Sunday Roundup - October 26, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at Iran, climate change, voter suppression, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Iran 
Progress was made in Iran's dilution of its uranium.  Reuters reported on October 20:   Iran is taking further action to comply with an interim nuclear agreement with six world powers, a monthly U.N. atomic agency report showed, a finding the West may see as positive ahead of a November deadline for clinching a long-term deal.  The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...made clear that Iran is meeting its commitments under the temporary deal, as it and major powers seek to negotiate a final settlement of a decade-old nuclear dispute. It said Iran had diluted more than 4,100 kg of uranium enriched to a fissile concentration of up to 2 percent down to the level of natural uranium. 

From BBC News website

Gareth Porter, in an October 22 Truthout article, lays out the story of the deception behind the Western claim that Iran was "stonewalling" investigations into alleged past nuclear weapons research. The accusation...has been a familiar theme in mainstream media coverage of Iran's relations with the IAEA for years.  What remains virtually unknown, however, is how a brazen deception by the George W. Bush administration and a key official within the IAEA created the false narrative of Iranian refusal to cooperate with the IAEA and was used to justify harsh international sanctions.  Based on conversations with former IAEA officials, Wikileaks documents, and the public record, Porter describes the background.  His article includes the smear campaign against the agency's director Mohamed ElBaredei - who had cleared Iran of six issues of concern in spite of the West's pressure -and the misleading report of meetings between the IAEA's Olli Heinonen and Iranian officials.  In one of those meetings, Heinonen asked Iran's Permanent Representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, whether various names of people, organizations and addresses found in the documents were correct. Soltanieh confirmed that the people, organizations and addresses did exist, but added, "So what?"....The language in the [IAEA May 2008 report from those meetings] was carefully chosen to mislead the reader without technically telling an outright lie. The report said Iran "did not dispute that some of the information contained in the documents was factually accurate, but said the events and activities concerned involved civil or conventional military applications." ...Iran, in a letter to the IAEA secretariat a few months later, denied that [they] had ever acknowledged the accuracy of anything in the intelligence documents except for those incidental details.  The misleading report formed the basis of the allegations that continue to this day.

The window of opportunity that would bring the Iran "in from the cold" may be closing.  The US Congressional elections are in a couple of weeks and pressure from the hardliners in the Israel lobby to keep Iran isolated will probably ratchet up.  Netanyahu has already started the rumblings with his anti-Iran comments at the UN in September.  Writing in The Guardian. Christopher de Ballaigue notes that Netanyahu's comments may reflect a fear that a rehabilitated Islamic Republic could dislodge Israel from western affections – a process already well advanced by the widespread killing of Palestinian civilians during the recent violence in Gaza.  De Ballaigue stresses the importance of closing the nuclear deal - perhaps the best hope of restoring stability to the Middle East.  A deal that offers Iran a nuclear power industry not exceeding its needs and ambitions, and the rest of the world reassurance through intrusive inspections, would do more than bring Iran in from the cold. It would inaugurate a new relationship between the Islamic Republic and the west that could keep together a region that is, in every other particular, coming apart.  [The Guardian, October 2]

Climate Change
With an eye on the global climate conference in Paris in 2015, the EU agreed on goals for greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and renewable energy.  The Guardian reported on October 23: European leaders have struck a broad climate change pact obliging the EU as a whole to cut greenhouse gases by at least 40% by 2030.  But key aspects of the deal that will form a bargaining position for global climate talks in Paris next year were left vague or voluntary, raising questions as to how the aims would be realised.  As well as the greenhouse gas, two 27% targets were agreed – for renewable energy market share and increase in energy efficiency improvement.  Informed Comment carried a post on solar energy good news stories.  Morocco, India, Tanzania, and Mexico all have programs to increase the use of solar energy.  Solar will likely be the world’s largest source of electricity by 2050, when some 26% of world energy will come from solar panels. 
Related Link
Spotlight on Green News and Views [Daily Kos, Oct. 23]

Voter Suppression

With Republicans on the verge of taking over the US Senate in November, every vote that might prevent that disaster is important.  Here's some of the past week's news on the status of  voter suppression in two "solid red" states in the midst of a demographic shift.

Poll tax sign- Mineola Texas, 1939 -  Russell Lee/Library of Congress
Appeared in Mother Jones article

Overturning a Federal trial court's earlier decision, the Supreme Court upheld without comment the Texas Voter ID Law, one of the worst in the nation.  The majority decision was unsigned but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg  along with Justices Kagan and Sotomayor authored a blistering dissent. Salon.com carried an Alternet article on Ginsburg's dissent. “Texas did not begin to demonstrate that the Bill’s discriminatory features were necessary to prevent fraud or to increase public confidence in the electoral process,” Ginsburg wrote in her dissent. The article summarizes the key points of Ginsburg's dissent, among them: hundreds of thousands of Texans will have a hard time getting the required ID and  "On an extensive factual record developed in the course of a nine-day trial, the District Court found Senate Bill 14 [the voter ID law] irreconcilable with Section 2 of the [federal] Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it was enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose and would yield a prohibited discriminatory result.” The law could potentially disenfranchise 600,000 Texas voters. [Salon.com, Oct. 21]  The law falls in line with Texas' long history of discriminatory voting practices.  Mother Jones presents a look at that history, based on expert testimony by Orville Vernon Burton, a professor of history at Clemson University, and Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in an October 21 article. [Mother Jones, Oct. 21]

