Category: Sub-Saharan Africa

The Coming World Crisis

“Chapter 7 – The Coming World Crisis

[…]

Before the nations of the world ultimately embrace a system of global government, they must first have a reason to do so. Humanity, convinced that permenant world peace cannot be attanied without the creation of a powerful world authority capable of pretecting countries from one another, will eventually sacrifice the current world order – seeing no
alternative. Significant strides have already been made in this directionsince the turn of the century, end if history repeats itself, further “progress” will be made soon.

Two world wars have already been fought in the twentieth century. In each case, an aggresive power was used to ignite a crisis that drew in the rest of the world; and both times the aggressor was defeated. After each war, as supranational organization was established for the alleged purpose of
promoting world peace, first the League of Nations, then the United Nations. Each organization has brought us one step closer to the realization of a one world government. The United Nations today is the closest thing to world government that humanity has ever known. Unlike the incomplete League of Nations, which consisted of only 63 countries and did not include the US, the United Nations consists of 159 nations, nearly every country in the world. Its infrastructure is all-encompassing and includes the World Court, the UN peace-keeping forces, and specialized organizations ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to the World HealthOrganization (WHO). It oversees dozens of additional agencies ranging from UNESCO to UNICEF, covering virtually every aspect of life. The UN lacks only the power to implement and enforce its strategies.

Could a third world war be used to finally lead mankind to accept a New World Order? If so, how might such a war begin? Who would be its main players? And what would be the outcome? To answer these important questions we must examine those areas where current events and the blueprints of the conspirators coincide with what the Bible teaches must yet take place.

A Possible Scenario

I believe that insiders will initiate a world crisis only if they feel it isnecessary to get the public to accept their New World Order. The mere threat of a major world conflict could be enough to scare the public into accepting such a change-especially when coupled with the existing problems of world hunger and global debt, and the created panic over the environment. As their campaign slogan openly proclaims, “Global Problems Demand Global Solutions!” Historically, however, wars have been effective in advancing the cause of
world government; the fact is, major changes occur more easily during times of crisis.

Unlike the previous world wars in which Germany was the main instigator, the world’s next major conflict will undoubtedly be sparked by the hotbed of tensions surrounding the Middle East. If not Iraq a second time, then perhaps Iran or Syria.

This writer believes that Syria might play a significant role in ushering in the New World Order, if not as an instigator of war, then as a middle man for negotiating peace. It is too critical a nation to remain on the sidelines for very long and, contrary to popular belief, Syria -not Iraq- is the most powerful Islamic military state in the Middle East. It therefore merits close watching.

During the past several years, Syria appears to have been laying the groundwork for its own attack against Israel. Syrian troops now hold long sought after positions in Lebanon and have been prepared for such an invasion since early 1984. According to the USA Department of Defense publication, Soviet Military Power, Syria has also become the site of the largest Soviet arms build-up in the Third World, having contrasted for 19 billion dollars in military hardware. It currently boasts the largest number of Soviet military advisors of any Third World country. (1)

The Syrian government, meanwhile, has effectively turned the tables by falsely warning its people of a coming Israeli attack on Syria, although Israel has repeatedly denied such allegations. (2) According to the Jerusalem Post during one of Syria’s propaganda campaigns several years ago it took a personal statement from Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzak Shamir, to maintain peace. Shamir voiced his “incomprehension” at Syrian “nervousness”, “which, he said, had triggered several strong Soviet warnings to Israel in recent days.” (3) I beleive the Syrian government was deliberately misleading its people in order to justify its own “pre-emptive” strike against Israel down the road. For these reasons, I have chosen to use Syria as our example in this scenario (although a similar scenario could beconstracted using Iraq, Iran, or even Libya).

If the powers-that-be were to move Syria against Israel, it would be Syria’s fatal mistake, planned this way by the conspirators in order to precipitatea world crisis. Unlike previous invasions, the Jewish state this time would have almost no time to respond. Its back would be to the wall quickly as Syrian MIGs would strike over Jerusalem within 4 minutes. Israel would be faced with a very difficult decision -either allow itself to be conquered, or else launch its nuclear arsenal against Syria and possibly Iraq. In late 1986, “London’s Sunday Times printed an article stating that Israel may havea stockpile of as many as 200 nuclear warheads.” (4) So we know that a nuclear exchange is a very real possibility.
There is an Old Testament prophesy concerning Damascus, the capital of Syria, which has yet to be fulfilled. Isaiah proclaimed: “See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins.” (Is. 17:1). As it is, Damascus is the oldest standing city in the world, never having experienced mass destruction. This prophesy must be fulfilled some time before the return of Christ.

