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Wherever you look, the heat, the drought, and the fires stagger the imagination. Now, it’sOklahoma at the heart of the American firestorm, with “18 straight days of 100-plus degree temperatures and persistent drought” and so many fires in neighboring states that extra help is unavailable. It’s the summer of heat across the U.S., where the first six months of the year have been the hottest on record (and the bugs are turning out in droves in response). Heat records arecontinually being broken. More than 52% of the country is now experiencing some level of drought, and drought conditions are actually intensifying in the Midwest; 66% of the Illinois corn crop is in “poor” or “very poor” shape, with similarly devastating percentages across the rest of the Midwest. The average is 48% across the corn belt, and for soybeans 37% — and it looks as if next year’scorn crop may be endangered as well. More than half of U.S. counties are officially in drought conditions and, according to the Department of Agriculture, “three-quarters of the nation’s cattle acreage is now inside a drought-stricken area, as is about two-thirds of the country’s hay acreage.” Worse yet, there’s no help in sight — not from the heavens, not even from Congress, whichadjourned for the summer without passing a relief package for farmers suffering through some of the worst months since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

In sum, it’s swelteringly, unnerving bad right now in a way that most of us can’t remember. And that’s the present moment.  The question of what lies ahead is the territory occupied byTomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources.  From the time he published his bookResource Wars back in 2001, he’s been ahead of the curve on such questions and he suggests that we’re going to have an uncomfortably hot time in all sorts of unexpected ways on this increasingly hot planet of ours. Tom

The Hunger Wars in Our Future

Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs, and Global Unrest

By Michael T. Klare

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s countiesdesignated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, willboost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.

Food — affordable food — is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle- and upper-income families.  It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. “You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,” commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha’s Creighton University. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, perhaps prompting an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians and other forms of dissent and unrest.

It is in the international arena, however, that the Great Drought is likely to have its most devastating effects. Because so many nations depend on grain imports from the U.S. to supplement their own harvests, and because intense drought and floods are damaging crops elsewhere as well, food supplies are expected to shrink and prices to rise across the planet. “What happens to the U.S. supply has immense impact around the world,” says Robert Thompson, a food expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. As the crops most affected by the drought, corn and soybeans, disappear from world markets, he noted, the price of all grains, including wheat, is likely to soar, causing immense hardship to those who already have trouble affording enough food to feed their families.

The Hunger Games, 2007-2011

What happens next is, of course, impossible to predict, but if the recent past is any guide, it could turn ugly. In 2007-2008, when rice, corn, and wheat experienced prices hikes of 100% or more, sharply higher prices — especially for bread –sparked “food riots” in more than two dozen countries, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Senegal, and Yemen. In Haiti, the rioting became so violent and public confidence in the government’s ability to address the problem dropped so precipitously that the Haitian Senate voted to oust the country’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis. In other countries, angry protestors clashed with army and police forces, leaving scores dead.

Those price increases of 2007-2008 were largely attributed to the soaring cost of oil, which made food production more expensive. (Oil’s use is widespread in farming operations, irrigation, food delivery, and pesticide manufacture.)  At the same time, increasing amounts of cropland worldwide were being diverted from food crops to the cultivation of plants used in making biofuels.

The next price spike in 2010-11 was, however, closely associated with climate change. An intense drought gripped much of eastern Russia during the summer of 2010, reducing the wheat harvest in that breadbasket region by one-fifth and prompting Moscow to ban all wheat exports. Drought also hurt China’s grain harvest, while intense flooding destroyed much of Australia’s wheat crop. Together with other extreme-weather-related effects, these disasters sent wheat pricessoaring by more than 50% and the price of most food staples by 32%.

Once again, a surge in food prices resulted in widespread social unrest, this time concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. The earliest protests arose over the cost of staples in Algeria and then Tunisia, where — no coincidence — the precipitating event was a young food vendor,Mohamed Bouazizi, setting himself on fire to protest government harassment. Anger over rising food and fuel prices combined with long-simmering resentments about government repression and corruption sparked what became known as the Arab Spring. The rising cost of basic staples, especially a loaf of bread, was also a cause of unrest in Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan. Other factors, notably anger at entrenched autocratic regimes, may have proved more powerful in those places, but as the author of Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti, wrote, “The initial trouble was traceable, at least in part, to the price of that loaf of bread.”

As for the current drought, analysts are already warning of instability in Africa, where corn is a major staple, and of increased popular unrest in China, where food prices are expected to rise at a time of growing hardship for that country’s vast pool of low-income, migratory workers and poor peasants. Higher food prices in the U.S. and China could also lead to reduced consumer spending on other goods, further contributing to the slowdown in the global economy and producing yet more worldwide misery, with unpredictable social consequences.

The Hunger Games, 2012-??

If this was just one bad harvest, occurring in only one country, the world would undoubtedly absorb the ensuing hardship and expect to bounce back in the years to come. Unfortunately, it’s becoming evident that the Great Drought of 2012 is not a one-off event in a single heartland nation, but rather an inevitable consequence of global warming which is only going to intensify.  As a result, we can expect not just more bad years of extreme heat, but worse years, hotter and more often, and not just in the United States, but globally for the indefinite future.

Until recently, most scientists were reluctant to blame particular storms or droughts on global warming.  Now, however, a growing number of scientists believe that such links can be demonstrated in certain cases. In one recent study focused on extreme weather events in 2011, for instance, climate specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Great Britain’s National Weather Service concluded that human-induced climate change has made intense heat waves of the kind experienced in Texas in 2011 more likely than ever before. Published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, it reportedthat global warming had ensured that the incidence of that Texas heat wave was 20 times more likely than it would have been in 1960; similarly, abnormally warm temperatures like those experienced in Britain last November were said to be 62 times as likely because of global warming.

It is still too early to apply the methodology used by these scientists to calculating the effect of global warming on the heat waves of 2012, which are proving to be far more severe, but we can assume the level of correlation will be high. And what can we expect in the future, as the warming gains momentum?

When we think about climate change (if we think about it at all), we envision rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, freakish storms, hellish wildfires, and rising sea levels. Among other things, this will result in damaged infrastructure and diminished food supplies.  These are, of course, manifestations of warming in the physical world, not the social world we all inhabit and rely on for so many aspects of our daily well-being and survival. The purely physical effects of climate change will, no doubt, prove catastrophic.  But the social effects including, somewhere down the line, food riots, mass starvation, state collapse, mass migrations, and conflicts of every sort, up to and including full-scale war, could prove even more disruptive and deadly.

In her immensely successful young-adult novel The Hunger Games (and the movie that followed), Suzanne Collins riveted millions with a portrait of a dystopian, resource-scarce, post-apocalyptic future where once-rebellious “districts” in an impoverished North America must supply two teenagers each year for a series of televised gladiatorial games that end in death for all but one of the youthful contestants. These “hunger games” are intended as recompense for the damage inflicted on the victorious capital of Panem by the rebellious districts during an insurrection. Without specifically mentioning global warming, Collins makes it clear that climate change was significantly responsible for the hunger that shadows the North American continent in this future era. Hence, as the gladiatorial contestants are about to be selected, the mayor of District 12’s principal city describes “the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land [and] the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.”

In this, Collins was prescient, even if her specific vision of the violence on which such a world might be organized is fantasy. While we may never see her version of those hunger games, do not doubt that some version of them will come into existence — that, in fact, hunger wars of many sorts will fill our future. These could include any combination or permutation of the deadly riots that led to the 2008 collapse of Haiti’s government, the pitched battles between massed protesters and security forces that engulfed parts of Cairo as the Arab Spring developed, the ethnic struggles over disputed croplands and water sources that have made Darfura recurring headline of horror in our world, or the inequitable distribution of agricultural land that continues to fuel the insurgency of the Maoist-inspiredNaxalites of India.

Combine such conflicts with another likelihood: that persistent drought and hunger will force millions of people to abandon their traditional lands and flee to the squalor of shantytowns and expanding slums surrounding large cities, sparking hostility from those already living there. One such eruption, with grisly results, occurred in Johannesburg’s shantytowns in 2008 when desperately poor and hungry migrants from Malawi and Zimbabwe were set upon, beaten, and in some cases burned to death by poor South Africans. One terrified Zimbabwean, cowering in a police station from the raging mobs, said she fled her country because “there is no work and no food.” And count on something else: millions more in the coming decades, pressed by disasters ranging from drought and flood to rising sea levels, will try to migrate to other countries, provoking even greater hostility. And that hardly begins to exhaust the possibilities that lie in our hunger-games future.

