Sunday Roundup - November 30, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Ferguson, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Iran, Iraq, and, in brief, Ebola and Ukraine.

Ferguson

Photo appeared in BBC News post
Demonstrators gathered in Parliament Square after walking down Oxford Street

The grand jury investigating the shooting death of an unarmed eighteen-year-old African-American by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri decided not to indict the officer. Protests against the decision flared in Ferguson and across the United States.  We may never know the exact timeline of events that led to this shooting death.  The shooter says he acted in self-defense and that he would or could have changed nothing.  Eyewitnesses and law enforcement experts both support and repudiate these statements. What we do know is that the grand jury did not return an indictment, that the proceedings of that grand jury were deeply flawed, and that there is an underlying assumption about the actions of young black men that leads to tragic and unnecessary deaths.  

In a Mother Jones article posted days after the shooting, Jaeah Lee writes: The killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, was no anomaly....But quantifying that pattern is difficult....No agency appears to track the number of police shootings or killings of unarmed victims in a systematic, comprehensive way.  We do know some of the data and Lee presents them:

• Previous attempts to analyze racial bias in police shootings have ...found that there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims.
• Often, the police officers do not get convicted or sentenced. 
• Between 2003 and 2009, the DOJ reported that 4,813 people died while in the process of arrest or in the custody of law enforcement. 
• Black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer's threat or use of force.  
• The Justice Department has investigated possible systemic abuse of power by police in at least 15 cities. 
• Police shootings of unarmed black people aren't limited to poor or predominantly black communities.   

People protesting the grand jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown took to the streets in cities across the country, from Los Angeles to New York City, for a second night on Tuesday.  Protests were held in Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cleveland and other cities. Rallies were [also] held in Michigan, Maine, Georgia, Wisconsin and other states. [Al Jazeera, Nov. 25]  London saw thousands of protesters march on Wednesday.  Thousands protested in London on Wednesday in sympathy with demonstrations across the US over the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer.  The roughly five thousand London protesters held signs reading "Black lives matter" and chanted "Hands up, don't shoot", the slogan adopted by protesters in the US. [AFP, mirrored by Yahoo News, Nov. 26]

The Left Bank Cafe post of December 3 will have more on the eyewitness testimony and the grand jury proceedings.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
For obvious reasons, Palestinians are particularly sympathetic to the Ferguson protests - some even tweeted advice to the US protesters on dealing with tear gas.  
In Gaza on November 23, a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces as he ventured into one of the "no-go" zones near the Israeli border.  Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, the first such fatality since the 50-day Gaza war ended in August....The ministry identified the man as Fadel Mohammed Halawa, 32, and said he was shot by soldiers east of Jabaliya refugee camp.  One of Halawa’s relatives said he had been searching for songbirds, which nest in trees near the Israeli border and command high prices in Gaza markets.  [The Guardian, Nov. 23] 
The United Nations has declared a state of emergency in the Gaza Strip after two days of heavy rains and flooding in the war-battered enclave.  The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) declared the state of emergency in Gaza City on Thursday, after torrential rain overwhelmed some areas and caused flooding. [Al Jazeera, Nov. 28]
With demolition orders already issued for the family homes of the two men responsible for the attack on the Jerusalem synagogue, Israel announced draft legislation for a new regime of collective punishment against the families of attackers and "violent" protesters.  These steps include revoking the residency rights of attackers and their families. Those who are accused of "inciting" against Israel will no longer receive state benefits. Also among the provisions is jail time for those who wave Palestinian flags at what are deemed "violent protests" and deportation to the Gaza Strip if certain conditions are met....The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has condemned the Netanyahu-proposed bill..."The absurd proposals raised involve serious human rights violations and acts of collective punishment – which bear no relation to an actual war on terror," the group said. [Al Jazeera, Nov. 27]

Iran
Although a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks was not reached by the November 24, the talks are being extended.  Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme have been extended until the end of June next year in the hope that the broad outlines of a deal can be agreed within three months.  The extension was announced on Monday after nine months of negotiations culminated in a week of talks in Vienna that failed to close gaps between Iran and a six-nation negotiating group over the scale of a future Iranian nuclear programme and the speed with which international sanctions would be lifted. [The Guardian, Nov. 24]  Both sides were optimistic when they emerged from Monday's discussions, but they understand that the longer the international standoff over Iran’s suspect nuclear programme continues, the more dangerous and volatile the situation becomes....By extending the talks again they have avoided a total collapse, but they have also raised the stakes, ensuring that failure, if that is what eventually transpires, will be all the more cataclysmic.   There is a growing sense that a the window of opportunity may be closing.  Those opposing a deal can now be expected to intensify their efforts to kill the extended talks.  This can come about in any number of ways - for example, by increased US sanctions passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, by Iranian hardliners replacing West-friendly negotiators to undermine Rouhani, or by Israeli military action against Iran.  [The Guardian, Nov. 24]

Iraq
Tom Englehardt writes of the recent US escalation in the Middle East in an excellent article at TomDispatch.com.  The article is well worth reading in its entirety and begins with a thought experiment asking what would be the reaction if Russia or China were the power re-entering the region militarily after the failure of its earlier interventions.  Here are a few selections:

...after 13 years of doing its damnedest, on one side of the Greater Middle East this power has somehow overseen the rise of the dominant narco-state on the planet with monopoly control over 80%-90% of the global opium supply and 75% of the heroin. On the other side of the region, it’s been complicit in the creation of the first terrorist mini-oil state in history, a post-al-Qaeda triumph of extreme jihadism....If this had been the work of any other power we thought less well of than we do of ourselves, imagine the blazing headlines right now

When it comes to a path “forward” in Iraq, it’s been ever deeper into Iraq War 3.0.  Since a limited, “humanitarian” bombing campaign began in August, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have been on the up escalator: more air strikes, more advisers, more weaponry, more money.  Two and a half weeks ago, the president doubled the corps of American advisers (plus assorted other U.S. personnel) there to 3,000-plus.  Last week, the news came in that they were being hustled into the country faster than expected...For those of a certain age, the escalatory path the Obama administration has set us on in Iraq has a certain resonance and so, not surprisingly, at the edges of our world, familiar words like “quagmire” are again rising.

