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Beginning his week-long Middle East tour in Tunis yesterday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called for regime change in Syria and threatened Iran with sanctions and war.

Panetta will visit the Tunisian Islamist regime of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali of the Ennadha Party, as well as Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Mursi and Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the US-backed Egyptian military junta. Panetta will then continue on to visit Israel and King Abdullah in Jordan.

Panetta’s trip aims to deepen the US military’s ties to the Islamist regimes that have come to power after the mass working class uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, while pursuing Washington’s deepening military intervention throughout the region.

In Tunis, the Tunisian capital, Panetta discussed closer collaboration between US and Tunisian counter-terrorism officials in tracking Al Qaeda-linked forces in Mali. Allied to Tuareg forces that fled from Libya to neighboring Mali after NATO overthrew Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi last year, these groups now control much of northern Mali, which rebelled against the central government in Bamako.

Panetta threatened Iran, repeating the Obama administration’s usual threat that “all options,” including war, are “on the table.”

Over the weekend, US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon also reportedly briefed Israeli officials on US contingency plans for raids on Iranian nuclear facilities and war with Iran, if Tehran does not give up its nuclear program.

Panetta also suggested, however, that current international sanctions might force Iran to negotiate a deal acceptable to Washington. US and European Union (EU) sanctions have cut Iranian oil exports by an estimated 40 percent. The Iranian currency has lost roughly half its value against the dollar, impoverishing Iranian workers by sharply pushing up prices of imported goods, including food.

Panetta explained, “These sanctions are having a serious impact in terms of the economy of Iran. And while the results of that may not be obvious at the moment, the fact is that they have expressed a willingness to negotiate, and they continue to seem interested in trying to find a diplomatic solution.”

Stepping back from his assessment earlier this year that Israel was “likely” to attack in the spring of 2012, he said Israel had “not made any decisions on Iran.”

Panetta also threatened a key Iranian ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime now faces a US-backed Sunni insurgency that has dragged Syria into civil war.

As Panetta spoke in Tunis, fighting flared in the key city of Aleppo in northern Syria, where army units attacked anti-Assad militias that had seized several key areas and set up check points. Army units assaulted the Salah al-Din and Sakhur neighborhoods. “Rebel” forces reportedly also seized a check point in Anadan, which would give them control of a direct route from Aleppo to the border with Turkey, which supports and arms anti-Assad forces.

Red Cross/Red Crescent officials claimed that 200,000 people have fled fighting in Aleppo.

Calling for international efforts to “bring Assad down,” Panetta said: “If they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think it will ultimately be a nail in Assad’s own coffin. What Assad has been doing to his own people and what he continues to do to his own people makes clear that his regime is coming to an end. It’s lost all legitimacy. It’s no longer a question of whether he’s coming to an end, it’s when.”

Panetta’s reference to Assad’s “coffin,” coming from a government that oversaw the overthrow and eventual killing of Gaddafi last year, was certainly intended as a quite deliberate threat of assassination.

At the same time, Washington—which has until now maintained the fiction that it is not arming the rebels, by claiming that weapons are being provided by US allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar—took a step closer to openly arming them Sunday. Reuters reported that the White House has drawn up a confidential presidential directive, or “finding,” authorizing greater covert assistance to the Syrian “rebels.”

The French government also reportedly plans to request a meeting of the UN Security Council this week to discuss Syria and “exert pressure” on the Assad regime.

Panetta’s trip reflects the Pentagon’s reorganization of its Middle East operations to defend US imperialist interests in the Middle East. It is seeking to deepen its ties to right-wing Islamist parties that came to power after last year’s mass working class uprisings overthrew US-backed secular dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. At the same time, it is forcibly intervening to topple any regime, like Syria or Iran, that stands in the way of US regional interests.

The arguments of Panetta—that the US is fighting Al Qaeda, or seeking to prevent Assad from killing “his own people”—are cynical and false. In fact, as part of its collaboration with Sunni Islamist regimes like the Saudi and Qatari monarchies, it is relying to a large extent on Al Qaeda forces to mobilize foreign Islamist fighters to infiltrate Syria and attack the Syrian army.

In the Wall Street Journal, former US Special Operations Command advisor Seth Jones wrote: “Al Qaeda in Syria (often operating as the ‘Al Nusra Front for the People of the Levant’) is using traffickers—some ideologically aligned, some motivated by money—to secure routes through Turkey and Iraq for foreign fighters, most of whom are from the Middle East and North Africa. A growing number of donors from the Persian Gulf and Levant appear to be sending financial support, according to US Treasury Department officials.”

Jones added that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were providing “rifles, light machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades” as well as expertise on bomb-making to US-backed forces in Syria.

The US operation to overthrow the Assad regime is destabilizing the entire region. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main Turkish-based anti-Assad force, told the Guardian that there were at least four units not affiliated to them operating inside Syria, including a Libyan guerrilla brigade. They added that the total number of independent foreign units in Syria operating against Assad was “likely far higher.”

Turkish officials are concerned that Kurdish separatist militias may seize portions of Syria and use them as a base to infiltrate neighboring Kurdish-majority areas in Turkey. Yesterday the New York Times cited Turkish officials who said they would “not hesitate to strike in Syria,” if Kurdish groups attacked Turkey from inside Syria.

Turkey has sent troops, armored personnel carriers, and missile batteries to reinforce its positions along its border with Syria.

Jordanian officials reportedly are also considering deploying Special Forces units from Jordan into Syria, ostensibly to seize its chemical and biological weapons stocks.

By Alex Lantier

31 July, 2012

@ WSWS.org

Overview

United States President Barack Obama swept into office with a powerful commitment to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. However, the escalatingU.S.sanctions and covert actions againstIran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapon as well as its increased military presence in the Gulf – all the while ignoringIsrael’s arsenal – push that goal well out of reach. In this policy brief produced in collaboration with American Muslims for Palestine, Al-Shabaka Program Director Victor Kattan explains why this is the case, and argues that if the U.S. is really serious about nuclear non-proliferation it must also and as part of its non-proliferation strategy tackle Israel’s longstanding nuclear weapons program.

How Israel Torpedoes Non-proliferation

Strengthening the international non-proliferation regime is one of President Obama’s key foreign policy goals. During a speech in Prague, in April 2009, he announced his “intention to seek a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.” He argued that because the US was the “only power to have used a nuclear weapon” he and his fellow countrymen had a “moral responsibility to act” by leading the disarmament agenda.

The US Government’s failure to seriously address Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program and its stockpile of hundreds of such weapons, which include thermonuclear weapons in the megaton range, makes the Administration’s policy towards nuclear non-proliferation elsewhere, look two-faced. Calling for more intrusive inspections of Iran’s alleged nuclear facilities is particularly incongruous in light of Israel’s refusal to accede to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its refusal to allow weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear facilities – about which the whole world has known for some time.

Knowledge of the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which began in earnest in the 1950s, and became critical in the 1960s, has contributed to an arms race for nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Past attempts by Libya, Iraq, and Syria to acquire such weapons, and Iran’s alleged attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon today, can only be understood as a reaction to the West’s refusal to put pressure on Israel to sign up to the NPT and allow IAEA weapons inspectors to inspect Israel’s nuclear program with a view to establishing the Middle East as a Nuclear-Free Zone.

In September 2009, the IAEA expressed concern aboutIsrael’s “nuclear capabilities” and called on it “to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards…” And in April 2010, President Obama urged all countries, including Israel, to sign the NPT. He added: “That’s been a consistent position of theUnited Statesgovernment, even prior to my administration”. However, this is as far as the U.S. has gone towardsIsrael, in sharp contrast to the way it is dealing withIran. If the Obama administration is serious about nuclear non-proliferation then it needs to radically overhaul its posture vis-à-visIsrael’s nuclear weapons program and treat all countries equally. Otherwise, some state somewhere, will always try to obtain the bomb to redress the power imbalance in the Middle East.

Until Israel either abandons its nuclear weapons, asSouth Africadid in 1994, or allows its facilities to be inspected by the IAEA, the effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and eventually complete nuclear disarmament will not succeed. Indeed,Israel’s refusal to accede to the NPT is the principal stumbling block to Obama’s policy. As former Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom, told Army Radio when former premier Ehud Olmert inadvertently let the nuclear cat out of the bag: “We always face the same question which our enemies ask: ‘Why is Israel allowed to [have a bomb] and not Iran?’”

Some serious analysts have argued that Iran should have the bomb because it leads to stability. That was Kenneth Waltz’s argument in the august establishment journal Foreign Affairs, which was provocatively entitled “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb.” However, as the international law expert Richard Falk pointed out inGuernica, this is a very dangerous line of argument to take. The only way to truly provide safety and stability for this planet is to fully – and at long last – implement the NPT.

Revisiting the NPT

It will be recalled that the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, required the original five nuclear weapon states – theUS,Britain,Russia,FranceandChina– to reduce and eliminate their nuclear arsenals. In exchange, all other signatory states agreed not to acquire such weapons although they were allowed the peaceful use of atomic energy.

In addition each state is required to accept safeguards to be negotiated and concluded with the IAEA “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. Three countries remained outside the NPT: India and Pakistan, which declared their nuclear status, andIsrael, which did not confirm or deny it.North Koreawas a party to the treaty but announced its withdrawal on 10 January 2003.

