Israel’s timeline of terror
By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | June 3, 2014
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making familiar noises about Hamas and “terrorism” in the wake of the announcement of the Palestinian unity government. “I call on all responsible elements in the international community not to rush to recognise a Palestinian government which has Hamas as part of it and which is dependent on Hamas,” he is reported to have said. “Hamas is a terrorist organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction, and the international community must not embrace it. That would not bolster peace, it would strengthen terror.” Israel, let us not forget, is a nuclear-armed state with massive military capabilities which is occupying and colonising Palestinian land. It is the state for which successive political party leaders and prime ministers in Britain have expressed their unflinching support.
Netanyahu clearly needs a reminder that his state was itself founded on what has been called “Jewish terrorism”. As the world prepares to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Israel’s timeline of terror, which started well before the founding of the state, makes interesting reading. It was intended, quite deliberately, to attack the British Mandatory government at a time when Britain and its allies were leading the fight against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers.
Throughout 1944, as the Allies prepared for and invaded Europe to free it of the Nazi menace, the Irgun and Stern Gang Zionist terrorist groups carried out a series of bombings against police stations and other government offices across Palestine. Their terrorism was not confined to historic Palestine, however. In November 1944, two “Jewish terrorists” murdered Britain’s Lord Moyne, the Minister of State resident in Cairo. The plan, it is claimed, was to blame the murder on Arabs but the Egyptian police caught the murderers who were hanged after being tried and found guilty.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a strong supporter of Zionism, said in the House of Commons that such acts will make him “reconsider” his support “if our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols and our labours for its future are to produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany.” Even the Executive of the Jewish Agency referred to the group behind the murder as a “terrorist organisation”.
British military and security personnel were also attacked: in September 1944 a policeman was killed in Jerusalem; in December 1946 an army officer was kidnapped and flogged; and in July 1947 two British sergeants were hanged by Irgun and their bodies were booby-trapped. The most infamous attack of all during that period was the July 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 British and local officials were killed.
Much has been made by Israel’s propagandists over the years about the visits of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, to Adolf Hitler, in order to court Nazi support for the Palestinian cause. Little is said, though, about the efforts of the eponymous Avraham Stern and his gang to do a deal with the Nazis “concerning the solution of the Jewish question in Europe”. This has been described as an “aberrant episode in Jewish history” which “should alert us to how far extremists may go in times of distress, and where their manias may lead.”
Throughout its short history, the state of Israel has committed many terrorist acts against Palestinian civilians. Former Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur is on record as stating that from 1948 onwards Israel always fought “against a population that lives in villages and cities.” Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff has noted that Gur’s comments are basically an admission that the so-called Israel Defence Forces have “always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously.” Atrocities took place in places like Qibya, where sixty-nine villagers were killed in 1953, two-thirds of them women and children; and Kafr Kassem in 1956, where 48 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them women and children. In neighbouring Lebanon, Israeli troops facilitated the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 when up to 3,500 Palestinian refugees were slaughtered in their homes. The massive, and disproportionate Israeli onslaught against the largely civilian population of Gaza in 2008/9 and again in 2012 was merely the most significant of a long catalogue of such acts. Palestinian farmers and fishermen are attacked by the Israel “Defence” Forces on an almost daily basis, with an accompanying loss of life, limbs and livelihood.
Israel continues to condone the terrorist acts of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem; security forces regularly stand and watch as they commit their crimes, only springing into action when the victims are moved to defend themselves.
Arguably the biggest act of terrorism is Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the land of historic Palestine. That this continues in the full view of history, the media and the international community is a disgrace matched only by its politicians’ attempts to justify it on the grounds of “self-defence”. Netanyahu’s latest bleats about Hamas and terrorism are one example of where – no apologies for paraphrasing Orwell once again – lies are made to appear truthful and murder becomes respectable. He presides over a government which is well-versed in the dark arts of terror against civilians.
The state of Israel was founded on terrorism and its timeline of terror is long and bloody, and has yet to reach its end. When politicians and journalists have the courage to challenge the Israeli prime minister’s outrageous claims in an objective manner, perhaps it will.
Family of man killed by Israeli forces denies he shot at police
Audah pictured in front of the cell phone store he owned
Ma’an – 03/06/2014
NABLUS – The family of a man killed by Israeli soldiers near Nablus late Monday have denied Israeli claims that he opened fire at forces.
They identified the man as Alaa Muhammad Awad Audah, 30, from the town of Huwwara south of Nablus.
According to the Israeli army, Audah approached the Zaatara checkpoint late Monday and opened fire at an Israeli policeman, lightly wounding him in the leg. Soldiers responded by shooting and killing Audah.