General Dempsey can’t know how long (or short) its lifespan in the region may be.  One thing we do know, however: as long as the global giant, the United States, continues to escalate its fight against the Islamic State, it gains a credibility and increasing popularity in the world of jihadism that it would never otherwise garner.

Given the history of this last period, even if the Islamic State were to collapse tomorrow under American pressure, there would likely be worse to come.  It might not look like that movement or anything else we’ve experienced thus far, but it will predictably shock American officials yet again.  Whatever it may be, rest assured that there’s a solution for it brewing in Washington and you already know what it is.  Call it Iraq War 4.0.

Whatever the bloody horror, fragmentation, and chaos in the Middle East today, 40 years from now the fears and fantasies that led Washington into such repetitively destructive behavior will look no less foolish than the domino theory does today.   

In Brief
Ebola
"How world’s worst Ebola outbreak began with one boy’s death" [BBC News, Nov. 26]

"Number of Ebola cases nears 16,000 as Sierra Leone loses ground: WHO" [Reuters/Yahoo News, Nov. 26]  The death toll in the world's worst Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,689 out of 15,935 cases reported in eight countries by the end of Nov. 23...Almost all cases and all but 15 deaths have been in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"Ebola vaccine 'promising' say scientists after human trial" [BBC News, Nov. 26]


Ukraine
"Why Ukraine Must Bargain for Peace with Russia"  [Foreign Policy, Nov.26]
The "let's make a deal" moment has arrived for Kiev and Moscow. But by pushing a hard-line agenda against Putin, the United States and Europe are only making things worse for Ukraine....The contours of the compromise would likely include: reaffirmation of the reality of Ukraine's nonalignment; mutually satisfactory trade arrangements among Russia, Ukraine, and the EU; implementation of a decentralization plan somewhat more ambitious than Poroshenko's June proposals, but significantly less far-reaching than Russia's March proposals; a return of full Ukrainian control over its border with Russia, perhaps with an international peacekeeping force on the ground in the Donbas... 

No threat to us and not our fight

Obama's proposed airstrikes against Islamic State are wrong on many levels.  To quote Phyllis Bennis, writing in The Progressive,  "We have to recognize that military attacks are not only wrong in a host of ways (illegal in international law, immoral because of civilian casualties, a distraction from vitally needed diplomacy) but also that those strikes are making real solutions impossible." Incredibly, we are now hearing bleatings from hawks for "boots on the ground" (again) in Iraq and (at last) in Syria to fight ISIS as well as calls for arming Syrian rebel forces.  This is a sectarian war - the discordant rumblings among Arab nations in the so-called coalition makes this eminently clear.  We should take no part in it.  In spite of the rhetoric from neocons, from various failed presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and from "perpetual war" believers, ISIS poses no imminent threat to the United States.  Islamic State has never made any threat to take the sectarian war being fought in the Middle East to the United States.

We've made mistakes before based on nonexistent threats - remember Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?  That's right - there were none.  Our unnecessary and unjustifiable invasion of Iraq set the stage for the creation of jihadist groups in the region. By destroying Iraq's government, military, and institutions, we ensured the rise of terrorist groups in countries where they were previously absent.  There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before our invasion brought them there.  There was no Islamic State in Iraq and Syria before we installed a partisan Shia to lead Iraq.  In spite of our role in destabilizing the Middle East by our totally misguided actions over the past 13 years, this is not our fight.

Why are we still giving any credence to those who misled us into those wars or to those who supported them?  Why is Obama caving in to the hawks and neocons, who should have lost all credibility by now?  The United States cannot be the world's policeman.  We tried that and failed.  The neocon dream of a new American century where all do our bidding is dangerous, costly and, ultimately, harmful to America.  Somehow we fail to understand that there is no military solution to this war.

A comprehensive diplomatic solution for both Iraq and Syria must be sought.  It is indeed the only solution to the sectarian strife now raging there.  Everyone in the region needs to be at the table - and that includes Iran.  (John Kerry, please take note.)

The arms flow to all parties must be stopped and the US should not arm any faction in these civil and sectarian wars.  Here again, diplomacy - diplomacy to weaken support for ISIS - is the right answer.  Continuing the arms flow to the combatants just prolongs these wars, adds to the death toll and ensures the continued misery of the civilian populations.

There's much that can be done short of military action.  Why these other courses of action are not being accorded the highest priority speaks volumes about the failure of political imagination and the downright stupidity gripping political "leaders".  "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."  The quote sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein pretty much sums it up.  Our political leaders are in the throes of military insanity.  They can't even learn from past mistakes.

Sunday Roundup - August 24, 2014

"I wonder how foreign policies would look if we ...thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never...wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children."

- Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

This is the weekly selection of news from sources outside the mainstream US corporate media.  Today we look at Syria, the Iran nuclear talks, Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine, and, in brief, the right-wing criticism of Obama's foreign policy.