The five nuclear states never met their obligations to liquidate their nuclear stockpiles but still insisted that the remaining treaty provisions be upheld, a hypocritical stance that has promoted proliferation. Of course, the problem with the NPT is, as Immanuel Wallerstein has pointed out, that in order to ensure the peaceful uses of atomic energy the NPT allows a country to achieve levels of technical competence that makes it very easy to go one step further and build a nuclear bomb.Japan, for example, is widely believed to have that nuclear capability. The development of such a nuclear capability is what Iran is alleged to be doing. As will be discussed below, the jury is still out as to whether Iran is building a nuclear weapon, according to the bestU.S.intelligence. And yet, the very states that helped Israel get the bomb are leading the charge againstIran. Given the lengths to which those states are going to stop Iran from enjoying its rights under the NPT, it is worth quickly reviewing the history of just howIsraelgot the bomb.

Helping Israel Get the Bomb

Although the U.S. is nowIsrael’s closest ally, it was not one of the early enablers ofIsrael’s nuclear weapons program, which began in the 1950s. The first country to do that was France, which promised to giveIsraela nuclear reactor to be built near Dimona in the Negev desert as well as a supply of uranium fuel in exchange for Israeli support of France and Britain during the 1956 Suez War.Britainalso agreed to help Israel although it remains unclear whether this was due toIsrael’s support for the invasion of theSuez– an act of aggression that was condemned by the US.

According to several declassified top-secret British documents available online at the National Archives,Britain made hundreds of secret shipments of restricted materials to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. These included specialist chemicals for reprocessing and samples of fissile material – uranium-235 in 1959, and plutonium in 1966, as well as highly enriched lithium-6, which is used to boost fission bombs and fuel hydrogen bombs. Britain also shipped 20 tons of heavy water directly toIsraelin 1959 and 1960 to start up the Dimona reactor. The transaction was made through a Norwegian front company called Noratom, which took a 2 per cent commission.

These deals were all done clandestinely by British civil servants behind the backs of their ministers. According to Tony Benn, Minister of Technology in 1966 while the plutonium deal was going through, the nuclear industry was part of his “white heat of technology” brief but no one told him that Britainwas exporting atomic energy materials toIsrael. “I’m not only surprised, I’m shocked,” he told the BBC, adding that neither he nor his predecessor Frank Cousins agreed to the sales. “It never occurred to me they would authorize something so totally against the policy of the [British] government.”

At the time,Israel deliberately sought to hide its Nuclear Weapons program from the U.S. Government so that it could be presented with a fait accompli at the appropriate moment. In one of the top-secret declassified British documents it was revealed that Israel was willing to pay more money to purchase Norwegian rather than American heavy water – even though the latter was much less expensive and they were short of cash: “The purchase of American heavy water would, however, have been likely to involve publicity and strict safeguards; and presumably this is what the Israelis were paying extra money to avoid.”Israel’s policy of keeping its nuclear weapons secret from the U.S. changed after the June War in 1967. Whether or not Israel’s practice of nuclear opacity was then “codified” between the U.S. Government and Israel or just “tolerated”, as one scholar has suggested, in secret agreements during the Cold War, does not make Israel’s retention of such weapons in a post-Cold War world any less objectionable today. It is clear that Israel’s possession of the bomb is contributing to proliferation in the Middle East: If Iran acquires a weapon, then what will stop Saudi Arabiaor the otherGulfKingdomsfrom doing so?

What the U.S. Knew and When

In September 1979, the US satellite VELA detected Israel’s tests of a series of nuclear devices in the vicinity of the Prince Edward and Marion Islands in the sub-antarctic Indian Ocean in collaboration with apartheid South Africa. According to documents obtained by Sasha Polakow-Suransky the CIA and nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory inNew Mexicoconcluded that no natural phenomenon could have caused the VELA incident.1

In both the opinion of the experts at Los Alamosand at the CIA it was a nuclear explosion. However, because US President Jimmy Carter was preparing for an election campaign in the midst of the Iranian hostage crisis, his administration decided to bury the reports rather than openly confront Israel and South Africa.

Declassified documents reveal that four years before the VELA Incident,South Africa’s defense minister asked Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister and now its president, for nuclear warheads. Peres responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men signed an agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause denying “the very existence of this agreement”.

The US State Department and the CIA suspected that Israel was the chief suspect behind the explosions. In 1979South Africahad not yet perfected the science that would allow it to independently make its own nuclear weapon, which the Israelis had already mastered but not tested.

According to Polakow-Suransky,South Africabegan its relationship withIsraelduring the heyday of apartheid when it agreed to supply Israel with yellowcake uranium in 1961 – the same year thatSouth Africawas forced to leave the Commonwealth due to international opposition to its policy of apartheid. Between 1961 and 1976,Israel built up a stockpile of about 500 tons of uranium.

In 1976,South Africa lifted the bilateral safeguards that accompanied the sale of yellowcake uranium toIsrael. In return for the yellowcake and lifted safeguards,South Africareceived fromIsrael30 grams of tritium, a radioactive substance that thermonuclear weapons require to increase their explosive power. Thirty grams was enough to boost the yield of several atomic bombs.

In October 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, gave testimony to The Sunday Times of London, checked with leading nuclear experts in the U.S. and in Europe, in which it became evident thatIsraelwas “a major nuclear power.” It was then estimated to rank sixth in the atomic league table, with a stockpile of at least 100 nuclear weapons and with the components and ability to build atomic, neutron or hydrogen bombs.

According to Vanunu, in addition to building weapons made from plutonium,Israelproduces tritium. According to The Times, “this is of immense significance, for it means Israel has the potential to produce thermonuclear weapons far more powerful than ordinary atomic bombs”. Two of the pictures that Vanunu supplied to The Times appeared “to show a lithium deuteride hemisphere which could be used in the construction of the most devastating weapon of all – the thermonuclear bomb – a weapon capable of yielding the equivalent explosive force of hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT. In the chilling jargon of the nuclear bomb makers,Israel has moved beyond the ability to produce small ‘suburb-busting’ nuclear bombs to ‘city-busters’”. A week after Vanunu’s story, The Sunday Times also reported that Professor Francis Perrin, the father of the French bomb, admitted that the French government secretly supplied Israel with the technology to make nuclear bombs in 1957 contradicting 30 years of repeated official denials from Paris and Tel Aviv.

Turning on Iran

The U.S.and the rest of the world have known beyond a shadow of a doubt thatIsraelhas had a 50-year-long clandestine nuclear weapons program. Yet, even thoughIsraelhas never opened its facilities to international inspections or signed the NPT, theU.S.is in lockstep withIsraelin leading an international campaign againstIranand tightening up sanctions, together with the European Union,Canada,JapanandAustralia. The sanctions already implemented include restrictions on Iranian oil sales, a ban on the supply of heavy weaponry and nuclear-related technology, and an asset freeze on certain individuals and organizations.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is careful in the language it uses. Its repeated threat is to stop Iran making a “nuclear weapon” which leaves open the possibility that the U.S. could live with anIranthat has a nuclear capability. It would therefore seem by implication that the U.S. would be willing to live with anIranthat has the capability to produce a weapon, but does not produce one. According to an analysis by the Carnegie Endowment, Iran could be allowed to enrich uranium so long as the enrichment is below weapons grade (i.e. 93 per cent – Iran is reportedly currently enriching uranium at 20 per cent). In other words, enrichment of uranium above 90 percent is one of Washington’s Red Lines that would be interpreted by the U.S. Government as an actionable indicator that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Only then, would theU.S.be willing to consider taking military action against Iran.

The Israeli Government, on the other hand, has always made it clear that it will not live with an Iranian nuclear capability let alone an Iran with a nuclear weapon, and it has threatened to bombIran’s nuclear facilities as it bombedIraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.

In this regard, it is intriguing that Israel’s claims aboutIran’s nuclear intentions are not new. Back in 1992, Binyamin Netanyahu who was then a member of Israel’s Knesset (parliament) predicted thatIranwas “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon. In the same year Israel’s then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told French TV thatIranwould have a nuclear warhead by 1999. In 1995, The New York Times quoted U.S. and Israeli officials saying thatIranwould have the bomb by 2000.

And yet the jury is still out as to whether Iran is actually building a weapon. In 2007, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US published its National Intelligence Estimate. It assessed “with high confidence” thatIrandid have a nuclear weapons program until 2003, but this was discovered and Iran stopped it.Tehranhad not restarted its nuclear weapons program in 2007, but the NIE said, “We do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons”.

There are, of course, concerns about the direction in which Iran is presently going, and it may indeed be the case that in light of the threats to its security and the buildup of troops in the Gulf, that Iran is trying to build a bomb. As Kenneth Waltz aptly noted in Foreign Affairs: “If Tehran determines that its security depends on possessing nuclear weapons, sanctions are unlikely to change its mind. In fact, adding still more sanctions now could make Iran feel even more vulnerable, giving it still more reason to seek the protection of the ultimate deterrent”. In November 2011, the IAEA said it had been unable tonon-proliferation “provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in  Iran” and that it continued to have “serious concerns” regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program. And yet, despite these concerns, and despite the fact thatIsraelhas had a nuclear weapons program since the 1950s and maintains a large stockpile of such weapons, no major power has ever suggested imposing sanctions against it. On the contrary,Israel has been “rewarded” and admired for having the audacity to develop its own weapon’s program.

For instance, recently,Germany was reported to have soldIsraeladvanced attack nuclear submarines fully capable of carrying, storing, and launching nuclear weapons. Armed with such weapons, these submarines send a clear signal to Iran that Israel would not be defenseless in the event of a nuclear attack, but could strike back with far more powerful weapons at a time of its choosing.

This makes it all the more questionable as to whether Iran – assuming that it indeed intends to build the bomb and is successful in so doing – would ever dream of launching a nuclear strike since such an act would likely lead to its own destruction. With such a powerful deterrent, it may be questioned why Israel even needs to prevent other states from having the weapon since they would never want to use it.