Having lost several thousand of its military advisors in the exchange and with world opinion seemingly turned against Israel for her use of nuclear force, the Soviet Union could seize this opportunity to do what it has long desired – move against Israel. Arab pressure on the Soviets to invade Israel would add to the temptation.

If the Soviet Union came to the rescue of Syria, it would suddenly find itself on opposite sides with the United States. What could happen next is unthinkable. Mankind will have been brought to the brink of destruction.

Wicked man high places have been contemplating such a crisis for years. In a letter to the Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini dated 15 Agust 1871 Albert Pike, the leader of the Illuminati’s activities in the United States and the head of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry at the time, describeda distant final war, which he felt would be necessary to usher in the New World Order. (5) According to Pike, this conflict between two future superpowers would be sparked by first igniting crisis between Islam and Judaism. He went on to write:

We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which, in all its horror, will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism, the origin of savagery and of most bloody turmoil. Then, everywhere, the people, forced to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization; and multitudes, disillusioned with Christianity whose deistic spirits will be from that moment on without direction and leadership, anxious for an ideal but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the uiversal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out into public view; a manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time. (6) (*)

Should such a crisis be permitted to occur, the amount of destruction would be staggering. Humanity would tremble with fear believing that man is about to destroy himself. For even if Soviet Union or the United States were eliminated as military powers, over 30 countries would still have nuclear capacity. It would be a time of despair and mass confusion. Add to this the resulting chaos of global financial markets, which are already on the brink of disaster; the economic turmoil would only contribute to the world’s state of panic.

(1) US Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power, 1986 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1986), 133

(2) Post Diplomatic Correspondent, “Jerusalem incomprehension at Syriannervousness,” The Jerusalem Post, (12 April 1984): 1, col. 1-2.

(3) Ibid.

(4) “Israel’s Nuclear Prowess – A Leak by Design?” US News and World Report(10 November 1986): 8.(5) Salem Kirban, Satan’s Angels Exposed (Roseville, GA: Grapevine Books, 1980), 158-161(6) Myron Fagan, The Illuminati-CFR, Emissary Publications, TP-107, 1968.
This letter between Pike and Mazzini is now catalogued in the British Museum in London (According to Salem Kirban, Satan’s Angels Exposed, 164). Parts of this letter are also quoted in “Descent Into Slavery” by Des Griffin

(*) It is a pure coincidence that the most powerful figures of the Middle East are Freemasons? Have they been destined to trigger the conflict about which Albert Pike wrote? A prominent Arab Christian leader recently informed me that according to his contacts in Lebanon, King Assad of Syria and King Hussain of Jordan are both Freemasons. If this is true, we could be closer to the New World Order than people realize. (He was uncartain about whetherSaddam Hussain belonged to the same secret society.)

A few months ago, the son of this same Arab Christian gave me a masonic document – a membership certificate – which he found in Lebanon, issued by a Phoenician Lodge located in Lebanon. However, the document notes that the Lodge is under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Jordan, which is under the authority of the Arab Supreme Council. For at least several centuries,Jordan has been a bastion of secret societies in the Middle East and has much more influence in the regions behind-the-scenes politics than most people realize. The same masonic symbol appearing on our dollar bill and found at ancient occult worship sites throughout the world, the all-seeing eye, is prominently displayed on the certificate.

Source: “En Route to Global Occupation” by Gary H. Kah, 1991, [Huntington House Publishers, Lafayette, Louisiana]

Tanrıyı Kıyamete Zorlamak – Kağan Kurt – 1.Bölüm by HoneyMedia

September 17, 2011
Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business

Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business

By Ayla Albayrak

As Turks returned Monday from a month of fasting and holidays over Ramadan, their government proudly declared the amount of aid they had gathered together to send to fellow Muslims in Somalia: More than $237 million.