At this point, the focus is understandably on the immediate consequences of the still ongoing Great Drought: dying crops, shrunken harvests, and rising food prices. But keep an eye out for the social and political effects that undoubtedly won’t begin to show up here or globally until later this year or 2013.  Better than any academic study, these will offer us a hint of what we can expect in the coming decades from a hunger-games world of rising temperatures, persistent droughts, recurring food shortages, and billions of famished, desperate people.

Posted by Michael Klare at 9:12am, August 7, 2012.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, ofThe Race for What’s Left (Metropolitan Books).  A documentary movie based on his book Blood and Oil can be previewed and ordered at www.bloodandoilmovie.com. You can follow Klare on Facebook by clickinghere.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook, and check out the latest TD book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

Copyright 2012 Michael T. Klare

At a time when the British press was still “reporting the truth”, London’s Guardian (27 September 2003) published a detailed report of a 1957 Anglo-American assassination plot directed against the Syrian president, with a view to implementing “regime change”. The similarity to today’s war on Syria is striking.

What is revealing is that the political assassination of the Syrian president has been on the Anglo-American drawing board for over half a century.

The article, which reviews the text of the leaked ‘Secret Document”, confirms that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered the assassination of  the Syrian Head of State.

“Macmillan backed Syria assassination plot

Documents show White House and No 10 conspired over oil-fuelled invasion plan”

To consult the complete article by Ben Fenton, The Guardian, 27 September 2003 click here http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/27/uk.syria1

The stated objective of this Secret Plan, entrusted to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) [today’s MI6] and the CIA, consisted in assassinating the Syrian president together with key political and military figures. “Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.”

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organise and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”  (The Guardian, 27 September 2003)

The stated pretext of the Macmillan-Eisenhower plan was that Syria was “spreading terrorism” and “preventing the West’s access to Middle East oil”  Déjà Vu

The secret 1957 Plan called for the funding of a so-called “Free Syria Committee” equivalent to today’s Syrian National Council (SNC).  It also involved  “the arming of “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria. Under the plan, the CIA together with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Serivce (SIS) “would instigate internal uprisings”.

“Internal disturbances” in Syria would be triggered through covert operations. The “CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents [sic] within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.”

An all out invasion plan had also been envisaged. What was lacking from the 1957 plan, formulated at the height of the Cold War, was the “humanitarian” R2P envelope. Moreover, in contrast to today’s Free Syrian Army (FSA) (i.e the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance), the 1957 Anglo-American plan did not contemplate the recruitment of foreign mercenaries to wage their war:

[in 1957] Britain and America sought a secretive “regime change” in another Arab country they accused of spreading terror and threatening the west’s oil supplies, by planning the invasion of Syria and the assassination of leading figures.

Newly discovered documents show how in 1957 Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria’s pro-western neighbours, and then to “eliminate” the most influential triumvirate in Damascus. (The Guardian, 27 September 2003)

The insidious plan was known to key political figures in the British government. It was made public 46 years later in 2003:

Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme. In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.

Part of the “preferred plan” reads: “In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organise and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”

The document, approved by London and Washington, named three men: Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, head of Syrian military intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, chief of the Syrian general staff; and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist party.

For a prime minister who had largely come to power on the back of Anthony Eden’s disastrous antics in Suez just a year before, Mr Macmillan was remarkably bellicose. He described it in his diary as “a most formidable report”. Secrecy was so great, Mr Macmillan ordered the plan withheld even from British chiefs of staff, because of their tendency “to chatter”.

Driving the call for action was the CIA’s Middle East chief Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of former president Theodore Roosevelt. He identified Colonel Sarraj, General al-Bizri and Mr Bakdash as the real power behind a figurehead president. …

The “preferred plan” adds: “Once a political decision is reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.

“The two services should consult, as appropriate, to avoid any overlapping or interference with each other’s activities… Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus; the operation should not be overdone; and to the extent possible care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”

The report said that once the necessary degree of fear had been created, frontier incidents and border clashes would be staged to provide a pretext for Iraqi and Jordanian military intervention. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report says. “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension.” That meant operations in Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, taking the form of “sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities” to be blamed on Damascus.

The plan called for funding of a “Free Syria Committee”, and the arming of “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria. The CIA and MI6 would instigate internal uprisings, for instance by the Druze in the south, help to free political prisoners held in the Mezze prison, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus.

The planners envisaged replacing the Ba’ath/Communist regime with one that was firmly anti-Soviet, but they conceded that this would not be popular and “would probably need to rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power”. (Ben Fenton, The Guardian, 27 September 2003, emphasis added)

In contrast to the 2011-2012 Plan, which is supported by the Arab League, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in covert ops., the 1957 Eisenhower Macmillan Plan was not carried due to lack of support by neighbouring Arab countries: “The plan was never used, chiefly because Syria’s Arab neighbours could not be persuaded to take action and an attack from Turkey alone was thought to be unacceptable. (Ben Fenton, The Guardian, 27 September 2003, emphasis added) The ongoing US-NATO aggression directed against Syria has been planned for several years. An invasion of Syria was contemplated in the immediate wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “Regime change” in Damascus was again put forth by the Bush adminstration in the immediate wake of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The assassination was casully blamed, without evidence, on Damascus. President George W. Bush  “denounced Syria and its ally, Iran, as ‘outlaw regimes… Syria and Iran deserve no patience from the victims of terror,'” The British media confirmed in October 2005 that Washington was “looking for a pro-western replacement for Mr Assad.”

By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

@Global Research, August 7, 2012

Politicians and the media in the United States and Europe stepped up demands for direct military intervention in Syria yesterday, as the Syrian army fought to expel US-backed forces from the city of Aleppo.

Syrian army forces reportedly captured much of the Salahuddin neighborhood in southwestern Aleppo, a Sunni-majority neighborhood that was a central base for the groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Some anti-Assad forces retired north towards the Sakkour district, though some reports stated that they continued to hold parts of Salahuddin.

Several hundred anti-Assad fighters were killed, amid reports that they were running low on ammunition and supplies.

Malek al-Kurdi, the deputy commander of the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), told Voice of America: “We had wanted an active role from the international community to take a bold decision to stop the massacres in Syria. But the delay and the modest capacities of the Free Syrian Army have put the Syrian situation in a state of limbo.”

Syrian army units were also reportedly fighting north of Aleppo to cut off supply lines between the anti-Assad forces and Syria’s northern border with Turkey. Working with the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the European powers, Turkey is using the city of Adana—home of the US Incirlik air base—as a “nerve center” to reinforce the anti-Assad forces with munitions and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda forces play a critical role among the US-backed foreign fighters going to Syria (See also: Washington’s proxy in Syria: Al Qaeda).

The battle for Aleppo is particularly significant, given its strategic location next to Turkey and Aleppo’s role as a commercial center in the Syrian economy. The Syrian government must hold Aleppo if it is to prevent the United States and its allies from setting up bases in Syria along the Turkish border and resupplying their proxies with heavy weaponry.

Ruling circles in the United States and Europe have responded to their proxies’ setback in Aleppo by escalating calls for direct military intervention.

Yesterday, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for “rapid” foreign intervention in Syria to “avoid a massacre.” Sarkozy, who spearheaded last year’s NATO war in Libya, met with members of the US-backed Syrian National Council and issued a joint statement declaring that “there are great similarities with the Libyan crisis.”

Sarkozy’s intervention is highly unusual for a former French president, especially as Sarkozy had pledged to abandon public life after his defeat in May’s presidential elections. The move apparently caught the Socialist Party (PS) administration of President François Hollande off guard. Hollande’s policy was to continue covert support for the anti-Assad forces; like the Italian government, it recently sent medical teams to treat wounded FSA fighters.

Former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind also issued a statement calling for military support to the anti-Assad forces.

The Washington Post yesterday published an editorial, “Getting around a dead-end in Syria,” demanding US military action against Syria. Calling the Alawites leading the Syrian security forces a “broadly cohesive, hardcore fighting faction fighting an increasingly bitter, fierce, and naked struggle for collective survival,” it warned that Assad could fight indefinitely “unless the United States abandons its policy of passivity.”

The Post advocated arming the anti-Assad forces with anti-tank and anti-air weapons. It explained that this would increase Washington’s influence over anti-Assad forces, compared to the influence of Saudi Arabia and Islamist groups: “By refusing to step in, the Obama administration is merely ensuring that Syria’s future leaders will be more resistant to the West and perhaps more open to groups like Al Qaeda.”

Despite the Post’s intentions, its editorial lays bare the reactionary character of the US proxy war in Syria. Having armed reactionary forces like Al Qaeda as shock troops in a Sunni war against Syria’s Alawites, Washington sees no solution besides escalating the war.

The US is stoking a confrontation not only with the Assad regime, but with its key regional ally, Iran, and its Russian and Chinese backers. Yesterday the Iranian government hosted an international conference on Syria with Russian officials. Representatives of China, Algeria, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, and Tajikistan reportedly also attended the meeting.

Under these circumstances, it fell to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to fashion a “humanitarian” argument for Washington’s escalation of its reactionary proxy war in Syria. A spear-carrier for human-rights imperialism, Kristof wrote his most recent column, “Obama AWOL in Syria,” to demand that Obama organize a Libyan-style US intervention in Syria.

He began by recounting his visit to the Aspen Strategy Group, a Cold War think tank led by former Nixon and Bush administration advisor Lt. General Brent Scowcroft and former Assistant Defense Secretary Joseph Nye. Kristof wrote, “I’m struck by how many strategists whom I respect think it’s time to move more aggressively.”

These strategists include former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Defense Secretary William Perry, who called for a “no-fly, no-drive zone in northern Syria.” Characteristically, Kristof did not spell out what this entails. However, it would mean setting up a US intervention force to shoot down any Syrian aircraft over Syria and destroy any Syrian vehicle moving in northern Syria without US approval; that is, it is an act of war.

Kristof explained, “There’s a humanitarian imperative. It appears that several times more people have been killed than in Libya when that intervention began, and the toll is rising steeply.”

This ambiguous phrase is consciously constructed to present US military aggression as an act of charity to limit civilian casualties. This is a contemptible lie, contradicted even by the casualty statistics that Kristof artfully does not present to his reader. Even the upper estimate of Syrian casualties presented by anti-Assad forces, at 20,000, stands well below the 50,000 killed in the US-led Libyan war, as NATO forces carpet-bombed Tripoli, Sirte, and other Libyan cities.

If the casualty total in Syria stands below the casualty count in Libya when NATO began bombing, this is because NATO intervened as fighting began in Libya, whereas the US has been stoking a bloody war fought by right-wing Sunni Islamist proxies in Syria for months. Should Washington begin bombing Syria—a far more populous country than Libya—casualties will soon mount beyond the massive death toll in Libya.

Kristof concludes, “Look, I’m no hawk. I was strongly against the Iraq war and the Afghan surge, and I’m firmly against today’s drift to war against Iran, But Syria, like Libya, is a rare case where we can take modest steps that stand a good chance of accelerating the fall of a dictator.”

Such comments only underscore the cynicism and dishonesty of the proponents of human rights imperialism. Proclaiming himself an opponent to “drift to war against Iran” and an advocate of “modest steps,” Kristof is promoting a deeply reactionary and bloody enterprise: US carpet-bombing of Syria, to bring victory to ultra-right Sunni forces in a sectarian war with Iran’s main Middle East ally, the Assad regime.

By Alex Lantier

10 August, 2012

@ WSWS.org

Global food prices rose 6.2 percent in July, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reported Thursday. The FAO said it released its Food Price Index ahead of its regular publication schedule as a warning against the impact of such price rises.

The index, which calculates the cost of a basket of food commodities, overall averaged 213 points in July, up 12 points from June. In February 2011, the height of the Arab Spring, the overall index peaked at 238. The index has remained above the average 2008 level for more than a year and is now trending toward an all-time high.

Grain prices have driven the overall rise. The US corn crop is in a state of disaster, with more than half of all US acreage listed in poor or very poor condition due to a record-breaking drought. Under a parallel drought, Russia downgraded its wheat crop by several million tons on Wednesday.

The FAO cereal index averaged 260 points in July, up 17 percent over the month. Most of the increase is attributable to a 23 percent rise in corn prices over the month and a similar, 19 percent surge in wheat prices. The cereal index is only 14 points below the all-time high of 274 points in April 2008.

The FAO registered a 12 percent rise in sugar prices in July, triggered by unseasonably wet weather in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of cane sugar. Oils rose 2 percent, primarily on tighter supply outlooks and record prices for soybeans.

Price indexes for meats and dairy remained relatively unchanged for the month, although the protracted drought in the US rangeland has distressed many ranchers, who will be compelled to liquidate their herds. The US Department of Agriculture projects US consumer price inflation for meat, poultry, and dairy in the next few months as a result. Internationally, the higher cost of animal feed will ripple through livestock producers. This process may sharply affect Asia, where demand for meat is growing, but nations have smaller domestic stockpiles.

International food organization Oxfam warned in response to the FAO report that “millions of the world’s poorest will face devastation” from the increases. “This is not some gentle monthly wake-up call—it’s the same global alarm that’s been screaming at us since 2008,” Oxfam spokesman Colin Roche stated. “These figures prove that the world’s food system cannot cope on crumbling foundations. The combination of rising prices and expected low reserves means the world is facing a double danger.”

One billion people suffer from hunger worldwide. Hundreds of millions more who live in poverty are vulnerable to food inflation because they spend half or more of their incomes on staple goods. Food price shocks in 2008—driven by a confluence of weather disasters, protectionist measures, and speculators jumping ship from the financial market into commodities—produced food protests across more than 30 countries.

“There is a potential for a situation to develop like we had back in 2007-08,” FAO economist and grain analyst Abdolreza Abbassian told Reuters Thursday. “There is an expectation that this time around we will not pursue bad policies and intervene in the market by restrictions, and if that doesn’t happen we will not see such a serious situation as 2007/08. But if those policies get repeated, anything is possible.”

While economists and aid organizations have issued progressively dire warnings over the consequences of another food crisis, the underlying factors—extreme weather, a disjointed food distribution system, the possibility of export bans, and above all, rampant speculation—are more exacerbated than ever.

Indeed, commodities investors have rallied on the raft of bad news, making price shocks inevitable. Traders on the Chicago Board of Trade, banking on the USDA to issue a dire outlook on Friday, sent corn prices soaring Thursday morning to $8.265 per bushel, two cents below the all-time record set in July.

Major banks and hedge funds in particular have played a role in the rally. As Bloomberg News noted, “crops are the best-performing commodities this year, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Macquarie Group Ltd. and Credit Suisse Group AG say the trend will continue.”

One Chicago trader commented to Reuters that Goldman Sachs was leading the betting on a USDA corn yield downgrade and predicting $9 corn and $20 soybeans by November. “The Goldman roll started Tuesday, you have that going on and the report is tomorrow. Everyone is expecting the corn number to be pretty friendly.”

Jaime Miralles of investment firm Intl FC Stone Europe said that “a firm $9 corn sentiment remains as rationing is and will be required.” Other speculators anticipate $10 per bushel corn prices in the coming months.

“I think general price firmness is being seen in ahead of the USDA report because the market is increasingly realising how horrible conditions are for U.S. corn,” Rabobank analyst Erin FitzPatrick commented. “There is pre-positioning ahead of the report as people are expecting more cuts in US harvest forecasts. Despite recent rain in the US, a lot of the damage has already been done to corn.”

Farmers and agricultural economists estimate that corn yield in much of the Corn Belt will be far lower than the USDA’s already downgraded estimate of 146 bushels per acre. Some areas may yield 100 bushels per acre or less, knocking the national corn crop back to levels not seen in decades.

The US Drought Monitor reported that for the week ending August 7, fully 80 percent of the contiguous US is experiencing drought. “Every day we go without significant rain is tightening the noose,” said meteorologist Mark Svoboda, who authored the latest Monitor report. In Iowa, the largest corn producing state, the area suffering from extreme drought more than doubled in size. As of August 7, nearly 70 percent of the state was under the most severe category of drought. Over 81 percent of Illinois and fully 94 percent of Missouri is in “at least extreme drought.”

The USDA estimates that inventories of corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice will be reduced to 2008 levels next year. Wheat inventories are projected to contract 7.5 percent.

Wheat production in Russia, the fourth largest exporter, is set to fall by 20 percent this year. The Australian wheat crop, stunted by repeated frosts and poor weather, may yield 40 percent less than initial projections. India’s agricultural region suffered a monsoon season providing 22 percent less rainfall than average, resulting in a 7.8 million ton loss in the global rice crop. The FAO also reduced rice production forecasts for Cambodia, Taiwan, North and South Korea, and Nepal.

By Naomi Spencer

10 August, 2012

@ WSWS.org

In April of 2003, I returned from Iraq after having lived there during the U.S. Shock and Awe bombing and the initial weeks of the invasion. Before the bombing I had traveled to Iraq about two dozen times and had helped organize 70 trips to Iraq , aiming to cast light on a brutal sanctions regime, with the “Voices in the Wilderness” campaign. As the bombing had approached, we had given our all to helping organize a remarkable worldwide peace movement effort, one which may have come closer than any before it to stopping a war before it started. But, just as, before the war, we’d failed to lift the vicious and lethally punitive economic sanctions against Iraq , we also failed to stop the war, and the devastating civil war that it created.

So it was April and I’d returned home, devastated at our failure. My mother possessed ample reserves of Irish charm, motherly wisdom, and, for purposes of political analyses, a political analysis consistent with that of Fox News Channel. She knew I was distraught, and aiming to comfort me, she said the following in her soft, lilting voice. “Kathy, dear, what you don’t understand is that the people of Iraq could have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein a long time ago, and they ought to have done so, and they didn’t. So we went in there and did it for them.” She clearly hoped I could share her relief that the U.S. could lend a helping hand in that part of the world. “And they ought to be grateful, and they’re not.”

My mother, then in her eighties, was actually quite anti-war, but she was also against evil dictators, and the governance of any country where she was consistently told we might need to invade. If a war could be packaged as necessary to achieving humanitarian goals, then my mother would almost certainly join the majority of U.S. people, over the past decade or so, in tolerating wars or at least enduring them with a general indifference to any accounts of the human suffering the wars might cause.

Although the war in Afghanistan is often referred to as the longest war in U.S. history, the multistage war in Iraq, beginning in 1991 and inclusive of 13 years of continual bombardment and nightmarish, generation-wasting economic warfare waged through militarily-enforced sanctions, constitutes the longest war, one which in real terms is of course ongoing.

John Tirman, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, attempted, in his book The Deaths of Others , (Oxford University Press, 2011), to understand how U.S. people could be so indifferent to the suffering caused by U.S. military actions. He was following up on his seminal study of Iraq war casualties, released by John Hopkins and printed in The Lancet , which had concluded that in the three and a half years following Shock and Awe, the war and its effects had killed upwards of 660,000 Iraqis. This credible report, backed by prestigious academic institutions, had been ignored by the government, and thus also by the media, allowing a disinterested public to avoid learning information they’d mostly been careful not to ask for.

In his book, Tirman was now trying to understand how the U.S. public could have been so indifferent.

His eventual explanation focuses on how hard U.S. war planners (and war profiteers) have worked to overcome “the Vietnam Syndrome,” which is to say the healthy democratic rejection of the Vietnam War, which authorities across the liberal-to-conservative spectrum have tended to see as a sort of disease to be eliminated. The inoculation campaign had been very effective: By creating an all-volunteer army, by carefully regimenting and ‘embedding’ reporters and relentlessly emphasizing “humanitarian” goals to be achieved by any exercise of our power overseas, the U.S. military-industrial complex has been able to assure that the majority of U.S. people won’t rise up in protest of our wars. If the public can be persuaded that a war is essentially humanitarian, Tirman believes their indifference can be counted on, in spite of the number of U.S. soldiers killed or maimed or psychologically disabled by their wartime experiences, regardless of the drain on U.S. economies however stricken or depressed, and without any apparent concern for or even awareness of the horrendous consequences borne by the communities overseas that are the targets of our massively armed humanitarianism. Adding to a predisposition on behalf of saving people from evil dictators, the U.S. population and that of many western allies face declining availability of jobs. Available jobs are increasingly controlled by either the military-industrial complex or the prison (criminal justice) industrial complex.

A few years ago, many people disenchanted with the Iraq and Afghan wars placed hopes in Obama as someone who would uphold the rule of law, including the international laws, ratified by U.S. congresses past, against international aggression and war crime, ending those abuses by the U.S. military, its private-sector contractors, and the CIA, which have contributed so to worldwide hostility against the U.S. and have arguably so greatly lessened our security. But the Obama administration, in its de facto continuation of both wars, in its massive escalation of targeted assassinations worldwide and its secrecy about drone warfare against Pakistan , has repeatedly shown our government’s unshakeable allegiance, to militarists and those radically right-wing advocates of corporate power we’re often now asked to call “centrists”.

I think we in the peace and antiwar movements find ourselves stalemated. Groups are outspent and out-maneuvered by military and corporate institutions with power to undercut whatever “clout” our movements might have developed because these two complexes have now arrogated so much antidemocratic control over the media and the economy. Nonetheless, grassroots groups persist with arduous and often heroic efforts to continue educating their constituencies and reminding ordinary people that the defense industry is not providing them with any of the security that it assuredly isn’t providing for people trapped in our war zones.

What direction should the peace and antiwar movements pursue now? Now, when it seems difficult to point toward substantial possible gains? Now, as the U.S. continues to wage multiple wars and build on a weapons stockpile that already exceeds the combined arsenals of the next most militarized eighteen countries on Earth? In advance or in retreat, we have to keep resisting. Surely, we must continue basic “maintenance” tasks of outreach and education. Voices for Creative Nonviolence tries to assist in educating the general public about people who bear the brunt of our wars – so we travel to war zones and live alongside ordinary people, trying, upon our return, to get their stories through to ordinary people in the U.S. We hope that by doing so we can eventually help motivate civil society into action to oppose these wars. But while working to preserve the heart of the society, its civilization in the best meaning of that term, we know we must always organize for and participate in campaigns designed to have the greatest possible impact on policymakers now, and through them on those whose lives are so desperately at stake. That commitment in turn is part of our message to our neighbors to reclaim their humanity through action.

It’s not just each other’s hearts, but also each other’s minds that citizens of a democracy are called upon to exercise. We must constantly appeal to the rationality of the general public, engaging in humble dialogue so they can appeal to ours, helping people see that U.S. war making does not make people safer here or abroad, that in fact we are jeopardized as well – if only by the intense anger and frustration caused by policies like targeted assassination, night raids, and aerial bombings of civilians.

We should celebrate the tremendous accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street. In just twelve weeks the “99 and 1” logos reintroduced people, worldwide, to the normalness of discussing, in all manner of public discussions, the fundamental unfairness of systems designed to benefit small elites at the expense of vast majorities; and the OWS movement welcomed anyone and everyone into solidarity in building towards more humane, more just, and more democratic communities. The peace movement should participate in and encourage this remarkable network, and similar organizations that will spring up to complement it, not only to demand more jobs and better wages but also to stipulate what kinds of jobs we want and what kinds of products we want those jobs devoted to creating. We must campaign for jobs that build our society instead of converting it into junk – that produce constructive and necessary goods and services and above all not the weapons that we employ in prisons and battlefields at home and abroad.

We must think hard about ways to democratize our country, and reverse the “unwarranted influence” over our society which, half a century ago, a Republican president was warning us already belonged to the military industrial complex. Enormous sums of money, along with human ingenuity and resources, are now being poured into developing drone warfare and surveillance to be used abroad and increasingly at home, but the more intelligence our leaders collect, the less we, the led, have access to. The drones aren’t there to help us understand the Afghan people – how they huddle together on the brink of starvation, dared to survive the capricious and uncivilized behavior of a nation gone mad on war. Have we any means of imposing civilization, not on desperate people around the world, but on those who lack it – the elites that control our military, our economy, and our government?

And honestly, I couldn’t persuade my own mother. I should admit here to a recent conversation with my sisters, the oldest of whom recently shared, “We weren’t sure whether or not to tell you, but mom really did hope you were working for the CIA.”

We never know how we will influence others and what unexpected developments might happen. The destiny of a world of seven billion people should never be shaped by a few activists – as it currently is shaped by a remarkably few activists occupying the U.S. Pentagon, our business centers, and the White House. We’re not supposed to make any change we can securely claim credit for – we’re supposed to do good for the world – to speak truth to it, to resist its oppressors, to surprise it with decency, love, and an implacability for justice; and trust it to surprise us in turn.

With eyes wide open, willing to look in the mirror, (I’m drawing from the titles of two extraordinarily impressive campaigns designed by the American Friends Service Committee), we must persist with the tasks of education and outreach, looking for nonviolent means to take risks commensurate to the crimes being committed, all the while growing ever more open to links with popular movements and respectful alliances well outside our choir. We must civilize the world by examples of clear-sightedness and courage. We’re supposed to do what anyone is supposed to do; live as full humans, as best we can, in a world whose destiny we can never predict, and whose astonishingly precious inhabitants could never be given enough justice, or love, or time.

