Sunday Roundup - December 21, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at Cuba, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, nuclear weapons, US-Russia relations, and in brief, the US federal judiciary, the death penalty, Venezuela and Colombia.   

Cuba
President Obama took a major step towards normalizing relations with Cuba on Wednesday.  The shift will see the reopening of a U.S. embassy in Havana and an easing of the decades-long trade embargo of the island.  Obama detailed the changes in a White House address that coincided with a prisoner swap with Cuban authorities. U.S. citizen Alan Gross, a USAID contract worker whom Havana accused of spying, was released in exchange for three Cuban nationals jailed in Florida.  “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries," Obama said...The policy shift amends existing regulations of the executive branch governing U.S. Cuba policy...These changes will allow an expansion of authorized travel categories by Americans to Cuba, increased caps for legal remittances from the U.S. to Cubans, greater commercial ties to the Cuban private sector and additional allowances between mutual exports and imports and authorizations for additional financial and banking transactions.  The reset in relations also includes a review of the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Pope Francis and Uruguayan President José Mujica each played a role in the recent events which followed after more than a year of back-channel communications.  [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]  The embargo has been opposed by the vast majority of nations - 188 of 193 nations voted to strike it down at this year's UN General Assembly vote on the embargo.  Latin American nations, which have long been especially critical of the embargo, welcomed the move.
Related

Pope John Paul II with President Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1998
Photo Credit: AP/Jose Goitia

"The US – not Cuba – comes in from the cold: Obama shifted US policy on Havana towards that of the rest of world, saying that decades-long embargo had failed" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]
"The spirit is willing: Papal role in Cuba thaw started with John Paul II" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]
John Paul II had raised eyebrows in 1996 when he granted a Vatican audience to the former seminarian-turned-revolutionary Fidel Castro. Even more remarkable, back then, was the apparent meeting of minds the two men had at the U.N. World Food conference in Rome that year on the question of hunger — and embargoes.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
With the US warning of a possible veto, Palestinian leaders and negotiators are pressing ahead with a Palestinian statehood resolution.  Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said the draft would be submitted to the Security Council after the Palestinians agreed with France on a merged text...The new text would set a two-year deadline for wrapping up negotiations on a final agreement paving the way to a new Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the shared capital...The Palestinians pushed for action at the United Nations as the European parliament overwhelmingly backed recognition of a Palestinian state..."The draft that will be presented...is the French draft based on Palestinian observations and decisions," Malki told AFP...UN diplomats however cautioned that action may not be imminent. Jordan was due to meet with Britain, France and the United States later before deciding on whether to submit the Palestinian text.  Secretary Kerry is meeting with Israel's Netanyahu, Palestinian negotiators, and European ministers in an attempt to head off a Security Council confrontation.  The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, warned this week that the international community could not simply ignore the Palestinian question.  "The Palestinian question is not going to evaporate," he said.  Mansour warned of more confrontation on the ground and said the Palestinians were ready to take action at the General Assembly and at the International Criminal Court. [AFP/Yahoo News, Dec. 18] 

To hold out hope that the Israeli government will negotiate in good faith on Palestinian statehood without serious international pressure is a cruel hoax.  It's been 21 years since the Oslo 2 Accord, which provided for a two-state solution.  Progress on Oslo has been virtually non-existent since the assassination of Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli right-wing extremist.  Kerry's failed peace talks are just the latest indication of the long-standing Israeli intransigence.  

After 47 years of military occupation, with the Gaza Strip devastated by a blockade and military assaults, with a government defying international law by illegal settlements and collective punishment, with an Israeli President who has built a political career on preventing a two-state solution, it is time for Palestinian statehood to be imposed by the world community.  Palestinians are only asking for what every other people have - a homeland (193 at last count).  As it is, the land sought by Palestinians has been reduced to just 40 percent of that proposed for their state by UN Resolution 181.  

If the world has learned anything after Israel's sabotage of the "Kerry":peace talks and after its brutal assault against Gaza this summer, it's that a two-state solution will never happen as long as the United States enables Israeli oppression by its arms sales and Security Council vetoes.  To continue this policy is morally reprehensible and makes a mockery of the United States's view of itself as a defender of human rights.  

Related
"Hamas taken off EU terror blacklist: Move comes as European parliament adopts resolution supporting principle of Palestinian statehood" [The Guardian, Dec. 17]

Pakistan
Seven heavily-armed Taliban gunmen carried out an attack on a school in Pakistan that left at least 141 people, mostly teenagers and younger children, dead.  Whatever these lunatics were thinking, unmitigated outrage spread quickly across the world  - even other terrorists denounced the attack.  It takes something unusually vile for the world to pay much attention to a terrorist outrage in Pakistan. Since 2007 the annual toll of murders by jihadists has never dropped below 2,000 and in 2012 and 2013 it was not far off 4,000....But the horror of the attack by the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of militant groups officially known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), on an army-run school in Peshawar stands out for the scale and nature of its brutality....The army, and previous governments, must take much of the responsibility for the violence the country has suffered in recent years. The growth of the TTP is a direct consequence of neurotic fear of encirclement by India which is widespread in Pakistan’s ruling class and has led to the disastrous policy of exploiting and encouraging jihadist groups...After Nawaz Sharif became prime minister in June 2013 and Raheel Sharif (they are not related) took over as chief of army staff a year ago this disastrous policy began to change. Both men came to the conclusion that jihadist terrorism poses a greater threat to their country than India does....Reining in other terrorist groups that the state has cultivated will ultimately require moves towards a rapprochement with India over Kashmir. For that to happen India’s government will also have to show vision. [The Economist, Dec. 20]
Related
"3 Problems Pakistani Politics has to Resolve after Grisly School Attack" [Informed Comment, Dec. 17]

