U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle - NYTimes.com

U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle - NYTimes.com:



"BAGHDAD — With American bombs raining down from the sky, Shiite militia fighters aligned with Iran battled Sunni extremists over the weekend, punching through their defenses to break the weekslong siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter."



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At Risk in Senate, Democrats Seek to Rally Blacks - NYTimes.com

At Risk in Senate, Democrats Seek to Rally Blacks - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — With their Senate majority imperiled, Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office."



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A Long Way From Recovery, Europe Tries to Find Its Way - NYTimes.com

A Long Way From Recovery, Europe Tries to Find Its Way - NYTimes.com:



 "PARIS — Six years after being struck by economic crisis, Europe is facing a fresh downturn, with few new ideas on the table for reigniting growth and deepening political divisions over the austerity policies that many blame for worsening the malaise."



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Separatists Force Captured Ukrainian Prisoners to Shovel Dirt - NYTimes.com

Separatists Force Captured Ukrainian Prisoners to Shovel Dirt - NYTimes.com:



"SNEZHNOYE Ukraine (Reuters) - Watched over by separatist rebels with automatic weapons, a group of captured Ukrainian soldiers toiled with shovels and brooms on Friday to clear up dirt and rubble from the ruins of an eastern town."



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Obama Said to Weigh Delaying Action on Immigration - NYTimes.com

Obama Said to Weigh Delaying Action on Immigration - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — Under pressure from nervous Democratic Senate candidates in tight races, President Obama is rethinking the timing of his pledge to act on his own to reshape the nation’s immigration system by summer’s end, and could instead delay some or all of his most controversial proposals until after the midterm elections in November, according to people familiar with White House deliberations."



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Sweden Raises Military Alert Level Due to Ukraine Crisis - NYTimes.com

Sweden Raises Military Alert Level Due to Ukraine Crisis - NYTimes.com:



 "STOCKHOLM — Sweden put its top military staff on higher alert on Friday as a result of the situation in Ukraine, the armed forces said."



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Ukraine Rebels Advance on Key Port, in Hint at Putin’s Strategy - NYTimes.com

Ukraine Rebels Advance on Key Port, in Hint at Putin’s Strategy - NYTimes.com:



 "NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine — Backed by Russian troops and weaponry, hundreds of Ukrainian rebel militiamen mobilized on Friday in this southeastern town, vacated by the Ukrainian military two days ago, and began to push toward the strategic seaport of Mariupol 27 miles away. The leader of the rebels called the advance a broad new effort to wrest control of a wide swath of coastal territory from the central government."



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Malaysia Airlines to Cut 30% of Work Force - NYTimes.com

Malaysia Airlines to Cut 30% of Work Force - NYTimes.com:



 "BANGKOK — Malaysia Airlines will cut 6,000 jobs, or about 30 percent of its work force, and receive a bailout from the Malaysian government amounting to nearly $2 billion, according to a restructuring plan announced on Friday."



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Brazil's Economy Slips Into a Recession - NYTimes.com

Brazil's Economy Slips Into a Recession - NYTimes.com:



 "SAO PAULO — Brazil's government says the country's gross domestic product contracted 0.6 percent in the second quarter compared with the previous three months, sending the country's economy into a recession."



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Mr. Putin Tests the West in Ukraine - NYTimes.com

Mr. Putin Tests the West in Ukraine - NYTimes.com:



 "The evidence has been mounting for some time, but there is no longer any doubt: Russian troops are in Ukraine, not as volunteers, as the rebel commander in Donetsk would have the world believe, but in units equipped with mobile artillery and heavy military equipment."



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Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion - NYTimes.com

Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — President Obama condemned the latest Russian military advance into Ukraine on Thursday and said the United States and its allies would take further actions to punish Moscow for violating its neighbor’s sovereignty, but he stopped short of calling it an invasion."



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Ukraine to Bring Back Compulsory Military Service: Ukraine Defense Council - NYTimes.com

Ukraine to Bring Back Compulsory Military Service: Ukraine Defense Council - NYTimes.com:



 "KIEV — Ukraine, which is fighting a war in the east against separatists, is to re-introduce compulsory military service from this autumn, but conscripts will not serve in the conflict zone, Ukraine's defense and security council ruled on Thursday."



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As Kiev Meets on Crisis, Rebel Claims Aid of Russian Troops - NYTimes.com

As Kiev Meets on Crisis, Rebel Claims Aid of Russian Troops - NYTimes.com:



"MOSCOW — Declaring that Russian troops had crossed into Ukraine, President Petro O. Poroshenko on Thursday canceled a planned visit to Turkey and convened a meeting of the national security council to focus on the “marked aggravation of the situation” in the southeast of his country."



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9 Mexicans Can Return to Contest Deportations - NYTimes.com

9 Mexicans Can Return to Contest Deportations - NYTimes.com:



 "LOS ANGELES — Nine Mexican immigrants who agreed to be deported from the United States during the last five years will be allowed to return to fight their expulsions under an agreement announced Wednesday that could also include other Mexicans who consented to leave."



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Immigration Clash Could Lead to Shutdown - NYTimes.com

Immigration Clash Could Lead to Shutdown - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — As President Obama nears a decision on taking broad executive action to reshape the nation’s immigration system, Republicans are threatening to force a confrontation over what they describe as a power grab by refusing to finance some or all of the moves."



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Stockholm Syndrome in Paris

Sure enough, President Hollande has finally shown some steel — moving forcefully to suppress critics of his slavish adherence to the austerity demanded by Germany and Brussels.

The question I would ask is, what do Hollande and his inner circle think will make the situation turn around? Europe’s austerity drive has now gone on for four years; over the course of those four years the euro area has seen economic recovery shrivel, a much-touted comeback also stumble, and now a slide toward deflation. French economic performance tends to track the eurozone average; why should anyone expect France to come roaring back?

I’ll try to produce a more systematic analysis later today or tomorrow; but does anyone think that the Élysée Palace has a well-thought-out vision of how ever more austerity is going to produce a French renaissance? It’s just stumbling along day by day, waiting for something to turn up — when it’s much more likely that everything will turn down instead.

Ukraine Says Russian Forces Lead Major New Offensive - NYTimes.com

Ukraine Says Russian Forces Lead Major New Offensive - NYTimes.com:



"NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine — Tanks, artillery and infantry have crossed from Russia into an unbreached part of eastern Ukraine in recent days, attacking Ukrainian forces and causing panic and wholesale retreat not only in this small border town but a wide swath of territory, in what Ukrainian and Western military officials are calling a stealth invasion."



