Sunday Roundup - September 7, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Ukraine, Israel's new settlement announcement, ISIS, Ebola, and Yellowstone's supervolcano.

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"One of the greatest cultural duties of the Jewish people is the attempt to re-enter the Promised Land, not by means of conquest...but through peaceful and cultural means, ..and with a decision not to do anything which cannot be justified before the world conscience."

- Rabbi Judah Magnes, Address at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1929, quoted in I.F. Stone's essay in Harper's Magazine,"The Other Zionism" (September 1978)

"...the territory internationally recognized as the State of Palestine [by the UN General Assembly vote of November 2012] constitutes 22 percent of historic Palestine.  We have forgiven you for 78 percent....You're telling us to compromise on the 22 percent?"

- Bassim Khoury, Israel and Palestine Forum, Harper's Magazine (September 2014)

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Ukraine
Tuesday was marked by contradictory statements. Vladimir Putin proposed a seven-point peace plan and Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, announced that a permanent ceasefire had been agreed in the civil war.  But, as The Guardian reported on Wednesday, Arseny Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister, dismissed the peace plan, which Putin had apparently jotted down on a flight to Mongolia, calling it a trap....On the ground there was no sign of a ceasefire. Clashes continued as both rebels and Ukrainian volunteers said they would continue fighting.  Both sides planned to meet in Minsk on Friday to hopefully, according to Putin, close the deal.  In the end, the ceasefire was agreed,  Reuters reported on Friday, Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed a ceasefire on Friday, the first step towards ending a conflict in eastern Ukraine that has caused the worst standoff between Moscow and the West since the Cold War ended.  The deal, taking effect from 1500 GMT(11.00 a.m. EDT), was agreed at peace talks with representatives of Russia and the OSCE security and rights group in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

Meanwhile, NATO is having its summit in Wales on Thursday and Friday (Sep 4-5). NATO hardliners were expected to push for a firmer stance against Russia after what Der Spiegel called Angela Merkel's "failed diplomacy" with Putin. [Spiegel Online, Sep 1]  The Guardian reported on Friday that NATO leaders have promised to press ahead with fresh sanctions against Russia, despite the announcement of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. They welcomed this development, but only cautiously, stressing the need for Russia to prove by actions, not just words, its commitment to peace. However, the full details of sanctions have yet to be announced. And NATO leaders have said that, if the ceasefire proves robust, the new sanctions will be withdrawn.  [The Guardian, Sep 5]

Israeli-Palestinian Relations
Unleashing a wave of international criticism, including some from the United States, Israel announced yet another takeover of Palestinian land. 988 acres in the West Bank are being expropriated for settlement construction. The Jewish-American organizations J Street and Americans for Peace Now have come out forcibly against the settlement expansion.

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are nearly universally seen as illegal according to international law.  The Guardian reported on the international reaction on Wednesday: John Kerry has called the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, amid a US effort to persuade Israel to reverse the go-ahead for the largest appropriation of land on the occupied West Bank since the 1980s. The secretary of state's call followed the disclosure that the US had officially requested Israel to reverse the decision, amid mounting criticism of the move both internationally and within Netanyahu's own cabinet.  Kerry is preparing to meet Palestinian negotiators seeking a firm deadline for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories to the pre-1967 borders. Failing that, Palestinian officials have warned they will seek a UN resolution setting a three-year deadline for the end of the occupation...Israel's announcement on Sunday has seen strong protests from the UK and European governments including France and Spain, and from Italian foreign minister Federica Mogherini, who was just appointed the EU's next foreign minister.  The US announcement was notably silent on what would be the consequences, if any, should Israel ignore the international community. Unfortunately, as we saw in the most recent siege of Gaza, actions without consequences or accountability will be repeated.  By making a viable, contiguous Palestinian state nearly impossible, settlements are a major impediment to the two-state solution.  There are 300,000 - 400,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and another 250,000 - 300,000 in East Jerusalem.

The "flip side" of expropriating Palestinian land is the demolition of Palestinian homes and buildings.  According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, as of March 2012: Israel has demolished more than 28,000 Palestinian homes, businesses, livestock facilities and other structures vital to Palestinian life and livelihood in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  And this is just since 1967 when the Occupation began.  The ICAHD report notes that between 1948 and into the 1960s, Israel systematically demolished...531 Palestinian villages and eleven urban neighborhoods inside of what became the State of Israel, two-thirds of the villages of Palestine.