Nuclear Weapons
James Carroll at TomDispatch plots the long, sad course from Obama's 2009 Prague speech on banishing nuclear weapons ("As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act... So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.") to his role as an enabler of their renewal, Obama’s timing in 2009 was critical. The weapons and delivery systems of the nuclear arsenal were aging fast....massive reductions in the arsenal had to begin before pressures to launch a program for the wholesale replacement of those weapons systems grew too strong to resist...Obama, in other words, was presiding over a golden moment, but an apocalyptic deadline was bearing down. And sure enough, that deadline came crashing through.  Thanks to Pentagon pressure, Russia's ambition to return to world power status, and extremist Republicans taking Congress hostage,  Obama has become the "Ahab of Nuclear Weapons".  In order to get the votes of Senate Republicans to ratify the START treaty, Obama made what turned out to be a devil’s bargain.  He agreed to lay the groundwork for a vast “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which, in the name of updating an aged system, is already morphing into a full-blown reinvention of the arms cache at an estimated future cost of more than a trillion dollars. Carroll wonders what might happen if the President went directly to the people and passionately made the case today that he made in Prague five years.  Although there is no sign that the president intends to do such a thing any longer,... if a commander-in-chief were to order nuclear reductions into the hundreds, the result might actually be a transformation of the American political conscience. In the process, the global dream of a nuclear-free world could be resuscitated and the commitment of non-nuclear states (including Iran) to refrain from nuclear-weapons development could be rescued. Ending on a pessimistic note, Carroll writes: Because of decisions likely to be taken this year and next, no American president will ever again be able to embrace this purpose as Obama once did. Nuclear weapons will instead become a normalized and permanent part of the twenty-first century American arsenal, and therefore of the arsenals of many other nations. [TomDispatch, Dec. 11]

Russia
On Thursday, President Obama signed a bill that will allow the White House to levy further sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, though the Administration has said it has no immediate plans to introduce them....US entities would be forbidden from investing in gas giant Gazprom, and the company would face additional sanctions if it broke off supplies to key eastern European countries.... Other sanctions would involve Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Perhaps most crucially, organizations in [Russia’s] embattled financial sector would be barred from dealing with any US banks...In a related move, the bill authorizes Obama to supply anti-tank weapons, surveillance drones and other sophisticated equipment for Petro Poroshenko's government in Kiev, though White House officials said the President had no immediate plans to allow US weapons to be used to put down the uprising in the east of the country...Two factors appear to have put a brake on the plan. Obama is loathe to impose new measures without backing from Brussels, where there is no unity on the need for future sanctions...and the Russia rouble has collapsed over the past week - partly due to oil prices. [Russia Times, Dec. 18]
Dmitri Trenin at The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace believes that the West and Russia may now be entering a state of permanent crisis.  Conflict resolution is not on the agenda. It is time for permanent crisis management. ...Crisis management must ensure, at minimum, that there is no resumption of hostilities in eastern Ukraine. Should Kiev, with Washington's blessing or its acquiescence, attempt to retake Donetsk and Lugansk, the Kremlin may not confine itself to restoring the status quo...The best one can do now is to engage in practical steps to make life less miserable for the people directly affected. The trilateral Russia-Ukraine-EU agreement on gas supplies to Ukraine finally concluded at the end of October is a useful first step...Ukraine and Europe...should not overreact to the November 2 elections in Donbass. They would be wise to engage with newly elected leaders of the region. Talking with people, including adversaries, and dealing with them does not imply recognition of an entity, but can be useful in managing important practical issues.  Europeans need to find a way to relate to Russians, even if, in Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel's memorable phrase, Putin may "live in another world." If Europe and Germany want to be a serious player..., they have to build a relationship with Russia on a new foundation of realism and pragmatism.  [CEIP, Nov. 4]

In Brief - Links
US Federal Judiciary
"The Senate Just Cemented Obama's Judicial Legacy" [Huffington Post, Dec. 18]
The number of vacancies in the Federal courts is now 41 out of 874 judgeships.  This is down from 86 vacancies in March.

Colombia
"Colombia rebuffs FARC ceasefire offer: Government says peace deal must be reached before it will accept rebels’ demand that truce be verified by other countries" [The Guardian, Dec. 18]

Venezuela
"Venezuela sanctions highlight US hypocrisy on human rights: Obama should follow his example on Cuba and engage with, not punish, Venezuela" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 18]

Death Penalty
In 2014, 35 people were executed, the fewest in 20 years. Death sentences dropped to their lowest level in the modern era of the death penalty, with 72 people sentenced to death, the smallest number in 40 years. Just seven states carried out executions, and three states (Texas, Missouri, and Florida) accounted for 80% of the executions.  [Death Penalty Information Center, Dec. 18]

Sunday Roundup - November 16, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at the US-China climate agreement, Mexico, immigration reform, Ukraine, the permanent war infrastructure, and the unheralded success of Evo Morales.

US-China Climate Agreement

Graphic from ThinkProgress website

On Tuesday night, the United States and China announced a historic agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions.  The plan...involves a series of initiatives to be undertaken in partnership between the two countries, including: expanding funding for clean energy technology research at the US-China Clean Energy Research Center; launching a large-scale pilot project in China to study carbon capture and sequestration; a push to further limit the use of hydroflourocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas found in refrigerants; a  federal framework for cities in both countries to share experiences and best practices for low-carbon economic growth and adaptation to the impacts of climate change at the municipal level; a call to boost trade in "green" goods, including energy efficiency technology and resilient infrastructure.  [Mother Jones, Nov. 11]
The announcement by the two largest carbon polluters in the world is a welcome signal ahead of the Paris 2015 climate conference.  China, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, has agreed to cap its output by 2030 or earlier if possible...Now it has also promised to increase its use of energy from zero-emission sources to 20% by 2030...The United States has pledged to cut its emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.  Both represent improved targets over previously announced goals.  [The Guardian, Nov. 12]
The deal was reached after nine months of intense negotiations.  The plan unveiled in Beijing by Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, commits the two countries to ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions after 2020, and could spur other big polluters to similar efforts.  After years of mistrust, the deal began to coalesce last spring after Obama sent a personal letter to Xi suggesting the two countries start to move in tandem to cut carbon pollution, the White House said.  The immediate inspiration for the letter arose from a visit to Beijing by John Kerry, the US secretary of state. Kerry, who had a strong environmental record when he was a senator, raised climate change to a top priority after taking over at State. [The Guardian, Nov. 12]
Related: 
"America's Solar Boom, in Charts"  According to a Deutsche Bank analyst: By 2016, solar power will be as cheap or cheaper than electricity from the conventional grid in every state except three. [Mother Jones, Nov. 7]
"How the Republican-led Congress could kill the climate change deal" [The Guardian, Nov. 12]

