We don’t want to deluge you with information on the subject, but this week on Crash Course Mythology, Mike Rugnetta is talking once again about floods. We’re looking at ancient flood myths in the Americas, and what they can tell us about the stories that people tell, and how they can look similar, even in cultures separated by large swathes of time and space. We’ll talk about floods from Mayan and Aztec traditions, and as always, see if we can find something in these tales that gives us some insight into what it means to be a human.
11 July 2017
The Intercept: After Viewing Secret Evidence, U.K. Court Rules Arms Sales to Saudis Lawful
British government officials licensed the sale of $4.2 billion (£3.3 billion) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the first 12 months of the Saudi-led bombing in Yemen, which is now in its third year. As of January this year the U.K. Ministry of Defence was itself tracking 252 cases of alleged breaches of international humanitarian law following Saudi coalition air strikes in Yemen. [...]
An array of international organizations — including a UN panel of experts, the European parliament, humanitarian and human rights groups — have repeatedly condemned the ongoing airstrikes against Yemen as unlawful. The British government has twice blocked attempts proposed through the UN Human Rights Council to establish a non-Saudi-led inquiry into alleged violations of international law. [...]
Similar recent attempts to suspend U.S. arms sales to Saudi have so far failed. The Trump administration notified Congress last month of its intention to resume the export of precision guided weapons to the country, suspended under Obama in December. On June 13 the Senate voted 53 to 47 in a narrow defeat of legislation seeking to block some arms sales to Saudi.
Haaretz: Avi Gabbay, a Business Exec With Little Political Experience, Just Won Israel's Labor Party Primary and Hopes to Replace Netanyahu
Avi Gabbay, who won Monday’s runoff for the Labor Party leadership, is not the typical candidate to lead Israel’s largest left-wing party. Not only is Gabbay a relatively new name for the voters, but the path he had chosen so far for his political and business career is at odds with the ways of traditional Labor leaders: He served as environmental protection minister under a different, right-wing party, he sat in a right-wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and before entering the political arena served as CEO of the biggest telecommunications firm in Israel.
On the eve of the runoff that will determine his political future, Gabbay can be seen as a complex and multifaceted character. The same person that had no problem sitting in a government accustomed to a diplomatic freeze now swears he is continuing the path of the late Yitzhak Rabin, and that he is unafraid to touch on the sensitive issue of East Jerusalem. His printed platform even states he would hand over Arab neighborhoods in the capital to the Palestinian Authority. [...]
Even in the business sector it is hard to identify the real Gabbay: He crossed the lines from the Finance Ministry’s budget department for a job at telecommunications monopoly Bezeq, and later fired workers while pocketing tens of millions of shekels for himself. On the other hand, all his colleagues at the firm described to Haaretz a sharp and well-liked manager who made the company more efficient and helped it grow while always treating people with respect. [...]
Kulanu officials note that Gabbay wasn’t always so adamant about Lieberman and his party. Before the 2015 elections, Kulanu and Yisrael Beiteinu had a surplus-vote agreement, which earned Kulanu a 10th seat and enabled it to demand a third ministerial post – for Gabbay. So what changed between then and May 2016? Gabbay’s close associates asserted that the appointment of Lieberman as defense minister following his support for Sgt. Elor Azaria, who executed a gravely wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron, crossed a red line. Kulanu officials deem the resignation a cynical, carefully planned move, an attempt to differentiate himself from Kahlon and to find a gimmick allowing him to strike out on his own. [...]
Gabbay left Bezeq a young man who didn’t have to worry about earning a living. His 14 years there made him a very rich man. He reportedly earned 50 million shekels ($14.1 million). Gabbay told “Uvda” that the 175,000 shekels a month he was earning by the end of his tenure did not necessarily reflect his contribution to Bezeq. His years there gave him the privilege of being able to enter politics for the sake of ideology rather than for a livelihood. Also, it cannot be ruled out that without the enormous sums he earned, he could not have funded his current electoral campaign. His money has also allowed him a larger home in North Tel Aviv, where he lives with his wife Ayelet, a teaching coordinator at a Tel Aviv high school, and their three children. His friends say his wife is a great influence in his life. Some of them say she pushed him for years toward leftist positions.
