5112개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
Yesterday again, according to the bourgeois German media, in France more than 2,5 Million people demonstrated against the CPE.
For more details and a chronology of the struggle day please check out
English language coverage of the young workers’ revolt in France
The British Guardian reported following
IHT reported this
Protesters take to the streets again in France
Yesterdays IHT wrote this..
France prepares again for a day of strikes
France prepared for another week of protests and a nationwide strike on Tuesday after student organizations and labor unions rejected a compromise offer by President Jacques Chirac on the government's new youth employment law.
Chirac formally enacted the legislation on Sunday and sought at the same time to defuse a political crisis by calling on lawmakers to soften two of the law's most contested provisions: a probation period of two years and the right of employers to fire workers with no justification during that period.
On the face of it, Chirac's decision to sign the measure was a face-saving effort for the embattled Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had almost single-handedly championed the measures.
But by leaving changes in the hands of the governing Union for a Popular Movement party, or UMP, the president effectively bolstered Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Villepin's main rival on the right, who also is head of the UMP.
"We now have a clear sense that we are no longer dealing with the prime minister but with the UMP lawmakers, and their leader is Nicolas Sarkozy," François Chérèque, head of the CFDT, France's second largest union, said in a radio interview over the weekend.
But critics of the law appeared more determined than ever to bring it down, with or without modifications.
"The declarations by the president will boost the mobilization" on Tuesday, said Jean-Claude Mailly, leader of the labor union Force Ouvrière. "I have made a list of all strike notices. It will be a big day."
Like last week, when strikes were organized across much of the country and hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets of Paris alone, public transportation is expected to be significantly affected Tuesday. Both the national rail company, the SNCF, and the Paris transportation system, the RATP, predicted disruptions, while walkouts also were planned by employees at Air France.
Six of seven civil service unions said they backed the strike and, in a sign that the protests this week may surpass those last week, workers in media, banking and telecommunications said they would join the effort.
In addition, the opposition Socialist Party made a formal call for the first time to join the strikes. On Sunday members were at the Richard Lenoir market in Paris, near the Bastille monument, distributing fliers stating: "Now more than ever: Withdraw the CPE," the French acronym for the labor measure.
Meanwhile, a new opinion survey by the CSA institute, published Sunday in Le Parisien newspaper, indicated that 62 percent of France's citizens found Chirac's offer unconvincing. Two out of three said they thought the student movement had been strengthened, and three out of four thought that Villepin, the architect of the law, had been weakened.
The president's double-barreled approach of enacting the legislation while calling for changes has left the country in a legal limbo: Companies have the right to employ new staff members under the new youth contract in its current form, even though the president has asked them not to do so until the changes have gone through Parliament.
In a televised address Friday night, which was watched by more than 20 million people, Chirac asked that lawmakers halve the current probation period to one year and oblige employers to justify any decision to dismiss a young employee.
Laurence Parisot, head of the Medef, France's biggest employer federation, said on Europe 1 radio over the weekend that she hoped companies would not use the new contract before it was revised.
Jack Lang, one of many potential Socialist presidential candidates, was quoted in Le Parisian on Sunday as saying, "Legally speaking, it's incomprehensible to sign a law and say that you should not apply it."
And in a front-page editorial in the newspaper Le Monde, its publisher Jean-Marie Colombani described Chirac's request as a nondecision that leaves the country adrift: "He did not come down on either side. He was content to evade the issue."
The leader of the UMP in the lower house of Parliament, Bernard Accoyer, said he would try to meet union leaders to discuss changes in the law as early as Tuesday. He said that, at the earliest, a new bill could be expected in early May.
Sporadic protests against the legislation continued through the weekend, although the police said the country was relatively calm compared with the heated end of the week. About 1,500 demonstrators assembled in Paris, while 300 people organized a counterdemonstration nearby. Students, who late last week embarked on a series of wildcat protests, pledged similar actions in the days ahead.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/03/news/france.php
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To follow today the latest developments there, please check out
English language coverage of the young workers’ revolt in France
While the National General Strike in Nepal, starting on Thursday, organized by the Seven Parties Alliance, together with the CPN.M is coming closer, eKantipur published following article
Maoists halt "military actions" in Kathmandu Valley
The Maoist rebels have brought to a halt all kinds “military actions” in the Kathmandu Valley with effect from Monday evening.
