Month: April 2013

Palestinian watchdog group says corruption continues

/ Meir Weiss

Dindu Nuffin

 

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas chairs a meeting of Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee in the West Bank city of Ramallah on April 18, 2013. (AFP)
The Associated Press, Ramallah, West Bank –

A Palestinian watchdog group says it’s looking into corruption claims against government officials.

Azmi Shuabi of the Coalition for Transparency in Palestine said Wednesday it is checking 29 claims that senior officials of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority stole public funds.

Shuabi said the Palestinian Authority also has problems with money laundering, nepotism and misusing official positions.

Shuabi said most cases involve institutions overseen by the Palestinian president’s office. He said it lacked proper oversight over matters like the airport authority, a project to build a shrine for former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the water authority.

He said another 12 cases were investigated and transferred to the courts.

Palestinian Authority Justice Minister Ali Muhanna says the…

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The silence of the Muslim Brotherhood

/ Meir Weiss

Dindu Nuffin

Although the fact finding committee formed by Mohamed Morsi to investigate rights violations from January 2011 to June 2012 found horrid cases of abuse, the president and his backers appear disinterested in its findings

 

 

Khaled Fahmy

Three weeks ago, I briefly reviewed here “Nostalgia for the Light,” Patricio Guzmán’s wonderful documentary about mass murders and forced disappearances in Chile under Pinochet. I was deeply touched by Guzmán’s sensitivity in showcasing the suffering of victims’ families and their relentless efforts to find out what had happened to their loved ones.

My intention was to draw a comparison with our own cases of torture under Mubarak and to highlight the importance of transitional justice without which, I tried to argue, we will not be able to turn over the leaf of the past, and look forward to a promising future where justice and security prevail.

After my article was published…

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After effects: BBC accuracy failure used to promote hate

/ Meir Weiss

BBC Watch

Back in March, when the UN HRC produced a report in which it established that the son of BBC Arabic journalist Jihad Masharawi had been killed as a result of a misfired terrorist rocket in November 2012, BBC Watch wrote:

“The BBC used the story of Omar Masharawi to advance the narrative of Israel as a ruthless killer of innocent children. It did so in unusually gory detail which etched the story in audiences’ minds, but without checking the facts, and with no regard whatsoever for its obligations to accuracy and impartiality. BBC reporters and editors  – including Jon Donnison, Paul Danahar and the many others who distributed the story via Twitter – rushed to spread as far and wide as possible a story they could not validate, but which fit in with their own narrative.

It is impossible to undo the extensive damage done by the BBC with…

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My Take: Nothing wrong with Nazi assignment

/ Meir Weiss

CNN Belief Blog

Editor’s note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of “The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation,” is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN

(CNN) – School officials in Albany, New York, are racing to control the damage after a teacher at Albany High School gave students a persuasive writing assignment that challenged them to defend the proposition that “Jews are evil.”

After studying Nazi propaganda and rhetoric, sophomores in three English classes were instructed to imagine that their teacher was “a member of the government in Nazi Germany” and to prove that that they were “loyal to the Nazis.”

But this unidentified teacher is now caught up in a propaganda swirl of his or her own.

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