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By Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh

2 February 2013

@ http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com

Here is where Israeli colonial settlements continue to expand on our lands. Here is where Israeli elites make billions from injustice while nature and people suffer.  Here is the forefront of a global struggle. Here is where western hypocrisy gets exposed.  Rhetoric about democracy and liberty in Syria and Iran is stripped naked when people see Western supported colonialism, racism and subjugation in Palestine. Here is where billions of Western taxpayer money is used to destroy life while enriching land thieves and war criminals.  Here where we lost most of our land to colonial settler activity and suffer regularly from racist settler attacks.  Here is where morality is shed daily because of paranoia and inferiority/superiority complexes (chosen but eternally victimized Jewish “people”).  Here is where immorality has become a norm of society (see good analytic piece in Haaretz below).  Here is where yesterday the Israeli occupation army and racist colonial settlers attacked villagers in Burin.  Several Palestinians were injured (one 16-year old Palestinian was shot by live ammunition from settlers). 18 were brutally arrested/kidnapped including our friend Ashraf Aburahma from Bilin. Ashraf was himself arrested many times in nonviolent demonstrations.  In one videotaped event, he was handcuffed, blindfolded and THEN shot at close range by occupation soldiers.

But here also is where we must and we will change things.  Here the struggle goes on (La Luta Continue, tastimur almasira) to hang on to our humanity. We Palestinians with help of people of conscience from around the world must do better to challenge immorality (including “mental occupation”).  We must work harder to undermine apartheid and repression.  More people come to visit and participate with us in our struggle thus lighting candles in the darkness.  We must accelerate this and be more bold.  Nothing scares the elites in the apartheid state or their Western and Arab/Palestinian collaborators than actions like civil disobedience and BDS (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions) and other forms of practical resistance.  There are signs of a new uprising/intifada. It will be the 13th or 14th wave/uprising on the way to liberty.  We hope it is a global uprising against injustice and that is why many of us talk with internationals on a daily basis about morality, justice, and human rights.  Of course there will be pain along the way (as happened yesterday in Burin) because no freedom is acquired without struggle and sacrifices. May the families of those thousands of martyrs killed in the struggle be comforted.  May the injured heel.  May the prisoners be released (some are now close to death as they engaged in a hunger strike).  May all the suffering end.  May more people shed immorality and join us to work to accelerate the end of injustice.

Do visit Palestine frequently even if only in your mind.

Just one story of thousands in the land of immorality: The struggle of Burin village

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/14847

http://972mag.com/palestinians-erect-third-west-bank-outpost-are-attacked-by-idf-settlers/65308/

Pictures http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.560035280673447.130173.136633479680298&type=3

Videos before the evictions and arrest but shows settlers throwing stones

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=K5mtU5SPRYU

Video of beating and kicking a Palestinian during the arrests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVklEywRgUE

Standing defiant. Khalid Daragmah’s family protect their land in a sea of settlements

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/resources/interviews/5144-standing-defiant-khalid-daragmahs-family-protect-their-land-in-a-sea-of-settlements

Follow-up: In my talks and in taking delegations around, I sometimes mention some things which happened in the past like the story of the “fugitive cows” in Beit Sahour or the destruction of a playground in Beit Jala.  Here and in future emails I will send some follow-up on these stories and on stories I had shared in previous emails.  They are not only relevant to those who heard directly from me about these things but to the thousands of others who receive those emails.

The Story of 18 fugitive cows of Beit Sahour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJcfJTELmoM

Video of the Israeli destruction of a playground to build an apartheid wall on Palestinian land http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH5KAvkgoDE

Analytical pieces

Never Again – unconditionally:

“As Jews, with our own painful history of oppression, we are compelled to speak out against human rights violations committed by the State of Israel – in our name – against the Palestinian people.” These are the first words of a group of South African Jews in their public statement in the Mail & Guardian of 14 December 2012. They recognize not only their own wounds and humanity…………

http://marthiemombergblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/never-again-unconditionally/

Big Brother: When secrecy becomes a norm in Israel, it comes as a price premium

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/big-brother-when-secrecy-becomes-a-norm-in-israel-it-comes-with-a-price.premium-1.500560

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour

By Countercurrents.org

02 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

In the Last year, more active-duty US soldiers killed themselves than died in combat. And after a decade of deployments to war zones, the problem seems to get much worse.

“Suicide among service members and veterans challenges the health of America’s all-volunteer force. While any loss of military personnel weakens the US armed forces, the rapid upswing in suicides among service members and veterans during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan threatens to inflict more lasting harm”, said Losing the Battle, The Challenge of Military Suicide, policy brief of Center for a New American Security. The observation was made in October 2011.

The policy brief, at that time, questioned:

“If military service becomes associated with suicide, will it be possible to recruit bright and promising young men and women at current rates? Will parents and teachers encourage young people to join the military when veterans from their own communities have died from suicide? Can the all-volunteer force be viable if veterans come to be seen as broken individuals? And how might climbing rates of suicide affect how Americans view active-duty service members and veterans – and indeed, how service members and veterans see themselves?”

Now, in February 2013, on the issue Ed Pilkington reports* from New York:

Libby Busbee is pretty sure that her son William never sat through or read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, even though he behaved as though he had. Soon after he got back from his final tour of Afghanistan, he began rubbing his hands over and over and constantly rinsing them under the tap.

“Mom, it won’t wash off,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“The blood. It won’t come off.”

On March 20, last year, the soldier’s striving for self-cleanliness came to a sudden end. That night he locked himself in his car and, with his mother and two sisters screaming just a few feet away and with Swat officers encircling the vehicle, he shot himself in the head.

At the age of 23, William Busbee had joined a gruesome statistic. In 2012, for the first time in at least a generation, the number of active-duty soldiers who killed themselves, 177, exceeded the 176 who were killed while in the war zone.

To put that another way, more of America’s serving soldiers died at their own hands than in pursuit of the enemy.

Across all branches of the US military and the reserves, a similar disturbing trend was recorded. In all, 349 service members took their own lives in 2012, while a lesser number, 295, died in combat.

Shocking though those figures are, they are as nothing compared with the statistic to which Busbee technically belongs. He had retired himself from the army just two months before he died, and so is officially recorded as death as a veteran – one of an astonishing 6,500 former military personnel who killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.

‘He wanted to be somebody, and he loved the army’

Busbee’s story, as told to the Guardian by his mother, illuminates crucial aspects of an epidemic that appears to be taking hold in the US military, spreading alarm as it grows. He personifies the despair that is being felt by increasing numbers of active and retired service members, as well as the inability of the military hierarchy to deal with their anguish.

That’s not, though, how William Busbee’s story began. He was in many ways the archetype of the American soldier. From the age of six he had only one ambition: to sign up for the military, which he did when he was 17.

“He wasn’t the normal teenager who went out and partied,” Libby Busbee said. “He wanted to be somebody. He had his mind set on what he wanted to do, and he loved the army. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”

Once enlisted, he was sent on three separate year-long tours to Afghanistan. It was the fulfillment of his dreams, but it came at a high price. He came under attack several times, and in one particularly serious incident incurred a blow to the head that caused traumatic brain injury. His body was so peppered with shrapnel that whenever he walked through an airport security screen he would set off the alarm.

The mental costs were high too. Each time he came back from Afghanistan. Between tours or on R&R, he struck his mother as a little more on edge, a little more withdrawn. He would rarely go out of the house and seemed ill at ease among civilians. “I reckon he felt he no longer belonged here,” she said.

Once, Busbee was driving Libby in his car when a nearby train sounded its horn. He was so startled by the noise that he leapt out of the vehicle, leaving it to crash into the curb. After that, he never drove farther than a couple of blocks.

Nights were the worst. He had bad dreams and confessed to being scared of the dark, making Libby swear not to tell anybody. Then he took to sleeping in a closet, using a military sleeping bag tucked inside the tiny space to recreate the conditions of deployment. “I think it made him feel more comfortable,” his mother said.

After one especially fraught night, Libby awoke to find that he had slashed his face with a knife. Occasionally, he would allude to the distressing events that led to such extreme behavior: there was the time that another soldier, aged 18, had been killed right beside him; and the times that he himself had killed.