Aid campaigns are commonplace during Muslims’ holy fasting month Ramadan, in line with Islamic principles of charity, sadaka, to poorer fellow Muslims. And Somalia is suffering from a severe humanitarian crisis caused by draught and decades-long political conflict, so the aid was timely.

Reuters

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, top, and his wife, Emine Erdogan, visit a camp for displaced people in Mogadishu last month.

But the scale of the government campaign and of the money raised was unusual for Turkey, which despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world can still be considered a developing country by many standards. Until recently, it had a rather small budget for foreign aid.

The Somalia campaign was promoted personally by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who also visited Somalia in August. He was followed by the main opposition party’s leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Huge Somalia posters covered buildings in main Turkish cities, and images of starved children filled Turkish TV screens as most of Turkey’s mainstream media flocked to the country to document the aid effort.

“Our work to send aid to the friend- and brother-nation of Somalia will continue by land and sea,” the prime minister’s emergency management agency, AFAD, said in a statement Monday.

More than Muslim principles of brotherhood are at work here. Last year, President Abdullah Gul spelled out Turkey’s ambition to raise its foreign aid game, boosting its aid budget above $1 billion as it sent support to Japan, Haiti, Pakistan, Palestine and Sudan, among others.

“A great country,” Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said, “used to be evaluated according to its GDP, its income per capita and its purchasing power parity. But actually, true greatness means being able to aid other countries in need in the name of humanity without waiting for anything in return.”

Turkey has made no secret of its desire to increase its influence in the Middle East and Muslim Africa, much of which used to be administered by the Ottoman empire until its collapse early last century. Last year Turkey said it was increasing the number of its embassies in Africa to 30 from a dozen. Turkey also became a member of the African Development Bank.

Turkey’s generosity isn’t so apparent when it comes to welcoming Somali refugees, though. Turkey only accepts asylum applications from European citizens. Those Somalis allowed to stay in Turkey while they complete applications for asylum in other countries aren’t allowed to stay in cities. They are sent to provincial Anatolian towns to wait.

via Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.

September 6, 2011
On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life

On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life

Thomas Seibert

Sep 5, 2011

African immigrants on the streets of the Kumkapi district in Istanbul. Kerem Uzel / Narphotos

ISTANBUL // When the muezzin’s call for the dhuhr prayer rang out from the Katip Kasim Mosque in a rundown neighbourhood of Istanbul this week, dozens of men arrived. But it was no ordinary crowd that gathered midday in the mosque: about half of the men were Africans.

“Istanbul’s Mogadishu” is the name Turkish newspapers call the area around the mosque in the Yenikapi district close to the Sea of Marmara on the European side of the Turkish metropolis. The street in front of the 17th-century mosque, Katip Kasim Camii Sokak, has been dubbed “Somalia Street”, because the neighbourhood has become home for migrants from across Africa, many of whom do not have Turkish residence permits and face expulsion if arrested by the police.

Some have been here for years.

“I want to go to the United States,” said Ali, 39, from Senegal, who only gave his first name. Like other Africans in the neighbourhood, he declined to be photographed because of fear of the police. Ali said he had come to Istanbul two years before and was earning money by selling perfume on the street in upscale and tourist parts of Istanbul.

“It is hard,” he said. “But I live together with friends, so it becomes a little easier.”

The area around the mosque is also home to Kurds, Armenians and members of other minority ethnic groups. Streets are dotted with telephone shops offering cheap calls to African countries and to Asian nations. Laleli, a quarter frequented by Eastern European tourists for cheap clothes and other supplies, is just up the road. Turks share tea with Africans and Eastern Europeans at cafes that dot the sidewalks.

On Somalia Street, Johnny Kitoko-Mboma, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, left a telephone shop and set out for home, a small flat he has been sharing with his wife and two young children since they arrived in Istanbul several months ago.

“I am stuck here,” Mr Kitoko-Mboma said. “There is no work permit, there are no jobs, they do not give jobs to Africans.”

Mr Kitoko-Mboma, 34, said he and his family left Kinshasa because of violence.

“My mother and my father are dead,” he said, adding they were killed as a result of political strife. The family ended up in Turkey after a weeks-long journey that took them through Tunisia and Lebanon.