In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State is delaying approval of tens of thousands of minority applications secured by by the New Georgia Project on the grounds that fraud was involved.  There is little evidence of any such thing.  Republican candidates are hyping voter fraud fears and the reason is fairly obvious.  Republican concerns about large numbers of black voters turning out this year have already roiled politics in the Peachtree State. One GOP state lawmaker said he opposed opening a new early voting location because it was in a heavily minority area. Georgia, which has seen big demographic shifts over the last decade, has nearly 900,000 unregistered minority voters. Mitt Romney’s 2012 margin of victory over President Obama in the state was just 305,000 votes. Michelle Nunn, the Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate race, is counting on a big minority turnout to propel her to an upset victory. [MSNBC, Oct. 21]  NGP has introduced a lawsuit against 5 counties and has settled with one of them (De Kalb),  The lawsuit is proceeding against the other 4 counties.  Daily Kos reports:  Earlier this month, NGP complained that the registrations in five counties—all of them surrounding large Democratic strongholds in Atlanta, Columbus and Savannah—had not processed some 40,000 of these registrations. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp said the claim is wrong....Since most of those 40,000 people are likely to be Democrats, the consequences could have a major impact on the election, including the outcome in the tight open-seat Senate contest between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue. Given the potential for disenfranchisement, the NGP, together with the NAACP, filed suit against Kemp and the county election boards.  [Daily Kos, Oct. 24]

Related Links

Running Scared : Georgia’s Democrats have registered more than 85,000 minority voters (and counting).Republicans never saw it coming. [Slate.com, Sept. 11]

Georgia's Battle for the Ballot Box [New York Magazine, Oct.21] tells the story of Stacey Abrams, the Georgia House minority leader and the woman behind the voter registration drive.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
The Palestinian Territory of the West Bank and Gaza has been under Israeli military occupation for more than 47 years.  The Gaza Strip has been crippled by a land, sea, and air blockade for 7 years. This summer Gaza endured an Israeli assault that left the enclave devastated and more than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead.  Even before the brutal Israeli siege, Gaza was deemed to become unlivable by 2020, and 80% of its people were receiving humanitarian aid of some type.  The Palestinian Authority laid out its plans to achieve statehood in an address to the United Nations in September - going to the Security Council for a resolution to end the Israeli Occupation by a definitive date and, failing that (for example, because of a US veto), to join the International Criminal Court.  Here are links to some stories relevant to Palestinian statehood and the Gaza War of 2014 that have developed since Abbas' speech at the UN.

October 3:  Sweden announces its intention to recognise state of Palestine [Reuters, Oct. 3]

October 12: Donor conference co-hosted by Egypt and Norway raises 5.4 billion US dollars for rebuilding Gaza.[Al Jazeera, Oct. 12]

October 14: British parliament votes 274-12 in favor of recognizing Palestine [YNetNews, Oct. 14]

October 21: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he was setting up an investigation into the attacks on United Nations facilities [Daily Mail, Oct. 21]

October 22: Democracy Now! interview with Noam Chomsky after his speech at the UN [Democracy Now!, Oct. 22]

October 23: Complicated mechanisms and restrictive measures risk prolonging the Gaza rebuilding effort [Al Jazeera, Oct. 23]

October 24: Irish upper house backs Palestinian state [Haaretz, Oct. 24]

October 24: Croatian Foreign Minister: "Croatia is likely to recognize Palestine as an independent state" [Daily Sabah, Oct. 24]

The Republican War on Science

Loss of the Senate to the Republicans will put both houses of Congress in the hands of a political party that prides itself on scientific ignorance.  What we may have to look forward to can be seen in the ongoing actions of the House's Science, Space and Technology Committee.  Look no further than the head of the committee, climate change skeptic Lamar Smith (R-TX).  "He voted to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, voted no several times on tax credits for renewable energy and incentives for energy production and conservation, voted against raising fuel efficiency standards, and rejected implementation of the Kyoto Protocol." [Daily Kos, October 20]

Besides his climate change position, he's also known for introducing SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in 2011.  The bill was tabled after generating widespread condemnation for its radically harsh policy in dealing with copyright infringement and other issues.  SOPA would have allowed the Justice Department to "pull foreign sites 'dedicated' to copyright infringement out of the DNS system and search engine results — effectively altering the way the internet works. It's a hugely controversial bill that takes a scorched-earth approach to solving the thorny problem of copyright infringement on the web." [The Verge, Dec. 2011]

For the past 18 months, Congressman Smith has spear-headed a program more suited to a totalitarian state than to a democracy.  He has been waging an assault on the peer-review process for granting National Science Foundation grants.  "He’s issued a barrage of press releases that ridicule specific awards, championed legislation that would alter NSF’s peer-review system and slash funding for the social science programs that have supported much of the research he has questioned, and berated NSF officials for providing what he considers to be inadequate explanations of their funding decisions." [Daily Kos, October 20]  It's all part of the Republican attempt to slash non-military funding so they won't have to raise taxes on the wealthy, and Lamar is now applying the "national interest" criterion to his investigation of research grants - that is, national interest in his opinion.  He evidently thinks this is a better way to conduct scientific research than the long-established peer-review process so critical to scientific progress.  

Although Smith directs much of his wrath at research projects in the social sciences, Tim McDonnell points out in an October 17 Mother Jones post, "some of the biggest-ticket items up for public dissection focus on climate change. They include a $3 million grant awarded in 2008 to study how federal agencies can better communicate climate science to the public and a $5.6 million award to a Columbia University team to carry out public education work on the impacts of climate change at the poles. You know, totally frivolous questions that have nothing to do with the 'national interest' on things like rising sea levels, epic releases of methane, US military engagement in the Arctic, new areas for offshore oil drilling, and 35,000 stranded walruses."