William told his mother: “You would hate me if you knew what I’ve done out there.”

“I will never hate you. You are the same person you always were,” she said.

“No, Mom,” he countered. “The son you loved died over there.”

Soldiers’ psychological damage

For William Nash, a retired Navy psychiatrist who directed the marine corps’ combat stress control program, William Busbee’s expressions of torment are all too familiar. He has worked with hundreds of service members who have been grappling with suicidal thoughts, not least when he was posted to Fallujah in Iraq during the height of the fighting in 2004.

He and colleagues in military psychiatry have developed the concept of “moral injury” to help understand the current wave of self-harm. He defines that as “damage to your deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. It might be caused by something that you do or fail to do, or by something that is done to you – but either way it breaks that sense of moral certainty.”

Contrary to widely held assumptions, it is not the fear and the terror that service members endure in the battlefield that inflicts most psychological damage, Nash has concluded, but feelings of shame and guilt related to the moral injuries they suffer. Top of the list of such injuries, by a long shot, is when one of their own people is killed.

“I have heard it over and over again from marines – the most common source of anguish for them was failing to protect their ‘brothers’.

The significance of that is unfathomable, it’s comparable to the feelings I’ve heard from parents who have lost a child.”

Incidents of “friendly fire” when US personnel are killed by mistake by their own side is another cause of terrible hurt, as is the guilt that follows the knowledge that a military action has led to the deaths of civilians, particularly women and children. Another important factor, Nash stressed, was the impact of being discharged from the military that can also instill a devastating sense of loss in those who have led a hermetically sealed life within the armed forces and suddenly find themselves excluded from it.

Busbee

That was certainly the case with William Busbee. In 2011, following his return to Fort Carson in Colorado after his third and last tour of Afghanistan, he made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. He was taken off normal duties and prescribed large quantities of psychotropic drugs which his mother believes only made his condition worse.

Eventually he was presented with an ultimatum by the army: retire yourself out or we will discharge you on medical grounds. He felt he had no choice but to quit, as to be medically discharged would have severely dented his future job prospects.

When he came home on January 18, 2012, a civilian once again, he was inconsolable. He told his mother: “I’m nothing now. I’ve been thrown away by the army.”

The suffering William Busbee went through, both inside the military and immediately after he left it, illustrates the most alarming single factor in the current suicide crisis: the growing link between multiple deployments and self-harm. Until 2012, the majority of individuals who killed themselves had seen no deployment at all. Their problems tended to relate to marital or relationship breakdown or financial or legal worries back at base.

The most recent department of defense suicide report, or DODSER, covers 2011. It shows that less than half, 47%, of all suicides involved service members who had ever been in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just one in 10 of those who died did so while posted in the war zone. Only 15% had ever experienced direct combat.

The DODSER for 2012 has yet to be released, but when it is it is expected to record a sea change. For the first time, the majority of those who killed themselves had been deployed. That’s a watershed that is causing deep concern within the services.

“We are starting to see the creeping up of suicides among those who have had multiple deployments,” said Phillip Carter, a military expert at the defense thinktank Center for a New American Security that in 2011 published one of the most authoritative studies into the crisis. He added that though the causes of the increase were still barely understood, one important cause might be the cumulative impact of deployments – the idea that the harmful consequences of stress might build up from one tour of Afghanistan to the next.

Over the past four years the Pentagon, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, have invested considerable resources at tackling the problem. The US Department of Defense has launched a suicide prevention program that tries to help service members to overcome the stigma towards seeking help. It has also launched an education campaign encouraging personnel to be on the look out for signs of distress among their peers under the rubric “never let our buddy fight alone”.

Despite such efforts, there is no apparent let up in the scale of the tragedy. Though President Obama has announced a draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, experts warn that the crisis could last for at least a decade beyond the end of war as a result of the delayed impact of psychological damage.

It’s all come in any case too late for Libby Busbee. She feels that her son was let down by the army he loved so much. In her view he was pumped full of drugs but deprived of the attention and care he needed.

William himself was so disillusioned that shortly before he died he told her that he didn’t want a military funeral; he would prefer to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. “I don’t want to be buried in my uniform – why would I want that when they threw me away when I was alive,” he said.

In the end, two infantrymen did stand to attention over his coffin, the flag was folded over it, and there was a gun salute as it was lowered into the ground. William Busbee was finally at rest, though for Libby Busbee the torture goes on.

“I was there for his first breath, and his last,” she said. “Now my daughters and me, we have to deal with what he was going through.”

* guardian.co.uk, Feb 1, 2013, “US military struggling to stop suicide epidemic among war veterans”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/us-military-suicide-epidemic-veteran

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By Franklin Lamb

02 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Damascus: There are more than 9000 of them. Predominately young but of all ages. Volunteers everyone. Often risking their lives just to come for a twelve hour work-shift, as many as seven days a week at the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society (SARCS) Emergency Operation center.

Located at The New Zahera (blooming flowers) Hospital in Damascus just to the south of Yarmouk refugee camp, SARCS has its main emergency response teams HQ. It is here where Syrians, some Palestinians and even a few from the region and the West receive training as qualified para-medics. Maybe two-thirds of those this observer spent a day with a few days ago are students and graduates. Nationalists all, and in the main, but not everyone, supporting the government, but sympathetic towards whomever can end the killing and return life even to “pre-events normalcy”.

In the Operations Center main room, volunteers take phone calls and as they are being spoken to they stare at a large computer screen that shows a Google Earth close up view of the areas where emergency responders are urgently needed. Some of the volunteers, being tech savvy, have outlined and regularly update with a green line, the most recent safest routes to the crisis that their ambulances should take. The dispatchers get input from police, neighbors, even troops and “others” advising them which streets are currently relatively safe for travel. Periodic snipers is a fact of daily life for the responders whenever they are “on mission.

One shift manager told this observer that something the operations room really wants to help them with their work is something he called “google live”. Apparently is can some activity as it happens. His team has two problems as they try to secure this capability. One problem is that GL is forbidden by the US-led sanctions. But frankly, his team could care less and already knows how to hack into something to secure it. The main problem is that they need Syrian government approval to set up Google live and they are hoping to get it soon. This GL capability will help SARCS emergency teams get to their destination faster and safer.

The main emergency operation center is an exciting beehive of activity staffed by friendly people urgently working to help others. Dressed in bright orange overalls plainly marked with “SARCS” in red letters. As are their dozen ambulances and other vehicles. The reason? To emphatically distinguish themselves from the other rescue vehicles operated by the Ministry of Health. The reason this is important is because rebels types of do not histitate to target their ambulances with RPG’s and other weapons whereas the Al Nursa Front and others insist SARCS ambulances will not be targeted. For example, the day Yarmouk Palestinian Refugees camp was bombed three weeks ago leaving many dead and three times the number wounded, SARCS ambulances raced into the camp and pulled out 30 victims in half a day.

Volunteers advised this observer that the reason their vehicles are rather less likely to be targeted is that SARCS strictly complies with the Hippocratic oath and keeps politics out of their work as best they can. As this observer witnessed several times first hand, when an emergency call comes in on the # 133 line, the dispatcher asks only the location, injury assessment if available, employing the Red, Yellow, Green system. No questions are asked whether the victim is pro or anti-government, sect, nationality, or political affiliation. If the victim has a weapon the ambulance driver instructs friends of the victim at the scene to take the weapon as none are allowed on the stretcher or in SARCS vehicles. While giving medical care it is prohibited for SARCS volunteers to inquire about political views or details about the circumstances surrounding the injury.

An observer might conclude that this is one of the reasons that SARCS emergency response teams have won the general trust of Syrians and NGO’s, who by Syrian law are obliged to work with and consult with other departments of SARCS, such as Disaster Management, to get the international aid as fast as possible to where it is most needed.

There are places and times that the emergency vehicles cannot go. More than four dozen SARCS volunteers have been reported killed or injured while performing their humanitarian work. Every bombing and disaster in Syria these days brings more applications to join the SARC volunteer teams. Such is the character of the Syrian people, an amalgam of their history, culture, Arab nationalism and resistance stance.

