Sunday Roundup - June 1, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at the Greenpeace and the Amazon rainforest, Pope Francis in Bethlehem, the New Populism conference, US gun violence, Guantanamo, and Ukraine.


Greenpeace and the Amazon

Amazon parrot (Greenpeace)

Greenpeace has turned its focus once again towards the Amazon rainforest - specifically, the illegal logging there. Besides being one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world (an estimated one-quarter of all known land and fresh water species live there), the rainforest is also one of the world's largest "carbon sinks", thus playing a major role in reducing the impact of human-induced climate change.  On May 15, Greenpeace released its report "The Amazon's Silent Crisis".  Describing how deforestation increases the risk of runaway climate change, the report warns that as climate change impacts are felt, there are concerns that the Amazon forest may reach a ‘tipping point’ in which it undergoes a rapid transition to savannah.  Besides deforestation (or clear-felling), selective logging is an important agent of forest fragmentation and degradation of the forest’s ecological integrity.  Even though the damaging selective logging of mahogany of the past has been stopped, selective logging remains a massive problem in the Amazon...If left unchecked, forest fragmentation will ultimately lead to the disappearance of whole tracts of forest. One of the main drivers of fragmentation today is the demand for high-value species such as Ipê.  In some states, as much as half to three-quarters of the logging is done illegally.  According to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, the federal environmental agency responsible (alongside state environmental secretariats) for monitoring and inspecting the Amazon timber industry, in Maranhão and Pará states alone almost 500,000m³ of timber had fraudulent documents in 2013 – enough to fill 14,000 trucks.  Greenpeace calls for a different way of approaching the forest and those whose livelihoods depend on forest products... Investment and capacity building need to be focused on giving communities the skills to undertake quality community forest management. The Brazilian government must strengthen the regulation of timber harvesting, and the enforcement of regulations. Command and control measures and monitoring systems should be transparent and able to operate in real time.  

Pope Francis in Bethlehem

Pope Francis at the separation barrier (AP photo appeared in The Guardian)

Pope Francis' trip to the Holy Land drew much attention from the world's press.  The Guardian, May 25:  It is an image that will define Pope Francis's first official visit to the Holy Land. Head bowed in prayer, the leader of the Catholic church pressed his palm against the graffiti-covered concrete of Israel's imposing "separation wall", a Palestinian girl holding a flag by his side. It was, as his aides conceded later, a silent statement against a symbol of division and conflict.

Al Jazeera, May 25:  On his second day of a visit to the Holy Land, the pope on Sunday called for Palestinians and Israelis to work together, saying the breakdown in talks between the two sides earlier this year was "unacceptable".  "In this, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, I wish to invite you, president Mahmoud Abbas, together with president Shimon Peres, to join me in heartfelt prayer to God for the gift of peace," he said during mass in Manger Square. The offer was accepted by both sides.  He then made [an] unscheduled stop at the Israeli separation wall, which divides Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The pope prayed for five minutes near an Israeli military watchtower, near graffiti which read, "Pope, we need someone to speak about justice", "Free Palestine" and a reference to the Warsaw ghetto.  The pontiff had earlier made references to Palestinian statehood, and addressed Christians with words of encouragement....The pope called for forging a peace that "rests on the acknowledgment by all of the right of two states to exist and to live in peace and security within internationally recognised borders".  

New Populism
As I see it, the drivers behind the "New Populism" in the US are simple:

• The majority of the American people support economic fairness and other progressive tenets
• But this doesn't translate into public policy because politicians are too timid and/or too influenced by big money to enact populist measures
• All popular social movements start with the people and it's up to us to influence our political leaders - to bring them along, so to speak, to the progressive positions held by the majority.

Whether or when the movement will be successful is a matter of debate.  It's certainly not going to happen any time soon.  Almost no coverage was given to May 22's New Populism Conference in the press or media.  I guess it's easier to get attention when you're spouting divisive, fear-mongering rhetoric than when you're proposing measures to promote justice and fairness.  People's World covered highlights of the conference, which was held at the Washington Court Hotel and attended by about 500 activists.  

Maya Rockeymoore, President of Global Policy Solutions, noted that the X and Y generations have been so badly economically screwed by the great recession they will not recover for the rest of their lives. Black families have been excluded from the economy for 80 percent of U.S. history. The Supreme Court is in the back pocket of the Republican majority that has taken over state government in multiple states....Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke of the moneyed interests who spent more than $1 million per day for one year to fight the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau....She reminded us that rebuilding the middle class, equal pay for equal work and raising the minimum wage are not just slogans but legislative bills. She urged the audience to "make (legislators) vote as often as possible" on these and other progressive issues....Sophia Zaman, president of the U.S. Student Association, concluded her talk stating that what the millennial generation needs...is a strong progressive movement; one that supports quality union jobs, reduction of student debt, divestment from fossil fuels. In return, progressive youth are building power that goes beyond elections...Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ...cautioned..."Now is not the time to turn our backs on the political process." Rather we need to continue to push the middle class's issues of jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, raising minimum wage, creating more daycare, making higher education free, and amending the constitution to end the unlimited power of billionaires.  "There are more people living in poverty than ever in U.S. history," he said, but by increasing workers' participation in elections by only 5 percent (from 60 percent to 65 percent) progressive goals can be achieved.

Link to video of full New Populism conference 

US Gun Violence
A few of the posts in the aftermath of the UC-Santa Barbara tragedy last weekend:

This is what legislative courage on gun control looks like [Daily Kos, May 28]

The Mother Jones Facebook page has a discussion of its Jan 2013 post "10 Pro-Gun Myths Shot Down"

The Onion, the digital news satire organization, condemns the political  paralysis that prevents a solution: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens [The Onion, May 27]

Guantanamo
On May 29, Andy Worthington wrote in Al Jazeera of the lack of progress on releasing prisoners from Guantanamo.  A year after Obama's promise to resume releasing prisoners from Guantanamo, 78 men cleared for release are still there.  Worthington notes the Congressional obstacles and Obama's inability to overcome those obstacles.  Obama touched on Guantanamo in a speech about America's foreign policy at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  The president said, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it's our willingness to affirm them through our actions. That's why I will continue to push to close GTMO - because American values and legal traditions don't permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders." One year on from his promise to resume releasing prisoners from Guantanamo, the president's words were as commendable as ever, but unless they are followed up with relevant actions they will reveal nothing but a gulf between words and action that has become rather predictable over the last five and a half years. 

