Excerpts: Arab League no side between Fateh and Hamas.CO2 emisions control
on hold.Retreat from democracy November 28, 2008

+++JORDAN TIMES 29 Nov.'08:"Arab ministers take no side between Fateh and
Hamas",Reuters
QUOTE:"the ministers said in a resolution they recognized Abbas as president
but they also allowed legitimacy to the Palestinian Legislative Council
where Hamas is dominant"
CAIRO - Arab foreign ministers steered clear of taking sides between
Palestinian groups Fateh and Hamas on Thursday(28 Nov.), at their first
meeting to review the state of Middle East peace talks since the US
presidential election.
The ministers told Palestinian groups they should resume without delay an
internal dialogue meant to bring the West Bank and Gaza Strip back under a
single Palestinian authority.
They also called for an immediate end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and
promised to send food, medicines and medical supplies to Gaza immediately.
The Islamist group Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since defeating Fateh forces
there in July. The Fateh group of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas runs
the West Bank.
After a late-night meeting at Arab League headquarters in Cairo, the
ministers said in a resolution they recognised Abbas as president but they
also allowed legitimacy to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where Hamas
is dominant.. . .
. . .Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem of Syria, which supports Hamas, said he
wished that "the other side" had had an opportunity to present its point of
view at the meeting.
. . .Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Gheit objected, saying that only
governments could take part in Arab League meetings.

+++SAUDI GAZETTE 29 Nov.'08:"Rich shelve CO2 cut plans as economies
decelerate"
QUOTE: " 'on the back-burner for the time being' "
EXCERPTSOSLO - Many industrialized nations are shelving ambitions for the
deepest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 as economic slowdown
overshadows the fight against climate change.
About 190 countries meet for UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland, next week
with scant mention of a deal in Vienna last year by almost all rich nations
to consider cuts in emissions of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
"That target is perhaps something that's on the back-burner for the time
being," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Climate Panel that said last
year that industrialized nations needed to make such cuts to avoid the worst
of warming.
Struggling with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, everyone from US
President-elect Barack Obama to European leaders are focusing more on
stimulus packages that should help a shift from fossil fuels by creating
"green" jobs.
Pachauri said world leaders might find it easier to discuss ambitious cuts
in a few months, "after the dust settles" from the financial crisis. Poznan
will review progress towards a new climate treaty to be agreed by the end of
2009 in Copenhagen.
But he also told Reuters: "If we want to limit temperature increase to 2
Celsius (3.6 F), or thereabouts, then clearly (25-40) is the target we
should be watching."
Two Celsius is seen by the EU, some other nations and many environmentalists
as a threshold for "dangerous" climate change - disrupting water supplies,
farming and causing more coastal floods from rising sea levels.
"Only the EU and Norway" have discussed cuts within the 25-40 percent band,
said Harald Dovland, a senior Norwegian official who chairs a UN climate
committee in Poznan looking at future pledges by industrialized nations.
The idea of 25-40 percent cuts was always a stretch.. . .

+++AL-AHRAM WEEKLY 27 Nov-3 Dec '09:"The curse of neo-totalitarianism",
Ayman
El-Amir*
QUOTE:"As dangerous as terrorism, the rise of autocratic dictatorship is a
grave threat to world peace."
Excerpts;The post-11 September global scene is undergoing a transformation
to a new phase of confrontation marked by the rise of autocracy in countries
that were believed to be on the path to democracy. The new trend appears as
an innocuous series of constitutional amendments designed to adapt these
countries to modern standards of political life. In effect, it is a
consecration of the 20th century "president-for-life" syndrome, complimented
by camouflaged hereditary succession under a pseudo-democratic republican
regime. Coupled with the global war on terror, the trend is bound to create
not only more intense domestic conflict but also to fuel a new and more
lethal transnational brand of terrorism.
. . .. Autocratic Arab regimes assumed the guise of fighting terror to
enact or prolong draconian emergency laws that they have used to rule
unopposed. In addition, they also contrived constitutional amendments that
would ensure their uninterrupted hold on power. These amendments, proposed
governments under the thumb of presidents, are usually rubber-stamped by an
automatic parliamentary majority whose ascendancy to representative office
is usually the result of cooked elections engineered by government
manipulation. Constitutional legitimacy becomes the respectable codename for
dictatorial rule that leaves no space for the rotation of power.
The practice has become rampant. . . .
What appears to be a drive for lifetime presidencies is not exclusively
endemic to the Arab Middle East. The Russian parliament has recently
approved an amendment proposed by President Dmitri Medvedev to increase the
term of the presidency from four to six years. An additional provision that
the change would apply only to future presidents gave credence to
speculation that the amendment was particularly designed to return former
president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin to two six-year terms starting
as early as next year and lasting until 2021. Following his two terms as
president, Putin was constitutionally barred from serving a third
consecutive term -- a condition that has now been broken by Medvedev's
presidential interlude.
.... Dictators who come to power under unusual circumstances tend to
experience the delusion of being "men of destiny" and assume the mantra of
"the father of the nation". ...Behind a dictator's delusion of grandeur, the
frenzy of self-adulation, cult of personality and exaggerated self-
confidence lies a deep-seated fear that some day, someone will unseat him
and open up a Pandora's box of vile crimes that should remain sealed for as
long as he is alive. This may explain why some presidents are trying to
engineer hereditary succession, so that the box may remain in family hands.
It is also why that, as much and they flaunt democratic reform, dictators
regard the introduction of true democracy as an act of suicide that they
will never commit.
. . .No one is predicting that the problem of terrorism will come to an
end anytime soon. More likely, terrorism and totalitarianism will become a
revolving door phenomenon, with each one chasing the other and blindly
fuelling it. The time has come for the UN Security Council to declare
totalitarianism as much as terrorism a threat to international peace and
security and provide a credible mechanism to fighting both.
* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also
served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA