Middle East: Israeli Massacre in Gaza and the Fallacy of Human Rights

The universal declaration of human rights repeatedly stresses that all people around the world have the right to live regardless of their race, language, and religion. But what is happening in Gaza tells another story. 

It tells the story of powerful countries repeatedly playing on the notion of human rights to  serve their political and economic greed; ironically, these are the very countries who violate what this notion stands for. Media coverage attests to this since viewers watch as the death toll of children, women, elderly people, and even the handicapped rises daily; civilians killed in an unfair and unequal war with no action on behalf of those who can stop it.

War on Gaza has become an international matter. The world has witnessed countless demonstrations supporting the Palestinians’ right for defense, denouncing Israeli terrorism, and urging their government to take real and strong actions. This puts the Israeli government in an embarrassing situation given the fact that even non-Muslims are denouncing its disregard and contempt for human rights.

Arabs also have shown sympathy for and solidarity with Palestinians and have expressed their anger by protesting Israeli crimes and calling for an immediate ceasefire. They have strongly criticized the siege of Gaza and demanded that it be liffted to allow entrance of supplies to the injured.

Thousands of protesters worldwide took to the streets of their cities to urge the United Nations, whose mission is to maintain international peace and security, to pressure the Israeli government to stop this genocide and injustice. The Israeli government’s response to the world’s worries was that “war on terrorism will not stop until terrorism has been uprooted.” This trick has been exploited by Israel to deceive its citizens, as well as the so-called international community.

This can be debunked by simply comparing the number of casualties on both sides. To date, Israeli soldiers have killed more than one thousand Palestinians and injured five thousand; the majority of whom are children according to the Red Cross and NGO reports.

Equally important to consider is that Israeli soldiers bombhouses, target correspondents and civilians, and shoot ambulances; the attack on Aljazeera’s office is a stellar example among many.

On the other side, the Israeli government has declared that 33 of its soldiers have been killed in this war. This ratio indicates that this is not war but rather slaughter of nnocents because they happen to be there and because they have chosen to defend themselves.

Read more: Israeli Massacre in Gaza and the Fallacy of Human Rights | Morocco World News

Ukraine: West's Sanctions Against Russia Remain Relatively Porous - by Marcus Walker and Laurence Norman

The U.S. and Europe are stepping up their sanctions against Russia, but the restrictions remain partial and porous compared with other economic embargoes recently imposed by the West. Bans on buying new bonds of Russian state-owned banks, or on selling some engineering technology to Russia's oil industry, are expected to hurt parts of Russia's economy.

But the measures don't touch Russia's main business with the West: the sale of natural gas and oil to Europe.

That makes the sanctions regime fundamentally different from the sweeping Western embargo that has blocked Iran from selling any oil or gas to its traditional customers in the European Union.

"The EU's core business with Russia has been left untouched," said Stefan Lehne, a scholar at Carnegie Europe, a nonpartisan Brussels think tank. Mr. Lehne said the EU is likely to adopt further sanctions against Russia, including tighter financial-sector restrictions, but that energy supplies won't be touched. "If you really restrict Russian energy exports, then you hurt the EU as much as Russia." EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel have said the sanctions can be scaled back if Moscow becomes more cooperative in the Ukraine conflict—or scaled up if it continues to support pro-Russia rebels there.

But few in Europe can imagine a boycott of Russian gas, which flowed West continuously even at the height of Cold War enmity. Many countries across the Continent have no way of replacing Russian gas quickly or affordably.

A sanctions regime that targets secondary economic ties such as banking, specialized engineering and weapons highlights the limits of the EU's room for maneuver. Despite doubts about the ability of the new measures to change the Kremlin's mind, experience shows international sanctions tend to escalate as the affected country finds ways to evade them. That leads to efforts to plug loopholes and tighten them.