Now his money was running out.

“If I can find work, I want to stay here, but I have been told the Turks do not accept asylum seekers at all,” Mr Kitoko-Mboma said.

Turkey’s asylum laws grant refuge only to migrants from Europe. Refugees from all other countries face expulsion if they do not register with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

The commission tries to find countries willing to take them in, a process with an uncertain outcome that can take years. Refugees are allowed to stay in Turkey, but rarely are given work permits.

Turkey is a major transit country for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa who want to get to the West but lack the necessary documents.

There are no official figures for the number of Africans currently in the country, but Turks and Africans in Yenikapi agreed there are several hundred, if not thousands, in that part of Istanbul alone.

While they wait, many Africans in Yenikapi try to get by on odd jobs and avoid the police.

“Every now and then you find work for a few hours,” said Abdul, 28, from Eritrea. “It’s hard.”

Not all Africans on Somalia Street are illegal migrants. Issa Konyate, a businessman from Senegal, said he had been in Turkey for a year and had travelled frequently between Istanbul and Dakar. He said he trades in textiles, managing several Senegalese football players in Turkey and had also helped Turkish entrepreneurs to set up a factory in Senegal.

“It’s good business,” he said. “There are no problems.”

Africa has been on people’s minds in Turkey recently. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, flew to Somalia and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, travelled to a refugee camp in Kenya on separate visits. Turks donated US$200 million (Dh735m) in famine relief during Ramadan. Mr Erdogan has said Turkey would bring field hospitals to Mogadishu and rebuild schools and roads.

Turkish residents on Somalia Street said they felt pity with the African migrants.

“They are poor people,” said Salih Kartop, a Kurdish grocer in the neighbourhood. “Their countries are even poorer than Turkey. Some of them come in here and ask for a tiny piece of butter, not even a whole stick, because they cannot afford it.”

Asked about news reports of fighting and heavy drinking among the Africans, Mr Kartop shook his head.

“I haven’t heard anything like that, and I have been here for 10 years. Only people with money can make noise, if you don’t have money, what can you do?”

Atam Donukok, a Turk of Armenian descent, said most Africans were “very, very good people, super people”, although some were engaged in petty crime and drug dealing.

“But there are bad people everywhere, aren’t there?”

tseibert@thenational.ae

via On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life – The National.

September 5, 2011
Libya and Syria: The Neocon Plan to Attack Seven Countries in Five Years

Kurt Nimmo

In the video below, former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about the neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years. Included in the plan was an attack on Libya. Clark mentions the plan at two minutes, 26 seconds into the video.

The video was recorded on October 3, 2007, at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco.

Clark’s revelation is nothing new, although it reminds us that the attack on Libya fits into a larger context and there are horrific conflicts to come if the globalists have their way.

Following the election of Obama and a reshuffling of the same old deck in Congress in 2008, it was believed the bad old days of neocon wars were finally behind us. Obama said he would close down the wars and bring home the troops. Instead, he intensified the effort to spread chaos, mayhem and mass murder in the Middle East and South Asia, thus underscoring the fact there is absolutely no difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to creative destruction (it is telling that the neocon Michael Leeden has used the term – creative destruction is a Marxist concept).

Clark has talked about the neocon plan on several occasions. He said the following during a speech at the University of Alabama in October of 2006, recounting a conversation with a general at the Pentagon:

I said, “Are we still going to invade Iraq?” “Yes, Sir,” he said, “but it’s worse than that.” I said, “How do you mean?” He held up this piece of paper. He said, “I just got this memo today or yesterday from the office of the Secretary of Defense upstairs. It’s a… five-year plan. We’re going to take down seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we’re going to come back and get Iran in five years. I said, “Is that classified, that paper?” He said, “Yes Sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me, because I want to be able to talk about it.”

The neocons, of course, are merely one of a number of establishment factions, all of them reading from the same script. Obama’s attack on Libya and the impending attack on Syria under the ruse popularly known as the “Arab Spring” (pushed by elite NGOs and the CIA) is interchangeable with the Bush regime’s call to action against the Axis of Evil. The only difference between Democrat Obama and the (supposedly) Republican neocons (who have roots in Trotskyism) is that the neocons are decidedly Israeli-centric in their geopolitical stance.