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Recording May Capture Shots Fired at Michael Brown - NYTimes.com

Recording May Capture Shots Fired at Michael Brown - NYTimes.com:



 "FERGUSON, Mo. — The federal authorities have received a brief video clip from a man who lives near the site where Michael Brown was killed and which, the man’s lawyer says, inadvertently captured the sounds of the gunshots fired at Mr. Brown."



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Hard-Line Splinter Group, Galvanized by ISIS, Emerges From Pakistani Taliban - NYTimes.com

Hard-Line Splinter Group, Galvanized by ISIS, Emerges From Pakistani Taliban - NYTimes.com:



"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani Taliban has suffered its second major split in three months, with militant leaders this week confirming the emergence of a hard-line splinter group inspired by the success of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria."



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U.S. Mobilizes Allies to Widen Assault on ISIS - NYTimes.com

U.S. Mobilizes Allies to Widen Assault on ISIS - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — The United States has begun to mobilize a broad coalition of allies behind potential American military action in Syria and is moving toward expanded airstrikes in northern Iraq, administration officials said on Tuesday."



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Mexican President Thanks California for Aiding Undocumented Migrants - NYTimes.com

Mexican President Thanks California for Aiding Undocumented Migrants - NYTimes.com:



"SACRAMENTO Calif. (Reuters) - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto thanked California on Thursday for improving the lives of immigrants from his country, including legalizing drivers' licenses for undocumented migrants and making it easier for them to work and start businesses."



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Safety Advocates Call for Florida to Curb Floating Watering Holes - NYTimes.com

Safety Advocates Call for Florida to Curb Floating Watering Holes - NYTimes.com:



 "MIAMI — In the clear waters of the bay here, not far from President Richard M. Nixon’s former compound on Key Biscayne, boaters enjoying a floating bacchanal routinely drop anchor on a sandbar, tether their boats together, and spend the day swimming, drinking, blasting music and jumping from boat to boat."



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Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on L.A. visit - LA Times

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on L.A. visit - LA Times:



"Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto kicked off a two-day tour of California with a speech to Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles on Monday in which he pledged to make life better for his countrymen living on both sides of the border."



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American Man Fighting for ISIS Is Killed in Syria - NYTimes.com

American Man Fighting for ISIS Is Killed in Syria - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — A 33-year-old American who was fighting for the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in recent days in a battle with a rival group in Syria, a senior American official said on Tuesday."



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American Man Fighting for ISIS Is Killed in Syria - NYTimes.com

American Man Fighting for ISIS Is Killed in Syria - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — A 33-year-old American who was fighting for the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in recent days in a battle with a rival group in Syria, a senior American official said on Tuesday."



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Egypt and United Arab Emirates Said to Have Secretly Carried Out Libya Airstrikes - NYTimes.com

Egypt and United Arab Emirates Said to Have Secretly Carried Out Libya Airstrikes - NYTimes.com:



"CAIRO — Twice in the last seven days, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have secretly teamed up to launch airstrikes against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli, Libya, four senior American officials said, in a major escalation between the supporters and opponents of political Islam."



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Robert Fisk: Isis's undoubted skill in exploiting social media is no reason for US leaders to start talking about the apocalypse

We keep banging on about British citizens turning into Jihadists – that tired old public relations man Dave Cameron does this all the time, with his worn-out political correctness – and it’s almost impolite to say “Muslim British citizens”. But isn’t it time we said “Muslim British citizens of Pakistani or Indian origin”? For – saving the occasional Arab-origin recruit - that, surely, is what we are talking about.

Whether James Foley’s killer comes from London or Newcastle (still my choice by accent), he seems to have been born into a British community of Muslims whose background – whether family or parents’ place of birth – lies within that vast, crushed jewel which we used to call the Raj.

Of course, it’s not difficult for these fighters to learn Arabic – Pushtu and Urdu, for a start, is written in Arabic script and they can thus read Arabic. From there it’s only a short step to understanding the language. But the political origin of Indian Muslims – and here I’ll use the frontiers of the old British India - surely provide a clue to the origins of the “Islamic State” which our modern-day Mahdi, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has created.

I suspect these roots lie in the Deobandis, one of several Sunni groups founded in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, a Muslim rebellion which we, of course, crushed with our usual ruthlessness.

The Deobandis’ House of Learning was to become the leading theological school in India, founded 10 years after the Mutiny by Mohamed Abed Husain in Uttar Pradesh. It was partly intended to counter the pro-western Muslim colleges whose curriculum included both Islam and western liberal sciences – not unlike the French “inculturation” of Egypt at about the same time.

As my esteemed colleague Ahmed Rashid has pointed out, while the Deobandis restricted women, opposed Muslim hierarchies and rejected the Shia, the Taliban “were to take these beliefs to an extreme which the original Deobandis would never have recognised.” But adopt their precepts, the Taliban did; after all, once Pakistan came into existence in 1947 – another uniquely British creation – the Deobandis became far more important in what was now the majority Muslim corner of what had been the Raj.

Even before partition, however, the Afghan government had sought help from the Deobandis to build state-controlled schools (madrassas) but half a century later, the Deobandi and Taliban distaste for tribal leadership coalesced. To quote Rashid again, the Taliban debased the Deobandi tradition of learning and reform, “excepting no concept of doubt except as sin and considering debate as little more than heresy.” By 1998 Taliban groups along the Afghan-Pakistan border were punishing sinners with stoning and amputation, killing Shia Muslims and forcing women to adopt Islamist dress. Sound familiar?

Even more so, perhaps, the next little tale. For in 2000, I visited a Taliban school at Akora Khattak in what was then the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. It was a Deoband production line of young men from Pakistan itself, from Afghanistan, from Tajikistan and, yes, from Chechnya. They laboured over the Koran but they used modern computers. There were 2,500 students with a waiting list of 15,000. A poster showed a Russian bear skewered with a green Muslim flag. Another depicted the former Soviet Union coloured green. “All of this is going to be Islam,” one of the students told me. Again, does this sound faintly familiar? Isn’t the new ‘Caliphate’ talking about Islamising the world – including, I notice, the White House?

One of Akora Khattak’s teachers, a genuinely religious man, explained to me that “the more the United States and the Western world and the nations that murder Muslims oppress us, the sooner there will be an Islamic republic. Our morale is high and it’s possible to have an Islamic Union all over this area and we want to create such a union – like the EU and Nato.” But the moment I asked in astonishment about the Nato parallel, he launched into a speech about the right of Muslims to have a nuclear bomb. “If the Hindus make a bomb (in India), It’s not a Hindu bomb,” he complained. “But the Muslims who make a bomb are called fundamentalist terrorists.”