Indeed, the sanctions and the hectoring and constant warmongering against Iran is more likely to encourage the Iranian government to build a bomb in order to protect itself from attack with its own deterrent. Having a nuclear weapon is a very good insurance policy. But, of course, it makes nonsense of any attempts to promote nuclear non-proliferation.

A Uniform Policy for All

Israel’s determination to makeIranthe issue has successfully detracted attention from its own arsenal (as well as its rapid colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories) and helped to keep the region tense and unstable, with the constant risk of another war in the background. It is also contributing to proliferation in theMiddle East.

The objective of nuclear nonproliferation will not succeed until all countries are treated equally. The five nuclear NPT powers will have to play their role in reducing their nuclear arsenals, which the U.S. and Russia have in theory pledged to do. The NPT nuclear powers must also work to coax all countries that are outside the NPT likeIsrael,Pakistan,India, andNorth Koreainto joining the NPT. If the fight against proliferation is to succeed all states should join the NPT.

President Obama is now caught up in his re-election campaign. If he wins a second term, he should heed the lessons of the past and confront the region’s existing nuclear powers –Israel,India, and Pakistan– to fulfill the dream of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons and on the path to complete nuclear disarmament.

Source: http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/politics/israels-nukes-derail-us-nonproliferation-goals?page=show

By Victor Kattan

26 July 2012

Obama administration support for Syrian rebels is based on a United Nations authorized report from November 2011. In that document, Syria is accused of committing “crimes against humanity.” The report’s co-author is a board member at a Washington, D.C. based think tank that just happens to have the former chairman of ExxonMobil, a consultant for the Saudi Binladin Group, and a former CIA executive on its board of directors.

Much of the U.S. and European press on the so-called civil war originates from a tiny organization in the United Kingdom called the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (the Observatory). The one man operation is run by a longtime opponent of Syrian Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

For the most part, this is how we know what we know about Syria.

The “human rights” rationale

The United Nations Human Rights Council authorized an independent committee to study human rights in Syria in 2011. The committee didn’t visit Syria, claiming that the three members lacked access. Instead members set up a safe house in Switzerland, brought in individuals who claimed to have fled Syria, and took anonymous testimony on human rights concerns. This was the basis of the November 23, 2011 report to the UN HRC criticizing the Assad regime.

The report co-author, Karen Koning AbuZayd, is on the board of directors for the Middle East Policy Council in Washington DC. The board’s vice chairman is the former head of a non-government organization that received over $50 million in 2011from U.S. Agency for International Development and other government agencies. The council received a $1 million grant from a Saudi prince in 2007.

The council strongly supports regime change in Syria as evidenced by the selection the spokesperson from the rebel Syrian National Council as a presenter for its July 23 Capitol Hill briefing for Congress.

The UN HRC failed to report on foreign fighters in Syria, foreign funding of the rebels, and human rights violations by the rebels over the past year, including terrorist suicide bombing. The report is selective, biased, and one sided. It is also the basis for of sanctions plus NATO and Gulf oil oligarch aid that turned an armed conflict into a civil war.

News from the front, Coventry, UK

The Syrian Human Rights Observatory is a one man operation located in Coventry, United Kingdom. Rami Abdul Rahman dispatches reports to the Western media from his apartment. He claims to have 200 sources on the ground in Syria. The sources don’t know other sources and their names are a secret that only Abdul Rahman knows. He has not been there since his self-exile in 2001. He claims to be self-funded. He was part of the resistance to Assad and supports the Free Syria Army. Rahman is hardly objective yet his operation serves as the preeminent source for much of the Western media reporting on Syria.

Here are some recent examples of the Observatory in action. Their allegations are often cited in the first or second paragraphs of stories on the conflict,

MSNBC uses the Observatory for day to day reports on battles and outcomes: “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group, reported helicopter attacks on the central Salaheddine district of Aleppo and fighting elsewhere in the city.” MSNBC, July 28

Bloomberg cited the Observatory for summary statistics on total deaths in the conflict on both sides: “International and regional efforts have failed to end the violence in Syria, which began in March 2011 and has left at least 19,000 people dead, including about 5,000 government troops, according to the Observatory.” Bloomberg, July 27

Even Aljazeera uses the observatory as a primary source: “Civilians crowded into basements seeking refuge from the bombing, with the SOHR’s Rami Abdel Rahman describing the clashes as the uprisings fiercest”. Aljazeera, July 29

The Western media apparently ignores itself. Reuters, which uses Observatory reports, did a profile of the organization and concluded that “it is virtually impossible to verify any data trickling out of the country.” The media also ignored a major investigative article in Alakhbar, January 26. It provides more than enough reasons to question the death toll estimates, action reports, and the stability of the Observatory.

The ruling elite want to keep its Saudi oil connection pumping and the contracts from the Gulf States alive. It is about oil and money. But it’s about much more than that.

The Money Party (aka ruling elite) has one set of tactics for achieving their goals — intimidation, subversion, war, and destruction. These are very blunt instruments. Why not? Who will stop them? Assad is pro-Iranian, he’s in power, and he won’t leave. So, what to do? Take control of the storyline, create a rationale for the anti-Syrian campaign, and get your minions in the two parties and the corporate media to execute the strategy.

While the country and much of the world languishes in a real depression, the leaders waste time on projects like this. As we face the imminent decline in the ability of the environment to support the human population, there’s no real effort to address that issue. The leaders are just too busy with Syria.

This time, they may not get their way. As Steve Hynd noted on July 20 and the Guardian’s Luke Harding reported, we’re looking a conflict that could take years.

What will The Money Party do if it doesn’t get its way right away? Does the term false flag ring a bell    February 1, 2007: “If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq (Syria), the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a defensive U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan”” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senate Foreign Relations Committee countering George W Bush’s push for an attack on Iran – See Quds Force II – the Storyline Repeats Itself)

By Michael Collins

31 July, 2012

@The Money Party

Michael Collins is a writer in the DC area who researches and comments on the corruptions of the new millennium. His articles focus on the financial manipulations of The Money Party, the abuse of power by government, and features on elections and election fraud. His articles can be found at here. His website is The Money Party

Downgraded harvest outlooks in the US, Russia and Australia sent grain markets soaring upward Monday. As US crops wither under the most severe drought and heat wave in more than half a century, droughts in Canada and the Black Sea growing region, a below average Indian monsoon, and a massive downgrade of the Australian wheat harvest threaten a global food crisis.

For the eighth consecutive week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Monday reported a deterioration in the nation’s corn crop.

As of the week ending July 29, less than one quarter (24 percent) of US corn is considered in “good” or “excellent” condition, down from 77 percent in mid-May. Only 3 percent of the corn crop across 18 states surveyed was rated as “excellent.”

Soybeans were also once again downgraded, with 29 percent in good or excellent condition and 37 percent in the worst categories. These ratings are the worst since the drought of 1988, which devastated the rural economy and forced thousands of smaller farmers out of business.

There are no signs that the drought or heat wave will ease in the coming weeks before soybean harvest. Across the southern corn belt, high temperatures will continue to approach 110°F, USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey said Monday.

This area, encompassing Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana, is a major center for grain crops as well as livestock production. Little to no rain has fallen for months in the region, and temperatures have consistently averaged 5° to 10°F above normal. Worldwide, the past weeks have seen the hottest land temperatures ever recorded.

The damage to the US corn crop sustained during the critical pollination stage last month is now irreversible. More than two-thirds of corn acreage in major agricultural states Illinois and Indiana were rated as “poor” or “very poor.” Throughout the Midwest as a whole, 48 percent of the corn crop is similarly rated.

A rating of “very poor” means that the plants will yield little to no corn. In Vermillion County, Indiana, for example, farmers have estimated some acreage will yield only 14 bushels of corn per acre. The USDA officially projects an average yield of 146 bushels an acre.

The US produces one of every three tons of corn, soybeans and wheat traded globally. “It is a disaster this year in the Midwest and I think that we need to start talking about disaster-type yield losses,” Des Moines, Iowa-based Freese-Notis Weather meteorologist Craig Solberg said in an interview with Agriculture.com. “In my mind this may mean a national corn yield below 120 bushels per acre (and maybe a national corn crop below 10 billion bushels) and a national soybean yield below 36 or even 35 bushels per acre.”

Other recent estimates by private firms of 120 bushels an acre have fueled a buying frenzy of corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade. On Tuesday morning, corn for September delivery surged to $8.2425 a bushel. The price represents a 28 percent increase over the month—the largest one-month gain in more than five years. Soybean and wheat prices are also spiking upward on speculation.

“Global attention remains fixed on the state of the US corn crop,” Rabobank analyst Erin FitzPatrick said in a statement. “Hope is now starting to run out that we will see any improvement in the US corn crop and the bulk of the crop is beyond repair. … The next stage of the debate will be about demand rationing, the smaller crops will have to be rationed by price. The question is who will be able to afford it.”

Investment firm PRICE Futures Group Vice President Jack Scoville told Agriculture.com that the rally was “mostly a lot of speculative buying,” with predictions of “a move to $8.50 December [delivery] corn and $17.00 November soybeans” based on the continuation of the drought. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast that the dry spell could extend through October.

Canada’s agricultural areas are experiencing a similar plight. On Monday, Ontario’s agriculture minister appealed to the federal government for disaster assistance for farmers and livestock producers crippled by the drought. Canada is a major global producer of wheat, canola, and livestock.