By Kathy Kelly

3 July, 2012

@ Mobilizing Ideas

Kathy Kelly ( Kathy@vcnv.org ) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

This article was first published by the Mobilizing Ideas website

Delhi must vote with its BRICS partners the next time a resolution comes up in the U.N. Security Council. That is the only way to help the West pull back from a sectarian war

On July 15, an estimated 7,000 rebel fighters owing allegiance to the Free Syrian Army invaded Damascus, the capital of Syria. In a Sturm und Drang operation, captured on amateur video by an observer whose harsh breathing reeks of fear, they raced towards the city in brand new pick-up trucks over barely marked desert tracks from Iraq and Jordan, waving Kalashnikovs in the air. Two days later, at 10.00 am, as a bomb planted in the defence headquarters killed four top generals in the Syrian armed forces and severely injured several of their advisers, they embarked on a reign of terror in Midan, killing anyone who was wearing a uniform or appeared hostile to them. Residents interviewed by the Syrian media after the army took Midan back said the attackers were Arabs, not Syrians, for they spoke a different kind of Arabic.

Surprise

The Arab League and the western powers convened a meeting of the United Nations Security Council within hours. But instead of demanding that the insurgents abide by Kofi Annan’s six-point plan, their draft resolution condemned Syria for using heavy weapons — in this case helicopters — against the marauders. Russia and China’s veto did not surprise anyone. But India’s decision not to vote with its BRICS partners and to toe the western line instead did.

Why did India do this? For it must surely have known even then that Damascus was only a curtain raiser for the battle that is now being joined in Aleppo. According to Syrian estimates, 12,000 FSA fighters have infiltrated Aleppo. Half of them are foreigners from Libya, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Sudan — in short, al-Qaeda.

If there is a bloodbath in Aleppo, the West is bound to table yet another resolution in the Security Council, this time seeking permission to use “other means” if necessary to topple Bashar al-Assad and “save civilian lives.” Will India again vote with the West? Before it does so, it would do well to remember that its own nation building project is still incomplete. So whatever conventions it allows or helps the West establish on the Right to Protect or Intervene may well come back to haunt it in the years that lie ahead.

New Delhi needs to bear this in mind because there are striking parallels between what Damascus is facing today and what Delhi faced in Kashmir in the 1990s. In 2011, Syria had been under the autocratic rule of the Ba’ath party for 48 years. In 1990, Kashmir too had been under autocratic rule for all but seven of the previous 40 years. However, in both countries the autocracy was a stable one. Young people in particular chafed under the Ba’ath party’s rule in Syria exactly as they chafed against “Delhi’s rule” in Kashmir. But while nearly everyone wanted a change, almost no one wanted it at the cost of a violent disruption of their lives. In neither case, therefore, was the state the first to resort to violence: On the contrary, both insurgencies had to be stoked, so the first to pick up the gun were the insurgents. In Syria this was done by Salafi/Takfiri Islamists who crossed the border from Jordan in March 2011 and holed up in the Omari mosque in Dera’a before launching targeted provocations, and attacks on police stations and government offices.

A third parallel is the intervention of hostile foreign powers bent on converting a domestic upsurge demanding political empowerment into a movement for secession or regime change. In Kashmir, Pakistan did this by disarming the JKLF cadres still in training in Muzaffarabad in 1990 and creating the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. In Syria, Turkey and Qatar are funnelling money and battle hardened jihadis to start a sectarian war that will overwhelm the state.

Last and most important, like New Delhi, Damascus has been trying to prevent civil war by offering the insurgents the alternative of the ballot box. Mr. Assad began, on his own, by lifting all controls on the Internet in January 2011. Over the next six months, he first tried to negotiate peace with the Sunni zealots in Dera’a by sacking the governor and releasing 260 prisoners and 16 clerics, and promising to repeal the Emergency Laws and the ban on political parties that had been in place for 48 years. He fulfilled his first promise five days ahead of schedule on April 20 and his second three months later in July.

Mr. Assad also set up a drafting committee to frame a new, democratic constitution for Syria, but neither this nor his other reforms made the least dent on the hardening resolve of the West and its Arab and Turkish allies to force Mr. Assad and his regime out of power and install the puppet Syrian National Council in its place.

Despite this, Mr. Assad persevered with his attempts to make an orderly transition to democracy. As the task of framing a new constitution neared completion, he announced that the draft would be placed before the people in a referendum. Six weeks before the referendum, he offered an amnesty to all rebels and invited them to join in the voting. They could well have done so for the draft constitution not only required an election within three months of its passing but also contained a clause that would bar Mr. Assad himself from contesting the presidential election after his current term ended in 2014. But, egged on by the “Friends of Syria,” of whom India was regrettably one, they chose to boycott the elections and let the violence continue.

Sneering scepticism

The world learned virtually nothing about Mr. Assad’s efforts because the international media, which reported several of his pronouncements, did so with sneering scepticism and no attempt at analysis. But on February 26, 2012, 57 per cent of Syria’s electorate crowned Mr. Assad’s efforts with success by turning out to endorse the new constitution. The large turnout showed that the vast majority of Syrians still wanted a peaceful transition to a secular democracy, and did not mind Mr. Assad remaining in power to manage the transition. For the Free Syrian Army, whose leaders knew (just as LTTE leader Prabakaran did when forced to negotiate with New Delhi in 1987) that the return of peace would erode most of the support they enjoyed among the people, the only alternative that remained was to bring in foreign fighters in the name of jihad.

The result has been a dramatic rise in casualties after February. At the end of October 2011— eight months after the uprising began — the U.N.’s tally was between 6,000 and 7,000 deaths. By February, the figure had risen to 10,000-11,000. Today the minimum estimate is in excess of 20,000 dead. Christians and Shias have been the main victims in recent months. 50,000 Christians have been driven out of Homs, leaving less than a thousand behind. As a result, the number of doctors in the city has fallen from 850 to less than 50, and functioning hospitals from 45 to 5.

Attack on Christians

The killing of Christians has now spread to Damascus. When the Syrian army retook Midan, the FSA ‘rebels’ dispersed but did not withdraw. Instead they selectively attacked and killed the wealthy, educated Christians of Damascus. The first targeted attack took place on July 23. Another occurred over the weekend of August 4-5. U.N. officials in Damascus have reported a ‘terrible killing’ in the Christian quarter of Damascus. Another exodus is therefore in the offing: the Archbishop of the Syrian church told a U.N. official ‘que dieu me sauve’— only god can save us.

It is inconceivable that Mr. Assad initiated this escalation because his successful referendum in February and Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan, which held the rebels equally responsible for the civilian deaths and did not endorse the western demand for Mr. Assad to step down first, had given him everything he wanted. From that point on, he had nothing to gain and everything to lose from violence. The western powers have their reasons for studiously ignoring his lack of motive, but Delhi needs to remember that they are not India’s reasons.

When the next resolution condemning the Syrian government comes up in the Security Council, there are two good reasons why India must vote against it. The first is to stand by the principle of national sovereignty that underpins the U.N. Charter and reassure its BRICS partners that it is not a fair weather friend.

The second is to give the West an escape hatch to avoid compounding its own mistakes. The recent horrifying rise in sectarian killings; the growing terror of Syria’s Christian population, the beheading of an international staff member of the Red Cross in Yemen, and the creeping spread of sectarian violence in Turkey, have triggered a spate of reappraisals in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other publications. These reveal a nagging anxiety that the West’s intervention is not preparing Syria for democracy but dragging the entire region towards a no-holds-barred Sunni-Shia jihad that will douse the candle of reason with blood for generations to come.

India has a unique moral position in the world today: it is a working democracy; it threatens no country and is almost completely free from sectarian conflict. A vote by it against military intervention in Syria will therefore carry disproportionate weight. It could give the West a face-saving way of pulling back from a sectarian war in which it will find itself aligned with the killers of Christians and the destroyers of the World Trade Centre.

By Prem Shankar Jha

7 August, 2012

@ The hindu

(The writer is a senior journalist.)

The illegal oil embargoes against Iran have begun to take effect; a precocious smile of satisfaction breaks upon the ugly face of Zionism; and the US once again proves its lapdog fidelity to the Zionist regime.