What a surprise! Not only do they deny human-induced climate change, they want to make sure money is not "wasted" on giving people the facts.  In the US, climate change has not yet reached the stage where public indignation against a lack of action will decide elections.  For most, its effects are too far in the future - unlike in Brazil, where the record-breaking drought has caused some water reservoirs to drop to 4% of normal level and may decide the presidential election  The Financial Times analyzes the situation in an October 19 article.  São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, is experiencing water shortages, early closings of schools and health centers, and police escorts for emergency water trucks.  FT reports: "...bars and restaurants in tourist areas have been urging their customers not to use the toilets...While the drought has already ravaged Brazil’s coffee and sugar crops and hit local companies,...it could weaken the business-friendly PSDB party ahead of Brazil’s tightly fought presidential elections next week."

Ignorance and misinformation have long been arrows in the quiver of Republican political tools. How else do you explain their ability to have anyone but the very rich vote for them?  How else do you explain their ability to get poor and middle class whites to vote consistently against their own interests as well as the common good?  

While the Republicans were still in the process of selecting a candidate for the 2012 Presidential election, Paul Krugman led off an op-ed piece quoting John Huntsman, Jr., a Republican who was "willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the anti-science party." After Krugman discusses then-candidate Rick Perry's views on evolution and climate change and eventual-candidate Mitt Romney's backtracking on climate change, he concludes that while we don't know who will "win next year's presidential election,...the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect."  [NYTimes, August 28, 2011]

Related

For more on the confrontation between the NSF and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, see: Battle between NSF and House science committee escalates: How did it get this bad? [ScienceInsider, October 2]

For more on the political success of the Republicans' Southern Strategy in spite of the economic downside of their policies, see Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.? [NYTimes, June 26]

The Sixth Extinction

In the 525 million years or so since creatures with backbones first appeared on our planet, there have been five mass extinctions.  A mass extinction (aka an "extinction event") is a widespread, geologically rapid loss of biodiversity.  In each of the five events classified as mass extinctions, no less than 60% (Ordovician-Silurian event, ~450 million years ago) and as much as 96% (Permian-Triassic event, ~250 million years ago) of all species were lost.  The most famous mass extinction is that which doomed the dinosaurs (and many other species) about 65 million years ago.  An asteroid crashed into the Yucatan, the dinosaurs died off and mammals rose to the top of the food chain.

Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction takes a look at the evidence that we may be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction - what may come to be known as the Anthropocene extinction.  Referring to an article that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kolbert writes, "If Wake and Vredenburg were correct, then those of us alive today not only are witnessing one of the rarest events in life's history, we are also causing it."

Until the late 18th century the idea that species could go extinct had few, if any, supporters. Evidence from the fossil record gradually proved that extinctions did occur and that there were some extinctions that were so massive that they only could have been caused by a catastrophic event - for example, an asteroid,  a huge volcanic eruption or a severe change in the climate.  Kolbert takes us on a journey through the causes of extinctions in a series of vignettes focusing on one or another creature that has become, or is in the process of becoming, extinct.

Panamanian golden frog (Wikipedia)

She first takes us to Central America where the Panamanian golden frog is disappearing - apparently from a previously unknown, but now ubiquitous, fungus.  There are two theories on how the fungus became so widespread.  The first theory is that it spread with shipments of African clawed frogs used in pregnancy tests in the 1950's and 60's.  The second is that it spread with the export of North American bullfrogs, often for human consumption, to Europe, Asia and South America.  In either case, without being loaded by someone on a boat or a plane, it would have been impossible for a frog carrying the fungus to spread from Africa or North America to other parts of the world.  The spread of the deadly fungus "appears to be, for all intents and purposes, unstoppable." Amphibians are the world's most endangered class.of animals. "But extinction rates among many other groups," Kolbert writes, "are approaching amphibian levels.  It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion."

Human hunters played a role, along with climate change, in the extinction of the North American mastodons.  The last of the great auks was killed by hunters on an island near Iceland in 1844.  But besides hunting animals to extinction, we've found less direct ways to endanger species. Since the Industrial Revolution began, the CO2 level in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 50%; atmospheric methane levels have more than doubled.  Our impact on the world around us is so great that some scientists are beginning to refer to the current geologic age as the Anthropocene.  "Roughly one-third of the CO2 that humans have so far pumped into the air has been absorbed by the oceans...a stunning 150 billion tons.  As with most aspects of the Anthropocene, though, it's not only the scale of the transfer but also the speed that's significant."

Coral reef near Fiji
The Guardian article on World Research Institute's 2011 Report: "Reefs at Risk"

Besides the impact on atmospheric temperatures and sea levels, the excess carbon dioxide being absorbed by the sea is acidifying the sea - to the detriment of sea life. Of the myriad possible impacts of this acidification,  Kolbert tells us, "probably the most significant involves the group of creatures known as calcifiers."  This varied group includes starfish, sea urchins, clams, oysters, coral, seaweed, algae, and many other species. Coral reefs, besides being threatened themselves, provide an amazing ecosystem. "Thousands - perhaps millions of species have evolved to rely on coral reefs, either directly for protection or food, or indirectly, to prey on species that come seeking protection or food."  Ocean acidification is just one of the threats facing coral reefs -overfishing and deforestation also endanger them - because of increased algae growth and susceptibility to pathogens,  Climate change also adds to the extinction threat - if water temperatures rise too high, coral reef bleaching occurs and the colony stops growing or, in the worst case, dies.  Quoting British scientists,  Kolbert writes: "It is likely that reefs will be the first major ecosystem in the modern era to go extinct."

Kolbert discusses forests and the impact of climate change on species distribution, invasive species and man's role in transporting them, and the near-extinction of the Sumatran rhino and its relationship to the mega-fauna extinctions that occurred 40,000 and 20,000 years ago.  She notes that people have directly transformed roughly 27 million square miles of the 50 million square miles of land on the planet that are are ice-free and habitat disruption plays a role in the loss of species.