Ukraine
The partially-boycotted presidential elections in Ukraine provided an overwhelming majority vote to EU-leaning billionaire Petro Poroshenko.  Violence between the government and separatist forces continued unabated in the ensuing days.  The Guardian May 26 editorial struck a somewhat optimistic note - not about the ongoing violence but about the hope for an eventual end to it.  It may be that, in spite of the dangers represented by events like the battle for Donetsk airport, Ukraine has turned the corner. Invasion is yesterday's threat, the extreme federalisation which Russia apparently wanted at an earlier stage has also faded as an idea, and the separatists in the east now seem more on their own than they were before. We are perhaps heading back to a more "normal" situation in which Moscow will still have a great deal of leverage in Ukraine, especially through its control of gas supplies and prices, and will lay down some red lines, but otherwise accept that for the time being the country has made a European and not an Eurasian choice.

Stop the Madness

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s--t that you feel sorry for me...Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.” - Richard Martinez, Santa Barbara gun victim's father

This weekend's tragedy in Santa Barbara leaves us wondering what will it take to get the country to confront the widespread availability of guns that lies at the heart of our developed-world-leading murder rate.  The craven toadies in Congress beholden to the NRA have done nothing - not after Sandy Hook, not after Gabby Giffords' shooting, not after the D.C. navy yard, not after any number of other recent mass shootings.  Gun lobby apologists and paranoid wing-nuts stifle any discussion of our unreasonably lax gun laws.

Comprehensive Federal gun control laws are a must if we are going to ever stop the ongoing killings in our communities.  The first and minimum step is a universal background check law with no loopholes, with annual renewal requirements for possession of a gun combined, and with severe civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance.  I'm amazed to read officials and pundits decrying how helpless we are in "identifying potential killers".  Well, if the mentally unstable and violent felons couldn't get their hands on weapons under any circumstances, you would eliminate that concern, wouldn't you?

And if the NRA complains about a national gun registry - well, tell them to go screw themselves.  That is exactly what is needed.  I mean if you have nothing to hide, why would you be against it?  If we require car registrations and driver licenses to be renewed, why shouldn't we require the same of guns and gun owners?

Then there's the disturbing trend of gun extremists threatening women.  Mother Jones reports on the attacks against paralyzed gun reform advocate Jennifer Longdon in a May 15 post and notes that these attacks are not isolated incidents:  "Ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, a small but vocal faction of the gun rights movement has been targeting women who speak up on the issue—whether to propose tighter regulations, educate about the dangers to children, or simply to sell guns with innovative security features. The vicious and often sexually degrading attacks have evolved far beyond online trolling, culminating in severe bullying, harassment, invasion of privacy, and physical aggression."

"Mother's Day" video aimed at women calling for gun reforms

(There are other videos and photos in the Mother Jones article.  This one is, believe it or not, one of the less offensive.  These videos and photos add a whole new dimension to the phrase "gun nut".)

Kudos to Chipotle and Starbucks and the others who've taken a step towards sanity by discouraging or prohibiting guns from being brought into their establishment.  But individual, private actions will never be enough to stem the country's gun violence.  Comprehensive Federal action is needed and it is needed now. Maybe there will be some movement on meaningful gun legislation in the coming days or maybe the NRA and its apologists will once again thwart even a minimal step towards restoring sanity to our gun laws.

Links
80 killed by guns in week prior to Santa Barbara

Sunday Roundup - May 25, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Israeli-Palestinian relations,  honeybees, the World Cup, and, in brief, Memorial Day, Libya, escalating food prices, and Pope Francis on climate change.

Quote of the Week

“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.”

- Pope Francis

Israeli-Palestinian Relations
The "Price Tag" movement has been around since 2008 but has been little covered by the US media.   "Price Tag" attacks "target mosques, churches, Arab and Jewish homes and property, Israeli military bases and vehicles, as well as other Israeli Jews. They involve the desecration of property with anti-Arab and anti-government slogans including the phrase 'price tag', often accompanied by hateful and racist slogans."  The attacks are carried out "by extremist Israeli Jews against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, often in reprisal for Israeli government action against illegal settlement activity." [Anti-Defamation League, May 7]  Price Tag is getting some attention in the Western press as Pope Francis plans a trip to the Holy Land and a US State Department report has issued a travel warning.  Much to the dismay of Israelis and the powerful Jewish Lobby in Washington DC, the US State Department have even issuing travel warnings now regarding extremist ‘Jewish hate groups’ in Israel [with]... Israelis ...angry that such warnings have been posted on a US government website.  [21st Century Wire, May 11] The attacks have been roundly condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and Peace Now but they continue as enforcement or punishment has been absent or ineffective.  Haaretz reported on May 19 of a demonstration by Israeli Army reservists against ongoing attacks against Palestinians.  Dozens of Israeli reservists staged a protest against what they termed "hate crimes and racism" outside the radical West Bank settlement of Yitzhar on Sunday evening.  Yair Fink, one of the organizers, told the rally: "We regard defending Israel to be the highest value – both against terrorists from the outside and terrorists from within."  

It's a shame that it took the defamation of Christian churches and an upcoming papal visit to get coverage in the Western press of these hate crimes.  But this is no surprise here in the US.  The widespread ignorance of the facts of the Israeli Occupation and the strength of right-wing Israel lobbyists pretty much assure that.  Aaron Mann writes in New Jersey Jewish News on May 15: In March, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spoke at an RNC fundraiser hosted by extreme right-wing “superdonor” -- and prominent Likud supporter -- Sheldon Adelson. The governor’s comments about Israel were just as uncritically hawkish and hardline as one would expect. Until a bit of uncomfortable truth slipped out when Christie mentioned the “Occupied Territories.”  It mattered little that Christie had referenced a term used by almost the entire world, including previous Republican presidents. Many in the audience were aghast, and the governor subsequently offered a personal apology to Adelson for the supposed affront.  Thus, Christie joined ranks with occupation-deniers...[but] the reality is not that complicated. Israel has never annexed the West Bank or Gaza, and the Palestinians living there are under Israeli control, subject to Israeli military law, and have no political rights in Israel. The occupation exists, and the only way to end it is through a two-state solution that brings an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...To deny the occupation and oppose a two-state solution might make one pro-Likud, but that’s not the same thing as being pro-Israel. 