But a few more thoughts. Across the vast area of Arab land which now comprises the ‘caliphate’, most of the population are from agricultural regions – from the broken farming land of civil war Iraq and from the dispossessed Syrian country population who lost their livelihood during their own country’s pre-civil war agricultural ‘reforms’, a poverty which drove them to the fringes of cities like Aleppo and Raqqa. These people lack the education they deserved and – while never touching the school-less communities of Afghanistan – they were never given the technical skills which I saw the students of Akora Khattak learning 14 years ago.

But those who have arrived in al-Baghdadi’s realm from the world of the internet and the website have come from abroad - the hi-tech jihadists, if you like, who understand that they will never receive a fair hearing from the West’s largely supine and unquestioning media but who are prepared to create their own. It was their ability to produce such a chilling videotape of James Foley’s beheading – but one which was also quite slickly made in its perverse way – that prompted the infantile outbursts (‘apocalyptic’/’end-of-days’) from America’s defence secretary and top soldier last week. These jihadi guys, they seem to have been saying, not only slaughtered Westerners – they knew how to use technology.

James Foley’s kidnappers, for example, searched through his laptop in a way no Taliban would have dreamed of 20 years ago. And that was where they found out that his brother was in the US air force. Foley, according to his friends who were later released, tried to make light of the beatings he then received. His treatment grew worse once his computer memory had been opened. That is what the foreign jihadis have added to this latest Middle East war, a profound understanding of a science which we hitherto thought – in some unenlightened, blimp-like way – belonged to us. We still have not reflected deeply enough about the internet in this context. In a world in which the most ferocious verbal attacks – poison pen letters gone made - can be made on politicians, journalists, even NGOs, is it surprising that the same science of power without responsibility has provided al-Baghdadi and his lads with their most potent weapon, an armament which can be used against us but also a science which they can share.

The Taliban used to hang television sets on trees. No more. Like so many others, I admired al-Baghdadi’s wrist-watch on the famous video of his Mosul sermon. For now we also live in the Age of Rolex.

Timeline for a Body: 4 Hours in the Middle of a Ferguson Street - NYTimes.com

Timeline for a Body: 4 Hours in the Middle of a Ferguson Street - NYTimes.com:



 "FERGUSON, Mo. — Just after noon on Saturday, Aug. 9, Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer on Canfield Drive."



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Robert Fisk: All this talk of an ‘apocalyptic’ threat is simply childish

"Apocalyptic." "End-of-days strategic vision." "Beyond anything we have ever seen." "An imminent threat to every interest we have." "Beyond just a terrorist group." "We must prepare for everything."

So are they Martians? Alien invaders from Planet X? Destroyer spacecraft from the movie Independence Day?

The word movie is the clue. Chuck Hagel and Martin Dempsey were pure Hollywood. It only needed Tom Cruise at their press conference to utter the words “Mission impossible”. Who writes this God-awful script? Can’t the US Defence Secretary and his joint chiefs chairman do better than this?

Even the titans of World War Two – Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin – never used this kind of rhetoric when they confronted real-life evil empires.

Churchill talked of Hitler threatening “a new dark age” and Stalin urged the Soviets to destroy the “robber hordes” of Germany. Roosevelt described the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour as “a day which will live in infamy”. Did the victors of the 1939-45 conflict ever use such trashy semantics to define their mortal enemies?

Never. They said what they meant. They would not dream of insulting our common sense by referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s crackpot “caliphate” as apocalyptic. Even at his most insane, General Gordon (of Khartoum fame) wanted only to “smash up” the Mahdi – the latter being the 19th century equivalent of Baghdadi – and look what the Mahdi did to Gordon!

The followers of Mohamed Ahmed ibn Abdullah, against orders, chopped off Gordon’s head. Revenge took many forms, including the Battle of Omdurman where the British destroyed the Dervish army of the now-dead Mahdi’s successor.

One of those Britons was Churchill himself, who commented eloquently that “the weapons … and the fanaticism of the Middle Ages were brought by an extraordinary anachronism into dire collision” with modern organisation, adding generously that his opponents were men “of the most desperate valour”.

Those were the days. You could slaughter your cruellest enemies without exaggerating their power or ignoring their courage.

But the art of rhetoric – of exaggerated and artificial language – is intended to deflect reality. At one point, almost unnoticed, a White House official, Ben Rhodes, said that the US would not now be limited by “geographic boundaries” – after Dempsey had told the world that the Iraqi-Syrian border was “non-existent”.

Odd that. It wasn’t non-existent a few months ago when the Assad regime was about to be given the Isis treatment. But now Assad’s lads are chatting – so I hear – to Dempsey’s lads about their mutual apocalyptic-visioned enemy, which has just beheaded an American journalist who (so American officials claimed not long ago) was in an Assad jail.

Long forgotten now is that one of the journalists viciously murdered in Gordon’s 19th-century war against the Mahdi was Frank Power, Khartoum correspondent of The Times who tried to make it through enemy lines down the Nile. He was tricked with his companions into eating with the rebels – who then murdered the lot. They say Power was beheaded. Certainly his severed head is produced in that old Hollywood clunker Khartoum when Gordon (Charlton Heston) meets the Mahdi (Laurence Olivier).

But Obama can relax. He called Isis a “cancer”, but Gordon never met his adversary – that bit of the movie was a hoax – until the Mahdi saw Gordon’s own chopped-off head in a leather bag. Someone should tip off Chuck and Martin on the difference between Hollywood and reality.

Oh yes, and I noticed that Chuck said of the “Islamic State” that it was “as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen.” Sophisticated? Really? And funded by whom, I wonder? If our new enemies have an end-of-days vision, where does the cash come from, Chuck?

Order vs. Disorder, Part 3

Thomas L. Friedman

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THE United States is swamped by refugee children from collapsing Central American countries; efforts to contain the major Ebola outbreak in West Africa are straining governments there; jihadists have carved out a bloodthirsty caliphate inside Iraq and Syria; after having already eaten Crimea, Russia keeps taking more bites out of Ukraine; and the U.N.’s refugee agency just announced that “the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.” If it feels as though the world of disorder is expanding against the world of order, it’s not your imagination. There’s an unfortunate logic to it.

Three big trends are converging. The first is what one of my teachers Dov Seidman calls the growing number of  “un-free” people in the world — the millions who “have secured a certain kind of freedom but yet feel un-free because they’re now aware that they don’t have the kind of freedom that matters most.”