Issuing a statement this afternoon, Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), Prachanda alias Pushpa Kamal Dahal, said his party had decided to “halt all kinds of military actions in the Kathmandu Valley until the next statement from the party.”
The Maoist declaration comes three days ahead of the seven-party alliance’s (SPA) April 6-9 nationwide general strike and a major showdown in Kathmandu on April 8.
In the statement Prachanda has made it clear that his party had taken this decision “keeping in view the requests made by the seven parties and civil society groups and also to expose the claims by the royal government that the Maoists were planning to infiltrate the protest programmes organized by the SPA.
“To expose the conspiracy of the autocratic feudal group to instill military terror on the capital-focussed peaceful showdown under the pretext of infiltration by the People’s Liberation Army, to create an easy environment for the general public to move forward with the peaceful movement with determination, and taking seriously the requests made by the seven political parties and the civil society,” the statement reads, “all military actions in the Kathmandu Valley have been suspended until the next statement from the party.”
The statement, however, reiterates the Maoists’ active support to SPA’s peaceful protest programmes and has appealed to the people of all levels “to come out on the streets to create a new history of a Loktantrik Nepal.”
Govt orders employees not to attend parties’ programmes
The warning came in a letter sent to all the ministries and constitutional bodies by the Office of the Council of Ministers.
Yesterday, Chief Secretary Lok Man Singh Karki had said that the government would immediately take action against employees who participate in the SPA’s movement.
Parties welcome Maoist moveMeanwhile, talking to eKantipur over the phone, Nepali Congress Spokesperson Krishna Prasad Sitaula welcomed the Maoists’ announcement.
“The step taken by the Maoists in view of the peaceful demonstrations in Kathmandu is a welcome move,” said Sitaula, adding that it would help make the alliance’s programme peaceful.
Welcoming the Maoists’ declaration on a light note, UML Standing Committee member K.P. Sharma Oli urged the Maoist leadership to declare a truce nationwide.
“The valley-centred ceasefire is not satisfactory in the sense that it cannot make a positive contribution to restore peace in the country. The ceasefire should be made nationwide to make it a complete success,” he said.
Minendra Rijal, spokesperson of the Nepali Congress-Democratic said the Maoists have made an encouraging move.
He, however, said a nationwide ceasefire would be more effective to make the environment conducive for the alliance's peaceful movement. He said, “I hope the Maoists will think about it in the days ahead.”
Earlier this week, Home Minister Kamal Thapa claimed that the government will foil the upcoming parties’ four-day nationwide general strike, “at any cost”.
The Minister also reiterated that the government would “treat the seven-party alliance like the Maoists as the pre-planned programmes are that of the rebels.”
The government also issued a statement urging the public to defer visits to Kathmandu except in urgent cases saying that the measure was part of its strict security arrangement aimed at controlling "terrorist activities".
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=70203
..from the Israeli point of view
Yesterdays Isreali bourgeois daily Yedioth Achronoth published following article
Corrupt kleptocracy vs. tyrannical theocracy
It is time to re-think the conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
A central tenet of prevailing conventional wisdom regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territory that came under Israeli administration in 1967 – the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza - is a sine qua non for a resolution of a seemingly intractable dispute.
Indeed this position is so widely held that it has become almost an "article of faith" in international circles - and woe betide anyone with the temerity to question its validity. In fact, one of the remarkable aspects of this belief is that appears totally immune to the ravages of empirical fact and historical experience.
While it is reasonably understandable why this view has taken root in the Arab and Muslim world, it is far more puzzling why this should be the case among those who purport to be liberal intellectuals. For there is an accumulating body of evidence to suggest that the establishment of a Palestinian state, under any foreseeable future leadership, is likely to have the perverse consequence of promoting values that are diametrically opposed to those to which its liberal intellectual proponents allegedly subscribe… and which, curiously enough, they invoke to justify their support for such a state.
Little reason for hope
There is, of course, little reason to believe that a nascent Palestinian state will blossom into a political entity significantly different from all the other Arab states in the region, where accepted parameters of liberal democracy such as the freedom of the press, individual liberties, due process, the equitable dispensation of justice and the rule of law, and the status of women are hardly the distinguishing hallmarks of the incumbent regimes.
And although the Palestinians indeed managed to conduct a reasonably orderly election (albeit in large measure under Israeli auspices and which brought Hamas to power), the first decade of self-rule has often been characterized by persecution of journalists, harassment of the press, arbitrary arrests, mob lynchings (by Palestinians of Palestinians), and a high rate of "honor killings" of Palestinian women by their male kinfolk.
