Turkey-US Relations:Turkey chafes at U.S. pressure over Russian defenses - by Daren Butler

"Turkey chafes at U.S. pressure over Russian defenses" -Turkey said on Tuesday a U.S. House of Representatives' resolution condemning Ankara's purchase of Russian defense systems and urging potential sanctions was unacceptably threatening.

Relations between the two NATO members have been strained on several fronts including Ankara's plans to buy Russia's S-400 air defense systems, the detention of US Consular staff and difference of opinion about Syria, Iran and Iraq policies.

Read more at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-security/turkey-chafes-at-u-s-pressure-over-russian-defenses-idUSKCN1TC0QQ 

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USA: We’re ignoring an American apocalypse: While everyone obsesses about Trump, the middle class is still rapidly dying - by Robert Hennelly

As the actual voting starts for 2016 it is critical we not just fixate on the horse race, but also on just how much socio-economic deterioration has occurred over these last eight years throughout our country.

 To name just one example: Democrats can’t ignore the failure of President Obama’s foreclosure prevention program to stop the accelerating decline of America’s cities and the growth in poverty just because he is a member of their party.

They continue to ignore the collateral damage done to the victims of Wall Street’s uncharged crimes at the nation’s peril.

As it is, the establishment’s inability to openly discuss the impoverishment of so much of America since the Great Recession has led to a rising anger in our nation that well-heeled pundits and politicians are at a loss to grasp. Everybody they know is doing fine.

These privileged elites are just so isolated from the tens of millions of Americans of all races who are finding it increasingly harder to make ends meet.

Flint, Michigan’s water crisis is just the tip of the iceberg.

The corporate media continues to ignore this reality because it does not fit into their narrative of the ruling elite’s “American recovery,” which takes their pals at the banks off the hook for the damage they have done because “it is all better now.”

Network reporters will go to Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, narrowly reporting on the crisis of police-community relations in those places. They will go to Flint and zoom in on the lead-in-the-water issue.

Yet, they will ignore the through-line that connects all of those communities to thousands of similarly situated neighborhoods that are still plagued by foreclosure, abandonment and neglect, years into the so-called recovery.

Reporting on this growing impoverishment of the U.S. population would expose the moral illegitimacy of our form of winner-take-all capitalism itself and the political class that feeds off of it. The sponsors of our major corporate media will have none of that.

Read more: We’re ignoring an American apocalypse: While everyone obsesses about Trump, the middle class is still rapidly dying - Salon.com

EU Social Dimenson: Reviving The EU Social Dimension: A Political Choice

The social dimension of the EU is on the verge of becoming insignificant. At practically all levels there has been a systematic weakening of Social Europe: aims, programmes and instruments have been reduced in the areas of employment policy, labour law and labour relations.

The Community is rolling back previous achievements. Workers and trade unions are losing out. This is particularly evident in three areas.

First, in the euro crisis the European Employment Strategy and the Open Method of Coordination were systematically subordinated to economic-policy aims. In the European Semester – the annual process of co-ordinating EU Member States’ economic policies – the economic and finance ministers have their hands firmly on the tiller. Half of all labour market and social policy recommendations for the Member States are based on legal provisions in the Stability and Growth Pact or the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. Thus, they come within the competence of finance ministers.

Labour and social affairs ministers are marginalised when it comes to their proper concerns. The upshot of all this is recommendations to deregulate national labour markets, decentralise wage systems and restructure social insurance in line with budgetary criteria. The social partners, generally speaking, have weak consultation rights. Trade unions are bypassed.

The EU’s labour market and social policy measures have long amounted to a comprehensive “labour market strategy”. Acknowledging this reality would be a first step for social policy actors towards a stronger say. Instead of continuing to put up with the thematic constriction of the European Employment Strategy the relevant ministers should insist on equal footing with finance ministers. In an era of European inter-governmentalism, a Eurogroup of social and labour ministers is their best bet.

Read more: Reviving The EU Social Dimension: A Political Choice