Current shortages for emergency services in Syria include medicines, medical equipment, fuel, food boxes, blankets and cooking utensils. Some of these shortages are the direct and foreseeable result of the US-led sanctions daily targeting the civilian population of Syria with the hope that riots from the cold, malnourished, suffering civilian population will cause the elected Government of Syria to falter and the Western goal of regime change will follow. As the history of sanctions targeting civilian populations makes plane, these inhumane sanctions fail in their political objectives and simply engender the wrath of the civilian population which frankly inures to the political benefit of the government in power.

As current events are demonstrating, the designers of the US-led sanctions, who are housed on the second floor of the US Treasury building in Washington DC, including the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC) , have once more failed to understand the nature and the quality of the Syrian people.

One wonders if the same process unfolding the past few weeks of whereby foreign interests, now may be realizing they have committed major “assessment errors” in Syria and reportedly reassessing their objectives, may now be willing to come to the negotiating table which currently has on it four serious proposals for discussion.

Only the presence of those currently absent from the dialogue table is needed to end the killing and start rebuilding homes, hospitals, infrastructures of every sort and equally essential, democratic freedoms for everyone in Syria.

Waiting also is the Syrian population, and the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society (SARCS) emergency responders, who 24/7 are doing life-saving national and humanitarian work for their country and for anyone who calls their emergency responders on 133.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

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By Bill Van Auken

01 February, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Wednesday’s bombing of a Syrian military site by Israeli warplanes has ratcheted up the danger that the Western-backed civil war in Syria will spill over into a broader regional conflagration.

Unnamed US officials cited by the New York Times claimed that the target of Wednesday’s dawn air strike was a military convoy carrying arms that were supposedly destined for Hezbollah, the Shia political movement and militia in Lebanon.

The Syrian government, however, said that air strikes were directed against a military research center in Jamraya, in the Qasioun mountain range about three miles west of Damascus. It said that two workers at the center were killed in the bombing and five others were wounded.

“Israeli warplanes violated our airspace at dawn today and directly struck one of the scientific research centers responsible for elevating the resistance and self-defense capabilities in the area of Jamraya in the Damascus countryside,” Syria’s military said in a statement published by the official Sana news agency.

The Syrian regime charged that the air strikes had been facilitated by coordinated attacks on the part of the US and Western-backed “rebels” against the country’s radar networks and air defense systems.

“Late Wednesday, a US official said the accounts of two targets—a convoy of weapons and a military site—weren’t mutually exclusive,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The official suggested that the convoy was attacked inside the military facility. How Israel determined that it was carrying weapons bound for Hezbollah across the border in Lebanon has not been clarified.

For its part, the Israeli regime has maintained a complete silence on its act of aggression against Syria. The New York Times late Thursday described this silence as “part of a longstanding strategy to give targeted countries face-saving opportunities to avoid conflict escalation.”

According to this perverse reasoning, Syria’s public statement on the attack—rather than the attack itself—was responsible for “increasing the likelihood of a cycle of retaliation.”

The air strike was reportedly carried out by four Israeli warplanes that flew low over Syrian territory before firing as many as a dozen missiles into the complex.

The Lebanese Daily Star quoted residents of the Jamraya area who said that they were woken by blasts at the military site. “We were sleeping. Then we started hearing rockets hitting the complex and the ground started shaking and we ran into the basement,” a woman who lives next to the complex told the Lebanese newspaper.

Another Syrian, who has a relative working inside the military site, told Reuters: “It appears that there were about a dozen rockets that appeared to hit one building in the complex. The facility is closed today.”

The extreme right-wing government of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that it fears the nearly two-year-old civil war in Syria will lead to advanced weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah or the Western-backed Islamist militias. In reality, as it begins its third term in office, the Netanyahu government is exploiting the crisis in Syria to carry out military strikes aimed at weakening its potential adversaries and paving the way for a new eruption of open warfare.

According to US officials, the alleged convoy headed to Lebanon was not carrying chemical weapons or any other offensive arms, but rather Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be capable of hitting Israeli fighter-bombers, helicopters and drones.

As NBC News put it, “They would remove Israel’s critical freedom of flight over Lebanon.” The Israeli regime has exercised this “freedom” repeatedly in the last several days. On Wednesday, the Lebanese army reported that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties over Lebanese territory, circling for hours on Tuesday and returning before dawn on Wednesday.

More importantly, this unchallenged control over Lebanon’s airspace is critical for Israel if it is preparing yet another war against the country to its north, which it last invaded in 2006, destroying much of its infrastructure with air and sea bombardments and killing over 1,100 people.

This eventuality was strongly suggested by a top Israeli military commander. On the eve of the air strike on Syria, Major-General Amir Eshel, the chief of Israel’s air force, declared that Israel was now engaged in a “war between wars” and that “this campaign is 24/7, 365 days a year. We are taking action to reduce the immediate threats, to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen.”

Eshel said that Tel Aviv was trying “to keep [our] efforts beneath the level at which war breaks out,” but added, “… if there is no alternative—maybe it will.”

The Israeli attack was carried out after prior consultation with the Obama administration in Washington, which, like Tel Aviv, has maintained a guilty silence over the air strikes. Indeed, the only official US response came in the form of a statement by the White House deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, who issued a warning to Syria that it should not “further destabilize the region by transferring weaponry to Hezbollah.”

Israel’s carrying out a so-called preventive military action, i.e., unprovoked aggression, against a sovereign territory was clearly not seen by the US administration as “destabilizing.” This was just the latest in a long line of such criminal actions, carried out by Washington’s ally, including last October’s attack on an alleged weapons factory in Sudan and endless violence against the Palestinian populations in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The Israeli air strikes were condemned by the Russian government, which called them “unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it.”

Iran, Syria’s closest regional ally, warned that the “Zionist regime’s attack on the outskirts of Damascus will have grave consequences for Tel Aviv.” Previously Tehran had warned that it would treat an attack on Syria as an act of aggression against its own territory.

In Lebanon, President Michel Suleiman denounced the Israeli attack as “flagrant aggression” and accused Israel of “exploiting the developments in Syria to carry out its aggressive policies, indifferent to all the humanitarian and international treaties.”

Debka.com, an Israeli military intelligence web site with close ties to the Israeli secret services, reported that the strike on Syria had “touched off high military alerts across the region,” including on the part of a Russian fleet of 18 warships in the eastern Mediterranean, the Lebanese and Jordanian armies and US forces based at the Incerlik air base in Turkey, as well as US special operations troops deployed in Jordan.

The US-backed Israeli attack on Syria is only the beginning of what threatens to explode into a far wider war, including against Iran, dragging the entire region into a bloodbath and endangering the lives of millions.

By Countercurrents.org

01 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Syria has turned into a hotbed of deadly competition of interests while the common people are suffering. The following three reports tell a part of the story:

A Reuters report [1] reveals a few hard facts from interventionists held parts of Syria. The story was reported by a visiting journalist whose name has been withheld by Reuters for security reasons.

The report datelined Mayadin, Syria said:

In a small town in Syria’s east, Islamist militants have taken unclothed mannequins they see as sexually enticing out of the shops.

Members of the al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, have also prevented women from wearing trousers, preferring that they adopt the shapeless head-to-toe black veil.

The town of 54,000 on the Euphrates river offers a snapshot of what life could be like if Islamist rebels take control of significant areas of Syria as President Bashar al-Assad loses further ground.

Of all the hundreds of rebel units, al-Nusra is considered the most effective. Its fighters, who seek out death in battle as a form of martyrdom, have achieved victories in attacks on several military bases across the country.

They still represent a small fraction of the armed anti-Assad groups fighting in Syria but are growing in size and influence.

Their militants, bolstered by veteran Iraqis who battled US forces, fought alongside rebel units from the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of rebels ranging from those who say they are fighting for democracy to hardline Islamists, to take Mayadin.

Government forces left the town in November and half its inhabitants fled during the fighting.

Now al-Nusra, the Free Syrian Army, local militia and tribal groups have carved the town into fiefdoms. Residents say there are around 8,000 armed men in total.

Insurgents with long Sunni-Muslim-style beards patrol the streets enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam. Alcohol is removed from shops. Daily religious teaching is provided for Mayadin’s children, who get free loaves of bread if they attend.

One young boy who attends these classes told Reuters that pupils are taught about praying, the role of women, the place of polygamy in marriage and jihad against “Assad’s Alawite regime.”

A turn to sectarianism

The revolt has turned sectarian, with majority Sunnis fighting Assad’s army, of which the top generals are mostly Alawite, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Assad, himself an Alawite, has framed the revolt as a foreign-backed terrorist conspiracy and blames the West and Sunni Gulf states.

Moderate rebel groups find themselves increasingly overshadowed by extremist units and peaceful opposition activists say they now have little say in the war.

Al-Nusra fighters present a threat to those who want democracy in Syria. Instead, they envision a caliphate and a return to the lifestyle of the 7th century. Shops are forcibly closed at prayer times and people are rounded up in the streets five times daily to go to mosques.

Liberal residents try to continue life as normal but are feeling the day-to-day effects of strict Islamist rule. Many stocked up on Arak, a grape-based liquor, when they heard that al-Nusra fighters were closing down the shops. A bottle of Arak can now be bought in Mayadin for five times Damascus’ prices but the transaction must be done in secret.

Selling oil

Al-Nusra has been shrewd. They took control of the nearby al-Ward oil and gas field and also went straight for the grain silos. They control the resources, which gives them power.

In the streets of Mayadin, oil can be bought at marked up prices and al-Nusra will even trade with the enemy if it means extra cash.

Residents of Mayadin said that al-Nusra has been transporting crude oil in large tankers to Deir al-Zor, 28 miles (45km) to the north, where the government still has a presence.

They say that the local authorities in Deir al-Zor are so stretched that even they will buy oil off the group Damascus says are terrorists.

Assad has lost huge areas of land, especially in the north and the east. Rebels have pushed into most major cities but the army has dig in and a military stalemate has ensued.

But the government has been punishing Mayadin for the rebel presence. Civilians stay away from al-Nusra and other rebel brigades as they are targets for aerial strikes and long range artillery from government positions to the north.

Damascus still controls the electricity supply and cuts it off regularly, residents say.

There is little bread and water, no telephone or Internet services and schools have closed.

People eat weeds from the Euphrates and some will make the journey to Deir al-Zor to buy food, risking arrest or death as they cross enemy lines.

Order has broken down in Mayadin and residents say looting and theft are rampant. The streets empty after dark.

Gaining support

Still, residents say al-Nusra are gaining support in Syria’s east. Militants have set up checkpoints at the entrances to the city where they try to recruit men and teenage boys.

“I will follow anyone who is fighting the regime,” said 19-year-old Mohammed, a law student who grew up in Mayadin. He agrees that al-Nusra fighters present a distorted moral framework, but says they have managed to battle back against Assad’s forces – his number one aim.

Members of al-Nusra refused to be interviewed by a female reporter but rebel fighters working with them talk of a strict hierarchy and coordination.

Hussein, a 28-year-old fighter from the Osama Ibn Ziad brigade of the Free Syrian Army, sees a strategic benefit from al-Nusra, who are well armed and include foreigner fighters who can advise on guerrilla warfare.

“The guys from al-Nusra are good people. We have to fight this regime and they are very well organized with strong fighters,” he said.

But Abu Mahmoud, a 55-year-old laborer and father, says he fears his kids will be drawn into the group.

“We don’t go out unless it is absolutely necessary. I sent my young children to a relative in Hasaka because I don’t want them to be armed,” he said, referring to the northern city near the border with Turkey.

Others hope that the tribal system of the arid desert east will prevent an Islamist takeover. “I don’t think al-Nusra will be able to do what they want. We have our traditions and tribes won’t let them,” said Imad, 22, a student of engineering.

A lost city

But many residents have organized demonstrations against rebel groups, include al-Nusra, whom they see as thieves. Across the country, rebels have taken over schools and hospitals to use as bases and take medical supplies and equipment for their war.

“The government abandoned us and there is nothing here; no life and no services. The bad situation will make all our young men join al-Nusra,” said Yamen, a 20-year-old maths student. “They want to fight the regime and see al-Nusra as the last solution for Syria.”

Many feel helpless.

“We lost our city and our children and now we will lose our future,” said Fadia, a 22-year-old housewife. “There is nothing here. I hate all sides; the regime, the opposition, the Free Syrian Army and al-Nusra, because none of them care about civilians.”

A call

An earlier Reuters report by Paul Taylor [2] from Davos said:

A senior member of Saudi Arabia’s monarchy called for Syrian rebels to be given anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to “level the playing field” in their battle against President Bashar al-Assad.

“What are needed are sophisticated, high-level weapons that can bring down planes, can take out tanks at a distance. This is not getting through,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief and brother of the Saudi foreign minister.

“I’m not in government so I don’t have to be diplomatic. I assume we’re sending weapons and if we were not sending weapons it would be terrible mistake on our part,” the Saudi prince said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“You have to level the playing field. Most of the weapons the rebels have come from captured Syrian stocks and defectors bringing their weapons,” he said.

King Abdullah of Jordan told the Davos meeting that anyone who thought Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was going to fall within weeks did not understand the complex situation and the balance of forces.

One major problem was that radical al Qaeda forces had established themselves in Syria for the last year and were receiving money and equipment from abroad, he said.

New Taliban in Syria?

Noting that Jordanian forces were still fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan alongside NATO troops, he said: “The new Taliban we are going to have to deal with will be in Syria.”

Even in the most optimistic scenario, it would take at least three years to “clean them up” after the fall of the Assad government, the monarch said.

He called for major powers to craft “a real and inclusive transition plan” for Syria, saying the army must be preserved intact to form the backbone of any new system and avoid the anarchy that prevailed in Iraq after the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.

Syria has accused Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the United States and France of funding and arming the rebels, something they have all denied. But U.N. diplomats say that weapons are clearly reaching the rebels via Gulf Arab states and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia has called in the past for the rebels to be armed, but diplomats say that Western countries are reluctant to allow sophisticated weapons into the country, fearing they would fall into the hands of increasingly powerful Islamist forces.

The United States has designated one Islamist group in Syria – the Nusra Front – as a terrorist organization and expressed concern about the growing Islamist militant strength in Syria.

But the Saudi prince said foreign powers should have enough information on the many rebel brigades to ensure weapons only reached specific groups.

“Leveling the plain militarily should go hand in hand with a diplomatic initiative … You can select the good guys and give them these means and build their credibility,” he said.

Call to showdown of Islamists

An Amman datelined Reuters report by Alistair Lyon and Suleiman Al-Khalidi [3] said:

A Jordanian Muslim preacher who encourages a flow of militants to Syria predicts an eventual showdown between Islamists and secular rebel groups should president Bashar al-Assad fall.

Mohammed Shalabi, better known as Abu Sayyaf, said Islamist fighters with groups such as the Nusra Front, which the United States lists as a terrorist organization, had refused offers to join the rebel Free Syrian Army in return for pay and weapons.

If Assad is overthrown, he told Reuters, the Free Syrian Army, or elements within it ideologically hostile to the Nusra Front, would immediately order Islamist groups to disarm.

“Then there will be a confrontation between us and losses will rise, but I don’t want to pre-empt events,” he said.

Abu Sayyaf is a marked man, who has spent 10 years behind bars for militant activities including a plot to attack US troops in Jordan, but seems unconcerned about surveillance.

Interviewed in his car outside the state security court in Amman this week, the Salafi jihadi leader said the Jordanian authorities were trying to stop young militants from crossing the border to join the battle against Assad’s forces.

“We have sat with the security forces and asked them what harm would come if they let us go to Syria freely,” said Abu Sayyaf, 46, a burly man with a flowing beard, dressed like a tribesman in a red chequered headdress and a white robe.

“You tell us we are troublesome, so let us get killed in Syria, leave us to meet our fate in this inferno,” he said he had told Jordanian intelligence officers when they called him in to ask him to restrain fighters bent on traveling to Syria.

“What they fear is that these youths will return like the ‘Afghan Arabs’ did. They fear they would come back one day and declare jihad and fight here,” he declared.

Abu Sayyaf, based in the volatile desert city of Maan, 160 km (100 miles) south of Amman, where he was involved in clashes with security forces in 2002, said at least 350 Jordanians were now fighting in Syria and nearly 25 had been “martyred”.

About 50 had been detained in Jordan before they could reach Syria and some were now facing trial at the state security court – although he said the authorities had softened their treatment of militants since Arab uprisings erupted two years ago.

Abu Sayyaf said: “We don’t have an organization that sends youths in an organized way,” adding that most entered Syria with the help of established drug smugglers in return for money.

“Trust me, there is no organizational link between al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, though they share the same views and methods,” he said, adding that these were based on the Koran.

He defended al Qaeda attacks such as those in the United States on September 11, 2001 as justified responses to Western or Israeli incursions into Muslim lands, and hinted that France could also become a target for its recent intervention in Mali.

“It’s France that has come to Mali, we did not go to your home territory,” he said of the French-led military action to regain control of northern Mali from Islamist militants.

Abu Sayyaf criticized Jordan’s King Abdullah for warning last week about the danger of a “new Taliban” arising in Syria, saying this reflected concerns of his Western allies about al Qaeda, which only masked worries about “true Islam”.

He said that just as al Qaeda’s aims in Afghanistan were once aligned with those of the West during the Cold War, Islamist militants shared a Western interest in Assad’s removal.

“Because the removal of the regime matters to us, if the Americans or the British or any party helps us to get rid of this regime, we don’t have a problem.”

Source:

[1] Jan 30, 2013, “Eastern Syrian town lives under al Qaeda rules”,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/30/us-syria-crisis-town-idUSBRE90T0VH20130130

[2] Jan 25, 2013, “Saudi prince calls for Syrian rebels to be armed”,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/25/us-syria-crisis-saudi-idUSBRE90O0M120130125

[3] Jan 31, 2013, “Jordan Islamist sees clash with secular Syrian rebels”,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/31/us-syria-crisis-preacher-idUSBRE90U0E320130131

By Karthik Ramanathan

01 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Fremont, CA: On the night of Friday January 25, I was glad to have the opportunity to see a film screening of Kamal Hassan’s spy thriller ‘Vishwaroopam’ and while not a crazed cine fan like many others in the audience, it was a pleasant occasion to see Mr. Kamal Hassan himself grace the event. Personally, it was the first time I saw an actor whose Tamil movies I have watched and enjoyed since childhood.

Prior to proceeding any further, I would like to state outright that the demand for banning this film even before its released, from the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam and others, is simply outlandish and goes against common sense and constitutionally guaranteed free speech. This would be true even if allegations of the movies prejudice against muslims (or potentially any other religion) have validity, and having watched the film my opinion is that this broad allegation against the film simply does not hold water. The Tamil Nadu government has unfortunately set a negative precedent against protection of free speech by appeasing fringe muslim groups who demand a ban on the film. The current state of affairs where TN Chief Minister Jayalalitha claims protection for free speech in the same sentence that she demands the film maker to modify his film based on the objections of those opposing its release simply defeats logic. Hitler too would have supported free speech if speech he did not like was modified to delete the objectionable content. I hope that the film would be allowed to screen unconditionally with no preconditions whatsoever for modifying its content.

The film incorporates many rarely used concepts in Indian cinema including wide use of computer graphics, innovates a storyline that is both unique and multithreaded. A true suspense thriller, it also keeps the viewer guessing about the motives and identities almost till the very end. For these, the film is a pleasure to watch, if one were to not pay attention to the historical events portrayed.

A narrative of mutually beneficial alliance with US imperialism

But as a person of conscience, one cannot be blind to the political narrative that is ultimately projected by the film. Mr. Hassan plays the role of a muslim RAW (Indian intelligence) agent Wasim. Wasim infiltrates Al-Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan, posing as a jihadi, as part of assisting the US invasion force in the year 2002 and this supposedly is to the benefit of India as well. As to why, assistance to a occupation, illegal by international law, and their military operations is beneficial to Indians is not made really clear, except for some short recordings about crazy plans by Al Qaeda operatives to carry out terror attacks on India. This suggests rather wrongly that Al-Qaeda is a central command organization, when in fact the best available analyses indicate disparate sets of individuals and groups only loosely connected to each other with a leadership that is more symbolic than organizational [1].

This is a narrative that has broad implications for a globalized India, and the inclination to look at ourselves as “natural allies” of the US – a state that routinely invades and terrorizes and murders innocents and nations in the name of freedom and justice – forgetting our moral obligations as people who were colonized by similar powers in the not too distant past. Mutual benefit of a meaningful kind from a US alliance is an oxymoron, as our Pakistani neighbors find out the hard way, with innocents being killed by drone attacks on their soil on an almost daily basis and a military that is too dependent on US support to defend its civilian population.

Oh.. Imperial crimes are only well intentioned mistakes or unintended collateral…

I recollect two scenes in the film, one where a US soldier in a helicopter, fires accidentally at a civilian and the film makes sure to show signs of remorse in the expression on the snipers face. In another, the American aircraft in the course of a firefight, bombs a structure housing women and children – even as Islamists themselves exhume confidence that the Americans will not kill women and children – apparently unknown to the well-intentioned aggressors. These are contrasted to images of murders and slayings by the Islamist fighters, who have no sense of remorse or mercy even at their own women, let alone their victims. By doing this, the film plays into a colonial narrative that simply flies against the logic of imperialism and historical fact. No one in India thinks the British carried out their mass crimes of economic deindustrialization, manmade famines and massacres such as the Jalianwala Bagh out of error. The films simply pretends to not know the supreme crime called aggression condemned at Nuremberg and how it applies to the US invasion of Afghanistan. Suffice it to say, that the US knew prior to the invasion and the carpet bombing of Afghanistan, that it was leaving “millions of Afghans… at grave risk of starvation”. [2] We know since that the US has not only resulted in tens of thousands of Afghan casualties but also extended its campaign into neighboring Pakistan resulting in even more innocents being killed. [3]

Colonial aggression: fact, memory and film making

A scene in the end really sent an arrow threw my heart: Wasim is presented as heroically killing a muslim individual who is trying to fire a rocket at a attacking US helicopter, and successfully foils the attempt. By implication, Mr. Hassan is conflating armed resistance to a foreign aggressor with acts of terrorism and thereby criminalizing acts of resistance. Not many Indians would like to think heroically of the British who put to death Rani Lakshmi Bhai or Tipu Sultan or the thousands of unknown Indians who gave their lives trying to liberate their nation even in the face of a superior enemy. Neither does the UN, which specifically excluded resistance from its most forceful denunciation of terrorism.[4] Why portray in a purely negative fashion the Afghan resistance to US occupation unless the point of the film is to crave favorable reviews in the Western press and Hollywood even at the cost of supporting imperial crimes.

There is one thing the film does get right. Wasim is a loyal Indian muslim always willing to do the bidding of the Indian State. But he is always preoccupied about ensuring the success of the US, be it in Afghanistan or later in ensuring the safety of New York – activities that should be the preoccupation of US agencies. Even while inaccurately presenting a picture of Indian intelligence capabilities as being superior to inept US investigators, this does strike a chord with reality: The Indian government and its middle classes assign an unusually high priority for doing the bidding of the worlds powerful even as they forget the priorities of governing their own people, their needs, history and constitution.

Fiction can never be expected to present all facts. But this film consistently errs on the side of imperialism and whitewashes its role in inflaming tensions in the region. Mr. Hassan and others in the Indian cine fold could also consider making movies based on our own history of film making that calls for a just social order. Even in fiction for example, a potential and similarly exciting multithreaded storyline could center on innocents who are torn apart by the US war machinery and their illegal torture and detention, and manage to escape its clutches to find their lives and humanity and positive ways to resist the American empire. In such an endeavor he would actually have allies in North America, in film makers such as Michael Moore (Farenheit 911) or James Cameron (Avatar). Hollywood may not invite Mr. Hassan then but he may then be remembered in the halls of justice and in the minds of freedom loving peoples everywhere. The choice is with him and the rest of India’s film makers. But history will not be very kind to those who forget it.

[The author is a professional based out of San Jose, CA and can be reached at ramanath.karthik@gmail.com . Outside of work, he has been involved with writing and participating on various human rights issues such as war, healthcare, cuba solidarity.]

References:

1. See book by British investigator Jason Burke: “Al-Qaeda”.

2. Samina Ahmed, International Security 26, no. 3, 2001-02.

3. The following Human Rights Watch report looks at the years 2006-07 and early 2008. http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/09/07/afghanistan-civilian-deaths-airstrikes

The report probably underestimates civilian casualties by making assumptions about civilian versus Taliban, something impossible to do without a fair court of law to make a judgement. Even with these underestimates, the total civilian toll is still of the order of tens of thousands when extrapolated over the entire period from 2001-2012. And this also excludes those who died of starvation and illnesses and imprisonment resulting from the US invasion. Drone strikes in Pakistan have further inflamed tensions and fears of a breakup of the Pakistan military, and further rise in Islamic militancy.

4. UN Resolution 42/159, 7 December 1987. The US State department identified 1987 as the peak year of terrorism. For more treatment of such issues of resistance and terrorism and justifications for US war in Afghanistan, see Hegemony or Survival, by Noam Chomsky.

Karthik Ramanathan is a Senior Engineer at Samsung Electronics in San Jose , California . Outside of his work, he has written about and been involved with various political movements against war, third world solidarity and economic justice in the United States . He can be contacted at ramanath.karthik@gmail.com

By Janet Larsen

31 January, 2013

@ Earth Policy Institute

The world produced 2,241 million tons of grain in 2012, down 75 million tons or 3 percent from the 2011 record harvest. The drop was largely because of droughts that devastated several major crops—namely corn in the United States (the world’s largest crop) and wheat in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Australia. Each of these countries also is an important exporter. Global grain consumption fell significantly for the first time since 1995, as high prices dampened use for ethanol production and livestock feed. Still, overall consumption did exceed production. With drought persisting in key producing regions, there is concern that farmers in 2013 will again be unable to produce the surpluses necessary to rebuild lowered global grain reserves.

Corn, wheat, and rice account for most of the world’s grain harvest. Whereas rice and most wheat are consumed directly as food, corn is largely used for livestock and poultry feed and for industrial purposes. Climbing demand for corn-intensive meat, milk, and eggs plus the recent increased production of corn-based ethanol have made corn the world’s leading grain since 1998. In 2012, the global corn harvest came in at 852 million tons, while 654 million tons of wheat and 466 million tons of rice were produced. Wheat takes up the most land because corn yields are typically much higher, averaging close to 5 tons per hectare globally compared with about 3 tons per hectare for wheat and rice. (One hectare = 2.47 acres.) In the United States, corn yields in the top-producing areas exceed 10 tons per hectare when conditions are favorable.

Nearly half the world’s grain is produced in just three countries: China, the United States, and India. China produced an estimated 479 million tons of grain in 2012—its largest harvest ever—compared with 354 million tons in the United States. India harvested 230 million tons. The countries in the European Union together produced 274 million tons. (See data.)

The 2012 U.S. grain harvest was 8 percent smaller than the year before. The heat and drought that gripped nearly two thirds of the contiguous United States during the summer was particularly severe throughout the midwestern Corn Belt. As temperatures soared, so did corn prices, hitting an all-time high of $8.39 a bushel on August 21st. Yields in Iowa, the top corn-producing state, were down 20 percent from 2011. In Illinois, typically the number two producer, yields dropped by 33 percent, ending up at the lowest level since the historic 1988 drought. As of January 2013, each state’s farmers have collected more than $1 billion in crop insurance payments.

The total U.S. corn harvest came in at 274 million tons, down from 314 million tons the year before. The drop would have been far worse were it not for strong production in states less affected by dryness or with ample irrigation; in fact, Minnesota and North Dakota had record high output. The result was that some of the trains and barges that normally transport corn out of the Corn Belt reversed routes to bring corn in for meat and ethanol producers. U.S. corn stocks fell to 15 million tons, enough for just 21 days at current consumption levels. Such a low corn-stocks-to-use ratio—unseen before by farmers working the land today—presages further price volatility.

As high corn prices shrank ethanol’s profit margins, a number of distilleries suspended operations. U.S. corn use for ethanol dropped to 114 million tons, down from 127 million tons in 2011. About a third of the total U.S. grain harvest went to fuel for cars.

The reduction of corn use for ethanol production and wheat use for feed contributed to an abrupt pause in the growth in global grain consumption, which over the past decade averaged close to 40 million more tons per year. January 2013 estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture put 2012 global grain consumption at 2,284 million tons, down 27 million tons from 2011. Even with the drop in use, global grain production fell short of consumption by 43 million tons.

Global grain consumption has exceeded production in 8 of the last 13 years, leading to a drawdown in reserves. Worldwide, carryover grain stocks—the amount left in the bin when the new harvest begins—stand at 423 million tons, enough to cover 68 days of consumption. This is just 6 days more than the low that preceded the 2007–08 grain crisis, when several countries restricted exports and food riots broke out in dozens of countries because of the spike in prices.

Grain prices receded somewhat during the recent recession, only to jump again in 2010 when heat and drought withered wheat in Russia, prompting an export ban. The poor prospects for the 2012 harvest led to the third spike in world market prices in just six years. This time around, even with its 2012 harvest forecast to be smaller than in 2010, Russia announced that it would avoid suspending exports.

Following a record high year in 2011, global grain trade in 2012 dropped back to 2010 levels. The 296 million tons of traded grain made up 13 percent of global consumption. Japan remained the world’s largest importer, taking in a net 24 million tons (mostly corn to feed livestock and poultry), equal to 73 percent of what it used. Densely populated South Korea imported 13 million tons of grain, also amounting to 73 percent of its consumption. Feed corn dominated imports in Mexico—the cradle of corn—as well, with 15 million tons of grain imports accounting for 32 percent of its use. In the arid Middle East, Egypt took in 14 million tons of grain, largely wheat for bread, making up 39 percent of its grain consumption. Saudi Arabia’s 13 million tons of grain imports, mostly barley for feed, accounted for 87 percent of its use.

China made the list of top 10 net importers for the second year in a row, taking in 8 million tons of grain in 2012, down from 11 million tons in 2011. China’s 2012 imports (roughly split between corn, wheat, rice, and barley) amounted to just 2 percent of its domestic consumption, but the country’s recent forays into world grain markets following years of self-sufficiency have captured attention because of China’s enormous potential appetite. (Soybeans are another story; China takes in 60 percent of world soybean exports.)

Although the United States is by far the world’s largest grain exporter, its share of the world market is shrinking. The net 49 million tons of grain the United States shipped out in 2012 was its smallest outflow since 1971. U.S. corn exports of 22 million tons were less than half the quantity of five years prior and just slightly larger than outflows from each of its South American competitors, Argentina and Brazil. For rice, Thailand was edged out of its top exporter position for the first time in three decades when India unloaded stocks accumulated during a four-year ban on non-Basmati exports.

Looking forward, the 2013 winter wheat crop could be in trouble because of droughts in the United States and in the Black Sea region. And while the heart of the Corn Belt has received some precipitation since the baking summer, soil moisture remains low and could possibly hinder spring planting, further tightening the corn situation. This is bad news when strong harvests are needed to rebuild stocks and to help stabilize prices.

Another hindrance to expanding production is the leveling off of yields for a number of key crops, importantly rice in Japan and South Korea and wheat in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It appears that farmers in some areas have maximized productivity and are now running into biological constraints. On top of that, climate change is heightening the likelihood of weather extremes, like heat waves, droughts, and flooding, that can so easily decimate harvests. Although 70 days’ worth of grain stocks once was considered enough to provide food security, a world with growing climate instability requires a larger buffer to protect against food price shocks. Skyrocketing prices hit the poorest among us the hardest, and ultimately they can spark instability that affects everyone.

For further discussion of the world food situation, see Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity by Lester R. Brown (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.), with data, video, and slideshows at www.earth-policy.org.