The global elite do not care about Israel or any other nation-state, but are not above using the neocons – who are highly organized and motivated (despite propaganda depicting them as inept) – in their quest to destroy Arab and Muslim nationalism that directly threatens their drive for hegemonic rule (in particular, Sharia law with its restrictions on banking poses a threat to the banksters).

Syria is the next target followed by the big Kahuna, Iran. For the globalists, who are determined to wreck all nation-states and eradicate national sovereignty and borders, the fact this effort will precipitate the destruction of the “world’s policeman,” the United States, is an extra added bonus.

Multiple wars in multiple and far-stretched “theaters” will ultimately bankrupt the United States, as Ron Paul and a handful of others have warned. Obama has made if perfectly clear that the U.S. will not leave Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to continue attacking Pakistan and failed states in Africa where the CIA cut-out al-Qaeda has appeared on cue.

Wesley Clark’s warning is prescient, but nearly a decade too late. Clark is, at best,disingenuous because he himself a war criminal for the role he played in the slaughter of civilians in Yugoslavia.

www.infowars.com, September 2, 2011

September 4, 2011
How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger
Speculating with Lives

By Horand Knaup, Michaela Schiessl and Anne Seith

In recent years, the financial markets have discovered the huge opportunities presented by agricultural commodities. The consequences are devastating, as speculators drive up food prices and plunge millions of people into poverty. But investors care little about the effects of their deals in the real world.

The room in which the world’s food is distributed looks everything but appetizing. Bits of paper and disposable cups litter the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Sweaty men in bright yellow, blue or red jackets walk around, seemingly oblivious of the debris beneath their feet, waving their hands, shouting and scrapping over futures contracts for soybeans, pork bellies or wheat.

Here, in the trading room of the world’s largest commodity futures exchange, decisions are made about the prices of food — and, by extension, the fates of millions of people. Those decisions affect both hunger on the planet and the wealth of individual investors.

For Alan Knuckman, there is hardly a nicer place than the CBOT trading floor. “This is capitalism in its purest form,” the commodities expert raves. “This is where millionaires are made.” The 42-year-old’s face shines with a boyish glow — perhaps because he has never stopped playing.

Knuckman arrived here 27 years ago, and quickly advanced from his first job as a runner in the trading room to a trader. He worked for brokerage firms, soon established his own firm and is now an analyst with Agora Financials, a consulting firm specializing in commodities investments. He also writes a newsletter that offers investment tips. “I trade in anything you can get in and out of quickly,” he says candidly. “I’m here to make money.”

‘I Believe in the Market’

How he makes money doesn’t make any difference to Knuckman. He draws no distinctions among commodities like petroleum, silver or food products. “I don’t believe in politics,” he says. “I believe in the market, and the market is always right.”

How does he feel about exploding food prices? For Knuckman, they are purely a reflection of supply and demand. And speculators? They’re good for the market, because they predict developments early on. Is there excessive speculation? “I don’t see it.”

It’s a surprising comment. Never before has so much cash flowed into financial transactions involving agricultural commodities. In the last quarter of 2010 alone, the amount of money invested in these commodities tripled compared with the previous quarter. There has been a lot of money in the market since the countries of the world tried to overcome the financial crisis with massive economic stimulus programs and bailout packages.

Agricultural commodities attract investors who are no more interested in grain than they were previously in dot-com companies or subprime mortgages. They range from giant pension funds to small private investors searching for new, safer investment options.

Satisfying the Demand

The large index and agriculture funds now being offered by the banks seem to have come along just at the right time to satisfy this demand. All of a sudden, the world’s food supplies have become a tradable commodity, as easy to handle as stocks.

The downside is that food prices are rising in parallel to the ravenous demand for agricultural securities. In March, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported new record high prices, which even surpassed the prices during the last major food crisis in 2008. According to the FAO’s Food Price Index, overall food costs rose by 39 percent within one year. Grain prices went up by 71 percent, as did prices for cooking oil and fat. The index had reached 234 points in July, only four points below its all-time high in February.

“The age of cheap food is over,” predicts Knuckman, noting that this can’t be such a bad thing for US citizens. “Most Americans eat too much, anyway.”

For his fellow Americans, who spend 13 percent of their disposable income on food, the price hike may be an annoyance. But for the world’s poor, who are forced to spend 70 percent of their meager budgets on food, it’s life-threatening.

Since last June alone, higher food prices have driven another 44 million people below the poverty line, reports the World Bank. These are people who must survive on less than $1.25 (€0.87) a day. More than a billion people are starving worldwide. The current famine in the Horn of Africa is not only the result of drought, civil war and corrupt officials, but is also caused by prohibitively high food prices.

‘Side Effects’

Knuckman refers to the fact that the poorest of the poor can no longer pay for their food as “undesirable side effects of the market.” Halima Abubakar, a 25-year-old Kenyan woman, is experiencing these supposed side effects at first hand.

She is sitting in her corrugated metal hut in Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest slum, wondering what to put on the table this evening for her husband and their two children. Until now, the Abubakars were among the higher earners in Kibera. The family managed to feed itself adequately with the monthly salary of €150 that Halima’s husband earns as a prison guard.

But that has suddenly become difficult. The price of corn meal, the most important food staple in Kenya, is now at a record high after increasing by more than 100 percent in only five months. Potato prices went up by a third, milk is also more expensive, and so are vegetables.

Abubakar doesn’t know why this is the case. She only knows that she suddenly has to pay close attention to how she spends the family’s meager daily food budget of about 300 shillings (€2.30). Her first step was to switch to a cheaper brand of corn meal. It doesn’t taste of much, but at least it fills one’s stomach. She sometimes goes without her own lunch so that her children can have enough to eat.

List of Possible Reasons

“More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in April, describing the brutal effects of price increases on consumers in developing countries. The problem has many experts deeply concerned. The probable reasons for the price explosions are cited again and again at meetings and conferences. They include:
- Climate change, which leads to droughts, floods and storm, and thus to crop failures;
- The cultivation of biofuels, which takes valuable farmland out of food production;
- The global population, which is growing too fast for agricultural production to keep up;
- The emerging economies China and India, whose citizens are consuming greater quantities of higher quality food;
- The rising price of oil, which makes it more expensive to produce and ship food products;
- The rise in meat consumption, which means that more grain is needed for animal feed;
- Decades of neglecting agriculture, especially in hunger-prone regions.
All of these factors sound logical and plausible, and some undoubtedly contribute to the tense food situation. Yet they are not responsible for the excessive price hikes.

Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, is one of the few who is trying to set the record straight. The production of biofuel and other “supply shocks” — such as crop failures and export bans — were “relatively minor catalysts,” he wrote recently. “But they set off a giant speculative bubble in a strained and desperate global financial environment.” He identifies the true culprits as major investors who, as the financial markets have dried up, have invested heavily in the commodities trade, expanding it beyond all proportion. According to de Schutter, excessive speculation is the primary cause of the price increases. Indeed, closer inspection reveals that the reasons cited to date for the price hikes on food products are somewhat dubious.
- Part 2: Every Bubble Needs a Story
- Part 3: Number of Speculators Will Continue to Grow
- Part 4: ‘It’s the Government’s Responsibility to Feed People’
www.spiegel.de, 09/01/2011
September 2, 2011
AFTER ISRAEL DEPLOYS WARSHIPS TO RED SEA, IRAN SENDS WARSHIP & SUB OF ITS OWN

by Tiffany Gabbay

CAIRO (The Blaze/AP) — An official Iranian news agency says Iran is sending a submarine and a warship to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Press TV quotes the commander, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, as saying the deployment will serve the country’s interests and “convey the message of peace and friendship to all countries.”

The item on Press TV’s website Tuesday said the presence of the Iranian navy would “tighten security for all countries.”

Sayyari said the ships would also fight against pirates.

Somalia, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, is a base for many pirate gangs. The body of water is south of Iran.

Interestingly enough, however, Iran’s action comes on the heels of Israel sending two additional warships to the Red Sea border with Egypt following warnings that militants are planning another attack on southern Israel from Egyptian soil.

www.theblaze.com, August 30, 2011

August 31, 2011