She has an intriguing chapter on the disappearance of our older siblings - the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and the recently discovered homo floresiensis - and on the threat to our next closest kin - the great apes.  Chimpanzee and highland gorilla populations have dropped 50% over the past 50 years, while the lowland gorilla population has shrunk by 60% over the past two decades and Sumatran orangutans are now classified as "critically endangered".

The human ability for cooperative problem-solving, creativity,our restlessness and inquisitiveness, and, perhaps most of all, the capacity for symbolic representation and language - due to "a tiny set of genetic variations" - divide us from Neanderthals and other near relatives, "but that has made all the difference."

The anthropocene or sixth extinction will most likely not be as massive as any of the "Big Five." Writing about the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Biodiversity, Kolbert asks "In an extinction event of our own making, what happens to us?"  There are two schools of thought on this. One possibility is that "we, too, will eventually be undone by our transformation of the ecological landscape."  The other, more optimistic, possibility is that "human ingenuity will outrun any disaster human ingenuity sets in motion"  - for example, by means of atmospheric re-engineering or, in the worst case, settling the planets and moons of the solar system. But in the end, perhaps the fate of our own species, Kolbert muses, is not "what's most worth attending to.  Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding. without quite meaning to, which evolutionary paths will remain open and which will be closed forever.  No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy."

Related
Our Closest Call [The Left Bank Cafe, July 29, 2012]

"Levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose at a record-shattering pace last year, a new report shows, a surge that surprised scientists and spurred fears of an accelerated warming of the planet in decades to come." [Washington Post, September 9]

The Big History Project

Big picture ecology has been raising its head in the past few months. The Atlantic devoted nine or ten pages of its September issue to Charles Mann's article, "How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen". The article contains reviews of recent books on climate change and global warming. Its general theme seems in line with the attention-grabbing cover description of the article: "How Climate Hysterics Hurt Their Own Cause." One of the books not mentioned in Mann's article is Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction - about the unprecedented rapid extinction of species that has occurred since humans came on the scene. 

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to stumble across a 2011 TED talk on Big History. Professor David Christian's "The History of Our World in 18 Minutes" is an introduction to the Big History way of looking at the universe. It's more like Big Science but who's to quibble with what the proponents of this interesting theory want to call it.

Big History takes the long view...the really long view - it starts with the Big Bang. The first question "Big Historians" ask is: "In a universe whose physical laws drive it toward simplicity and disorder, how does all the complexity we see arise?" They answer the question by pointing to increasing thresholds of complexity that are brought about by ideal conditions, what David Christian dubs "the Goldilocks conditions." As each threshold is exceeded, complexity increases. Each threshold holds the key and energy to bring us to the next threshold of complexity. Complexity comes with a price - the "fragility" of the system, which wants to drive towards simplicity and disorder and would do so were the "Goldilocks conditions" disrupted.

In his TED talk, Christian introduces us to 8 thresholds of increasing complexity: the Big Bang, the formation of stars, the formation of new chemical elements in the death of stars, the formation of solar systems and rocky planets, life on Earth, collective learning made possible by human intelligence, the development of agriculture, and the modern revolution - humans linking up globally starting 500 years ago with improvements in transportation and communication. This modern revolution was then accelerated further by the discovery of fossil fuels 200 years ago. The irony lies in the potential humans have to change the "Goldilocks conditions" that made this threshold of complexity possible. We so far have escaped the nuclear winter - the destruction of the biosphere that would result from a nuclear exchange - and now we face another world altering scenario with global warming. As Christian notes: "Collective learning is a very, very powerful force and it's not clear that we humans are in charge of it."

ChronoZoom Timeline (Source: Wikipedia)

The Big History Project website presents more details in a series of short lectures on each of the thresholds. Perhaps by knowing how we got here, the next generations will understand the challenges facing us and the power of collective thinking to meet those challenges. Pointing out that humans dominate the Earth and have the power to significantly alter the life systems here, Big History sees both negative and positive trends and asks some pertinent questions: "At present, we can see both dangerous trends, such as global warming and the continued existence of nuclear weapons, as well as positive trends, such as increased collaboration in dealing with climate change, a slowing in population growth, and an acceleration in our knowledge about the biosphere. Can we imagine a future largely free of conflict, disease, and degradation, one in which some humans may even begin to migrate to other worlds as our Paleolithic ancestors migrated to other continents? Or are we in danger of undermining the foundations of today's world with vicious conflict over scarce resources? The answers will depend on decisions made by the generations of humans that are alive today." (From The Big History Project website)

(The Sixth Extinction will be discussed in a future post.)

Updates and Briefs

"It's About Humanity. Pray for Gaza."
- Selena Gomez' Instagram

Gaza
The Palestinian death toll from the Israeli attacks now exceeds 650.  An estimated two-thirds of the Palestinian dead, more than 400, are civilians.  The civilian dead include at least 147 children and 74 women.  The Israeli civilian death toll stands at 2.  In an article published today, The Irish Times reported on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights statement that "that Israel may be committing war crimes in Gaza, where its punitive house demolitions and killing of children raise the 'strong possibility' that it is violating international law."  The comments came at an emergency debate at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.  Ms. Pillay also condemned the indiscriminate firing of rockets and mortars by Hamas into Israel.  The Irish Times reported on John Kerry's diplomatic efforts: "In a sign of the intensity of the US diplomacy, Mr Kerry spoke to Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers after meeting [Egyptian President] Sisi for two hours, a senior US official said."  So far there is no sign of a letup in the fighting.  The article quotes a 17 year old Palestinian on the desperation of the Gazans fleeing their homes in the face of the Israeli onslaught: “Columns of people are heading west of Beit Hanoun, looking for a safe shelter. This is not war, this is annihilation."