But his family told Ma’an Tuesday that the 30-year-old arrived at the checkpoint in order to receive a shipment of cell phones for a store he owned.
In order to avoid traffic, Audah decided to cross the checkpoint and retrieve his package on foot while his taxi driver waited nearby, family member Jumaah Omran said.
Soldiers shot and killed him as he approached the checkpoint, Omran added.
Locals told Ma’an that the shooting occurred as Israel army chief of staff Benny Gantz was visiting Joseph’s Tomb nearby.
Audah left behind a wife and two children. His village, Huwwara, has announced three days of mourning.
His body has yet to be delivered to his family.
Israeli forces have killed 12 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of 2014, according to AFP figures.
It Is about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms Mr. Ambassador!
By Shawn Robinson and Rana Abdulla | Palestine Chronicle | June 2 2014
The exhibit is an opportunity for Canadians to view imagery that captures the humanity of a real situation (Public ART/Facebook)
The woman behind the exhibit is artist Rehab Nazzal, a Canadian citizen born in Jenin, an historic town located in Palestine in a territory under occupation since 1967. Nazzal’s exhibit of 1700 photographic images along with four short videos, were collected by her over the fourteen years. Segments of these images depict life in the experience of occupation.
Nazzal’s premise of this collection is based on the idea that people leave traces of their existence and the traces in this case are part of the collective memory of occupied Palestine. Not being the first time this collection has been exhibited, it was also featured in Toronto at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2013.
Stumbling across the exhibit at Ottawa’s City Hall in the Karsh-Masson Gallery, the Israeli Ambassador to Canada felt that such an exhibit should prohibited. The Ambassador operating outside of his mission, met with Mayor Jim Watson and Deputy City Manager Steven Kanellakos of the City of Ottawa, to demand closure of the exhibit, stating it “glorified terrorism”. Somehow in the unidentified 1700 images and four videos, the Ambassador was able to single out seven individuals he described as terrorists.
The 4th Geneva Convention that Israel and Canada are signatories as well as the Hague Regulations, provides that people under occupation have the right to resist their occupiers. Palestinians are in a situation where they are resisting occupation. The Israeli government and their representatives dispute this occupation in spite of the presence of its military. Terrorism terminology by Israel has become so common and so pervasive that many inside and outside of Israel perceive Palestinians as terrorists – a racist generalization that is pejorative and isolating.
Nazzal’s work reveals human cost of military violence and war, and it is not a call for more human loss, contrary to the Ambassador’s allegations. It is a catalog of Palestinian history, creativity and expression for Forgotten Survivors; a lament for their homeland; and sadness for those who have died in a long hopeless conflict. Her work is a strong counter-narrative articulated creatively using visual vocabulary, transforming the oppressive tools of Israel and its discriminatory policies into elements of hope and life. Her political art communicates messages of dignity and liberation and has undoubtedly inspired many, not just Arabs but non-Arabs as well. The strong media attention certainly indicates that her message is worthy of consideration and appreciation.
Not satisfied with the responses from the Canadian public and City of Ottawa, the Ambassador has escalated his inflammatory language including allegations of “blood libel” and descriptors such as “child murderers”. Is this the role of a foreign diplomat to Canada? His call on Jewish groups to demand action is of great concern. Individuals who have yet to see the exhibit but have read the Ambassador’s false and inflammatory statements, are responding through promotion of these false allegations in blogs, emails to City Hall and online comments. Canadians are being presented with a bias that perpetuates this terrorism label.
The Israeli suppression of the Palestinian narrative appears to now be officially part of the Canadian art and political stream of understanding. It has no place nor is it appropriate. Instead of approaching the situation as an ethnic denial of people, that would appear racist to Canadians, the Ambassador of Israel instead invokes falsely the understandably reactionary term – terrorist.
Censorship of art, especially political art has a history associated with oppressive regimes. Artists in Canada of all faiths, backgrounds and cultures have the full right to artistic expression as granted by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Therefore uncensored artists are able to explore difficult themes; which is a victory for democracy and freedom of expression.
Realizing that Mayor Watson and his staff have stood by the Charter, the Ambassador requested that Mayor Watson review the process of selecting future art exhibitions at the Karsh-Masson Gallery. This is also censorship. Does this mean future exhibitions could be at risk? That the City of Ottawa should influence the selection panel of professional artists? Do we want elected politicians interfering with these processes, and especially at the behest of a foreign country and its diplomatic body?
The situation is of concern to Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and other ethnic minority artists who may not be featured by galleries across Canada due to the fear of facing the public wrath of Jewish groups and/or the Israeli government. As Canadians, we don’t want to be controlled in how our art is expressed.
We know from the history of others, that when governments and special interest groups control the message of art, that in many cases, target groups who are censored are in danger of future marginalization. In Europe in the 1930’s a number of countries excelled in this practice further legitimizing their hateful actions against minorities, including Roma and Jews. For some countries this was the beginning of their marginalization process against an ethnic minority. Canada must uphold its values for this reason as our laws and freedoms are for everybody, and not to be denied for a specified group, especially under pressure from an outside country.
The exhibit created by Nazzal is an opportunity for Canadians to view imagery that captures the humanity of a real situation. People are not exploited in their suffering or celebrations, they are living an experience that is untold by the media and has been for as much as four decades.
To be Palestinian is not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli. In actuality it is a culture that is centuries old in its cuisine, dance, literature, art, architecture, music, costume and other elements we all embrace in our own.
Canada, a country of hundreds of cultures, cannot be part and parcel of this type of denial, and should not be afraid in embracing its citizens. Removing this show would set a precedence that would allow one group at odds with another group to demand censorship in the Canadian milieu. Influencing selection committees of art galleries, are creating the environment of fearing to present a Palestinian artist would also be an act of censorship and stifling our right to the freedom of expression. This is not a Canada we want.
– Rana Abdulla is a Canadian professional accountant, living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Shawn Robinson is a Canadian artist in graphic design and creative writing. She lives in Ottawa.
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For full version of these videos, please contact: info@vtape.org OR info@rehabnazzal.com
You are missed
© 2012, Rehab Nazzal
NATO encouraging Kiev to use force: Russian envoy
Russian envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko
Press TV – June 2, 2014
Russia’s envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says the western military alliance is “encouraging” the Kiev authorities to use force against pro-Moscow activists in eastern Ukraine.
Alexander Grushko made the remarks in a meeting with ambassadors of NATO member states in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Monday, Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency reported.
“NATO is providing Kiev … with technical support, thus encouraging the continuation of forceful actions,” Grushko said.
The Russian official also accused NATO of adding to tensions in the eastern Ukrainian provinces by conducting “unprecedented” activities near Russia’s borders.
He further noted that the military alliance is hampering efforts to find a peaceful solution to the current turmoil in the former Soviet state.
On May 6, NATO launched military drills in Estonia with a record-breaking number of 6,000 troops from a number of allied countries, including the US, the UK, Latvia and Lithuania. The alliance has also deployed fighter jets and naval vessels to Lithuania and Poland as well as to Romania.
Tensions between Russia and the West heightened after Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea integrated into the Russian Federation following a referendum on March 16.
The United States and its European allies accuse Moscow of destabilizing Ukraine and have slapped a number of sanctions against Russian and pro-Russia figures.
Russia, however, rejects the accusation, saying the pro-Moscow protests in Ukraine began spontaneously against the new interim government in Kiev.
Polar Bear Specialist Group says its global population estimate was “a qualified guess”
By Dr. Susan Crockford | Watts Up With That? | June 2, 2014
Last week (May 22), I received an unsolicited email from Dr. Dag Vongraven, the current chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG).
The email from Vongraven began this way:
“Dr. Crockford
Below you’ll find a footnote that will accompany a total polar bear population size range in the circumpolar polar bear action plan that we are currently drafting together with the Parties to the 1973 Agreement. This might keep you blogging for a day or two.” [my bold]
It appears the PBSG have come to the realization that public outrage (or just confusion) is brewing over their global population estimates and some damage control is perhaps called for. Their solution — bury a statement of clarification within their next official missive (which I have commented upon here).
Instead of issuing a press release to clarify matters to the public immediately, Vongraven decided he would let me take care of informing the public that this global estimate may not be what it seems.
OK, I’ll oblige (I am traveling in Russia on business and finding it very hard to do even short posts – more on that later). The footnote Vongraven sent is below, with some comments from me. You can decide for yourself if the PBSG have been straight-forward about the nature of their global population estimates and transparent about the purpose for issuing it.
Here is the statement that the PBSG proposes to insert as a footnote in their forthcoming Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan draft:
“As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations. Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.” [my bold]
So, the global estimates were “…simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand” and according to this statement, were never meant to be considered scientific estimates, despite what they were called, the scientific group that issued them, and how they were used (see footnote below).
All this glosses over what I think is a critical point: none of these ‘global population estimates’ (from 2001 onward) came anywhere close to being estimates of the actual world population size of polar bears (regardless of how scientifically inaccurate they might have been) — rather, they were estimates of only the subpopulations that Arctic biologists have tried to count.
For example, the PBSG’s most recent global estimate (range 13,071-24,238) ignores five very large subpopulation regions which between them potentially contain 1/3 as many additional bears as the official estimate includes (see map below). The PBSG effectively gives them each an estimate of zero.
Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research reports, it appears there are probably at least another 6,000 or so bears living in these regions and perhaps as many as 9,000 (or more) that are not included in any PBSG “global population estimate”: Chukchi Sea ~2,000-3,000; East Greenland, ~ 2,000-3,000; the two Russian regions together (Laptev Sea and Kara Sea), another ~2,000-3,000 or so, plus 200 or so in the central Arctic Basin. These are guesses, to be sure, but they at least give a potential size
In other words, rather than assigning a “simple, qualified guess” for these subpopulations that have not been formally counted as well as those that have been counted (generating a total figure that is indeed a “global population estimate,” however inaccurate), the PBSG have been passing off their estimate of counted populations as a true global population estimate, with caveats seldom included.
US troops ‘kidnap’ 4-year-old drone strike victim from hospital, allege parents
RT | June 02, 2014
A four-year-old girl whose face was blown off during a US drone strike in Afghanistan was kidnapped by American troops and hidden by an international organization, her family says.
The child, named Aisha Rashid, was travelling with her parents, a sibling and several other relatives from Kabul to their home in the village of Gamber in the Kunar province on a hot September day, when the drone exploded, Expressen.se reported. An uncle, Meya Jan, is at home on his farm in that village when he receives a phone call about the strike from the neighboring village. He and others rush to the strike.
Suddenly they hear a voice. “Water, water…”
It is Aisha. She is missing a hand, her leg is bleeding, and there is nothing left of her eyes or nose.
Older relatives rush her to the hospital in Asadabad, but doctors there can do nothing. She is transported by ambulance to a hospital in Jalalabad, where surgeons do what they can to patch her face, but her case is too difficult for them. Hospital staff contact the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), who arranges for her to be sent by medical helicopter to Kabul four days later.
The incident occurred on September 7, 2013, when NATO drones destroyed a pickup truck with civilians inside after its driver agreed to give a lift to Taliban insurgents, provincial governor Shuja ul Mulk Jalala said at the time. A report listed that four women, four children, and four men had been killed in the strike. The remaining four fatalities were said to be Taliban militants. NATO command acknowledged that the strike took place, but stated that the operation killed only militants – not civilians.
Once in the Kabul hospital, Aisha is visited by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “She had lost the whole family, the entire family, 14 of them, in the bombing in Kunar. And that day . . . [note: there is a 39-second pause as Karzai struggles with his emotions] . . . that day, I wished she were dead, so she could be buried with her parents and brothers and sisters,” he said, recalling the visit in an interview with the Washington Post five months later.
“She is walking now, she is in America. We arranged for her to be taken to America. She’s there now,” Karzai said in the March phone interview.
But Jan and Aisha’s other uncle, Hasrat Gul, did not give permission for the only surviving member of the Rashid family to be taken to the US, nor were they allowed to go with her. And they were not given any news of their niece.
“We think she is in the US, that’s what they told us, but we have no contact and we don’t know if she is still in Bagram or if she’s been flown out,” Gul told Expressen’s Av Terese Cristiansson in early October. They said they believed the US military was trying to hide her because drone strikes are such a sensitive subject.The two uncles give the reporter power of attorney to find Aisha.
And so Cristiansson embarks on a journey to find Aisha that she describes as “Kafkaesque.”
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took over the case days after Karzai visited Aisha. Cristiansson emails the ISAF, but they have turned Aisha’s case over to a relief organization named Solace, which helps Afghan children with war injuries to receive international treatment. Solace’s strategy is to pay for foreign treatment and then place the children with foster families until they can be flown back to their own country. The reporter contacts them in November, and they initially seem willing to work with her on following the case for an article and documentary. But when Cristiansson says she wants to visit Aisha at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, DC (where Solace says the girl is located), the group becomes unresponsive.
In the meantime, the family had been receiving no communications. “We were informed that she didn’t have any family,” says Patsy Wilson, one of the founders of Solace told Cristiansson. The press office at Walter Reed said the family should ask local representatives at the base in Kunar about Aisha’s condition.
The family, with no updates, believes the US military have taken Aisha. “They probably don’t want her to become a poster girl for drone repercussions,” they said. They even start doubting whether she is alive.
Karzai spoke to Aisha at the end of February, days before his Post interview. “I called the family with whom she was. She’s still blind; she will not be a normal girl again. They’re trying to conduct plastic surgery on her,” he said. “The lady that looks after her, an Afghan lady, says she keeps asking about her younger brother who was 3 years old when they were killed.”
Jan and Gul did not speak to their niece until March.
“She cried and wondered where we are and how everyone in the village is. She spoke to my son and said that ‘as soon as I’m strong I’m coming home to the village’,” Jan said to Cristiansson at the time. “She said she has learnt her ABC.”
But the two uncles say they do not want Aisha in the United States. “We were against the US taking her. They killed our entire family and now they have her,” they said. “Even Germany and France said they could help her, but the US wanted her so that the case didn’t become too big in other countries. We don’t understand why none of us got to go with her either, that she had to travel alone.”
Gul told Cristiansson they have been compensated $2,000 per victim who died in the drone strike. “They want to give us money, but we don’t want America’s money. We have said that the only apology we can accept is what it says in the Koran: 100 camels,” he said. They also want the person responsible for killing their family brought to justice, and for Aisha to return to them. They think she realizes she cannot live in a country that killed her mother, father and little brother.
“She belongs at home with us,” Jan said.
To President Obama: Let’s just assume for a moment we have a climate crisis
By Paul Driessen | Watts Up With That? | June 2, 2014
As we start hurricane season today, we note the unprecedented 3142 day drought of major hurricane landfalls, shattering a record that goes back to the year 1900.
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, president Obama is now warning us that “storms like Hurricane Sandy will become more frequent as climate change intensifies.” It’s merely the latest in the administration’s seemingly endless stream of headline-grabbing scare stories, designed to justify the job-killing, economy-strangling, family-bashing rules for vehicles, power plants, cement kilns, refineries, factories, farms, shopping malls and countless other facilities that are or soon will be regulated by Environmental Protection Agency fiat. We need to keep one vitally important fact in mind.
Every one of these “looming calamities” is based on assumptions, assertions and computer models that represent the real world about as well as the special-effects T-rexes and raptors do in Jurassic Park. The data on hurricanes says otherwise:
Climate modelers and disaster proponents remind me of the four guys who were marooned on an island, after their plane went down. The engineer began drawing plans for a boat; the lumberjack cut trees to build it; the pilot plotted a course to the nearest known civilization. But the economist just sat there. The exasperated workers asked him why he wasn’t helping.
“I don’t see the problem,” he replied. “Why can’t we just assume we have a boat, get on it and leave?”
In the case of climate change, those making the assumptions demand that we act immediately to avert planetary crises based solely on their computer model predictions. It’s like demanding that governments enact laws to safeguard us from velociraptors, after Jurassic Park scientists found that dinosaur DNA could be extracted from fossilized mosquitoes … and brought the carnivores back to special-effects life.
Climate models help improve our conceptual understandings of climate systems and the forces that drive climate change. However, they are terrible at predicting Earth’s temperature and other components of its climate. They should never be used to set or justify policies, laws and regulations – such as what the Environmental Protection Agency is about to impose on CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Even our best climate scientists still have only a limited grasp of Earth’s highly complex and chaotic climate systems, and the many interrelated solar, cosmic, oceanic, atmospheric, terrestrial and other forces that control climate and weather. Even the best models are only as good as that understanding.
Worse, the models and the science behind them have been horribly politicized. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was ostensibly organized in 1988 to examine possible human influences on Earth’s climate. In reality, Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin and environmental activist groups wanted to use global warming to drive an anti-hydrocarbon, limited-growth agenda. That meant they somehow had to find a human influence on the climate – even if the best they could come up with was “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” [emphasis added]
“Discernible” (ie, detectable) soon metamorphosed into “dominant,” which quickly morphed into the absurd notion that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have now replaced natural forces and become the only factors influencing climate change. They are certainly the only factors that climate activists and alarmists want to talk about, while they attempt to silence debate, criticism and skepticism. They use the models to generate scary “scenarios” that are presented as actual predictions of future calamities.
They predict, project or forecast that heat waves will intensify, droughts and floods will be stronger and more frequent, hurricanes will be more frequent and violent, sea levels will rise four feet by 2100 [versus eight inches since 1880], forest fires will worsen, and countless animal species will disappear. Unlikely.
Natural forces obviously caused the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Pleistocene Ice Ages. (A slab of limestone that I dug up has numerous striations – scratches – left by the last mile-thick glacier that covered what is now my home town in Wisconsin.) After long denying it, the IPCC finally acknowledged that the LIA did occur, and that it was a worldwide agricultural and human disaster.
However, the models and computer algorithms the IPCC and EPA rely on still do not include the proper magnitude of solar cycles and other powerful natural forces that influence climate changes. They assume “positive feedbacks” from GHGs that trap heat, but understate the reflective and thus cooling effects of clouds. They display a global warming bias throughout – bolstered by temperature data contaminated by “urban heat island” effects, due to measuring stations being located too close to human heat sources. They assume Earth’s climate is now controlled almost entirely by rising human CO2/GHG emissions.