With the election of Hamas, it is doubtful, to say the least, that matters will improve. Indeed, quite the reverse is likely to be true. Thus, it is puzzling why those who profess support for the tenets of liberal democracy should push for the establishment of an entity in which such anti-liberal features are likely to flourish.
Intellectual honesty
This conundrum needs to be addressed seriously, for it seems highly anomalous that the notion of statehood should be given such overriding sway that it outweighs all other considerations – including those of the personal welfare and quality of life of individual Palestinians who have been left languishing in misery while a failed and fraudulent leadership has lead, or rather mislead, them deeper and deeper into an endless saga of tragedy.
Surely then, at some point, the international community should pause and reassess the moral validity and the practical viability of the Palestinian statehood issue. In many respects it is becoming increasing difficult to defend the moral merit and the political prudence of the entire endeavor.
The enduring inability of the Palestinians to succeed in establishing the apparatus of a state for themselves is a matter that its proponents – in the interest of intellectual integrity - must address. For only the dogmatic, the doctrinaire, and the demagogic can overlook the irksome question of why the Palestinians have failed so resoundingly and consistently to achieve statehood when so many other national movements with far less moral and material support have succeeded in far more daunting conditions – even against mighty empires rather than a micro-state like Israel.
Unprecedented support
Of course, some will protest that it is misleading to characterize Israel in this manner and point out that it has enjoyed strong superpower support of the US. True enough.
But it should also be remembered that for almost four decades, the Palestinians, too, had had even more unmitigated support from a superpower, the USSR, plus that of China and of India, the whole "non-aligned" bloc of nations, and the entire Muslim world. To this one might add the strong endorsement of major international institutions such as the U.N., and highly favorable coverage of nearly all the leading media channels together with strong sources of sympathy within the U.S. administration, particularly the Arabists down at "Foggy Bottom".
So a lack of international political backing certainly cannot account for the poor Palestinian performance. Neither can the lack of international economic support - for in the period between the signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 90's and the outbreak of the Palestinian "intifada" late in 2000, the Palestinians the highest per capita recipients of international aid in world.
Yet in spite of these very favorable conditions – certainly far more benign than those experienced by almost any other movement of national freedom since WWII - the Palestinians have not managed to produce any semblance of a stable productive society. Indeed, quite the opposite is true.
Almost a decade-and-a-half has passed since the benevolent Oslo Accords were virtually thrust upon the Palestinians by an unprecedented accommodative Israeli administration which, to a large degree, not only recognized their claims for self determination, but actually identified with them.
Yet in this period the Palestinian leadership used the Oslo process to create a repressive and regressive interim regime that provided little, but successfully managed to pillage the Palestinian people. Indeed the Palestinian Authority has perhaps the unique, if dubious, distinction of attaining "failed state" status even before it was established.
Kleptocracy or theocracy
It is highly doubtful that the radical Islamists who have now assumed power will be able to remedy this condition. Almost half a century after the establishment of their "national liberation" movement, the Palestinian leadership has provided its people with a harsh choice between two distinctly unpalatable alternatives: the corrupt kleptocracy of the former regime or tyrannical theocracy of the present one.
In light of these grim and grisly facts, it seems only proper that the international community pause to reflect on the feasibility and desirability of persisting with the idea of a Palestinian state as if it were an axiomatic inevitability. This should be especially true for those who have a genuine concern for the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people.
Other possibilities
It seems not only proper, but pressing, that the international community begin to seriously consider scenarios for the resolution of the Middle East conflict that do not include the creation of a Palestinian state. Such alternative paradigms should focus on attempting to alleviate genuine humanitarian suffering rather than endeavoring to implement spurious political enterprises.
While the details of such alternatives are beyond the scope of this article, one alarming point should, in closing , be emphasized: Unless there is a paradigmatic shift in the thinking applied to the Palestinian predicament, the recent events in the Palestinian administered territories – particularly the widespread lawlessness and factional gunfights – suggest that the Palestinian people may soon be forced to face a third alternative even more uninviting than the previous two – that is the prospect of a descent into chronic chaos and anarchy.
