Six In The Morning

ROBERT FISK

Sunday 25 November 2012

Netanyahu leads Israel into isolation

The Iron Dome system kept missiles at bay, but another 'dome' shields the people from reality

Israelis are congratulating themselves on the success of their Iron Dome missile shield. But across Israel these past years has fallen a different kind of iron dome, one that isolates the country rather than protects it, which shields its people from the realities of the Middle East, from Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world. The country's liberal elite fear this isolation and the soullessness it has created. How else can one account for the government minister who proposed "sending Gaza back to the Middle Ages" or the accusations against Israeli model Bar Refaeli that she was "an enemy of the people" because she merely prayed "for the welfare of the citizens on both sides" during last week's Gaza war?

India's clothing workers: 'They slap us and call us dogs and monkeys'

Human rights tribunal hears allegations of abuse and low pay against clothing companies that supply high street stores

• Gethin Chamberlain in Bengaluru
• The Observer, Sunday 25 November 2012

Workers making clothes that end up in the stores of the biggest names on the British high street have testified to a shocking regime of abuse, threats and poverty pay. Many workers in Indian factories earn so little that an entire month's wages would not buy a single item they produce.

Physical and verbal abuse is rife, while female workers who fail to meet impossible targets say they are berated, called "dogs and donkeys", and told to "go and die". Many workers who toil long hours in an attempt to support their families on poverty wages claim they are cheated out of their dues by their employers.

The allegations, which will be of concern to household names including Gap, H&M, Next and Walmart, were made at a human rights tribunal in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru.

M23 rebels steal show at DRC summit

25 NOV 2012 07:05 - AFP

M23 rebels announced they had opened talks with DRC President Joseph Kabila, hours after a regional summit called on them to end their offensive.

Stealing a march on the region's leaders, the political leader of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo rebel group, Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, said he had had an initial meeting with Kabila after the summit in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, had ended.

While he was not invited to the summit itself, Runiga Lugerero told Agence France-Presse he had been able to meet Kabila thanks to the mediation of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, with whom he had been due to hold talks.

"The atmosphere was tense but afterwards, each [side] calmed the debate down because these are not personal problems, but problems of the country" that must be settled, he told AFP by phone.

25 November 2012 Last updated at 07:13 GMT

Bangladesh clothes factory fire kills more than 100

More than 100 people are now known to have died in a fire that swept through a clothes factory in Bangladesh, local officials say.

The blaze broke out late on Saturday in the multi-floor Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.

Some people died having jumped from the building trying to escape the flames.

It is unclear what caused the fire, which started on the ground floor trapping many victims in the factory.

Officials suspect that an electrical short circuit might have started the blaze.

As Colombia and FARC rebels edge toward peace, a former U.S. hostage recalls his captors

Jim Wyss | Miami Herald

BOGOTA For more than five years, Marc Gonsalvez and two other Americans were marched through Colombia’s jungles as hostages of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas.

Now, as FARC and government negotiators meet in Cuba to hammer out a peace deal, Gonsalvez, 40, said he’s hoping for the best, but fears the intentions of his former captors.

“I am quickly losing hope that something positive will come out of it,” Gonsalvez told The Miami Herald from his home in Stratford, Conn.

Negotiators from both sides resumed meeting in Havana Monday to plot a path that might allow the nation’s largest guerrilla group to put down its arms after 48 years. There are five points on the peace agenda, including land reform, victims’ rights and the FARC’s political future.

U.S. Election Speeded Move to Codify Policy on Drones

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: November 24, 2012

 Facing the possibility that President Obamamight not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.