Friday, 27 May 2016

Simply preventing Israel from continuing to pursue its objective of creating facts misses the point.

Those opposed to occupation in Palestine have a far more difficult challenge to undo the bitter fruits that the policy of creating facts has produced, writes Aronson [EPA]

By

Geoffrey Aronson

Geoffrey Aronson is a specialist in Middle East affairs.

It is said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. As the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates the anniversary of yet another year of Israel's occupation, the news from places as far flung as Moscow and Beijing must be gratifying indeed.
For almost half a century, and in the teeth of unanimous international opposition to its policy of permanent occupation, Israel has successfully managed to "create facts" that the international community - led by the United States - has either accommodated or proved unable to or uninterested in challenging.
Since 1967, Israel has settled almost 600,000 of its citizens - 7 percent of its population - in territories not a single nation recognises as part of the sovereign state of Israel.
Israel has built a modern infrastructure to transform these areas, home to more than four million Palestinians, into unremarkable parts of the state.
As a result, Israel - as intended - has compromised, perhaps fatally, an Arab-Palestinian demand, supported by the international community, to secure a viable territorial base for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Al Jazeera World - Journey into an Invisible war

Old-fashioned ways

Israel's strategy is a prime example of the old-fashioned way of practising diplomacy. It is concerned less about its standing on the ever-elusive "right side of history" - the source of many of the US President Barack Obama administration's Middle East policy travails - than about ensuring a hard-headed, often brutal and single-minded determination to win.
Washington's shortcomings in this regard have been most spectacularly evident in an arc running from Iraq and Syria to Libya - where its policies aimed at undermining state power and sovereignty have never been grounded by any strategy of winning the battles of "the day after".
Washington may be a stranger to such policies, but Moscow and China, like Israel, are not.
Both countries are buttressing their determination to win - in Russia's case by cementing its control of the Crimea at Ukraine's expense, in China's case by the expansion of its power and presence in the strategically important South China Sea.

The most difficult challenge facing those who oppose Israel's policy of creating facts is not to prevent Israel from pursuing policies that are making these territories into its own.

Each mimics Israel by creating territorial facts on the ground in an effort to shape both the military and diplomatic environment in their favour.
Like Israel's policies, those of Russia and China present difficult challenges to Washington, challenges that it has so far been unable to reverse.

Does might makes it right?

Construction has just begun of a 19km bridge connecting Russia's Krasnodar region with the Crimean city of Kerch, annexed following a disputed referendum in 2014. The $3.2bn bridge is designed to cement Crimea's integration with Russia and its economy.
"Our predecessors understood the significance of this bridge ... and tried to complete this project a long time ago," said Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Let's hope we can fulfil this historical mission."
China's actions are even more sobering. Beijing is literally creating new Chinese territory on water-swept reefs in the South China Sea, despite the opposition of other claimants and parties led by Washington.

OPINION: Israel in Palestine - Separating fact from fiction

Beijing has expanded by 1,300 hectares disputed atolls in the South China Sea in the past two years, according to a recent Pentagon report.
China claims "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands - known in China as the Nansha Islands - where construction is centred.
"China's construction and deployment of facilities on its own soil in defence of its territory are legitimate acts of peaceful construction and exercise of its right to self-preservation," explained an official spokesman. "We need necessary means and capabilities to defend ourselves."

Unintended recognition of success

If Israel's example is any guide, Russia and China can rest easy. At a recent meeting of the UN Security Council, Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour took the international community to task yet again for its failure to end occupation.
"At a time when the situation is boiling, the passivity and silence of the Security Council is truly shocking," Mansour said.

OPINION: Statehood versus 'facts on the ground'

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon offered the Netanyahu government unintended recognition of the success of its strategy when he noted, "a two-state solution that meets the national aspirations of both peoples … seems more distant than it has for many decades … The creation of new facts on the ground through demolitions and settlement building," Ban suggested, "raises questions about whether Israel's ultimate goal is in fact to drive Palestinians out of certain parts of the West Bank, thereby undermining any prospect of transition to a viable Palestinian state."
On Palestine, Ban is 50 years too late. Israel, no matter that it is the party in power, has managed for decades - indeed, it may be argued, since its inception - to successfully wield the power of the state, first to establish, and then to expand, its still-contested borders.

The most difficult challenge facing those who oppose Israel's policy of creating facts - like those policies adopted by China and Russia - is not to prevent Israel from pursuing policies that are making these territories into its own.
That battle was lost when it extended Israeli law and jurisdiction to parts of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem before the guns cooled in June 1967.
For nearly 50 years, the bulldozers have been working without pause.
Simply preventing Israel from continuing to pursue its objective of creating facts misses the point.
Those opposed to occupation, whether in Palestine, the Crimea, or the contested atolls of the South China Sea, have a far more difficult challenge - to undo the bitter fruits that the policy of creating facts has produced.
Geoffrey Aronson writes about Middle Eastern affairs. He consults with a variety of public and private institutions dealing with regional political, security, and development issues.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/05/fabricating-facts-fashioned-political-tool-160524094358015.html

What You Should Know About Yellow Fever

Cross Sections / Science & Media

Last week, the WHO met to discuss the outbreak of yellow fever in Angola. How serious is the disease, and what still needs to be done?

05.27.2016 / By Ian Evans

Last week, the World Health Organization declared the yellow fever outbreaks in the neighboring African nations of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo a “serious public health event,” but concluded that they did not constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

The same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and West Nile viruses are also spreading yellow fever. (Photo by Gilles San Martin/Flickr)

Under the WHO’s International Health Regulations of 2005, a PHEIC is defined as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.” The organization has only made this declaration four times: for Swine Flu in 2009, polio and Ebola in 2014, and most recently for the cases of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré Syndrome being caused by the Zika virus.
The recent yellow fever outbreak was first detected in Angola last December and is suspected to have infected over 2,400 people — of those, about 300 have died so far. While this number is so far small compared to other disease outbreaks, the WHO notes that it appears to be accelerating: cases increased 33 percent in the past five weeks. With vaccines in short supply, scientists worry that there is potential for the virus to spread and become a greater hazard.
Already, the Angola outbreak has spread as far as China and a separate, apparently unrelated outbreak began in Uganda this month. The Aedes aegypti mosquito — the same species responsible for Zika and West Nile virus — is the main vector for yellow fever and unfortunately, it can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
“The potential for it to cause many more infections and many more deaths and to spread to other countries and other cities is quite high,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease researcher and Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “We’re looking at a cross section, a snapshot in time — a moment in time — and in my opinion it’s really important…to look forward to try and anticipate the trajectory of these two yellow fever epidemics.”
Lucey doesn’t think an outbreak in the U.S. is likely, but still says yellow fever is something that Americans — most of who are not vaccinated — should be aware of.
Historically the disease has remained mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the U.S. — notably in the Southeastern region — experienced outbreaks up until the early 20th century. And around the world, yellow fever still kills 30,000 to 60,000 people every year. East Asia has never experienced an outbreak before, leading to concern that a lack of immunity there could exacerbate the situation.
Although the majority of people who do get yellow fever experience little-to-no symptoms, 15 percent become ill, suffering shock, dangerously high fevers and liver failure. Named for the color a person’s skin turns when liver damage sets in, yellow fever is fatal in about 15 percent of cases.
One strategy to deal with the limited vaccines is to split up the existing supply. Most people still gain some protection from yellow fever with just a partial vaccination. “Imagine if there’s another big city somewhere, so Windhoek or Osaka or, heaven forbid, Lagos, or any city in Asia,” said Lucey. “Then we’re not going to have enough vaccine so were going to have to do this contingency plan of using maybe one-fifth of the normal dose.”
Such a strategy isn’t ideal, but it may be necessary. Yellow fever vaccines are still made using a slow, outdated technique: injecting the virus into fertilized chicken eggs. It’s a technique that Thomas Yuill, professor emeritus in the department of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, refers to as an “arcane, wing-of-bat, eye-of-newt method.”
“That is where many, including myself, think that some serious emphasis need to be put,” said Yuill
There are currently only four facilities in the world that make the vaccine for yellow fever. While early attempts to create it in a new, faster way seem to have been successful, ramping up the production and making sure that the vaccine is safe could take months or years, said Yuill — and that’s if everything goes well. Until then, the WHO and infected countries will have to do make do with what vaccines they have.
According to Science, the WHO used up their emergency stockpile of vaccines earlier this year in Angola, but expects to have 7 million more by the end of the month. That’s a definite improvement but not, obviously, a solution to a major outbreak, for instance in a country like China, which has over 1 billion people and is home to densley-packed megacities like Shanghai and Beijing.
At the moment, “We have the capacity to make millions more vaccines, but not hundreds of millions,” said Lucey.
Still, for now, the outbreak seems to be under control and is definitely being closely monitored. Even Lucey, who has been critical of the WHO’s efforts to combat Zika and Ebola in the past, said that with yellow fever, the organization seems to be taking the right steps.