Mexico
On September 26 in the southwestern town of Iguala. 43 Mexican college students were detained by police after a protest against what the students considered to be discriminatory hiring and funding practices by the government.   They have not been seen since.  The former mayor of Iguala is under arrest and its police chief is on the run.  Mexico has been facing violent rallies since local authorities revealed that the 43 students were handed over by corrupt police to the Guerros Unidos gang, members of which confessed to murdering them and reducing their bodies to ashes.  On Tuesday, protesters blocked Acapulco Airport.  On Wednesday a crowd of about 500 protesters set ablaze the state congress building in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero in a violent rally over the alleged massacre of 43 college students....Their disappearance has posed the biggest challenge so far to President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration, with many questioning the government’s progress in fighting against drug violence. [Reuters, Nov. 13]
Related:
"Mexicans in ‘Forgotten State’ Hail Arrest of Fugitive Mayor" [Bloomberg, Nov. 4]

Immigration Reform
President Obama is pledging to take executive action on immigration reform before year end. Depending on the specifics, the executive actions may protect between 2 and 5 million immigrants from deportation.  A comprehensive reform bill passed the Senate in 2013 but the Republican-controlled House has refused to act.  At a news conference during a visit to Myanmar, the President said, "There has been ample opportunity for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would strengthen our borders, improve the legal immigration system and lift millions of people out of the shadows....I said that if in fact Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority I possess to try to make the system work better."  The executive actions are centered on an extension of the President's "deferred action plan" which was designed to protect young adults who were brought to the US illegally as children from being deported.  The plan is to include parents of children who are US citizens or legal residents.  The action is designed to prevent the break-up of families via deportations.  Other steps reportedly include increasing the number of high-tech workers allowed to live and work in the US, [expanding] the existing deferred action plans [by moving] the cut-off date for children arriving to 2010, and [shifting] border security resources to the US southern border. Republicans are gearing up to fight Obama's actions, and one potential outcome of the showdown is a government shutdown. [BBC News, Nov. 14]

Ukraine
The US and Europe are warning Russia on increased sanctions for Russia's part in "destabilizing" the Ukraine.  Vladimir Putin planned to leave the G20 summit early after the criticism.  Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Thursday of the counter accusations between Russia and Ukraine.  Moscow and Kiev accused each other on Thursday of violating a ceasefire and the United States warned Russia the West might punish it further for its "military escalation" of the Ukraine crisis.  Ukraine accused Russia of sending soldiers and weapons to help separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine launch a new offensive in a conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people. Russia warned Kiev that any resumption of hostilities against the separatists would be catastrophic for Ukraine.  Increasing violence, truce violations and reports of unmarked armed convoys traveling from the direction of the Russian border have aroused fears that a shaky Sept. 5 truce could collapse.  [Reuters, Nov. 13]

In an op-ed piece appearing in The Guardian, Volodymyr Ishchenko warns of the danger of ignoring the far right.  Ukrainian authorities and mainstream opinion in Ukraine continue to show unacceptable ignorance of the danger from the far right and even openly neo-Nazi forces, cooperating with them in elections and allowing them to take positions within law enforcement...It is short-sighted and formalistic to conclude that the Ukrainian far right is insignificant based on the lack of electoral success. The rhetoric of many politicians which could be called centrist or even liberal has moved significantly to the right, competing for the increasingly patriotic and even nationalist voters...Ukrainians have already paid a very high price for ignoring the far right. According to research into systematic protests, members of the far right were the most visibly identified political agents in the Maidan protests, from the very beginning of the movement to the overthrow of Yanukovych.  Moreover, they were relatively more visible in eastern and southern regions where Maidan did not have the majority support, thus pushing the local population even further away from the protest message.  Ishchenko concludes that this tolerance for the far right has already cost Ukraine lost territories, a mass destruction of industry and infrastructure, and thousands and thousands of lives. It is necessary to break with the “it might be beneficial for Putin” logic and start to think what is beneficial for all the people living in Ukraine, and whether the radical nationalist ideas can fit the Ukrainian future to which we aspire.

NATO Map (Wikimedia Commons)

John Mearsheimer has an in-depth analysis of the roots of the crisis in Ukraine in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.  The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.   Mearsheimer asks us to imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico. He proposes the West rethink its Ukraine strategy:  There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however -- although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.

The Permanent War Infrastructure
David Vine, writing at tomdispatch.com, discusses the long-standing US military presence in the Middle East  and the consequences of that policy.  Approaching its 35th anniversary, the strategy of maintaining such a structure of garrisons, troops, planes, and ships in the Middle East has been one of the great disasters in the history of American foreign policy. The rapid disappearance of debate about our newest, possibly illegal war should remind us of just how easy this huge infrastructure of bases has made it for anyone in the Oval Office to launch a war that seems guaranteed, like its predecessors, to set off new cycles of blowback and yet more war.  Vine traces the development of our base building policy and the morphing of the Rapid Deployment Force into the U.S. Central Command from 1980 through the present day.  Originally intended to maintain access to the oil-rich region during the Cold War era, the bases have become a "catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization” since a suicide bombing killed 241 marines in Lebanon in 1983....The garrisoning of the Muslim Holy Land was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama Bin Laden's professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks....Part of the anti-American anger has stemmed from the support U.S. bases offer to repressive, undemocratic regimes....Of course, using bases to launch wars and other kinds of interventions does much the same, generating anger, antagonism, and anti-American attacks....Rather than providing security, the infrastructure of bases in the Greater Middle East has made it ever easier to go to war far from home. It has enabled wars of choice and an interventionist foreign policy that has resulted in repeated disasters for the region, the United States, and the world.  By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades. Vine concludes: The sad irony is that any legitimate desire to maintain the free flow of regional oil to the global economy could be sustained through other far less expensive and deadly means....In addition to the direct damage our military spending has caused, it has diverted money and attention from developing the kinds of alternative energy sources that could free the United States and the world from a dependence on Middle Eastern oil -- and from the cycle of war that our military bases have fed. [TomDispatch, Nov.13]