Syria
More than 191,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict up to April, the UN human rights chief says.  Navi Pillay said the figure was "probably an underestimate" and criticised what she called "international paralysis" on the issue.  [BBC, Aug 22] Approximately one-third of the casualties are civilians.  Nine million Syrians have been displaced by the fighting.

On August 19, OPCW director Ahmet Üzümcü announced the completion of the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.  The U.S. Maritime Vessel Cape Ray has completed destruction of its entire consignment of 600 metric tonnes of Category 1 chemicals from the Syrian Arab Republic. This ends a crucial stage in the complex international maritime operation to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile...The Cape Ray’s consignment included the most dangerous chemicals in Syria’s arsenal: 581 metric tonnes of DF, a binary precursor for sarin gas, and 19.8 metric tonnes of ready-to-use sulfur mustard (HD).  The operation was completed weeks ahead of schedule and Üzümcü thanked and congratulated the United States, the crew aboard the Cape Ray, and our OPCW inspectors and demilitarisation experts for this remarkable achievement.

Iran Nuclear Talks
The IAEA's monthly update notes that Iran is moving to meet the terms of the extended nuclear talks.  The talks were extended last month to resolve differences in the permissible future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment.   Iran has started taking action to comply with the terms of an extended agreement with six world powers over its disputed atomic activities, a U.N. nuclear watchdog report obtained by Reuters on Wednesday showed. The findings in a monthly update by the International Atomic Energy Agency - though no major surprise - may be seen as positive by the West ahead of the expected resumption next month of negotiations on ending the decade-old nuclear dispute.  The IAEA document made clear that Iran is continuing to meet its commitments under the interim accord that it reached with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia late last year and that took effect in January. [Reuters, August 20]

Iraq
The truth is violence never ceased in Iraq. The cracks never filled. The wounds never healed. Our continued support has been catastrophic, costing thousands of innocent lives and delivering the final blow to a divided society. ‘We need a comprehensive plan for the Middle East that correctly learns the lessons of the past decade,’ [wrote former Prime Minister Blair in a June 14 essay]. Sadly, he still appears to need to include himself in that ‘we’.  [Iraq Body Count website: "The Casualties of Support" by Lily Hamourtziadou, June 16]

In response to international criticism, Iraq's president Nuri al-Maliki agreed to resign on August 14. Maliki's critics, from Washington to Riyadh, say he has systematically alienated Sunnis from the political process, thus fuelling support for the Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS or ISIL) who have now seized towns and cities across northern Iraq and have threatened to march on Baghdad. The Islamist group, which now calls itself the Islamic State, poses the biggest threat to Iraqi stability since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.  Sectarian and inter-religious violence has again become widespread, reaching levels not seen since unrest peaked in 2006-2007 in the era following the US-led invasion. [France24 website, Aug 15]

In a grim reminder of the civilian toll caused by 21st century wars, The Guardian website has re-posted a link to a 2010 video revealing the extent of violent civilian deaths following the US-led invasion.  As of YE 2009, 65% of the 109,000 violent Iraqi deaths were civilians.  The leaked documents led the UK-based organization Iraq Body Count to increase the civilian death toll by 15,000.  Iraq Body Count has continued to update its tally as sectarian fighting engulfs the country.  The figures as of August 22 are:

Documented civilian deaths from violence:  127,685 – 142,924  

Total violent deaths including combatants: 195,000

Gaza

The Egyptian-brokered talks and the ceasefire aimed at stopping the violence in Gaza collapsed on Tuesday and hostilities resumed.  The primary sticking point is the end of the seven-year blockade against Gaza, which would include the reopening of the air and seaports.  The blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas came to power in 2006 has done much to destroy the Gaza economy and prevent the repair of buildings destroyed in the Israeli sieges of the enclave since then.  The violence since the end of the cease-fire has so far claimed 65 Palestinian and one Israeli life, bringing the total death toll for Palestinians in this latest siege to 2,090 - 70 to 80% are civilians - and for Israelis to 68,  four are civilians.

An offer from the EU was apparently on the table and receiving positive consideration by Hamas.  The European Union...offered to take charge of Gaza's border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows, insisting on a durable truce with Israel and saying a return to the status quo for the region "is not an option." ...Hamas negotiators met in Qatar with the group's leadership to discuss a proposal for a long-term truce with Israel. An official said the group was inclined to accept the Egyptian-mediated offer.  The Gaza blockade remains the main stumbling block to negotiating a truce. The blockade has greatly limited Palestinians’ movements in and out of the territory of 1.8 million people, restricted the flow of goods into Gaza and blocked virtually all exports...[The EU foreign ministers said,] "The situation in the Gaza Strip has been unsustainable for many years and a return to the status quo prior to the latest conflict is not an option." [Al Jazeera, August 15] 

Palestinians walk through rubble during a ceasefire
in the Shujai'iya residential neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images
(The Guardian, July 26)

It will be a long time before we know the actual reason the truce negotiations failed.  Mouin Rabini, in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, writes:  Available reports coming out of the Cairo talks indicate that the Palestinian delegation showed flexibility on the implementation of any agreement, provided it entailed the removal rather than simply relaxation of the siege of the Gaza Strip. But any such truce, even if it conformed with the international consensus on ending the blockade of Gaza, would pose a major domestic political risk to the Israeli leader. Palestinian analyst Khalil Shaheen of the Palestinian think tank Masarat said, “It would be very difficult for Netanyahu to sign an agreement whose main element is the end of the siege and makes no mention of Palestinian disarmament and continue to declare victory.”  Meanwhile the blockade, death and destruction in Gaza continue as Israel attempts to destroy Hamas and end the Palestinian unity government. The international community makes the right noises but, in the end, stands by impotently.

