The United Nations Security Council has decided not to extend the body’s observer mission in Syria, setting up a civilian liaison office instead. Russia called for the Syria Action Group to meet in New York on Friday in response.
The Council’s members have agreed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s proposal to establish a liaison office in Damascus, France’s UN Ambassador Gerard Araud announced on Thursday following a Security Council meeting.
The new body will include military advisers to the head of the office on military affairs, as well as civil affairs and human rights components.
The exact size of the office is yet to be determined, but it will be significantly smaller than the current UN observer mission, peacekeeping department chief Edmond Mulet said.
“We are already identifying some staff already working there that will be willing to continue working in Damascus under this new office,” Mulet stated.
According to Mulet, the Syrian government has already given its agreement for the UN liaison office in Damascus.
Mulet also said he expected the new UN-Arab League Syrian envoy to be announced “very soon.” The new envoy will fill the shoes of Kofi Annan, who has announced his resignation effective August 31, noting that the conflict was spiraling out of control and that the Syrian government, rebels and incessantly-bickering Security Council members were to blame.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Annan said Syrian authorities have backed former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran UN diplomat who had previously served as the UN’s representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, as the new UN Syrian envoy. Several UN diplomats said Brahimi has already accepted the post, but with an altered mandate and title. Brahimi also reportedly conditioned his acceptance on “strong support” from the Security Council.
Currently there are 101 military observers and 72 civilian staff working in Syria’s UN observer mission. The last observer is to leave the country by August 24, but the observers will stop all their duties after August 19, when the mandate ends.
Meanwhile, Moscow has invited the members of the Syria Action Group to meet in New York on Friday.
The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that the group’s members are committed to the consensus document signed in Geneva in June, Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said.
“Foreign ministers of countries, members of the action group, agreed to certain things and they need to do those things,” Churkin stated.
The meeting will take place at 11 am somewhere at the UN headquarters, he added.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Syria, United Nations, United Nations Security Council |
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Never mind the drought, shrinking corn crops, rising food prices, or the possibility of global grain shortages, let’s talk about the evils of foreign oil.
That was the message put out last week by the ethanol lobbyists just a day or so before Jose Graziano da Silva the director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization called for “an immediate, temporary suspension” of America’s corn-ethanol mandates to “give some respite to the market and allow more of the crop to be channelled towards food and feed uses.”
Da Silva was responding to soaring corn prices, which are up by more than 60 percent over the past two months. They recently hit $8.49 per bushel, an all-time high. And if drought conditions in the United States and Europe continue, prices will continue climbing.
Da Silva is not alone in his concern about grain prices. On Tuesday, Shenggen Fan, the director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, told Bloomberg that a global food crisis may “hit us very soon” due to the drought. Fan continued saying “Biofuel production has to be stopped. That actually pushed global food prices higher and many poor people, particularly women and children, have suffered.”
But never mind the women and children, says Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council, one of a myriad of biofuel lobby groups. On August 8, Coleman defended the corn-ethanol mandates saying that “the problem is our dependence on foreign oil, which in turn costs consumers billions of dollars and comes at great cost to the economy and the environment. The Renewable Fuel Standard, which drives American-made fuel into the marketplace, is part of the solution.”
Growth Energy, yet another ethanol lobby group, had a nearly identical message. On August 8, the group’s CEO, Tom Buis, issued a statement defending domestic corn ethanol production, and dismissed criticisms that “tie biofuel production to alleged increased food prices.” He went on, saying that efforts to curtail the corn ethanol mandates will only continue “to keep our nation addicted to foreign oil. Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates jobs right here in America, improves our environment, revitalizes rural communities and saves consumers at the pump.”
For the ethanol lobby, the bogeyman of foreign oil trumps everything, including common sense. But you don’t have to be an economist to understand why the ethanol sector is driving food prices higher.
This year, about 4.3 billion bushels of corn will be converted into motor fuel, according to Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, an Omaha-based commodity consulting firm. That means that nearly 37 percent of this year’s corn crop, which Lapp estimates to amount to about 11.6 billion bushels, will be diverted into ethanol production.