Bolivia's Evo Morales

Photo of Evo Morales is from greanvillepost.com

While some warn that the rise of a racist far right presents a "clear and present danger "to both Western and Eastern Europe, Sergi Halimi writing in Le Monde Diplomatique wonders why the success of Bolivia's indigenous, leftist president Evo Morales has gone unremarked by the media. In times of crisis, a head of state who gets re-elected in the first round, having already served two terms, is a rarity indeed. One such is Evo Morales, whose win, with 61% of the vote, should have received more attention than it did. All the more so since he pulled off this electoral feat in Bolivia — which had five different presidents between 2001 and 2005. His victory follows a 25% reduction in poverty, an 87% real-terms increase in the minimum wage, a lowering of the retirement age and an annual growth rate of over 5% — all since 2006.  Pointing to the security failures such as the student massacre in Mexico - the students were protesting the neoliberal education reforms proposed by the conservative regime, Sergi Halimi asks us to imagine what would have leapt to mind had the student massacre taken place in Ecuador, Cuba or Venezuela. Or indeed in Bolivia, where President Morales has just been re-elected. [Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2014]

Sunday Roundup - November 9, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at the US midterm elections, Brussels austerity protests, Ukraine, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and, in brief, China's slowdown, Ebola, and Syria.

US Midterm Elections
Republicans made gains across the board in Tuesday's midterm elections.  Most importantly, with their gains in the Senate, they now control both houses of Congress.  The Democrats' get-out-the-vote effort failed to overcome the dark money, the voter suppression laws, and their own inadequate and defensive explanations of their policies.

Democrats failed to motivate their base, particularly the young.
Voter turnout was 36.6% - 4 points lower than in the 2010 midterms and 21 points lower than in the 2012 Presidential elections.  In exit polls from Tuesday's midterms, only 13 percent of voters were under 30.  Nonvoters are also more racially diverse than the voting population....More than 40 percent of likely nonvoters in the 2014 elections identified as Hispanic, black or other racial/ethnic minorities, compared with 22 percent of likely voters...On average, the populations who are likely to avoid the polls are also the populations likely to vote for a Democrat. [US News & World Report Data Mine, Nov. 5]

Voter suppression played a key role in close races.
The voter restrictions passed in Republican-controlled states were aimed to reduce the minority and youth vote.  For the most part, the restrictions worked.  The Brennan Center for Justice examined the results from North Carolina, Kansas, Virginia and Florida and concluded The Republican electoral sweep in yesterday’s elections has put an end to speculation over whether new laws making it harder to vote in 21 states would help determine control of the Senate this year. ...A quick look at the numbers shows that in several key races, the margin of victory came very close to the likely margin of disenfranchisement.  [Brennan Center for Justice, Nov. 5]

Republicans controlled the political conversation and framed the terms of the election.
Stirring up their base with a vigorous anti-Obama campaign, Republicans motivated them to come out and vote.  Democrats did nothing to counteract it and, for the most part, "ran away" from the President.  Jeff Schweitzer, blogging at the Huffington Post, has one of the best analyses of the election . Speaking of Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell's absurd statement that the way to end gridlock was to put Republicans in control of the Senate, Schweitzer writes: This story highlights the major failure of the left. Democrats have not defined the agenda or narrated the story. This capitulation creates a void of reason such that absurdities like McConnell's claim can take hold without everybody doubling over in laughter. Like frightened children Democrats run from Obama's record, as defined by the right, rather than championing his amazing successes as defined by fact. 
Although the rampant, fact-free antagonism to the Affordable Care Act was a major factor, the economy was the issue most on people's minds.  In spite of a recovering economy (unemployment down to 5.8% in October), exit polls indicated that 45% of the voters chose this as the #1 issue.  What's the deal, then? As President Obama alluded to in Wednesday's press conference and the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien explained Tuesday on Wonkblog, the recovery of the economy as a whole has not created wage or income gains for most people. In fact, those gains have gone almost exclusively to the "1 percent" folks you might have heard about.  The beauty of the Republican campaign was that they somehow convinced the American public that this uneven recovery was Obama's fault!  Voting for a party whose representatives in Congress are proud of opposing every Obama proposal to increase public-service spending or raise taxes on high-income individuals isn't necessarily the obvious way to address this issue.  [Slate, Nov. 6]  But then, as H. L. Mencken said many years ago, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Money wins elections.  
SCOTUS's Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions unleashed virtually unlimited money to be spent on the elections - much of it in the form of dark money (i.e., money from undisclosed sources) . The combined totals for both parties for the most expensive midterms in history was nearly $3.7 billion.   Even in some places where Democrats had an advantage in donations, they lost - although in some states voter suppression may have played a part.  Counting all forms of spending — by candidates, parties and outside groups — Team Red is projected to have spent $1.75 billion, while Team Blue’s spending is projected to ring in at $1.64 billion. CRP’s analysis of last night’s results finds that in House races, the candidate who spent the most prevailed 94.2 percent of the time; the Senate figure is slightly lower, 81.8 percent. [OpenSecrets.org, Nov. 5]

In Brief / Related Links - What will Republican control of the Senate look like?