Seidman, author of the book “How” and C.E.O. of LRN, which advises global businesses on governance, points out that while there’s been a lot of warranted focus on the destabilizing effects of income inequality, there is another equally destabilizing inequality emerging at the same time: “It is the inequality of freedom, and it is even more disordering.”

That may sound odd. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the toppling of dictators in the Arab awakening, how could more people be feeling “un-free”?

Seidman looks at the world through the framework of “freedom from” and “freedom to.” In recent years, he argues, “more people than ever have secured their ‘freedom from’ different autocrats in different countries.” Ukrainians, Tunisians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis to name a few. “But so few are getting the freedom we truly cherish,” he adds. “And that is not just ‘freedom from.’ It is ‘freedom to.’ ”

“Freedom to” is the freedom to live your life, speak your mind, start your own political party, build your own business, vote for any candidate, pursue happiness, and be yourself, whatever your sexual, religious or political orientation.

“Protecting and enabling all of those freedoms,” says Seidman, “requires the kind of laws, rules, norms, mutual trust and institutions that can only be built upon shared values and by people who believe they are on a journey of progress and prosperity together.”

Such values-based legal systems and institutions are just what so many societies have failed to build after overthrowing their autocrats. That’s why the world today can be divided into three kinds of spaces: countries with what Seidman calls “sustainable order,” or order based on shared values, stable institutions and consensual politics; countries with imposed order — or order based on an iron-fisted, top-down leadership, or propped-up by oil money, or combinations of both, but no real shared values or institutions; and, finally, whole regions of disorder, such as Iraq, Syria, Central America and growing swaths of Central and North Africa, where there is neither an iron fist from above nor shared values from below to hold states together anymore.  

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Imposed order, says Seidman, “depends on having power over people and formal authority to coerce allegiance and compel obedience,” but both are much harder to sustain today in an age of increasingly empowered, informed and connected citizens and employees who can easily connect and collaborate to cast off authority they deem illegitimate.

“Exerting formal power over people,” he adds, “is getting more and more elusive and expensive” — either in the number of people you have to kill or jail or the amount of money you have to spend to anesthetize your people into submission or indifference — “and ultimately it is not sustainable.” The only power that will be sustainable in a world where more people have “freedom from,” argues Seidman, “is power based on leading in a two-way conversation with people, power that is built on moral authority that inspires constructive citizenship and creates the context for ‘freedom to.’ ”

But because generating such sustainable leadership and institutions is hard and takes time, we have a lot more disorderly vacuums in the world today — where people have won “freedom from” without building “freedom to.”

The biggest challenge for the world of order today is collaborating to contain these vacuums and fill them with order. That is what President Obama is trying to do in Iraq, by demanding Iraqis build a sustainable inclusive government in tandem with any U.S. military action against the jihadists there. Otherwise, there will never be self-sustaining order there, and they will never be truly free.

But containing and shrinking the world of disorder is a huge task, precisely because it involves so much nation-building — beyond the capacity of any one country. Which leads to the second disturbing trend today: how weak or disjointed the whole world of order is. The European Union is mired in an economic/unemployment slump. China behaves like it’s on another planet, content to be a free-rider on the international system. And Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is playing out some paranoid czarist fantasy in Ukraine, while the jihadist world of disorder encroaches from the south.

Now add a third trend, and you can really get worried: America is the tent pole holding up the whole world of order. But our inability to agree on policies that would ensure our long-term economic vitality — an immigration bill that would ease the way for energetic and talented immigrants; a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would replace income and corporate taxes; and government borrowing at these low rates to rebuild our infrastructure and create jobs, while gradually phasing in long-term fiscal rebalancing — is the definition of shortsighted.  

“If we can’t do the hard work of building alliances at home,” says David Rothkopf, author of the upcoming book “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear,” “we are never going to have the strength or ability to build them around the world.”

 The Cold War involved two competing visions of order. That is, both sides were in the world of order, and all we in the West needed to do was collaborate enough to contain the East/Communism. Today is different. It is a world of order versus a world of disorder — and that disorder can only be contained by the world of order collaborating with itself and with the people in disorder to build their “freedom to.” But “building” is so much harder than “containing.” It takes so much more energy and resources. We’ve got to stop messing around at home as if this moment is just the same-old, same-old — and our real and tacit allies had better wake up, too. Preserving and expanding the world of sustainable order is the leadership challenge of our time. 

U.S. Faces Suit Over Tactics at Immigrant Detention Center - NYTimes.com

U.S. Faces Suit Over Tactics at Immigrant Detention Center - NYTimes.com:



"In a challenge to the Obama administration’s strategy for deterring illegal border crossings by Central American migrants, civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the government committed egregious due process violations against women and children held for deportation at a detention center in New Mexico."



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More Than 1,000 Businesses in U.S. Affected by Same Cyberattack That Hit Target - NYTimes.com

More Than 1,000 Businesses in U.S. Affected by Same Cyberattack That Hit Target - NYTimes.com:



"More than 1,000 American businesses have been affected by the cyberattacks that hit the in-store cash register systems at Target, Supervalu and most recently UPS Stores."



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U.S. Weighs Direct Military Action Against ISIS in Syria - NYTimes.com

U.S. Weighs Direct Military Action Against ISIS in Syria - NYTimes.com:



"EDGARTOWN, Mass. — A top national security adviser to President Obama vowed Friday that the United States would “do what is necessary” in Syria to protect American interests and said that direct military action was possible against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS."



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Pentagon Condemns Russian Movements Into Ukraine - NYTimes.com

Pentagon Condemns Russian Movements Into Ukraine - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. government "strongly condemns" the unilateral movement of a Russian convoy into Ukraine."



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Russian Trucks Cross Border Without Assent of Ukraine - NYTimes.com

Russian Trucks Cross Border Without Assent of Ukraine - NYTimes.com:



 "IZVARYNE, Ukraine — More than 200 trucks from a long-stalled Russian convoy said to be carrying humanitarian aid crossed the border into eastern Ukraine on Friday, without the consent of the Ukrainian government and unaccompanied by Red Cross escorts, as had been earlier agreed upon."



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Rebels Falter, but Russian Border Buzzes With Military Activity - NYTimes.com

Rebels Falter, but Russian Border Buzzes With Military Activity - NYTimes.com:



 "DONETSK, Russia — They arrive every day, carloads of young men and women in camouflage who pass through this Russian border checkpoint before heading for the battlefields of eastern Ukraine."



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Couple Used Dog to Lure 2 Amish Girls as Part of Slavery Scheme, Official Says - NYTimes.com

Couple Used Dog to Lure 2 Amish Girls as Part of Slavery Scheme, Official Says - NYTimes.com:



 "FOWLER, N.Y. — A northern New York couple used a dog to lure two Amish sisters from their family farm stand with a plan to turn them into slaves, an investigator testified on Thursday at a hearing."