Compare those numbers to those of 2005, when corn was selling for just $2 per bushel. That year, 1.6 billion bushels of corn —or about 13 percent of domestic corn production—was distilled into ethanol.
By dramatically increasing the volume of ethanol that must be blended into our gasoline supplies, Congress has, in just seven years, nearly tripled the amount of corn being diverted from food production to fuel production. And with the worst drought in recent memory desiccating corn fields, those mandates are hurting consumers who are already being pummeled by stubbornly high unemployment and a weak economy.
A recent study published by a coalition of food producers, including the National Turkey Federation, National Pork Producers Council, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, found that since 2007, when the ethanol mandates took effect, prices for grain-intensive foods like cereals, bakery products, meats, poultry, eggs, fats, and oils, have increased at almost twice the rate of overall inflation. That study is one of at least 16 reports—published by entities ranging from Purdue University to the World Bank—which have linked the ethanol mandates to higher food costs.
Last month, Ken Powell, the CEO of General Mills, the world’s sixth-largest food producer, said that the corn ethanol mandates were leading to higher food prices because corn and wheat prices are “all linked.”
To understand why the corn ethanol scam is affecting grain prices, consider this: America ’s corn ethanol sector now consumes about as much grain as all of this country’s livestock. About 4.6 billion bushels of corn will be used for livestock feed this year. Thus, American motorists are now burning about as much corn in their cars as is fed to all of the country’s chickens, turkeys, cattle, pigs, and fish combined.
Need another comparison? This year, the American automobile fleet will consume about twice as much corn as is grown in the entire European Union. Put another way, the U.S. ethanol sector will burn almost as much corn as is produced by Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and India combined.
Need another comparison? This year, the U.S. is now using about 13 percent of global corn production—that’s about 4.6 percent of all global grain production—so that it can produce a quantity of ethanol that contains the energy equivalent of about seven-tenths of one percent of global oil needs.
Despite these facts, the Obama administration has become a willing accomplice to the corn ethanol industry. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (the former governor of Iowa) routinely praises the corn ethanol sector. In February, during a speech at the 2012 National Ethanol Conference, he said that “we owe ethanol producers in this country a debt of gratitude.” Meanwhile, the EPA is doing all it can to force more ethanol into the gasoline supply despite objections from a broad coalition of groups ranging from grocery makers to the oil industry.
Gasoline containing ten percent ethanol, or E10, has been sold for many years. But with too much ethanol on its hands, the ethanol industry launched an intensive lobby campaign at the EPA to convince the agency to increase the permissible blend to 15 percent, or E15. And a few weeks ago, the agency gave final approval to the move to E15 even though only about four percent of all the motor vehicles in the U.S. are designed to burn fuel containing that much ethanol.
The EPA approved the move to E15 despite strident objections from groups like the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, which says the higher-ethanol blend fuel is “dangerous” and could damage or ruin motors used in generators, lawn mowers, and other devices. Numerous other trade groups, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute, have also been fighting the move to E15. Toyota Motor Corporation has taken the unusual step of adding a label to the fuel caps on the new cars it sells in America. The label warns “Up to E10 gasoline only.”
Last year, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of the Swiss food giant Nestle declared that using food crops to make biofuels was “absolute madness.”
He’s right, of course. But what is so maddening about the madness is that all of this was so easily predictable. The leaders in Congress who foisted the ethanol scam on the American people should have known that droughts happen, that corn crops cannot, will not, grow to infinity.
David Swenson, an associate scientist in the economics department at Iowa State University told me recently that Iowa hasn’t had a hard drought since 1988 and the current drought is “now rivaling that. We forget about childbirth, and pain, and lessons learned.” Over the last two decades, says Swenson, the U.S. has had good corn crops, and “That luck enabled the renewable fuel policies to slide through and not be addressed seriously. Everyone forgot about Mother Nature.”
