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 - September 28, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at the US airstrikes in Syria, the UN climate change summit, Ukraine, South Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Derek Jeter.

US Airstrikes
This past week, the United States expanded its role in the Middle East war by conducting airstrikes inside Syria - targeting Khorasan, a previously obscure group, as well as Islamic State. Democracy Now! spoke with Patrick Cockburn, the Middle East correspondent for The Independent, on September 24.  Asked to explain why we are suddenly hearing about Khorasan, who have been painted as an offshoot of al-Qaeda with designs on US targets, Cockburn replied, "One’s a little suspicious that the administration, those who are carrying out the bombing, may want to say to its audience in America that here are people we’re attacking who are about to attack you in the homeland, which ISIS didn’t show much sign of doing. So that might be one reason why this obscure group is suddenly given such publicity."  The situation is chaotic - groups on both sides of the ongoing Syrian Civil War are now fighting ISIS - and the risk of civilian casualties is rising as the airstrikes hit targets near the Turkish border, close to an area where tens of thousands of Kurds have fled to escape from militants tied to the Islamic State group.  Without a truce in Syrian Civil War, U.S.-led strikes threaten more chaos for the world’s worst crisis.  Meanwhile Dan Roberts, writing in The Guardian on September 23, notes that US lawyers are tying themselves up in legal knots justifying the airstrikes in Syria.  The US...argued [to the UN] that there was legal right to pursue Isis inside Syria due to the weakness of that country’s government – a regime the US has been actively urging be undermined by rebel groups for much of the past two years....The legal circumlocutions to avoid requesting a UN security council resolution match similar efforts to avoid requesting specific legal authority from Congress.  Fearing that US politicians up for re-election in November may balk at voting for a third military attack on Iraq and being sucked into a Syrian quagmire, the White House has avoided seeking a fresh authorisation of the use of military force, preferring to rely on early authorisations against al-Qaida granted after the 11 September 2001 attacks.  

UN Climate Change Summit
In advance of the UN Climate Change Summit, marches were held worldwide to demand action on global warming.  ecowatch.com reported on September 21: Today in New York City more than 300,000 people attended what is now known as the largest climate action in world history.  The march in New York City was by far the largest of the 2,808 People’s Climate rallies that took place today in 166 countries from around the world. From the crowded streets of New Delhi to Melbourne to Johannesburg, hundreds of thousands of people took part in the weekend’s global events.  

From RTCC website
Note: COP20 is held in December, 2014

The Summit itself featured speeches and commitments to action.  Perhaps the most encouraging announcement was that of China's Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli  who went a step further than China has ever gone before in announcing that the country's emissions of manmade greenhouse gases would peak "as early as possible."  China, with its 1.3 billion people and heavy reliance on coal is the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide.  Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters that "weather extremes have greatly affected the Chinese people." Xie said weather extremes have cost China more than 200 billion Renminbi [about $32 billion] per year. “The losses are extensive in China," Xie said, noting that climate impacts extend to "water, land and people." These impacts, along with China's staggering air pollution problem, are forcing China to take action both on climate mitigation...and adaptation. Perhaps the most disappointing item was the sorry state of the Green Climate Fund. The Green Climate Fund came out of the December 2009 Copenhagen Conference. Industrialized nations promised to provide financial assistance to developing countries to ease their transition off fossil fuels, and combat climate change impacts....On Tuesday, a total of about $1.3 billion in new pledges were announced from Denmark, France, South Korea, Norway, Mexico and three smaller nations. The lack of a U.S. financial commitment on Tuesday was noteworthy....“The pledges announced here still leave the fund with less than a sixth of the total developed countries should commit,” Tim Gore, head of climate policy for aid group Oxfam, said in a statement. "All eyes are now on those yet to stump up, including the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, and on the devil in the detail of those pledges made today."  [Mashable, September 24]

Ukraine
The ceasefire in the Ukraine is holding but The Moscow Times reminded us of the human costs of the war.  After fleeing to Russia from Ukraine's conflict-torn east, nearly 390,000 people have formally registered as refugees, Russian children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said late Wednesday.  More than a quarter of the refugees — about 100,000 of them — are children...In total, some 870,000 residents of eastern Ukraine are currently in Russia,...However, the majority of those have not formally sought refugee status...The total casualty count, including civilians and combatants, stood at 3,500 in eastern Ukraine's rebel-held Donbass region. [The Moscow Times, September 25]

Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to grant additional autonomy to provinces of eastern Ukraine ("the Donbass").  On September 16, The Guardian reported on the legislation, which include, among other provisions:
• The rebel-held Luhansk and Donetsk regions will be granted a "special status" giving them broader autonomy for a three-year period...
• Use of the Russian language to be allowed in state institutions....
• The legislation also promises to help restore damaged infrastructure and to provide social and economic assistance to particularly hard-hit areas....
• Another bill on amnesty protects from criminal prosecution "participants of events in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions" 

South Sudan

The civil war in South Sudan continues.  The country has teetered for months on the brink of a man-made famine.  The Guardian's Andrew Greene reports on the agencies battling to stave off starvation in South Sudan’s civil war sanctuaries.  Jean-Louis de Brouwer, a senior European commission official, says that while the worst appears to have been averted for the time being, 3.5 million people still face severe food shortages.  Delivering aid to the stricken region is difficult - especially during the rainy season (April-November).  Over the past six months, the World Food Programme and UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) has turned to a rapid response mechanism (RRM). When the combatants allow, the agencies fly teams of experts by helicopter into remote areas to gauge food and health needs. Local leaders rally communities to come and register. While people sign up for food rations, health workers are on standby to put measuring tapes around children’s arms and quickly assess whether they are malnourished.  At the end of the registration, after health workers have started underweight children on a course of treatment and injected vaccines, there is a massive distribution of sorghum, lentils, salt and oil. Children who are under five years old also receive a heavily fortified porridge.  There have been 23 completed RRMs so far, reaching more than 460,000 people, according to Unicef.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
The Guardian reported on Thursday of the breakthrough agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that would turn over the civil administration of Gaza immediately to officials of a Palestinian unity government led by President Mahmoud Abbas.  The agreement, negotiated in Cairo, is designed to ease the long blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt and open the way to reconstruction of the war-ravaged coastal entity. A recent Palestinian Authority study estimated the cost of reconstruction in Gaza following this summer’s 50-day conflict with Israel at $7.8bn (£4.8bn). Palestinian officials said the agreement would allow the Palestinian Authority to take control over the border crossings of the Gaza Strip, including the crucial Rafah crossing into Egypt.

From the antiwar.com website

Palestinians have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The occupation is currently the longest anywhere in the world and the only one in which the occupying power controls the entire homeland of another people.  The Guardian reported Friday on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' UN speech calling on the Security Council to support a resolution setting a clear deadline for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories....Abbas declared the American-backed Israel-Palestinian peace process which has dragged on for two decades dead, saying it was “impossible to return to negotiations...that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question. There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and the occupation’s brutality.  There is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian territory occupied in the 1967 war.  And, there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal.”...[Abbas] also accused Israel of “war crimes carried out before the eyes of the world” during the recent 50-day Gaza war that ended in a ceasefire on 26 August...“We will not forget and we will not forgive, and we will not allow war criminals to escape punishment,” Abbas declared. Palestinian officials were expected to start working with members of the security council to seek backing for a resolution setting a time frame for the ending of what he called the “racist and colonial” occupation – a resolution certain to be opposed by the US....[ If he is faced with a veto of the resolution by the United States,] Palestinian sources say Abbas will accelerate moves to join UN and international bodies, including accession to the international criminal court.  

Derek Jeter

Derek Jeter after his game-winning hit
Photo by Corey Sipkin/Daily News/Published 9/26/14

Had one presented Hollywood with the story of Derek Jeter's final game at Yankee Stadium, the script would have been rejected.  Too implausible for today's movie audiences...no one would believe it.   The all-time baseball great said goodbye to his hometown fans with a flourish that those present will remember for the rest of their lives.  To start with, the game was in danger of being cancelled because of the rain showers soaking the metropolitan area all day.  The skies cleared a bit and, fifteen minutes before game time, a rainbow appeared over the stadium,  The game began.  Jeter knocked in 3 runs for the Yankees - one with a double in the first inning, one on a misplayed fielder's choice that put the Yankees ahead in the 7th, and then the game winner in the bottom of the ninth.  His appearance at the plate in the ninth was totally unexpected.  After all, the Yankees were up by 3 runs going into the top of the ninth and their ace closer was set to mow down the Oriole batters to preserve the victory, right?  Not. Baltimore scored 3 runs on two homers to tie the game.  In the bottom of the ninth with the Yankees at bat...a single, a pinch runner, a sacrifice bunt and there was a man in scoring position with Derek Jeter coming to the plate. On the first pitch, Jeter, as he had so often, lined a single to right.  The runner raced around third and beat the throw to the plate.  From the ESPN New York's blog: The walk-off single...caused Yankee Stadium to explode the way it had when Jeter and Yankees teams from a previous era were winning championships seemingly every year. Jeter was mobbed on the field after the game by current teammates as well as former ones, including Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez and former manager Joe Torre.  The only place where Jeter lost tonight was in a battle with his emotions. As the crowd chanted his name and gave him a thunderous, spontaneous standing ovation in the eighth inning -- prompting him to tip his cap around the ballpark -- the normally stoic Jeter was clearly struggling to maintain his composure. 