It’s no wonder the models, modelers and alarmists totally failed to predict the nearly-18-year absence of global warming – or that the modeled predictions diverge further from actual temperature measurements with every passing year. It’s no wonder modelers cannot tell us which aspects of global warming, global cooling, climate change and “climate disruption” are due to humans, and which are the result of natural forces. It’s hardly surprising that they cannot replicate (“hindcast”) the global temperature record from 1950 to 1995, without “fudging” their data and computer codes– or that they are wrong almost every time.
In 2000, Britain’s Met Office said cold winters would be a thing of the past, and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” The 2010 and 2012 winters were the coldest and snowiest in centuries. In 2013, Met Office scholars said the coming winter would be extremely dry; the forecast left towns, families and government agencies totally unprepared for the immense rains and floods that followed.
In 2007, Australia’s climate commissioner predicted Brisbane and other cities would never again have sufficient rain to fill their reservoirs. The forecast ignored previous drought and flood cycles, and was demolished by record rains in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Forecasts of Arctic and Antarctic meltdowns have ignored the long history of warmer and colder cycles, and ice buildups and breakups.
The Bonneville Power Administration said manmade warming will cause Columbia River Basin snowpack to melt faster, future precipitation to fall as rain, reservoirs to be overwhelmed – and yet water levels will be well below normal year round. President Obama insists that global temperatures will soar, wildfires will be more frequent and devastating, floods and droughts will be more frequent and disastrous, rising seas will inundate coastal cities as Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves melt and disintegrate, and 97% of scientists agree. Every claim is based on models or bald-faced assertions unsupported by evidence.
And still the IPCC says it has “very high confidence” (the highest level it assigns) to the supposed agreement between computer model forecasts and actual observations. The greater the divergence from reality, the higher its “confidence” climbs. Meanwhile, climate researchers and modelers from Nebraska, Penn State, Great Britain and other “learned institutions” continue to focus on alleged human influences on Earth’s climate. They know they will likely lose their government, foundation and other funding – and will certainly be harassed and vilified by EPA, environmentalists, politicians, and their ideological and pedagogical peers – if they examine natural forces too closely.
Thus they input erroneous data, simplistic assumptions, personal biases, and political and financial calculations, letting models spew out specious scenarios and phony forecasts: garbage in, garbage out.
The modelers owe it to humanity to get it right – so that we can predict, prepare for, mitigate and adapt to whatever future climate conditions nature (or humans) might throw at us. They cannot possibly do that without first understanding, inputting and modeling natural factors along with human influences.
Above all, these supposed modeling experts and climate scientists need to terminate their biases and their evangelism of political agendas that seek to slash fossil fuel use, “transform” our energy and economic systems, redistribute wealth [upward], reduce our standards of living, and “permit” African and other impoverished nations to enter the modern era only in a “sustainable manner,” as defined by callous elitists.
The climate catastrophe camp’s focus on CO2 is based on the fact that it is a byproduct of detested hydrocarbon use. But this trace gas (a mere 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere) makes life on our planet possible. More carbon dioxide means crops, forests and grasslands grow faster and better. CO2’s role in climate change is speculative – and contradicted by real-world measurements, observations and history.
Computer models, scenarios and predictions of planetary Armageddon are little more than faulty, corrupt, even fraudulent pseudo-science. They have consistently forecast what has not happened on Planet Earth, and failed to forecast what did happen.
They must no longer be allowed to justify EPA’s job-killing, economy-strangling, family-bashing rules for vehicles, power plants, cement kilns, refineries, factories, farms, shopping malls and countless other facilities that are or soon will be regulated by agency fiat.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
UK announces Yuan clearing Bank in London
The BRICS Post | June 2, 2014
The UK government has agreed to establish a yuan-clearing bank in London that would “act as a signal for London’s growing yuan activities”.
Mark Boleat, policy chairman for the City of London Corp said consultations were ongoing for a long time with the People’s Bank of China, Bank of England and many banks in London, and the PBOC has now decided to appoint the clearing bank.
“We assume it’s going to be a Chinese bank, because that’s the way the PBOC does things,” Boleat said in an interview to a Chinese daily in London.
China and the UK had signed an agreement last year to establish a reciprocal 3-year sterling/renminbi (RMB, or Chinese yuan) currency swap line.
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had said earlier this year that a clearing bank was the next logical step to take in building trade ties with China.
“It would be an important further milestone both in the development of the renminbi as a currency of the world’s economic future, but also of London and the U.K. as the western center for renminbi trading,” said Osborne.
China has also signed an agreement with Germany to work on appointing a clearing bank in Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, the UK administration would also allow Chinese banks to open new branches in the country soon.
Previously, Chinese banks, as well as many other international banks, were only allowed to set up subsidiaries, which are subject to the strict capital requirements that apply to Britain’s local banks, hence the lending and financing capacity is proportional to the balance sheet of the subsidiary.
Hungry for land: small farmers feed the world – with less than a quarter of all farmland
GRAIN | May 28, 2014
Governments and international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest share of the world’s agricultural land. When the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization inaugurated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, he sang the praises of family farmers but didn’t once mention the need for land reform. Instead, he announced that family farms already manage most of the world’s farmland – a whopping 70%, according to his team.
But a new review of the data carried out by GRAIN reveals that the opposite is true. Small farms, which produce most of the world’s food, are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland – or less than one fifth if you leave out China and India.
“We are fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN. “The overwhelming majority of farming families today have less than two hectares to cultivate and that share is shrinking. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.”
Marina Dos Santos of the Coordination of the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST), and of La Via Campesina, states: “Today, the peasantry is criminalised, taken to court and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. Currently, there are an alarming numbers of deaths that go unpunished. States have created legal concepts such as terrorism and sabotage to intimidate our struggle. Every day we are exposed to systematic expulsion from our land. This affects not only peasants fighting to stay on the land, but also many other small farmers and indigenous peoples who are the target of greedy foreign interests. We want the land in order to live and to produce, as these are our basic rights against land grabbing corporations who seek only speculation and profit.”
“People need to understand that if the current processes of land concentration continue, then no matter how hard-working, efficient and productive they are, small farmers will simply not be able to carry on,” said GRAIN’s Camila Montecinos. “The concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day.”
GRAIN’s report also provides new data that show that small farmers still provide most of the world’s food, and that they are often much more productive than large corporate farms. If all of Kenya’s farms matched the output of its small farms, the nation’s agricultural productivity would double. In Central America, it would nearly triple. Women are the major food producers, but their role remains unrecorded and marginalised.
The international agencies keep on reminding us that we need to produce more food to feed the growing population. But how much more food could be produced almost immediately if small farmers had access to more land and could work in a supportive policy environment, rather than under the siege conditions they are facing today?
“The vast majority of farms in Zimbabwe belong to small holders and their average farmsize has increased as a result of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Small farmers in the country now produce over 90% of diverse agricultural food crops, while they only provided 60-70% of the national food before land redistribution. More women own land in their own right, which is key to food sovereignty everywhere,” said Elizabeth Mpofu, General coordinator of La Via Campesina.
We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for genuine and comprehensive agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems. Something peasant organisations and landless people’s movements have long been fighting for.
GRAIN’s new report, Hungry for land: small farmers feed the world with less than a quarter of all farmland provides an in depth review of the data on farm structures and food production worldwide and comes to the following 6 central conclusions:
1. The vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getting smaller
Due to a myriad of forces, average farm sizes have shrunk dramatically over the past decades, particularly in Asia and Africa.
2. Small farms are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland
Despite what the UN and others report, small farms occupy less than 25% of the world’s farmland today – just 17%, if we exclude India and China.
3. We’re fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger
One major reason why small farms are disappearing is the rapid growth of monoculture plantations. In the last 50 years, 140 million hectares – well more than all the farmland in China – have been taken over for soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane alone.
4. Small farmers continue to be the major food producers in the world
By definition, peasant agriculture prioritises food production for local and national markets as well as for farmers’ own families – not commodities or export crops. GRAIN compiled staggering statistics that show how, even with so little land, small farms produce the bulk of many countries’ food supply.
5. Small farms are technically more productive than big farms
Industrial farms have enormous power, clout and resources, but small farms almost everywhere outperform big farms in terms of productivity. If all of Kenya’s farms matched the output of its small farms, the nation’s agricultural productivity would double. In Central America, it would nearly triple. If Russia’s big farms were as productive as its small ones, output would increase by a factor of six.
6. The majority of small farmers are women, yet their contributions are unrecognised and marginalised
Women’s immense contribution to farming and food production is not captured in official statistics and they are discriminated against when it comes to controlling land in most countries.
The report is accompanied by illustrative maps and a fully-referenced dataset. Available for download at: http://www.grain.org/e/4929.
More on the farmers’ struggle for land: “Land is life! La Via Campesina and the Struggle for Land” at: http://viacampesina.org/downloads/pdf/en/EN-notebook5.pdf.
Contacts
Mr Henk Hobbelink, Spain (EN, ES, NL): +34933011381, henk@grain.org
Ms Camila Montecinos, Chile (EN, ES): +56222224437, camila@grain.org
Ms Elizabeth Mpofu, Zimbabwe (EN): + +2634576221, nkbnyoni@yahoo.co.uk
A new take on land reform in Zimbabwe
IRIN | February 5, 2013
LONDON/HARARE – More than 10 years after the chaotic and often violent farm invasions that accompanied Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme, a new book argues that the redistribution programme has dramatically improved the lives of thousands of smallholder farmers and their families.