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Halting ISIS Would Require Attacks in Syria, Top General Says - NYTimes.com

Halting ISIS Would Require Attacks in Syria, Top General Says - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday afternoon that it would not be possible to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria without attacking its fighters in Syria."



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Watch This | A Rolex That a Scientist Can Love

Watch This | A Rolex That a Scientist Can Love:



"Rolex Oyster Perpetual Milgauss

Ironically, for some engineers and technicians, accurate time-telling can prove difficult: magnetic fields sometimes disrupt the performance of mechanical watches. So in 1956, Rolex introduced the Milgauss, a timepiece designed specifically to resist magnetic interference up to 1,000 gauss (or, G’s). Now the brand unveils its latest version of the classic model, which has gained a reputation as the ultimate watch for scientists. It features an electric blue dial that complements a green sapphire crystal and the Milgauss’s signature orange-lightning-bolt-shaped second hand.



 $8,200, rolex.com."



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Rick Perry Says Terrorists Could Be Entering U.S. Along Mexico Border - NYTimes.com

Rick Perry Says Terrorists Could Be Entering U.S. Along Mexico Border - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — Gov. Rick Perry, Republican of Texas, on Thursday raised the “very real possibility” that individuals affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other terrorist groups have already slipped across the border as he made the case that border security was a pressing national security issue."



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Brains of Autistic Children Have Too Many Synapses, Study Suggests - NYTimes.com

Brains of Autistic Children Have Too Many Synapses, Study Suggests - NYTimes.com:



 "Shedding new light on brain function in autism, a new study suggests that there is an oversupply of synapses in at least some parts of the brains of children with autism, and that the brain’s ability to thin out the number of synapses is compromised."



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Bank of America Expected to Settle Huge Mortgage Case for $16.65 Billion - NYTimes.com

Bank of America Expected to Settle Huge Mortgage Case for $16.65 Billion - NYTimes.com:



 "The Justice Department is poised to announce a $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America over accusations that it duped investors into buying toxic mortgage securities, say people briefed on the matter — the single largest government settlement by a company in American history."



'via Blog this'

Fed Dissenters Increasingly Vocal About Inflation Fears - NYTimes.com

Fed Dissenters Increasingly Vocal About Inflation Fears - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — An increasingly vocal minority of Federal Reserve officials want the central bank to retreat more quickly from its stimulus campaign, arguing that the bank has largely exhausted its ability to improve economic conditions."



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Obama, Outraged Over Beheading, Vows to Stay on Course - NYTimes.com

Obama, Outraged Over Beheading, Vows to Stay on Course - NYTimes.com:



 "EDGARTOWN, Mass. — President Obama declared that the entire world was “appalled” by the beheading of an American journalist by militants in Syria, but vowed that America would not change course in Iraq, where the United States has been conducting airstrikes against terrorists, despite threats by the group to kill another reporter in the days ahead."



'via Blog this'

U.S. Could Send Another 300 Military Personnel to Iraq: Official - NYTimes.com

U.S. Could Send Another 300 Military Personnel to Iraq: Official - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has requested additional military personnel to provide security in Iraq, a U.S. official said on Wednesday."



'via Blog this'

Will the Ends, Will the Means - NYTimes.com

Will the Ends, Will the Means - NYTimes.com:



 "Hillary Clinton recently reignited the who-lost-Syria debate when she suggested that President Obama made a mistake in not intervening more forcefully early in the Syrian civil war by arming the pro-democracy rebels. I’ve been skeptical about such an intervention — skeptical that there were enough of these “mainstream insurgents,” skeptical that they could ever defeat President Bashar al-Assad’s army and the Islamists and govern Syria. So if people try to sell you on it, ask them these questions before you decide if you are with Clinton or Obama:"



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Man Killed by St. Louis Officers in Disturbance at Store - NYTimes.com

Man Killed by St. Louis Officers in Disturbance at Store - NYTimes.com:



"ST. LOUIS — An emotionally disturbed 23-year-old black man was shot and killed by St. Louis police officers on Tuesday afternoon, the authorities said, threatening to further inflame a community still reeling after another shooting by an officer in a suburb less than two weeks ago."



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America’s Racial Divide, Charted - NYTimes.com

America’s Racial Divide, Charted - NYTimes.com:



 "America’s racial divide is older than the republic itself, a central fault line that has shaped the nation’s history. This month it has manifested itself in sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., after a police killing of an unarmed young black man. The resonance of that event is related to deeper racial fissures between blacks and whites; that divide is the reason that the events in Ferguson amount to something bigger than a local crime story."



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Cities Rocked by Past Unrest Offer Lessons in What, and What Not, to Do - NYTimes.com

Cities Rocked by Past Unrest Offer Lessons in What, and What Not, to Do - NYTimes.com:



"The trigger for civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo. — the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a police officer — has also provoked riots in American cities both small and large in the last two decades. But few of those disturbances were as stubbornly resistant to resolution as the Missouri protests, which now have drawn the National Guard and even the White House into efforts to restore calm."



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Obama Says Iraqi Dam Has Been Retaken From Militants - NYTimes.com

Obama Says Iraqi Dam Has Been Retaken From Militants - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that Iraqi special forces and Kurdish fighters, backed by American war planes, had retaken a strategically critical dam near Mosul, the latest in what he described as a string of positive steps in halting the march of Islamic extremists across the country."



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Violence Flares in Ferguson After Appeals for Harmony - NYTimes.com

Violence Flares in Ferguson After Appeals for Harmony - NYTimes.com:



"FERGUSON, Mo. — Hours ahead of a second night of a mandatory curfew, the most chaotic violence in a week of unrest broke out here Sunday evening, with law enforcement officers facing off against angry protesters and responding to reports of gunfire and fire bombs."



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Gunfire Erupts as Protesters Flee in Missouri City Where Officer Shot Black Teen - NYTimes.com

Gunfire Erupts as Protesters Flee in Missouri City Where Officer Shot Black Teen - NYTimes.com:



"FERGUSON Missouri (Reuters) - Shots were fired and police shouted through bullhorns for protesters to disperse, witnesses said, as chaos erupted Sunday night in Ferguson, Missouri, which has been racked by protests since an unarmed black teenager was shot by police last week."



'via Blog this'

Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times - NYTimes.com

Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times - NYTimes.com:



 "FERGUSON, Mo. — Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was killed by a police officer, sparking protests around the nation, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, a preliminary private autopsy performed on Sunday found."



