1 Obama target IS in Syria (San Francisco Chronicle)
Opening a new military front in the Middle East, President Barack Obama has authorized
US airstrikes inside Syria for the first time, along with expanded strikes in
Iraq as part of "a steady, relentless effort" to root out Islamic
State extremists and their spreading reign of terror.
"We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our
country, wherever they are," Obama declared. "This is a core
principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe
haven." Obama announced that he was dispatching nearly 500 more US troops
to Iraq to assist that country's besieged security forces, bringing the total
number of American forces sent there this summer to more than 1,500. He also
urged Congress anew to authorize a program to train and arm Syrian rebels who
are fighting both the Islamic State militants and Syrian President Bashar
Assad.
The president's announcements follow a summer of
deliberation at the White House over how to respond to the violent Islamic
State militants. While administration officials have said they are not aware of
a credible threat of a potential attack by the militants in the US, they say
the group poses risks to Americans and interests across the Middle East.
In recent weeks, the militants have released videos
depicting the beheading of two American journalists in Syria. The violent
images appear to have had an impact on a formerly war-weary public, with
multiple polls in recent days showing that the majority of Americans support
airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria.
2 RBS, Lloyds may quit Scotland (Patrick Collinson,
Jill Treanor & Rupert Jones in The Guardian) The financial implications of
a yes vote for Scottish independence came under intense scrutiny as home owners
were warned it would be harder get a mortgage and Royal Bank of Scotland and
Lloyds Banking Group made plans to move to London if the electorate backed a
breakaway from the UK.
The revelations about the contingency plans by the
two banks – which employ thousands of people in Scotland – to set up legal
entities in England came after Scottish homebuyers were facing warnings it
could be harder to obtain a mortgage in the event of a yes vote.
The bosses of two major companies – BP and Standard
Life – had also voiced their concerns about the impact of a yes vote even
before details emerged of the plans being made by the two bailed-out banks to
move their crucial legal status if the referendum on 18 September backed Alex
Salmond's independence campaign.
Bob Dudley, the BP boss who has faced criticism for
not speaking out enough on the critical issue of oil, said the future prospects
for the North Sea would be best served if the UK stayed together because
"future long-term investments require fiscal stability and
certainty".
One housing industry insider said there has already
been an impact on the housing market, with signs that the market for homes
worth more than £600,000 – the top end of the market in Scotland – is drying
up. At the same time, commercial property deals were being put on hold until
the vote was known – and could be abandoned in the event of a yes vote.
3 Violence is in fact beating a retreat (Jonathan
Power in Khaleej Times) Despite Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan,
Israel/Palestine and Southern Sudan the world is a lot more peaceful than it
was at the end of the Cold War and shows no sign of returning to the bad old
days when there were some 25 wars going on every year. Now it is down to about
a dozen.
The task today is to keep that number going down — a
difficult job when the outbreak of conflict in Syria, Libya and Ukraine have
turned the graph upwards a few notches for the first time. Research suggests
that between 1900 and 2006 campaigns of nonviolent resistance against
authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements.
Iran’s last shah had little difficulty neutralising
the Islamist and Marxist-inspired guerrilla groups during the 1960s and early
70s. But when large numbers of oil workers, bazaar merchants and students used
work stoppages, boycotts and street protests to make their point the repressive
apparatus became overstretched and the economy tanked. Western governments
withdrew their tacit support. The US made it clear it no longer supported the
shah. He had no alternative but to go into exile.
The yoke of dictatorial communism was finally thrown
off in Poland when Pope John Paul, a Pole, urged change and made the clergy
read out his views at mass, and a movement that began in the shipyards, led by
Lech Walesa, calling itself Solidarity, gathered widespread support. Tunisia is
the one clear victor in the “Arab Spring”. It was because all the anti-regime
movements obeyed their leaders’ calls to remain non-violent that the transition
to democracy has been peaceful.
The evidence gathered from 1900 to 2006 suggests
that violent campaigns have only a 30 per cent chance of success — movements
like the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (later overthrown by the Vietnamese)
and the mujahideen against the Soviet army in Afghanistan (later pushed aside
by the Taleban) all came to grief. Nonviolence is a hard fist in a velvet
glove. We need to see more of it not less.
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