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.

Sunday Round-Up - May 12, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at the still-open Guantanamo Bay prison, Secretary of State Kerry's Moscow visit and Syria, Italy's failure to form a progressive government after the February elections, and the Bangladesh factory collapse. Excerpts are from TomDispatch.com, The Guardian, The Asia Times, Pravda, and The Nation.

Guantanamo Bay Prison

One of the first things Barack Obama did when taking office in 2009 was to pledge the shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay prison. Guantanamo was being used as a facility for the indefinite detention of prisoners in the "war on terror". Well, four years later, prisoners are still being held in indefinite detention and a hunger strike is underway.   Hopefully Obama will make good on his latest pledge to finally close this, as Peter Van Buren calls it, "crown jewel of the offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice that the Bush administration set up in January 2002." Van Buren continues in his May 9 post on TomDispatch.com: "The fact that relatively few Americans seem fazed by this should be startling. No charges, no trials, but never getting out of prison: that would once have been associated with the practices of a totalitarian state....Guantanamo now holds 86 prisoners (out of the 166 caged there) who have been carefully vetted by the U.S. military, the FBI, the CIA, and so on, and found to have done nothing for which they could be charged or should be imprisoned." Most of these vetted prisoners are Yemeni and Obama has imposed a moratorium on transferring prisoners there.

 

 

Syria and Kerry's Visit to Moscow

Secretary of State John Kerry was in Moscow Tuesday, May 7, on a "working visit" trying to enlist Russian assistance in ending the Syrian civil war. The civil war has resulted in more than 70,000 deaths. The recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria and the Hezbollah and Syrian reaction to it have brought to the forefront the potential for the situation to spill over and destabilize the entire Middle East.  Stephen Lendman notes in a May 9 post in Pravda: "Russian condemnation of Israeli air strikes preceded Kerry's arrival. Moscow's Foreign Ministry called them 'a threat to regional stability.' ... Moscow wants Syrians to decide who'll lead them. Foreign intervention is rejected. It doesn't want another allied regional government toppled. Doing so leaves others more vulnerable. It gives Washington greater control. It harms Russia's strategic interests." The Asia Times continued the theme of the strange run-up to Kerry's Moscow visit. Besides noting Moscow's angry reaction to the Israeli airstrikes, M K Bhadrakumar writes "the US senate's foreign relations committee took up a draft bill proposing American military help for the Syrian rebel fighters. It was no doubt a barely-disguised pressure tactic threatening Moscow that unless it compromised on Syria, Obama would arm the anti-regime fighters." In the end, Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, "pledged [their countries] to convene an international conference aimed at ending the civil war in Syria, hoping to give the situation a new diplomatic push following two years of bloodshed...Kerry said at the midnight press conference that the conference would be held 'as soon as practical, possibly, hopefully as soon as the end of the month'. " [The Guardian]  Then in a Friday editorial, The Guardian endorses the persuasive arguments of the European Council on Foreign Relations for de-escalation and a diplomatic solution. "It means pressuring the Gulf states to starve rival militias of arms. Without that happening, there is no political solution....For Russia and Iran to cut their military support, Assad's fate has to be a product of the transition, not a precondition of it." As events of the past couple of weeks show, a "war that has already killed 70,000 Syrians, displaced 4 million and forced 1 million to flee could get a lot worse. That is why it is right for Barack Obama to resist pressure from Britain and France to arm the rebels, and to instead make another attempt at an internationally brokered settlement with the Russians."

 

 

Italy's New Not-So-Progressive Government

 

Italy's new government of center-left and center-right coalitions was formed two months after the elections after Beppe Grillo refused to take his Five Star Movement party into any coalition.   Frederika Randall writing in The Nation examines Italy's failure to form a progressive government. She writes: "There was one sunny week this spring when it looked like change might finally come to Italy. A week when an ossified and gerontocratic political class looked like it might give way to new faces and new ideas. When the combined forces of youth and progress looked strong enough to defy European austerity." Unfortunately, "hopes for a progressive government failed, thanks to suicidal divisions among the center-left and Beppe Grillo’s demagogic posturing."

 

Bangladesh Garment Factory Tragedy

Finally on May 8, The Guardian carried a sad update on the factory collapse in Bangladesh. The death toll had risen above 800.   "The disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, far surpassing fires last year that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and 112 in Bangladesh, as well as the 1911 garment disaster in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory that killed 146 workers." As to the possible cause of the collapse, officials "say the building's owner illegally added three floors and allowed the garment factories to install heavy machines and generators, even though the structure was not designed to support such equipment." (By Friday, the death toll had soared over 1,000.  That day, there was a miraculous rescue of a seamstress who had been trapped in the rubble for 17 days. [Washington Post/AP])

Sunday Roundup - April 7, 2013

This is the first of what hopefully will become a regular feature of The Left Bank Cafe.  Every Sunday, I'll post links to articles appearing in online versions of newspapers or journals outside the mainstream media. The intent is to provide some insight and background that you may not be getting with your daily dose of US flavor-of-the-week news.

