Hiroshima urges end of nuclear umbrella

Hiroshima urges end of nuclear umbrella

Roos, Ban among 55,000 at 65th anniversary of bombing

By ERIC JOHNSTON

Staff writer

HIROSHIMA — At a memorial ceremony attended for the first time ever by a U.N. secretary general and a U.S. representative, Hiroshima on Friday marked the 65th anniversary of its atomic bombing by calling on Japan to withdraw from the U.S. nuclear umbrella and accelerate the progress made over the past 18 months to eliminate nuclear arms.

On a sweltering morning, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, U.S. Ambassador John Roos, as well as representatives of nuclear states Great Britain and France were on hand for the ceremony. Some 55,000 people took part in the memorial, according to city officials.

This year’s ceremony took place three months after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference in New York, which followed an April meeting hosted by the U.S. on nuclear disarmament.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said in his message to the ceremony that Japan needs to do more to assure the world it is serious about remaining a nonnuclear state.

“The time is ripe for the Japanese government to take decisive action. It should begin to take the lead in the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons by legislating the three nonnuclear principles, abandoning the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and implementing passionate, caring assistance measures for all of the aging hibakusha anywhere in the world,” Akiba said.

Earlier this week, Akiba said it is ridiculous for Japan to think about national security policies while still being dependent on America’s nuclear umbrella.

Akiba’s call to turn Japan’s long-standing three nonnuclear principles into law is something antinuclear groups have long desired.

The three nonnuclear principles of not possessing, manufacturing, or introducing nuclear weapons were introduced as a Diet resolution in the late 1960s and adopted in 1971, but have yet to be codified into law.

The mayor also urged Kan to speak to nuclear weapons states directly and push them to disarm completely by 2020.

Kan, who was once an activist, gave credit to the hibakusha, their next of kin, and citizens’ groups worldwide for their efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and for the recent political progress toward that goal.

“Last May, at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference in New York, nearly 100 hibakusha spoke about their experiences. Over 4,000 cities worldwide, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, belong to the Mayors for Peace Conference, which is calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. It is the activities of citizens and NGOs that have played a critical role in arms reduction,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador Roos laid a memorial wreath at the cenotaph, but did not address the ceremony.

Kan, Ban and Akiba all welcomed his attendance to the annual event, as well as the ambassadors from Great Britain and France.

Roos, who visited the A-bomb Dome and the memorial museum in Hiroshima last October shortly after assuming his post, said he was “deeply moved.”

His visit was generally received favorably by the Japanese government and the public.

But this time, the ambassador stayed at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the site of the memorial service, for one hour without talking to any survivors.

In Tokyo, the U.S. Embassy released a press release after the memorial saying that Roos attended the ceremony “to express respect for all the victims of World War II.”

“For the sake of future generations, we must continue to work together to realize a world without nuclear weapons,” Roos was quoted as saying in the release.

Ban’s attendance at the annual ceremony, the first ever by a U.N. secretary general, was even more anticipated and drew the lion’s share of the attention.

Recalling the destruction he saw during the Korean War as a youth, Ban said his experience of marching along a muddy country road while his home village burned led him to devote his life to peace, and also brought him to Hiroshima.

Paying his respects to the hibakusha and their families, Ban said the efforts made since the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, by Hiroshima citizens to convey the horrors of the atomic bomb have made city the epicenter of peace.

“Together, we are on a journey from ground zero to ground zero, a world free of weapons of mass destruction,” Ban said.

CIA Report on Iran War: Israel Will Be Destroyed

Readers Number : 587

06/08/2010 A group of ex-CIA officials warned Washington against Tel Aviv’s efforts to “mousetrap” the US on Iran, a mistake that would “destroy” Israel, media reports said. In a memo to the US President Barack Obama, a group of former CIA intelligence officers at the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to go unilateral on Iran. “Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel,” the group said. “Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel’s quiver,” the group said on Thursday. To prevent such a ‘disaster’, the former officials wrote, the White House should “move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.” If Obama fails to do so “Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel,” the memo continues. Formed in January 2003 “to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war,” the veterans are widely known for their opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “We now believe that we may also be right on (and right on the cusp of) another impending catastrophe of even wider scope – Iran – on which another President, you, are not getting good advice from your closed circle of advisers,” the memo concludes.

Politics of Alarm In Balochistan and Islamabad

Politics of Alarm

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik

Through the length and breadth of the country, a chorus of troubled voices is sounding the alarm on Balochistan. Asked to comment on this mounting sense of panic, a senior army officer told The Friday Times: “This is mere alarmism. Alarmists have succeeded in creating a sense of imminent doom.”

In other words, chill out; no big deal.

Except common sense begs the question: if what is happening in Balochistan is no big deal, why does the army’s – and the state’s – response, today and in the past, wreak of alarm – even fear?