Links
 [Haaretz, August 22] The Israeli newspaper Haaretz pointedly asks "How many Palestinian civilians is a single militant worth?" As of Thursday, 76.8 percent of the 2,090 fatalities documented by the Gazan human rights organization Mizan have been civilians.

[Al Jazeera, July 31] "Gaza’s kids affected psychologically, physically by lifetime of violence" - Beyond the immediate loss in Gaza... Israel’s onslaught will have long-term mental and physical effects on the Palestinian children who survived weeks of airstrikes and naval and tank shelling. 

[The Nation, July 16 post; Aug 4-11 print edition] "The War on Gaza and the Cycle of Impunity" - If Israel is not brought to justice, it will commit the same crimes again and again.

Ukraine
A controversial Russian aid convoy to eastern Ukraine has been completed. After being delayed at the Ukrainian border for a week, the convoy proceeded without permission from the government in Kiev.  Russia’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed humanitarian aid has been delivered to the besieged city of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile all trucks that delivered aid had returned to Russia....All trucks have returned empty, Ukrainian and Russian border guards confirmed, Russian Deputy Emergency Minister Eduard Chizhikov said....The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also confirmed that all 227 vehicles that entered Ukraine as part of a Russian aid convoy have now returned home....The convoy approached the Russian-Ukrainian border on August 14, and only entered Ukraine a week later, as Kiev had been postponing its final approval for the trucks to go ahead. [Russia Times, Aug 23]  Getting to the aid is being complicated by the continuing hostilities in the area.  Rebel leaders in Luhansk said the aid had been delivered and that distribution would begin, but pro-Russia media said that shelling was preventing people from getting to the aid...Meanwhile, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel arrived in Kiev on Saturday for talks with Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko... She later said that the standoff over Ukraine could be solved but only if control was tightened over the Ukraine-Russia border. "There must be two sides to be successful. You cannot achieve peace on your own. I hope the talks with Russia will lead to success," Merkel said, looking ahead to the meeting on Tuesday involving Putin and Poroshenko. [The Guardian, August 23]

In Brief - The Attacks on Obama's Foreign Policy

[Daily Kos, August 12, "Obama slams reporter's right-wing adopted talking point as bogus" ] It is a continuum of doing stupid stuff and being presumptuous internationally that has cost us thousands of lives, cost hundreds of thousands of lives overseas, and depleted our treasury. Those who criticize President Obama for being overcautious should check history for America’s continuous blunders internationally that have kept us at war for decades with little marginal increase in security (Iraq twice, Iran, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, etc.) 

Earth to Hillary: We don't need an ignorant hawk in the White House

Sunday Roundup - August 10, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the mainstream US corporate media.  Today we look at Iraq, the nuclear weapons era, and Gaza.


Iraq

Map is from The Guardian

The destabilization of the Middle East caused by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq continues the legacy of the neocons who misled our country into this unjustifiable war.  Iraq is on the verge of unraveling as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) forces advance throughout the northwestern section of the country and into Syria.   Isis forces advanced across north-western Iraq almost unchecked since a small band of hardliners stormed Iraq's second city, Mosul, on 10 June, sending the Iraqi army fleeing and shattering the central government's control. Flush with weapons looted from Iraqi arsenals, Isis sacked Tikrit and advanced on Kirkuk. With new recruits lured or pressganged along the way, it has captured five oilfields and three cities, an 800-mile stretch of border with Syria. It has menaced Baghdad and is now within striking distance of Iraq's two largest dams.  

The latest ISIS campaign is against Kurdish minority Yazidis.  UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.   At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. [The Guardian, August 6]

On Friday, US began airstrikes against the militant forces.  U.S. warplanes bombed Islamist fighters marching on Iraq's Kurdish capital on Friday after President Barack Obama said Washington must act to prevent "genocide".  Islamic State fighters...have advanced to within a half hour's drive of Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region and a hub for U.S. oil companies. [Reuters, August 8]

Related
Stephen Walt, "Do No (More) Harm" (Foreign Policy, August 7) - the case against bombing the Islamic State..."Every time the U.S. touches the Middle East, it makes things worse. It's time to walk away and not look back...This argument would not preclude limited U.S. action for purely humanitarian purposes -- such as humanitarian airdrops for the beleaguered religious minorities now threatened with starvation in Iraq."


The Nuclear Weapons Era
On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  It was the beginning of the nuclear weapons era.  In his  introduction to a Noam Chomsky article, Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch writes that the way for the bombing of Hiroshima had been paved by an evolution in warfare: the increasing targeting of civilian populations from the air (something that can be seen again today in the carnage of Gaza)....Targeted by the planet’s major nuclear arsenals would be the civilian inhabitants not just of single cities but of scores and scores of cities, even of the planet itself.  On August 6th, 70 years ago, the possibility of the apocalypse passed out of the hands of God or the gods and into human hands, which meant a new kind of history had begun whose endpoint is unknowable.  Noam Chomsky's article reviews the insane strategies of the nuclear weapons era (NWE) and the squandered opportunities to reduce the threat.  He quotes General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy.  Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”  Chomsky concludes As General Butler observed, it is a near miracle that we have escaped destruction so far, and the longer we tempt fate, the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle.  Nine countries currently possess at least 16,300 nuclear weapons - a significant drop from the 60-70,000 present at the peak but a long way from zero.