That’s not all, though. Israel craves for more and Washington has no choice but to cater to the wanton demands of a decadent colonizing regime.

A report carried by the Reuters titled “Iranians feel the pain as West tightens sanctions” details the “financial and social woes” exacerbated by these sanctions in Iran and succeeds in faking a larger-than-life image of the woes the Iranian society encounters in the face of the sanctions. That the oil sanctions exercise a detrimental effect on the financial issues of the Iranian society is a bitter reality which shamefully strikes right in the face of Washington which is seen by pundits and laymen alike to be making herculean efforts to hamper the progress of the Islamic Republic by targeting and placing pressure on the general public. However, the report falls short of mentioning the group to be mostly and brutally afflicted with these sanctions.

There are more than fifty kinds of badly needed medicine for people who suffer from certain diseases such as cancer, children’s cancer, Thalassemia, Multiple sclerosis (MS), respiratory and heart diseases. The drastically declining import of such medicine caused by the US-engineered sanctions on Iran’s banking and transactions has reached an ominously critical point in the country. The rise in dollar value against rial has further complicated the issue, doubling or tripling the price of medicine. Those who suffer from such diseases hardly find their medicine or if they do, they should pay a heavy price. These facts do not worry Washington in the least bit as these are human issues and human issues do not appear to concern the US government.

Washington’s vitriolic animosity towards Iran is nothing new and the fact that they wish to cripple the country’s economy at the behest of the Zionist regime is no secret book to anyone.

Besides, these unilateral sanctions starkly run counter to international laws and can become a major issue at an international court though the whole notion seems bitterly remote to a cynical mind when one considers the considerable degree of influence that Washington and the Zionists exercise in the world.

Be that as it may, Iran mulls taking legal action at the International Court of Justice against US-led sanctions. Mohammad Nahavandian, the president of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture raised the issue during a recent session of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The members slammed the unilateral US-engineered EU sanctions against Iran as illegal.

Nahavandian says, “The members asserted that the unilateral sanctions are in contradiction to the rules of the International Chamber of Commerce and also against the international free trade frameworks.”

This has to be pursued vehemently as the ICC members agreed that if Iran were to take legal action in The Hague, the court would definitely vote against the sanctions.

Two rounds of talks have recently taken place between the P5+1 and Iran with no practical steps. Just prior to the first round of talks between the big six world powers and Iran in Baghdad on May 23, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the demands on Iran are clear: 1. Stop enriching uranium, 2. Remove already enriched uranium, and 3. Close the underground Fordow nuclear facility near Qom.

Interestingly, these three demands were placed high on the agenda of the multifaceted talks in Baghdad by the American party who had well received her nuclear lessons from the Zionist regime.

There are two subtle points in these demands which need to be put under critical scrutiny.

Firstly, it is quite clear that these demands were enunciated in an ambience where the American party knew the Islamic Republic would never give in to such terms. Iran will never stop enriching uranium; Iran will never close Fordow nuclear facility and Iran will never ship out the already enriched uranium on which the Islamic Republic has expended so much money and energy. So why does the American party even broach it when it already knows the answer? As Ambassador to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh said in an interview with Reuters Iran will never suspend uranium enrichment and sees no reason to close the Fordow nuclear site.

“Iran will not close the underground nuclear site as the country sees no justification for doing so. Fordow is a safe place. We have spent a lot of money and time to have a safe place…. When you have a safe place, secure place under IAEA control, then why do you tell me that I should close it?”

In the same interview, he clearly stated, “One thing is clear: the enrichment in Iran will never be suspended.”

“Neither sanctions, nor military actions, nor assassinations of our scientists will stop the enrichment,” he emphasized.

Secondly, if the American party already knows the answer to the demands, why does it have to bother at all to point them out? Isn’t it because they capitalize on international community’s ignorance of Iran’s nuclear energy program and are resolute to depict Iran in a negative light only to push ahead with their diabolical goals i.e. quenching their thirst for invasion and beefing up the obesity of their military muscle in the region.

Indeed, the sanctions are an invasion of justice, a tacit declaration of war and a brutal tactic of breaking down a determined nation who sees no point in bowing down to Washington’s imperialist lust or capitulating to the thieving Zionist regime which has stolen the dreams of a nation.

By Ismail Salami

05 July, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Gush Etzion has become a hot destination in recent months for tourists seeking an Israeli experience like no other: The opportunity to pretend-shoot a terror operative. Residents of the nearby settlements, who run the site, offer day-trippers a chance to hear stories from the battleground, watch a simulated assassination of terrorists by guards, and fire weapons at the range.”

David Pearl, who heads the Gush Etzion Regional Council, notes that this kind of experience turns the district into a world-famous “tourist gem.” At the end of the thrill-filled day, the tourists get a diploma indicating they “completed a basic shooting course in Israel.”

Israeli tourism is a double edged sword. On one hand, it manufactures enemy images of the Palestinian. Trained guides are taught to scare the tourist about the dangerous Palestinian who is all set to shoot and kill. On the other hand, Israel tourism is there to rake in the billions of dollars on offer – at the expense of the Palestinian. The number of Palestinian heritage sites now appropriated by Israel is yet another instrument of the occupation to take away the best for the occupier and leave Palestine deprived even of its own natural historical culture and heritage.

A study by the Alternative Tourism Group in Beit Sahour says: “Israel claims to present a surplus of tourism products – historical and religious places, beach resorts, heritage locales, archaeological spaces, and nature spots. The industry relies on what has come to be known as a ‘pilgrim market’ to make its dramatic gains from the tourism industry. However, it is important, at the very outset, to underline that Israel has craftily appropriated a number of Palestinian sites and areas into its own market and parades these important locations as authentically Israeli. This has been possible because Israel, as the occupying power in Palestine, carries out the seizure of these sites through unlawful means.”

Palestine’s main attraction for a large proportion of visitors is the status of Palestine as the Holy Land. Traditionally, pilgrims have visited the country from all over the world. The conflict stemming from the occupation has caused a drastic reduction in pilgrimages. At least 15 military orders and regulations related to tourism have been issued since 1967 by the Israeli military authorities, who have assumed responsibility for tourism in the Occupied Territories. These orders raised the level of requirements for licensing and functioning of tourist institutions, without availing those institutions of the means necessary for the required improvements.

To the question: “Are tourists allowed to enter areas outside of the Israeli responsibility (Palestinian areas)?” the Israeli government is ambiguous but suggests that typically it is not safe.

The Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) argues that travel to Palestine is secure. Hospitality is an extremely important value in Palestine, as it is throughout the Mediterranean world. Palestinians welcome visitors with open arms. The greatest risk does not arise from potential Palestinian violence but dangerous situations that can arise due to the Israeli Occupation.

ATG insists that “Arab people in general and Palestinians in particular, have been demonized in the West for decades. They are often presented in the media as dangerous, conniving, and immoral. It is not uncommon for visitors to Palestine to experience a mix of emotions — bewilderment, confusion, delight, embarrassment, and anger — when they realize how false those demonized images really are.
Negative stereotypes of Palestinians have been purposely reinforced by the Israeli government, which discourages international visitors to have contact with Palestinians. Israel knows that exposure to the present and historical realities of the situation have a transformative effect on the majority of tourists to Palestine, who return to their home countries as opponents to Israel’s oppressive policies against Palestinians.”

In the face of harsh propaganda, Palestinians encourage international visitors to suspend any preconceived notions they have about Palestinians until they have a chance to meet us face-to-face.

When “tourists venture to West Bank to ‘shoot terrorists”, under the tutelage of settlers, then Israel tourism has assumed its most ugly face. Tourism is designed to be a transformational experience- an encounter between peoples that results in enhancing human values and understanding between peoples. Israeli tourism has chosen profits over people, and hate over understanding.

The ynetnews (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4243882,00.html) about how illegal settlers in the West Bank create tour packages for hate and violence must be roundly condemned and steps taken to ban it.

PU readers are urged to act by:

o Conveying disapproval of such touristic itineraries under the very nose of the Israeli authorities – you may write to Ministry of Tourism at: info@goisrael.com

o Disseminate this information widely to tour operators and churches- any location from where tours to Israel originate and encourage them to take the tours where ‘human encounters’ for peace, justice and human understanding take place.

The Alternative Tourism Group (www.atg.ps) offers constructive alternatives through which one can “see what Palestine is like beyond the headlines”… to see and meet “with Palestinian families, witness the real effects of occupation, and learn about the history, religions, conflicts, cultures, and traditions of this region.”