The killing of civilians by militants and indiscriminate use of force, disappearances of political activists and human rights abuses by the military and paramilitary forces: no cause for anxiety . Wiping out popular indigenous Baloch leadership and supporting apolitical, pro-establishment tribal chiefs as an alternative: a policy only a complacent state could follow for decades .  The Frontier Corps being allowed to establish a parallel government in Balochistan; opening fire on a student protest and killing two students and injuring four more in January this year: smells like nonchalance to me.

So, all those who think there’s anything wrong with Balochistan, think again.

Speaking to a local daily last week, a high-ranking army officer said as much: given that there are 100,000 security men in the province, “at most there will be a few thousand among the Baloch population capable of causing trouble. They will never be able to create big mischief .”

One can only wonder what counts as ‘big mischief’. Target killings, road side bomb blasts, land mine explosions and attacks by militants on police check posts, trains, gas pipelines and electricity lines: do these make the grade for ‘big mischief’? Since January this year alone, more than 250 people from other provinces who had settled in Balochistan have been killed in attacks; does that count as big mischief? Does the killing of Baloch leaders by their own militant Baloch friends constitute ‘big mischief’? Is the growing religious radicalisation of Balochistan something we can consider the result of ‘big mischief’? Perhaps we can choose not to be alarmed about this; perhaps we can ignore the radicalisation of Balochistan as we did that of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.

Except with regards to Balochistan, the Pakistan Army – if one were to believe on- and off-the-record statements by army officers – seems peculiarly unalarmed for an army that uses alarm over an India-threat as the very reason and condition for its constant expansion. If the fuss about Balochistan is really just that, fuss, then why, over the course of six decades has Islamabad failed to come to terms with Baloch nationalism; why has the province almost always been under the effective control of the army and intelligence services; why has indiscriminate, brute force been used time and again? It was certainly an arrogant, but not unalarmed, Musharraf who warned Baloch militants during an interview in January 2005: “It isn’t the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time, you won’t even know what hit you.”

What hit them was a military operation complete with helicopter gunships – again, the recourse of an unalarmed Islamabad, of course. Indeed, it was a similarly unalarmed Pakistan Army that killed the 80-year-old Nawab Akbar Bugti with the help of modern precision weapons in September 2006. The Pakistan Army gave itself a good pat on the back and told doomsayers to relax: getting rid of Bugti and the broader insurgent leadership would provide the final answer to the active anti-Centre campaign mounted by the renegade Baloch; the situation in Balochistan could not escalate; Balochistan was different from East Pakistan; and so on.

Even if the political blunder that was Bugti’s killing was not the result of alarm, unfortunately for the government and the army, the reaction to Bugti’s killing was so alarming that the central government, unalarmed as ever, had to deploy the paramilitary Rangers, arrest over 450 people and impose an indefinite curfew. Musharraf went from cocky to, yes, alarmed , overnight. The mask of complacency worn by state officials was shed and a weak-kneed director-general of Inter-Services Public relations, in complete contradiction to earlier official statements, suggested that a ‘mysterious blast’ had led to Bugti’s killing; that 21 army personnel, including six officers, were also killed when the cave collapsed – in other words, that the state had, perhaps , not intended to target or kill Bugti.

It’s hard to accuse the Pakistani state of steadfastness. But that’s not the reason the Bugti episode comes to mind. It comes to mind because history, to teach important lessons, has a cruel way of making heroes of even dubious types like Akbar Bugti. His killing was meant to remind us of the devastating results of military dominance in Pakistan – dismemberment, violent sectarianism, Al Qaeda and Talibanism – and warn us of the terrible consequences for Pakistan if Balochistan were sucked into a new great game to redraw the map of the region once more. More than anything else, it was meant to remind us that while this wasn’t the worst that could happen, the worst wasn’t far around the corner if things didn’t change. In a word: that it was time to be alarmed .

The situation in Balochistan has reached its lowest ebb since the military operation that began in January 2005 and one thing is clear: the state apparatus in Islamabad has learnt nothing from the past. If there is anything to suggest that the civilian government still has no control over the army establishment, it is Balochistan. As Islamabad rolls out political and economic reforms, the army continues to pick up Baloch activists; the killing and disposing of of bodies of missing persons indicates the unchanged behavior of the Army.

The claim that the army, or Islamabad, aren’t alarmed by what’s going on in Balochistan is rubbish if one considers how they have responded to Balochistan over the years. No unalarmed state, or its army, will use force as indiscriminately as has been used in Balochistan – or be met with five sustained rebellions.

Yes, what we have today is Balochistan’s fifth sustained rebellion against Islamabad since 1948. It’s time now to be alarmed in all the right ways, lest this apathy turn into despair.

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times, and may be reached atmehreen.tft@gmail.com

Courtesy: The Friday Times, Lahore)

Anger at Zardari Grows as Pakistan Battles Floods

By SALMAN MASOOD and KEVIN DREW

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As rain fell throughout Pakistan on Friday, public anger at President Asif Ali Zardari, away on a European trip, began to swell, with critics accusing him of ignoring the country’s worst flooding in 80 years in order to travel abroad.

Political opponents, print and electronic media continued venting their anger at Mr. Zardari as the army and international aid organizations struggled to help victims of the flooding. After visiting France Mr. Zardari is in Britain, where he arrived on Friday at the country residence of Prime Minister David Cameron for talks on terrorism, Afghanistan and trade.

The Pakistan government emphasized that the talks were an opportunity to smooth over a diplomatic tussle created by Mr. Cameron’s comments last week, some of which were highly critical of Pakistan’s approach to fighting terrorism. Pakistani leaders were particularly angered because Mr. Cameron made the criticism during a visit to its regional archrival, India.

After the meeting on Friday, Mr. Zardari and Mr. Cameron both described ties between their countries as unbreakable. “Storms will come and storms will go, and Pakistan and Britain will stand together and face all the difficulties with dignity,” Mr. Zardari said.

A joint statement said Mr. Cameron had acknowledged the “sacrifices made by Pakistan’s military, civil law enforcement agencies and people in fighting violent extremism and militancy.” The wording was apparently designed to defuse Pakistani anger at Mr. Cameron’s earlier comments, which were interpreted as ignoring the high casualties from terrorist attacks and counter-insurgency campaigns in Pakistan.

But Mr. Zardari’s diplomacy has not eased criticism at home, where his popularity continued to fall in recent surveys.

“We have been let down very badly by Mr. Zardari,” Nawaz Sharif, an opposition leader and former prime minister, said this week. “We have been let down more by him than the statement by David Cameron,” Mr. Sharif told reporters after visiting flood affected areas in Charsadda in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly the North-West Frontier Province.

The Café Pyala Web site, a blog known for biting political commentary, said in a posting: “To add to the callousness of it all, most of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is underwater at the time of filing this post. And yet our president just can’t resist the temptation of grinning a broad grin before the British cameras for a huge photo-op, probably at vast public expense.”

Mr. Zardari was elected as Pakistan’s president after the former president Pervez Musharraf resigned under threat of impeachment in 2008. Mr. Zardari assumed the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party after the December 2007 assassination of his wife,Benazir Bhutto.

Accompanying Mr. Zardari on this trip is his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who recently finished studies at Oxford University. Mr. Zardari was expected to travel to Birmingham in the English Midlands on Saturday to deliver a speech at a rally of overseas supporters of his Pakistan Peoples Party.

Opponents have seized on the cost of Mr. Zardari’s overseas trip at a time of an acute humanitarian crisis at home.

Imran Khan, an opposition leader and former cricket star, asked, “Why will our president and his delegation be lodged in the most expensive hotel in London at a time when thousands of people are marooned and scores of others stand devastated?”

In a statement released by the Pakistan diplomatic mission in London last weekend, the government said that Mr. Zardari would stay in London hotels at discounted rates and eat discounted food from Pakistani restaurants and that officials accompanying him would travel in eight-seat vans rather than luxury cars while in Great Britain.

Some senior government officials defended the president.

“He would have been remembered and criticized even if there were no floods in the country,” Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said. “I am the chief executive of the country. I am here and my whole cabinet is here to supervise the relief operation which is our responsibility and not the president’s.”

The United Nations has called the flooding the worst in 80 years, with at least 1,500 lives lost and more than 4 million people affected.

On Friday rain fell throughout the country and floodwaters moved into the southern Sindh Province.

The Pakistani military has led Pakistani flood relief efforts since state relief agencies don’t have the resources to cope, and has been joined by the international community.

The United Nations refugee agency said it was aiming to support more than 350,000 of the most vulnerable flood-affected victims. The agency earlier said it had distributed 10,000 tents for temporary housing and had ordered 20,000 more.

The lack of resources to cope with the disaster is worrying aid organizations. The humanitarian agency Médecins San Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement that it was assessing health service needs in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan Provinces.

In Charsadda the scale of desperation among displaced people was growing, the organization said.

“You can really see the frustration,” Dr. Awais Yaqub, a deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. “Aid is coming, but the scale of the disaster is such that it is clearly not enough, especially in terms of drinking water.”

“We are working hard to provide as much as we can, but we are the only organization doing this in Charsadda and the scale of the problem is so big. We have decided to assess the mental health situation here, as many people are still in a state of shock. They are still scared of water coming back, of new floods taking them by surprise. They still fear for their lives.”

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

Like Rats On a Sinking Ship

Obama loses another key economic adviser

Christina Romer

By Haraz N. Ghanbari, AP

President Obama must grapple with the economy without another key adviser, given the departure of Christina Romer.

Romer, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, announced Thursday night that she is returning to her previous job as economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her resignation follows that of budget director Peter Orszag.

In a statement, Romer called the her White House service the “honor of a lifetime.”

“While I look forward to returning to research and teaching, the opportunity to help shape economic policy these past 20 months, and to work with the other members of the economic team and my colleagues on the CEA, is one I will always cherish,” she said.

Obama said Romer has long expressed a desire to return to California, where he son starts high school in the fall.

“Christy Romer has provided extraordinary service to me and our country during a time of economic crisis and recovery,” Obama said. “The challenges we faced demanded more of Christy than any of her predecessors, and I greatly valued and appreciated her skill, commitment and wise counsel.”

He added: “While Christy’s family commitments require that she return home, I’m gratified that she will continue to offer her insights and advice as a member of my Economic Recovery Advisory Board.”

The White House described Romer’s work this way:

Under Dr. Romer’s leadership, the CEA has provided the detailed analysis of economic developments and data critical to the development of the President’s economic policy.

Dr. Romer and the CEA’s careful analysis of the effects of health care reform on the overall economy, small businesses, and state and local governments were instrumental in crafting a better bill and making the case for its enactment, and she has been a powerful voice for sound, evidence-based economic analysis on a wide range of public policy issues.

As one of the most public faces of the administration’s economic policies she also has been a forceful and tireless advocate of additional measures to support the recovery and help the unemployed, including additional fiscal relief to state governments to prevent the layoffs of hundreds and thousands of teachers.

(Posted by David Jackson)

Forced U.S. military extensions to end

[The military need for these extra hands has not diminished, but the resistance caused by the practice is increasing support for the antiwar resistance.  Right now is the time when all combat troops should be thinking of walking away from the military, before Obama can ignite the next war.]

By Derick Hingle, AP file

Family members welcome home soldiers of the Louisiana Army National Guard fom their deployment in Afghanistan on May 12 in Hammond, La.

By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The number of Army soldiers forced to serve beyond their commitment has been cut in half in the past year and is on track to be eliminated by March 2011, Pentagon records and interviews show.

The practice known as “stop loss” affected more than 15,000 troops at its peak in 2005 and has been cut to about 4,000. Experts on military morale say the steady decline in forcing troops to serve has dampened the controversy, though they say the Pentagon delayed action.

The use of stop loss during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has “dragged on for years,” said James Martin, a professor of social work at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and a retired Army colonel and Pentagon official. “In terms of policy, clearly somebody had to think out of the box.”

That somebody turned out to be Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He declared in March 2009 that the practice had to end, saying it was “breaking faith” with those who volunteered to serve. He had ordered the services to reduce stop loss in 2007. However, the numbers of troops affected climbed more than 40% in the months that followed, largely because of the additional troops sent to Iraq.

More than 140,000 troops — all but about 20,000 of them Army soldiers — had assignments extended under the policy since 2001. It was referred to as a “back-door draft” by Rep. John Murtha, the combat veteran and Pennsylvania Democrat who died early this year. Troops affected are eligible for additional payments of $500 for each month they were compelled to serve.

Stop loss can keep a servicemember in the military if his or her unit deploys within 90 days of the end of the commitment they make when they join. The Army relies on stop loss to keep units intact through training and combat tours.

“The Army was careful when determining whether or not to employ stop loss because we knew it placed an unfair burden on soldiers and families,” Army Secretary John McHugh told USA TODAY. The policy affected about 1% of all soldiers, said Maj. Tim Beninato, a spokesman for the Army’s personnel office.

The Pentagon has added tens of thousands of troops to the Army and Marine Corps since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. That has reduced the need to use stop loss.

McHugh encouraged those affected by stop loss since 2001 to apply for compensation.

The Pentagon operates a website for all services at www.defense.gov/stoploss.

Breakthroughs in electromagnetic mind manipulation

Breakthroughs in electromagnetic mind manipulation, posted with vodpod

Link to Community Help Victims of Fires in Russia

by noblerussia

http://help-map.ru/

Charitable aid to victims of fires in Russia

Head office.

Friendly community:

http://russian-fires.ru/ aka http://help-map.info and http://help-map.ru – map of fires and help!
http://needhelp.wikidot.com/ – information by region in text mode
http://pozhar.yandex.ru/
http://i-cherski.livejournal.com/ – actively support through your LJ, Moscow

LIST Burnt villages
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/70510.html

Everyone who goes to the disaster area of humanitarian assistance, read this post!
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/61769.html

To learn how to prepare things. Newcomers, please read this post. http://taoky.livejournal.com/489104.html

King James otdel.Moskva
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/46753.html
CAUTION Moscow Synodal Department until CLOTHES DO NOT ACCEPT, its a lot.

Need info from the field of disasters, natural records of those who went there. It really is the situation, preferably every day. Please, if you have info or familiar with the information ask them to call the Synodal Department and tell about the real state of things.
Telephones Department: 9126866, 9111535
As well as hold the info here under the tag / news fire / / Targeted Assistance / reports on the / /! Lists of people / + Region

Their organizational tips leave here in a comment http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/40523.html

Set your TAGS, otherwise messages will TERYATSYA!
including, in the old messages
————————————–
Team information regions (updated)

http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/48852.html – Moscow and Moscow region
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/35030.html – Nizhny Novgorod Region
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/52154.html – Voronezh Oblast
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/51954.html – Ryazan
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/50817.html – St. Petersburg
other regions, see Tag

Благотворительная помощь пострадавшим от пожаров в России

Главный пост.

Дружественные сообщества:

http://russian-fires.ru/ он же http://help-map.info и http://help-map.ru – карта пожаров и помощи!
http://needhelp.wikidot.com/ – инфо по регионам в текстовом режиме
http://pozhar.yandex.ru/
http://i-cherski.livejournal.com/ – активно ведёт помощь через свой жж,Москва

СПИСОК СГОРЕВШИХ СЁЛ И ДЕРЕВЕНЬ
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/70510.html

Все кто едет в районы бедствий с гуманитарной помощью,ПРОЧТИТЕ этот пост!
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/61769.html

О том, как подготовить вещи. Новички, пожалуйста, прочтите этот пост. http://taoky.livejournal.com/489104.html

Синодальный отдел.Москва
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/46753.html
ВНИМАНИЕ! в Москве Синодальный отдел пока ОДЕЖДУ НЕ ПРИНИМАЕТ,её много.

Нужна инфо с мест бедствий, живые отчёты тех, кто туда ездил. Как на самом деле обстоит ситуация, желательно, каждый день. Пожалуйста, если у вас есть инфо или знакомые с инфо попросите их звонить в Синодальный отдел и рассказывать о реальном положении вещей.
Телефоны отдела: 9126866, 9111535
А так же вешайте инфо здесь под тегом /хроника пожара/ /адресная помощь/ /отчёты о помощи/ /!Списки людей/+ область

Свои организационные советы оставляйте здесь в комментах http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/40523.html

РАССТАВЛЯЙТЕ ТЕГИ, ИНАЧЕ СООБЩЕНИЯ БУДУТ ТЕРЯТСЯ !!!
в том числе, в старых сообщениях
————————————–
Сборная информация по областям (обновляется)

http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/48852.html – Москва и Московская область
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/35030.html – Нижегородская область
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/52154.html – Воронежская область
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/51954.html – Рязанская область
http://community.livejournal.com/pozar_ru/50817.html – Санкт-Петербург
остальные регионы смотрите по тегам

Ban on wheat exports sends global prices skyrocketing

RUSSIA BANS GRAIN EXPORTS! 8-5-2010, posted with vodpod

Russia’s decision to ban wheat exports for the rest of 2010 after a drought that destroyed one-fifth of the country’s crop sent prices soaring Thursday to the highest level in two years. Wheat prices have risen more than 80 percent since early June.

By News Wires

AP – Russia’s decision to ban wheat exports for the rest of the year sent prices for the grain soaring Thursday to the highest level in two years.

The rally in wheat also helped drive up prices for corn, oats and soybeans. That’s good news for U.S. farmers, whose wheat will help make up some of the shortfall in exports from Russia and other countries with damaged crops such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Canada.

“The American farmer is walking into a gold mine because America is one of the few countries in the world that grew a good wheat, corn, and soybean crop. We have a ton in storage,” said Tom Grisafi, who trades commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade.

The sharp rise in commodity prices this summer also makes it more likely that U.S. shoppers will have to pay a bit more for bread, cereal or pasta in the next two to six months, said Ephraim Leibtag, an economist with the U.S.  Department of Agriculture.

Russia, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, said Thursday that it was cutting off wheat exports from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31 because a severe drought this summer has already destroyed one-fifth of the country’s crop. It will also ban exports of wheat flour, barley, rye and corn. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said whether the ban was extended into 2011 would be decided after the harvest.

Wheat prices have risen more than 80 percent since early June and notched their biggest monthly gain in July in at least 51 years. Prices for September delivery shot up 60 cents, or 8.3 percent, to $7.8575 a bushel Thursday, the maximum one-day jump allowed. December wheat jumped 55.75 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $8.1125 a bushel.

CBOT rules say that contract prices can rise up to 60 cents in one day.

That limit is expanded to 90 cents the day following a maximum rise.

Other grains also rose. Corn for September delivery gained 3.25 cents to $4.035 a bushel, while December corn added 3 cents to $4.18 a bushel.  November soybeans gained 4.75 cents to $10.29 a bushel.

Food manufacturers generally have hedges in place that have allow them to buy grain at prices lower than current futures contracts, said Tom Graves, a food industry analyst with Standard & Poor’s Equity Research. If the rally lasts for another quarter or into next year, however, he said companies would likely begin to pass higher costs to consumers. General Mills declined to comment on its pricing strategy or hedges.

Despite wheat’s huge rally since early June, it’s still a far cry from the 2007-08 run-up. Bad weather and demand for biofuels sent grains to record prices in summer 2008, sparking food crises in developing countries.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization on Wednesday cut its wheat production forecast Wednesday by nearly 4 percent to 651 million metric tons, but said fears of another food crisis were “not justified at this point” because of existing large global stockpiles of wheat.

In other commodity trading Thursday, energy prices fell while metals were mixed.

Natural gas for September delivery fell 13.9 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $4.598 per 1,000 cubic feet in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.  September crude dropped 46 cents to $82.01 a barrel, and heating oil lost 1.54 cents to $2.1868 a gallon.

December gold edged up $3.40 to $1,199.30 an ounce, while September silver added 4.3 cents to $18.321 an ounce. September copper dropped 5.1 cents to $3.3535 a pound.

Sixteen years in jail…for videotaping a police officer in Maryland

Motorcycle traffic violation – Cop pulls out gun, posted with vodpod

Sixteen years in jail… for videotaping a police officer

A motorcyclist in the US is facing up to 16 years in prison for filming a state trooper who pulled him over for speeding.

The incident took place in March this year when Anthony Graber, an Air National Guard staff sergeant who had never before been arrested, was filming himself driving his motorbike (albeit, over the speed limit). When a non-uniform officer pulls him over, he continues to film.

Graber’s potential sentence has sparked criticism around the country. Civil rights groups say that filming police officers is not an offence, and argue that in this case, Graber is being punished for revealing poor behaviour on the part of the trooper concerned (who brandished his gun without identifying himself).

DEC Pakistan Floods Appeal

DEC Pakistan Floods Appeal, posted with vodpod

Pakistan’s Greatest Flood Ever–In Pictures

[The following photos thanks to Maqsood Kayani.]

People carry their belongings where heavy flooding destroyed homes in Nowshera, Pakistan on Monday. The disaster has killed up to 1,500 people and forced millions to flee their homes. (Mohammad Sajjad / AP)

A bridge is washed away following flooding in the Swat region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province on Monday. The United Nations and the United States announced $10 million in emergency aid for Pakistan on Sunday. (W. Khan / EPA)

Flood survivors walk over a makeshift suspension bridge built by the Pakistan army after floods washed away the iron bridge in Chakdara, near Mingora in the Swat valley on Monday. (Naveed Ali / AP)

People camp along railway tracks on Monday after their homes were destroyed by flooding in Nowshera. (Mohammad Sajjad / AP)

Pakistan army soldiers pass a baby as they help people flee from their flooded village in Taunsa near Multan on Sunday. The army deployed 30,000 troops but thousands remain trapped by floodwaters. (Khalid Tanveer / AP)

Residents scramble to recover water bottles dropped from a Pakistan Air Force helicopter on Monday, Aug. 2 in Nowshera, Pakistan. Rescue workers and troops in northwest Pakistan struggled to reach thousands of people affected by the country’s worst floods since 1929. (Daniel Berehulak / Getty Image

Ikramulla, 37, stands near a pen where he lost a handful of water buffalo to floods in Nowshera, on Aug. 1. (Adrees Latif / Reuters)

Men assist residents in crossing the Islamabad Peshawar tollway, parts of which were washed away by heavy floods, in Charsadda, Pakistan, on July 31. (Faisal Mahmood / Reuters)

Houses are submerged in Dera Ismail Khan on July 31. (Ishtiaq Mahsud / AP)

A man tries to cross a makeshift bridge to escape his flooded home in Nowshera on July 31. (Adrees Latif / Reuters)

Stranded Pakistani villagers wait for rescue helicopters on their house in Nowshera, Pakistan, on July 30. (Mohammad Sajjad / AP)

An aerial view shows Nowshera city submerged in floodwaters caused by heavy monsoon rains on July 30. (Mohammad Sajjad / AP)

Residents take shelter on high grounds from floods in Risalpur,in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province on Friday, July 30. (Adrees Latif / Reuters)

A boy hangs on to the front of a cargo truck while passing through a flooded road in Risalpur on July 30. Three days of heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, pulling down bridges and flooding towns. (Adrees Latif / Reuters)

Pakistani residents stand by flood water that entered a residential area of Muzaffarabad on July 30. (Sajjad Qayyum / AFP – Getty Images)

The “Summer Camp Of Destruction”–Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town

by Max Blumenthal* With the enthusiastic participation of Israeli teenagers and egged on by cheering civilian bystanders, on July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. Max Blumenthal’s eye-witness report serves as a further demonstration that Israeli youth are raised to embrace racism and hatred instead of justice and democracy.

Uprooted Bedouin villagers.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them.

The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form of JNF forests.

Video of the demolition of al-Arakib

The “Summer Camp Of Destruction”: Israeli High …, posted with vodpod

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?

I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation.

Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family’s home.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

Israeli police youth volunteers pick through the belongings an al-Arakib family.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest issue of Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians being expelled to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family fleeing al-Arakib last week. The headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)

The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including youth as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are teenagers), is one of many programs designed to incorporate Israeli children into the state’s military apparatus. It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human.

The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.

The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56% of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Knesset – why the next generation wants apartheid. Indeed, the widespread indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military apparatus is a central factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be difficult for any adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-Arakib, where adults in heroic warrior garb encourage him to participate in and gloat over acts of massive destruction, with even a trace of democratic values.

Youth volunteers extract belongings from village homes as bulldozers move in.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann, “obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.” Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste

…and the destruction begins.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

Max Blumenthal Award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party”, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Timesbestseller.

Source: http://maxblumenthal.com

Israel’s Teenage Barbarians at al-Arakib

Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family’s home.

Photo: Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News  (Voltairenet.org)

The Bedouin Village of al-Arakib

By Lawrence Davidson

On July 26, 2010 Israeli police armed with tear gas, a water canon, and two helicopters forced the 200 Bedouin residents of the southern Israeli village of al-Arakib out of their homes. Most of the furniture was then removed from the 45 buildings of the village and bulldozers used to flattened the buildings. It is to be noted that the victims of this act are not residents of the Occupied Territories. They are non-Jewish citizens of the state of Israel.

The news of these home demolitions made it to CNN in a short report entitled Bedouins Evicted from Village in Southern Israel. The Bedouin families explained that this was ancestral land on which they had lived for generations going back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. They even have their original land deeds. Israeli government officials explained that they did not care because they chose not to recognize the Bedouin claim. Why not? Well, all the land of Israel is reserved for the Jewish people and these folks are not Jewish. As far as police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld was concerned, that meant they were living there “illegally.” The government expects the Bedouin to move to “reservations” that have been set aside for them.

This sort of thing happens all the time in “the only democracy in the Middle East.” According to theIsraeli Committee Against Home Demolitions over 24,000 Palestinian homes have been torn down or blown up in the Occupied Territories alone. The vast majority of similarly destroyed homes in Israel proper are also those of Palestinians, making Israel’s law of eminent domain a racist weapon. In the case of al-Arakib, the Israeli government says it will be turning the village land into part of a new “Jewish National Fund forest.” But there is every indication that the area will eventually be opened to Jewish settlement, with preference given to “young couples in the army.” Sometimes the Bedouin serve in the IDF, but they won’t qualify for this future perk.

So far this is a story that can be replicated thousands of times and thus just another day in the life of Israel’s segregated non-Jews. So why draw attention to the quite ordinary fate of the 200 people from al-Arakib? The answer to this question comes from the following line in the CNN report, “the Israeli forces arrived in the village accompanied by busloads of civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished.” This makes the whole incident a ‘sit up and take notice’ kind of event.

II. Israel’s Teen Age Police Volunteers

This sentence in the CNN report caught the eye of members of Ta’ayush, a small movement within Israel that organizes joint Palestinian-Jewish resistance to the Israeli occupation. They wanted to identify who the “cheering civilians” might be and so sent a delegation to al-Arakib soon after the demolitions took place. There they interviewed the village leaders and others, all of whom are now camped out in tents at the site of their demolished homes. The report of what they learned, accompanied by pictures, is now posted on the web. Here is some of what it says:

1. The cheering civilians were all Israeli Jewish high school students who had volunteered as “police civilian guards” to take part in this assault.

2. These teenagers did more then cheer. “Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings.” In the process they vandalized the sites, “smashing windows and mirrors…and defacing family photographs.” With the furniture piled up outside, the students “lounged around” on it while waiting for the bulldozers. This was done “in plain sight of the owners.”

3. While the bulldozers were doing their work, the teens “celebrated.”

III. What Does it All Mean?

The incorporation of Jewish youth into the racist and destructive pattern of behavior exhibited in this incident is almost inevitable. You simply cannot raise up generation after generation within an environment of officially sanctioned racism and not get many of the young seeking confirmation of their place in the community through unjust socio-political actions. We can expect to hear more about this sort of officially organized youth thuggery in Israel. It is a logical tactic for the state to use, particularly at a time when the country is becoming increasingly criticized and isolated.

Nor is this sort of thing historically unique. Reading about this incident one can see intimations of the youth organizations of Fascist Italy and Spain, Nazi Germany, and Communist China during the Cultural Revolution. More explicitly though, one can see in this two more immediate precedents. The first is Vladimir Jabotinsky’s youth movement Betar. Up until his death in 1940 Jobotinsky was the leader of the Zionist Revisionsts, the most militant, and often most terror prone, of pre-1948 Zionists. Likud and its kin are successors of the Revisionist movement. As part of this history, Betar was founded in 1923 in order to “educate its members with a military and nationalistic spirit.” The teens at al-Arakib are a good match. The second precedent, and one noted in the Ta’ayush report, are the youth involved in the violent Israeli settler movement. The Ta’ayush investigators observed that the behavior of the teenage volunteers at al-Arakib was “strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of the Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.”

I will end this analysis on a personal note. I grew up in a liberal and secular Jewish American household that adhered to the values of equity and justice in their idealized American forms. At the time we all thought that these were perfectly compatible with Jewish teachings. Following from those values, as a teenager I involved myself in the civil rights movement and the resistance against war in Viet Nam. It seemed not only the right thing, but also the natural thing to do. On rare occasion some of my adult relatives used negative Yiddish terms to refer to African-Americans, but that was the closest I ever came to experiencing illiberal sentiments among Jews. Then in 1972, as part of a wider visit to the Middle East, I spent ten days in Israel. It was a real culture shock mainly because for the first time I met openly racist Jews, many of them Americans of my own age.

The shock of those ten days has worn off long ago. But it was replaced by a lasting conviction that Zionism is bad for the Jews in exact proportion to its negative impact on the Palestinians. As the Zionists ethnically cleanse and otherwise destroy Palestinians and their society, they destroy Judaism and mutate themselves, and all others who support them, into barbarians. That includes those teenagers at al-Arakib. It is a matter of ends equaling means and so cannot be otherwise. That is why all Jews would do well to heed the words of Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), an emancipated American slave and fighter for African American dignity, “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”

Lawrence Davidson is a Professor of Middle East History at West Chester University in West ChesterPennsylvania.He is the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University Press of Florida, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and, co-author with Arthur Goldschmidt of the Concise History of the Middle East, 8^th and 9^th Editions (Westview Press, 2006 and 2009). His latest book is entitled Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentucky Press, 2009). Professor Davidson travels often and widely in the Middle East. He also has taken on the role of public intellectual in order to explain to American audiences the impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Opposition leader held in Kyrgyzstan

05.08.2010 22:27

Kyrgyzstan opposition leader Urmat Baryktabassov was arrested on Thursday, following clashes between police and demonstrators, dpa reported.

Baryktabassov and his supporters planned to kill members of the government, President Roza Otunbayeva said.

She said the authorities had the situation under control.

Earlier, police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of demonstrators and prevent Baryktabassov and his supporters from entering the capital, Bishkek.

At one checkpoint 20 kilometres from the city the situation escalated, with special forces using armoured personnel carriers and water cannon to stop the protesters, who were carrying sticks and stones.

Hundreds of Baryktabassov’s supporters also gathered outside parliament, despite the blockade and demanded the resignation of the interim government.

Tensions have gripped the former Soviet republic since the ouster of president Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April and the ethnic clashes which followed two months later, killing 2,000 people.

But the interim government Thursday denied reports that Bishkek had declared a state of emergency.

Elections are due in the coming months.

Russia fires pose nuclear threat, death toll hits 50

* Death toll rises to 50 from forest fires

* Emergencies Ministry warns of nuclear threat

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

MOSCOW, Aug 5 (Reuters) – The Russian government warned on Thursday that the country’s deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades posed a nuclear threat if they are not contained, as the death toll rose to 50 and the blazes continued to spread.

The worst heatwave in more than a century is set to intensify on Friday, with record temperatures of 40 celsius (104 fahrenheit) expected and to continue into the next week, weather forecasters said.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a ban on exports of grain and grain products from Aug. 15 until December, and his spokesman said it would apply also to contracts already signed.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said heat from fires in the Bryansk region, which already has nuclear contamination from the Chernobyl disaster more than 20 years ago, could release harmful radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

“In the event of a fire there, radionuclides could rise (into the air) together with combustion particles, resulting in a new pollution zone,” he said on state television, without going into detail.

Shoigu added two fires had already broken out in the Bryansk region, some 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Moscow, but they were quickly contained