Climate scientists have warned that much of Canada, the US and Mexico are confronting a long-term disaster. A swath of western North America from southern Canada to northern Mexico may face a “100-year drought,” called a “megadrought,” as a result of global warming, according to new research published July 29 in the journal Nature Geoscience. The extreme weather may permanently damage soil quality and forestation, leading to a build-up of carbon that would otherwise be absorbed and creating a feedback effect of drought. Creeping desertification of the US Southwest agricultural zones suggests the potential for a process to occur similar to that of the Dust Bowl, which lasted through much of the 1930s.

The weather disaster in North America is mirrored in the bread baskets of Russia and the Ukraine, where wheat crops have been buffeted by a series of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts over the year. A lower projected surplus of wheat in the Black Sea region has spawned rumors that Russia will cut its exports, Reuters reported Tuesday. Although the Russian government has denied such plans, the country’s wheat exports for July were down by a quarter—325,000 tons—from a year ago.

Commodities market analysts have estimated that Russia’s harvest will be 6 to 7 million tons less than originally projected. “The wheat markets are basically marking time until the result of the Russian government meeting on the grain market is clear,” an unnamed trader commented to Reuters. A commission on food security is schedule to convene on August 8 to discuss the Russian wheat supply. In 2010, Russia suspended grain exports after speculation pushed US wheat prices above $13 a bushel. The protectionist measure cut off import-dependent countries in the Middle East.

In the past few weeks, Egypt, the world’s leading importer of wheat, and other Middle Eastern and African countries have seen grain suppliers default on previously agreed sales as grain prices rise. In June, a German speculator explained to Reuters, “traders were selling wheat and other grains to buyers in the Middle East in expectation that a record US corn crop and Russian export surge would push down global grains prices. The price rises mean some sales were made at huge losses; people are now looking at the terms of their performance bonds to see if it is worthwhile not delivering.”

Another speculator commented, “Some people with a 10 percent performance bond on deals could be financially better off defaulting than delivering. Naturally you can ruin your relationship with the buyers, but you have to decide what is worse.”

The anarchy of the market is stoking conditions for a food crisis across the globe. “Wheat is the biggest problem for food security. There’s a lot of vulnerability, given supply and demand sources,” Egyptian Center for Economic Studies Director Magda Kandil told the Egypt Independent last week. Forty percent of the Egyptian population survives on $2 a day or less.

Globally, more than a billion of the world’s poor already suffer from hunger and malnutrition. “When food prices rise, families cope by pulling their kids out of school and eating cheaper, less nutritious food, which can have catastrophic, life-long effects on the social, physical, and mental well-being of millions of young people,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim warned in a statement Monday. Nevertheless, World Bank officials have downplayed the risk of grain shortages from falling harvests, and have pointed to lower prices for fuel and fertilizer currently than in 2008.

Across Asia, however, rising grain prices pose a substantial problem. Because Asian importers buy nearly half of the world’s corn, the market rally is pushing up costs for Asian grain-based supermarket goods as well as animal feed for the pork, chicken and beef industries. Last year, Asian buyers substituted some 8 million tons of mainly US-grown corn with cheaper Australian wheat.

This year, however, the western Australian wheat crop has been damaged by lack of rain and repeated frosts, degrading the quality of much of the harvest. Grain output in the region may drop as much as 40 percent. Along with the US, Russia and Canada, Australia is one of the world’s top wheat producers.

Island nations Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia are the most vulnerable to price shocks because they do not have sizeable stockpiles, and most have secured imports only two to three months ahead. “It is a very tough situation for the feed industry and we feel prices will stay high for the entire season,” a Malaysian grain industry trader commented to Reuters. “Substitutes are not going to be cheap.”

By Naomi Spencer

01 August, 2012

@WSWS.org

My Hiroshima message in 2012 is: Only after Hiroshima, Fukushima, Japan and the rest of the world are wide awake, and acting very decisively against the danger of atomic weapons, and now also ending nuclear energy.

It was not enough for Japan and Germany to see the disaster of Hiroshima, they needed also to see the catastrophe of Fukushima accident.

The Hiroshima tragedy was a catastrophe which brought to the world the birth of atomic weapons. This nuclear test on human beings and a city of civilians did not teach the world to stop all the nuclear production. Rather the opposite: the super powers and other small states like Israel moved to produce and engaged in NWs production, proliferation.

At the same time, this Hiroshima catastrophe was a big obstacle to any use of any atomic bombs, during all the cold war. Hiroshima photos of all the victims were in the mind and that kept all the world wild awake during all the cold war, to prevent any use of nuclear weapons again. And it has never been used again.

The end of the cold war sent all the world free from the fear of nuclear war. But the world is still in danger of some small states, like here in the Middle East who can use the Bombs. Also, the world has still many nuclear bombs, and we want all the world free from any nuclear bombs.

States like Japan, Germany, Canada, France and others did not realized the danger of nuclear actives, and moved in full speed to build many nuclear reactors for energy.

The Chernobyl accident was not enough to wake up all the world to end nuclear energy.

So the world needed a new catastrophe in Japan to wake up all the Japanese people and the rest of the world, from that dangers of nuclear accident and the danger of all the materials that had been produced from the use of nuclear energy. The catastrophe of Fukushima send the world to demand freedom also from any use of nuclear energy.

So my 2012 Hiroshima, Fukushima Message is:

End all nuclear weapons in the world including the Middle East, also in Israel. What Israel wants for itself all the M E. want. End Nuclear weapons everywhere including in Israel. Dimona or all the M E.will have Nuclear weapons exactly like in Dimona. The second message of Fukushima from Japan is that a very Industrial state like Japan can work and produce without any Nuclear Energy. All the world can be free

from Nuclear weapons, and also from Nuclear Energy. 100 years ago the world was hungry for new Energy, and was running very fast to adopt all kind of nuclear energy. Now after 100 years the world has had enough from nuclear energy, and the world learn to work and survive without any use of nuclear energy.

So 2012 from Japan to all the world End Nuclear Energy, and all the Atomic Bombs .Freedom to every one freedom Now,!!!!!!.

Vanunu Mordechai J C.

East Jerusalem. waiting for freedom now.

FREEDOM NOW, FREEDOM MUST MUST COME.!!.

Vanunu Mordechai John Crossman.

‪ 2012 , East jerusalem Waiting To Be Free,

To start New life out of israel.

Mobile ( 9 7 2 ) 0 5 2 3 7 4 4 5 6 9.

http://vanunu.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/vanunuvmjc

By Mordechai Vanunu

01 August, 2012

@Countercurrents.org

Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and abducted by Israeli intelligence agents. He was transported to Israel and ultimately convicted in a trial that was held behind closed doors. Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. Released from prison in 2004, he became subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement

A failure of epic proportions?

Commentators are fairly unanimous that the Rio+20 talks have been a failure. Expectations had of course been low. And because of this most developed country leaders stayed away. In opening the summit Ban Ki-Moon admitted the draft outcome was “disappointing” due to the conflicting interests of member states. China’s Sha Zukang, the UN’s lead on the conference agreed, calling the statement “an outcome that makes nobody happy.”

NGOs were unanimous in their disgust with the conference outcome statement, The Future We Want and Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo spoke of “…the longest suicide note in history…the last will and testament of a destructive twentieth century development model…a failure of epic proportions.”

So what was missing from the talks? What hope might there be coming from outside official negotiating rooms?

The end of an era of global diplomacy?

There seemed to be some consensus that the era of global treaties might be over, at least for the time being. George Monbiot concluded his roll call of Rio failures by calling for us to give up on global agreements. Barbara Stocking, head of Oxfam, urged civil society to “pick up and move on… take action.” Lasse Gustavasson, the World Wildlife Fund’s Executive Director of Conservation agreed that there had been a fundamental failure of “sophisticated UN diplomacy.”

UN Environment Programme Director Achim Steiner said the conference was evidence of “a world at a loss what to do” and that “we can’t legislate sustainable development in the current state of international relations.” Of course it is not just on sustainable development that global agreement is failing — the same is true of solutions to the financial system and issues such as Syria.

US Delegation Lead Todd Stern seemed to agree that global multi-state solutions no longer hold out much hope. Todd joined others in suggesting that the failures of Copenhagen and now Rio+20 signal the end of the post-Cold War global treaty era.

Both Stern and WWF’s Gustavasson noted that far more commitment and leadership had been shown at Rio+20 by civil society, city mayors, and the private sector. Indeed, Stern spoke of the early stages of a new era of new forms of global cooperation linking nations with business and civil society that is now flourishing in the shadow of the hollowing-out of formal processes. Some commentated that there was

far more of a meeting of minds between some business and civil society folk in the 3,000 fringe events at Rio+20 than in the negotiating rooms.

It is perhaps hard to see how such one-off, informal cooperation between the private sector and civil society will replace binding global treaties, but perhaps there is some small reason to be hopeful still? For the time being, we may have to give up hope for action from governments. After all, the best our political “leaders” were able to come up with at Rio+20 was “green growth” and its love-child “sustained growth.” How many more moronic oxymorons can they think up?

Thankfully, there are signs that civil society and the private sector might take up some of the slack.

By Jules Peck

05 August, 2012

@The Daly News

Jules Peck originally posted this as a two-part essay on the blog of the New Economics Foundation. To read more, please see Jules Peck’s original Part 1 and his follow-up in Part 2, which call for sustainable development rather than sustained growth

Jules Peck is a Founding Partner at strategy and innovation consultancy Flourishing Enterprise which works to engage the corporate world with beyond-growth economics and to help them innovate through the lens of wellbeing..

When history repeated itself on 6 June 2012, it became clearer that something is amiss in our post-war nation building efforts. One and a half years on, the itinerary of a Presidential visit to the United Kingdom was once again altered when an invitation to deliver the keynote address at the Commonwealth Economic Forum organized by the Commonwealth Business Council was cancelled on the morning of the event. The Commonwealth Economic Forum was organized as one of the events to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in London.

The incident was harshly reminiscent of the events of December 2010 when the President’s address at the Oxford Union was suddenly called off. The massive protest expected in the University premises put the Oxford Union in the awkward position of having to make the decision that it did. The then President of the Oxford Union, James Kingston, in an email response to a query raised by D.B.S. Jeyaraj, published in an article authored by the latter in these pages on 9 June 2012 stated the following: ‘I was advised there was a serious public order risk, and a serious risk of major disruption to the activities of the local community. At 5000 protestors, it would have been the largest demonstration seen in the history of Oxford, and the risks would have increased accordingly.’

THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION

The revelation of the projected turn-out at the December 2010 protest as being the largest in the history of Oxford is noteworthy for more reasons than one – the ability of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora to potentially generate the largest demonstration in the history of the Oxford Union is one, and the ability for it to alter Presidential itineraries is another. The most worrying aspect, however, is the indicator it serves to provide – perhaps a barometer, albeit non-scientific, of the intensity of passion that still exists in certain members of the Tamil Diaspora abroad with regards to grievances.

Come 2012, and similar such efforts to gather a number as large as 2000 at the Mansion House where the Commonwealth Economic Forum was to be held, signals the unwavering commitment and sentiments that were displayed one and a half years ago at the protests staged at the Oxford Union, and more importantly, three years after the ending of the war. Further, it has been reported in the media that members of the Tamil Diaspora had travelled from other countries in the region, namely, France and Germany to join and strengthen the protests.

THE UNDISPUTED CONSENSUS

The reactions, the analyses and the interpretations of such incidents have been wide and varied, yet agreement can be forged across the spectrum of views at least on the following: the Diaspora communities ought to be engaged with some seriousness in our post-war nation-building and reconciliation efforts.

Engaging the Diaspora will not only improve our foreign and international relations but also contribute to internal national stability: the link between the two is inextricable.  As my article of 13 June 2012 in these pages concludes, the protection of our national interests and international positioning cannot be clearer. Grounding our foreign relations and policies in strong national positions is the way forward.

The most credible manner of engaging the Diaspora is through addressing the rights of minorities locally, both systematically and genuinely. Rights of minorities need to be coupled of course with assurances for the possibility of peaceful return and life in the country. This is once again illustrative of how domestic policy and foreign policy are inextricably linked.

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT

The LLRC report has highlighted that there exist perceptions about the conflict areas, what happened in the conflict areas, what is being done in conflict areas, and what is the thinking of the people in the conflict areas: such in turn have an impact on the perceptions of relatives and friends overseas, the Diaspora, and the international community at large.

Hence, perception management must be accorded top priority in any effort to engage the Diaspora and reap the benefits of true reconciliation. Effecting a strong and credible visibility strategy of national progress, plans and challenges is critical to perception management. Additionally, documentation and visibility will serve the larger purpose of measuring progress and identifying gaps to be filled, thereby providing direction for taking the nation-building and reconciliation agenda forward.

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT: AN OFFICE OF DIASPORA AFFAIR

The final report of the LLRC recommends that the Government constitute a Multi – Disciplinary Task Force that will include representatives from the Presidential Secretariat, External Affairs, Defence, Foreign Employment, the Private Sector, and Academia, to propose a programme of action to harness the untapped potential of the expatriate community, and to respond to the concerns of the so-called ‘hostile Diaspora groups,’ and to engage them constructively with the Government and other stakeholders involved in the reconciliation process.

There may be merit in going one step further to recommend the setting up of a specially designated Office of Diaspora Affairs. The roles and responsibility of the Office must include the emphasis on highlighting the importance of Diaspora engagement in reconstruction and capacity-building; and an identification and assessment of Diaspora organizations and individuals, and contributions they can make towards reconciliation, peacebuilding and nation-building. It must be stressed that Diaspora contributions ought not be only limited to the financial or commercial, but also include technical and professional expertise. The Office must ensure that the Diaspora contribution match the needs, priorities and capacities that exist in the country.

The Office must also seek to encourage visits to Sri Lanka for disillusioned members of the Diaspora community to make assessments for themselves on what is taking place and what remains to be done, and more importantly, how they themselves need to be a part of the country’s plans and future. Every effort should be made to build loyalty and seek to neutralize and counter hostility, misperceptions and grudges, real or otherwise.

FORMS OF INVOLVEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT

Forms of Diaspora engagement that are likely to be most beneficial for the long-term development of the country must be identified.  Leveraging Remittance for development purposes can be through investment in real estate, capital markets, BONDS, and a Diaspora Trust Fund which would enable those in the Diaspora to invest in specific development initiatives such as infrastructure and agriculture development, health or education facilities or even shareholders of new private enterprises in the country.

THE ROLE OF EMBASSIES AND HIGH COMMISSIONS

Countering negative propaganda: The opportunities that our foreign missions have to directly engage with members of the Diaspora communities places them in a critical position of being able to provide information on the situation prevailing in the country, government plans and progress. However, it must be mentioned that no attempt to subvert the importance of addressing remaining issues in our post-war efforts must be made. The positive developments together with the success stories of hope must be emphasized with every effort given to actively engage and discuss specific and particular concerns that remain.

Overcome inadequate information about trading opportunities: This will include providing market information, supplying matching and referral services, facilitating the process whereby migrants forge host and source country bilateral trade and investment. The Diaspora can be an important source as well as facilitator of research and innovation, technology transfer and skills development. Our missions can play a critical role in encouraging such transactions and garnering the necessary interest.

THE BENEFITS

In addition to the all-important contribution to the stability of the nation and political future of the country, the Diaspora could be invaluable to supplement local capacities through the formation of a global exchange of knowledge. Admittedly, a remaining challenge is that no government mapping of Diaspora exists, current data is mainly based on those who register with embassies and high commissions. Nevertheless, the existing networks can provide a critical mass of professional peer-review, an effective mechanism for keeping in touch with frontier knowledge and a cost effective means for specialized training and skills formation.

Ultimately, the dividends of successful engagement with the Diaspora communities will be felt by the country both locally through an improvement in relationships between communities and increased national unity and stability while contributing towards positive international positioning. Diaspora engagement is by no means a small or easy task but it is one that cannot be overlooked any further in any effort to take the country forward towards genuine reconciliation.

By Salma Yusuf

Severe drought spread rapidly across the central US this week, further damaging staple crops and heightening the risk of a global food crisis. The Midwest, where roughly one-third of the world’s staple grains are produced, is experiencing the deepest dry spell in over half a century.

The National Drought Mitigation Center in a statement Thursday reported “tremendous intensification of drought through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska, and into part of Wyoming and South Dakota in the last week.” Almost 30 percent of the Midwest is under extreme drought, triple that of the previous week.

Every state in the country had some counties under abnormally dry or drought conditions, making the disaster the most widespread US drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has declared 1,369 counties across 31 states disaster areas—officially the largest US disaster on record.

“It’s getting to the point where some of the damage is not reversible,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the center. “The damage is done, and even with rain, you’re not going to reverse some of these problems, at least not this growing season.”

With temperatures remaining in the triple digits across the Midwest, scattered rainstorms did little to restore moisture to topsoil. Iowa State University agronomist Roger Elmore said that over the week, “most of the state got a quarter- to half-inch of rain. We lose the equivalent of a quarter-inch of moisture every warm, sunny day.”

Meteorologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center have warned that the high heat and dry spell could extend through October. Through June, the year has been the hottest ever recorded for the US. Globally, land temperatures likewise broke all previous records last month. The extreme weather corresponds to projections issued by climatologists over the past three decades, indicating the worsening impact of global warming.

“This year is very emblematic of the type of thing we worry about with climate change,” David Lobell of global warming monitor Climate Central told ABC News. “The new normal for agriculture is going to be frequent episodes of very high temperatures. Temperatures at which pretty much any crop does not do very well.”

For the seventh consecutive week, the USDA on Monday downgraded its assessment of corn and soybean crops. For the week ending July 22, the portion of the corn crop rated in “poor” and “very poor” condition rose to 45 percent. Thirty-five percent of soybean acreage was rated poor to very poor. Purdue University agricultural economist Chris Hurt told the World Socialist Web Site in a recent interview that a rating of “very poor” likely meant such crops were “approaching no yield.”

Since June 3, the portion of corn rated in “good” to “excellent” condition plummeted from 72 to 26 percent. Seven of the largest corn-exporting states now have only one percent or less of corn acreage assessed as “excellent.” A similar plunge was recorded in soybean acreage (65 to 31 percent).

The assessment is the worst since the drought of 1988, when small farmers went out of business en masse after a decade-long rural economic crisis.

The impact of the agricultural disaster on the global food supply is compounded by a speculative frenzy on grain futures on the Chicago Board of Trade. Last week corn futures surpassed all-time records at $8.2875 a bushel, before falling back on news of rain. As of Friday, corn for September delivery was trading at $7.9375 a bushel. Some analysts have suggested that corn futures for December delivery could fetch $9 or more per bushel in August if climate predictions prove correct.

With pastures in ruin and feed prices driven up in trading, smaller US livestock producers are facing the prospect of liquidating their herds. As a result, supermarket prices for beef, pork, and other meats are likely to surge in the coming year, after the initial influx of slaughtered herds. Prices for quick-to-market meats such as chicken and eggs, as well as dairy products, will likely rise more swiftly.

The USDA on Wednesday announced that supermarket prices would rise in coming months. Currently it projects beef prices will rise 4 to 5 percent, and dairy products 3.5 to 4.5 percent.

However, large meat producers are warning that cheaper meats such as pork and chicken will become “luxuries” if Washington does not suspend a program enabling the energy industry to secure up to 40 percent of the US corn crop for ethanol production.

“I’ll use the word catastrophe—that’s my definition,” Larry Pope, head of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, told the Financial Times. In June, Smithfield moved to lock in feed costs on the futures markets before corn broke $8 a bushel. “I thought that $6 corn was the end of the world,” he said. “I never could have realized that I would be thankful to be buying it at $7.”

“Beef is simply going to be too expensive to eat,” Pope said. “Pork is not going to be too far behind. Chicken is catching up fast… Are we going to really take protein away from Americans?” He said US meat prices would rise by “significant double digits” per year.

Even a less drastic price increase in protein food sources would compell millions of low-income Americans to choose what they can afford to buy over the nutritional value provided.

The disaster bears brutal consequences for the populations of import-dependent countries across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. In 2008, riots erupted in more than 30 countries after a similar confluence of severe weather and speculation drove up staple food prices. Among the billions of people living on $2 a day or less, the cost of food consumes as much as three-quarters of a family’s income.

Grain suppliers are beginning to default on deals with importers in Egypt, Libya, and Iraq. Egypt, the world’s largest consumer of wheat, is turning to Russia as the US drought deepens. However, Russia has also cut its wheat outlook by 3 million tons.

The US corn outlook negatively impacts wheat exports, as a poor corn harvest tends to mean wheat is held more tightly for domestic use. Because Egypt imports half of its wheat, and a quarter of its wheat imports originate in the US, any fluctuation in the grain’s price or supply sharply impacts living conditions in the country. Forty percent of the Egyptian population subsists on $2 a day or less.

The world’s population is subjected to the irrationality of the market, and the disjointed global food system. Barges loaded with Southeast Asia-bound grain have clogged Indian ports, creating delays of up to 25 days. Spotty rains in Asian growing regions may further compound food shortfalls and inflation.

“The deficit in rainfall will definitely cause food inflation to go up,” Dun & Bradstreet economist Arun Singh told Reuters. “The extent of the impact will be known only after the monsoon is over.” With monsoon season half over, some agricultural areas of the country have seen rainfall 68 percent lower than average. Food inflation in India is already 10.81 percent, significantly higher than general inflation; on lentils, chickpeas, potatoes, and other staples, the rise is far higher.

By Naomi Spencer

28 July, 2012

@ WSWS.org

NASA’s James Hansen, the ‘Godfather of Global Warming,’ says earlier predictions “too optimistic”

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

Twenty-four years ago, I introduced the concept of “climate dice” to help distinguish the long-term trend of climate change from the natural variability of day-to-day weather. Some summers are hot, some cool. Some winters brutal, some mild. That’s natural variability.

But as the climate warms, natural variability is altered, too. In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather,

and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time.

But loading the die with a warming climate changes the odds. You end up with only one side cooler than normal, one side average, and four sides warmer than normal. Even with climate change, you will occasionally see cooler-than-normal summers or a typically cold winter. Don’t let that fool you.

Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.

The change is so dramatic that one face of the die must now represent extreme weather to illustrate the greater frequency of extremely hot weather events.

Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.

This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.

There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.

The future is now. And it is hot.

By James Hansen

05 August, 2012

@ The Washington Post

Dr. James Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. He was the first scientist to warn the US Congress of the dangers of climate change and writes here as a private citizen. Hansen is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”

© 2012 The Washington Post

Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamic organization, has evolved over the last three decades from a guerilla movement to the most influential political and military power in Lebanon .

Given that Hezbollah is a crucial part of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”, it is not surprising that the mainstream media in the West uses simplistic stereotypes to demonize it. However, whether the West likes it or not, Hezbollah is clearly fated to continue playing an important role in Lebanon ‘s future.

The purpose of this quiz is to understand the roots and evolution of Hezbollah, a sophisticated organization that effectively combines pragmatism and militancy, social services and religious faith.

THE HEZBOLLAH QUIZ

1. Did Hezbollah exist before June 1982?

No.

2. Did Hezbollah exist after June 1982?

Yes.

3. What precipitated Hezbollah’s creation?

“Israel invaded Lebanon on June 5, 1982, following an eleven-month cease-fire with the PLO, which Israel claimed had been broken by the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom…It made little difference to the Israelis that the assassination had been carried out by a renegade Palestinian group [which was] a blood foe of the PLO. The invasion gave Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli defense minister, carte blanche to pursue his own dream of destroying the PLO as a political force in the region and putting in place a pliant government in Beirut that would become the second Arab state, after Egypt , to enter into a formal peace agreement with Israel . Within the Israeli government at the time—as within the American foreign policy establishment—there was little understanding of the developments under way among the Shi’i Muslims of Lebanon and no analysis was made of the impact of this invasion on them. Even if Israel had not launched its invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, the young would-be revolutionaries among the Shi’a would have pursued their path of emulating Iran ‘s Islamic revolution. Undoubtedly, however, the invasion pushed the Shi’a further in this direction, creating conditions for the establishment and flourishing of Hezbollah.” (Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History , Princeton University Press, Princeton : 2007, 33. Hereinafter referred to as, Norton.)

“ Iran and Syria share credit for sponsoring [Hezbollah]…although Iran certainly played the leading role. For Iran , the creation of Hezbollah was a realization of the revolutionary state’s zealous campaign to spread the message of the self-styled ‘Islamic revolution.’ From Syria ‘s standpoint, the new militant Shi’i party was a fortuitous instrument for preserving Syrian interests: supporting Hezbollah allowed Syria to maintain its alliance with Iran , gain the means for striking indirectly at both Israel and the United States , and keep its Lebanese allies, including the Amal movement, in line.” (Norton, 34-5.)

“From where had this Shia surge sprung? For a millennium or more…Shia Muslims had struggled, with a few rare historical exceptions, on the margins of politics and wars. Their…senior jurists espoused the dogma of quietism…By the turn of the twentieth century, Shia thinkers had begun to question quietism” and thus argued that Shia should not resign themselves to passivity and injustice. (Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege To Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel , Free Press, New York : 2010, 101-2. Hereinafter referred to as, Cambanis.)

For more information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and for a more extensive version of this quiz, go to : http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/

4. Who said the following? “When we entered Lebanon [in June 1982]…there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.”

Ehud Barak: Prime minister of Israel from 1999 – 2001 and current Minister of Defense. (Another Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, made the same point in 1987.) (Norton, 33.)

Israel had expected the Shiites to greet them with tolerance; and, “thanks to their prior hostility to the Palestinians, most Shiites did at first manifest a kind of ‘positive indifference’ towards the Israelis….But this reception did not last very long….It was Israel itself that changed the Shiites, which turned rice and flowers [tossed mainly by southern Maronites] into grenades and home-made bombs. [While the Shiites had not been Israel ‘s main target] they had nonetheless suffered more than any other community if only because, as inhabitants of the South, they stood directly in its path. Mainly theirs were the villages—nearly 80 per cent of them—that were damaged or destroyed, theirs the majority of the 20,000 killed.” (David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon , Battleground of the Middle East , Nation Books, New York : 2010, 197-9. Hereinafter referred to as, Hirst.)

From 1985 until its withdrawal in 2000, Israel maintained its ‘security zone’ in southern Lebanon which comprised 10 per cent of all Lebanese territory and 6 percent of its people. The Israelis set up a 2,000-man South Lebanese Army (SLA) that was overwhelmingly Maronite-officered, and Israeli ‘advisers’ remained in the security zone to oversee it. “If the situation in the South quieted, as it did periodically, Israeli officials held up the zone as a success that could not be safely terminated. When the situation became hotter, the zone became a necessity. [Hezbollah officials reasonably argued] that, without effective…resistance… Israel would have little incentive to consider withdrawing…” (The Egyptians in 1973 and the Palestinians in 1987 came to the same conclusion.) (Norton, 81.)

Israel ‘s general strategy in Lebanon from 1985 to 2000 was two-fold: “militarily to smash the guerillas themselves, their bases and their personnel; politically to persuade the Lebanese state and people, by punishing them too, to turn against Hizbullah, and then to make a final peace with Israel independently of Syria .” For an example of civilians being punished, consider Israel ‘s 1996 “Grapes of Wrath” campaign which caused “some 500,000” Lebanese to flee north. During the 16-day campaign “25,132 artillery rounds and 2,350 air sorties” resulted in killing only thirteen Hizbollah fighters. “Once again…it was Lebanese civilians who bore the brunt; 165 died, compared with not one Israeli, military or civilian.” (Hirst, 249, 257-8.)

5. Who wrote the following in 1954? “It is clear that Lebanon is the weakest link in the Arab League…[The Christians] are a majority in historical Lebanon and this majority has a tradition and a culture different from those other components of the Arab League…The creation of a Christian state is therefore a natural act…It seems to me that this is the central duty…of our foreign policy. We must act in all possible ways to bring about a radical change in Lebanon …”

Ben-Gurion , Israel ‘s founding prime minister, was expressing his hope to capitalize on tensions that existed in the Middle East at the time to promote a grand design for Lebanon . “On this occasion Sharett [the foreign minister] prevailed: there was no attack on Lebanon …But the idea of one would not go away. In May…1955, Ben-Gurion once again demanded that something be done about Lebanon….Dayan leapt to his support and…outlined a plan by which it should actually be carried out: ‘[T]he only thing that’s necessary is to find an officer…We should either win his heart or buy him with money, to make him agree to declare himself the saviour of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon , will occupy the necessary territory, and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel . The territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel …’” This plan by Dayan eerily anticipated Israel ‘s 1982 war on Lebanon . (Hirst, 65-6.)