Table is from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and appeared in Business Insider

Note: A Ploughshares Fund estimate puts the nuclear weapons total at 17,300.


Gaza
A three-day ceasefire ended Friday.  Al Jazeera  reports: Israel has hit the Gaza Strip with missiles and artillery for the first time in three days, while Palestinian fighters launched a barrage of rockets at Israel, just hours after a ceasefire between the two sides expired....The ceasefire expired as no progress was made in the Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at finding a durable solution to the month-long fighting.  The Egyptian-brokered talks had not resumed as of Saturday night.

Preliminary UN estimates of the destruction to date in six areas of the Gaza Strip based on satellite images show a total of 3246 structures damaged or destroyed (1525 destroyed, 700 severely damaged, 1021 moderately damaged), 4900 acres of farmland destroyed, and 1288 road or rural area craters.  A UN report on casualties (August 6) estimated that 1,843 Palestinians had been killed and 66 Israelis and one Thai national since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July.  Of those Palestinians, the status of 279 could not be identified, at least 1,354 were civilians, including 415 children and 214 women.  Israel's 67 deaths include 3 civilians.

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting for an investigation into possible war crimes.  The UN could launch an independent investigation into the conduct of the war: The U.S. has cast the sole vote against establishing an investigation by the United Nations into war crimes committed in Gaza.  Yesterday [July 23], the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 29-1, with 17 abstentions, to establish an inquiry. The United States was the only no vote. The European nations on the council all abstained. [Mondo Weiss, July 24]  Also, The Guardian reported on August 5: Palestinian political leaders are poised to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the aim of putting Israel in the dock on war crimes charges, officials said today.  "Israel has left us with no other option," Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, told reporters after meeting ICC officials in The Hague to discuss the implications of signing the Rome Statute. It would make the Palestinian state a member of the court with the authority to call for an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The destruction of property and the death toll in Occupied Gaza now exceed those of the Israeli siege of Dec 2008-Jan 2009.  Without accountability for the massive civilian casualties and damage inflicted by the IDF, what The Nation has called "the cycle of impunity" will continue.  Impunity is what happens when an aggressor fractures the norms of international law and basic human rights yet is never held to account, and so is free to commit the same crimes again and again. That is what we’re seeing now, and that is exactly what the Goldstone Report—the findings of the UN investigation of Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09—so presciently warned against. It said then that bringing to justice those who committed war crimes—Israel as well as Hamas—was perhaps the only effective way to prevent another round of violence. [The Nation, posted July 16]

Related
"What the Gaza War Means for the Middle East" (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 27) - "Despite the horrifying human toll of the latest Israel offensive against Gaza, Palestinians are rallying in even greater numbers around Hamas. They have rejected any ceasefire proposal that does not end the crippling seven-year blockade of Gaza; a blockade that has been described as a form of collective punishment that keeps Palestinians trapped in the largest 'open-air prison camp' in the world."

Marjorie Cohn, "Israel Inflicts Illegal Collective Punishment on Gaza" (Huffington Post, July 14) - "Israel's overwhelming use of military force constitutes collective punishment, which is a war crime... Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, 'No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed ... Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited'  "

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 12 August 1949

Update Last Sunday's round-up noted that the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier was used as the Israeli justification for the increased violence on Friday August 1 that left around 100 Palestinians dead.  Consistent with the Hamas' statement at the time, the kidnapping did not actually occur and  Israel confirmed on Saturday August 2 that the soldier presumed captured had been killed in action. 

Sunday Roundup - July 27, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at Gaza, the US's Israel policy, and, in brief, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine and Russia.

"Today's attack underscores the imperative for the killing to stop and to stop now." 

- Ban Ki Moon after the Israeli shelling of a UN refugee shelter on Thursday.  

Gaza
The Israeli assault against Gaza continued unabated until Saturday morning.  A 12-hour ceasefire went into effect July 26 after Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary pause in the fighting.  Israel had come under widespread criticism for its rejection of a seven-day humanitarian ceasefire brokered  by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Hamas' regional proxies.  The Palestinian death toll in Gaza is now over 1000, the great majority of whom are civilians.  More than 5000 have been wounded.  One can only pray that the horrific slaughter taking place in Gaza will be ended permanently, that the devastating blockade that has crippled Gaza for the past seven years will be ended, and that the world community will send the necessary humanitarian aid to the beleaguered enclave to help it rebuild from this and past Israeli attacks.

Gaza Ceasefire Reveals Full Extent of Israeli Destruction [The Guardian, July 26]

Palestinian women react to the destruction in Beit Hanuon,
northern Gaza Strip, during the ceasefire.
Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
[Image appeared in The Guardian]

Thousands of people in Gaza have ventured out from homes and shelters during a 12-hour ceasefire to find that whole streets and neighbourhoods have been destroyed in the last week.  Shortly before the ceasefire took effect, at least 18 members of the al-Najar family, including many children, were killed in an air strike on Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The family had recently gone there to escape fighting in a nearby village, a Palestinian health official said.  As the Palestinian death toll in the 19-day-long conflict topped 1,000, diplomatic efforts to forge a longer ceasefire continued in Paris. Foreign ministers from seven nations – the US, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Turkey and Qatar – called for an extension of the truce.