Dr. Martin Sherman is a political scientist at Tel Aviv University
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3235672,00.html
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Btw.., if you want to fight your enemy you have to study him, or her... W.I. Lenin
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PS.. Latest news and articles
IDF kills Palestinian boy in clashes north of Jerusalem
Fatah activist makes propaganda for Hamas+Fatah
The German bourgeois magazine Der Spiegel published some days ago following article..
Player Silences German Racists With Hitler Salute
Mired in betting scandals, riven by infighting and alarmed by recent poor performances on the pitch, German soccer needs anything but more controversy in the few months remaining before it hosts the World Cup. But some recent cases of blatant racism are doing further damage to its image.
It started with a Hitler salute. Two eastern German soccer teams in the fourth division, FC Sachsen Leipzig and Hallesche FC, had just drawn 2-2 on March 25 in Halle, and the fans weren't happy.
Leipzig's Nigerian midfielder Adebowale Ogungbure was walking off the pitch when hooligans ran up to him, spat at him and called him "Dirty Nigger," "Shit Nigger" and "Ape." He ignored it and walked on. Then, when he passed the main stand and heard fans making whooping monkey noises at him, he decided he'd had enough. He put two fingers above his mouth to symbolise a Hitler moustache and stuck out his right arm in a Nazi salute to the crowd.
Given their behavior, one might think they would have appreciated the gesture and even returned it. But a Halle supporter attacked him from behind with a corner flag and another grabbed him in a stranglehold. Ogungbure pushed them away as a teammate intervened and dragged him towards the tunnel, to the safety of the changing rooms.
"I was just so angry, I didn't care. I could have been killed but I had to do something," Ogungbure told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week. "I thought to myself, what can I do to get them as angry as they have made me? Then when I lifted my arm I saw the anger in their faces and I started to laugh."
"I've faced some sort of racist abuse at about half the matches I've played," he said, but the spitting was too much on March 25. "I've never seen anyone spit at a dog or a cat in Germany -- why should I be spat at?"
The story took a grotesque turn when Ogungbure was charged with "unconstitutional behavior" for making the Hitler salute, which is illegal in Germany. The public prosecutor's office wisely dropped proceedings within 24 hours. But the incident made nationwide headlines and spurred a flurry of reports suggesting racist abuse is rife in the lower leagues where crowds are smaller and fewer police are present.
Rolf Heller, president of FC Sachsen Leipzig, played down the incident and said it was an isolated case. "This has nothing whatsoever to do with right wing extremism, it is just misguided fervor on the part of the fans," he said. Ogungbure said he informed Heller long ago about the hostility he faces. His answer: "They only want to wind you up."
FIFA toughens penalties
The case came to the attention of the governing body of world football, FIFA, which recently implemented tougher penalties for clubs whose fans engage in racist behavior. Possible sanctions now include match suspensions, the deduction of points, relegation or elimination from competitions.
The new rules were introduced in response to recent acts of racism in the top Spanish and Italian leagues but FIFA Secretary-General Urs Linsi told German newspaper Tagesspiegel last week: "We will of course also make sure that something like this is punished in Germany's fourth division as well."
So clubs had better start getting their act together, because greeting black players with ape noises and riling against foreigners is a frequent occurrence, especially, it appears, at matches involving teams from eastern Germany where unemployment is high and support for far-right parties has been strongest in recent years.
Last weekend at a second division match between Hamburg St. Pauli and eastern club Chemnitz FC, visiting Chemnitz fans stormed Turkish-owned stores chanting "Sieg Heil" and waving imitation Nazi flags. Some shouted: "We're going to build a subway from St Pauli to Ausschwitz."
Such behavior is bad enough at any time, but especially damaging now with Germany trying to project a cosmopolitan image under a World Cup slogan: "A Time to Make Friends."
Neo-Nazis plan to spoil World Cup
German officials last week admitted the far right may try to capitalize on the month-long World Cup, which starts July 9. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said neo-Nazi groups were planning to use the tournament to raise their profile.
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The far-right NPD party and other neo-Nazi groups apparently want to stage a "freedom of speech" march in Gelsenkirchen, in the Ruhr Valley, and further demonstrations in Leipzig, Berlin, and Nuremberg, to show solidarity with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has openly denied the Holocaust and suggested that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
The NPD is also already actively fomenting soccer xenophobia by offering a World Cup match fixtures guide that calls for Germany to field only white-skinned players.
The list is headlined "WHITE -- not just a soccer shirt color -- for a real NATIONAL team." It has a picture of a player bearing the number 25 -- the number used by national team player Patrick Owomoyela, who has a Nigerian father.