6. Why did Israel withdraw from Lebanon in 2000?

Hizbullah’s resistance operations against Israel were relentless and effective. From “an average of about 200 a year before 1996” such operations rose to “1,000 a year thereafter, peaking at 1,500 in 1999-2000.” Hizbullah lost 1,248 men between the 1982 invasion and 1999; while the Israelis, between 1985 and 1999, lost 332. And the trend favored Hizbullah. “There was only one way the ‘slow bleeding’…could be staunched, and that was to get out…” Israel would “do what it had never done before—relinquish Arab territory it had conquered and occupied for nothing in return.” (Hirst, 263-5.)

In 2006, “Israeli Brigadier General Guy Zur…described Hezbollah as ‘by far the greatest guerrilla group in the world’…” (Norton, 140.)

7. After Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, what was Hezbollah’s policy toward Lebanese who had collaborated with Israel ?

When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, “it left behind thousands of collaborators, including men who had beaten and tortured Hezbollah fighters on behalf of the Israelis. Nasrallah ordered his followers to keep their hands off all collaborators, leaving their judgment to Lebanese courts.” In fact, following the withdrawal “there was a remarkable degree of calm….Overall, that time will be remembered as a remarkably orderly and humane period, especially when measured against the history of internecine violence that scarred Lebanon for much of the preceding few decades.” (Cambanis, 5; Norton, 89-90.)

Hezbollah’s decency and efficiency “was so remarkable that those whom much of the world still looked upon as ‘terrorists’…now earned a grudging respect in unfamiliar quarters, including European officialdom…” (Hirst, 267.)

8. During the period between the Israeli withdrawal of May 2000 and the war in July 2006, how many Israeli civilians were killed by Hezbollah?

One. However, “Nine Israeli soldiers died in Hezbollah attacks in the contested [Shebaa] farms area”, a disputed territory in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that is recognized to belong to Lebanon , “and eight others were killed in six clashes along the ‘Blue Line’ demarcated by the UN after Israel ‘s withdrawal. Some of the attacks were in retaliation for Israeli-caused deaths in Lebanon ….Generally, however, this six-year period was relatively quiet…and this was frequently commented on by Israeli officials prior to the summer of 2006.” (Norton, 91.)

From 2000 to 2006, the great bulk of Katyusha rocket firings into Israel proper, according to Israeli sources, came from Palestinian fedayeen not Hezbollah. (Norton, 92.)

9. What was the “pretext” for Israel ‘s 12 July 2006 invasion of Lebanon ? What was the “context”?

“Since Israel ‘s withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah and Israel had clashed sporadically….Nasrallah had said again and again that Hezbollah’s primary military goal was to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israel and the return of Lebanese dead. The way forward, he said, was to seize Israeli captives and trade them.” On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah commandos succeeded in capturing Israeli soldiers; the commandos had tried similar raids in the past without success. Nasrallah expected that Israel ‘s response would be similar to past experience however Israel exploited the operation to justify its 2006 invasion. (Cambanis, 63.)

Hezbollah had negotiated a January 2004 prisoner exchange with Israel . And, “when its fighters attacked an Israeli army unit on July 12, 2006, and captured two soldiers, Hezbollah announced it would exchange them for…Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel .” (Assaf Kfoury editor, Inside Lebanon: Journey to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky , Monthly Review Press, New York : 2007, 97. Hereinafter referred to as, Kfoury.)

The context of Israel ‘s invasion was clear. The desire within Israel ‘s “leadership to have it out with Hezbollah increased markedly in 2005 and early 2006.” Israeli officials had had to endure “Hezbollah’s taunting ever since their unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000” and thus desired to reestablish their deterrence power in the eyes of Hamas and Hezbollah in particular.” (Norton, 133.)

“In leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee investigating Israel’s mismanagement of the summer 2006 Lebanon war, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert admitted that the war had been carefully planned at least four months ahead of time…” (Kfoury, 157.)

“In confidential discussions with the White House, Israel promised President Bush a ‘quick and decisive result’ that would end with Hezbollah’s demise.” (Norton, 139.)

10. True or False: Human Rights Watch reported that it found no evidence that Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect its fighters from retaliatory Israeli attack.

True. (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/lebanon0806/2.htm.)

Hezbollah, as Nasrallah admitted on a 21 July 2006 broadcast, underestimated Israel’s grossly disproportionate attack: “strikes on roads, bridges, [hospitals, schools, densely populated areas,] seaports and airports throughout Lebanon…” “Even a member of [Tony Blair’s] cabinet, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Howell, was moved to declare, during a visit to Beirut , that it was ‘very, very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics that have been used [by Israel ]…You know, if [you’re] chasing Hizbullah, then go for Hizbullah. You don’t go for the entire Lebanese nation…’” (Norton, 135, 138; Hirst, 360-1.)

11. True or False: Just before the launch of the July 2006 Lebanon War, Israel ‘s Chief of Staff Dan Halutz instructed his stockbroker to sell certain investments that were likely to be negatively affected by the war.

True. (Hirst, 345.)

“Within a few months [of the end of the war]…Halutz and key commanders had resigned in disgust or disgrace; the reputation of the Israeli army, most sacrosanct of institutions, fell to an unprecedented low.” (Hirst, 381.)

12. True or False: Saudi Arabia supported Hezbollah during the 2006 war.

False. Saudi Arabia voiced “quick disapproval of Hezbollah’s actions…and Jordan , Egypt , and United Arab Emirates followed suit. The Sunni Arab governments were understandably apprehensive about the rising profile of the Shi’ite power Iran in the Arab world, the emergence of a Shi’i-dominated government in… Iraq , and the influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon . All these forces might well inspire domestic opposition forces in their own countries, especially as Hezbollah gained enthusiastic support even among the vast Sunni population of the Arab world [as it provided the only effective opposition to Israel].” (Norton, 136.)

“Many secular Arabs, Sunni Muslims, Christians—forces for moderation who had suffered at the strengthening arms of the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas ‘Resistance Axis’—yearned for a death blow to Nasrallah’s movement. But as the arc of Israel ‘s punishment expanded, the outrage toward Hezbollah subsided to a chirp. After Qana it fell silent completely.” The “Israeli bombing of Qana on July 30,” that resulted in the deaths of “twenty-eight civilians,” ended the “support for Israel ‘s campaign in” Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt due to “the heat of public outrage”. In Saudi Arabia , for example, “by late July, public expressions of solidarity with the Lebanese and Hezbollah were expressed by Saudi officials, albeit grudgingly.” (Cambanis, 81; Norton, 140, 149.)

“Across the Arab and Islamic world people on the street began hoisting Hassan Nasrallah’s portrait into the air. Here was a leader who resonated like no one had since Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 or Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.” Hezbollah had shown that resistance, not the accommodation of states like Egypt , Jordan and Saudi Arabia , worked against Israel . And, as all Arabs knew, “in 1967 Israel had vanquished all the Arab armies in six days, but in 2006 they had fought thirty-four days and failed to take control of a thin sliver of South Lebanon [despite a massive ground offensive of some 30,000 troops in the last two days of the war].” (Cambanis, 119, 120, 122.)

For the confluence of interests of the US , Saudi Arabia and Israel , see the Saudi Arabia Quiz at: http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/

13. Does Hezbollah receive substantial support from Iran ?

While much of the funding for Hezbollah’s extensive “social and medical infrastructure is raised domestically…Hezbollah…receives significant subsidies from Iran . The amounts are often estimated at $100 million a year…A significant portion of Iranian support is for Hezbollah’s militia wing.” (Norton, 110.)

“Nasrallah [makes] no apologies for his party’s links to Tehran and Damascus , publicly thanking Hezbollah’s patrons in speech after speech.” In fact, “Every Lebanese faction [has] received money, weapons, and political cover from foreign powers [such as Saudi Arabia , the CIA and Israel ].” (Cambanis, 113, 182.)

Hezbollah’s capacity for force that has made the party so important depends almost entirely on Iran and Syria , not just financially but logistically. According to Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan , “The fall of the Baath regime in Syria would leave Hizbullah high and dry. Its rockets and other weapons, and some of its communications and code-breaking abilities, depended on Syrian help….The downside of any weakening of Hizbullah is that it could encourage Israeli expansionism in South Lebanon, as in the 1980s and 1990s (Israel’s leaders have long wanted to steal the water in south Lebanon’s rivers).” ( http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/top-ten-implications-of-the-damascus-bombing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_

campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29)

As a mature organization, “Hezbollah is no mere proxy, and seems to enjoy something closer to the status of a junior partner or favored ally with Tehran .” “The speed with which Hezbollah [has] attacked, counterattacked, and improvised during clashes with Israel [makes] clear the local command in Lebanon [makes] its own decisions.” (Cambanis, 223.)

Iran ‘s assistance to Hezbollah is dwarfed by US assistance to Israel . According to the 12 March 2012 US Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, “ Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $115 billion in bilateral assistance. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance…” (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf)

14. Is the following an official Hezbollah statement? “ Israel ‘s final departure from Lebanon is a prelude to its final obliteration from existence and the liberation of venerable Jerusalem from the talons of occupation.”