Americans for Peace Now's "Price Tag" Escalation Timeline: Jan 2011 - Present [APN website, May 9]


Honeybee Colony Collapse

European honeybee extracting nectar (Wikipedia)

Honeybees pollinate several hundred billion dollars worth of global crops every year.  So when honeybees started dying off in Europe and North America at unprecedented rates in the 2000's, scientists worked to find the cause. Studies have pointed to neonicotinoid pesticides as a contributor to colony collapse disorder.  The EU voted to impose a two-year moratorium on these pesticides last April but the US is still studying the problem.  On May 20, Mother Jones reported on a Harvard study that strengthens the argument against this widely used pesticide class.  Harvard researcher Chensheng Lu and his team treated 12 colonies with tiny levels of neonics and kept six control hives free of the popular chemicals....Come winter,...the bees in six of the treated hives vanished, leaving behind empty colonies—the classic behavior of colony collapse disorder. None of the six control hives experienced a CCD-style disappearing act....What makes the new Harvard study remarkable is that it actually simulated colony collapse disorder—neonic-treated bees suddenly abandoned hives that had been healthy all summer, while untreated bees hung around and repopulated their hives....More research is needed to identify the mechanism by which neonic pesticides trigger the evacuations, they write, but the results point to "impairment of honeybee neurological functions, specifically memory, cognition, or behavior."  There is a bit of good news.  The USDA has released a preliminary report on its nationwide survey asking beekeepers how their hives fared over the winter. The report found that 23.2 percent of hives collapsed—the lowest levels since CCD began in 2005-06, and down from a peak of about 35 percent in the winter of 2007-08. The previous year's losses clocked in 31 percent.  Note that this is an average for the entire country with some areas exhibiting much higher losses.  Ohio, for example, reported losses from 50 to 80 percent.

Link to other posts on honeybee colony collapse

World Cup
The World Cup tournament kicks off in Brazil on Thursday June 12.  Team USA plays its first game against Ghana on June 16.  The Azzurri's opener is against England June 14.  You can find the complete Group Stage schedule here.  The pre-tournament favorite, currently at 3 to 1, is Brazil.  Italy is 28 to 1.  USA is 225 to 1.  Oh well.

The May 21 Sydney Morning Herald carried a story on Pele's thoughts on the preparations for the games: Brazil legend Pele was critical of his country's preparations.  "It's clear that politically speaking, the money spent to build the stadiums was a lot, and in some cases was more than it should have been," Pele said.  He said "some of this money could have been invested in schools, in hospitals.... Brazil needs it. That's clear. On that point, I agree (with the protests)." 4 billion US$ have been spent on stadiums alone.  Several are still incomplete with just 3 weeks to go until the first game.  Pele was particularly critical of the stadium in Sao Paulo, the venue for the opening match between Brazil and Croatia on June 12.  Officials acknowledged last week that a portion of the roof won't be completed until after the World Cup ends on July 13.  

Brazilian star Marta Vieira da Silva (from The Far Post article)

The April 29 article in The Far Post series from Roads & Kingdoms relates the slow development of women's soccer in Brazil.  The article leads with the story of Marta Vieira da Silva (aka "Pele in skirts").  Marta’s game—like Pelé’s—is Brazilian football: quick, explosive, and exhibiting the impeccable ball control that comes from a childhood spent playing in the streets and in the country’s ubiquitous enclosed concrete courts.She also shares the narrative so common to male Brazilian footballers, of rising to stardom from humble origins. ...she played street football as a child but like the neighborhood girls (and most girls in the country), she was discouraged from participating...She would rise through the ranks of the women’s team associated with Rio’s Vasco de Gama club,...has played for numerous professional clubs in her country and abroad, and has starred for the Brazilian women’s national team, becoming a World Cup and Olympic medalist, a five-time FIFA Player of the Year, and an international icon.  As striking as Marta’s story is, her success is even more striking in the context of her country. In the land of the jogo bonito, women still face immense hurdles to simply participating in the sport, let alone achieving recognition for their footballing talent.  The article also relates the story of Aline Pellegrino, another Brazilian woman soccer star, and former American player Caitlin Fisher who played in Brazil and was a co-founder of the Guerreiras Project.  Led by professional female football players, the project ...uses football as the language with which to address gender justice. The group runs workshops...to open discussions about gender norms, it trains young girls to be leaders, and it encourages the creation of more opportunities for girls and women to play.

In Brief
Link to The Left Bank Cafe post "Remembering the Fallen" (Memorial Day 2013)

While House Republicans play politics on Benghazi, Libya is on the verge of imploding.  The Guardian May 22 post describes "Khalifa Haftar: renegade general causing upheaval in Libya".

The price of popular breakfast cereals is set to soar over the next 15 years as a result of climate change...Staples like corn and rice will double in cost by 2030, with half of that increase due to climate change [Mother Jones]

Pope Francis made the religious case for tackling climate change...calling on his fellow Christians to become “Custodians of Creation” and issuing a dire warning about the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change: “Safeguard Creation,” he said. “Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us!" [Think Progress/Climate Progress]

The Next Attacks on Campaign Finance Reform and Voting Rights

After Citizens United and McCutcheon, you could be forgiven if you thought the ruling class was through with their attacks against reasonable constraints on campaign financing.  After the widespread implementation of voter suppression laws in Republican-held states over the past few years, you could also be forgiven if you thought they would sit back and allow the laws to do the dirty work of denying people the right to vote.  In both cases, of course, you would be wrong.

Huffington Post reported on May 8 on the next attack against campaign finance limits.  Encouraged by the wording in the McCutcheon ruling that defined corruption as direct, quid pro quo bribery,  "Republican Party officials are set to join what may be the next big court challenge in the ongoing push to unravel campaign finance laws...The target of this new challenge is the ban on political parties soliciting and receiving unlimited contributions, known as "soft money," that was enacted in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law. The lawsuit aims to overturn that ban and more.  It will ask the courts to allow political parties, at both the national and state levels, to create affiliated super PACs that can raise and spend unlimited sums on any electoral effort. This would include express electoral activity -- that is, efforts aimed at supporting or defeating specific candidates."