Palestinian women viewing building complex destroyed by Israeli rockets
(Photo credit: AFP; appeared in The Telegraph)

Added to this, nearly 17,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged in the recent Israeli siege.  The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday: Rebuilding Gaza will cost $7.8 billion, the Palestinian Authority said on Thursday, in the most comprehensive assessment yet of damage from a seven-week war with Israel during which whole neighborhoods and vital infrastructure were flattened.  The cost of rebuilding 17,000 Gazan homes razed by Israeli bombings would be $2.5 billion, the Authority said, and the energy sector needed $250 million after the Strip's only power plant was destroyed by two Israeli missiles.

Islamic State
Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch has written a piece on the US' inadvertent role in the rise of the Islamic State.  All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the uprooting of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the expending of trillions of dollars...would prove [to be] jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.  When the U.S. was done, when it had set off the process that led to insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse of state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new on Planet Earth: ISIS -- as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country, to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.  Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington.  Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them.  They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy....In fact, just about everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise.  After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first signs of ISIS’s fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington's weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.  As neocons, media hawks and militarists once again begin pounding the war drums, Engelhardt asks what is to be done about the new terrorist threat?  There may, however, be no obvious or at least immediate solution when it comes to ISIS, an organization based on exclusivity and divisiveness in a region that couldn’t be more divided.  On the other hand, as a minority movement that has already alienated so many in the region, left to itself it might with time simply burn out or implode.  We don’t know.  We can’t know.  But we do have reasonable evidence from the past 13 years of what an escalating American military intervention is likely to do: not whatever it is that Washington wants it to do....The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful one.  "Do it again" should not be an option.



Ebola

Source:Mother Jones article

The Ebola outbreak which has so far claimed more than 1500 lives has spread to Nigeria and Senegal.  In the last few days, with the virus entering Senegal and health workers discovering a fresh outbreak in Nigeria, global health groups such as the World Health Organization are getting increasingly strident with their concerns. On Sunday, WHO officials called Ebola's arrival in Senegal "a top priority emergency." On Tuesday, Joanne Liu, international president of the global health organization Doctors Without Borders, warned the United Nations that the world was "losing the battle to contain" the disease. "Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," she said.  The increased concern comes from the recognition that unlike Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal are international transit hubs....More than 30 carriers fly through the Léopold Sédar Senghor airport in Dakar [Senegal], on the continent's westernmost point, ferrying passengers to and from destinations in 25 countries around the world. While most of the routes are regional, some connect with major airports in New York City, Paris, Istanbul, Dubai, and Johannesburg....Nigeria, like Senegal, is internationally connected, with flights to and from numerous countries and a running influx of expatriates, mostly affiliated with the nation's oil industry. A quick response by Nigerian authorities helped keep the case count in Lagos to a minimum—on Tuesday, Nigeria's health ministry reported a total of just 17 confirmed cases nationwide since the outbreak began. [Mother Jones, Sep 4]

Yellowstone's Sleeping Giant

(From Salon.com article: Credit:  Nina B/Shutterstock)

Beneath Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, there lies a massive volcano, also known as the Yellowstone Supervolcano. It’s erupted, spectacularly, three times over the past 2.1 million years: If you take the amount of ash produced from each, you’d have enough to fill the Grand Canyon. The last eruption occurred about 640,000 years ago, and at some point, it’s probably going to happen again. Lindsay Abrams at Salon,com reports on a study recently published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems on the effects of such an eruption.  Computer modeling indicates that a supereruption...would spew about 240 miles of [ash] into the atmosphere, effectively shutting down electronic communications and air travel throughout the continent....Cities closest to the eruption could end up blanketed in up to a meter of ash; those on the East, West and Gulf Coast would get smaller, but still disruptive, ash deposits of their own.  Even in places where the ash layer is only millimeters thick, water supplies and crops would be ruined; it would be hard to drive, and people would develop respiratory problems. And the climate itself would change significantly.  The scientists stress that this is unlikely to occur in the 21st century. [Salon.com, Sep 2]

Related

Gaza war destruction 'will take 20 years to rebuild'[The Telegraph, August 30]

Israeli court issues verdict in favor of Ship to Gaza Sweden - Israel must return hijacked ship and pay legal expenses [Ship to Gaza press release, August 31]