The statement is part of Hezbollah’s 1985 open letter addressed to the “Downtrodden in Lebanon and in the World.” “There have been periodic hints from leading Hezbollah officials, including Nasrallah…, that the 1985 open letter is obsolete” and belongs “to a certain historical moment that” has passed. In any event, despite what it may wish, Hezbollah cannot destroy Israel . (Norton, 39, 46.)

In the “modern Middle East racist attitudes thrive even among populations that coexist peacefully…Whether sincerely or not, [Hezbollah] has excised hatred of Jews from its official doctrine….[However,] Hezbollah’s updated manifesto declares Israel ‘an unnatural creation that is not viable and cannot continue to survive.’” (Cambanis, 9-10.)

“It [Hezbollah] will wage unyielding war against Israel as long as that approach expands its power base. If war with Israel were to become more costly, or if by some change in circumstances it endangered Iranian support, Hezbollah could shift its focus to other enemies.” (Cambanis, 227.)

When asked whether he “was prepared to live with a two-state settlement between Israel and Palestine , Nasrallah said he would not sabotage what is finally a ‘Palestinian matter.’” (Kfoury, 97.)

15. Why hasn’t Lebanon had an official census since 1932?

Following Lebanon’s independence from France in 1943 the “political system…was formalized into a system of sectarian communities…Each of the country’s seventeen recognized sects was accorded political privilege, including senior appointments in the bureaucracy, membership in parliament, and positions in high political office, roughly proportionate to the community’s size….Thus, the Maronites, considered the plurality, were accorded the presidency, which carried preeminent prerogatives and powers, and the second largest community, the Sunnis, won the premiership, decidedly second fiddle to the presidency. The Shi’i community, third largest, was awarded the speakership of the parliament, a position with far weaker constitutional powers than either the presidency or the premiership. The provenance of this allocation of power was a 1932 census of dubious reliability and, in fact, the last official census ever conducted in Lebanon….The imbalance of power…was rectified significantly by” the Ta’if accord; however Ta’if left in place the destructive sectarianism of the original constitution. “As a result of the Ta’if accord of 1989, which marked the end of the civil war [which claimed 150,000 lives], seats are divided equally [in parliament] between Muslim [including Druzes] and Christians, in contrast to the prior distribution that favored Christians by a 6 to 5 ratio. The 128 parliamentary seats are subdivided along confessional lines: 27 seats each for the three largest sects—Shi’a, Sunni, and Maronites…” (Norton, 11-12, 97.)

In 1932, Shiites were “a mere 16 per cent of the population”. However, by 2005, they had risen to “35 per cent of it.” (Hirst, 308.)

Lebanon ‘s dilemma is that while the percentage of Shi’a in the population has grown over the past decades, “the constitution does not” enable this fact to “be translated at the level of politics….So, every time a sect wants to move…upward in the political hierarchy” strife results. “In a regular democracy” votes would address the issue. (Norton, 155.)

“Not a single powerful political party in Lebanon, with the exception of Hezbollah, argued for a wholesale redesign of the political system because all of them knew that a more fair, just, or representative system would cast them from their perches. None of the movements allied with the moderates or with Hezbollah had anything resembling internal elections or party congresses. They were run like family mafias.” (Cambanis, 261.)

16. What percentage of the popular vote did Hezbollah and its allies receive in the 2009 elections?

In the June 2009 parliamentary elections, “Hezbollah and its allies…decisively triumphed in the popular vote, denying Saad Hariri and his backers an opportunity to trumpet the election as a great victory for the moderate axis….Of the roughly 1.5 million people who voted, 54 percent voted for Hezbollah [and its allies], and 46 for the governing coalition.” In June 2011, Lebanon ‘s new prime minister, Najib Mikati , announced a government dominated by members and allies of Hezbollah. (Cambanis, 286.)

“Hizbullah…has members of parliament and cabinet positions and…so it is part of the Lebanese political establishment.” All over the Arab world, the “old Muslim fundamentalist movements have for over a decade been…drawn into parliamentary, Westminster-style politics.” We see this with Turkey , Egypt , Tunisia and elsewhere. ( http://www.juancole.com/2012/05/romney-wants-to-fight-whole-muslim-world-not-concentrate-on-bin-laden.html )

“Without ever shedding its Islamist character and conservative moral code, Hezbollah has in fact built alliances with other parties, secular and non-Shiite, in order to get a larger representation in the government. When it put up candidates in…parliamentary elections, some of those on its electoral list were Christians…” (Kfoury, 100.)

17. True or False: Hezbollah campaigns for votes primarily by promoting religious issues.

False. “[M]ost striking about Hezbollah’s political campaigns is the extent to which nonreligious themes [such as economic and security issues] are habitually emphasized. Hezbollah’s electoral strategy does not dwell explicitly on religious themes at all, in stark contrast to, for example, Christian fundamentalist groups in the United States .” (Norton, 102.) ( For more information, see the Christian Right Quiz at : http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/ )

The Shia in southern Lebanon “were known as an easygoing and hospitable lot, who liked their food…tobacco…liquor…Once in the 1980s Hezbollah tried to preach austerity, in the manner of the Iranian ayatollahs, and popular support plummeted. They retreated quickly, and never again tried to enforce any moral code on the general public.” (Cambanis, 58.)

In municipalities where Hezbollah has controlled the local council it has shown a capacity for good governance and it has not prohibited alcohol. (Norton, 103.)

18. What are the two main reasons Hezbollah is supported by the bulk of Lebanon ‘s Shi’a and by many from other sects as well?

Hezbollah Provides Dignity

Hezbollah’s effective resistance against the legendarily effective Israeli military forces “embarrassed virtually all regular Arab armies and undermined the notion, deeply embedded in the Israeli psyche, that Arabs are inherently inferior in the arts of war.” Hezbollah thus gives Shiites a deep feeling of pride, for this it is honored. (Hirst, 247.)

Consider the words of an educated Lebanese Shiite to understand the deep support of Hezbollah: “The people of the South had grown accustomed to feeling downtrodden. But Hezbollah was able to give people a sense of pride so strong that people were willing to lose material things, and even to give family members as martyrs, so long as they could keep this sense of honor.” (Cambanis, 178.)

What good, Nasrallah can fairly ask, have the many years of negotiations between the PLO and Israel achieved? While the Palestinians continue to lack dignity under occupation, Hezbollah’s long resistance has led to dignity and freedom from occupation for Lebanese. (Cambanis, 8.)

Hezbollah Provides Services

As the “Lebanese government offers paltry social welfare services for its citizens” Hezbollah’s welfare provision is needed. And, unlike other Lebanese parties and militias, its “discipline, integrity and dedication generate feelings akin to awe among many Lebanese, Christians and Muslims alike.” (Norton, 107; Hirst, 240.)

Hezbollah engages “in a vast range of public services and infrastructural projects—from which Christians and Sunnis, not just Shiites, often benefited—such as hospitals and schools, cut-price supermarkets and pharmacies, low-cost housing, land reclamation and irrigation. [In some areas] it has assumed responsibility for most of the water supply, electricity, refuse collection, sewage disposal” and policing. (Hirst, 240.)

While support for Hezbollah is unquestionably genuine, the party does also deftly use “instruments of coercion” to maintain its dominance over its community. It has “its own intelligence network, its own army, police, court, and prisons…Shia political rivals who contested Hezbollah could be humiliated, slandered, or economically pressured. Social critics could face ostracizing, harassment, or loss of benefits.” (Cambanis, 179.)

19. Did Hezbollah praise the 9/11 terrorists?

Hezbollah was placed on the US Terrorism list in 1999 but “was taken off the list a couple of years later following Hezbollah’s strong condemnation of the 9/11 attack on America. Hezbollah was returned to the list when Dick Cheney opined that a ‘presumed Hezbollah operative’ probably met with an Al Qaeda representative in South America in 2001.” “A study undertaken at the American University of Beirut in January – February 2007, benefiting from research and surveys from a variety of international and Israeli human rights organizations, tabulated no fewer than 6,672 acts of Israeli state terrorism directed against Lebanon and Palestine between the years 1967-2007. Not only is Israel absent from the US State Department Terrorism list, Israel appears to determine who is on it.” (http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/06/why-is-hezbollah-on-the-terrorism-list/)

For more information, see the Terrorism Quiz at: http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/

20. True or False: Hezbollah normally sends its most dispensable fighters on martyrdom (suicide) operations thus preserving its elite fighters.

False. Only Hezbollah fighters “of exceptional battlefield prowess [can] apply for martyrdom operations, and only a small subset of that elite [is] accepted.…If Hezbollah deployed callow throwaway teenagers on martyrdom operations the party felt it would cheapen rather than ennoble the cult of death. The party’s military planners reserved death missions for otherwise unattainable military objectives.” (Cambanis, 164.)

“Even though it cultivates a vibrant culture of martyrdom among it supporters, the party hasn’t launched a suicide bomber since December 30, 1999, when a Hezbollah fighter drove a car bomb into an Israeli military convoy.” (Cambanis, 12.)

If a US marine charged an enemy sniper position to save comrades under fire he might receive the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration awarded by the US government.

By Jeffrey Rudolph

31 July, 2012

Countercurrents.org

Jeffrey Rudolph,   a Montreal college professor, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations. He was awarded the prestigious   Cheryl Rosa Teresa Doran Prize   upon graduation from McGill University ‘s faculty of law; has worked as a chartered accountant at one of the world’s largest public accounting firms; and, has taught at McGill University . He has prepared widely-distributed quizzes on Israel-Palestine , Iran , Hamas, Terrorism, Saudi Arabia , US Inequality, and the US Christian Right. These quizzes, and a more extensive version of the Hezbollah Quiz, are available at: http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/