Today, Mother Nature is taking her revenge. And consumers here in the U.S. and abroad are paying the price. The only question is whether the feckless bureaucrats in the Obama administration and their willing enablers in Congress will finally put an end to the ethanol madness.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Biofuel, International Food Policy Research Institute, Shenggen Fan, United States |
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Pletka wants Washington to ‘stop subcontracting Syria policy.’ (C-SPAN)
In US political circles, the Syria conflict is increasingly being presented as a discussion pertaining to Israeli interests. This attitude is not substantially different from the way US politicians and media weighed in on the Egyptian January 25 revolution and its aftermath. Egypt mostly matters because of the US-brokered Camp David treaty of 1979, which benefited Israel beyond all expectations. The treaty had ushered in a false period of peace; it turned Egypt into an American ally, largely alienating it from its Arab political context.
When it comes to US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israel represents a point of departure for many in the US political establishment. Neoconservative groups have long defined US foreign policy in the region. Their most crucial and unifying concern is Israel’s security and any threat, real or imagined, to Israel’s regional domination.
The neocons clustered through various organizations and think tanks. Most visible among them was the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which included very influential foreign policy individuals. PNAC’s ‘vision’ was seen as the roadmap that guided George W. Bush in his war against Iraq, the sanctions against Iran, and the overall hostile relationship that defined (and continues to define) US foreign policy in the Middle East. Tainted by the disastrous foreign policy, PNAC folded, only to be reinvented two years ago with the advent of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).
The neocons are duly challenged. Their critics in the establishments are the ‘realists’ (as described by former Secretary of State James Baker in a recent interview with Foreign Policy). The so-called realists are far less organized than the neocons. They were simply empowered by the latter’s mammoth failures. Now the neocons are making a comeback, thanks to the golden opportunities presented by ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East.
“Our biggest threat today isn’t Syria, or even Iran, or Russia or China,” Baker told Foreign Policy. “Our biggest threat today is our own economy, and we cannot continue to be strong diplomatically, politically, and militarily and be weak economically” (August 9). Baker, of course, hasn’t completely abandoned Israel. The problem is that the pro-Israel camp is asking for a military intervention in Syria and an escalation against Iran, both of which come with a high political and financial price tag — one that the US cannot afford.
Another ‘realist’ is Aaron David Miller, a former US adviser on the Middle East (to six Secretaries of State) and a member of the US Advisory Council of Israel Policy Forum. Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 6, in an article entitled ‘Syria: Let’s Stay out of It’, Miller stated, “Syria today is a mess — but it’s a Syrian mess. Afghanistan and Iraq should teach us that America can’t control the world. It’s time for the United States to focus on fixing its own broken house instead of chasing the illusion that it can always help repair somebody else’s.”
However, this ‘realist’ estimation by Miller was further discussed in his article in Foreign Policy two days later. In ‘Winners and Losers of Syria’s Civil War,’ Miller argued that Israel was a possible winner in case of Bashar Al Assad’s fall.
“The good news for the Israelis is that Iran and Hezbollah will be weakened by Al Assad’s fall. The bad news is that like so much of the Arab Spring/ Winter, the impending transition brings with it enormous uncertainty.”
US intervention in Libya was a much easier decision for both neocons and realists. A letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative and signed by 40 policy analysts, calling on President Barack Obama’s administration to arm Libyan rebels and to “immediately’ prepare for military action to bring down the Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. The neocons’ calls at the time were hardly rejected as ‘unrealistic’. According to Jim Lobe, they were “a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq.” Of course, they got what they asked for in Libya. Now, the neocons are pushing for another intervention in Syria.
“Washington must stop subcontracting Syria policy to the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. They are clearly part of the anti-Al Assad effort, but the United States cannot tolerate Syria becoming a proxy state for yet another regional power,” wrote Danielle Pletka, a leading neocon and vice-president of Foreign and Defence Policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington Post, July 20).
Despite immense hesitation from the Obama administration, the neocons are now trying to weasel in their version of an endgame in Syria. Their efforts are extremely focused and well-coordinated, making impressive use of their direct ties with the Israeli lobby, major US media and Syrian leaders in exile. Writing in CNN online, Elise Labott reported on a recent neoconservative push to upgrade American involvement in Syria, urging “the Obama administration to increase its support of the armed opposition” (CNN, August 1).
The ‘experts’ included Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), another pro-Israel conduit in Washington, established in 1985 as a research department for the influential Israeli lobby group, AIPAC. Obama obliged under pressure from the ‘experts’. According to CNN, he signed a secret order “referred to as an intelligence ‘finding,’ allow[ing] for clandestine support by the CIA and other agencies.”
More, On July 31, AIPAC urged all members of Congress to sign on a bill introduced by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman. Entitled ‘The Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (H.R.1905)’, the bill, if passed, “will establish virtual state of war with Iran,” according to the Council for the National Interest. The old neoconservative wisdom arguing for an unavoidable link between Syria, Iran and their allies in the region is now being exploited to the maximum. Their hope is to settle all scores left unsettled by the Bush administration.
US foreign policy in Syria is likely to become clearer once the signs of an endgame become easier to read. Until then, the neocons will continue to push for another campaign of intervention. For them, influencing the endgame in favor of Israel is much more beneficial than dealing with a divided country, which is ‘subcontracted’ to other regional powers, per Pletka’s unrelenting wisdom.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Zionism |
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A Palestinian hunger striker in Israel’s Ramleh prison was knocked unconscious by prison guards earlier this week in the most recent abuse of prisoners, a coalition of human rights groups said on Thursday.
Hassan Safadi, who has gone 57 days without food, had his head slammed against the steel door of his prison cell during an assault on him and another hunger striker, Samer al-Barq.
The assault occurred after they refused to be transferred to a new cell, Addameer, al-Haq and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said in a joint statement.
“During the attack, Mr Safadi’s head was slammed against the iron door of the cell two times, causing him to fall to the ground, unconscious. Prison guards then dragged him through the hall to be seen by all the other prisoners,” it said.
Safadi announced after the beating that he would no longer be drinking water.
The two prisoners are refusing food to protest their detention without trial under a system Israel calls administrative detention.
Over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners ended a mass hunger strike in May after reaching a deal with Israel.
The deal specifically stipulated that Safadi would be released following the expiration of his detention order, but the agreement was not upheld.
Two other Palestinian prisoners, Ayman Sharawna and Samer al-Issawi, have also been refusing food for 47 and 16 days, respectively.
Israel’s draconian administrative detention allows for the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable six month periods.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Administrative detention, Hunger strike, Israel, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel |
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Following around six hours of deliberation, the United Church of Canada (UCC), the largest Protestant denomination in the country, voted for boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
The Toronto Star reported that a spokesperson of the UCC general council identified as Bruce Gregersen, stated that the decision is considered a significant step.
The UCC will be holding another vote on Friday to decide whether this boycott would be a regarded as a permanent policy of the church.
Israeli Ynet News reported that the Centre for Israel and the Jewish Affairs in Canada said that it was “outraged by this decision”, and considered it “a move that singled out Jewish communities for boycott”.
The Centre claimed that this decision is considered a “reckless path”, and added that the decision just dismisses the concerns of the Jewish community in Canada.
According to the Ynet, Chairman of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, David Koschitzky, stated that mainstream Jewish organization, including the Canadian Friends of Peace Now, “do not approve of this boycott decision”.
He added that this decision ignored around 100.000 families, members of different Jewish federations in Canada, and said that this decision “also ignores written rejection letters of 70 Canadian Rabbis, representing tens of thousands of Jewish families in the country”.
Israel’s settlements are located in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in and around occupied East Jerusalem. There have been several churches and organizations around the world, including educational facilities that have previously voted in favor of boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements.
Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestine are illegal under International Law, and even violate the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Canada, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, East Jerusalem, Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel, United Church of Canada, West Bank, Zionism |
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AL-KHALIL — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Wednesday held for the first time a military ceremony in the courtyard of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil city after declaring it a closed military zone.
Local sources told Safa news agency that the IOF imposed a tight cordon on the perimeter of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and prevented the calls for prayers and the entry of Muslim worshipers.
They said the IOF celebrated the appointment of a new army leadership for Al-Khalil city and announced the installation of new officers inside the Mosque.
The sources condemned this behavior as an unprecedented act provoking the feeling of Muslims and a serious step to consolidate Israel’s illegal control over the Mosque.
The IOF also declared the intention to close the Ibrahimi Mosque before the Palestinian natives on Thursday at the pretext of allowing the Jews to celebrate one of their feasts.
August 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Al-Khalil, Ibrahimi Mosque, Israel |
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