By Douglas Quan

30 January 2013

@ Postmedia News

Saudi police may receive ‘investigative training’ from the RCMP. Hassan Ammar / The Associated Press

RCMP officials are negotiating with their counterparts in Saudi Arabia to provide training in “investigative techniques,” Postmedia News has learned.

While such a deal could bolster international cooperation and the fight against terrorism, some observers question whether Canada’s national police force should be providing support to the oil-rich kingdom, whose human-rights record has long been criticized.

“Unless they’re going in to revolutionize Saudi police, it’s hard to imagine they’ll do anything good,” said Toby Jones, a professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “The Saudis have a terrible record on human rights and police brutality.”

Amnesty International’s 2012 report on Saudi Arabia said planned demonstrations were “ruthlessly suppressed.”

RCMP briefing notes obtained under access-to-information legislation show that the Mounties have been trying to forge closer ties with Saudi police. Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press

“Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments, particularly flogging, continued to be imposed and carried out. Women and girls faced severe discrimination in law and practice, as well as violence,” the report said.

In 2011, German federal police came under criticism for their involvement in training Saudi Arabian security forces, news media in that country reported.

The federal government has said it is trying to “diversify” its relationship with Saudi Arabia beyond trade and economic interests. This month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews each held meetings with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz, the interior minister, during a visit to Canada, according to a posting on the Saudi ministry’s website.

Rick Roth, a spokesman for Mr. Baird, said Wednesday the men discussed a number of bilateral and regional issues, including the ongoing crisis in Syria, but declined to elaborate.

Julie Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Mr. Toews, who visited Saudi Arabia in May, 2012, said his meeting focused on “matters related to policing and mutual interests in areas of security.”

Meanwhile, RCMP briefing notes obtained under access-to-information legislation show that the Mounties have been trying to forge closer ties with Saudi police.

A Dubai-based RCMP liaison, who is responsible for 12 Middle East countries, regularly travels to Saudi Arabia for the purposes of “conducting inquiries and cultivating working relationships,” the documents state. Cooperation with Saudi police is described as “very good.”

An RCMP corporal participates in a collision analysis training exercise in 2011 at Regina’s RCMP Academy. Don Healy / Postmedia News

In November, 2011, Saudi officials made a formal request to the RCMP-run Canadian Police College — which provides advanced and specialized police training courses and workshops — to establish a memorandum of understanding to provide “various training products.”

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Greg Cox said in an email this week that negotiations are continuing.

“The Canadian Police College (CPC) is in negotiations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to provide investigative technique training to its law enforcement,” he said. “There is no signed agreement in place at this time.”

Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana said the discussions revolve around providing the Saudis with training in evidence collection and software tools for major case management. Sgt. Cox said the force receives many requests to provide training and that law enforcement officers from the Middle East and the Arab peninsula have attended courses on investigative techniques at the Canadian Police College.

The RCMP provides a lot of training to many countries in the world and even some questionable ones

If the deal with Saudi Arabia is approved, it would mark the first time the college has delivered training in the Middle East, Sgt. Cox said.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior manager and intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the negotiations do not surprise him.

“The RCMP provides a lot of training to many countries in the world and even some questionable ones. For example, the RCMP gave riot-control training to Chinese police in preparation for the Olympics a few years ago,” he said.

Plus, he said, the Saudi royals love the Mounties and their horses.

Mr. Jones, the Rutgers expert, cited an arms-transfer database maintained by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that showed Canada has sold billions of dollars worth of military equipment, including armoured vehicles, to Saudi Arabia over the last several years.

By Bill Van Auken

30 January, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Washington has secured an agreement with the government of Niger to establish a US military base in the Northwest African country, which borders Mali. The agreement comes in the midst of the French intervention in Mali, employing ground troops and warplanes.

The deal, first reported Monday by the New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, would clear the way for the Pentagon to set up a base for drone flights over the entire region.

While US officials and the media have placed the base agreement in the context of the French war in Mali, it is evident that Washington had been negotiating with the Niger government well before the advance of Islamist militias toward southern Mali triggered the French intervention on January 11. It appears more the case that the recent Mali events have served as a pretext for an already planned US militarization of the region.

For several months there has been a drumbeat in the media and official circles about Africa being the “new front” in the war on terror, along with reports that AFRICOM (Africa Command), the US military command set up for operations in Africa, was seeking to establish bases on the continent and deploy for the first time a combat brigade on African soil.

The deal reached with the Niger government is a status of forces agreement of the kind demanded by the Pentagon wherever US forces are deployed. It grants blanket immunity to American troops for any crimes committed on the country’s soil.

According to the Times, it is anticipated that some 300 US troops and private contractors will be stationed at the Niger base. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that there are already some 50 US military personnel deployed in Niger.

The US had previously set up drone bases in Ethiopia and Djibouti, the tiny semi-colonial African territory at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, where the US and France jointly operate Camp Lemonnier, the site of a 2,000-member American special operations task force. These bases, together with secret air fields in the Arab peninsula, have been used to carry out drone missile strikes and assassinations in Somalia and Yemen. However, they are some 3,000 miles away from Mali.

Washington has also deployed turboprop spy planes flying from secret fields in Burkina Faso and Mauritania, as the Washington Post reported last year, based on secret US diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks as well as military contracting documents. US officials, however, have reported that these spy flights have proven less than effective in terms of intelligence gathering over Mali and other parts of Northwest Africa.

“For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the [Niger] base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens,” the Times reported Tuesday.

This seems hardly credible. While drones may well be used to collect intelligence on potential targets that would be handed off to the French for execution, there is little doubt that the Obama administration intends to spread its drone killing spree to Northwest Africa.

This was implicitly threatened by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta following the hostage siege at the gas facility in Algeria earlier this month. “We have a responsibility to go after Al Qaeda wherever they are,” Panetta stated, adding that the US was “going after” it in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia—all the scene of continuous drone missile strikes—and would act to deny Al Qaeda a “a base for operations in North Africa and Mali.”

As the Wall Street Journal noted, the moves toward a permanent base in Niger “show the extent to which the US and France are girding for what could be an open-ended campaign against the militants in North and West Africa.”

Indeed, one of the top US State Department officials in charge of Africa warned Monday that the present offensive in Mali “could take years.”

“This is only the first phase,” Don Yamamoto, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told the Associated Press. “I think people should not be into the illusion that it is going to be quick,” he added. “It’s going to take a long time and time means that it could take several years … you got do it right.”

Yamamoto noted that Washington has already begun training and equipping troops from Niger, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Togo and will transport them to Mali for use in an African proxy force. AFRICOM has also announced that it is backing the French intervention by providing military transport planes to move French troops and weaponry and by flying refueling missions for French warplanes.

The US State Department official also told the AP the following: “A lot of the rebel groups that are now fighting in the region were under Gaddafi’s troops. They were trained for over a decade. You have rebel groups that are well trained and well armed and very aggressive. And so if you have any problems in governance in the country, that would allow these extremist groups to come and that’s what happened in Mali.”

This is a grossly distorted and self-serving presentation of the events in Mali. The reality is that the crisis was precipitated by the US-NATO war for regime-change that ended in Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s assassination. The bringing down of the Libyan regime served to destabilize the entire region. It sent Tuaregs, a nomadic population that is present in Libya, Mali, Niger and elsewhere in the region, fleeing to Mali under conditions in which US-backed “rebels” were hunting down and killing black people in Libya.

The Tuaregs, who had fought on the side of Gaddafi, brought with them large quantities of weapons, reigniting a revolt that has erupted at least four times since Mali’s independence in 1960. Entire Tuareg units of the Malian army went over to the rebels.

However, better armed and better funded Islamists, affiliated with Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, entered northern Mali and gained control of large swathes of territory. These were the very forces that the US and NATO has backed and armed in Libya, utilizing them as a proxy ground force in the war to topple Gaddafi.

Yamamoto’s remarks strongly suggest that US imperialism is intervening in Mali not merely to drive out or destroy its erstwhile allies, the Islamists (the same forces that it is still backing in Syria), but also to crush the Tuareg revolt.

Given that the same Tuareg population exists to the east in Niger, the US intervention has the potential of spreading this revolt and igniting a bitter ethnic-based transnational civil war.

