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

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

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

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

The Hunger Games, 2007-2011

What happens next is, of course, impossible to predict, but if the recent past is any guide, it could turn ugly. In 2007-2008, when rice, corn, and wheat experienced prices hikes of 100% or more, sharply higher prices — especially for bread — sparked “food riots” in more than two dozen countries, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Senegal, and Yemen. In Haiti, the rioting became so

violent and public confidence in the government’s ability to address the problem dropped so precipitously that the Haitian Senate voted to oust the country’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis. In other countries, angry protestors clashed with army and police forces, leaving scores dead.

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

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

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

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

The Hunger Games, 2012-??

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

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

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

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

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

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

distribution of agricultural land that continues to fuel the insurgency of the Maoist-inspired Naxalites of India.

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

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

By Michael T. Klare

07 August, 2012

@ TomDispatch.com

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

Copyright 2012 Michael T. Klare

We grieve and condemn in the strongest terms the killing of Dutch missionary Willem Geertman, 67, who has lived a good 46 years among the people of Quezon province in Luzon until his death on July 3 last week.

President Benigno Aquino III’s conscience should be haunted by this latest killing. But no, he forms another futile Task Force which, like all the others, indicates that the government is turning another blind eye on this yet another murder of a foreign missionary in the country.

Already, the signs that authorities are in denial mode over the political nature of the killing can be seen in the preposterous claim that robbery was the motive here.  Who is the government fooling? This government has produced the most ridiculous of cover-ups for state-sponsored abductions, murders, enforced evacuations, and other human rights violations against grassroots leaders, activists, and community folk.

Like the killing of Italian Missionary Fr. FaustoTentorio, PIME in October last year, and of Protestant Bishop Alberto Ramento in 2006, Geertman’s murder is not caused by petty thieves. It is traced to the state’s Internal Peace and Security Plan (IPSP) which targets ‘enemies of the state’. The Dutch missionary was forced to kneel before his assassins then he was gunned down.

Another life has been sacrificed at the altar of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Oplan Bayanihan. What hypocrisy for the AFP to mouth ‘Peace! Peace!’ when behind the rhetoric of the IPSP is the intent to silence those who truly work for justice and peace!

Geertman’s killing bespeaks of an escalating attack on Christian missions.

Many foreign and Filipino religious missionaries in the country are experiencing surveillance, harassment, and political killings by state security forces ranging from paramilitaries, AFP-backed fanatical cults, militaries, police, and assassin-at-large General Palparan and his ilk. Often, missionaries live among the poorest of the poor in the remotest of areas initiating programs to provide what the government has neglected to give — education, health, livelihood, and even their sense of dignity as communities.

Missionary works have been empowering communities through years of raising awareness on their human dignity and rights. Oplan Bayanihan reverses this impact by intimidating missionaries and silencing them forever.

Their work stands in stark contrast against the superficial social welfare dole-outs like the Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) and the counter-insurgency ‘peace and development’ projects of Oplan Bayanihan. Missionary works, including those by women religious in Mindanao, have led to the strengthening of community positions against largescale mining and other projects that destroy livelihoods and the environment. Government social welfare programs particularly those taken over and carried out by the AFP seek to force communities to accede to ‘development’ aggression.

We direct our indignation to President Aquino who boasts of billion-dollar foreign investments that plunder our people’s labor and the environment but fails to see that enlightened foreign missionaries are God’s grace to the poor and the oppressed.

We thank Willem for being God’s missionary who fulfilled and lived the belief that “As far as the Church is concerned, the social message of the Gospel must not be considered as theory but, above all else, a basis and a motivation for action.” (No. 57, Centesimus Annus)

Justice for Willem Geertman!

Stop killing our Missionaries and Prophets!

STATEMENT

July 6, 2012

@ Sister’s Association in Mindanao

For reference:

Sr. Noemi P. Degala, SMSM

Executive Secretary

Mobile 0929-446-3684

In 1992, world leaders signed up to something called “sustainability”. Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: “sustainable development”. Then it made a short jump to another term: “sustainable growth”. And now, in the 2012 Rio+20 text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into “sustained growth”.

This term crops up 16 times in the document, where it is used interchangeably with sustainability and sustainable development. But if sustainability means anything, it is surely the opposite of sustained growth. Sustained growth on a finite planet is the essence of unsustainability.

As political economist Robert Skidelsky, who comes at this issue from a different angle, observes in the Guardian today:

“Aristotle knew of insatiability only as a personal vice; he had no inkling of the collective, politically orchestrated insatiability that we call economic growth. The civilization of “always more” would have struck him as moral and political madness. And, beyond a certain point, it is also economic madness. This is not just or mainly because we will soon enough run up against the natural limits to growth. It is because we cannot go on for much longer economising on labour faster than we can find new uses for it.”

Several of the more outrageous deletions proposed by the United States – such as any mention of rights or equity or of common but differentiated responsibilities – have been rebuffed. In other respects the Obama government’s purge has succeeded, striking out such concepts as “unsustainable consumption and production patterns” and the proposed decoupling of economic growth from the use of natural resources.

At least the states due to sign this document haven’t ripped up the declarations from the last Earth summit, 20 years ago. But in terms of progress since then, that’s as far as it goes. Reaffirming the Rio 1992 commitments is perhaps the most radical principle in the entire declaration.

As a result, the draft document, which seems set to become the final document, takes us precisely nowhere: 190 governments have spent 20 years bracing themselves to “acknowledge”, “recognise” and express “deep concern” about the world’s environmental crises, but not to do anything about them.

This paragraph from the declaration sums up the problem for me:

“We recognise that the planet Earth and its ecosystems are our home and that Mother Earth is a common expression in a number of countries and regions and we note that some countries recognise the rights of nature in the context of the promotion of sustainable development. We are convinced that in order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environment needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature.”

It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It could be illustrated with rainbows and psychedelic unicorns and stuck on the door of your toilet. But without any proposed means of implementation, it might just as well be deployed for a different function in the same room.

The declaration is remarkable for its absence of figures, dates and targets. It is as stuffed with meaningless platitudes as an advertisement for payday loans, but without the necessary menace. There is nothing to work with here, no programme, no sense of urgency or call for concrete action beyond the inadequate measures already agreed in previous flaccid declarations. Its tone and contents would be better suited to a retirement homily than a response to a complex of escalating global crises.

The draft and probably final declaration is 283 paragraphs of fluff. It suggests that the 190 governments due to approve it have, in effect, given up on multilateralism, given up on the world and given up on us. So what do we do now? That is the topic I intend to address in my column next week.

By George Monbiot

24 June, 2012
Monbiot.com

George Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, and Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice. His website ishttp://www.monbiot.com

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. “Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . , the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,” Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

By John Rosenthal

9 June 2012

@ National Review Online

John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. You can follow his work at www.trans-int.com or on Facebook.

Gaza City: “I can never forget his image with blood all over his little body and both his legs badly injured,” Umm Mamoun Hassouna told The Electronic Intifada as she sat at a relative’s house in Gaza City. “I am a preacher [for women] at a local mosque and used to preach against harming innocent Israeli children, women or the elderly, and even cutting down a tree,” she said.

“After I have seen my son killed by an Israeli warplane in front of my eyes, I wonder what my only son did against Israel [for them to] kill him,” Umm Mamoun added.

Thirteen-year-old Mamoun Zuhdi al-Dam was killed on Wednesday, 20 June, during an Israeli attack on Gaza amid exchange of fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance factions that left eight Palestinians dead.

At approximately 3pm, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at members of a Palestinian family who were having a picnic behind the campus of the University College of Applied Sciences in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Tal al-Hawa. As a result, Mamoun al-Dam was killed.

His blind father, Muhammad Zuhdi al-Dam, 67, was wounded by shrapnel to the head and the neck. Three other children who were in a nearby field were also wounded, according to theweekly report from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

He made tea for his parents

“One month ago, I inherited a small piece of land — about 220 square meters — from my family, and we were all so happy to own that land as my husband is an elderly retired man,” Umm Mamoun said. “Since we inherited that land, Mamoun used to go to it often to enjoy some time outdoors.”

On the day he was killed, his mother said, Mamoun went to the piece of land in the Zaytoun neighborhood, just near the Ali Bin Abi Talib mosque, at about 9am. “I received a phone call from him later on to inform me that the situation was tense and that Israeli warplanes were buzzing overhead,” she said. “His father and I were scared for him and we went to join him.”

Mamoun, his mother said, used to read the Quran, and he led noon prayers that day on the family’s plot of land. The boy also prepared some tea for his parents, and then laid down to listen to news on his mobile phone.

“As he was listening to the newscast that moment, he told us that an Israeli warplane had fired a missile somewhere else,” she added.

Killed as he played football

“Then, Mamoun went to play with a football just close to us on the same land,” his mother recalled, surrounded by mourners. “Suddenly, we heard a loud explosion and pillars of smoke covered the place. I heard Mamoun screaming and saw him stained with blood, and his legs were badly injured. By then my relatives, who are our neighbors, came over to help us as his father was slightly injured too.”

“Mamoun was everything for me — a son, a brother, a sister and everything in my life,” his grief-stricken mother said, “I am the second wife of his father, and God had given me Mamoun to fill in my life.”

In tears, Umm Mamoun spoke of how her son would tell her, “I love you so much, mom. You are my dearest, I love you, I love you.”

“He used to fill my moments with joy”

Muhammad, Mamoun’s father and a retired trader, sat at a condolence ceremony in the Asqoula neighborhood of Gaza City, with his left hand bandaged due to his injuries from the same missile strike that killed his son.

As relatives and friends came to offer condolences, al-Dam lamented, “I do not know what to say, except may God take revenge on those who killed my son Mamoun.”

Al-Dam explained that his son used to look after him due to his lack of sight. “Mamoun, may he rest in peace, used to be very reliable, though he was only a child. He used to take me to the mosque for prayer, he used to bring whatever I need from nearby grocery stores, he used to fill my moments with joy.”

No resistance, no shooting

Al-Dam told The Electronic Intifada that the moment his son Mamoun was hit by the Israeli missile, there was no sign of Palestinian shooting or rocket fire in the area.

“The area where our new piece of land is located is far away from the Israeli border line and it is populated as well,” he said.

Mamoun’s maternal aunts on his mother’s side, Umm Mahmoud and Umm Ahmad Hassouna, recalled how cheerful, humorous and polite Mamoun was.

“One day I was very sad and visited my sister Umm Mamoun to feel better. Mamoun came over to me and said, aunty, I will tell you 15 jokes so that you will smile,” Umm Ahmad said as a little smile broke the grief on her face.

Mamoun’s niece, seven-year-old Abeer Zuhdi al-Dam, wanted to share her feelings too.

“We used to play together often. Sometimes he used to show me some pictures on his own computer, and we used to play many games including hide and seek. We hate Israel for killing him, we hate Israel for killing him,” she said.

“Like my son”

Mamoun’s elder brother, Zuhdi al-Dam, 42, received condolences alongside his father. “This is something that our faith obliges us to tolerate and take for granted, but the question is, why does Israel target such little children? Why?” Zuhdi al-Dam said. “Mamoun was like my son as the age difference between us is thirty years.”

“Why do those alleged world leaders assemble at the so-called United Nations Security Council? Rather, it is the No-Security Council,” Mamoun’s father remarked.

“When an Israeli is hurt, those alleged leaders rush to condemn or call for action, while our own children are being killed and no one even moves.”

By Rami Almeghari

24 June, 2012
The Electronic Intifada

Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

Outside London’s five-star Dorchester Hotel sits a Bugatti Veyron. These 253 mph supercars are rare enough at the best of times, but this one is unique: known as L’Or Blanc, or White Gold, its exterior is inlaid with porcelain, giving it the appearance of a highly polished humbug.

In terms of conspicuous consumption that takes some beating — £1.6 million for a car that is as delicate as a tea-set.

But for the Saudi owner who has had it flown over to London for the duration of his visit, that is what life is all about. Like the first swallows of summer, the arrival of the world’s rarest supercars in the capital heralds the start of another, lesser known, season — the Ramadan Rush.

This year the weeks leading up to the Muslim month of fasting, which begins on July 20, have seen millionaires and billionaires flock to London from across the Middle East.

They come to escape the oppressive heat back home, to relax, to party and, above all, to show off their wealth.

For upmarket shops, restaurants, nightclubs and hotels, it is bonanza time. Forget the summer sales, these visitors want the best and are prepared to pay for it.

And so it is that Bond Street jewellers, West End designer outlets, casinos such as Les Ambassedeurs, restaurants such as Le Caprice, and hotels such as The Sheraton Park Tower have been instructing their (Arabic-speaking) staff to roll out the red carpet.

The figures speak for themselves: some five-star hotels are reporting 80 per cent Middle Eastern occupancy.

As for the stores, the average British shopper will spend £120 during a trip to the West End and an American £550. Compare that with the average Saudi spend of £1,900. What’s more, in the month before Ramadan, the amount spent by Middle Eastern visitors will be double that in other months.

Of course, it is not the first time the high-rollers have abandoned the fierce heat of a Middle Eastern summer for London. But this year the numbers are well up on before.

Saudi visitors are up 22 per cent year-on-year, while visitors from the UAE have risen to almost 120,000 — up nearly ten per cent.

With the burka banned in France, many who traditionally holidayed in Paris can do so no more. Furthermore, the shockwaves from the Arab Spring have encouraged many of the ruling elites to look beyond their own shores for a potential long-term safe haven.

As a result, while house prices in other parts of Britain stagnate in the recession, Middle Eastern buyers have piled in to London properties, particularly those worth upwards of £5million, driving prices up.

‘The Ramadan Rush is a total phenomenon,’ says Jace Tyrrell of the New West End Company, the management company for retailers in Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street.

‘It is worth millions to us — last year there was about £120 million spent in the pre-Ramadan rush by Middle Eastern visitors, but it grows every single year. We expect it to be up ten per cent this year.’

In central London the signs of this flood of Arab money, and of businesses’ efforts to catch it, are everywhere to see.

‘This stunning international fashion label is looking for an experienced Arabic-speaking sales advisor to join their upmarket concession within Harrods,’ reads one vacancy advert.

‘Arabic-speaking, experienced, talented makeup artists and skincare specialists needed for exciting positions in West End premier department store,’ reads another, one of dozens posted online. And it’s not just the staff who are hand-picked.

The visitors from the Middle East are not interested in buying run-of-the-mill designer goods and have no interest in discounted items. Consider the fact that the value of a single Saudi shopping transaction in London averages out at £600.

As a result the traditional summer sales in many upmarket London stores were brought forward to May and have ended early. They have now been replaced with tailored and often specially designed collections that will chime with the tastes of their incoming customers.

‘They absolutely don’t want summer sales bargains, they want new season stock,’ explains a Selfridge’s spokesperson. ‘They’re very keen on fine jewellery and shoes, and on recognised brands like Chanel. They’re very savvy shoppers and they want the latest, most fashionable, limited-edition products.’

One example of targeting by the brands is to be found in the use of Oud, a distinctive fragrance, in scents and beauty products.

‘Oud is a particularly popular scent for Middle Eastern shoppers, so a limited edition of, say, an Oud-scented fragrance, whether it’s by Armani, Jo Malone or Tom Ford, is very popular,’ says the spokesperson.

Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest draws for the visitors is Harrods. Indeed, so popular is the department store with Middle Eastern travellers that the Ramadan Rush has also been nicknamed the Harrods Hajj — a light-hearted reference to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Again, limited-edition items are popular: Louis Vuitton handbags; diamond jewellery; watches from Cartier; leather goods; silk scarves, and perfumes from Hermès.

Many of the purchases will be paid for in cash. Atif Nawaz works a stone’s throw from Harrods, at the Knightsbridge Foreign Currency Exchange.

He says it is not uncommon for Middle Eastern families to exchange £3,000 a day during a three-day shopping trip.

‘The family will go to Harrods or Harvey Nichols, spend the money they have and then send their chauffeur back to me the next day to exchange more money,’ said Mr Nawaz.

‘It is spare change for these people. But even though they are rich, they always haggle. They’ll spend thousands in the casino or at Harrods but come back and argue about the exchange rate.’

It’s not just shops that benefit from this deluge of dollars and dirhams, the currency of the UAE.

Companies providing chauffeurs, private chefs and close-protection bodyguards are all reporting a surge in business, as are concierge companies who cater for the rich and famous.

One such outfit, Quintessentially, is currently looking after a Saudi woman who is visiting London. She has requested that every week she is here she be hand-delivered a new handbag. So far she has had ones by Celine and Isabel Marant.

For another client they arranged for a guitar signed by Damien Hirst to be delivered to a member’s son because he loved the artist’s exhibition at the Tate so much. The cost? £10,000.

Quintessentially also laid on a very special tour of London for a group of male clients from the Middle East. The brief was that it was to involve cars and that money was to be no object. And so they arranged for a fleet of ten deluxe supercars to pick them up from their Mayfair apartment.

They included a Bugatti Veyron, a Ferrari Enzo, a Lamborghini Gallardo and an Aston Martin DB9.

The men then drove around the capital, stopping at ten of London’s most iconic locations and swapping cars at each. The drivers were equipped with wireless headsets through which a live commentary was given by a historian following in a car of his own. Better than an open-top bus tour.

Karen Jones, editor of Citywealth, a publication aimed at ‘individuals of ultra-high net worth’ (the sort of people with £100 million-plus to invest), says that for her clients London is all about having a good time before returning home to observe Ramadan.

‘Arabs love London because of the shopping and the fun,’ she says. ‘They don’t come to do business, they come and use London as a playground as we would Cannes or Monaco.’ One of her clients from Saudi Arabia told her that during a month in London he would expect to spend £100,000.

His daytimes will be spent shopping at Hermès and dining at Scott’s, La Petite Maison, Le Caprice and Nobu, and in the evenings he will frequent the capital’s casinos.

‘He told me that one of his Saudi friends bought a £9 million flat opposite Harrods and then spent £1 million furnishing it,’ said Ms Jones. ‘The trouble was that he couldn’t get any staff to work in it or anyone to come and make him a cup of coffee, so he ended up going to stay in a hotel. He tried bringing maids to London but the minute they get here they disappear.’ Presumably into the black market.

Even the weather isn’t off-putting. Ms Jones says: ‘They don’t get rain in places like Saudi, so running for a taxi in a shower is seen as a fun and exciting thing to do.’

Of course, the real high-flyers would not be seen dead in a taxi.
Instead they have their cars freighted over to London, generally by aeroplane, so that they can use them during their stay.

Take a trip around central London at the moment and supercars with Arabic-script plates can be seen — and heard — touring the streets.

Their drivers want to be noticed, and where better to be seen than outside Harrods? So it was that in the space of ten minutes on Wednesday afternoon I spotted a Saudi-registered Ferrari 438 worth £170,000 performing three laps of Harrods, its driver revving the engine each time he passed the famous green doors. He was followed shortly afterwards by a Dubai-registered, £270,000 Lamborghini SV.

Given the wealth of the owners, it is perhaps unsurprising that little notice is paid to the British rules of the road. Each summer Westminster Council is left with tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of unpaid fines as these visitors abandon their cars on yellow lines.

A list of last year’s most prolific offenders included the Arab owner of a £300,000 Rolls Royce who owed £2,000 for 18 tickets, and a Dubai-registered, £200,000 Lamborghini Murcielago which had racked up 24.

Meanwhile, the owner of a Bugatti Veyron L’Edition Centenaire — registration 444 — failed to pay £120 after he parked on a yellow line outside Selfridges (despite having managed to find £1.2 million to buy the car).

A mile or two from Harrods, legally parked on the forecourt of the Sheraton Park Hotel are two Maybachs with foreign plates and a Qatar-registered McLaren MP4.

‘The MP4 is worth about £200,000,’ one hotel worker explained. ‘It’s been brought in on a private jet and then driven straight off the plane to here. The amount of money these people can spend is ferocious.

‘We had one chap here, the son of a Saudi prince, and he and his brother each had a Bugatti Veyron, which they had had shipped over while they stayed here. He told me he had just bought a fully crewed yacht and anchored it in Monaco. The thing cost him about £30 million and he had never even seen it.’

Back at The Dorchester in Mayfair, the Veyron L’Or Blanc is attracting a crowd, even with its high-powered engine switched off.

The onlookers are discussing its vital statistics — kiln-fired porcelain inlay, eight-litre engine and acceleration of zero to 60mph in a touch over two-and-a-half seconds. As for fuel economy? That’s seven miles per gallon in town. With petrol prices what they are, that’s enough to send a shudder through the wallet of even a very well-off Briton.

But for the car’s owner, an unknown Saudi said to be in his 30s, the cost of a tank of petrol wouldn’t even count as small change.

By Tom Rawstorne

29 June 2012

@ www.dailymail.co.uk

Fasting is a universal custom and is advocated by all religions of the world, with more restrictions in some than in others. The “Siy?m” should not be interpreted as “fasting” lest it may be misunderstood as mere starvation or as an act of self-denial and asceticism, and therefore, a renunciation of the world. For the purpose of this article, let us call it the “Islamic Fast”.

Readers are kindly requested to refer to Q. 2:183-185, where the main fruit of fasting is to achieve Taqw? that essentially means self-restraint.

“O ye faithful! fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you so that you may guard against evil”. This is also translated by some as “…you may learn self-restraint”, or “…you may develop Taqw?? (God-consciousness)” (Q.2:183).

Thus, the Islamic fast is for those Muslims, who are preparing to become Mu?min?n (true and firm believers in faith). Faith carries much more weight than belief or doctrine. In this verse, Allah gives an open invitation to us as: “Oh ye faithful!” Although multiple benefits accrue, Muslims in general fast because it is Allah’s command and not merely for the physical benefits.

Fasting is the most rigorous of all spiritual disciplines imposed on every adult Muslim man and woman. Fasting frees oneself from egoism, replacing it with an indescribable peace within, which makes the person accept differences in humans. The aim of this spiritual exercise is to enable man to achieve proximity to Allah and obtain His pleasure.

In Islam, fasting is obligatory in the lunar month of Ramad??n, a lunar month of 29 or 30 days. During this period there is complete abstinence from food, drink, smoke, marital relationship, and any evil thought, word or deed. The advantage of the lunar month, compared to solar, is that fasting takes place by cyclic rotation under different climatic conditions, during the life span of the individual while residing in the same geographical location.

Fasting gives us an opportunity to fine tune the body, to develop qualities of endurance, and to control anger, sensual desires and a malicious tongue. The fasting person should avoid such actions as might arouse passion in him as well as in others, such as casting lustful eyes at a woman. He should also abstain from thinking carnal thoughts and fantasizing pleasures incompatible with the spiritual regimen.

It is a well-known fact that beasts can be brought under control by keeping them occasionally hungry and then feeding them at planned intervals. Similarly, man can tame the animal within himself and become its master by fasting for one whole month. One of the objectives is to bring unruly passions under control. The man who can rule his desires and makes them work as he likes, has attained true moral excellence.

Allah puts our faith to a severe test for one month, with strict non-indulgence in physical gratifications, during long hours of a day. If we emerge triumphant in this test, more strength develops in us to refrain from other sins. Our brain then also responds by sending recurrent and frequent signals to us to protect ourselves by rejecting evil immediately. In fact, this exercise trains us to receive warning signals at all times, whether Ramad??n or not, so that we should not see evil, hear evil, utter evil or act evil. Besides abstention from food and drink, the fasting of the pious man is to curb unchaste desires, to fast from looking at the provocative, from hearing the mischievous, and from uttering the obscene. A fasting man is also required to avoid slander and from thinking about inflicting injury to others. He should never find himself in a situation which may expose whatever animal qualities in whatever form he possesses.

The effect of fasting on the human personality is dominant and decisive. It enables man to subdue the strongest worldly urges raging within him and brings a harmonious equilibrium between the temporal (the body) and the spiritual (the soul), both coming together for peaceful co-existence.

Fasting is an institution for the improvement of the moral and spiritual character of man. The purpose of the fast is to help develop self-restraint, self-purification, God-consciousness, compassion, spirit of caring and sharing, and the love of Allah and humanity. The objective of fasting is to develop our personality to a high standard of God-consciousness and maintain that standard throughout life, so that on the Day of Judgment before God, we would already be well-off to a good start, to begin our life in Hereafter.

However, for some Muslims, Ramad??n is a burst of Islamic activity in a year-long ocean of un-Islamic behavior. As soon as the fasting program is over, some Muslims throw to the wind whatever good and hard-earned qualities they might have gained as a result of that exercise, and sooner or later return to their vicious habits and practices of their pre-Ramad??n days, be they of thoughts, words or deeds. We ought to remind ourselves that we must not allow the weeds in our garden to stifle the flowers and the fruits. Islam is neither a Sunday religion nor a Ramad??n only religion. Ramad??n is not meant to be a 30-day fast ending on ‘Id with a feast to beat all feasts. Some of the greatest achievements in Islam were made during Ramad??n, e.g. the Battle of Badr. If the newly converted Muslims had gorged themselves after Ift??r parties at nights and had slept in the day, they could not have become victorious at the Battle of Badr, and we, even now, might still have been pagans.

From a moral point of view, during fasting, one becomes more sympathetic and tolerant towards those in needy circumstances. It brings about a better realization of human understanding. In this world of today, with a population explosion, where two-thirds of the world goes to sleep on an empty stomach, the quicker this realization takes place, the sooner the problems would be appreciated and solved. It is only during such time as Ramad??n that one can reflect and make an inventory of the importance of the basic moral values affecting oneself and the community.

We should remember that Allah says that fasting has been prescribed for you. It is a divine prescription from Allah Who is the Greatest Physician. It is different from a medical doctor’s prescription and hence this prescription should be duly respected and carried out in full. It is also a pre-scription i.e. it was also prescribed for religious communities before the advent of Islam. If a person fasts for temporal motives only e.g. slimming according to a doctor’s prescription, he will be far from performing his religious duty or achieving nearness to Allah or obtaining His pleasure. In order to subjugate the body with the sole purpose of developing will power and a dominant personality, it is essential to bring certain forces within the body under control and thus develop will power. Besides hunger, thirst and carnal desires, we must gain full control of the tongue, mind and the rest of the body. Hence, Muslims call Ramad??n a blessed month of compassion and mercy, a month of self-purification and re-dedication, a month of commiseration with the poor and the hungry, who are in the majority among mankind. It is a unique month of self-analysis, of taking stock of one’s moral and spiritual assets and liabilities and of examining critically one’s spiritual portrait.

Why is it that we fast in the daytime and not, for our own convenience, at nights? This is because the human personality only develops when a person is exposed to maximum social conditions. Hence, Islam puts great stress on family and community life. Islam does not advocate running away from society or becoming a monk or leaving the family to retire in a desert, with all the solitude and the solitary confinement. Personality only develops during encounters with others in a society or community. To alienate from society is not Da’wah (invitation to Islam). Religion does not become perfect without the world. We must work for the community and also with the community for the common welfare and the good of the Ummah. Islam regards the interest of the society above the interest of the individual. Service to Allah is rendered through a clean life in the turmoil of this world in the multitudes of society.

Perhaps it would be interesting to consider why fasting was not made compulsory every single day of one’s life. Allah gives us a month of compulsory fast and then gives us eleven lunar months to asses the result of this month-long effort. This 11-month grace period is the reason as to why we should not fast every single day of our lives. If we had done so, we would have remained under continuous compulsory restrictions of the Islamic fast throughout the year, and without the complete and unrestricted freedom to do as we like. Our will power would not have been given a chance to develop a strong personality. Personality grows much more when we are free to do any wrong we would like, but choose not to do it under unrestricted conditions, such as during the eleven months following the Ramad??n fast. Both during Ramad??n and after, Allah gives us the opportunity to examine our spiritual profile and see where the defect lies. Has some jealousy, hatred, malice, miserliness, tendency to give short measure, cheating and intrigue and unforgiving thoughts and actions been removed in our acquired attributes?

Fasting is an institution by which an individual and by extension a community, may benefit physically and morally. The Islamic fast strengthens the disposition of the individual to obedience of laws and respect for social order. Islam lays stress on submission to Allah and consequently, lays stress on submission to just authority, beginning with example in the home.

What are the three components of personality that we put to the acid test in the month-long exercise of fasting? They are (a) our physical cravings, (b) sensory desires, and (c) material longings. If we are successful in overcoming these, we shall pass the first part of our examination, emerging a far better Muslim within ourselves, fully laden with Taqw? (God-consciousness). We see a much better individual unfolding itself from within us, a person that was lying dormant for long. Now the same person in the month of Ramad??n, has become the captain, the master of the control room of the self, controlling and at times eliminating certain types of worldly desires. It is easy now for such a person to be “on guard” and reject evil temptations as fast as they come, even challenging and encountering more temptations without any fear of giving in to them.

The purpose of the Islamic Fast is to obey Allah’s Command with a view to becoming His vicegerent (Khal?fah). It trains all those who volunteer for service to Allah before allowing them to take on the job of His vicegerency and establish Allah’s rule on Earth.

There is no guarantee that the fasting person has definitely acquired the laudable achievement of Taqw? or God-consciousness. Some of us, who fast, often wait anxiously for Ramad??n to end so that we could resume our nefarious activities. Sometimes, during the fasting month Satan becomes more active than usual. Allah may use such situations to test a fasting person’s Taqw? if and when he makes his evil passion his god.

The English translation of Q.2:183 is usually expressed as “…you may develop taqw?”. Note the word “may”. There is no guaranty that a fasting person would definitely develop God-consciousness and piety or enough will power that he could guard against evil. In fact, the fasting person cannot develop Taqw? if he continues to backbite, slander, tell lies, harm others, deceive people and show malice, anger and hatred towards fellow beings. It is easy for any belittler, slanderer, tyrant or businessman who gives short measure or a miser who does not disburse Zak?t money, to starve himself during Ramadan days. But, how can such a person develop God-consciousness and divine qualities? Such a person, besides committing sins of commission and omission, may simply be wasting his time by fasting. Shall we spend a month every year, in which we starve and become thirsty, fast and eat, while our condition does not change – our rich remain rich and our poor remain as poor? Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) had warned that poverty may lead to unbelief. This is why a person who steals food while facing starvation is not to be punished according to the Shariah.

@ Imam Reza Network

Afrocentricity International condemns the destruction of historic monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu and calls for an immediate response by the African Union to the Ansar Dine criminals who have chosen to bring their destruction to the heart of West African culture. Led by Ag Ghaly, a Tuareg nomad who converted to the Pakistani style Islam, Ansar Dine is allied to MUJUAO of Algeria and Boko Haram of Nigeria. Since it is not clear if the African Union has either the will power or the military capability to respond to the assault against one of the most sacred of African cities then we call upon the nations of Africa, acting in their capacity as regional powers, to arrest this destruction. However, we demand in the name of African people the immediate response of the African Union to this crisis!

Afrocentricity International does not believe it is the responsibility of NATO, the European Union, or the United States AFRICOM to save Africa.

Africa must save itself!

If Africa cannot save itself and will not save itself, then it cannot be saved. The rampant campaign against the monuments in the north represents another strand of death to African culture. Over the past millennium we have lost the indigenous treasures of some of the world’s greatest civilizations to the outrages of foreign religionists. They have even fought among themselves for the honor or dishonor of claiming to be better than the others who support these foreign invasions of Africa’s culture. In their attacks and assaults they have smashed everything of value, all treasures from the past, manuscripts, sculptures, evidences of ancient African art and culture, and stamped their feet on our ancestors’ graves. These are not men with a divine mission; they are pure and simple criminals whose ambition is to rule and they will use any ruse to destroy monuments and manuscripts that were created by Africans out of our own tradition. The people of Mali Africanized many of the symbols that came with invaders; they did not accept the idea that Africa was devoid of culture prior to the coming of the Arabs and whites.

Afrocentricity International looks at this situation as we have looked at other instances of this destruction to our culture. It is a political and mental war, carried on for ages against the best that is Africa, and in Mali we are seeing the latest, but not the last, attempt to ruin Africa.  As in Sudan, now in Mali, the attackers and the attacked are both Muslims. But in Mali we know that the ancient graves of the 333 saints include many African philosophers and thinkers who made the civilizations of Mali and Songhay the rivals to the world’s greatest cultures. But what do these Ansar Dine criminals do? They destroy the monuments of the greatest ancestors of African people and claim they are doing it in the name of Allah. But Allah has given them no such command; they must be condemned, captured, and brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.

The attackers who have sacked the mausoleums of Timbuktu allied themselves to the Tuareg MNLA, a group fighting to have the government recognize legitimate grievances of the northerners. Soon after the Taureg rebels seceded the northern part of Mali from the rest of the country in March 2012, the little known Ansar Dine group supposedly with support from Al Qaeda in Libya drove the secular MNLA out of Timbuktu and Gao and took over as the absolute rulers of the north. They have taken rights away from women, killed people they claim were violating the Koran, and imposed Sharia law. These Neanderthalian activities have plunged Mali deeper into the closet of ignorance than almost any other nation in Africa. Afrocentricity International blames Malian leadership for the crisis because that leadership did not practice equality, justice, and respect toward its own people and opened the door for this throwback gang of terrorists who have now laid hold to the land of Sunni Ali Ber.

Once again the crisis in Mali has proved what Afrocentricity International has always claimed that when you accept the religion and ideology of foreigners, you will end up fighting against your own interests. Indeed, the rumble in the ancient cities of Northern Mali, Timbuktu, Jenne, and Gao, is nothing more than a down payment on the problems that Africa will face in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Guinea, and Ivory Coast. Indeed, we have already seen this problem in Nigeria and Ivory Coast. It is yet to be resolved and will not be resolved until Africans, any Africans, some Africans, have the courage to speak up in the interest of Africa and not in the interest of Europe or the Arabs. The dilemma is real; the task is our responsibility. Afrocentricity International supports any effort to bring the crisis in Mali to an end, but we insist that the criminals who destroyed the precious historical monuments must be brought to justice. Unity is our aim; victory is our destiny!

Dr. Ama Mazama, Per-aat International

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, International Organizer

www.Afrocentricityinternational.org

July 4, 2012

There is a moment, just before a pendulum changes direction, when it is perfectly still. It is precisely that moment that marks the end of the old way and the beginning of the new. That is what happened for divestment last week in Pittsburgh.

At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PC[USA]), the US Campaign and member groups Jewish Voice for Peace, the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice rallied to support the Israel Palestine Mission Network, also a member group, in its efforts to pass a resolution to divest from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard to protest the companies’ profiting from the Israeli occupation. The effort also included a proposal to boycott settlement products Ahava Beauty Products and Hadiklaim Israel Date Growers.

Click here to read the full account on what happened and what it means.

The roller coaster week began with an historic victory in the Middle East and Peacemaking Issues Committee considering both divestment and boycott. The committee voted overwhelmingly — by a more than 3:1 margin — to recommend both measures to the GA.

The decision followed a series of moving testimonies [click for example] from Palestinians (including Palestinian Presbyterians), other Presbyterians, Jews, and others, followed by many hours of heartfelt discussion about what it meant to stand with the oppressed, to withstand bullying, and to vote according to one’s conscience rather than what others might think.

On boycott, the committee decided that boycotting only Ahava and Hadiklaim wasn’t enough. Theyamended the overture to include boycott of “all Israeli products coming from the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” and calling on “all nations to prohibit the import of products made by enterprises in Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.” The overture passed in plenary by 71%.

This is a major victory. The GA has also called for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel. These are the “B” and the “S” in BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions).

The boycott victory was bittersweet. I was among hundreds on the plenary floor who let out a collective gasp when a vote to substitute divestment with investment won 333 to 331. Divestment was ruled out by just one vote (a tie would have gone to considering the divestment option). One woman announced that she had accidentally voted against divestment, but by then it was too late.

Click here to read the full account on what happened in Pittsburgh.

The commissioners casting the crucial vote were split. For years, support for divestment had represented a small, albeit important, minority of the church. That day, discussion on divestment reached the end of the pendulum swing: 50/50. There’s only one way it can — and will — go now forward, towards divestment and justice.

While the commissioners were split, the majority of advisory delegates — who advise the commissioners but don’t have an official vote — voted against substituting divestment with investment. Crucially, they included the Young Adult Advisory Delegates, representing the future of the church. In addition, virtually all staff and leadership within the church have come out in support for divestment.

It can be said that the commissioners were split but the Church representation overall is for divestment.

Throughout the deliberations, it was crystal clear that the discourse has shifted. Nearly unanimous condemnation of the occupation and widespread opposition to U.S. institutional support for it has entered the highest levels of mainstream institutions. Nobody tried to defend the occupation, but only debated what should be done about it.

Ultimately the Church faced the crucial decision of whether it should listen to the voices of the oppressed (calling for divestment), or decide for themselves what is best for Palestinians (i.e. investment)? Palestinian civil society, including Christians of all denominations, is asking for divestment. In the words of Palestinian businessman Sam Bahour,

“we Palestinians don’t want a more beautiful prison to live in. We want the prison walls to come down, and that won’t happen unless pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation.” [Click to read in full.]

The PC(USA) vote, like the United Methodist vote two months ago, garnered the attention of world, including U.S. mainstream media, showing that the BDS movement can no longer be ignored. In light of this and the recent stream of victories for divestment by major U.S. institutions, and the extraordinary success of BDS worldwide, it is clear that those defending Israel’s actions are fighting a losing battle. The pendulum is beginning to reverse and will continue to gather momentum as it swings towards justice.

The US Campaign will be there every step of the way, pushing that pendulum to keep swinging in the right direction.

By Anna Baltzer

13 July, 2012

Countercurrents.org

Anna Baltzer is national organizer for US campaign to end the Israeli occupation

Please take these actions:

1. Read the full account of what happened in Pittsburgh.

2. Watch a video from Palestinian Christians to the PC(USA) commissioners.

3. Read a global BDS wrap-up of the last two years!

4. Register for the National Organizers Conference!

It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital.

Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.

A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.

More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

The findings have led Suha Arafat, his widow, to ask the Palestinian Authority to exhume her late husband’s body from its grave in Ramallah. If tests show that Arafat’s bones contain high levels of polonium, it would be more conclusive proof that he was poisoned, doctors say.

“I know the Palestinian Authority has been trying to discover what Yasser died from,” Suha Arafat said in an interview. “And now we are helping them. We have very substantial, very important results.”

Unsupported polonium

The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium.

It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory.

At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.

But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant.

There is little scientific consensus about the symptoms of polonium poisoning, mostly because there are so few recorded cases. Litvinenko suffered severe diarrhea, weight loss, and vomiting, all of which were symptoms Arafat exhibited in the days and weeks after he initially fell ill.

Animal studies have found similar symptoms, which lingered for weeks – depending on the dosage – until the subject died. “The primary radiation target… is the gastrointestinal tract,” said an American study conducted in 1991, “activating the ‘vomiting centre’ in the brainstem.”

Scientists in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat’s belongings – in some cases, they were ten times higher than those on control subjects, random samples which were tested for comparison.

The lab’s results were reported in millibecquerels (mBq), a scientific unit used to measure radioactivity.

Polonium is present in the atmosphere, but the natural levels that accumulate on surfaces barely register, and the element disappears quickly. Polonium-210, the isotope found on Arafat’s belongings, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months. “Even in case of a poisoning similar to the Litvinenko case, only traces of the order of a few [millibecquerels] were expected to be found in [the] year 2012,” the institute noted in its report to Al Jazeera.

But Arafat’s personal effects, particularly those with bodily fluids on them, registered much higher levels of the element. His toothbrushes had polonium levels of 54mBq; the urine stain on his underwear, 180mBq. (Another man’s pair of underwear, used as a control, measured just 6.7mBq.)

Further tests, conducted over a three-month period from March until June, concluded that most of that polonium – between 60 and 80 per cent, depending on the sample – was “unsupported,” meaning that it did not come from natural sources.

‘It was a crime’

Doctors in Lausanne, and elsewhere, also ruled out a range of other possible causes for Arafat’s death, based on his original medical file, which Ms. Arafat also provided to Al Jazeera. Their examination ruled out many of the other causes of death that have been rumored over the last eight years.

“There was not liver cirrhosis, apparently no traces of cancer, no leukemia,” said Dr. Patrice Mangin, the head of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Lausanne University. “Concerning HIV, AIDS – there was no sign, and the symptomology was not suggesting these things.”

Dr. Tawfik Shaaban, a Tunisian specialist in HIV and one of the doctors who examined Arafat in his Ramallah compound, confirmed that there were no signs of the disease.

Their conclusions, of course, were based on documentation rather than firsthand examination. Doctors in Lausanne had hoped to study the blood and urine samples taken from Arafat while he was at Percy Military Hospital in France. But when she requested access, the hospital told his widow that those samples had been destroyed.

“I was not satisfied with that answer,” Ms. Arafat said. “Usually a very important person, like Yasser, they would keep traces – maybe they don’t want to be involved in it?”

Several of the doctors who treated Arafat said that they were not allowed to discuss his case – even with Ms. Arafat’s permission – because it was considered a “military secret.” And most of his onetime doctors in Cairo and Tunis refused requests for interviews as well.

With those avenues of inquiry closed, Arafat’s body itself would be the last remaining source of conclusive evidence. Exhuming it would require approval from the Palestinian Authority; shipping bone samples outside of the West Bank would require permission from the Israeli government.

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Arafat said she hopes further tests would “remove a lot of doubt” about her husband’s still-mysterious death.

“We got into this very, very painful conclusion, but at least this removes this great burden on me, on my chest,” she said. “At least I’ve done something to explain to the Palestinian people, to the Arab and Muslim generation all over the world, that it was not a natural death, it was a crime.”

A conclusive finding that Arafat was poisoned with polonium would not, of course, explain who killed him. It is a difficult element to produce, though – it requires a nuclear reactor – and the signature of the polonium in Arafat’s bones could provide some insight about its origin.

About the institute

The study of Arafat’s medical file and belongings was carried out at the University Hospital Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The university’s Centre of Legal Medicine is considered one of the best forensic pathology labs in the world.

It has studied evidence for the United Nations in East Timor and the International Criminal Court in the former Yugoslavia, and it investigated the death of Princess Diana, among other well-known personalities.

By Al Jazeera

4 July, 2012

@ Al Jazeera