"Republicans Just Took Over the Senate—Here’s Why That Sucks" From staffing the executive branch through keeping the government open, The Nation describes eight reasons why this new alignment is going to be hugely problematic for progressive governance—perhaps for governance, period. [The Nation, Nov. 4]

"The Pressure to Escalate: The Phantasmagoric World of Washington"  Tom Englehardt asks us to think of this otherwise drab midterm campaign as the escalation election.  Republican candidates will arrive in Washington having beaten the war and disease drums particularly energetically, and they’re not likely to stop. [TomDispatch, Nov. 4]

"A Red Tide Swamps the US Political Landscape"  What do we have to look forward to from this extremist Congress and a ham-strung moderate President in the next two years? [The Left Bank Cafe, Nov. 5]

"How a Republican Congress could Entangle the US further in the Middle East" [Informed Comment, Nov. 5]

Brussels Austerity Protests
Europe's recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 has been much slower than that in the US. Unemployment remains above 10% for the region as a whole, ranging from a low of  5% in Germany to a high of 26% in Greece.  One of the reasons for the slower recovery has been the austerity (deficit reduction) measures demanded by the European Central Bank.  The Guardian reported on Thursday's labor protests in Brussels:  About 100,000 workers marched across Brussels on Thursday to protest against government free-market reforms and austerity measures, and the demonstration ended in violence when people set fire to cars and threw cobblestones and police responded with tear gas and water cannons.  About 50 people were injured and 30 detained, police said, in one of biggest postwar labour demonstrations in Belgium, a country long vaunted as a shining example of an efficient welfare state.  The violence overshadowed a raucous but largely peaceful march for better protection of workers during the economic crisis. The workers were angry at government policies that will raise the pension age, freeze wages and cut into public services.

Ukraine
Elections were held in the separatist Donbass region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday November 2 - two weeks after the general election in the rest of Ukraine.  Kiev refuses to recognize the elections in eastern Urkaine – but has not provoked any hostilities either.  The Donbass elections resulted in a predictable outcome, bringing victory to Alexander Zakharchenko, head of the Oplot battalion, who scooped more than 70 percent of the votes. Turnout varied from 65 percent to 100 percent at 350 polling stations, where 1,148,000 people had registered to vote...Not a single shot has been fired in Donbass since November 2 – a situation unseen since spring, including the ceasefire declared in early September after the Minsk talks.  [Russia Times, Nov. 3]  Russia has backed the vote and called on the elected representatives "to hold negotiations with central Ukrainian authorities."  Russia has given cautious backing to a vote in separatist regions of east Ukraine, which local rebels said proved they would never again be ruled by Kiev. Russia has not recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” as independent, but said the vote should be respected.  Kiev said it would open criminal cases against the organisers. Most other countries have dismissed the vote as illegitimate and there were no recognised international observers present. Nevertheless, the poll was one more step in the de facto separation of the region from the rest of Ukraine.  Moscow’s talk of negotiations between the separatists and Kiev, however, was at odds with comments from the separatists' electoral committee. [The Guardian, Nov. 3]

Occupied Palestinian Territory
East Jerusalem remains tense, and the International Criminal Court ruled on the Gaza Flotilla incident.

In an Al Jazeera op-ed, Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University, describes how "a silent intifada" is taking place in Jerusalem due to Israel's policy of denying Palestinians their natural rights.  After forty seven years of occupation, physical isolation, and weakening of leadership structures, the Palestinians of Jerusalem are totally stateless. The few Palestinians holding any sort of symbolic leadership position, such as members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or religious leaders are regularly hauled to the Israeli police station for questions, short-term arrests and are sometimes forbidden to enter Islam's third holiest mosque, Al-Aqsa Mosque....Palestinians seeking housing permits are routinely denied because the requests are not based on an approved zoning plan. Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhoods have purposely not been planned, leaving the local communities to build illegally and then to suffer regular house demolitions for violating city laws. At the same time, Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem in violation of international law.This has led to the rise of groups trying to fill the political void.  In several locations around Jerusalem,  local groups have sprouted attempting to organise their own community in defence of the Israeli onslaught that attempts to move them out of their homes and city with the goal of making Jerusalem an even more Jewish city.  While Israel regularly denies it, these Judaisation attempts are synchronised by the Israeli government, police, courts, Jewish settlers, radical groups and Knesset members, with each group doing its part.

The Guardian reported on November 6 of the International Criminal Court's decision on the Gaza Flotilla incident of 2010.  The international criminal court (ICC) will not prosecute over Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010, in which 10 Turkish activists died, despite a “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed”.  The chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said there would be no investigation leading to a potential prosecution because the alleged crimes, including the killing of 10 activists by Israeli commandos, were not of “sufficient gravity”....Nine Turkish nationals died when Israeli commandos staged a botched raid on a six-ship flotilla seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on 31 May 2010. A 10th activist later died of his wounds.  The air-land-sea blockade, now more than seven years old, has devastated the economy of Gaza, and combined with Israeli sieges since 2007 have commentators warning that Gaza will be "unlivable" by 2020.

Gaza photo appeared in Al Jazeera/photo credit AFP

Let's just hope the ICC takes a much closer look at the war crimes committed in Gaza during this summer's Israeli siege.  More than 2000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed during the 50 day assault.  Inger Andersen is responsible for World Bank strategy and operations throughout the Middle East and North Africa region.  In an op-ed piece, Andersen reports on her recent visit to Gaza: Throughout my career at the World Bank, and at the United Nations or even before, I have come across many war zones but none compare to what I have just seen in Gaza: no scene of destruction, desolation and despair I have witnessed is equal to the tragic stage of Gaza.  Today, I feel obliged to add my voice for the voiceless and to plead that none of us forget the Palestinian people. It is our collective and historic responsibility to step up support and mobilise a response commensurate to the needs of the Palestinian people....For the Palestinians struggling daily, the access to water, electricity and municipal services [is critical]. I saw the destroyed water reservoir in Al Monttar area (Shujayea) which would have serviced 250,000 people. I walked into the shell-struck electricity storage facility that now resembled a lunar landscape. While visiting al-Shifa hospital, I discussed with doctors the dire need for medical equipment and supplies, staff and fuel, all severely strained by shortages and outages.  Numbers fail to capture the human realities of the daunting scenes I witnessed at the hospital. As winter sets in, the partial or total destruction of 60,000 housing units has led to 100,000 people without shelter. [Al Jazeera, Nov. 6]

In Brief/Links
China
China's gross domestic product grew 7.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the weakest rate since the first quarter of 2009, adding to concerns the world's second-largest economy is becoming a drag on global growth.  [Reuters, Oct. 21]

Ebola
WHO released its data for the period up to Nov. 2 saying that Ebola has now been blamed for 4,818 reported deaths.  The group said that the weekly incidence of Ebola seems to be stable in Guinea, rising in Sierra Leone, and declining in Liberia   [NPR, Nov. 5]

Syria
"Syria: Mapping the conflict" According to the Syria Needs Analysis Project (Snap), IS jihadists are now in full control of the eastern region of Raqqa and hold significant swathes of territory in Aleppo to the north and Hassakeh and Deir al-Zour in the east. [BBC News, Nov. 7]
"US plan for proxy army to fight Isis in Syria suffers attack": Syrian opposition leader blames Washington for rout as air strikes on Isis seen as aiding Assad crackdown [The Guardian, Nov. 2]
"US Dilemma in Syria: Moderate Stronghold Falls to al-Qaeda, Fighters desert to Extremists" - Juan Cole analyzes the chaotic situation in Syria and potential consequences of arming and training so-called moderate rebels: a present Syrian moderate is all too often a future al-Qaeda member; many of these affiliations are not particularly ideological, but have to do with who is winning and who has more money. [Informed Comment, Nov. 3]

BBC News map of areas of control:

Map sources: areas of control and border crossings from the Syria Needs Analysis Project; all other geographical detail from humanitarian organisations and Google

Sunday Roundup - November 2, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Ukraine, recent Latin American elections, the Jerusalem protests, Hong Kong, Ebola, and, in brief, the U.S. midterm elections.

Ukraine
On October 26. parliamentary elections were held in the parts of Ukraine controlled by Kiev's troops. It was a victory for the pro-European parties.  With 98.02 percent of ballots having been counted, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party is ahead of its rivals, with 22.16 percent. President Petro Poroshenko's party is only slightly behind, with 21.82 percent.  The Opposition Bloc, which campaigns for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis, has received 9.36 percent, mostly from voters in southeast Ukraine – Kharkov, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, and Donetsk Region – where the balance has shifted away from the pro-EU trend, which is widely supported in other regions....Most of the east is still under rebel control. Voting did not take place there, as the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk plan to hold their own parliamentary elections on November 2. [Russia Times, Oct. 29]  The separatist eastern region of the country, known as "Donboss", will be holding its own elections on Sunday November 2 in spite of the ongoing skirmishes and shelling occurring in violation of the ceasefire.  Russia is backing a plan by separatists in eastern Ukraine to hold a vote in areas under their control ostensibly as part of a deal with Kiev to allow limited self-rule in the region. The vote, set for Nov. 2 would come days after Ukrainian elections that saw pro-Western parties allied with President Petro Poroshenko sweep to power.  But the Ukrainian government says the elections come too early and has urged Russia to put pressure on the rebels it backs to hold off. Western governments have also opposed the poll. [NPR, October 28] Finally, Ukraine, Russia and the European Union signed a deal on Thursday on the resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine for winter after several months of delay during the conflict in Ukraine....Talks had been broken off in the early hours as Moscow sought more guarantees from the EU that it would help Ukraine pay for its natural gas. They resumed on Thursday evening before reaching a deal....European energy commissioner Günther Oettinger...said the $4.6bn deal should extend to the spring and that it was “perhaps first glimmer of a relaxation in the relations between neighbours.” [The Guardian. Oct. 30]

Bolivia and Brazil Elections
Presidential elections were held in Bolivia and Brazil. The leftist incumbents won both elections.

On October 12, Bolivian voters returned Evo Morales for a third term with 61.4% of the vote - more than 35 points ahead of his nearest rival.  President Morales told cheering supporters at the presidential palace in La Paz that "this win is a triumph for anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists". He dedicated "this triumph" to the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and Venezuela's late president, Hugo Chavez.  Mr Morales has overseen strong economic growth since taking office in 2006, using Bolivia's commodity wealth to reduce poverty levels. [BBC News, October 13]

Supporters of Brazil's President and Workers' Party (PT) presidential candidate
Dilma Rousseff react to first results of the Brazil general elections in Porto Alegre, October 26, 2014. 
CREDIT: REUTERS/PAULO WHITAKER

The October 26 election in Brazil, the world's seventh largest economy, was much closer.  Brazil's leftist President Dilma Rousseff narrowly won re-election on Sunday after convincing voters that her party's strong record of reducing poverty over the last 12 years was more important than a recent economic slump.  After one of the closest, most divisive campaigns in Brazil in decades, Rousseff won 51.6 percent of votes in a runoff against centrist opposition leader Aecio Neves, who won 48.4 percent....The result means another four years in power for the Workers' Party, which since 2003 has virtually transformed Brazil - lifting 40 million from poverty, reducing unemployment to record lows and making big inroads against hunger in what remains one of the world's most unequal countries. [Reuters, Oct. 26]

East Jerusalem Protests

"I urge you to pray so that the Holy City, dear to Jews, Christians and Muslims, which has experienced several tensions in these days, may be more and more a symbol and a precursor of the peace that God wishes for the entire human family."

- Pope Francis, All Saints Day (November 1) in Jerusalem

Israel reopened the al Aqsa mosque to Muslim men over 50 for Friday prayers after the "Day of Rage" protests, but tensions in East Jerusalem continue.  The closing of the mosque was prompted by the wounding of an Israeli extremist on Wednesday.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said through his spokesman that the closure of al Aqsa combined with other dangerous escalations by Israel were "tantamount to a declaration of war."  Abbas has requested that US Secretary of State Kerry get involved in order to stop Israeli settlement projects in the city, which, in his view, will cause a dangerous escalation and continue the cycle of violence, anger and radicalization in the area.

Palestinian protester stands near burning tires
during clashes with Israeli police in East Jerusalem
Photo is by Ammar Awad/Reuters and appeared in The Guardian 

The Netanyahu government had announced that it will go ahead with the construction of 1,000 settler units in East Jerusalem despite widespread condemnation of the action.  As reported in The Guardian on October 27, The Israeli government is to advance construction plans for 1,000 housing units to be built in parts of Jerusalem that Palestinians demand for their future state.  The move, revealed by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,, is the first in what is expected to be a series of announcements .... on new settlement construction work in East Jerusalem and on the occupied West Bank.  It comes despite a warning from the US this month that continued construction would “poison the atmosphere” and distance Israel from even its closest allies...The announcement was immediately condemned by the finance minister, Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party, who warned that it would damage US-Israeli relations, which are already at a low ebb. Last week, the White House refused the Israeli defence minister’s requests to meet several top national security aides. 