Money wins elections and, because of its importance and presence, it sometimes sways the votes of elected representatives.  The 2014 elections are turning out to be the most expensive mid-terms in our history. The obvious and perhaps only answer to the election money problem, a Constitutional Amendment giving Congress the right to regulate campaign financing, is far in the future.

As for preventing votes and lowering turnout, Adalia Woodbury blogs in PoliticusUSA, watch out for Republican tricks in the 2014 elections for "there is no tactic too extreme or too low for the Republican Party to try if they can get away with it. These extend beyond the already unacceptable restrictions on voter and registration ID, shorter voting hours, eliminated weekend voting, reduced or eliminated early voting, reduced or eliminated absentee voting, and eliminated same day registration."  Erroneous voter roll purges have been conducted prior to past electuions.  Woodbury cites Florida and Kansas as examples and indicative of things to come.  "Some states have given election gestapo groups like True the Vote and the Voter Integrity Project additional powers on Election Day.  In North Carolina, Art Pope’s election gestapo, the Voter Integrity Project, now has the power to challenge any voter in any district. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, gave the Koch Brother funded True the Vote and other 'poll observers' the new power of standing as close as 3 feet from voters  while they are registering to vote and as they are processed by election officials."

After voter intimidation, what else can the Republican right come up with?  Well, they can always make it more difficult for you to get to a polling place and to vote.  "Local officials are using a variety of tactics guaranteed to create even longer lines.  In one Florida county, half the voting locations  were eliminated. It comes as no surprise that occurred in a district comprised mainly of minority voters.  If the same number of people are voting, but there are dramatically fewer locations at which to vote, wait times will increase substantially.  It also means people will have to travel further to vote, discouraging more voters.  As if that wasn’t enough, some poll places in Dade Country, Florida won’t allow  voters to use restrooms."

Sure, there will be a few court challenges against voter suppression laws in the coming months. Democrats and the ACLU will have their own observers at some polling places to try to prevent the most egregious abuses and intimidation.  But the damage has been done.  Who knows how many voters will be discouraged from voting because of the ID laws - even when overturned - and the obstacles thrown in their way?

Today, there was this lead-in for a USA Today article: "The United States of America — the land of opportunity — has the fourth most uneven income distribution in the developed world."  Only Chile, Mexico and Turkey have a wider gap.  We have elections that are overwhelmingly determined by which candidate spends the most money.  We have Congressional districts so gerrymandered that they make a mockery of the "one man, one vote" basis for a democracy. We have a Supreme Court whose majority is more concerned with defining money as speech and corporations as persons than with protecting voting rights.

So what to make of all this? Frankly,our nation appears to be in a headlong dive towards oligarchy.

 “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

- George Orwell, Animal Farm

Sunday Roundup - May 18,2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at Guatemala, Nigeria, Ukraine, and, in brief, the "American Spring" rally in Washington.

Guatemala
The United States has a long, sordid history of interference in Guatemala, a Central American nation with a population of about 14.6 million.  In 1954, the second freely-elected President in Guatemalan history, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA.  His popular program of land reform, credit, and literacy began to diminish the extreme inequality in Guatemala.  Unfortunately, he was deemed unacceptable by both Cold Warriors and wealthy Guatemalans.  Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala was immersed in a bloody internal armed conflict that pitted the army against guerrilla groups. The fighting was rife with human rights abuses by the government forces.  More than 200,000 men, women and children were murdered or disappeared during this 36-year-long war; most of them were indigenous.  At various periods during this 36 year civil war, the US provided "counter-insurgency" aid to the Guatemalan government.  In 2013, former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rioss Montt, who ruled in 1982-3, was convicted of genocide.  Less than two weeks later his conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Guatemalan supreme court.  Now Guatemala is back in the news.

On May 13, the Guatemalan Congress voted to deny that genocide had occurred during the 36 year conflict.  A blogger for IC Magazine writes: This deplorable decision is another step towards relieving Rios Montt...of all responsibilities for his crimes against humanity. There is no time limit on the penal responsibility regarding crimes of genocide. If the crimes are not considered to be crimes of genocide, then those accused can no longer be considered legally responsible for crimes committed some 30 years ago.  The hope that Rioss Montt's conviction had engendered - that injustice against Indigenous communities would no longer be tolerated, and that justice, even against the highest powers, could be sought - has pretty much been crushed.

Nobel Prize nominee Claudia Paz y Paz (Moises Castillo/AP)

The back-sliding in Guatemala began in earnest earlier this year when the prosecutor who won the case against Rioss Montt was removed from her position as attorney general.  As reported in The Guardian in February: War criminals, corrupt officials and drug traffickers let out a collective sigh of relief in Guatemala last week after another controversial ruling by the constitutional court appeared to fly in the face of justice and accountability.  Claudia Paz y Paz, the country's first female – and easily most effective – attorney general, will be forced to leave office seven months early after the court ruled in favour of a dubious technical challenge brought by corporate lawyer and businessman Ricardo Sagastume.   Paz y Paz was then removed from the list of possible replacements by the commission established to nominate a new attorney general.

On May 9 Guatemalan President Otto Perez delivered another slap to the face of anti-impunity reformers.  He named Thelma Aldana as Guatemala's new attorney general, a controversial decision that raises fears of a return to impunity after four years of judicial reform...The selection process that resulted in Aldana's appointment has been widely criticized both nationally and internationally for its apparent lack of impartiality...Given her ties to the country's political elite, it is unlikely Aldana will take the same tough stance on corruption and organized crime. Plaza Publica reported that Aldana also has links to the Guatemalan Republican Front, which was founded by former dictator Efrain Rios Montt. These allegations are especially troubling because as Attorney General, Aldana will be in charge of prosecuting Rios Montt when he returns to trial in January 2015.  [In Sight Crime website, May 12] That is, if he even returns to trial given the Guatemalan Congressional vote on May 13.

