespread shortages of many basic items. These shortages have prevented Hamas from repairing the massive damage caused in Gaza by an Israeli military offensive last winter.

Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas, a violent group backed by Iran and Syria, seized power in Gaza two years ago. Officials have said the embargo will not be lifted until Schalit comes home.

The closure has led to a bustling smuggling business along Gaza's border with Egypt. On Wednesday, two smugglers were killed and four were injured when a tunnel under the border collapsed. A paramedic said the men were working in a tunnel in an area struck by the Israeli military the night before.

The Israeli army confirmed it targeted three tunnels in response to rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in the previous two days. Israel says the tunnels are used to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

More than 120 people have died in tunnel collapses since 2007.

Terrorism: Hizballah's Brand is Tarnished

By Jonathan Spyer*

September 24, 2009

A famous Hizbullah marching song, "Hizbullah ya ayuni" (Hizbullah - my eyes), contains the following verse: "And today through the blood of the brave, the merciful creator has given us victory, and the whole world and all people have begun to speak of our glory." Unfortunately for the Lebanese Shi'ite Islamist movement, the main world news story in which it currently features concerns matters of a distinctly inglorious type, with which it would undoubtedly prefer not to be associated.

The revelations concerning the activities of the so-called Lebanese Bernie Madoff - Salah Ezz el-Din of the south Lebanese village of Ma'aroub - are serving to tarnish the image of selflessness and idealism in which Hizbullah likes to present itself. The movement has long sought to differentiate itself from the notoriously corrupt, distinctly nonidealistic political and financial practices with which Lebanon is often associated. Ezz el-Din's activities suggest that on close observation, Hizbullah may be less different from its surroundings than its admirers (especially in the west) like to think.

Ezz el-Din, a Lebanese Shi'ite in his 50s, is accused of embezzlement and defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. The means by which he chose to part his victims from their money are familiar. He promised quick returns on investments in what he claimed were construction, oil and gas projects outside of Lebanon. He is reported to have guaranteed investors 20 percent-25% profits within 100 days on certain investments.

It now appears that Ezz el-Din was running a Ponzi scheme - paying clients with funds gleaned from newer investors. The sums involved are large - though nowhere near Madoff-like proportions. He is believed to have defrauded investors of around $500 million.

But Ezz el-Din was no ordinary financier. Rather, he enjoyed close links to Hizbullah. He ran a variety of enterprises associated with the group - most importantly the Dar al-Hadi Publishing House - named after Hadi Nasrallah. Hadi Nasrallah was the son of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed fighting the IDF in southern Lebanon, and is somewhere near the top of the movement's pantheon of "martyrs." The publishing house which bore his name was responsible for the publication of a number of books by senior Hizbullah officials.

THE PERCEPTION of Hizbullah patronage was a major factor in encouraging investors to place their trust in Ezz el-Din. As one disappointed client put it, "people put money with him because he was wearing the Hizbullah cloak." The presence of people like him does not fit with the puritanical image of Hizbullah. But it is not especially out of place with the broader pattern of the movement's activities.
As a major Lebanese political force, Hizbullah offers patronage to powerful families and individuals from the Lebanese Shi'ite community. The organization effectively operates a state within a state. Its areas are off limits to the army and police. This is particularly useful for individuals close to the movement engaged in criminal activities.

The lucrative hashish trade in the movement's heartland in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon offers an example of this patronage. Families engaged in this trade receive the protection of Hizbullah, ensuring that neither the authorities nor their rivals interfere with their activities. In return, Hizbullah takes a generous helping of the considerable profits.

The movement controls 13,000 acres in the Bekaa, which produce at least 300 tons of hashish annually. Hizbullah is reckoned to rake in profits of $180 million annually from this trade.

Most of the hashish is exported to Europe. Not all, though. The problem of drug abuse among residents in the Hizbullah-controlled Dahiyeh area of south Beirut is well known in Lebanon. Not all residents of the Dahiyeh are Shi'ite puritans.

Hizbullah is not reinventing the wheel. Rather, it is behaving in the manner of other Lebanese political forces. These activities are not particularly demonic - though the less powerful members of the various Lebanese communities are most likely to be hurt by them. But they serve to indicate the extent to which Hizbullah's pose of purity and incorruptibility and standing above the base practices of its rivals is largely a product of good public relations, rather than any observable reality.

The gradual tarnishing of the Hizbullah brand is, of course, good news for Israel. With past enemies - Arab nationalist regimes, the Yasser Arafat-led PLO - it was in the end the unbridgeable gap between proclamations and reality which served to initiate their slow decay and decline more than any single military defeat.

In this regard, another explanation for the Ezz al-Din affair is predictably doing the rounds in southern Lebanon. Haj Kamal Shour, who lost $1.03 million investing with the financier told reporters that he was sure that the "Israeli Mossad and Zionist lobby" were in some unaccountable way behind it all.

The reliable Zionist foe is enlisted to explain away failures and corruption scandals. But wasn't that exactly the political style that Hizbullah, with its selfless martyrs and its blood-curdling marching songs, was supposed to be doing away with? As Lebanon's former colonial governors might have put it - the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Nancy Snow on William Safire's Passing

I don't feel that William Safire could be pigeon holed.

I guess he was conservative, but he was charming, and I believe he really cared for America.

He will be missed for his writing and his intellectual depth.