And in this particular conflict, political and military events are intensifying rather than defusing the underlying conflict. "The Ukrainian military is showing greater capability, so Russia has to step back or double down" in supporting the rebels, said Robert Kahn, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

"So far, the signs are it's likely to double down." Sanctions can be effective when accompanied by a workable political strategy to resolve a conflict through negotiations, but sometimes the EU adopts sanctions "out of a sense that something must be done," said Mr. Lehne at Carnegie Europe. "It's possible that this will be one of the effective cases, but it's not guaranteed," he said.

Read more: West's Sanctions Against Russia Remain Relatively Porous - WSJ

US Power Shift Benefits Corporate America: the Hobby Lobby Ruling impact on US and EU US trade negotiations

Last month, as you’ve probably heard, a closely divided Supreme Court ruled that corporations with religious owners cannot be required to pay for insurance coverage of contraception. The so-called Hobby Lobby decision, named for the chain of craft stores that brought the case, has been both praised and condemned for expanding religious rights and constraining Obamacare. 

But beneath the political implications, the ruling has significant economic undertones. It expands the right of corporations to be treated like people, part of a trend that may be contributing to the rise of economic inequality.

The notion that corporations are people is ridiculous on its face, but often true. Although Mitt Romney was mocked for saying it on the campaign trail a few summers ago, the U.S. Code, our national rule book, defines corporations as people in its very first sentence. 

And since the 19th century, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are entitled to a wide range of constitutional protections. This was a business decision, and it was a good one. Incorporation encourages risk-taking: Investors are far more likely to put money into a business that can outlast its creators; managers, for their part, are more likely to take risks themselves because they owe nothing to the investors if they fail.

The rise of corporations, which developed more fully in the United States than in other industrializing nations, helped to make it the richest nation on earth. And economic historians have found that states where businesses could incorporate more easily tended to grow more quickly, aiding New York’s rise as a banking center and helping Pennsylvania’s coal industry to outstrip Virginia’s. 

The notion of corporate personhood still sounds weird, but we rely upon it constantly in our everyday lives. The corporation that published this column, for instance, is exercising its constitutional right to speak freely and to make contracts, taking money from some of you and giving a little to me.

Note EU-Digest: the above should be a clear warning to the EU not to sign any major trade agreement with the US wich has laws in place which gives profit based and not democratically run corporations the same legal rights and status as human beings.

Read more: What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for America - NYTimes.com

Ukraine: Dutch sending unarmed police to Ukraine crash site - by Mike Corder

The Netherlands is sending 40 unarmed military police to eastern Ukraine as part of a ramped-up effort to find the last victims of the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 still at the wreckage site, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced late Thursday.

He also is sending forensic investigators to the site to try to piece together exactly what happened when the plane was shot down a week ago, killing all 298 people on board.
U.S. officials say the Boeing 777 was probably shot down by a missile from territory held by pro-Russian rebels, likely by accident.

Rutte said the military police will help the investigators.

"They are really looking like the forensic experts," he said. "They will be extra hands and eyes to look for remaining remains and personal belongings."

His comments Thursday came hours after two military planes carrying 74 coffins landed at a military base in the Netherlands. A day earlier, the two military transport planes — one Dutch and one Australian — brought back the first 40 coffins and more flights were planned for Friday.

Thousands of people have turned out to watch the convoys of hearses drive from the Eindhoven Air Base to a military barracks in the central city of Hilversum, where the remains will be identified by an international team of experts.

The Netherlands has been given the lead in the investigation into what exactly happened to Flight 17 and is taking charge of efforts to identify the dead. This nation of 17 million was the hardest hit, with 194 of its citizens on board the plane.

Read more: Dutch sending unarmed police to Ukraine crash site - US News

EU must cut umbilical cord with the US - deal with Moscow without US handholding - by Mary Dejevsky

After a harrowing delay, the first bodies from MH17 arrived back at their point of departure on Wednesday.

The sendoff from Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, had been dignified, in contrast to most of their treatment over the previous six days. There were decent coffins, a short military ceremony and soberly dressed officials with heads bowed. A measure of order had been restored.