Underlying Washington’s incendiary activities in Northwest Africa are not, fundamentally, concerns about a supposed terrorist threat, but rather the determination of US imperialism, like its French counterpart, to lay hold of the region’s strategically vital energy and mineral wealth.

The US is flexing is military muscle under conditions where it has been outstripped in terms of trade and investment by its ascendant rival in the region, China.

As the secret diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks made clear, China’s economic activities have been a central preoccupation of the US spies and diplomats assigned to Niamey, the capital of Niger.

As one such cable to Washington warned: “China is building a major portfolio in Niger’s resource sectors and will probably replace France as Niger’s top foreign investor when projects under construction are fully operational. Chinese investments include oil and gas production, refining, uranium mining, and infrastructure. There are no current examples of US-China collaboration in Niger.”

The move to militarize Africa’s Sahel region is part and parcel of the Obama administration’s so-called “pivot” to Asia, based on a steady escalation of Washington’s confrontation with China. This extends to Africa, where the attempt to militarily assert US dominance over resource-rich territories in which China has developed significant economic interests has the potential of contributing to a far wider war.

By Countercurrents.org

30 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Israel has hit Syria.

Citing a Western diplomat and regional security sources a London datelined Reuters report [1] said on January 30, 2013:

Israeli forces attacked a convoy on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight.

Earlier, Israel expressed concern over the fate of Syrian chemical and advanced conventional weapons.

The sources, four in total, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, had no further information about what the vehicles may have been carrying, what forces were used or where precisely the attack happened.

In the run-up to the raid, Israeli officials have been warning very publicly of a threat of high-tech anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles reaching Israel’s enemies in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from Syria. They have also echoed U.S. concerns about Syria’s presumed chemical weapons arsenal.

The Lebanese army reported a heavy presence of Israeli jets over its territory throughout the night.

“There was definitely a hit in the border area,” one security source said. A Western diplomat in the region who asked about the strike said “something has happened”, without elaborating.

An activist in Syria who works with a network of opposition groups around the country said that she had heard of a strike in southern Syria from her colleagues but could not confirm it. A strike just inside Lebanon would appear a less diplomatically explosive option for Israel to avoid provoking Syrian ally Iran.

Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said on Sunday that any sign that Syria’s grip on its chemical weapons was slipping, as President Bashar al-Assad fights rebels trying to overthrow him, could trigger Israeli intervention.

Israeli sources said on Tuesday that Syria’s advanced conventional weapons would represent as much of a threat to Israel as its chemical arms should they fall into the hands of Islamist rebels or Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon.

Interviewed on January 30, 2013, Shalom would not be drawn on whether Israel was operating on its northern front, instead describing the country as part of an international coalition seeking to stop spillover from Syria’s two-year-old insurgency.

“The entire world has said more than once that it takes developments in Syria very seriously, developments which can be in negative directions,” he told Israel Radio, recalling that President Barack Obama has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of U.S. action if his forces use chemical weapons.

“The world, led by President Obama who has said this more than once, is taking all possibilities into account,” Shalom added. “And of course any development which is a development in a negative direction would be something that needs stopping and prevention.”

Border Strike

Whether the strike took place within Syrian territory, or over the border in Lebanon, could affect any escalation from the incident. Iran, Israel’s arch-foe and one of Damascus’s few allies, said on Saturday it would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself. During and since Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, there have been unconfirmed reports of Israeli strikes on convoys just after they entered Lebanon from Syria.

Israel has long made clear it claims a right to act preemptively against enemy capabilities.

Alluding to this, air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel on Tuesday said his corps was involved in a covert and far-flung “campaign between wars”.

“This campaign is 24/7, 365 days a year,” Eshel told an international conference. “We are taking action to reduce the immediate threats, to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen.”

He did not elaborate on any operations, but did single out the threat Israel saw from Syria’s arsenal, calling it “huge, part of it state-of-the-art, part of it unconventional”.

Israeli jets regularly enter Lebanese airspace, but its forces have been more discreet about Syrian incursions.

Israel’s bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, though revealed by then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, is still not formally acknowledged by the Israelis.

According to Bush, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to keep the matter quiet so as to reduce the risk of Assad feeling public pressure to retaliate. Syria and Israel are technically at war but have not exchanged fire in a significant way in decades.

Israeli media reported this week that the country’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, was sent to Russia and its military intelligence chief Major-General Aviv Kochavi to the United States for consultations.

Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London said that there are indications that Hezbollah is training near chemical weapons sites in Syria, with which the Shi’ite Lebanese militia has historically had a strong alliance.

“We also know that (Syria’s) use of tactical ballistic missiles has been escalating – presumably as air power becomes harder to use in contested areas, and rebels seize larger targets like bases that are amenable to missile attack,” he said.

Worries about Syria and Hezbollah have sent Israelis lining up for government-issued gas masks. According to the Israel post office, which is handling distribution of the kits, demand roughly trebled this week.

“It looks like every kind of discourse on this or that security matter contributes to public vigilance,” its deputy director Haim Azaki told Israel’s Army Radio. “We have really seen a very significant jump in demand.”

Israeli warplane ‘struck target on Syria-Lebanon border’ amid weapons fears

Harriet Sherwood reported [2] from Jerusalem:

Israeli warplanes have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border, according to unconfirmed reports.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had no comment on the report.

The report followed claims in the Lebanese media that IDF fighter planes had flown sorties over Lebanon’s airspace from January 29, 2013 afternoon until January 30, 2013 morning.

A Lebanese army statement, quoted by local news agencies, said: “Four Israeli planes entered Lebanese airspace at 4.30pm on Tuesday. They were replaced four hours later by another group of planes, which overflew southern Lebanon until 2am, and a third mission took over, finally leaving at 7.55am on Wednesday morning.” The IDF also declined to comment on these reports.

It was also reported that the IDF’s intelligence chief, Major-General Aiv Kochavi, arrived in Washington on Tuesday for private talks with the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Martin Dempsey, at the Pentagon.

Hezbollah is also believed to have extensive stockpiles of conventional weapons in warehouses inside Syria. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nazrallah, “wants to remove everything from Syrian soil to Lebanon”, said Amnon Sofrin, a former head of intelligence in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Israel, he added, was “looking very carefully at convoys heading from Syria to Lebanon”.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was reported earlier this week to be conducting intense security consultations on the possible response to the movement of weapons.

The deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, told Army Radio on Sunday: “If there is a need, we will take action to prevent chemical weapons from being transferred to Islamic terror organizations. We are obligated to keep our eye on it at all times, in the event chemical weapons fall into Hezbollah’s hands.”

Israel’s concern over the civil war in Syria has mounted over recent months as Bashar al-Assad’s regime has come closer to collapse and fighting has bordered on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Although Israel has been technically at war with Syria since 1967, the Golan Heights has been mostly quiet since Israel occupied it almost 46 years ago.

But Israel fears that the implosion of the Assad regime could herald an Islamist Syria, which could seek to reignite hostilities with its neighbor.

Alex Fishman, defense analyst for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote earlier this week: “In the light of Assad’s increasingly unsteady status, Hezbollah figures have understood that [its stockpiles of conventional] weapons cannot remain there. And as soon as these weapons reach Lebanon, they are swallowed up in secret underground stockpiles. Looking for them will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

“If chemical weapons are brought into Lebanon, Israel will probably not hesitate – and will attack.”

According to Sofrin, the Israeli military would be more inclined to deploy “specialist skilled units” on the ground to secure depots of chemical weapons, rather than use air strikes, which risked dispersing chemicals over a wide area. But any such operation would be complicated and risky, he added.

Israel’s primary concern was to prevent Hezbollah acquiring chemical warheads that it could mount on existing missiles, he said.

Netanyahu told Sunday’s cabinet meeting Syria was “increasingly coming apart”. He added: “The reality is developing apace. In the east, north and south, everything is in ferment, and we must be prepared: strong and determined in the face of all possible developments.”

Source:

[1] “Israel hits target in Syria border area: sources” http://news.yahoo.com/israel-hits-target-syria-border-area-sources-113955592.html

[2] guardian.co.uk, Jan 30, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/30/israeli-warplane-syria-lebanon-border