I miss him already.

Nancy Snow

Today's Google News has the wedding of reality TV star Khloe Kardashian and Los Angeles Lakers' forward Lamar Odom getting more hits than the passing of New York Times columnist, William Safire. Now granted, Khloe and Lamar have more blogger followers, including Perez Hilton's "wedding deets" to share with those not privy to be in Los Angeles.

This suggests, albeit unscientifically, that the death of an esteemed giant in American journalism is less newsworthy than a second-tier celebrity wedding. The media weren't reporting the wedding of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but two people who have been dating for a month and decided to get hitched before basketball season begins.

We're so awash in infotainment sludge that we can't distinguish the truly irrelevant from the significant.

Safire, 79, was a conservative columnist for the New York Times. He was a fish out of water, to say the least, and many of the Times reporters were not happy with his swimming around for thirty years at the liberal newspaper of record. The Sulzberger family knew better.

Part of journalistic appeal, especially in opinion writing, is to provoke reader interest through saying something that jolts a reader's perspective out of somnolence. Safire did just that with his political columns that undoubtedly raised the blood pressure of some liberal readers, and with his "On Language" columns, which soothed the souls of etymologists and grammarians.

I recall a most memorable political column he published in the Times shortly before he retired. It was called "You Are a Suspect".

It was against type for this former Nixon speechwriter. The date was November 14, 2002, a year after 9/11, and before the invasion of Iraq. The USA PATRIOT Act had already passed with barely any debate. I immediately shared Safire's column with my journalism students at Cal State Fullerton. I told them, "This matters to you."

Here is what Bill Safire wrote in part:

If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

That Safire column sparked Congressional action that stopped Poindexter's push for a big net approach to data collection.

Safire didn't always get his facts right. He was pilloried for his many columns that linked al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein as a rationale for the invasion of Iraq. (See David Corn's "The Propaganda of William Safire")

Safire attended Syracuse University and gave its commencement speeches in 1978 and 1990. I now teach public diplomacy and global communications at the Newhouse School here at SU.

Safire's relationship with Richard Nixon began at a public diplomacy venue. In 1959 Safire was a publicist and his client Herbert Sadkin, president of All-State Properties, built the famous modern American home featured at the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park, Moscow. Safire coaxed Vice President Richard Nixon into attending the exhibit opening on July 24, 1959, also attended by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

The two men got into some back-and-forth conversations about the merits of Soviet communism versus American capitalism that came to be known as the "The Kitchen Debate." Nixon's proud defense of American know-how raised his public profile both at home and abroad. He later asked Safire to join his inner circle, and Safire served the president in the White House, along with Patrick Buchanan, Diane Sawyer and David Gergen. In 1973 Safire began writing for the New York Times, where he remained a columnist until 2003.

If you want some advice for what to pay attention to in the news, read more about the "life deets" of self-proclaimed libertarian conservative Bill Safire and not about the wedding of Khloe and Lamar. Relevant knowledge is good and powerful.

Dr. Nancy Snow is the author of six books, including Information War and Propaganda, Inc. She teaches in the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, New York. Reach her at www.nancysnow.com.

Follow Nancy Snow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpersuasion

Related News On Huffington Post:

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-snow/william-safires-passing-a_b_302043.html

Caritas targets 50,000 people in Philippines after devastating flooding

This situation is still unfolding, it has already been tragic.
It is amazing how little coverage the story is receiving on U.S. media.
Hundreds may have died, the counts are not in, and hundreds of thousands will be homeless.


Caritas targets 50,000 people in Philippines after devastating flooding

Shared via AddThis

Caritas targets 50,000 people in Philippines after devastating flooding

Source: Caritas
Date: 28 Sep 2009

Caritas Philippines (NASSA) is rushing aid to people in the Philippines after the worst flooding in some areas in nearly half a century.

Tropical Storm Ketsana (also known as "Typhoon Ondoy") hit Saturday. A month of rain fell in just 12 hours, submerging 80 percent of the capital Manila and affecting 27 provinces in total. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes and over a hundred people have been killed.

Caritas will initially provide aid for a total of 10,000 families (50,000 people) in the seriously affected areas.

Caritas has bought 650 bags of rice for Antipolo in Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Cavite, and San Pablo in Laguna and will evaluate further needs as the crisis progresses.

There is also an ongoing repacking of sets of relief goods (kitchen wares, shelter aid materials, personal hygiene items and other food stuff) at the St. Paul University in Manila. They are intended for the first 5,000 families in these areas. Students and staff of the University are helping Caritas prepare the packs.

Caritas Philippines Executive Director Sr. Rosanne B. Mallillin SPC said, "The situation is very challenging. Many of our local social actions centres are still unable to reach the worse-hit areas because of the debris and the flooding. People are in need of food and clean water, as many of the water sources have been contaminated. We're also sending cooking utensils, sleeping mats and bed sheets."

The Metro Manila has been the worst-hit in terms of flooding and damage, while Rizal had the highest number of casualties due to landslides and flashfloods. In the Province of Pampanga, over 200 villages have been submerged. A landslide occurred in Arayat, affecting 174 families, which are now temporarily housed in five evacuation centres mostly schools and chapels.

The storm has moved out of the country but will continue to enhance the southwest monsoon.

For more information, please contact Patrick Nicholson on 0039 334 359 0700 or nicholson@caritas.va