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The 2006 Soccer World Cup is staying under the motto THE WORLD TO GUEST IN GERMANY... harrharr
One protester died after police opened fire to disperse Kurdish demonstrators in southeastern Turkey on Sunday, raising the death toll in six days of street violence to nine, security sources said.
They said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, had been shot in the stomach when police started firing in the air to stop a protest march in the town of Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border.
He was part of a crowd that had marched to the family home of another protester, 27-year-old Ahmet Arac, who was shot dead in Kiziltepe on Saturday, they said.
Riots in the mainly Kurdish region erupted on Tuesday after the funerals of 14 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed in clashes with the military last weekend.
The civil unrest has been some of Turkey's worst since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984.
Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's largest city, Diyarbakir.
Locals gathered under a canopy to express condolences to relatives of the two men killed in the town.
"The people are very angry and I think the trouble will continue. We are protesting because we want Europe to know what is happening. How can Turkey enter the EU when it is like this?" asked Abdulkadir, a car salesman and friend of Arac.
AUTONOMY AND LIVING STANDARDS
Political analysts and diplomats say the violence reflects local anger over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's refusal to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.
Locals are disappointed that more reforms have not emerged out of Turkey securing an EU go-ahead last October to begin accession talks, and pledges of economic improvements by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
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Meanwhile the conflict, or better said a kind of Kurdish uprising in Turkey, N. Kurdistan is reaching the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora. Before yesterday in the early night young Kurdish activists in Berlin, Germany, attacked a bourgeois Turkish restaurant, to protest against the massacres by the police and military against civilians there. The owners of the attacked restaurant have usually also no problems to support German conservative members of the govt. and beside Turkish rightwing politicians.
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4.3 updating..
Three Killed in Istanbul Bus Attack
The Nepalese bourgeois eKantipur published yesterday following articles
Mass movement aimed at restoring people’s sovereignty: Koirala
Former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress (NC) President Girija Prasad Koirala has said that the present mass movement launched by the seven-party alliance was aimed at restoring the people’s sovereignty in the country.
In a special interview with media persons at his residence in Maharajgunj on Saturday morning, NC President Koirala made it clear that the parties’ mass movement against last year’s Feb.1 royal takeover would be peaceful.
“This time the movement will be different than the previous one,” said Koirala, adding, “Our movement will be peaceful. Wherever the people of this country are, Nepalis from all walks of life are being agitated.”
Hinting at the government’s allegation that the seven-party alliance’s April 6-9 general strike could be infiltrated by the Maoist rebels, Koirala ruled out any such possibility.
“One thing is clear, we won’t jointly move ahead with the Maoists. We will advance our movement in our own peaceful manner,” he said.
Though protests will be organised across the country, Koirala said, the parties’ movement would focus on the capital “since the international community is in the capital and all eyes are on the capital.”
When asked about the 12-point understanding reached with the Maoists, Koirala said, “Several persons have misunderstood this issue. I talked to all-- the Maoists and the international community (on the issue) as per my own basic principles. I have my principle that there should be an end to the autocratic rule, (there should be) peace, full-fledged democracy and an independent, sovereign, progressive and prosperous Nepal.”
He said, “I have told them (Maoists) that I have no trust in your and the King’s guns, because several incidents have happened in the meantime. I have told the Maoists that when I met you (Maoists), you told me that the King offered you joint rule of the country by putting all (leaders of the parties) in jail. Then after differences surfaced between you two (Maoist Chairman Pranchanda and politburo member Baburam Bhattarai), I told Baburam that you accused Prachanda of being pro-palace and Prachanda accused you of being pro-Indian. So I told them how could I trust your guns?”
Koirala added that during his meetings with the Maoist leaders he told them that the third party—the democrats—have their important role when the two gun-wielders (King and Maoists) unite.
He also said that no one could stop the nation from opting for a republican setup if the monarch refused to be ceremonial.
“The seed (of a republic) has already been sown, no one can stop it unless the king changes his behaviour entirely,” Koirala said, adding, “History can be built through that process.”
Asked about the Maoists’ opinion on a “ceremonial king,” Koirala refused to answer. He said, “I don’t want to say everything. If I say everything about our talks (with the Maoists) the thing that is developing positively, will be knocked down. Don’t ask me more about this. I am not speaking whimsically. I am speaking with conviction.”
