This is the weekly selection of news
and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we
look at Secretary Kerry's Israeli-Palestinian
peace effort, the German press's dawning understanding that austerity
"may not be working" in Europe, Pope Francis' comments on
the world's poor, the NRA convention, Obama's
counter-terrorism speech, and preparations for the Syrian peace
talks. Sources: Haaretz, Der
Spiegel, Pravda, Opera Mundi, Mother Jones, and Al Jazeera.
Kerry and the Israeli-Palestinian
Peace Talks
Haaretz reported Friday that US
Secretary of State John Kerry, in the Middle East for the fourth time
in two months had "considered holding another round of talks
with two sides on Monday, but said now is not the right
time....'Netanyahu and Abbas have to take a week or two to make some
difficult
decisions that would allow peace talks to resume', Kerry said before his departure. He urged both sides to exhibit leadership in order for that to happen." Kerry made clear (again) the US position on the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land: "construction must end." A senior Israeli official was quoted as saying "we are prepared to launch direct negotiations with the Palestinians immediately."
decisions that would allow peace talks to resume', Kerry said before his departure. He urged both sides to exhibit leadership in order for that to happen." Kerry made clear (again) the US position on the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land: "construction must end." A senior Israeli official was quoted as saying "we are prepared to launch direct negotiations with the Palestinians immediately."
German Media on the Euro-recession
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on the increasing number of German newspapers acknowledging
that the austerity policies put in place by the European central
banks and supported by Merkel's government "may not be working."
Charles Hawley writing in the May 16 post of Spiegel Online points
to France's "new membership in the recession club as just the
latest indication that the current strategy may not be working."
The German business daily Handelsblatt comments on the
austerity measures: "That one slides into a recession at the
beginning is part of the plan. But the fact that it is lasting so
horrifically long leads one to suspect that Europe's path is making
the Continent sicker rather than healthier." While the
center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung focusses on
France's situation and asks "where are the ideas or the visions
for how the EU can exist in our highly competitive world?", the
left-leaning Die Tageszeitung
notes that "alternative models for how to stimulate Europe's
economy and fairly tax wealth exist only on paper and must be
finalized."
The Pope, the Chancellor and European Youth
Pope Francis met with Angela Merkel,
Germany's leader, recently selected again by Forbes magazine as
the world's most powerful woman and "a leader largely identified
by Europe’s economically suffering citizens as a champion of debt
reduction, including painful austerity across much of the continent."
The timing was exquisite. They met right after a 200,000 strong
rally in St. Peter's square at which Pope Francis said “If
investments, the banks plunge, this is a tragedy, if families are
hurting, if they have nothing to eat, well, this is nothing, this is
our crisis today.” Francis said his church “opposes this
mentality” and pledged that it will be dedicated to “the poor
people.” After the meeting, Merkel "joined the pope in
expressing concern about the many victims of Europe’s economic
crisis." In a May 20 article Der Spiegel noted
the particular hardships of the young people in Europe during the
recession. With unemployment above 23%, the youth of Europe are in
danger of becoming "a lost generation." Unemployment is even worse in
Spain (upper 50's%) and Greece (over 60%). Although almost nothing
has been done either in the South or the North, the continually
escalating unemployment numbers appear to have had an impact at last: "Suddenly
Europe is scrambling to address the problem. Youth unemployment will
top the agenda of a summit of European leaders in June. And Italy's
new prime minister, Enrico Letta, is demanding that the fight against
youth unemployment become an 'obsession' for the EU."
Guns, Kids, and the NRA
The United States' idolization of guns
is covered in a May 15 Pravda article on the NRA's 142nd annual
convention in Houston, Texas. Noting the attempt to appeal to young
people, the article relates several
cameos from the gun show at the convention, including this one:
"Nearby, Sandy holds a small rifle. Pointing to the ceiling,
concentrating. Closing one eye. Breathe. Shoot. Reload. The trebuchet
is pink, small, looks like a toy. It has a plastic butt, but the
metal pipe is black. Sandy smiles. At age four, she and her father,
Eric, are choosing their first rifle. In a few months a birthday and,
consequently, they will be able to bring the "gift"
home....A rifle exactly like the one Sandy has caused a tragedy on
April 30, in Cumberland County, State of Kentucky. A five year old
boy shot his twin sister by accident, killing her. The gun had been
given as a gift a year earlier." Frightening, huh? The article
(translated from the Portuguese language "Opera Mundi" where it originally appeared)
concludes: "The end of the first day of the convention in
Houston is reached, participants are ready to sleep armed to the
teeth. Like the rest of the U.S."
Obama's Counter-Terrorism Speech
David Corn in a May 23 post in MotherJones sees a glimmer of hope for civil liberties in President Obama's
speech on counter-terrorism policies. Obama made the speech a day
after the Administration admitted to the killing of four US citizens
by drones. I'm not sure I see as much of a glimmer of hope as Corn does but at
least it's better than what probably would have happened under a Republican
administration. The President placed new restrictions on the use of
drones and talked again about the necessity of closing
Guantanamo. Corn admits that "Obama is not renouncing his
administration's claim that it possesses the authority to kill an
American overseas without full due process" and "not
declaring an end to the dicey practice of indefinite detention or a
conclusion to the fight against terrorism". But he concludes:
"Obama, at the least, is showing that he does ponder these
difficult issues in a deliberative manner and is still attempting to
steer the nation into a post-9/11 period.." Two of the more
positive highlights from the speech:
- The call for an end to "the post-9/11 authority to wage war Congress granted the president: 'I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing."
- The unreasonableness of the Congressional restrictions on closing the Guantanamo prison: "These restrictions make no sense. After all, under President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from Gitmo with Congress’s support. When I ran for President the first time, John McCain supported closing Gitmo. No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States. Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for terrorism-related offenses, including some who are more dangerous than most Gitmo detainees." Obama is appointing " a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries" and he is lifting the restrictions on detainee transfers to Yemen (86 of the 166 still imprisoned are from Yemen).
Syrian Peace Talks
More than 80,000 people have been
killed in the Syrian conflict since the March 2011 uprising. 1.5
million have fled the country. On May 21, Al Jazeera reported that "Syria's opposition and government are preparing
to take part in an internationally-sponsored peace conference,
according to Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations-Arab League
mediator....Meanwhile, Moaz al-Khtaib, the former president of the
Syrian National Coalition, said the opposition is open to negotiating
with the government of President Assad. At a meeting of Syrian
opposition groups in Spain on Tuesday, Khtaib said the opposition
forces have no objection to a political solution to the conflict."
Several days later (May 24), the NYT reported that a Russian
Foreign Ministry spokesman had stated that the "Syrian
government has agreed to participate in an international peace
conference coordinated by Russia and the United States."
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