Sunday Round-Up - December 8, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the passing of Nelson Mandela, the Iran nuclear deal, the New Zealand climate refugee case, and the activities of ALEC - the conservative group behind some of the most regressive legislation in the country.

"This is the moment of our deepest sorrow. Our nation has lost its greatest son," President Jacob Zuma said last night following the death of the world's most loved statesman, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.  Thus leads the Times (of Johannesburg) article announcing the death on Thursday of the iconic South African.  Nelson Mandela was instrumental in ending apartheid in his country and his passing is being mourned by millions around the world.  The Times reports on his fellow South Africans' reactions to his passing and concludes: "His charisma, generosity of spirit, and an unwavering commitment to the wellbeing of his fellow humans, earned him love and acclaim across the globe.  It earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and as an elder statesman he continued to champion the cause of reconciliation, peace and human rights, speaking out strongly on issues including Aids and armed conflict."  He was 95. [Link to Times Live "Nelson Mandela: A Timeline"]

Don't listen to the critics of the Iran nuclear deal.  As James Action writes in his post at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that criticism is wrong.  The agreement will slow Iran's nuclear progress. "To accurately assess the Geneva deal, four questions need to be answered. First, if Iran abides by the agreement, how much further will it be from the bomb than if there had been no agreement? Second, has the P5+1 made disproportionate concessions to get the deal? Third, if Iran violates the terms of the Geneva agreement, is its noncompliance likely to be detected? And, fourth, if noncompliance is detected, can anything meaningful be done about it? The answers to all of these questions demonstrate that the deal is a good one."  He explores the answers to these questions in detail in the post.  Serge Halimi presents the same message in Le Monde Diplomatique, adding that "after 30 years of confrontation, direct or through intermediaries, Iran and the US are preparing to normalise relations. The event recalls the historic meeting between US president Richard Nixon and China’s Mao Zedong in February 1972... [which] transformed the entire geopolitical scene. The thaw between Iran and US, Halimi writes, "could also help to settle conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan."


The well-funded conservative group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is behind many of the most regressive, anti-government and anti-democracy efforts in the country - including, but certainly not limited to, voter suppression laws.  The Guardian has some of the best coverage of their efforts.  At a time when Citizens United threatens to undermine the foundations of American democracy and rampant partisanship threatens to make government dysfunctional, ALEC is an organization that deserves careful scrutiny.  Here are links to some of The Guardian's recent coverage.  Scary reading...
December 4: ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy
December 3:ALEC facing funding crisis from donor exodus in wake of Trayvon Martin row (yes, they are behind the stand your ground laws)
November 20: Obamacare faces new threat at state level from corporate interest group Alec
(This one is too shameless not to summarize: "A new ALEC proposal, approved by its annual meeting in Chicago in August and published as a model bill for adoption by state assemblies across the nation, would scupper the federal health insurance exchanges set up under Obamacare. The Health Care Freedom Act, as ALEC calls its model bill, threatens to strip health insurers of their licenses to do new business on the federal exchanges should they accept any subsidies under the system.")
August 8: US lobbying group Alec pushing pro-gun agenda despite promise to stop

After New Zealand's high court rejected his appeal for asylum as a climate refugee, Ioane Teitiota has decided to take the case to the Court of Appeals.  Radio New Zealand reported on Wednesday that "Mr Teitiota's lawyer Michael Kidd said on Wednesday the father-of-three will now take his case to the Court of Appeal, where he will argue that rising sea levels are making his homeland uninhabitable."  With a predicted rise of sea level of a half meter or more according to the latest IPCC assessment report, much of Kiribati will be under water by the end of the century.  The Kiribati native's island country's "elevation is no more than 2 meters above sea level. Its fresh water comes from aquifers. Saltwater intrusion into the aquifers is expected to make the islands uninhabitable before rising water overtakes settlements." [Conservation International website] 

Nelson Mandela Images and Quotes
Hate and love - quotespick.com
Poverty - activatingthoughts.blogspot.com

Sunday Round-Up October 27, 2013

In this week's selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media, we look at European reaction to NSA spying, climate refugees, Syria and an update on the Bo Xilai case.  Sources include The Guardian, Deutsche Welle and BBC News.

The Guardian, which played a key role in bringing the NSA spying documents to the public's attention, had several stories on the European reaction to recent revelations. 