Read more: http://undark.org/2016/05/27/know-yellow-fever/

540 infected with fever that causes joint pain

THE STAR

May. 27, 2016, 5:00 am

By STEPHEN ASTARIKO @stephen ASTARIKO

Chikungunya virus causes knees to bend. The disease saw more than 500 hospitalised in Mandera on Wednesday May 25, 2016. Photo/Courtesy

The Mandera Health department has raised the alarm over the rising number of people hospitalised with Chikungunya fever. Five hundred and forty people have been hospitalised.
Health chief officer Mariam Dahir on Wednesday said the number of residents affected could be higher as many schools have not been inspected. Health workers have been dispatched to inspect schools. Chikungunya, a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes, causes severe joint pain and headaches.

Thank you for participating in discussions on The Star, Kenya. Note that:

Unwarranted personal abuse and defamatory statements will be deleted.
Strong personal criticism is acceptable if justified by facts and arguments.
Deviation from points of discussion may lead to deletion of comments.

Four jailed for filming, kidnapping woman in Dubai

Marie Nammour/Dubai

Filed on May 26, 2016 | Last updated on May 26, 2016 at 06.26 am

(Representational image)

Two Egyptian men (a restaurant manager, 30 and a vendor, 33) were sentenced to one year in jail each for criminal complicity.

Three Moroccan women (a hairdresser, 26, and two saleswomen, aged 23 and 24) and an Egyptian businessman, 30, have each been sentenced by the Court of First Instance to three years in jail for kidnapping a Moroccan woman and filming her naked to blackmail her brother for a 7 million Moroccan dirham ransom.

Three other women (two Moroccans, aged 26 and 24, and an Ethiopian maid, 30) have each been sentenced to two years in jail for helping and abetting the four main defendants confine the victim in a flat and deprive her of freedom.

Two Egyptian men (a restaurant manager, 30 and a vendor, 33) were sentenced to one year in jail each for criminal complicity.

The victim, a 29-year-old Moroccan manicurist, said the four main accused kidnapped her at around 8pm on September 19, 2015, in Al Qusais.

"I had just walked out of a clothing shop in Al Nahda when they blocked my way and forced me inside the businessman's car".

They took her to a flat where they seized her belongings including her mobile phone and passport which the main female accused tore up.

"She filmed me naked with her mobile phone and then sent the clip to my brother on WhatsApp to blackmail him to pay the woman's husband in Morocco 7 million Moroccan dirhams or she would circulate the clip on the net.

"The men watched me as I was naked. The main female defendant asked them to rape me but that did not happen," the victim told the prosecutor.

The accused tied the victim's hands and feet with duct tapes. They also gagged her. She was held there for two days.

The brother's compatriot friend in Dubai reported the defendants to the police after he was contacted by him.

"We could track the victim's location at a flat in Al Nahda. We went there at around 11pm on September 21. We found her exhausted and scared. She had bruises and injury marks," a police lieutenant said. The women were then arrested.

All the defendants will be deported after completing their jail terms, the court ruled.

They may appeal the ruling.

mary@khaleejtimes.com