Koirala, however, said that he was in favour of national reconciliation.
He said, “At the time when B.P (Koirala) and the king reached national reconciliation, there was no third party like the Maoists. As there is a third party now, I aim to make the environment conducive for reconciliation among the three (forces). We should go through the present Constitution even if we move to a constituent assembly.”
Koirala also said that he had not been in contact with the palace for the last 15 months while claiming that royalists over this period had made several “failed attempts” to split the seven-party alliance.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=70025
And
Rare show for democracy by SPA, Maoist representatives
In a rare show of unity and solidarity for a 'new Nepal', exiled representatives of Nepal's Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on Saturday announced simultaneous protest programs in India coinciding with the April 9 showdown in Nepal.
The eight parties' representatives also requested the Indian government, media and the civil society to lend support to Nepal's struggle for a "new democratic republic". By Nepali New Year on April 14, they also hoped that "a new Nepal will emerge with a promising democratic future".
On April 6, they will organize a seminar on Nepal's democratic struggle in New Delhi, which will be followed by a big showdown at Jantarmantar on April 9, or the People's Movement Day. About 50,000 Delhi-based Nepali workers are expected to turn up for that.
Those representing the eight parties today included: pro-Maoist Nepali Janadhikar Surakshya Samiti's Laxman Pant, pro-CPN-UML Pravashi Nepali Sangh's chief advisor Chhabilal Biswokarma and functionary Ramlal Kafle, Janamorch Representative Iswori Bhattarai and Nepali Congress (Loktantra newsletter) representatives Shailesh Acharya and Dinesh Prasain.
Conspicuously, Delhi based SPA negotiators Bam Dev Gautam, Jhalanath Khanal, Mahantha Thakur -- who until last week were hopeful about an "eight party joint statement around April 9", but now understandably frustrated because of "deepening differences with the SPA itself" -- were absent.
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=70024
But unfortunately there are no real independent informations about the current situation and developments there..
But try it with
http://www.cpnuml.org/newsticker.html
and
ANOTHER STEP FORWARD TO A REAL DICTATORSHIP..
IHT reported yesterday, 4.1 following
Philippine press comes under official heat
The Philippine press, one of the most vigorous and free-wheeling in Asia, is coming under serious government pressure for the first time since the martial law government of Ferdinand Marcos more than 20 years ago.
Along with hints that the authorities might restrict public assembly, the campaign against the press strikes at the heart of the freedoms that were won in 1986 when Marcos was driven from the presidency by a popular uprising.
It is an insidious form of pressure that involves warnings, watch lists, surveillance, court cases, harassment lawsuits and threats of arrest on charges of sedition.
No one from the press has yet been arrested, although three journalists from The Tribune, a daily newspaper, have been charged with rebellion. No news outlets have been shut down, although troops surrounded television stations for several days.
Journalists say the situation is all the more unnerving because of the uncertainty of what is happening or may happen to them.
"I have a number of people on my list," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said in a recent television interview. "We are studying them."
This aggressive posture follows a one-week state of emergency imposed Feb. 24 by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in response to what she said was a coup attempt involving an array of people who have been calling for her resignation.
Since then, the police have broken up several gatherings that were seen as critical of the president and have briefly detained some participants.
The gatherings included an annual celebration of International Women's Day on March 8, in which a congresswoman who opposes Arroyo was forcibly detained "to get her out of harm's way."
They also included a mock beauty pageant in which each contestant was to be made up with a mole on her face in imitation of Arroyo.
There also was something else that seemed like a joke - small weekly protest gatherings that at first amounted to buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
The protesters got away with that one, but on March 19, the same group was dispersed by the police as its members walked through a park wearing T-shirts reading, "Out Now" in an evident reference to the president.
Officials have spoken of "intelligence" they had received about planned gatherings in the same manner they have talked about monitoring reporters.
Government statements about the press have played on the intimidation caused by uncertainty.
"The press is not a target of censorship," said the president's press secretary, Ignacio Bunye, "but some members of the press have been charged with violations of law and shall be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen."
The director of the National Police, General Arturo Lomibao, has told the press it must conform to certain standards, but unspecified ones, subject to government interpretation on a case-by-case basis.
He referred to a new catch-all regulation that bans "actions that hurt the Philippine state by obstructing governance including hindering the growth of the economy and sabotaging the people's confidence in government and their faith in the future of this country."