Funeral of Carlos Hernandez, a trade unionist shot last year (VICE News)

Besides corruption, organized crime, drug cartels and genocide, Guatemala needs to address anti-union violence.  According to the International Trade Union Confederation, 73 trade unionists have been murdered in the Central American nation since 2007. That makes it the most deadly place in the world to be a trade unionist, on a per-capita basis. No one has been convicted of the crimes... Having recently emerged from a bloody history of military dictatorship and civil war, Guatemala now finds itself caught up in another conflict being fought by the region’s drug cartels. According to human rights organizations, the country has a weak judicial system that fuels a culture of impunity and fear so when unionists campaign for better labor rights, it's easy for those with power and money to shut them up without repercussions...Guatemala is at a crossroads. The current government pledged to start a process to end anti-union violence and implemented several initiatives on social dialogue and consultation with trade unions. But when trade unionists are being murdered and threatened, dialogue alone is not going to put them at ease, or punish the killers. [VICE News, May 15]

Amnesty International's fact sheet on Guatemela's genocide trial (2013)


Nigeria
With a population of 175 million, Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation.  Its oil riches have yet to trickle down to its people. Recently $20 billion in oil revenues was discovered to be missing and an investigation is underway.  Nigeria is a divided nation.  Besides the ethnic divisions, there is the divide between the Muslim north and the Christian south.  The abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram bought the world's attention to the country.  Author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani writes in The Guardian that the abduction of the school girls is uniting her country.  For a change, every Nigerian is united in his or her need for safety. The 234 missing girls are not being seen as Hausa or Igbo or Yoruba; they are simply people's children.  I hope this spirit of unity lives on, that it extends beyond grief and the need for security. In their attempt to tear Nigeria apart with their reckless destruction, the Boko Haram terrorists have inadvertently succeeded in showing just how much Nigerians can care about one another.

Muslim schoolgirls around the world react to the Nigerian abductions [The Guardian, May 8]

Background on religious conflict in Nigeria: As with so much in Nigeria, [the] violence has its roots in the colonial period.  [The Atlantic, July 10, 2013]

Ukraine
Turning a deaf ear to both Kiev and Moscow, Donetsk went ahead with its referendum last Sunday and voted overwhelmingly to separate from Ukraine.  As the country unravels amidst uncertainty and chaos, Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss, writing in Politico in a story picked up by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, propose a four-step solution to the crisis.  The West needs to recognize that the situation in eastern and southern Ukraine is now far more complex than a mere Russian ploy, ...[and] to acknowledge that their sanctions are not going to solve Ukraine’s problems or hold Russia at bay....[Kiev should take] a hard look at the possibility of postponing the May 25 election. It is difficult to see how it can be credibly conducted in the present circumstances...[and there ]...should be a no-holds-barred conversation involving all parties to the conflict about the way forward. What Ukraine really needs is a staggered process that postpones elections until after some combination of constitutional reform, parliamentary elections and national-level referendum on power-sharing between Kyiv and the regions. All sides have to be represented in that national conversation, and all of them will have to recognize that no side will come out on top, that compromise will be necessary to avoid the worst possible outcome: an outright civil war in Ukraine, in which all sides will be the losers.

In Case You Missed It
The organizers and supporters promised 10-30 million right-wingers would descend on Washington on Friday May 16 to take back America by demonstrating to force Obama out of office.  Looks like a few hundred showed up - appears the weather may have held attendance down a bit.  Wingnut “American Spring” Rally Flops Big Time [Balloon Juice website, May 16]

Crime and Punishment in America

Ramsey Clark, 1968 (Wikipedia)

During my politically formative years in the 1960's and '70's, there was a lot going on. The civil rights and anti-war movements were operating at full throttle. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs and the environmental movement were getting underway. In addition to the events and ambiance of that time, two books played a major role in the development of my political positions. One was The Other America: Poverty in the United States by Michael Harrington. The other was Crime in America: Observations on its Nature, Causes, Prevention and Control by Ramsey Clark, Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General from 1967-1969. So much of the discussion on these subjects was, and is, nothing more than an unthinking reaction to effects. What distinguished these books from others and from today's general discourse was their attempt to understand the causes of these conditions in America - on the one hand, poverty, and, on the other, crime.

A few relatively recent news items on our criminal justice system caused me to think back on Ramsey Clark's excellent work and wonder about the fairness and effectiveness of our system.

Let's start with mandatory drug sentences. Historically, mandatory sentencing has discriminated against minorities - for example, in the disproportionate sentencing for crack as opposed to powder cocaine.  The Fair Sentencing Act signed into law in August 2010 remedied this. The Act was passed just before the Republican takeover of the House in the November 2010 elections. Fast forward to May 2014 and this lead paragraph from a story in the Huffington Post: "The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration is refusing to support a bill backed by the Obama administration that would lower the length of mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug crimes, putting her at odds with her boss Attorney General Eric Holder on one of the criminal justice reform initiatives he hopes to make a centerpiece of his legacy." Needless to say, the DEA head is a holdover from W's administration. What was Obama thinking when he asked her to stay on?   

Addiction is an illness that needs to be treated. Addressing the hopelessness and the life conditions that lead to addiction is necessary if we really want to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it serves the interests of law-and-order demagogues to treat it as a crime. The result: "The incarceration rate in the United States of America is the highest in the world. As of 2009, the incarceration rate was 743 per 100,000 of national population (0.743%). While the United States represents about 5 percent of the world's population, it houses around 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Imprisonment of America's 2.3 million prisoners, costing $24,000 per inmate per year, and $5.1 billion in new prison construction, consumes $60.3 billion in budget expenditures." [Wikipedia entry on "United States Incarceration Rate"]   

Speaking of law-and-order, the wing nuts of the right rose to defend the armed men who threatened Bureau of Land Management agents trying to remove illegally grazing cattle from Federal land. The dead beat rancher, to whose "defense" these gun-toting, self-styled militia came, owes the United States more than $1,000,000 in grazing fees! "When the Bureau of Land Management tried to round up the illegal cattle, [Cliven Bundy, the rancher,] violated yet another court order by meeting them with a band of armed militia thugs, several of which pointed semi-automatic assault rifles at federal police officers." [azcentral blog, May 3]  Captured in a video is one of these lunatics saying he thought it would be wise to put women and children in front as human shields (of course, he didn't use that term). The Federal agents withdrew to avoid a potential shootout. The FBI is now looking into the armed standoff and the threats. Seems pretty clear to me - threaten someone with a lethal weapon, you've violated some law; threaten a Federal agent with a semi-automatic, you've probably violated a Federal law.   