Al Jazeera: Did Saudi Arabia miscalculate with Qatar feud?
In this web extra, we discuss the new leadership of Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and look at how the current Gulf crisis may shape future diplomatic relations.
"I think [Mohammed bin Salman] has miscalculated, once again," says Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. "I think he has scored an own goal."
"[Mohammed bin Salman] is not going to have quick success everywhere and his biggest challenge, actually, is not in foreign policy, it’s in domestic policy, and in reforming and diversifying his economy, and that’s a huge undertaking," says Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
The panellists also discussed whether relations between Gulf countries will recover.
America Magazine: Preventive strikes on North
From Father Hehir’s perspective a hypothetical preventive strike against North Korea fails a test for moral legitimacy on three “just war” grounds: All other options to conflict have not been exhausted; the expectation of success is weak; and, finally, any strike would initiate a conflict that would lead to a level of noncombatant suffering last witnessed during one of the 20th century’s world wars.
It may be tough for saber rattlers in Washington or on Twitter to accept, but patience and caution ought to continue to guide the Trump administration’s response, according to Father Hehir. “We have not satisfied the last resort criterion in that there are other ways to continue to deal with this problem,” he says, including new diplomatic and economic pressure. In terms of the probability of success, he points out that because its nuclear capability is unclear and its nuclear forces hidden away in deep mountain bunkers or dispersed on mobile launching platforms, “it is very hard to conceive of a use of force that would completely eliminate North Korean nuclear capacity.” [...]
South Korea’s capital Seoul, with 26 million people in its metro area, is a mere 35 miles from the demilitarized zone where 70 percent of Pyongyang’s conventional military capacity is crowded. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, a second Korean War could mean 200,000 to 300,000 South Korean and U.S. military casualties within its first 90 days, in addition to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Another assessment predicts that should Pyongyang “live up to its threat of turning Seoul into a ‘sea of fire,’ casualties in the larger Seoul metropolitan area alone may surpass 100,000 within 48 hours.” A South Korean simulation in 2004 put the figure as high as 2 million civilian casualties in the first days of renewed conflict.
Bloomberg: Italy's Migrant Crisis Is Europe's Problem
Summer makes it easier for migrants to cross the Mediterranean, so Italy is struggling to cope with another influx of refugees. And like before, its European partners are doing too little to help. The Italian government is asking for a new approach, and it's right: The EU should see this as a pan-European issue, requiring a pan-European response.
More than 84,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea in the first six months of this year, nearly 20 percent more than in the first half of 2016. In future, the pressure on Italy's southern shores will only increase, as the demographic boom in Africa and Asia leads more young people to risk their lives for a brighter future in Europe. [...]
Granted, the EU has taken some steps to share the expense. Frontex, the agency patrolling the common border, has seen its budget increase from less than 20 million euros in 2006 to 300 million euros this year. Last week the European Commission approved a financial package with another 35 million euros for Italy to deal with the new surge of migrants, and 46 million euros to help the authorities in Libya, a main point of departure. [...]
Many of Italy's EU partners still see the migrant crisis as not their problem. That's grossly unfair -- and from Italy's point of view, unaffordable. If European solidarity means anything, the EU will finally, belatedly, put this right.
The Washington Post: President Trump is ignoring the lesson of two world wars
But looking at the wilting of America’s influence and alliances, especially the weakening of NATO, solely through the lens of long-term Russian aspirations misses the bigger picture. Trump’s fulfillment of Kremlin aspirations also violates the central tenet of America’s foreign policy since 1945: The United States must stay actively involved to keep Europe stable. Trump instead intends to leave Europe to battle its history alone — a move that threatens the security of the continent, and our own. [...]
