TDB Top 5 International Stories: Monday 31st July 2017
5: So, Is Trump Gonna Build That Wall or What?
After Friday morning’s dramatic Senate vote on the latest Republican healthcare bill, the efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act are stalled, if not totally dead. There goes one of Donald Trump’s major campaign promises. Is the wall the next one to be broken?
The wall on the US-Mexico border, ostensibly vital for curbing illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the states, has been one of Trump’s most original, and absurd-seeming ideas. Though it’s often derided, the president seems committed to it, recently speculating about putting solar panels on the future wall, and making sure it’s transparent so no one gets killed by bags of drugs tossed over it. But despite a high-profile (if wonky) development this week it remains unclear how the wall is going to be funded, and the battle over the money issue could drive Trump to desperation.
Vice News
4: Saudi-led bloc ‘cannot shrink list of demands on Qatar’
Four Arab countries boycotting Qatar will only enter dialogue to ease the dispute if Doha agrees to certain demands, and “fights terror”, the group said on Sunday as they met in Manama.
High-level officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt reiterated their positions on the Gulf crisis, condemning Qatar for what they perceive as Doha’s support for armed groups.
Qatar has repeatedly denied those allegations.
Aljazeera
3: REPUBLICANS GOT GOOD AT SYMBOLIC REPEALS OF OBAMACARE, BUT FLINCHED WHEN FACED WITH REALITY
BEFORE THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT had even been signed into law, congressional Republicans were promising to repeal it. Those solemn vows continued throughout the 2010 midterms, helping Republicans take back the House in the tea party wave.
They used that position of power to pass repeal after repeal after repeal — and to point at the Democratic-controlled Senate as an obstacle to be overcome.
In 2014 they finally took the upper chamber back. With unified control of Congress, in 2015 they sent President Obama a full repeal of Obamacare. He vetoed it. The message to activists was clear: Republicans needed to control the White House, too.
In 2016, they took the White House. And then things got real.
The Intercept
Two Iowa-based Catholic Worker activists revealed they secretly carried out multiple acts of sabotage and arson in order to stop construction of the controversial $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. We speak with Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya about how they set fire to heavy machinery being used to construct the pipeline. They say their actions were inspired by the anti-nuclear Plowshares Movement which used nonviolent direct action to target nuclear warheads and military installations.Democracy Now
1: Greek debt crisis: ‘People can’t see any light at the end of any tunnel’
The worst is clearly behind us.” Panaghiota Mourtidou pondered the words with a gravity unusual for the jovial volunteer. Even now, several days after the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, saw fit to use the phrase, she still feels somewhat bewildered. “Politicians clearly have no idea of the reality on the ground,” she said. “If they did, they wouldn’t make such pronouncements because, really, it couldn’t be worse.”
It is four years since the Guardian met Mourtidou packing food boxes at the Solidarity Club which she and other concerned citizens were running out of the local branch of Tsipras’s then radical Syriza party. At the time, the leftist was an ardent fan of the only political force she truly believed could pull Greece from the depths of financial collapse.
Tsipras’s promise to stamp out austerity, his raised fist and fiery rhetoric appealed to her sense of justice. In the summer of 2013 – almost 18 months before assuming power – he was “our big hope, the big promise of better days”.
The Guardian
he (Tsipras’s then radical Syriza party) was “our big hope, the big promise of better days”.
Yes well the lesson we have all learned;- was after the Elite globalists (in this case the EU Troika) totally put him through the wringer he was reduced to a puppy, so next time refuse to discuss a bail-out plan as anyone will just be swindled.