The apparent goal of all this is self-censorship, said Maria Ressa, senior vice president for news and public affairs at the ABS-CBN broadcasting network.
"It's crazy," she said. "You don't know what's happening, but you feel they can move on you at any time."
Ressa has been a leader in demanding clarification of the government's policies toward the press and in filing a class-action lawsuit to bar prior restraint.
"There is definitely fear and uncertainty," she said.
"When government officials say, 'We have the power to shut you down, we have the power to look at your content,' it's intimidation."
Some news organizations have prepared for possible searches or arrests by backing up computer files, setting aside bail money and instructing their staffs on their legal rights if the police enter their offices.
Some journalists have noted that the president's executive secretary, Eduardo Ermita, is experienced in censorship and press manipulation, having served at the top of the Department of Public Information under Marcos.
If the current restrictions are pointing the way toward de facto martial law, as some critics suggest, Ermita said, it is a "smiling" or "laughing" martial law.
The government has chosen in its threatening statements to single out the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, a small, aggressive group of journalists headed by Sheila Coronel, a prominent figure in Southeast Asian press associations.
The center's exposés of corruption, presented during congressional impeachment hearings, were instrumental in bringing down Arroyo's predecessor, Joseph Estrada.
Government officials have said they might charge Coronel and members of her staff with sedition, but the evidence they cite is strangely lackadaisical.
Their only references are to an audiotape posted on the center's Web site in which Arroyo apparently consults with an election official about rigging the presidential vote in 2004.
But as Coronel pointed out in a statement, portions of the tape have been played on radio and television and are posted on a dozen other Web sites and blogs. A version was even played for the press by Bunye, the press secretary.
"It's very insidious," Coronel said. "They say they are studying filing sedition charges. They say they have lists, but they don't say who is on them. This is not how the game should be played. We know our rights, and we should not be harassed by psychological pressure."
Coronel was one of a group of young female reporters who became well known for defying Marcos in the early 1980s when journalists were being harassed and arrested.
The press freedom that is now under threat is something she struggled for herself.
"People went to prison, people died for this freedom," Coronel said, "and if you give it up, it is a betrayal of all the sacrifices that people have made in the past, people I know personally. It really makes me mad."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/manila.php
The police have so far acted with relative restraint, IHT wrotes...
IHT was asking in its yesterdays edition..
What's next for the protesters?
The French government's decision not to rescind its disputed labor law risks radicalizing the protest movement and plunging France into a new, more dangerous phase of disturbances, students, labor unionists, opposition politicians and sociologists warned Friday.
With labor unions planning another day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations Tuesday, unauthorized protests by students have already begun multiplying across the country - a clear change of tactics from traditional demonstrations and strikes, which are planned with police authorization.
For a second day Friday, decentralized groups of protesters disrupted traffic and invaded public buildings in Paris and other cities, prompting the riot police to intervene.
"They have opened a Pandora's box," said François Dubet, a prominent sociologist. "The decision of the government is an extremely dangerous one."
Student leaders called on students throughout the country Friday to rally in the main squares of their cities before a televised address to the nation by President Jacques Chirac.
At the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Friday evening, thousands of students crowded around a set of loudspeakers to listen to Chirac's speech. They greeted his announcement that he would enact the law with cries of "Resign, Chirac! Resign."
"In my opinion, things are going to explode, and it's going to hurt," said Jeanne Enaut, a 22-year-old economics student at the rally.
Before the Bastille rally, the police blocked exits from the Métro, apparently to prevent people who were arriving via the underground train from gathering there. Early in the day, riot police officers broke up an attempted sit-in at the square. Métro exits were also blocked at the Concorde and Champs-Élysées- Clémenceau stations, near the presidential palace where Chirac lives, because of student actions above ground, a police officer said.
Elsewhere, students blocked train tracks in Libourne, in the southwest, and invaded a post office in Montpellier, in the south. In the Mediterranean city of Marseille, two youths were injured when a motorist forced his way through a blockade across a road to a school campus, French news organizations reported. Incidents were reported in many other cities across the country.
High school students, who were less represented in the movement initially, have now joined the protests in droves. Karl Stoeckel, the head of the UNL, the national union of high school students, said Friday that he expected unauthorized protests to continue through the weekend, with youths occupying train stations, roadways and public buildings.
"Demonstrations and strikes didn't do the job, so we need to diversify our ways of protesting," he said.