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Why We Fight - NYTimes.com

Why We Fight - NYTimes.com:



 "A century has passed since the start of World War I, which many people at the time declared was “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, wars just kept happening. And with the headlines from Ukraine getting scarier by the day, this seems like a good time to ask why."



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Clusters of Protesters Defy Night Curfew in Ferguson - NYTimes.com

Clusters of Protesters Defy Night Curfew in Ferguson - NYTimes.com:



"Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri on Saturday imposed a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in this small city, declaring a state of emergency as violence flared anew after a week of street protests over the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer."



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Missouri Governor Declares Emergency in Ferguson and Orders Nightly Curfew - NYTimes.com

Missouri Governor Declares Emergency in Ferguson and Orders Nightly Curfew - NYTimes.com:



"FERGUSON, Mo. — After a week of unrest following the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer, Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri on Saturday declared a state of emergency in Ferguson and ordered a curfew."



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Why the Children Fleeing Central America Will Not Stop Coming | The Nation

Why the Children Fleeing Central America Will Not Stop Coming | The Nation:



 "On Friday, June 11, David de la O disappeared. He was walking home from school in rural Santa Cruz Michapa, a small city in El Salvador about an hour’s drive from San Salvador, the nation’s capital. David’s family searched for him all night, without success. The next morning, his remains were found buried in an abandoned field outside town. He had been stabbed four times in the torso; his head, arms and legs had been severed. David was only 11 years old. In fourth grade, he had been learning long division and multiplication and practicing verb tenses. With no leads to go on, the police speculated that David was killed and dismembered by gang members because he refused to join their ranks. (He went to school in an area controlled by one gang and lived in a neighborhood dominated by another.)"



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Ferguson Police Identify Darren Wilson as Officer in Fatal Shooting and Link Teenager to Robbery - NYTimes.com

Ferguson Police Identify Darren Wilson as Officer in Fatal Shooting and Link Teenager to Robbery - NYTimes.com:



 "FERGUSON, Mo. — The police in Ferguson broke their weeklong silence on Friday and identified the officer involved in the fatal shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager, as demanded by protesters and the family of the victim."



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San Bernardino Starts Bondholder Talks Two Years After Bankruptcy - NYTimes.com

San Bernardino Starts Bondholder Talks Two Years After Bankruptcy - NYTimes.com:



 "RIVERSIDE Calif. (Reuters) - San Bernardino, California, has begun face-to-face talks with some of its biggest creditors - bondholders and insurers - for the first time, two years after filing for bankruptcy in a case that has slowed to a crawl in the past 12 months."



'via Blog this'

Iraq’s Prime Minister Agrees to Relinquish Power - NYTimes.com

Iraq’s Prime Minister Agrees to Relinquish Power - NYTimes.com:



"BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Thursday night said he agreed to relinquish power, state television reported, a move that came after days of crisis in which Mr. Maliki’s deployment of extra security forces around the capital raised worries of a military coup."



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Obama Calls for Open Inquiry Into Police Shooting of Teenager in Ferguson, Mo. - NYTimes.com

Obama Calls for Open Inquiry Into Police Shooting of Teenager in Ferguson, Mo. - NYTimes.com:



"FERGUSON, Mo. — President Obama called on the police in this St. Louis suburb to be “open and transparent” as they investigate the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, and he urged calm in a city that has been rocked by violence in recent days."



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Holder: 'Concerned' About Tensions in Ferguson, MO - NYTimes.com

Holder: 'Concerned' About Tensions in Ferguson, MO - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder says he's concerned that the use of military equipment by police in Ferguson, Missouri, is sending a "conflicting message.""



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Anger Simmers in Ferguson, Missouri; Hackers Claim to Name Officer - NYTimes.com

Anger Simmers in Ferguson, Missouri; Hackers Claim to Name Officer - NYTimes.com:



"FERGUSON, Mo. — After a fifth night of unrest in this St. Louis suburb, a group identifying itself as Anonymous, the computer hacking collective, disclosed Thursday what it said was the name of the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed African-American teenager on Saturday."



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U.S. Breaks Siege on Iraqi Mountain, Defense Officials Say - NYTimes.com

U.S. Breaks Siege on Iraqi Mountain, Defense Officials Say - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape."



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Mexico: State Firm Gets 83 Pct of 2P Reserves - NYTimes.com

Mexico: State Firm Gets 83 Pct of 2P Reserves - NYTimes.com:



"MEXICO CITY — Mexico's state-owned oil company will retain rights to exploit 83 percent of the country's proven and probable reserves, but could form alliances with private firms in some of those fields."



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Robert Fisk: Don't Dare Mention Oil!

In the Middle East, the first shots of every war define the narrative we all dutifully follow. So too, this greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis in Iraq. Christians fleeing for their lives? Save them. Yazidis starving on the mountain tops? Give them food. Islamists advancing on Irbil? Bomb them. Bomb their convoys and “artillery” and their fighters, and bomb them again and again until…

Well, the first clue about the timeframe of our latest Middle East adventure came at the weekend when Barack Obama told the world – in the most disguised “mission creep” of recent history – that “I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem [sic] in weeks – this is going to take time.” So how much time? At least a month, obviously. And maybe six months. Or maybe a year? Or more? After the 1991 Gulf War – there have actually been three such conflicts in the past three-and-a-half decades, with another in the making – the Americans and British imposed a “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq and Kurdistan. And they bombed the military “threats” they discovered in Saddam’s Iraq for the next 12 years.

So is Obama laying the groundwork – the threat of “genocide”, the American “mandate” from the impotent government in Baghdad to strike at Iraq’s enemies – for another prolonged air war in Iraq? And if so, what makes him – or us – think that the Islamists busy creating their caliphate in Iraq and Syria are going to play along with this cheerful scenario. Do the US President and the Pentagon and Centcom – and, I suppose, the childishly named British Cobra committee – really believe that Isis, for all its medieval ideology, is going to sit on the plains of Ninevah and wait to be destroyed by our munitions?

No, the lads from Isis or the Islamic State or the caliphate or whatever they like to call themselves are simply going to divert their attacks elsewhere. If the road to Irbil is closed, then they’ll take the road to Aleppo or Damascus which the Americans and British will be less willing to bomb or defend – because that would mean helping the regime of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom we must hate almost as much as we hate the Islamic State. Yet if the Islamists do try to capture all of Aleppo, besiege Damascus, and push on across the Lebanese frontier – the largely Sunni Mediterranean city of Tripoli would seem a choice target – we are going to be forced to expand our precious “mandate” to include two more countries, not least because they border the one nation even more deserving of our love and protection than Kurdistan: Israel. Anyone thought of that?