In a companion article, Ambassador Patricia O'Brien, Ireland's representative to the meeting of the Human Rights Council, is quoted: “Irish people have been appalled by the upsurge of violence in Gaza, and especially the very high and unacceptable level of civilian casualties.  It is clear to us that neither side is paying adequate regard to the cost of their actions on innocent civilians.”   Ms O’ Brien said no ceasefire would last without a serious political effort to 'address the causes of the disastrous situation in Gaza'...The continued absence for people in Gaza of any political or economic perspective for the future is a breeding ground for extremist action.”  Would that some US politicians had the courage and moral clarity of the 57 year old UN Ambassador O'Brien and the 21 year old entertainer Selena Gomez.

Obamacare Rulings
"Two federal appeals court panels issued conflicting rulings Tuesday on whether the government could subsidize health insurance premiums for [4.5 million] Americans...By a vote of 2 to 1, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down a regulation issued by the Internal Revenue Service that authorizes the payment of premium subsidies in states that rely on the federal insurance exchange...Within hours, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., issued a ruling that came to the opposite conclusion."  [NYTimes, July 22] The rulings will not affect consumers immediately as the Obama Administration will continue to provide subsidies until the appeals process takes place.  Despite the Obama Administration's optimism that the D.C. panel will be overruled, this has the potential to reach the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court has already weakened the Affordable Care Act considerably in its ruling that states were not required to expand Medicaid.  Just because Chief Justice Roberts voted once to uphold the law - so his court would not look like a total political shill - doesn't mean he will do it again.  Just a brief review of the rulings of this court will show that he's apparently no longer concerned about the court's credibility.

Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United and McCutcheon vs. FEC
One way to amend the constitution is for 2/3 of the states (34) to call for a Constitutional Convention to consider the amendment.  Two states (California and Vermont) have passed such resolutions to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that have removed campaign finance limits.  A third state, Illinois, is considering a similar resolution.  A total of 16 states have passed resolutions or ballot initiatives to overturn Citizens United.   The other way to amend the Constitution is for Congress, by a 2/3 vote, to send the amendment to the states for ratification.  The amendment is enacted once 3/4 of the states (38) approve it.  On July 10, in a straight party line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve an amendment that would restore to Congress and the States the power to regulate the financing of political campaigns.  The party line vote means that it is unlikely that the amendment will be referred to the states.  So, for now, it is up to individual states to call for a Constitutional Convention. [TPM, July 10]

Iran Completes Conversion of 20% Uranium
The BBC reported on July 20: "Iran has turned all of its enriched uranium closest to the level needed to make nuclear arms into more harmless forms, the UN nuclear agency says...A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran is observing all of its other commitments as well."  This was a major diplomatic victory for Obama's Iran policy and nary a peep was heard in the US corporate media.

Record June Temperatures
"The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June 2014 was the highest on record for the month, at 0.72°C (1.30°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F)." [NOAA, Global Analysis - June 2014]

Coal Rules: Ten Things You Should Know

The much-anticipated EPA rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants were released today. The rules call for an average 30 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions from coal (against a 2005 base line) by 2030. The action has been variously described as Obama going around Congress (it's no such thing: agency rule-setting is part and parcel of the powers of the executive branch), America providing leadership in the battle against climate change (belated to say the least - 24 years after Kyoto), and a hit to the US economy (if you want to call accounting for the true cost of coal a hit to the economy, you may be unaware of (or ignoring) the damage to come from global warming - measured in the trillions). The new rules are bound to attract lawsuits from industry groups - even though two Supreme Court decisions (Massachusetts vs. EPA in 2007 and American Electric Power vs. Connecticut in 2011) clearly give the EPA the right to regulate greenhouse gases.

As we await the lawsuits and the ongoing cries of pain from climate-change-deniers, here are 10 facts about coal, the environment, and the new law.

1. Pound for pound, coal is the largest producer of carbon dioxide of any fossil fuel. When burned, coal produces about 60% more CO₂ per unit of energy than gasoline and more than double the CO₂ of that produced by methane (natural gas). And that is before the efficiency of energy production for the various fuels is taken into account. (Since coal-fired plants provide 40% of the electricity in the US, you may want to mention this to your friends who drive 100% electric cars.)

2. World carbon dioxide emissions rose to a record 36 billion metric tons in 2013. This is a 2.1 percent gain versus 2012 and a 61 percent increase since 1990, the baseline year for the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the only global agreement that places binding limits on national CO₂ emission levels. [1]

3. Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April. Prior to the industrial revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 ppm.

4. Releasing nearly 7 billion metric tons annually, the United States is the second largest producer of CO₂. Only China with its heavy reliance on coal and its 1.3 billion plus population produces more. The US emits nearly 20% of the world's total human-caused CO₂. [3]

5. Power plants and vehicles are the two biggest sources of this pollution in the United States, accounting for about 38 and 31 percent of carbon emissions, respectively. [2]

6. Domestic coal-fired plants produced 1.45 billion metric tons of CO₂ in 2012, according to Environmental Protection Agency data, equal to about 305 million cars. [2]

7. Sixty-three percent of US coal plants are at least 40 years old.

8. Will it be effective? The middle range of projections from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a reduction of 544 million metric tons by 2020, equivalent to taking about 114 million cars off the road. [2]

9. How will the rule be implemented? The EPA will finalize its proposal in mid-2015. After that, the EPA will give states a year to design their implementation plans. It will let states meet emission targets for power plants several ways, including through plant upgrades, switching from coal to natural gas, or by improving energy efficiency or promoting renewable energy “outside the fence,” meaning outside the plant site. Each state has its own specific target.  West Virginia, for example, must reduce the pollution it puts out per amount of power by 19 percent compared to the rate in 2012.  The approach will give each state flexibility for meeting its specific target. [4,5]

10. What about China? At the November 2013 Warsaw Conference on climate change, China reiterated its commitment to achieve a target of reducing CO₂ emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 levels.  China is also introducing a set of new taxation policies designed to "preserve the environment", including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. [6,7]

Hopefully, the new rules can be implemented without too much economic dislocation. The timing is clearly a gamble - it could cost Democrats the Senate in November. But the costs of continuing to not doing anything are great.  Paraphrasing the President, we don't want to give our children and grandchildren a world that it is too late to fix.  