Weather and Climate Change

Drought in the Plains States, superstormss in the Northeast, blizzards in the UK - extreme weather events are becoming the norm throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Meteorologists ae finding it more difficult to predict the weather. In this April 6 article from The Guardian, a researcher traces the reason for the turbulent patterns to the rapid warming of the Arctic and its effect on the jetstream.

 

WTF?

Some of the more egregious policies from the Bush era are being institutionalized. One of the first actions of Obama after taking office was to sign orders to begin the process of closing the prison at Guantanamo. Four years later, there is little to no hope that this will actually occur. In this April 2 article from RollingStone, the author reviews how "Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime's response to 9/11. "  Change you can believe in?

Gun Violence and Gun Laws

Gun deaths are projected to exceed deaths due to automobile accidents by 2015. Still, the assault weapons ban has gone down in flames and President Obama is struggling to get universal background checks, supported by 80-90% of the American public, through Congress. The Guardian points out that "the reality is that the majority of gun legislation in the US is enacted at the state level."  This is a link to an interactive Guardian article from Januaryon state gun laws.

And Mother Jones provides this insight in the profits being made by foreign weapons companies by selling into the open US market.

What We Didn't Learn from Europe

As the fiscal cliff's "sequestration" begins to put the brakes on the US economic recovery (e.g., just 88,000 new jobs in March), one wonders at how the austerity/deficit reduction ideology maintains support among policy makers. This article from the EU Observeranalyzes the failure of the European austerity measures and argues that growth "is likely to be subdued at best, recessionary at worst."

The Fiscal Cliff (and other) Follies

The markets reacted positively yesterday (Dow up 300 points) when the so-called fiscal cliff was finally averted. The dreaded fiscal cliff was and continues to be a self-imposed crisis. It's closely related to last year's Republican-manufactured “debt ceiling crisis” that briefly threw the markets into a downward spin. The centrists who control the Democratic Party today have apparently swallowed the Republican nonsense that the most important problem facing America is the national debt. It's not. The most important economic problem facing America today is the continuing high unemployment and underemployment.

The fiscal compromise was finally approved by the Republican-controlled House. The Senate shamed them into it by overwhelmingly approving it. The compromise raises revenues by discontinuing the income tax break for people earning more than $450k/yr (almost double Obama's going in position). It basically kicks the can down the road two months – when additional battles on the sequestering of funds will take place. If the Republican foot dragging on the compromise is any indication, you can bet the military-industrial-political complex will fight the defense cuts that are in play. And if the lack of cooperation in the fiscal cliff negotiations shown by Republicans is any indication, you can bet that the debt ceiling will again become another ridiculous fiasco at about the same time. Geithner's special steps on the debt run out about then. In any case, we'll get an early indication of how much the Republicans intend to obstruct progress on things beneficial to the average American when Biden's task force on gun violence presents its recommendations to Congress. It will be particularly interesting to see what they do on the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. 

It took Republican Governor Christie of New Jersey to call out House Republicans, and in particular John Boehner for failing to call for a vote on the $60 billion relief bill for Sandy victims already approved by the Senate. As ABC reported, "Do your job and come through for the people of this country," Christie pointedly said about Boehner. The bill "could not overcome the toxic internal politics of the House majority," Christie said. It had the desired effect – Republicans scrambled to reassure voters that they would vote on $9 billion within days and consider the remaining $51 billion by mid January.

President Obama also has a lot to answer for. As reported in the Huffington Post: “President Barack Obama signed the [$633 billion] National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp....Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. “ There was no way Congress would have overridden his veto. They would have revoted on the ridiculously overbloated military budget without those provisions. Maybe Obama was just worn down by the fiscal cliff negotiations but this does not bode well for his second term.

Finally just a word about what may be one of the bigger threats to our democracy – gerrymandering (aka redistricting) of House Congressional districts. Talk about the will of the people. With a Congressional approval rating barely registering in double digits for much of 2012, 94% of House incumbents were reelected to office in the 2012 elections – and Republicans, because they are now better at gerrymandering  than Democrats, retained firm control of the House.  From  the Think Progress website: “Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.”  The scary thing is that there is no end in sight to Republican control of the House and their "safe" districts.  Unless the average Republican voter wakes up to what is happening (or more accurately not happening) because of this, we are in for more of the same until the next census in 2020.