Cecily McMillan at the start of her trial (The Guardian)

On the other hand, there's the story out of New York where a woman faces up to 7 years in prison for "assault on a police officer" as he tried to remove her from an Occupy demonstration - apparently she hit him in the eye with her elbow as she was being taken away. The harshness of the potential sentence is incredible but what is just as unbelievable is that this first time offender, who never missed a court hearing date, was denied bail. "Judge Ronald Zweibel ordered that McMillan, 25, a graduate student at the New School, be detained. He rejected a request from her lawyers for bail." [The Guardian, May 5] So she'll be spending time on Riker's Island until she's sentenced on May 19. Various groups are supporting McMillan. Nine of the twelve jurors who convicted her - unaware of the sentence she was facing if convicted- have appealed to the judge for leniency.  This is the same judge who denied bail.  Good luck.

So let's see if I have this straight - engage in a peaceful protest, go to prison; point lethal weapons at Federal agents, be hailed as patriots. Kafka-esque to say the least.

Update 5/19/2014: Cecily McMillan was sentenced to 3 months behind bars and 5 years probation today.

Finally, let's talk about the death penalty. I oppose it. The United States is the only industrialized Western nation that still adheres to the barbaric practice of state executions.

The recent events in Oklahoma where a death-row prisoner was, in essence, tortured to death when the lethal injection process went horribly wrong (I mean more horribly wrong than the basic inhumanity of the death penalty itself ) make the "cruel and unusual punishment' clause of the Constitution meaningless.   

There is not now, nor ever has been, a deterrent justification for state executions. Plainly and simply put, and supported by many studies, executions do not deter. Vengeance is not an acceptable reason either. The United States is, or should be, long past the vigilante stage of government. The death penalty is inconsistent with both our Judeo-Christian heritage, with our democracy and our Constitution's cruel and unusual punishment clause.

Add to this the increasing evidence that numerous people on death row are innocent of the crimes for which they've been convicted, that the death penalty is imposed disproportionately on people of color and those who cannot afford legal defense, and that it is an expensive process. It soon becomes clear that, in addition to the moral and legal objections to its practice, the death penalty is unjust, impractical, and ineffective.

We can only hope that the death penalty will be abolished by the states quickly. We haven't had a Supreme Court willing to consider the unconstitutionality of the practice in decades. As of now, just 18 states plus the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. But there is a growing states' movement towards rejoining the civilized world. At least seven states are reconsidering the death penalty either by declaring a moratorium or by staying executions.

Links

March 7, 2012 The Left Bank Cafe post: "The Other America"

Death Penalty Information Center homepage

Root cause analysis is a powerful "quality tool" for problem solving in (to name just a few areas) technical and design issues, risk management, efficiency studies and safety incident investigations.  By understanding root causes, you can prevent the recurrence of the undesired event.   Here's a link to an introductory description of the process.  (Or you can use the method I employed for much of my working career: "Ask why five times".)

Sunday Roundup - May 11

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at Obamacare, Republicans' economic myths, Iran's nuclear program, Pope Francis' comments on inequality to UN officials, Obama's last chance on the environment, and Ukraine.

Obamacare
The first open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act is complete and the numbers are in. Total enrollments came to at least 17.8 million, once you add together numbers from Medicaid [expansion], marketplace enrollments and the lowest estimates of how many people bought new ACA-compliant policies outside the exchanges. [NPR Shots blog, May 2]  That didn't stop Republicans from holding yet another hearing to convince people that the program is a failure.  House Republicans brought in insurance executives on Wednesday and tried to get them to say that only 2/3 of the enrollees had paid their premiums.  The executives were having  none of it.  As Salon.com reported: A slate of health insurance industry executives sat down in front of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee for oversight and gave their estimates for how many people who signed up for health coverage through the Affordable Care Act actually paid their first month’s premium....Across the board, the health insurance executives testified that the payment rate for premiums was somewhere between 80 and 90 percent, while stressing that these data are preliminary and that outstanding payments are still coming in.  After this latest rebuke to their fact-free view of reality, Republicans are apparently now turning to Plan B - using the Benghazi tragedy as something to stir up their base and raise money.

Economic Myths
Health care is just one of the many issues where Republicans refuse to face reality.  Sean McElwee in an April 28 article in Rolling Stone enumerates the extensive studies that show just about everything the Republicans believe about the economy to be wrong.  After quoting economist John Maynard Keynes famous line "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?", McElwee writes: Sadly, in their quest to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the wealthiest members of society, today's Republicans have held the opposite position – as the evidence has piled up against them, they continue spreading the same myths.  McElwee proceeds to demolish right-wing myths about the minimum wage, the stimulus, taxing the rich, global warming and the Affordable Care Act.  It's a great, quick read and a good antidote to the nonsense that will be spewing in ever greater quantities from Republican mouths and right-wing media as the election season approaches.

Iran's Nuclear Program
John Glaser relates the comments of the former head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission in a May 8 post at antiwar.org: The former head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission believes Iran is more than a decade away from a nuclear weapon and that the Islamic Republic may not even want “the bomb,” according to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth (Ynet news)....Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam, who for a decade headed the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, does not believe that Tehran is even close to having a bomb, if that is even what it really aspires to.  Glaser points out that this is consistent with US intelligence estimates and that Eilam is not the first Israeli insider to counter the political rhetoric of the Israeli right and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who have opposed the Iran nuclear negotiations.  Glaser wonders why despite Iran’s cooperation and compliance in unprecedented negotiations with world powers that aim to partially retard and comprehensively limit their civilian nuclear program, Western commentators of all stripes continue to refer to Iran's "nuclear weapons program".