References

[1] Reuters, November 18, 2013, "Global carbon emissions rise to new record in 2013: report"

[2] Mother Jones, May 30, 2014, "Obama's New Plan to Fight Climate Change Is a Really Big Deal"

[3] The Guardian interactive carbon dioxide emissions map

[4] Washington Post, June 1, 2014 "Everything you need to know about the EPA’s proposed rule on coal plants"

[5] Associated Press, June 2, 2014 "Obama administration orders big power-plant pollution cuts"

[6] Xinhua News Agency, Feb 19,2013  "China to introduce carbon tax: official"

[7] china.org.cn, Nov 21, 2013, "China will notably cut CO2 emissions by 2020"

Sunday Roundup - May 11

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

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

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

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


"Legitimate Redistribution of Wealth to the Poor"

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

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

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

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

Map is from infoplease.com

Ukraine

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

Links
Complete text of Pope Francis' comments to UN

Earth Day 2014

Consider the following propositions:

1. Life exists only because the material conditions on Earth happen to be just right for its existence;

2. Life defines the material conditions for its existence and makes sure that they stay there.

- James Lovelock & Sidney Epton, "The Quest for Gaia", 1975

The first Earth Day in April, 1970 was celebrated shortly after James Lovelock began his work on the Gaia Hypothesis. He formulated the hypothesis in the 1960's as a result of work he had done for NASA on the detection of life on Mars.  In February 1975, he wrote an article for New Scientist magazine with Sidney Epton called "The Quest for Gaia", wherein they explained and developed the hypothesis. It became Lovelock's life work and, in 2009, the then ninety-year-old scientist wrote The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. 

In between Lovelock's early work on Gaia and his latest book, of course, were the lunar missions that gave us those awe-inspiring photos of the Earth, beautiful and vulnerable in the void of space. Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" is still the only confirmed home of life, intelligent or otherwise, in the universe. Here, life has filled every nook from the depths of the oceans to volcanic vents to the fissures in rocks. Organisms can require oxygen or not. They can live in temperatures below the freezing point and above the boiling point of water . They can live in acidic environments or basic. They live in water or in deserts. They can live under tremendous pressure and can resist ionizing radiation. Lovelock's hypothesis proposes that these organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.  Lovelock's "final warning" is that the complexity of the living Gaia system is significant and important, that computer modeling that does not take it into account can lead us astray, and that "Until we all feel intuitively that the Earth is a living system, and know that we are part of it, we will fail to react automatically for its and ultimately our own protection."

Native American culture has a respectful, almost sacred, stance towards the natural world and the creatures that share it with us. A quote often attributed to the Duwamish Chief Seattle reflects an attitude of stewardship towards the world - “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”. There's a phrase in the Lakota language "Mitakuye Oyasin" that translates to "all are related" and reflects the Lakota belief in a universal interconnectedness. What affects one, affects all.   

William Wordsworth, in his magnificent poem "Tintern Abbey" (actually, the full title is "Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting The Banks Of The Wye During A Tour. July 13, 1798"), writes of an almost mystical unity.  When contemplating the nature, he feels

"A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things."

Earth Day is a good time to pause and reflect on this interconnectedness of all life. Marc Ian Barasch discusses this in his 2005 book, Field Notes on the Compassionate Life. He relates the story of a Colorado boy who became lost in the woods in the dead of winter. As hypothermia was setting in, the boy tried to chase away two huge elks that he saw nearby. He lost consciousness and would surely have died had not the two elks slept up against him warming him through the cold night. Barasch continues, "There are a million stories of our fellow creatures being kind to us for no good reason...There are inexplicable ways compassion radiates through the world; some spirit of sympathy drawn toward any distress." Barasch relates experiments that show even plants to be sensitive to painful or sad thoughts and memories.  He concludes that perhaps "our ultimate human assignment is to extend our sense of kinship beyond family and clan and strangers to all other creatures...Acknowledging a sentient world might make us kinder, gentler citizens of a planet that has already had to endure more than its share of our cruelties."

I'll close with a final thought from Barasch's book that could perhaps guide and inspire our efforts over the coming year. "Given our shaky collective plight, knowing Nature's 'value' may not be enough; we may need to love it."

Images

Earth from Space (Apollo 17) from NASA

Gray wolf from US Fish & Wildlife Service (Gary Kramer)
Tintern Abbey from Destination Envy website/Drive Wales page
Deer in winter woods is from Conservation Fund website (Reggie Hall)
Polar bear on ice floe is from ZME Science website

Sunday Roundup - March 9, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the Pentagon budget, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, the Ukraine, the Central African Republic, and climate change.

The Pentagon Budget 
TomDispatch contributor Mattea Kramer writes about the Pentagon's phony budget war.  Washington is pushing the panic button, claiming austerity is hollowing out our armed forces and our national security is at risk...Yet a careful look at budget figures for the U.S. military -- a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57% of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40% of all military spending on this planet -- shows that such claims have been largely fictional. Despite cries of doom since the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration surfaced in Washington in 2011, the Pentagon has seen few actual reductions, and there is no indication that will change any time soon.  Kramer analyzes the positioning of the military-industrial-political-complex in an excellent March 6 post at TomDispatch.  "Ike" must be turning over in his grave.

