Syria
With a three-day ceasefire in place, the first stage of the evacuation of the besieged city of Homs began on Friday. As reported in The Guardian: "Scores of Syrian women, children and elderly men from the besieged old city of Homs have been evacuated to safety and humanitarian supplies are expected to be allowed in in the first stage of a limited relief operation agreed between the UN and the government of President Bashar al-Assad." The Assad government has agreed to attend the second round of Geneva II peace talks. The NGO Save The Children welcomed the deal but sees it as a temporary measure: "We need all parties to the conflict to allow immediate humanitarian assistance into Homs and other besieged areas all across Syria, from Aleppo to Damascus." [The Guardian, February 7]
Israel-Palestine
Palestinian workers from Hebron at a checkpoint. Image credit:Emil Salman; Haaretz, February 7
AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu are still reeling from their failed ham-handed attempt to derail the Iran nuclear negotiations. Support for the new Iran sanctions bill is diminishing with several former cosponsors now saying they changed their mind. So back to the main issue of concern for Israelis - how are the US sponsored negotiations with the Palestinians going? Recent polls suggest that neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli public believes a deal can be reached. The negotiations are stalled and the US is signaling that the original April 29 date for a final agreement is in jeopardy. There is Palestinian anger at the ongoing Israeli permitting of illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and the destruction of Palestinian homes is at a five year high. A key stumbling block for the Israelis is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. It seems to me that one solution might be Arab and Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state combined with a recognition of the Palestinian right of return, a guarantee that Palestinians will be accorded full rights in Israel should they choose to return, and an end to settlement activity and home destruction on Palestinian lands.
Russia Today reported on Friday of the protests lodged by aid groups and the UN on the destruction of the Palestinian homes. "In a statement Friday, 25 aid organizations said the number of demolitions went up by almost half and the displacement of Palestinians by almost three-quarters between July 2013 – when peace negotiations began again – and the end of the year, compared to the same time period in 2012. The groups said that of the 663 Palestinian structures destroyed by Israel in 2013, 122 were constructed with international donor aid. The 663 demolitions mark the highest number in the last five years. 'International and local aid organizations have faced increasingly severe restrictions in responding to the needs created by the unlawful demolition of civilian property, in violation of Israel's obligation to facilitate the effective delivery of aid,' wrote the groups, which included Oxfam.
On Thursday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on the meeting between "chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat [and] U.S. Middle East peace talks envoy Martin Indyk, against a backdrop of tension between Israel and the United Sates and criticism in Jerusalem of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry...Erekat said Thursday in an interview on Al Jazeera television that the Palestinian response to Israel’s continued construction in East Jerusalem was to join the Geneva Convention, in preparation for declaring the settlements a war crime and bringing Israel to the International Criminal Court in The Hague."
Eurozone Recession
The Guardian reported on January 31 that Eurozone unemployment dropped for the third straight month in January. Overall unemployment in the Eurozone is still at 12%, ranging from ~5% in Austria and Germany to over 25% in Spain and Greece. "Youth unemployment fell by 23,000 to 3.53 million, with the youth jobless rate falling to 23.8% from 24% in November." European policymakers are "becoming increasingly concerned about the risk of deflation, with the latest data showing inflation fell to 0.7% in January from 0.8% in December."
Food Stamp Cuts
The Republican assault on the social safety net continues. Not only have they blocked the extension of long-term unemployment benefits - the measure fell one vote short of the required 60 to break the Senate filibuster - but they managed a big win in the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program passed as part of the farm bill. Mother Jones reporter Erika Eichelberger wrote on January 31 of the impending passage of the Farm Bill by the Senate with its subsequent sign-off by the President. Both of these steps have now been executed and $8.6 billion will be taken from the food stamps program over the next 5 years. It's less than the Tea Party wanted but double the amount in the original Senate bill. Eichelberger explains why the compromise level of cuts is a Republican win: "In addition to the [nearly] $9 billion in food stamp cuts in this five-year farm bill, another $11 billion will be slashed over three years as stimulus funding for the program expires. The first $5 billion of that stimulus money expired in October; the rest will disappear by 2016. In the months since the first $5 billion in stimulus funding was cut, food pantries have been struggling to provide enough food for the hungry. Poverty remains at record high levels, and three job applicants compete for every job opening.And yet, despite the $5 billion in cuts that already happened and the guarantee of $6 billion more, Republicans succeeded in getting their Democratic peers to cut food stamps further." As the non-profit Feeding America noted "The $8.6 billion cut means that 850,000 SNAP recipients will lose an average of $90 in monthly benefits. That’s not a talking point. That’s real food for families that are struggling."
Climate Change
Haven't heard much on climate change in the news recently? You're not alone. Tom Engelhardt bemoans the lack of coverage in a February 2 essay on the TomDispatch website. "That the anything-but-extreme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers an at least 95% guarantee of human causation for global warming is not a story, nor is the recent revelation that IPCC experts believe we only have 15 years left to rein in carbon emissions or we’ll need new technologies not yet in existence which may never be effective. Nor is the recent poll showing that only 47% of Americans believe climate change is human-caused (a drop of 7% since 2012)...Climate change isn’t the news and it isn’t a set of news stories. It’s the prospective end of all news. Think of it as the anti-news."
Link
Food bank locator - find a food bank in your area - from the Feeding America website
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