"Legitimate Redistribution of Wealth to the Poor"

The Pope and Un Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
(Vatican Network website)

Pope Francis spoke to UN officials in Rome May 9, urging world leaders to resist the economy of exclusion and serve the poor.  As reported at the Common Dreams website: Pope Francis on Friday issued another indictment of inequality, saying that equitable economic and social progress are only possible through solidarity and generosity, and require the legitimate redistribution of wealth..."A contribution to this equitable development will also be made both by international activity aimed at the integral human development of all the world's peoples and by the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society," he continued.  HoundDog's May 9 blog at the DailyKos added:  Pope Francis' authentic Christianity comes as such an unfamiliar shock to many, that Pope Francis has had to deny he was a Marxist. He had a similar message to the World Economic Forum in January...Pope Francis' passion to improve the conditions of the world's poor, support for social justice inspires me....What will right-wing conservatives have to say about this? I can not wait to see how Representative Paul Ryan revises his draconian budget proposal which contains harsh cut backs in programs for the poor. Ryan has proclaimed his budgets are consistent with Catholic teachings, a claim I assert is simply impossible to support now.

Obama and the Environment
Calling it Obama's "last shot" to do something on the environment, Jeff Goodell wrote in an April 23 post in Rolling Stone magazine: In the next few months, [Obama] will take one of the biggest gambles of his presidency by testing the radical proposition that even SUV-loving Americans believe that global warming is real and are ready to do something about it....It's a gamble that could have a profound impact on energy politics, our economy and our ability to stabilize the climate. But if the president is wrong, it could not only cost his party control of the Senate this fall but also blow the last opportunity we have to save ourselves from life on a superheated planet.  Obama will take action in three key areas.

• In June, the EPA is expected to announce new rules for power plants, setting limits on carbon pollution.  Obama will be using his presidential powers to effectively hasten the phase-out of dirty coal from America's energy system. Right now, coal-fired power plants generate about 40 percent of the electricity in the U.S. and are by far the largest single source of heat-trapping gases.  
• A decision on the Keystone XL pipeline has been delayed while lawsuits on the pipeline's route go through the courts.  These are not expected to be resolved until after the November elections.  Goodell writes:  Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the pipeline.
• The next global climate summit will be in Paris in December 2015.  The objective is an international treaty to reduce carbon pollution.  Climate change, of course, is a global problem, and ultimately what matters is the degree to which Obama's actions in the U.S. inspire the world.  Regarding the international summit, Goodell quotes John Podesta, Obama's point man on climate policy: "Are we going to be on track to come to an agreement that will limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, which is the threshold scientists have set for dangerous climate change?  Our goal is to give leadership and credibility to that effort."

Map is from infoplease.com

Ukraine

Ukraine is moving towards civil war as the government in Kiev cracks down on pro-separatists and as Donetsk, defying both Kiev and Putin, goes ahead with a referendum Sunday to create a quasi-independent statelet there.  [The Guardian, May 10]

Links
Complete text of Pope Francis' comments to UN

How the Light Gets In - a novel by Louise Penny

I've been reading some detective fiction over the past few years and discovered several authors that I really enjoy.  Canadian writer Louise Penny is one of these authors and How the Light Gets In is her latest novel.

How the Light Gets In is Louise Penny's ninth novel featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sȗreté de Québec. Gamache is the head of the homicide department and the stories take place in the rural countryside of eastern Quebec province. The well-drawn characters and their relationships with each other develop over the course of the series, and reading a new Louise Penny novel is like returning to visit old friends.

Her latest story brings the reader back to the remote village of Three Pines - a village so isolated that it doesn't appear on maps and has no connections to the world of cellphones and the internet. Seventy-something Constance Pineault, a woman with more than one secret, is visiting a friend in Three Pines. "It had snowed day and night since Constance had arrived...she'd forgotten snow could be quite so beautiful...this was the snow of her childhood. Joyful, playful, bright and clean...It covered the fieldstone homes and clapboard homes and rose brick homes that ringed the village green. It covered the bistro and the bookstore, the boulangerie and the general store."  Enjoying the tranquility of the village, Constance muses that "perhaps like the snow, the tiny village had fallen from the sky, to provide a soft landing for those who'd also fallen." She leaves to return to her home in Montreal but promises to come back to Three Pines in a few days to celebrate Christmas there.  Some days later, Inspector Gamache receives a "missing person" call from Three Pines. Constance Pineault has failed to arrive. Attempts to contact her have gone for naught and Myrna, Constance's friend - a retired psychotherapist who runs a bookstore in Three Pines, is worried.

Gamache is having problems of his own as he investigates a leaked video of a raid in which several agents under his command were killed.  His antagonistic supervisor, Chief Superintendent Sylvain Francoeur, seems determined to dismantle the homicide department that Gamache has built over the years. Jean-Guy Beauvoir, whom Gamache mentored, is addicted to pain killers and working for Francouer. Only agent Isabel Lacoste has maintained her loyalty to Gamache: "The rest of the old guard had been transferred out, either by request or on the orders of Chief Superintendent Francouer." Gamache suspects something much darker than a leaked video is underway and is determined to resolve it before his career is totally destroyed by Francouer.

Gamache goes to Constance's home in Montreal. Upon entering, he discovers her body - murdered by a blow to the head. He learns that Constance Pineault is actually Constance Ouellet - one of the world famous Ouellet quintuplets and believed to be the last one alive. After their early fame, the quints built walls of privacy around themselves and have gone unrecognized for decades. Who would murder her and why?

An apparent suicide, a long-closed case of police corruption and brutality, a terrorist plot or two, the miraculous birth of the quints, the early death of one of them, their co-opting by a publicity-seeking doctor and the Canadian government in the midst of The Great Depression, surveillance and counter-surveillance, trust and friendship, unimaginable evil and heart-warming loyalty - all figure in this page-turner as it races to its heart-pounding conclusion.

Lousie Penny is a wonderful story teller. Her novels may remind you of Agatha Christie - one of the writers from detective fiction's "Golden Age" whom she credits with inspiring her.  I think she goes beyond those writers. Penny delves into the recesses of the heart and into the complexities of emotion and relationship. As she wrote in an article for the Shots Crime & Thriller Ezine: "My books are never about murder, or about blood. They’re about what happens in the marrow. The things we hide, even from ourselves."