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks
The original time frame for the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is rapidly approaching with no visible progress to report.  Former Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Ishtayeh doesn't believe there is much hope for an extension of the April 29 deadline for a framework deal.  “What we have seen in the talks is that the gap is growing, rather than narrowing,” said Mr. Ishtayeh, who resigned as a negotiator in November to protest accelerated Israeli settlement building.  For the Palestinians, the biggest obstacle is a new demand ... that they accept Israel as a Jewish state, he said. The Palestine Liberation Organization recognized the state of Israel when peace efforts began two decades ago and Mr. Abbas has argued this is sufficient.  Mr. Abbas cannot “under any circumstances” recognize Israel as a Jewish state because this would restrict the return options of Palestinian refugees...Israel’s land demands pose another serious obstacle.... Israel wants to annex these “settlement blocs,” but never has presented a detailed border proposal. The Palestinians say these blocs add up to about 12% of the West Bank. Israel also wants a long-term military presence in the Jordan Valley, which makes up 28% of the West Bank. [National Post/Associated Press, March 6]

Obama's Message to Netanyahu
Meanwhile Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington speaking with President Obama.  Juan Cole's March 5 Informed Comment opinion piece called Netanyahu’s visit even more of a disaster for him than might have been expected...It did not help that the Crimea crisis had broken out.... Most observers in Europe and even some in the US could see the hypocrisy of the US denouncing Russian troops in Crimea but supporting Israeli troops in Hebron.  Prior to his meeting with Netanyahu, Obama had been interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for Bloomberg.  Obama had a strong message for the Israeli Prime Minister on the peace process (see below).  Juan Cole called Obama's words more candid than those of any sitting president since the 1970s.  Cole's take on the President's statement is that Obama is trying to tell Netanyahu that we can see him...that the world is deciding that the Israelis intend to keep the Palestinians stateless and to constrain their lives with checkpoints and arbitrary arrest and property theft virtually forever...What Obama was...saying was that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement to respond to Israeli colonialism against the Palestinians is unfolding in other venues where the US government doesn’t have a veto. The US cannot force the European Union states to disregard EU law. It cannot forestall lawsuits by Palestinian concerns in Europe against European companies involved in helping occupy them. Moreover, ...Palestine [as] a non-member observer state at the UN...could take Israel to the International Criminal Court over criminal Israel actions in the Occupied territories. Obama was simply observing that as the scales fall from the world’s eyes, Israel will be subject to sanctions, and the US government cannot do anything about it.

Ukraine
Crimea declared its intent to rejoin Russia after the demonstrations that removed President Viktor Yanukovich from office.  Russia Times reported on March 7: Over 65,000 people gathered on Friday for a demonstration in central Moscow to support residents of Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea. 

Juan Cole in an Informed Comment March 7 post noted the hypocrisy of US politicians for opposing the Crimean decision as a violation of international law.  He points to Yugoslavia, the Sudan and Iraq as countries where US politicians supported breaking up countries and suggests that George Mitchell’s careful agreement [for Northern Ireland]...would be a good model for keeping Crimea in Ukraine while recognizing Russian interests there.

Central African Republic
The Central African Republic, a land-locked nation of about 4.6 million people, is one of the world's poorest countries.  The Human Development Index,  a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income, places it in 179th place of the 187 countries with data.  These facts make the sectarian violence engulfing the country even more senseless and tragic.  The CAR has been in chaos since Muslim rebels seized power a year ago and then lost it around December as Christian militias fought back...Since then, revenge attacks on the Muslim minority community, including summary executions, torture and looting, have become more common. [The Economist, Feb 15]  A new president, Catherine Samba-Panza, has pledged to put a stop to the violence and to bring reconciliation to the country.  She took office on an interim basis in January but so far the violence has not abated.  Muslims are fleeing to neighboring countries, French troops are trying to maintain some semblance of order and the UN is considering bringing in a large peace-keeping force. With the mass exodus, the Bangui economy has gone into rapid decline, made worse by violence on the roads into the capital that has all but cut the city off from outside supplies.  A recent statement by Oxfam and Action Against Hunger highlighted the increased threat of food shortages in a country where 1.3 million are already in dire need of food. [The Guardian, Feb 14]
(Image of children in refugee camp at Bangui airport is by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images and appeared in The Guardian Feb 21)

Climate Change
The world's oceans play a major role in maintaining our climate.  They convey heat from warm regions to cold and vice versa.   A disruption in the "thermo-haline" conveyors of the world's oceans and seas can lead to severe, and possibly abrupt, climate change.  Temperature (thermo) and salt (haline) content determine the density of ocean water.  Differences in ocean water density drive this (literally) world-scale conveyor belt.  If this conveyor belt receives a big enough shock - for example, large amounts of fresh water from melting glaciers or increased precipitation - the oceans will experience a decrease in salt content and density.  This will interfere with or shutdown the ocean conveyor belt.  The result would be somewhere between the Younger Dryas event (10-20 degree F. temperature drop) and a return to a full-blown glacial period.  If this catastrophe does occur, the change will be very quick - on the order of a decade.  Now a recent study reported at Smithsonian.com concludes that a surge in freshwater at the surface may have shut down mixing of water layers in the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic or in the more dramatic words at the Daily Kos website - The Antarctic Half of the Global Thermohaline Circulation is Collapsing - adding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate models have not considered the effects the collapsing production of Antarctic Bottom Water and political policy has not kept up with the IPCC. We are moving rapidly into uncharted waters as the Arctic melts. Global political policies are not keeping up with the rate of change and our models have, to date, underestimated the rate of change. We are witnessing a total failure of global leadership to deal with changes we caused that are spiraling out of control.