Statement of UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that Israel’s military actions are responsible for the death of a child every hour in recent days and observed, “Respect for the right to life of civilians, including children, should be a foremost consideration. Not abiding by these principles may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” That is, in international law, Israel’s pretext for indiscriminate bombing– that Hamas hides out among non-combatants– is unacceptable. Israel is the occupying power in Gaza and has a duty to minimize non-combatant death, which it clearly is not doing... [Informed Comment, July 24]

Massacre at UN School/Refugee Shelter

The majority of those injured in the attack on the school
were women and children. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Image appeared in The Guardian

As noted by Al Jazeera:  More than 140,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza by the fighting, many of them seeking shelter in buildings run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.  Juan Cole in his Informed Comment blog on July 25 wrote:   A new element entered the current Gaza war on Thursday, as Israel shelled a UN school full of displaced persons taking refuge there and  large protests broke out in the Palestinian West Bank. The shelling of the UNRWA school, which killed 15 and injured 200, was a war crime. The UN had given the school’s coordinates to the Israelis, so they knew it was a school and was holding displaced persons.  The UN, when informed it would be shelled, asked for more time to evacuate people but were denied it.  The attack occurred hours after the UN had warned that Israel's actions in the Palestinian enclave could constitute war crimes.  For more on the Israeli shelling of the refugee shelter, see The Guardian July 24 article.

Israel Rejects Seven-Day Humanitarian Ceasefire Proposal
World reaction to the humanitarian disaster is growing - especially after the Israeli shelling of the UN school serving as a center for displaced persons and after Israel rejected a seven-day humanitarian cease-fire brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Hamas' regional proxies.  Kerry is remaining in the Middle East for a few more days to attempt to narrow the differences between Hamas and the Israeli government for achieving a cease-fire.  For more see the Al Jazeera, July 25 article.

Palestinian West Bank Protests and Friday Israeli strikes in Gaza

On Friday, Israeli strikes on 30 houses [in Gaza] killed another 19 people, including the head of media operations for Hamas ally Islamic Jihad and his son.  [Al Jazeera, July 25]

Demonstrations in the West Bank against the Israeli assault has resulted in the killing of 6 Palestinians.  In the occupied West Bank, where U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governs in uneasy coordination with Israel, some 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity with Gaza overnight Thursday – a scale recalling mass revolts of the past. Protesters surged against an Israeli army checkpoint, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, and Palestinian medics said one was shot dead and 200 wounded when troops opened fire.  The next day, medics said five Palestinians were killed in separate incidents near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Hebron, including one shooting that witnesses blamed on an apparent Jewish settler. [Al Jazeera, July 25]

The United States' Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy
Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, writes in a July 22 article at the Huffington Post:  Israel is [again] using weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers to bombard the captive and impoverished Palestinians in Gaza...As usual, the U.S. government is siding with Israel, even though most American leaders understand Israel instigated the latest round of violence, is not acting with restraint, and that its actions make Washington look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of most of the world...This Orwellian situation is eloquent testimony to the continued political clout of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the other hardline elements of the Israel lobby. There is no other plausible explanation for the supine behavior of the U.S. Congress...or the shallow hypocrisy of the Obama administration...The explanation for America's impotent and morally bankrupt policy is the political clout of the Israel lobby.  Barack Obama knows that if he were to side with the Palestinians in Gaza or criticize Israel's actions in any way, he would face a firestorm of criticism from the lobby and his chances of getting Congressional approval for a deal with Iran would evaporate.  

Walt notes that the Israeli hard-line lobby isn't as powerful as it once was.  Nevertheless, it is still able to keep roughly $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel flowing each year; it can still prevent U.S. presidents from putting meaningful pressure on Israel; and it can still get the U.S. to wield its veto whenever a resolution criticizing Israel's actions is floated in the U.N. Security Council. This situation explains why the Obama administration made zero progress toward "two states for two peoples": if Israel gets generous U.S. support no matter what it does, why should its leaders pay any attention to Washington's requests? 

Iraq

Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric urged political leaders on Friday to refrain from clinging to their posts - an apparent reference to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has defied demands that he step aside...Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Sunni militants led by the hardline Islamic State swept across northern Iraq last month and seized vast swathes of territory, posing the biggest challenge to Maliki's Shi'ite-led government since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011.  Critics say Maliki is a divisive figure whose alienation of Sunnis has fueled sectarian hatred and played into the hands of the insurgents, who have reached to within 70 km of the capital Baghdad. [Reuters, July 25]

Syria
Fighters from al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State killed at least 50 Syrian army soldiers...on Friday outside the northern city of Raqqa, as the radicals escalated their attacks on government forces, a monitoring group said...Islamic State...has advanced in Syria and taken over swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq in what it has described as a bid to establish an Islamic caliphate...Since its lightning advance in Iraq last month, the group has confronted government forces in Syria more frequently whilst continuing to attack rival rebel groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad. [Reuters, July 25]

Ukraine and Russia
Russia reacted angrily on Saturday [July 26]to additional sanctions imposed by the European Union over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, saying they would hamper cooperation on security issues and undermine the fight against terrorism and organized crime.  The 28-nation EU reached an outline agreement on Friday to impose economic sanctions on Russia...The EU also imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the chiefs of Russia's FSB security service and foreign intelligence service and a number of other top Russian officials.  [Reuters, July 26]

Sunday Roundup - June 15, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at Syria, pro-gun antics, the State Senator sellout and the Tea Party victory in Virginia, and Iraq.