Al Jazeera traces the escalating tensions back to this summer:  Tensions in Jerusalem had risen to a boiling point over the summer, when Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped and burned alive by Israelis, who said they were avenging the murder of three Israeli teenagers near Hebron.  Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem erupted in protests, prompting an Israeli crackdown. At the same time, angry crowds of Israelis marched through the city’s streets demanding revenge.  At least 760 Palestinians, including 260 children, were arrested in the security sweeps that followed, according to the Israeli news outlet Haaretz. “The mass arrests in Jerusalem … the settlers’ invasion of Arab neighborhoods with the support of the government and courts … all this will have a price,” Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz on Thursday. Between 1967 and 2013, he wrote, Israel revoked the residence status — or the identification card that allows Palestinians to live in East Jerusalem — of over 14,000 Palestinians, “with strange claims that don’t apply to any of its Jewish residents. Isn’t that apartheid?”

Hong Kong
The Hong Kong protests have been pushed off the front page but they are still going on.  Peter Thal Larsen in an October 28 op-ed blog for Reuters writes of the "polite impasse" on the streets of Hong Kong:  The three-lane highway that passes in front of Hong Kong’s central government buildings has been transformed into an impromptu city-centre campsite. Wandering between the hundreds of numbered, multicoloured tents on Harcourt Road feels more like attending a nerdy music festival than a hotbed of political agitation....Hong Kong’s large financial district has mostly continued to operate as normal....The protesters have...defied predictions that they would quickly lose interest. The government’s clumsy and sometimes heavy-handed attempts to end the protests have helped. The use of tear gas; the decision to call and then cancel talks with student leaders; the policemen caught on film beating up a handcuffed protester – all have spurred crowds to return to the streets.  The other surprise is that China has not ordered a crackdown. ...Beijing’s relative tolerance does not mean it is prepared to meet the movement’s requests, however. China has stuck to the proposed system for selecting Hong Kong’s chief executive that ignited the protests in the first place. 

Ebola
As the US and Canada sort out protective gear, medical procedures, quarantines, and visas to reduce the likelihood of Ebola infections here, West Africa's battle against the epidemic continues in the face of a massive overload of their medical systems.  The World Health Organization (WHO) published figures on Friday, October 31, showing 4,951 people have died of Ebola out of a total of 13,567 reported cases.  WHO acknowledges that the official figures are under-reported.  Ebola has wiped out whole villages in Sierra Leone and may have caused many more deaths than the nearly 5,000 official global toll, a senior coordinator of the medical aid group MSF [Doctors Without Borders] said Friday. "The WHO says there is a correction factor of 2.5, so maybe it is 2.5 times higher and maybe that is not far from the truth. It could be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000," said [Rony] Zachariah.  "You have one nurse for 10,000 people and then you lose 10, 11, 12 nurses. How is the health system going to work?"  [AFP, Nov. 1]

Links/In Brief - The US Midterm Elections
The US midterm elections will be held Tuesday, November 4.  Control of the US Senate is up for grabs and, with it, control of the Federal courts and ambassadorial nominations.  Republicans have held up confirmation of Obama nominations to these posts by a variety of procedural motions in spite of the filibuster reform of November 2013.

The Guardian 's take on the election is given in an October 31 article: Republicans are entering the final stretch of the midterm election campaign convinced they stand poised to retake control of the Senate and possibly even extend their majority in the House of Representatives to the largest enjoyed by the party since 1928.  For me, this is an ominous thought.  The last time the Republicans held that large a majority in the House, they presided over the Great Depression.

If, as many predict, the Republicans do take control of the Senate for the next session of Congress, Democrats will make a major push to confirm as many of the 156 pending nominations as they can in the lame duck session. [Daily Kos, Oct. 23]

Republican dirty tricks and voter suppression continue unabated: Grimes Files for Injunction Against McConnell for Illegal Voter Suppression/Intimidation [Daily Kos, Oct 31]

How can Democrats hold the Senate? [The Left Bank Cafe, Oct. 6]

The World Series, Halloween, and the Election [The Left Bank Cafe, Oct. 30]

Sunday Roundup - October 19, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US corporate mainstream media.  Today we look at Gaza, Ebola, Turkey, Ukraine, the brightest pulsar, the Catholic synod's "midterm" statement on gays, and, in brief, the Argus II bionic eye.

Gaza
The Gaza Donor Conference held October 12 raised $5.4 billion for the reconstruction of the enclave devastated this summer by the Israeli assault.  Global donors have pledged a sum of $5.4bn in aid to reconstruct the Gaza Strip amid warnings that the Palestinian territory remains a "tinderbox" following the summer war between Hamas and Israel.  The pledged amount surpasses the $4bn which Palestinians had asked for during the conference to reconstruct the enclave, after the 50-day Israeli military campaign. "The participants pledged approximately $5.4bn," Boerge Brende, Norwegian foreign minister, said during the closing statement at the Cairo conference which Norway co-hosted.  The pledged amount includes $1 billion from Qatar, $570 million from the European Union, and $212 million from the United States.  [Al Jazeera, October 12]

A Palestinian reacts after his mother's body was removed from the rubble in Rafah.

The UN Human Rights Commission began its investigation into war crimes committed in this summer's conflict.  A United Nations panel has started preliminary investigations into potential war crimes committed in the conflict between Palestinians and Israel this past July and August. The panel will submit its findings over to the UN Human Rights Commission.  One incident in particular is drawing attention as some legal experts suspect it may constitute a war crime. On the morning of August 1, Israel invoked what is called the “Hannibal directive,” which directs its forces to take drastic measures to avoid the capture of an Israeli solider....In order to carry out the directive, the IDF intensely bombed the eastern portion of the heavily-populated city of Rafah in southern Gaza. Israel's bombing killed 150 people and wounded more than 200 in a matter of hours. The artillery fire was so heavy that at times a shell was fired once every 60 seconds. It was the deadliest day in the conflict. Because the Israeli attack came just as a ceasefire was supposed to come into effect, hundreds of civilians that had been taking cover had gone out under the impression that a cease-fire was indeed in place....Palestinians are set to join the International Criminal Court, which will open the door to proceedings against Israel. The head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission panel investigating the Gaza war has said any evidence it gathers could be used by the ICC in a war crimes case against Israel. [Telesur, October 13]  Photo credit: August 4 file photo by Reuters;from Telesur article.