On October 25, Ian Traynor reported on warnings from Europeans that fallout from the spying was jeopardizing the international fight against terrorism:

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"Germany and France are to spearhead a drive to try to force the Americans to agree new transatlantic rules on intelligence and security service behaviour in the wake of the Snowden revelations and allegations of mass US spying in France and tapping of the German chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.  At an EU summit in Brussels that was hijacked by the furor over the activities of the National Security Agency in the US and Britain's GCHQ, the French president, François Hollande, also called for a new code of conduct agreed between national intelligence services in the EU, raising the question of whether Britain would opt to join in.  Shaken by this week's revelations of NSA operations in France and Germany, EU leaders and Merkel in particular warned that the international fight against terrorism was being jeopardised by the perception that mass US surveillance was out of control."
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The Guardian's Lizzie Davies and Angelina Chrisafis reported on additional revelations from Italy and France noted in  L'Espresso and Le Monde:

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"The weekly L'Espresso magazine said it had learned that documents obtained by the whistleblower Edward Snowden showed the intensive monitoring of Italian telecoms networks by both the NSA and GCHQ.  L'Espresso ...said it had ascertained that Italy - and particularly Sicily - had become a focus of activity because of its strategic location between Europe, north Africa and the Middle East...

In France, the daily newspaper Le Monde published an internal NSA document which it said showed the "tensions and distrust between Paris and Washington".  The document, a preparatory note before a visit to the NSA by two top French intelligence officials in April 2013, shows that French officials suspected the US could have been behind a now well-known cyber-attack on the French presidential computer network at the Elysée in May 2012....The NSA document states that no US intelligence agency or of its close allies in Britain and Canada were behind the electronic attack...[and] shows that the US maintained it had no role in the cyber-attack."
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Deutsche Welle had an October 24 article on the Kiribati climate refugee case now being considered by New Zealand immigration authorities and the "legal void" that surrounds such cases.   

The case should be decided by the end of this month - just several weeks before UN-organized Warsaw Climate Change Conference. Migration because of climate changes - rising seas, increased extreme weather events and desertification - will increase as global warming takes its toll. Recent estimates have put the possible total at 700 million by mid-century.   (See also Left Bank Café post "Sunday Round-Up October 6, 2013) 

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"Recently, Kiribati's government suggested relocating the entire island state's population of over 100,000 people, if predictions prove accurate that the sea will rise by one meter (3.25 feet) by the end of the century. At the moment, half of the population is crammed on to the central island of Tarawa, which comprises 32 square kilometers (12.4 square miles) of land. New Zealand and Australia, the two most developed countries in the South Pacific, have in recent years resisted calls to change immigration rules in favor of Pacific people displaced by climate change....

But, while conditions in Kiribati are difficult, they do not fall within the scope of the UN refugee convention, said Ska Keller, a migration policy expert with the German Greens party in the European Parliament. At the moment, Finland and Sweden are the only countries in the world to have passed legislation allowing people to apply for asylum for environmental reasons, but the processes there remain largely untested."
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As the effort to secure and destroy Syrian chemical weaponry proceeds and the Syrian civil war continues, Deutsche Welle reports on alleged Jihadist attacks against Christians and moderate Muslims in an October 23 article.    

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 "They want to drive us out of Syria," [says] 29-year-old Jalal Gazouha, whose brother was killed by al Qaeda fighters...  By "they," he's referring to Jihadists from countries neighboring Syria...who have joined in the Syrian civil war to fight against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to Gazouha, they're also targeting Christians.. ..When Gazouha received death threats, he fled the country. "I saw my name on a list on the Internet. That list contained names of Christians who were supposed to be killed, he says, written by "the terrorists of al Qaeda."

 

Jean Kawak, a Syriac bishop from Damascus, chose his words carefully when he spoke about the subject with DW. "We Christians have recently felt threatened by particular radical Islamist groups," he said....These radicalized groups are not only targeting Christians though, Kawak says. "Moderate Muslims are also being threatened."

 

"Reconciliation is possible," says Kawak - of that he is convinced.  But what kind of reconciliation could be possible between Bashar al-Assad and the rebels, the latter of whom have rejected any form of political solution that leaves Assad in power? .... Jochen Langer, Middle East expert at the International Society for Human Rights, shares the bishop's concerns. "The Syrian army is trying, as well as they can, to protect Syria's Christians," he told DW. "But that's only possible to a limited extent."...

 

Sadiq Al-Mousslie, a member of the Syrian National Council in Germany that forms part of the Syrian National Coalition, acknowledges that there were cases of "sporadic attacks by sick individuals" [but denies they were targeted attacks.]"

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Update

[BBC News, October 25] Bo Xilai's appeal of his life sentence was rejected by a Chinese court. "The former Chongqing Communist Party leader was convicted [on charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power].in September....Bo only receives one chance to appeal and his sentence is now final. He could submit a complaint to the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, but the vast majority of such complaints are rejected and do not result in another trial." (See also Left Bank Café post of September 29.)