There are quite a few "most memorable moments" slideshows and videos out there.  Here's a link to one of the best: The Top 10 most iconic GIFs of Derek Jeter's brilliant career [SB Nation, Sep 25]

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 - 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?"

Sunday Roundup - May 4, 2014

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

Ukraine

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

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

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

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

May Day (International Labor Day)

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

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

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

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

Sunday Roundup - April 13

“I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day.”

- Bill Shankly, Liverpool FC Manager from 1959-74

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Russia-US relations, Syria, and the World Cup.

Russia-US Relations
The overthrow of Russia-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimean referendum to rejoin Russia, and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea have placed US-Russia relations in about as bad a place as they have been since the end of the Cold War.  Congressional Republicans have ratcheted up their rhetoric and seem to have lost their senses on the issue of nuclear safety.  As The Nation's editor Katrina vanden Heuvel writes on April 10: Representatives Michael Turner (R-OH) and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon (R-CA) introduced a bill that, among other things, prohibits "the contact, cooperation or transfer of technology between the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA] and the Russian Federation until the Secretary of Energy certifies the Russian military is no longer illegally occupying Crimea, no longer violating the INF treaty, and in compliance with the CFE treaty." Engendering nuclear instability by using safety as a stick is an incredibly reckless way to approach global security.  The bill has little chance of prevailing and, even if it does, it will be vetoed by President Obama.

NASA/AFP/Getty Images (appears in Al Jazeera article)

Thankfully, the crisis in the Ukraine has not affected operations at the International Space Station.  Al Jazeera reported on April 9: While relations between American and Russian space officials have frayed because of the crisis in Ukraine, work together on the station remains the same, officials say....The Russian cargo shuttle launched Wednesday morning from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and after about four spins around the Earth it docked with the ISS, delivering food, fuel and cosmic knickknacks to one Japanese astronaut, two American astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts on board.

The Japan Times offers this take on the deterioration of relations between the two superpowers: Underlying the ferociously strong sense of grievance that prevails among the Russian people against the West is one simple, overpowering emotion: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” (to use the classic line from Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves from the classic 1976 movie “Network”).  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has not just seen its historic standing and interests in its ancient zone of influence, going back hundreds of years, shrink; worse, Russia’s reach has been systematically dismantled by the United States. One solemn promise after another, made to the Russians, has been forgotten, ignored or scrapped.  It is one thing to talk about other nations’ freedom and independence (and rejoice when they receive it). It is quite another matter if those powers then move deliberately to put those freed countries fully into their orbit.

Syria
In a bleak account of the possibilities for peace in Syria, Yezid Sayigh, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes in an April 8 article: The grim truth is that for those determined to extract a diplomatic exit from the crisis under present conditions, Iran’s latest four-point peace plan is the only potentially feasible bid on the table. It calls for a general ceasefire, a national unity government composed of the regime and Syria’s “internal” opposition, the successive transfer of a wide but unspecified range of presidential powers to the government over several years, and general and presidential elections.

World Cup

Bill Shankly turned Second Division Liverpool into an English Premier League "bastion of invincibility"
Photo by Bob Thomas appears in The Far Post article

Roads and Kingdoms continues its excellent "The Far Post" series on the global soccer culture in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup.  One of the most interesting and thought-provoking in the series is philosopher Simon Critchley's March 11 piece, "Working Class Ballet", on the "spectacle, poetry and importance of professional football."  It's a personal telling of his life-long love of the sport.  Along the way, he speaks of the great Liverpool coach Bill Shankly, his memories of previous World Cups, of his relationship through the sport to his father and to his son, and the film Zidane: A Portrait of the 21st Century.  Here are a few quotes from the article, reflecting on the World Cup:
The World Cup is a spectacle in the strictly Situationist sense. It is a shiny display of teams, tribes and nations in symbolic, indeed rather atavistic, national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization...

The World Cup is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe and group....

The World Cup, then, is about ever-shifting floors of memory and the complexity of personal and national identity. But at its best it is about grace...an unforced bodily containment and elegance of movement, a kind of discipline where long periods of inactivity can suddenly accelerate and time takes on a different dimension in bursts of controlled power.