Ebola
As of October 15, the World Health Organization (WHO) put the official death toll from the Ebola virus at 4,493.  But as the BBC reports, because of difficulties with the Ebola data from West Africa, 12,000 could be a better estimate.  The BBC analysis notes that under-reporting, both of cases and of deaths, may be occurring. We know people are contracting the disease, and dying from it, without being noticed....Also, comparing current cases and current deaths does not take account of people living with the disease for some time before either dying or recovering.  What you need is quality data and the best comes from a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.  A team, including scientists at Imperial College London, looked at a sub-set of patients with full medical records from diagnosis through to either recovery or death. [Dr Christopher Dye, the director of strategy in the office of the director general at the WHO] told the BBC: "On the basis of this analysis, our best estimate is a 60-70% case fatality and it's sensible to use a range as there are variations from one place to another." [BBC News, October 15]

The U.S. Defense Department won permission to shift $750 million in war funds to fight Ebola in West Africa as a Republican senator on Friday lifted his remaining objections to the transfer.  The action by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma will give the Pentagon enough funding for about six months of operations in West Africa, including the deployment of up to 4,000 troops and the establishment some 17 Ebola treatment facilities with 100 beds each.  But key members of Congress are still withholding about $250 million of the Obama administration's original request to shift $1 billion to the Ebola effort under an arcane procedure known as a "reprogramming request."  [Reuters, October 10]

See also: Ebola - the threat, the heroes, the politics

Turkey
The sectarian war flaring across the Middle East continues with Turkey becoming the latest country to be destabilized.  Turkey and Kurdish military groups had been observing a ceasefire since 2013. That appears to be over for now.  Turkey is bombing rebellious Kurds inside its own borders in a conflict over the country's refusal to let Kurdish fighters travel to Syria to fight ISIS, reports say....Turkey's conflict with its Kurdish population is long-running, and while the country has accepted refugees fleeing ISIS's attack on the city of Kobani—which is just over the border in Syria—it refuses to allow Kurdish fighters to cross the other way.  [Slate, October 14]

Ukraine
The ceasefire in Ukraine is holding as the presidents of Russia and Ukraine met in Milan on Friday. On October 12, Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw to their permanent bases after military exercises in Rostov region near the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin said, in a sign of some tension easing before a key meeting .... The troop pullout came before an expected meeting between Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko in Milan. The Russia Times reported that the meeting is to be held "on the sidelines" of the EU-Asia (ASEM) summit.  The presidents of Russia and Ukraine are to meet at a business breakfast in Milan on Friday October 16, with the fragile peace in Ukraine and gas supplies to Europe expected to dominate. The summit carries hopes of further progress in resolving the crisis.  Ukrainian President Poroshenko stressed the "high expectations" for the meeting in a statement before the meeting: "...the leaders of the European states and the European Union together with me, the president of Ukraine, will hold the talks with the leadership of the Russian Federation concerning extremely important issues: establishment of peace in Ukraine, securing the peace process, development of the political process, de-escalation of the situation in the east of the country."   The morning meeting between Russia, Ukraine, and European governments lasted an hour later with various leaders...later telling reporters some progress had been made and promising further talks. "It was good, it was positive," a smiling Putin told reporters after the meeting, held on the margins of a summit of Asian and European leaders in Milan.  However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later poured cold water on hopes of any breakthrough, saying "certain participants" had taken an "absolutely biased, non-flexible, non-diplomatic" approach to Ukraine. [Reuters, October 17]


The Brightest Pulsar Ever Discovered

photo credit: Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Astronomers using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) have found the most luminous pulsar ever discovered. Located 12 million light-years away in the galaxy Messier 82 (M82), a pulsar exists that is 10 million times brighter than the sun. The research was led by Matteo Bachetti of the University of Toulouse and the paper was published in Nature. As with many incredible discoveries, this one came by chance as the team was looking for something else entirely. While using NuSTAR to image a supernova in M82, they noticed two incredibly bright X-ray signatures. One of these sources was a medium-sized black hole, but the other signal was pulsing, indicating that they were looking at a pulsar.  Pulsars are neutron stars that spin rapidly and are magnetized. As gas and dust are pulled inward, they are heated up and become illuminated.   [IFLScience website, October 9]

Gays and the Catholic Church
A Vatican working document generated much discussion after it was introduced Monday at the Vatican's Synod on the Family.  The so-called "midterm report" said that homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer" and asked if Catholicism could accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples.  The document, prepared after a week of discussions at an assembly of 200 bishops on the family, said the Church should challenge itself to find "a fraternal space" for homosexuals without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony. The document, reflecting "Pope Francis' desire to adopt a more merciful pastoral approach on marriage and family issues", asked, "...are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home.  Are our communities capable of proving that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?...Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners."  [Huffington Post, October 13]

The publication of the controversial document summarizing the interventions made during the Synod on the Family’s first week brought both rapturous praise and fierce criticism.[Commonweal, October 15] Conservative groups and bishops have challenged the report and there will be continuing discussion and revisions before it is released from the Synod.  Already the English language version has softened some of the language in the Italian original.  Nevertheless, judging by the comments at Wednesday's press conference, writes dotCommonweal blogger Grant Gallicho, you'd scarcely be able to tell that yesterday a cardinal went in front of the world press and claimed their coverage of the synod's working document had put the bishops in "an irredeemable position." Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz--president of the U.S. bishops conference--did not show any displeasure with the [working document].

In Brief
The Best News of the Year post (December 2013) listed the Argus II bionic eye as one of the things to celebrate in 2013.  After living in darkness for most of his life, a North Carolina man can now see thanks to a bionic eye. He is the seventh person to receive the FDA-approved device. [HuffPost Live, October 10]

Sunday Roundup - September 7, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Ebola

Source:Mother Jones article

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

Yellowstone's Sleeping Giant

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

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

Related

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

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