Starting in 2000, the government implemented an initiative to acquire 11 million hectares of white-owned farmland and redistribute it on a massive scale; the programme was often carried out in the form of farm invasions led by frustrated war veterans and supporters of President Robert Mugabe. By its conclusion, only 0.4 percent of farmland remained in the hands of white commercial farmers, and smallholder farmers dominated the agricultural sector.
The land reform programme was followed by years of drought, hyperinflation and an economic meltdown.
Thirteen years later and more than 8,000km away, it still raises strong emotions. At a recent event hosted by London’s Chatham House at which authors of the new book, Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land, defended their work, the hall was packed, and a polite but persistent group of anti-Mugabe protesters occupied the pavement outside.
The book avoids passing judgement on the often violent manner in which the programme was executed. “This is not a book about what might have been, could have been, or should have been,” write authors Joseph Hanlon, Jeanette Manjengwa and Teresa Smart. Instead, it focuses on the results of a study they carried out in Mashonaland, a region of northern Zimbabwe covering three provinces, which found that many of the ‘fast-track’ farmers are faring much better than has been widely assumed.
Despite receiving very little government assistance, “we saw that these farmers had a real passion for farming. We found that farmers are making investments, building houses and barns… and buying farm implements,” said Manjengwa. “They are making the land their own, and they are becoming serious commercial farmers.”
Finding success
When Samson Pfumo, a 52-year-old teacher from Harare, applied for and received a 60-hectare plot in Marondera District through the land redistribution programme, his expectations were low.
“My brother, a war veteran, encouraged me to apply to the government for a piece of land, but I was pessimistic because of the controversy that surrounded the land reform programme,” Pfumo told IRIN. “When I got an offer letter for the plot [in 2005], I only set up a small mud-and-dagga [hut] and hardly visited the farm.”
When the economy started improving in 2009, after the formation of a coalition government, Pfumo developed a keener interest in farming and started raising pigs. A year later, he had 60 pigs, some of which he sold to buy farming implements and to start growing maize for feed.
Today, he has five large pig pens housing more than 300 pigs, which he periodically slaughters for sale, with each pig fetching an average of US$150. He is also rearing about 500 chicks for sale and is considering venturing into tobacco farming after noting that many resettled farmers have been making good profits from the crop.
“I managed to buy a truck to ferry meat to my clients and a luxury car. My two sons are now studying at reputable universities in South Africa because I can afford it, thanks to the piggery project,” said Pfumo, who has left teaching and now lives on the farm with his wife and mother.
Controversial progress
Manjengwa and her colleagues found that even the less ambitious among the new farmers surveyed, who mainly received smaller plots of five or six hectares, had greatly improved their standard of living. After being mostly poor, landless and unemployed prior to resettlement, virtually all of them were able to grow enough food for their families, and to sell the surplus to pay for their children’s school fees. But many were doing much better than that, producing significant quantities of maize, tobacco and other crops for sale, and building up capital in the form of livestock, farm buildings and equipment. They were also starting to employ labour.
The issue of labour is contentious because so many farm workers lost their jobs and their homes when the old white-owned farms were broken up; some are still homeless and unemployed. However, Hanlon, Manjengwa and Smart estimate that around 550,000 family members and 350,000 paid labourers now work full-time on land that previously employed 170,000 workers.
Charles Taffs, president of Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers’ Union, reminded those at the meeting at Chatham House that the workers now being hired are not the same ones who were driven off the commercial farms. He also asserted that the figures presented in the study did not add up.
Zimbabwe’s agricultural production experienced a dramatic drop following the upheavals of 2000, but according to the authors, it is now returning to the levels of the 1990s. This is despite the fact that many rely on a much more labour-intensive form of farming than that used by the earlier white commercial farmers.
The authors also point out that, although many of the white-owned commercial farms were efficient and productive, many others were struggling and had far more land than they could use; some of the most fertile land in the country had gone uncultivated. The new smallholders have brought much of that unused land into cultivation.
Dilemma
Manjengwa and her colleagues are not the first to suggest that Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme has achieved a number of positive results. A 10-year study of land reform in Masvingo Province, led by Ian Scoones from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and published in 2010, challenged a number of the “myths” surrounding fast-track land reform, finding that many of the 400 households sampled were employing labour and expanding their farming operations.
“The suggestion that the fast-track land reform programme was not an unmitigated disaster presents dilemmas about whether to accept this growing body of evidence and risk endorsing the methods used to achieve the asset transfer,” commented Admos Chimhowu of Manchester University’s Institute for Development Policy and Management, who pointed out that neighbouring South Africa has yet to find a solution to its land reform challenges.
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