Syria
According to the UN, more than 160,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war.  Nearly three million refugees have sought sanctuary abroad and six million people have been displaced inside the country.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was re-elected to his third seven-year term on June 3 in an election held in government controlled areas.  On June 9, Assad announced a wide-ranging amnesty.  As reported by the Reuters news agency: In a decree published by state media, Assad commuted some death sentences to life imprisonment, reduced jail terms for many offences and canceled some others altogether.  Foreigners who entered the country "to join a terrorist group or perpetrate a terrorist act" would receive an amnesty if they surrender to authorities within a month, the decree said. Kidnappers who free their hostages and army deserters would also be covered.   On June 10, Reuters reported on the  internecine fighting among Assad's mainly Sunni Muslim opponents.  A six-week offensive by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against rival Islamists in eastern Syria has killed 600 fighters and driven 130,000 people from their homes...The group follows al Qaeda's jihadist ideology but its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has defied orders by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri to stop fighting in Syria and focus on Iraq. The UK-based Observatory said 241 fighters from ISIL and 354 from Nusra and other Islamic brigades had been killed in fighting since ISIL launched its offensive in Syria's Deir al-Zor province, seizing four oilfields from its rivals. Civilian deaths are estimated at 39.

Gun Violence
Mass shootings continue in the US with no Congressional action to even establish standards for universal background checks anywhere in sight.  Among other shootings in the past several weeks, a couple allegedly at the Cliven Bundy ranch shot to death two Las Vegas police officers and a bystander.  In a June 10 post, The Daily Kos analyzes the disappearance of the Tea Party terrorist story from Fox News reports after just one day.  Ordinarily, Fox, or any news operation, would grasp dearly to a story that had the emotional punch of police officers murdered in an ambush. It has the drama of a horrific crime and the sympathy reserved for a community's fallen heroes. For Fox to forgo all of that makes it clear that they are afraid of their own audience. They are not going to risk upsetting them with a story that indicts their most closely held principles. And Fox is surely not going to indulge in a story that contradicts everything they have stood for over the last seventeen years.

Meanwhile just when you thought the anti-gun-control fanatics couldn't get any nuttier, we are treated to the spectacle of packs of Open Carry Texas members carrying their rifles into commercial establishments and hounding gun control advocates, the NRA criticizing OCT actions and then retracting its criticism, "Joe the Plumber" insisting to parents of children killed at UC-Santa Barbara that the deaths of innocent people "don't trump" his constitutional rights, and a loaded gun being found in the toy aisle of a Target in South Carolina. Perhaps some of these pro-gun activists are afraid of universal background checks because they act so bat-shit crazy that, in any civilized society, they would be deemed unsuited to carry weapons.  President Obama asked for us as a nation to do some soul-searching and that may be all that happens for the foreseeable future on a Federal level.  With NRA money backing so many in Congress and with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, don't expect too much by way of courageous action to stop the American gun slaughter.  

Virginia Doings
Referring to what appears to have been the bribery of a Democratic state senator by Virginia Republicans, Zoe Carpenter writing in The Nation wonders "What won't the GOP do to keep the poor uninsured?" Phillip Puckett, who served as a Democratic state senator for one of Virginia's poorest districts, resigned suddenly on Monday. His decision to step down appears to have been the result of a bribe offered by Republican colleagues bent on stopping the expansion of Medicaid. Puckett’s resignation gave Republicans the one seat they needed to take control of the Senate; it also put him in the running for a paid post on a state tobacco commission that is controlled by some of the very same Republicans. And it cleared the way for the chamber to appoint his daughter to a state judgeship. Turns out Puckett, in view of the uproar, may not be taking the post at the state tobacco commission.  But the damage was done.  By stepping down, Puckett effectively ended a months-long battle over the fate of the 400,000 Virginians who are too poor to buy insurance but don’t meet the state’s restrictive eligibility requirements for Medicaid. The state Senate had been on course to vote to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act, setting up a budget showdown with the Republican-controlled House. But with the GOP now in control of the Senate, both chambers are expected to pass a spending plan on Thursday that does not include the expansion.  Virginia is not the only state where Republicans have gone to insane lengths to keep millions uninsured, or to justify doing so.  Carpenter cites Missouri, Louisiana, Utah and Arkansas as examples of these Republican efforts.

In other Virginia political news, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was deemed too moderate (wow, Cantor pressured Boehner from the right!) for the likes of his constituents.  David Brat, an obscure right-wing professor of economics, supported by the Tea Party but outspent 25 to 1 by Cantor, defeated Cantor by 11 percentage points.  How did this happen? New York Magazine assessed it this way:  Brat ... benefited from the constant undercurrent of discontent emanating from the base that House Republicans had accommodated President Obama by failing to force him to accept their agenda — the still-extant pangs of anger that drove the party to shut down the government last fall.  But the biggest issue by far was immigration reform. Cantor was no reformer, really. He rejected the bipartisan immigration reform deal ...but he did hope to salvage some partial compromise, perhaps allowing some illegal immigrants who had been brought over the border as children.... Brat rejected even that. Any token of conciliation was too much. He still uses the old lingo, calling undocumented immigrants “illegals.” The chortling on the Democratic side has begun.  They are glad that Cantor has been defeated.  I wonder what they can possibly be thinking.  He was replaced on the 2014 Republican ticket in a secure Republican district by someone even further to the right than he is. Albeit this was one of the few Tea Party victories against the Republican establishment candidates in this primary season.