And then, of course, there’s the unmentionable. When “we” liberated Kuwait in 1991, we all had to recite – again and again – that this war was not about oil. And when we invaded Iraq in 2003, again we had to repeat, ad nauseam, that this act of aggression was not about oil – as if the US Marines would have been sent to Mesopotamia if its major export was asparagus. And now, as we protect our beloved Westerners in Irbil and succour the Yazidis in the mountains of Kurdistan and mourn for the tens of thousands of Christians fleeing from the iniquities of Isis, we must not – do not and will not – mention oil.
An oil drilling facility in 

Taq Taq, near Erbil I wonder why not. For is it not significant – or just a bit relevant – that Kurdistan accounts for 43.7 billion barrels of Iraq’s 143 billion barrels of reserves, as well as 25.5 billion barrels of unproven reserves and three to six trillion cubic metres of gas? Global oil and gas conglomerates have been flocking to Kurdistan – hence the thousands of Westerners living in Irbil, although their presence has gone largely unexplained – and poured in upwards of $10bn in investments. Mobil, Chevron, Exxon and Total are on the ground – and Isis is not going to be allowed to mess with companies like these – in a place where oil operators stand to pick up 20 per cent of all profits.

Indeed, recent reports suggest that current Kurdish oil production of 200,000 barrels a day will reach 250,000 next year – providing the boys from the caliphate are kept at bay, of course – which means, according to Reuters, that if Iraqi Kurdistan were a real country and not just a bit of Iraq, it would be among the top 10 oil-rich countries in the world. Which is surely worth defending. But has anyone mentioned this? Has a single White House reporter pestered Obama with a single question about this salient fact?

Sure, we feel for the Christians of Iraq – although we cared little enough when their persecution started after our 2003 invasion. And we should protect the minority Yazidis, as we promised – but failed – to protect 1.5 million genocided Armenian Christians from their Muslim killers in the same region 99 years ago. But don’t let’s forget that the masters of the Middle East’s new caliphate are not fools. The boundaries of their war stretch far beyond our military “mandates”. And they know – even if we do not admit – that our real mandate includes that unspeakable word: oil.

Scrambling Down an Iraqi Mountain, Yazidi Families Search for Missing - NYTimes.com

Scrambling Down an Iraqi Mountain, Yazidi Families Search for Missing - NYTimes.com:





"FISHKHABOUR, Iraq — Like sleepwalkers moving under a blazing sun, family after family from the Yazidi minority made their way across the narrow bridge that spans the river between Syria and Iraq, hardly seeming to see where they were going until they reached the Iraqi side."



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Capitalizing on U.S. Bombing, Kurds Retake Iraqi Towns - NYTimes.com

Capitalizing on U.S. Bombing, Kurds Retake Iraqi Towns - NYTimes.com:



"GWER, Iraq — With American strikes beginning to show clear effects on the battlefield, Kurdish forces counterattacked Sunni militants in northern Iraq on Sunday, regaining control of two strategic towns with aid from the air."



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Israelis and Palestinians Accept New Cease-Fire Deal - NYTimes.com

Israelis and Palestinians Accept New Cease-Fire Deal - NYTimes.com:



"JERUSALEM — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Sunday accepted Egypt’s call for a new 72-hour cease-fire in the Gaza fighting to start at one minute after midnight Monday and for a resumption of Egyptian-mediated negotiations toward a more durable solution for Gaza."



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The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It: Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig: 9780691162386: Amazon.com: Books

The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It: Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig: 9780691162386: Amazon.com: Books:



The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. The Bankers' New Clothes examines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid. Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig argue that we can have a safer and healthier banking system without sacrificing any of its benefits, and at essentially no cost to society. They seek to engage the broader public in the debate by cutting through the jargon of banking, clearing the fog of confusion, and presenting the issues in simple and accessible terms.



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Obama Warns of ‘Long-Term’ Iraq Strikes - NYTimes.com

Obama Warns of ‘Long-Term’ Iraq Strikes - NYTimes.com:



 "WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Saturday that the airstrikes and humanitarian assistance drops he ordered last week in Iraq could go on for months, preparing Americans for an extended military presence in the skies there as Iraq’s leaders try to build a new government."



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Robert Fisk: "Bombs away! US to the rescue – but only of certain minorities, not Muslims"

Obama’s air strikes on Isis in northern Iraq are hypocritical, and a sense of déjà vu is understandable

He wouldn’t bomb Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s bloody caliphate when it was butchering the majority Shia Muslims of Iraq. But Barak Obama is riding to the rescue of the Christian refugees – and the Yazidis – because of “a potential act of genocide”. Bombs away. And thank heavens that the refugees in question are not Palestinian.

This hypocrisy almost takes the breath away, not least because the US President is still too frightened – in case he upsets the Turks – to use the “G” word about the 1915 Turkish genocide of a million and a half Armenian Christians, a mass slaughter on a scale which even Abu Bakr’s thugs have not yet attempted. We’ll have to wait another year to see how Obama wriggles out of the 100th anniversary commemorations of that particular Muslim massacre of Christians.

But for now, “America is coming to help” in Iraq with air strikes on “convoys” of Isis fighters. But isn’t that what the Americans staged against the Taliban in Afghanistan, often mistaking innocent wedding parties for Islamist “convoys”? Dropping food parcels to minority refugees in fear of their lives on the bare mountainsides of northern Iraq – also under way – is exactly the same operation US forces performed for the Kurds almost a quarter of a century ago; and in the end, they had to put American and British soldiers on the ground to create a “safe haven” for the Kurds.

Nor has Obama said anything about his friendly ally Saudi Arabia, whose Salafists are the inspiration and fund-raisers for the Sunni militias of Iraq and Syria, just as they were for the Taliban in Afghanistan. The wall between the Saudis and the monsters they create – and which America now bombs – must be kept as high as it must be invisible. That is the measure of American dissimulation in this latest act of duplicity. Obama is bombing the friends of his Saudi allies – and the enemies of the Assad regime in Syria, by the way – but won’t say so. And just for good measure, he believes that America must act in defence of its consulate in Erbil and embassy in Baghdad.

That’s the same excuse the US used when it fired its naval guns into the Chouf mountains of Lebanon 30 years ago: that Lebanon’s pro-Syrian warlords were endangering the US embassy in Beirut. That the Islamists are as unlikely to seize Irbil as they are to capture Baghdad is neither here nor there. Obama says he has a “mandate” to bomb from the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki, the elected but dictatorial Shia who now runs Iraq as a broken and sectarian state. How we Westerners love “mandates”, ever since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which drew the borders of the Middle East for our “mandates” – the very frontiers which Abu Bakr’s caliphate has now sworn to destroy. There is not much doubt about the awfulness of the equally sectarian Isis which Abu Bakr is creating.