Continuing in the same article, she wrote "I’m...one of the most competitive people I know. Not against others, but with myself. I wanted each book to be better than the last. And different. And I wanted to get better and better as a writer." How she will improve on this latest novel is hard to see. We won't have long to wait to find out. The tenth in the Inspector Gamache series is to be published in August.  


Links
Good Reads listing of books in Chief Inspector Gamache series

Shots Ezine article by Louise Penny

Sunday Roundup - May 4, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Ukraine, Syria, global May Day celebrations, South Sudan and income disparity on 21st century America.

Ukraine

Outside the burned out trade union building in Odessa(Reuters)

With military operations by Ukrainian government forces underway against a rebel-held city, the crisis in the Ukraine has taken another step towards civil war.  The Guardian reported the Russian reaction to the Ukrainian offensive on Friday: A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the Geneva agreement to defuse the situation in eastern Ukraine was no longer viable after Kiev launched a military operation against the rebel-held city of Slavyansk on Friday.  The Ukrainian military launched its first serious offensive to retake the city, which is being held by pro-Russia militia, early on Friday morning....Russia's foreign ministry accused the Ukrainian military of launching rocket strikes at protesters and claimed it had used ultranationalists from the group Right Sector..."As we have warned many times before, the use of the army against its own people is a crime and is leading Ukraine to catastrophe," the statement said.  The situation worsened later Friday when skirmishes broke out in Odessa between pro-Russian and anti-separatist groups.  As reported by the BBC: Pro-Russia supporters in the Ukrainian city of Odessa have voiced their anger a day after 42 people were killed.  Friday's clashes culminated in a major fire at a trade union building where most of the deaths occurred. Hundreds of people gathered there on Saturday.  The protest comes as Ukraine says it has seized a security building from rebels in the east of the country. Most of the deaths occurred when petrol bombs were thrown at the trade union building where pro-Russian protesters had sought refuge in the trade union building after their encampment was burned down.

Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen Cohen,writing in The Nation , in an article to be published in the May 19 issue, wonder about Obama's indirect declaration of a new Cold War against Russia - a declaration made with little discussion or public debate and with bipartisan and media support or indifference.  No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War—its epicenter on Russia’s borders; undertaken amid inflammatory American, Russian and Ukrainian media misinformation; and unfolding without the stabilizing practices that prevented disasters during the preceding Cold War—may be even more perilous....Both sides in the confrontation, the West and Russia, have legitimate grievances. Does this mean, however, that the American establishment’s account of recent events should not be questioned?  Vanden Heuvel and Cohen point to twenty years of NATO's eastward expansion, the triggering of the Ukraine crisis by the West’s attempt, last November, to "smuggle the former Soviet republic into NATO", and the "jettisoning in February of the West's own agreement with then-President Viktor Yanukovych" which brought to power in Kiev an extremely anti-Russian and unelected regime.  Most recently, Kiev’s sending of military units to suppress protests in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine is itself a violation of the April 17 agreement to de-escalate the crisis.

Syria
Syria's government and rebels have agreed to a ceasefire in Homs to allow hundreds of fighters holed up in the old quarters of the city to leave – a deal that will bring the country's third-largest city under the control of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad. [The Guardian, May 2]  The fighters were the remnants of the rebel forces that had controlled Homs until the Syrian government began its offensive.  This is a face-saving measure for the small hardcore group of rebels that had remained fighting, dispatching explosive-rigged cars into government-controlled areas, killing dozens of people, mostly civilians. Most recently, two car bombs on Tuesday killed more than 50 people in a government-controlled area of Homs.  

May Day (International Labor Day)

From Common Dreams post: Union leaders during May Day celebrations in Bilbao, Spain
 The banner in front reads, "Without Quality Employment, There is no Recovery'
(Photograph: VINCENT WEST/Reuters)

Except in the United States and Canada, May 1 is a public holiday that celebrates the contributions of workers around the world.  This year was no exception. From the Common Dreams post of May 1: In marches and street demonstrations, people across the world on Thursday were marking May Day, or International Labor Day, by demanding better treatment of working people and union members as they also called  for respect of democratic freedoms and equal rights.  Most marches went off peacefully but there was a confrontation with police in Turkey where the government had banned demonstrations.

South Sudan
There's a small spark of hope emerging in South Sudan.  John Kerry appears to be on the verge of getting two rival factions to agree to sit down for ceasefire discussions.  As reported in The Guardian on Friday: The peace talks could mark a turning point in nearly six months of horrific fighting largely along ethnic lines between Dinka and Nuer tribes. It began after Kiir [the country's President], a Dinka, accused Machar, a Nuer, of plotting a coup to seize power last December. A ceasefire agreement reached in January was abandoned within days.

Rise of the Oligarchs
State Department whistle-blower Peter van Buren takes a look at life on the other side of the tracks in 21st century America in a May 1 TomDispatch.com post.  As part of his journey through the country, he visits Atlantic City, New Jersey, Weirton, West Virginia, and Spanish Harlem in New York City.  What he sees and reports is not pretty - a damning reflection on the living conditions of the working class in the richest nation on earth.  Van Buren observes the cumulative effects of years of deindustrialization, declining salaries, absent benefits, and weakened unions, along with a rise in meth and alcohol abuse, a broad-based loss of good jobs, and soaring inequality...What I found in my travels was place after place being hollowed out as wealth went elsewhere and people came to realize that, odds on, life was likely to get worse, not better. For most people, what passed for hope for the future meant clinging to the same flat-lined life they now had...What’s happening is both easy enough for a traveler to see and for an economist to measure. Median household income in 2012 was no higher than it had been a quarter-century earlier. Meanwhile, expenses had outpaced inflation. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the income gap between rich and poor had widened to a more than four-decade record since the 1970s. The 46.2 million people in poverty remained the highest number since the Census Bureau began collecting that data 53 years ago. The gap between how much total wealth America's 1% of earners control and what the rest of us have is even wider than even in the years preceding the Great Depression of 1929.  With the Supreme Court decisions allowing an ever-increasing role for money in shaping our politics and, let's face it, money wins elections, I'm afraid the interests of the 99% will not come to the forefront anytime soon.