Related Links

Obama's Interview with Jeffrey Goldberg: Time Is Running Out
In an hour long interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible....There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?” [Bloomberg View website, Jeffrey Goldberg, March 2]

Central African Republic
Can Catherine Samba-Panza save the Central African Republic? [The Guardian, March 2]

President Eisenhower's Warning About the Military-Industrial Complex
You-Tube of the warning given in his Farewell Address (1961)

Sunday Roundup - February 23, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the Iran nuclear talks, Arctic ice, Gaza, soccer in Brazil, video games as treatment for learning disabilities, the Syrian Civil War and the chaos in the Ukraine.


Iran
With the breakdown in the Syrian Civil War talks and with the apparent stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, it's encouraging to find at least one ray of hope for the troubled Middle East.  As reported in The Guardian Thursday: "Three days of talks between Iran and six world powers in Vienna have ended to 'a good start' as diplomats negotiating for a final nuclear deal, agreed on a mutual framework before they could discuss details in future sessions."  EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who acts as "the convenor of talks on behalf of Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the US – the group known as P5+1 – is negotiating directly with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister."   Ashton said both sides had "agreed to start the technical work and further political discussions as early as March. They would set a timetable over four months to discuss the differences that have so far prevented settlement of the decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme."



Climate Change
It's been a wild winter in the Northern Hemisphere - drought in California, avalanches in the Rockies, winter storms in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast, massive flooding in the UK.  Anyone out there still unconcerned about global climate change or humankind's role in causing it?  Ryan Koronowski reported Thursday on the ClimateProgress website of a new "record".  In February, Arctic sea ice dipped to "record low levels in February. On the 18th, sea ice covered 5.544 million square miles of the Arctic, while the previous low on that date was in 2006, at 5.548 million square miles."   The sea ice is dwindling even in the almost perpetual darkness of winter "because there is less of its bright whiteness to reflect back sunlight into space. As the ice melts, more of the surface area changes to darker ocean water, which absorbs the sun’s energy, warming the ocean and allowing more ice to melt."  Some researchers are blaming the frequent strong winter storms in the UK on this phenomenon.
(Image of flooding near Tewksbury is from the Daily Mail; copyright by Adam Gray/SWNS.com)



Gaza
Bad as the Palestinian situation is in the West Bank, it's much worse in the Gaza Strip, where Israel, with assistance from Egypt, has maintained a blockade on Gaza's 1.7 million inhabitants since 2007.  Gaza is back in the news in recent weeks.  After the Arab Spring there was some easing of restrictions on the Egyptian side.  Unfortunately,  Egypt closed supply tunnels on its border with Gaza after the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power.  Earlier this month, far-right members of the Israeli Knesset walked out on a speech by European Parliament President Martin Schulz when he criticized Israel for its blockade of the Gaza Strip and for the Israeli water policy in the Occupied Territories.  On February 12, a dozen human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, called upon the European Union to urge Israel to "immediately, unconditionally and completely...lift the unlawful closure of the Gaza Strip, and demand that all parties comply with their obligations under international law."  Calling Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip a collective punishment of 1.7 million Palestinians and a "breach of international humanitarian law", the rights organizations noted that the "impact of the closure and the violence on the population’s right to life, health, education, food, water and an adequate standard of living has never been clearer."
(Photo of two Gaza children looking through rubble after an Israeli airstrike is by EPA/Mohammed Saber and appeared in The Telegraph in Nov 2012)


Brazil and Soccer - The Beautiful Language
As we all know, the World Cup is being played in Brazil this year.  In a brilliant article for Roads & Kingdoms' "Far Post" series, sportswriter Jack Lang writes about the unique Brazilian "language" for the sport.  As the World Cup approaches "amid the FIFA-approved images of soccer stars in sun-drenched stadiums, much of what truly defines Brazilian football will be concealed, lost in translation. For while Neymar, Thiago Silva et al represent one aspect of this nation’s continuing clout in the sport, there is another sphere in which it excels. No other nation can match the verve with which Brazil talks and writes about o jogo bonito."  From players' nicknames to sportscasters' commentary to their creative shorthand descriptions of play, the article is a great romp through the language and character of Brazil's soccer culture. 


Your Brain and Video Games
On Tuesday, the Utne Reader reported on an Oxford University study that "indicates that video games may be able to help the 5 to 10 percent of the world’s population who are affected by dyslexia.  UR notes that this is not the first study to point out the benefits of video games. "Past research has shown that playing video games can improve mental reasoning and decision-making skills as well as precision and self-esteem."


Ukraine
The violence in the Ukraine, which has resulted in as  many as 100 deaths over the past week, seems to have ended thanks to a deal to cut the President's powers, revise the Constitution and release an opposition leader.  Mother Jones tries to describe "why Kiev is burning":  "The EuroMaidan protests, which started on November 21 in response to President Viktor Yanukovych's rejection of a European Union trade deal, have been going on for nearly three months....the conflict is fueled by sharp political and ethnic divides. A significant portion of the population wants closer ties to Europe, but Putin has been pressuring Yanukovych's government toward closer economic integration with Russia."

In Brief/Other Links 

For more on the second reason for the Israeli far-right-wing walkout during Martin Schultz' address to the Knesset, see  Haaretz, February 16 "The Israeli 'watergate' scandal: The facts about Palestinian water"


For other soccer culture articles, here's a link to the home page of "The Far Post" series.


Syrian and American diplomats "blamed each other for a lack of progress at peace talks in Geneva aimed at opening a dialogue between Damascus and opposition representatives from the Syrian National Coalition, who are fighting a civil war that activists say has claimed 140,000 lives. The peace talks broke off Saturday (Feb 13), and it’s not clear when, or if, they’ll resume." [Al Jazeera, February 16]