His threat to the Christians of Iraq – convert, pay tax or die – has now been turned against the Yazidis, the harmless and tiny sect whose Persian-Assyrian roots, Christian-Islamo rituals and forgiving God have doomed them as assuredly as the Christians. Ethnic Kurds, the poor old Yazidis believe that God, whose seven angels supposedly govern the Earth, pardoned Satan: so inevitably, this ancient people came to be regarded as devil-worshippers. Hence their 130,000 refugees – at least 40,000 of them living on mountain rocks in at least nine locations around Mount Sinjar – tell stories of rape, murder and child-killing at the hands of Abu Bakr’s men. Alas, they may all be true.
The Yazidis are probably descended from supporters of the second Umayyad Caliph, Yazid the First; his suppression of Hussein, the son of Ali – whose followers are now the Shia of the Middle East – might theoretically have commended the Yazidis to Abu Bakr’s Sunni Muslim army. But their mixed rituals and their denial of evil were never going to find favour with a group which – like Saudi Arabia and the Taliban – believes in “the suppression of vice and the propagation of virtue”. In the fault lines that lie across ancient Kurdistan, Armenia and what was Mesopotamia, history has dealt the Yazidis a bad hand.

But for them and the Nestorians and other Christian groups, Obama has gone to war. The French, their old Crusader spirits reawakened, called the Security Council to reflect upon this Christian pogrom. But the question remains: would America have done the same if the wretched minority refugees of northern Iraq had been Palestinians? Or will Obama’s latest bombing campaign merely provide a welcome distraction from the killing fields of Gaza?

Rebels Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam - NYTimes.com

Rebels Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam - NYTimes.com:



 "ERBIL, Iraq — Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital."



'via Blog this'

Obama Weighs Airstrikes or Aid to Help Trapped Iraqis, Officials Say - NYTimes.com

Obama Weighs Airstrikes or Aid to Help Trapped Iraqis, Officials Say - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — President Obama is considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday."



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Texas Bolsters Border Patrol With Its Own - NYTimes.com

Texas Bolsters Border Patrol With Its Own - NYTimes.com:



 "MISSION, Tex. — Along the Rio Grande here, the suspected smugglers trying to slip into the United States have certainly noticed their adversaries on the water: burly commandos in black-and-white boats mounted with .30-caliber machine guns and bulletproof shields. The patches on the officers’ camouflage fatigues identify them not as federal Border Patrol agents but as another breed of law enforcement entirely."



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Michel Warschawski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michel Warschawski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:



"Michel Warschawski (Mikado) (Hebrew: מיכאל ורשבסקי (מיקאדו)‎) is an Israeli anti-Zionist activist. He led the Marxist Revolutionary Communist League (previously Matzpen-Jerusalem) until its demise in the 1990s, and founded the Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian-Israeli non-governmental organization, in 1984."



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U.S. Inquiry Finds a ‘Culture of Violence’ Against Teenage Inmates at Rikers Island - NYTimes.com

U.S. Inquiry Finds a ‘Culture of Violence’ Against Teenage Inmates at Rikers Island - NYTimes.com:



 "In an extraordinary rebuke of the New York City Department of Correction, the federal government said on Monday that the department had systematically violated the civil rights of male teenagers held at Rikers Island by failing to protect them from the rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force by correction officers."



'via Blog this'

New Cease-Fire in Gaza as Israel Winds Down Military Operation - NYTimes.com

New Cease-Fire in Gaza as Israel Winds Down Military Operation - NYTimes.com:



"JERUSALEM — Claiming it had achieved most of its objectives and pressured by Western allies to stop causing civilian casualties in Gaza, Israel moved to wind down its operations there on Monday — either unilaterally or through a new Egyptian-brokered cease-fire announced late in the day."



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Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Is Working - NYTimes.com

Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Is Working - NYTimes.com:



"Although the enemies of health reform will never admit it, the Affordable Care Act is looking more and more like a big success. Costs are coming in below predictions, while the number of uninsured Americans is dropping fast, especially in states that haven’t tried to sabotage the program. Obamacare is working."



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One Direction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One Direction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:



 "One Direction (commonly initialised as 1D) are an English-Irish pop boy band based in London, comprising Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. They signed with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records after forming and finishing third in the seventh series of the British televised singing competition The X Factor in 2010. Propelled to international success by social media, One Direction's three albums, Up All Night (2011), Take Me Home (2012) and Midnight Memories (2013) broke records, topped charts in most major markets, and generated hit singles including "What Makes You Beautiful", "Live While We're Young" and "Story of My Life"."



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Extremists Seize 3 More Towns in Iraq After Routing Kurdish Forces - NYTimes.com

Extremists Seize 3 More Towns in Iraq After Routing Kurdish Forces - NYTimes.com:



 "BAGHDAD — Sunni extremists seized control of three towns in northern Iraq on Sunday after fierce battles with Kurdish security forces, sending thousands of people fleeing to the nearby mountains and threatening the country’s largest dam."



'via Blog this'

Airstrike Near U.N. School Kills 10, Gaza Officials Say - NYTimes.com

Airstrike Near U.N. School Kills 10, Gaza Officials Say - NYTimes.com:



"JERUSALEM — As Israel began to redeploy significant numbers of its troops away from populated areas of Gaza on Sunday, an Israeli Air Force missile struck near the entrance of a United Nations school sheltering displaced Gazans in Rafah, killing 10 people and wounding 35 others."



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Dress the Gaza situation up all you like, but the truth hurts - Comment - Voices - The Independent

Dress the Gaza situation up all you like, but the truth hurts - Comment - Voices - The Independent:



 "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."



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How This War Ends - NYTimes.com

How This War Ends - NYTimes.com:



"RAMALLAH, West Bank — I HAD held off coming to Israel, hoping the situation in Gaza would clarify — not in terms of what’s happening, but how it might end in a stable way. Being here now, it is clear to me that there is a way this cruel little war could not only be stopped, but stopped in a way that the moderates in the region, who have been so much on the run, could gain the initiative. But — and here is where some flight from reality is required to be hopeful — developing something that decent out of this war will demand a level of leadership from the key parties that has simply never been manifested by any of them. This is a generation of Arab, Palestinian and Israeli leaders who are experts at building tunnels and walls. None of them ever took the course on bridges and gates."



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