Sunday Round-Up - November 17, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the Republican stranglehold on Congress, the Euro-recession, war spending and the deficit, The Guardian editor's upcoming appearance before Parliament, and bee colony collapse.

In an article posted on its website on November 11, Rolling Stone magazine takes up the lock on Congress that Republicans have in spite of the growing gap between their policies and the wishes of the majority of the electorate.  Tom Dickinson explains how national Republicans have rigged the game by "waging an unrelenting campaign to exploit every weakness and anachronism in our electoral system.  Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today's GOP has locked in political power that it could never have secured on a level playing field."  The redistricting of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan is described in some detail.  The vast sum of money spent by Republicans in North Carolina to take over the state legislature in 2010, voter suppression laws, activist judges and the unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate are exposed.  And, as Dickinson notes, the Republicans are not done yet.  "In a project with the explicit blessing of Republican National Committee Chairman..., a half-dozen Republican-dominated legislatures in states that swing blue in presidential elections have advanced proposals to abandon the winner-take-all standard in the Electoral College. These states would instead apportion electoral votes by the favored candidate of each congressional district – a method currently practiced by only two, small, homogenous states, Maine and Nebraska. Thanks to the GOP's gerrymandering, such a change would all but guarantee that a Democratic presidential candidate in a big, diverse state like Michigan would lose the split of electoral votes even if he or she won in a popular landslide."

"The EU economy will remain flat in 2013, EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday (5 November), as he downgraded the bloc's growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015...There was little to cheer for Europe's jobless. Unemployment levels are likely to remain virtually unchanged, although they are forecast to fall from 12.2 percent to 11.8 percent across the eurozone by 2015."   The November 13 EU Observer article should be a reminder to us of how austerity programs implemented to reduce deficits slow recovery from a recession.  The "sequestration" cuts, our own version of misguided austerity, will begin having a greater impact in 2014.  Combine this with the fiscal cliff negotiations and the possibility of another government shutdown and we may be in for an interesting ride leading to the 2014 mid-term elections.

Speaking of the US deficit, a Harvard report out earlier this year put the eventual total monetary cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars as high as 6 trillion dollars - or 35% of the 17 trillion dollars total national debt.  The DNA India website noted that this corresponds to $75,000 for every household in the country.  "There's a sense that we are turning the corner, but unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of decision about the way we fought and funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come," [Harvard Professor Linda] Bilmes said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "We may be mentally turning the page, but we are certainly not from a budgetary and financial perspective."   As the Congressional budget discussions proceed, it should be helpful to keep in mind this graphic from the National Priorities Project.



 

In the UK, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has been asked to appear before Parliament to give evidence regarding the intelligence files leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Rusbridger will appear at a meeting of the home affairs select committee amidst rising criticism from British intelligence agencies and Tories.  "Alan has been invited to give evidence to the home affairs select committee and looks forward to appearing next month," a Guardian spokeswoman said.  A New York Times editorial  warns that the freedom of the press so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.



Finally, here's an update on the bee colony collapse that's been occurring around the world and threatening to impact fruit and vegetable production.  Ars Technica reported on October 21 that Italian researchers had cut through the complexity of causes that had surrounded the bee colony collapse.  Infections, insecticides and agricultural practices were all thought to be involved.  "Previous toxicology work in mammals indicated that a specific class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, could influence the activity of genes involved in the innate immune system."  The researchers started by showing that the same is true in insects. Initially, they worked with everyone's favorite fruit fly, Drosophila, showing that the equivalent genes responded in the same ways in the flies. They then showed that the innate immune response isn't activated when these same flies are exposed to an infection.... Various infections may still be doing the ultimate job of killing the bees, but their virulence could be explained by compromised immune function, caused by a combination of insecticide use and agricultural practices. The results will also provide further support for the European Union's attempt to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides."  The relationship between insecticides and colony collapse had been legally challenged by Bayer and Syngenta earlier this year.  

The image of the European honey bee is from Wikipedia.