Map is from uniraq.org

Iraq

Iraq is facing its gravest test since the US-led invasion more than a decade ago, after its army capitulated to Islamist insurgents who have seized four cities and pillaged military bases and banks, in a lightning campaign which seems poised to fuel a cross-border insurgency endangering the entire region.  [The Guardian, June 11]  Al-Qaeda-linked extremists seized control of Nineveh province and Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city.  It puts terrorists in control of an enormous part of Iraq’s north and west.   As Bob Dreyfuss in a June 10 article in The Nation so correctly puts it: The crisis now engulfing Iraq provides the ultimate condemnation of the decision by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts—backed, of course, by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry—to invade Iraq in 2003. That action, which destroyed virtually all of Iraq’s institutions and created a power vacuum that led directly to an ethnic and sectarian civil war, is now playing out all of its terrible consequences.  The ongoing sectarian violence has taken a staggering toll in Iraq - with more than 8,000 killed in 2013 and monthly totals that suggest an even higher number of deaths this year; in May, 799 Iraqis died as the result of suicide bombings, car bombs, targeted assassinations, tit-for-tat killings and other civil war–like violence, according to the United Nations—and that data doesn’t even include Anbar province. 

Mother Jones, June 13 post: "What the Hell is Happening in Iraq Right Now?"

When Will They Ever Learn?

That famous line from Peter, Paul and Mary's 1960's anti-war anthem "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" should give us all something to think about as America approaches the eleventh anniversary of the Afghanistan War. 

The Afghanistan War became the longest war in American history on June 7, 2010 - longer than Vietnam, longer than Korea, longer than World War II.  Leon Panetta says we'll be ending it next year.  Not soon enough by a long shot.  It never should have been waged.  Terrorism is best controlled and prevented by police actions.  Of course, if you are asleep at the wheel and the the largest single-day attack on American soil occurs on your watch, you need to show that you're doing something - even if what you are doing is destructive, costly and ineffective.  But the neocons decided to declare a war on terror and Afghanistan was their easy first choice.  They then expanded this so-called war to invade Iraq, a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 and, of course, which had no weapons of mass destruction.  A permanent state of war (I mean, really, how can you ever defeat a noun) facilitates the destruction of civil liberties in a democracy.  Politically it creates an atmosphere that favors militarists, fear mongers, and neo cons.  Reason goes out the window as any opposition to war policies are branded "unpatriotic" or, in the more recent terminology of the right-wing echo machine, "You don't believe in American exceptionalism!"

These wars were totally unjustified.  Since many think that right and wrong has to do with power and winning (as in, "might makes right"), here's something to think about.  The end result of these disastrous wars is far from what was envisioned by the war planners and what was hoped for by the neocons.  In Iraq, power is now held by Shia political parties closely aligned with Iran.  In Afghanistan, the most likely outcome is some power sharing arrangement between Karzai and the Taliban.

The world, as Jonathan Schell says, is unconquerable (Note 1).  We will not be able to impose our will on others in the long-term by violent means .  We seem never to learn that war always causes more misery than we can contemplate.  We seem never to learn that, even if we put aside the moral considerations, war is ineffective and leads to unintended and unimaginable consequences. 

So to answer the nearly 50 year old question of Peter Paul and Mary...apparently not yet.

(1) The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. Jonathan Schell, 2003, Henry Holt and Co., New York).  From the jacket notes: "a visionary work that explores the limits of violence and charts an unexpectedly hopeful course toward a nonviolent future".

US Ends Iraq War

After nearly nine years, all American troops are finally leaving Iraq.  The United States formally ended the war today - eight years, seven months and 14 days after the so-called "mission accomplished" speech.  Nearly 4500 Americans lost their lives.  Thankfully there will be no more from this particular war.  Welcome home. 

The costs of this totally unnecessary neocon war have been enormous.  And, the increasingly irrelevant John McCain and increasingly misguided Cheney family to the contrary, the withdrawal is long past due.  In addition, the official number of wounded Americans is more than 33,000.  The toll on Iraqis was much greater - a minimum of 100,000 - 125,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invaded (Iraq Body Count website).  Some other estimates are much higher (e.g., Lancet/Johns Hopkins study on the "excessive" Iraqi deaths).  The total US price tag for the Iraq War will eventually reach 3 trillion dollars with the cost to other countries about the same order of magnitude (Stiglitz and Bilmes, Washington Post article).  For a good summary of Stiglitz and Bilmes analysis of the total cost of the war, see the 2008 article by Aida Edemariam in The Guardian.

The Iraq War is the greatest US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.  It has immeasurably damaged the US reputation throughout the world.  It has damaged the world and national economy.  It was based on false intelligence and "sold" to a gullible and scared American public with deception, arrogance and lies.  Senator McCain, you have it completely wrong.  It was the neocons who misled the country into this unnecessary war of aggression and it is they, not the President who finally extracted us from Iraq, who will be judged most harshly by history. 

Get Out Now

Obama's announcement of the beginning of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is welcome news but far from adequate.  By the end of 2012, we will still have more troops in Afghanistan than when our Nobel Peace prize winner took office.  The end must come immediately for this ill-advised war with no defined objective. 

Why any troops remain in Iraq at all is also beyond comprehension.  The Iraq War was based on lies, pumped up false intelligence and fear-mongering from the neo-cons.   Time to end it once and for all.

America cannot afford the lives and money for what has been a serious misadventure in the Middle East.  It has done nothing to improve our security, has provided grist for the terrorist recruitment mills, has shifted the balance of power in the region towards Iran, and has seriously damaged America's reputation and ability to lead by example. 

The days of the neocon dream of an American empire are over.  The reality needs to sink in that we cannot force our will or way of life on others. 

Get out now.