These arrangements, it appears, were the result of highly complicated negotiations between many parties.

There were representatives of Malaysia (because the plane was theirs); of the Netherlands (because this is where the plane had set off from, and the majority of the passengers were Dutch nationals); of the Ukrainian government (because the plane came down within its borders); of the anti-Kiev rebels (because they control the actual territory where the plane crashed); and of Russia (because it had some lines open to the rebels, if not as much real leverage as many still believe).

Add in international organisations, such as the OSCE, and the various official groups charged with investigating air disasters, plus officials from countries such as Britain that also lost nationals and which can offer particular expertise, and the picture becomes still more complex. When you consider this extensive list, however, what is striking is not just who is there, but who is not. Where, most conspicuously, is the US?

In the early days, some overheated rhetoric wafted across the Atlantic about blame for MH17, especially from Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, who loses no opportunity to rehearse her trademark denunciations of Russia. But President Obama was always more cautious, and now US intelligence officials have expressly excluded “direct” Russian involvement in what happened, while blaming Russia for “helping to create the conditions”.

For the most part, though, the US has remained on the sidelines. Where it has acted, for instance in sending aviation safety officials, it has done so without fanfare. Rather than rush to Kiev or Moscow or the Netherlands, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, has remained in the Middle East, applying his efforts to the ever more destructive conflict over Gaza.

Whether US intervention would have been welcome or not after MH17 is neither here nor there. The downing of the Malaysian plane soon turned into as much of a major international diplomatic crisis (with Russia in the dock) as it was a human tragedy many times over. Somehow, as seen from Europe, you would have expected the US to have been there.

Maybe, though, we Europeans are going to have to get used to the idea that in diplomatic and military – if not economic – terms, Europe has ceased to be special in Washington. There were already hints, during Obama’s first election campaign, that “Yes, we can!” might one day be completed with “do without Europe”.

Read more: Europe must learn to deal with Moscow without US backing | Mary Dejevsky | Comment is free | The Guardian

Netherlands mourns as bodies of MH17 plane crash victims are flown home - by Philip Oltermann

A a day of national mourning in the Netherlands

As the first coffin was lowered from the planes on the runway, silence fell over Eindhoven military airport. The only sound came from a row of flags whipping in the wind at half mast.

Almost a week after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot from the skies above Ukraine, 40 bodies arrived on Wednesday in the Netherlands, the country that bore the heaviest toll in the crash.

King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, joined about 1,000 relatives and friends of the victims, who gathered at the airport for a ceremony receiving the two military transport planes.

A lone trumpeter played the Last Post as troops in dress uniform saluted then carried the wooden caskets to a row of hearses. They drove from the airport under military police escort to an army barracks in the central city of Hilversum where forensic experts were waiting to begin the painstaking task of identifying the remains.
Crowds gathered on bridges along the 65-mile route to throw flowers on to the convoy of 40 hearses.

The Dutch government had declared a day of national mourning – the first since the death of Queen Wilhelmina in 1962 – and at 4.07pm a minute's silence was requested across the country.

Two-hundred and ninety-eight passengers and crew were killed when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpar was shot down last Thursday a week today. The Dutch victims numbered 193. In a nation of just 16 million, few have been unaffected by the disaster.

Read more: Netherlands mourns as bodies of MH17 plane crash victims are flown home | World news | The Guardian

Netherlands: Majority of Dutch population polled want the Netherlands to severe diplomatic relations with Russia

In a recent Dutch poll 58 percent of the people polled said the government should severe diplomatic relations with Russia regardless of the economic consequences .

Another 26 % said major sanctions should be imposed on Russia and 16% wern't sure what to do.

Comparing the percentage of the total Netherlands population with that of the US and the number of Dutch casualties as a result of this Russian missile shoot down of the Malaysian aircraft, the Netherlands suffered a greater loss of livespercentage wise than the US did in 9/11.

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