In solidarity,

Ranjan Solomon

TARIQ ALI says we are witnessing in Syria a new form of re-colonisation by the West, like we have already seen in Iraq and in Libya.

Many of the people who first rose against the Assad regime in Syria have been sidelined, leaving the Syrian people with limited choices, neither of which they want: either a Western imposed regime, “composed of sundry Syrians who work for the western intelligence agencies”, or the Assad regime.

The only way forward, in the interests of all Syrians, says Ali, is negotiation and discussion. But it is now obvious that the West is not going to let that happen because they are backing the opposition groups who are against any negotiation.

An interview with Tariq Ali on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tI1SLqXJI7M

14 July 2012

By Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali is an author, activist and expert on the Middle East.

Foreign and Expatriates Ministry: Armed Terrorist Groups have once again Foiled Efforts to Evacuate Wounded People and Families from Homs

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – An official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry stated on Thursday that the Ministry, the authorities concerned and the local authorities in Homs city have exerted efforts to enable the International Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent to enter the areas where the armed terrorist groups exist in order to evacuate the wounded, the elders, children, women, people with special needs and the other citizens and to enter medical and food aid; however, the armed terrorist groups once again foiled all efforts.

The source pointed out that the armed terrorist groups fired at the Red Crescent and the Red Cross delegation and announced their rejection of evacuating any wounded or ill citizen.

These terrorist practices which violate the international human law uncover once again the criminal nature of those armed groups and the nature of their regional and international supporters, the source added.

Syria calls on the UN Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) to shoulder their responsibilities and exert pressure on the armed terrorist groups to force them to abide by the human logic, the source noted.

The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry’s source reiterated Syria’s commitment to the safety and security of the citizens and cooperation with the international community to end the suffering of the citizens in the areas where the armed terrorist groups exist.

4 Citizens Injured in Terrorist Blast in Aleppo, Two Members of the Authorities Martyred in Clash with Terrorists in Idleb

GOVERNORATES, (SANA)- Four citizens got wounded in the explosion of a booby-trapped motorcycle near Salah Eddin Mosque in Sheikh Maksoud neighborhood on Thursday.

A source in Aleppo Governorate told SANA reporter that two terrorists driving a booby-trapped motorcycle blew themselves up causing their immediate death and the injury of four citizens.

Two Members of Authorities Martyred in Clash with Terrorists in Idleb

Two members of the authorities on Thursday were martyred and five others were injured in a clash with an armed terrorist group who have been attacking citizens and law enforcement personnel and vandalizing public and private properties in Arminaz town in the countryside of Idleb governorate.

SANA reporter cited a source in the governorate as saying that tens of terrorists were killed or injured in the clash, among them was the terrorist Adnan al-Sattouf who was wanted for various crimes.

Military Engineering Units Detonate 3 Explosive Devices in Idleb

In another context, members of military engineering units detonated three explosive devices, each weighed 40 kg, planted by an armed terrorist group on Nahlia crossroads in Jabal al-Arbaeen area.

A source of the engineering units said that the explosive devices were equipped with remote control devices and could not be dismantled.

A Number of Terrorists Killed in Clash with the Authorities

On Idleb-Harem road, the authorities clashed with members of an armed terrorist group who have been planting explosive devices and injured a number of them.

Three Citizens Injured by Terrorists’ Gunfire in Hama

In Hama, three citizens on Wednesday were injured by the fire of an armed terrorist group in Janoub al-Mala’b neighborhood in Hama.

SANA reporter quoted a source in Hama Governorate  as saying that terrorists opened  fire randomly at the aforementioned neighborhood causing the injury of Doctor Majd Dakak and citizens Zuhair Qartabani and Asil Mukleh.

The source added that the competent authorities found the body of pharmacist Mahmoud Yasin Hassani near al-Kabbarieh village in Souran area, after having been shot by terrorists.

260 Tons of Raw Cotton Bales Burned in Terrorist Attack on Factory in Hama

An armed terrorist group on Wednesday targeted the Cotton Yarn Factory in the city of Hama with RPGs causing fire to erupt at the factory which devoured 260 tons of raw cotton bales.

A source at Hama Police Command told SANA reporter that the fire broke out in storehouse 2 of the factory, which is located on Hama-Homs road, burning out 1300 raw cotton bales before firefighters were able to extinguish the fire.

The source added that each of the burned bales weighed 200 g, making a quarter of the warehouse’s contents of unrefined cotton.

Authorities Clash with Terrorists in Douma, Damascus Countryside

Authorities, in cooperation with locals, stormed a number of terrorists’ hideouts in Douma and its surroundings.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the authorities clashed with the terrorists, killing few of them and wounding others in addition to seizing their weapons.

Twenty Army, Law-enforcement and Civilian Martyrs Laid to Rest

PROVINCES, (SANA) -The bodies of 20 army, law enforcement and civilian martyrs on Thursday were escorted from the military hospitals of Tishreen, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Zahi Azraq to their final resting place.

Solemn funeral ceremonies were held for the martyrs who were targeted by armed terrorist groups while they were in the line of duty in Damascus and its Countryside, Homs, Hama, Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Idleb.

The martyrs are:

§ Lieutenant Gen. Ghassan Khalil Abu al-Dhahab, from Damascus.

§ Chief Warrant Officer Ali Mahmoud Ali, from Lattakia.

§ Warrant Officer Yamen Ahmad Makhlouf, from Hama.

§ Sergeant Ali Hassan Ma’rouf, from Homs.

§ Sergeant Major Ali Zuhair Dawa, from Hama.

§ Sergeant Majd Aref Darwish, from Lattakia.

§ Sergeant Suleiman Yousef Shaaban, from Hama.

§ Corporal conscript Mohammad Ahmad Abbadi, from Damascus Countryside.

§ Conscript Shihab Ahmad al-Ahmad, from Hasaka.

§ Conscript Hamid Matro al-Jarou, from Aleppo.

§ Conscript Ibrahim Ramez Qadmous, from Raqaa.

§ Conscript Ahmad Mohammad Eidtabak, from Damascus.

§ Conscript Hajji Haidar al-Salou, from Aleppo.

§ Conscript Mohammad Haytham Azraq, from Aleppo.

§ Conscript Abdul-Jabbar Omar Hamshari, from Aleppo.

§ Conscript Hussein Mustafa Osman, from Aleppo.

§ Conscript Ahmad Naser Eidris, from Hasaka.

§ Conscript Midyan Hani Jaber, from Sweida.

§ Conscript Khaled Ahmad al-Saeed, from Aleppo.

§ Civilian Mohammad Rashed Wahbeh, from Damascus.

The martyrs’ families expressed pride in the martyrdom of their sons, stressing their readiness for martyrdom in defending the homeland whenever duty calls.

They expressed rejection of all forms of foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, calling for confronting the armed terrorist groups and striking with an iron fist those who try to tamper with the homeland’s security and stability.

Lavrov: British PM’s Statement that President Putin Shifted his Position on Syria Not True

MOSCOW, (SANA) – Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refuted the statement made by the British PM David Cameron that President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, shifted his stance towards the situation in Syria after the G20 meeting as not true.

“It is not true at all,” said Lavrov in an interview with Russia Today on Thursday.

“The meetings with UK PM David Cameron and US President Barack Obama did discuss Syria. Both our partners said President Bashar Al-Assad must go and external players must develop a transition plan for the Syrians to agree,” Lavrov added.

He said ” We expressed our position that we cannot accept a policy which would aim at changing regimes from the outside. This has been our position all along. We also cannot prejudge for the Syrians what the outcome of the political dialogue would be.”

Lavrov reiterated his country’s call for a political dialogue among all Syrians without preconditions or foreign dictates to solve the crisis in Syria.

He underlined that Russia strongly supports political dialogue and the halt of violence.

He added that his country calls upon all external players who have influence on both sides to persuade them to withdraw from cities and sit down for dialogue.

“There should be no prejudging from outside what the substance and result of this dialogue might be. It’s for the Syrians to decide,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov warned that any military intervention in Syria will lead to a catastrophe in the region, stressing that Moscow is committed to implementing its military deals with Syria, especially in relation to air defense, to repel any foreign intervention.

Lavrov said that Russia’s stance on the crisis in Syria is fair and transparent.

Lavrov added that there is discussion with Western and regional partners on activating the foreign factor for solving the Syrian crisis in Syria through the international conference on Syria due on June 30, adding that the conference constitutes a real chance that could yield results.

The Russian foreign minister reiterated call for non-interference in the Syrian domestic affairs and not forestalling agreements that must be reached by the Syrians themselves.

Lavrov pointed out to a US support to the proposals of the UN envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, for the meeting of the foreign players on June 30 in Geneva.

Lavrov underlined the importance that Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar take part in the conference, in addition to Iran, adding that the Iranians should be invited to the negotiating table, as well as the representatives of the UN, the Arab League and the EU.

Lavrov said that at least 50 per cent of the Syrians tie their future to President Bashar al-Assad for a variety of reasons, indicating that the Syrians fear that the West’s policies will bring Islamic extremists to power.
Lavrov added that Syria’s fate has to be decided through a comprehensive Syrian dialogue.

Lavrov, Annan Discuss Ways to Settle Crisis in Syria

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister discussed with the UN Envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, ways to settle the crisis in Syria in a phone call.

Russia Today website quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying the phone call focused on international efforts to reach a diplomatic political settlement to the crisis in Syria as soon as possible.

Russia called for establishing effective mechanism to implement Annan’s plan to solve the current crisis in Syria through political dialogue.

Lukashevich : Next World Order Will Depend on Way of Settling Situation in Syria

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the upcoming world order will depend on the way of settling the situation in Syria.

” It is quite clear that the Syrian situation is linked to the bases of the future world order and the mechanism of resolving the crisis in Syria,” Lukashevich said in a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

He stressed that no outsider is entitled to impose any examples on the Syrians to resolve the crisis or force people to deal with issues according to certain types.

” With respect to Syria, diplomatic and political means should be used with a commitment to the provisions of the UN Charter and international laws ,” the Russian official said.

” The UN Security Council will not authorize a military intervention in Syria, ” Lukashevich said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin, during the summit of G20 , noted to the impossibility of such option.

He underlined that it is better to encourage the two parties of conflict to sit down at the negotiations table, stop the bloodshed and to find ways of dealing between the international players for achieving Annan’s settlement plan.

Lavrov: Alaed Carried Air Defense Systems and Three Helicopters which were Overhauled

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that the Alaed Ship was carrying air defense systems and three helicopters which were overhauled in Russia.

Lavrov added in a statement to Ekho Moskvy radio that the ship carried air defense systems that could be used to repel foreign air attacks only,  in addition to three helicopters which were overhauled in Russia.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that the ship MV Alaed, carrying a cargo of overhauled Russian-made Mil Mi-25 helicopter gunships bound for Syria, will dock in the north Russian port of Murmansk on June 23rd.

“While transiting the North Sea to the Atlantic, the ship-owner was informed that its third-party insurance cover had been withdrawn, and the classification agency in which the ship is located – although it is registered under a Curacao flag – demanded it go into a port for inspection. In order to avoid delay, it was decided to dock in Murmansk where it is expected on Saturday, for re-registration under the Russian flag,” Lukashevich added.

Defense Ministry Statement: Colonel Hassan Mirei al-Hamada is a Deserter, a Traitor to his Country and Military Honor

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_The Ministry of Defense said that at 10: 34 a.m. on Thursday, communication was lost with a MiG-21 aircraft flown by the pilot Colonel Hassan Mirei al-Hamada during a usual training flight.

The ministry said in a statement that the aircraft was last detected over the Syrian southern borders before communication was lost with it, adding that the warplane left the Syrian airspace and landed in Jordan.

The Ministry said that the pilot al-Hamada is a deserter and a traitor to his country and military honor, and will be punished accordingly.

The ministry said that contacts with the Jordanian sides are underway to restore the aircraft.

Earlier, an official source announced that contact was lost with an MiG-21 aircraft that was on a training flight.

The source added in a statement that the aircraft, which was piloted by Col. Hassan Mirei al-Hamadeh, was near the Syrian southern borders before contact with it was lost at around 10: 34 am.

In Amman, a Jordanian government source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the MiG-21 warplane was forced to land in north Jordan.

China Stresses Its Constructive Role in Dealing with Crisis in Syria

BEIJING, (SANA) – China on Thursday reiterated its constructive role in dealing with the crisis in Syria, calling upon all sides to an immediate halt of violence.

The Chinese News Agency (Xinhua) quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei’s remarks in response to a question regarding a U.S. statement saying the US had reached a consensus with China on the Syria issue.

“China has always stressed to solve the Syrian conflict through political means,” he said.

“Under the current situation, the most pressing task lies in commitments of relevant parties of Syria to cease fire and stop the violence, and seriously implement relevant UN resolutions and the six-point peace plan sponsored by Kofi Annan,” said the spokesman.

He added that China is working to start a comprehensive political dialogue without preconditions and pre-set results as soon as possible, expressing his country’s hope to work with the international community to play a constructive role in a political, appropriate and comprehensive settlement of the crisis in Syria.

Response Plan to Meet Needs of People Affected by Crisis in Syria Discussed

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Fayssal Mikdad, and Head of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Ben Parker, discussed the response plan to meet the humanitarian needs of the people affected by the crisis in Syria and the work of the UN agencies in this regard.

Mikdad stressed that Syria provides all necessary help to the UN agencies working in Syria and the international non-governmental organizations whose work is separated from any policies or agendas.

Mikdad underlined that the EU economic sanctions against Syria target the life of the Syrian citizens and increase the difficulties facing them due to the sabotage acts committed by the armed terrorist groups against the Syrian people and the public and private institutions, adding that these sanctions violate all international standards and the international humanitarian law.

Parker hailed the standing cooperation between the UN agencies working in Syria, the official authorities and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, stressing the need for mobilizing all efforts of the international community and the donor countries to enable the Syrian citizen overcoming this difficult stage.

International Human Rights Ambassador: Syria Defends her People against Terrorism and Crimes

BEIRUT, (SANA)_ Ambassador Haitham Abu said, the Representative of the International High Commission for Human Rights to the Middle East, said Syria is now defending her people in the face of the terrorism and crimes imposed on it.

Ambassador Abu Said added in press statements following his meeting today with former Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, that Syria has the right to defend its official properties and the security of its people.

Ambassador Abu Said asserted that the International Commission follows every precise information received and takes every necessary measures to reach to aspired-to conclusions, declaring that he briefed president Lahoud on the situation in Syria as well as on some information related to the kidnapped Lebanese in Syria.

Abdullahian: Syria Is Facing International Coalition which Represents the Peak of Hypocrisy and Duplicity

TEHRAN, (SANA)- Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hussein Amir Abdullahian reiterated Iran’s support to Syria, the reforms taking place in it, and its resistant approach.

In a statement to the press on Wednesday in Qum City, Abdullahian, condemned the foreign meddling in the affairs of the countries of the region, particularly in Syria’s affairs, saying that Syria is facing an international coalition of more than 70 political systems which represent the peak of hypocrisy and duplicity.

He pointed out that the US, Israel and some Arab governments thought that Syria will be toppled in three months, but despite all pressures and the overt and covert foreign inteferences, Syria has been able to face the campaign targeting its geopolitical role in the region.

He indicated that his country will participate, along with China and Russia, in a conference in Moscow to discuss the situation in Syria and to stress on supporting the plan of the UN Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan.

AL Decision on Stopping Broadcast of Syrian TV Channels Condemned as Unjust, and Unaccepted

GENEVA, SANA_ Representatives of Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela to the UN Human Rights Council have criticized the Arab League (AL) decision on asking Arabsat and Nilesat administrations to stop the broadcast of the official and unofficial Syrian TV satellite channels.

” This decision is one of the most dangerous violations of the freedom of expression,” the representatives said Thursday, calling on the AL to withdraw this “unjust, condemned and unaccepted decision” as they described it.

For his part, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Human Rights Council, Faisal al-Hamwi stressed Syria’s keenness on respecting the right of expression and freedom of journalists who adhere to the Code of Honor and objectivity and enter the country through regular and legal means, not those who infiltrate in coordination with the terrorists.

He affirmed that the AL decision constitutes a flagrant violation of the principles of the media work, freedom of getting the information and document of organizing the Arab satellite broadcasting.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, said that the decision of the AL to stop the broadcast of Syrian TV channels contradicts with the principles of freedom of expression.

He reminded of the necessity of not impeding the freedom of journalists and satellite broadcasting by any country, especially in such circumstances which Syria is passing through, where the fact of what is going on should be conveyed to the public opinion.

Earlier, the UN Human Rights Council report on the freedom of expression touched upon the situation in Syria and targeting journalists by certain sides, calling for more freedom for mass media in the world.