Economic data suggest that the Great Recession of 2008-09 had a long-term effect on the distribution of wealth in the US. The top 1% of the US population have recovered almost completely from the negative effects of the recession, but the bottom 99% have yet to recover from the downturn. It appears as if the losses from the recession will end up being permanent for the bottom 99%, and there is no reason to expect that a recovery will erase those gains. The permanence of those losses suggest that market forces alone will be able to compensate for the bottom 99%–some sort out outside intervention is necessary for recovery.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released a report on the result of a month-long period of bombing in Syria by the US and its allies in the fight against the Islamic State. The report claims that 521 Islamist fighters and 32 civilians have been killed in the strikes. That works out to about a 6% death rate for non-combatants. There is no quantitative measure of what constitutes a war crime in terms of civilian casualties in an active combat zone. Any deliberate civilian death is automatically a war crime, but, assuming that these civilians were accidentally killed in the course of a legitimate military air strike, some civilian deaths are not automatically criminal. But at some point the number of even unintended civilians killed becomes a serious matter.
The patterns of global economic growth are not particularly robust right now, but, as always, there are some exceptions to the general trend. Today, some of the fastest growing markets are ones that often go ignored. But at this time, economic growth is quite strong in the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. These countries have been able to avoid the global slowdown by essentially focusing on domestic demand and the building up of domestic infrastructure. I thank Wintana Balema for bringing this article to my attention.
World Politics News 
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