Global News and Analysis

Source: Truthout

When President Obama said on August 8, 2014, that: “with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale . . . when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” you might have thought that he was talking about the current situation in Gaza. However, as you may or may not be aware, we are once again back to talking about Iraq.

Considering that the US government is ultimately responsible for the scale of death and destruction in Gaza through its sponsorship and unfaltering support for the state of Israel, it might be prudent to ask why, in this part of the world, at this point in time, the US government is considering airstrikes “to prevent a potential act of genocide” while supporting another one in a completely different location. Bear in mind that last year, Iraq saw its most violent year without so much as a comment from Western powers. read more

Source: The Nation

Israel’s war on Gaza has provoked both peaceful and armed resistance in the West Bank, a simmering situation over which the largely discredited PA is losing control.

Ramallah, West Bank—The bullet was still lodged in Ahmad Kittaneh’s right lung when he arrived at Ramallah Hospital late on a Thursday night. The 22-year-old went into cardiac arrest twice, but miraculously pulled through after having been shot by Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia checkpoint, which separates the West Bank from Jerusalem. read more

Source: The Indypendent

When Deborah Cipolla-Dennis moved to Dryden, New York, she and her wife built a house on the 32 acres of land they had purchased. They looked forward to putting down roots in a small, tight-knit rural community that shares the tolerant values of the nearby college town of Ithaca where she works.

However, Cipolla-Dennis soon started receiving visits and phone calls from a representative of the Colorado-based Anschutz Exploration Corporation who urged her to lease her land. He said nothing of fracking — the controversial drilling technique that requires injecting millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand deep into the earth to tap hard-to-reach deposits — but Cipolla-Dennis was wary and shooed him away. read more

Source: Truthout

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel’s goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.

For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.

For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more. read more

There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. So corrosive, so vicious was this charge against any honest critic of Israel that merely to bleat the word “disproportionate” – as in any normal wartime exchange rate of Arab-to-Israeli deaths – was to provoke charges of Nazism by Israel’s would-be supporters. Sympathy for Palestinians would earn the sobriquet “pro-Palestinian”, which, of course,  means “pro-terrorist”. read more

Source: New Internationalist

Exactly one hundred years ago, on 28 July 1914, socialist representatives from across Europe gathered in Brussels. Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. Much of the rest of Europe was expected to join in.

French socialist leader Jean Jaures stood with his arm around the co-chair of the German Social Democrats, Hugo Haase. They insisted that whatever governments and capitalists might do, working-class people must refuse to fight each other. Thousands of people marched against war in cities throughout Europe. read more