Generations of postwar American strategists imbibed this dogma, regardless of party or politics. “The history of the past two hundred years in Europe showed that Western Europe would tear itself to pieces” without outside supervision, Republican Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained in the early 1950s. His Democratic successor, Dean Rusk, toed the same line. “Without the visible assurance of a sizeable American contingent,” he explained, “old frictions may revive, and Europe could become unstable once more.” Advisers to Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan all said the same. [...]
Trump is thus fueling the very forces that previous generations of American policymakers feared as much — if not more — than the Soviets, and the real causes of Europe’s historic inability to keep its own peace. Nationalism is on the rise. Britain voted to leave the European Union. France, Austria and the Netherlands nearly elected proud xenophobes. Poland and Hungary have. More ominously, Europeans are re-arming. Sweden has recently reintroduced military conscription. Norway expanded its own. The European Union announced plans for a new headquarters for military planning and coordination, outside of NATO control or integration.
The Guardian: Improve the Brexit offer to EU citizens, or we’ll veto the deal
The UK response came three weeks later. It was a damp squib, proposing that Europeans obtain the status of “third-country nationals” in the UK, with fewer rights than British citizens are offered throughout the EU. Europeans will not only lose their right to vote in local elections, but family members will be subject to minimum income requirements, and it is unclear what the status of “post-Brexit” babies would be. This carries a real risk of creating second-class citizenship. The proposal is even in contradiction with the Vote Leave manifesto, which promised to treat EU citizens “no less favourably than they are at present”. [...]
While we have the greatest respect for the British legal system, courts apply the laws adopted by British politicians, who are currently unable to give sufficient guarantees for the years to come, let alone for a lifetime. British and European citizens should be able to enforce their rights under a mechanism in which the European court of justice plays a full role.
In early 2019 MEPs will have a final say on the Brexit deal. We will work closely with the EU negotiator and the 27 member states to help steer negotiations. Our wish is to deliver an ambitious and progressive withdrawal agreement; we want to be clear that sufficient progress – especially on citizenship and the financial settlement – is needed before we can define this new relationship between the EU and the UK. Brexit negotiations must be completed by 30 March 2019; we will not support any extension to this deadline, because it would require the UK to hold European elections in May 2019. That is simply unthinkable. [...]
uy Verhofstadt is an MEP, and chairs the European parliament’s Brexit steering group. The article was co-written with a cross-party group of MEPs: Manfred Weber, chair of the European People’s party group; Gianni Pittella, chair of the Socialists and Democrats group; Gabi Zimmer, chair of the European United Left-Nordic Green Left group; Ska Keller and Phillippe Lamberts, co-chairs of the Greens-European Free Alliance group; Elmar Brok, member of the Brexit steering group; Roberto Gualtieri and Danuta Hubner, both members of the Brexit steering group.
CNN: Can this priest persuade church leaders to welcome gay Catholics?
After the massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando last year, only a few Catholic bishops expressed their sympathy or reached out to the LGBT community, and even fewer used the words "LGBT" or "gay" in their statements. That was revelatory to me. Even in death, LGBT people are largely invisible in the church. [...]
He is absolutely right. That doesn't mean that church teaching caused the shooting, but the ways in which religious leaders speak about the LGBT community influences the way the culture at large talks about them. Oftentimes it can give people cover for simply being homophobic, and they can use church teaching as a mask for their homophobia. [...]
You could make the "scandal" case about a whole raft of people: people who are divorced; people who are divorced and remarried without an annulment; women who have given birth to, or men who have fathered, a child out of wedlock; an unmarried couple who are living together. All these things are very public and we chose not to thunder over them. That, to me, is classic discrimination. Either you require everyone to adhere to church teaching -- on everything, not just sexual morality -- or not. But you don't put one person's life under a moral microscope simply because they are LGBT.
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