Even students at the Lycée Victor Hugo in Paris's wealthy Marais neighborhood walked out Friday to protest the youth employment law. As Chirac prepared to enact the legislation, hundreds of Victor Hugo students gathered at the nearby Place des Vosges, one of Paris's most venerable squares, with banners and drums.
"Enough is enough," said Ulysse Mathieu, 16. "In the beginning only a few of us actually joined the protests. But now most students are mobilized. The government is really asking for it."
Zoë Miniconi, 16, predicted that the movement would grow - and grow more radical. "This could blow up in their faces, just like the suburbs last year," she said, referring to three weeks of rioting in immigrant suburbs across France last November.
Dubet, who is research director at Paris's School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences, and other political scientists warned that Chirac's decision to enact the law could widen the gulf between moderate students and a radical fringe of youths willing to use violence to make themselves heard.
If the movement becomes more radical and clashes with the police turn more violent, the protests risk drawing in youths from immigrant neighborhoods who were at the center of three weeks of rioting last autumn, the analysts said. Some youths from the poorer suburbs ringing Paris have joined the protests already, but those numbers could swell, the experts said.
Finally, they warned, if youths resort to the kind of violence that has broken out in some areas during the protests - smashing storefronts, battering cars and setting them on fire, attacking the police - labor unions that have acted as a moderating force on the young people could distance themselves from the movement for fear of alienating their members. This could amplify the radicalization.
"So far we have been in a phase of protest that in general was less explosive because there has been a strong coalition between unions and students," Dubet said. "If divisions emerge, it would create a very high risk of violence, chaos and police violence."
François Hollande, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, warned Friday that by signing the law Chirac would be "opening a major crisis."
For the moment, labor unions are planning to step up their resistance to the law. At the headquarters of the powerful CGT union, a spokeswoman said that France's five main unions would decide in coming days what "new forms of protest" would be pursued next week.
The unions and student organizations are hoping that strikes next Tuesday will exceed the mass protests of the past week, which brought more than one million demonstrators into the streets.
The police have so far acted with relative restraint, although students say tensions are increasing.
Anna Mélin, 22, a law student in the southern city of Toulouse, where students occupied a post office Friday, said the riot police had reacted "very aggressively" when she and others occupied a local government building, hitting students with their batons and arresting scores of them.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/paris.php
Hey, first of all yesterday was the holiday in Palestine...
...but the Guardian, UK, reported following story..
Palestinian factions clash over militant killing
The clashes came at the funeral of Abu Yousef Abu Quka, who died when his car exploded in flames near a Gaza City mosque at the start of Friday prayers.
The Popular Resistance Committees militant group, of which Abu Quka was a commander, said an Israeli air strike was responsible for the death of their leader.
However, some of its members privately blamed local Fatah leaders, the Associated Press reported.
Clashes later broke out between members of the PRC and members of the large Fatah movement.
Hospital worker Bakr Abu-Safir said: "We have a big mess here."
The Israeli military, which has killed dozens of Palestinian militant leaders, denied any involvement in today's blast, telling Reuters: "It wasn't us."
Israel radio reported that Abu Quka had overseen numerous rocket attacks on Israel.
The militant Islamic group Hamas, which took charge of the Palestinian government on Wednesday, also blamed Israel for Abu Quka's death.
Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister, said the killing "justifies the process of self-defence to stop the Israeli aggression by all means".
Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in January, refuses to recognise Israel or renounce violence.
Today's blast followed a suicide bombing that killed four Israelis in the West Bank.
The attack, by a man dressed as an Orthodox Jew who hitched a ride in a car, was claimed by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group linked to Fatah.
It was the first suicide attack by a Fatah affiliate since a truce in February 2005.
Some observers suggest the attack may be linked to Ehud Olmert's victory in Israel's general election on Tuesday.
With Mr Olmert planning to withdraw from much of the West Bank, and the long-ruling Fatah out of power, Al-Aqsa might want to revive Fatah's credibility by creating the impression that Israel is retreating under fire.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the suicide attack, but Hamas defended it as "resistance" against Israeli "crimes".
IHT, AP wrote this
Explosion kills Palestinian militant amid spreading violence
The Israeli Yedioth Achronoth this
Al Jazeera wrote this
Violence erupts in Gaza after killing
...and finally the Israeli Haaretz reported yesterday this
Hamas pledges to remove arms from streets of Gaza
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