Six In The Morning Sunday September 20

Refugee crisis was caused by a careless West that allowed anarchy and fear to take root in the Middle East

The war in Syria and Iraq has gone on as long as the First World War

PATRICK COCKBURN 

 

 

Sunday 20 September 2015

Little has been done to end the four-year civil war that is destroying Iraq and Syria and which has caused the biggest mass flight of people ever seen in the Middle East. More than half of the 23 million Syrian population have fled their homes, of which four million are refugees outside Syria. There is a growing exodus from Iraq, with three million people displaced, many of whom today see that the war is not ending and that they can never again hope to live safely in their own country.

The Iraq-Syrian war is the cause of the European Union’s refugee crisis and it is going to get worse. There is a bloody stalemate in Iraq, with the country divided by military front lines more heavily defended than the frontiers of the state. The Sunni Arabs are suffering particularly badly because they are being forced to leave the previously mixed provinces around Baghdad, where they are suspected of sympathising with Islamic State (Isis). They are unlikely to be able to return. Others flee provinces such as Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin to escape the fighting.

Pro-democracy protesters stage rare rally in Bangkok 

Pro-democracy protesters in Bangkok staged a rally against Thailand's ruling military government despite a ban on protests.

By Staff, Associated Press

BANGKOK — Pro-democracy protesters in Thailand's capital defied a ban on protests and staged a rare rally Saturday against the country's ruling military government.

More than 200 people marched peacefully to Bangkok's Democracy Monument, a symbolic location that has become a rallying point for protests in recent years. They carried anti-junta banners and shouted pro-democracy slogans as a ring of police kept watch over the event but did not break it up.

The demonstration started with a forum at Bangkok's Thammasat University that was allowed by the authorities, who then denied a request to stage a march outside of the campus.

Myanmar approves ‘discriminatory’ marriage bill

President signs a law requiring Buddhist women to seek permission before marrying outside their faith.

20 Sep 2015 08:33 GMT

Myanmar's president has signed a law requiring Buddhist women to seek permission before marrying outside their faith. Parliament passed the bill in July despite criticism that it discriminates against religious minorities and encourages anti-Muslim sentiment.

Al Jazeera's Florence Looi reports from Yangon, Myanmar.

Pope to hold a giant Mass in Cuba one day after veiled critique to leaders

By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

Updated 0525 GMT (1225 HKT) September 20, 2015

Pope Francis will start the second day of his visit to Cuba by holding a Mass in Havana's Revolution Square. Later Sunday he is to meet with government officials and follow that with meetings with local priests and seminarians.

When Francis landed in Cuba on Saturday, quickly calling on the communist nation to "open itself to the world," while praising its recent restoration of diplomatic ties with the United States. 

Francis was greeted by President Raul Castro at Jose Marti International airport in Havana, where the pontiff urged Cuba to grant its people the "freedom, the means and the space" to practice their faith, an implicit criticism of the many restrictions the country places on religion.

Jerusalem's worrying al-Aqsa clashes, explained

Updated by Zack Beauchamp

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been out of the news of late — but a new round of violence in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, which is predominantly Arab, has brought it back into focus.

Clashes over the past few days, between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters, have reportedly wounded dozens of people on both sides. This began several days ago in East Jerusalem, but has spread to other parts of the West Bank. Israel called up hundreds of reserve policemen on Friday and stepped up its police presence in East Jerusalem.

While these clashes were triggered by a recent dispute over a part of Jerusalem, they're symptoms of the inherent instability of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in which the slightest provocation can trigger this kind of violence. This is just a feature of the status quo.

Why North Korea's Latest Nuclear Threats Are Like Groundhog Day All Over Again

An expert explains why we've been here before, and how to break the cycle.

Charlotte AlfredWorld Reporter, The Huffington Post

North Korean officials sent a defiant message to the world over their nuclear and missile programs this week, as the reclusive regime gears up to celebrate the ruling party's 70th anniversary.

The head of Pyongyang's space agency said on Monday it was preparing to send a new earth observation satellite into space on a long-range rocket. The U.S. has warned this would violate United Nations resolutions against Pyongyang conducting ballistic missile tests, because of the similarity of the technology involved. Meanwhile, analysts and South Korean officials are skeptical of the announcement, saying there is little sign that Pyongyang is readying a satellite launch.

A day later, the director of North Korea's Atomic Energy Institute announced that the country's main Nyongbyon nuclear complex was fully operational again and reiterated threats to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. The complex was closed in 2007 during six-party talks with the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. But the talks collapsed, and North Korea said in 2013 that it would resume nuclear enrichment. Tuesday's announcement accords with recent analysis by 38 North, a project of the U.S.-Korea Institute at John Hopkins University, which concluded, based on satellite imagery, that North Korea is "expanding its capacity to mine and mill natural uranium."