• Listen to this segment with Robert Jensen

Uprising’s guest expert Robert Jensen, an author and a professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzes today’s news headlines:

Israel has launched air strikes on Gaza just hours after a ceasefire that would have expired had been extended. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strikes, claiming they were in response to three rockets fired from Gaza. The move may derail ceasefire negotiations taking place in neighboring Egypt. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said that Israel has banned them from entering Gaza to carry out their investigations. Members of the groups have been trying to enter since July 7th but have been prevented by authorities. In the past they had used the Rafah crossing but since that was shut down, they are effectively barred. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the end of the ceasefire, and here for an RT.com article about Amnesty Intl and HRW being barred from Israel.

The US is claiming it has successfully wrested the critically important Mosul Dam in Iraq from the Sunni rebel group ISIS. The US’s military operation has not coordinated this closely with Iraqi and Kurdish forces since the US occupation was in effect. In a speech yesterday, President Obama warned Iraq’s government which is currently undergoing a political restructuring, not to let US military involvement lull them into a false sense of security. He said, “Don’t think that because we’ve engaged in airstrikes to protect our people that now is the time to let your foot off the gas and return to the kind of dysfunction that has so weakened the country generally.” Click here for a New York Times article about the story.

Here in the US, there have been three separate incidents of accidental and potential gun violence in the past few days. A 63-year old woman in Tampa, Florida this morning accidentally shot her 7 year old grandson, thinking he was an intruder. The boy is “in critical but stable condition,” according to Reuters. And, a week ago a Sheriff’s deputy in Virginia shot his own teen daughter in the early hours of the morning, also mistaking her for an intruder. So far it appears she has survived. In Southern California, police have arrested two students from South Pasadena High School on suspicion of carrying out a mass shooting. Click here for a Reuters article about the Florida shooting, here for a NY Daily News article about the Virginia shooting, and here for an LA Times article about the South Pasadena school arrests.