Titles:

• Food prices to double by 2030, Oxfam warns
• Gaddafi to be told to stand down or face Apache attack
• British Think-Tank: Saudi, US Blunders Increasing Iran’s Might, Clout
• US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive, leaked cables reveal
• Pakistani military ‘bows to US pressure’ on Taliban

News Details:

Food prices to double by 2030, Oxfam warns
The average price of staple foods will more than double in the next 20 years, leading to an unprecedented reversal in human development, Oxfam has warned.The world’s poorest people, who spend up to 80% of their income of food, will be hit hardest according to the charity. It said the world is entering an era of permanent food crisis, which is likely to be accompanied by political unrest and will require radical reform of the international food system.Research to be published on Wednesday forecasts international prices of staples such as maize could rise by as much as 180% by 2030, with half of that rise due to the impacts of climate change.After decades of steady decline in the number of hungry people around the world, the numbers are rapidly increasing as demand outpaces food production. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of 1% in the next decade.A devastating combination of factors – climate change, depleting natural resources, a global scramble for land and water, the rush to turn food into biofuels, a growing global population, and changing diets – have created the conditions for an increase in deep poverty.”We are sleepwalking towards an age of avoidable crisis,” Oxfam’s chief executive, Barbara Stocking, said. “One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone. The food system must be overhauled.” The Oxfam report followed warnings from the UN last week that food prices are likely to hit new highs in the next few weeks, triggering unrest in developing countries. The average global price of cereals jumped by 71% to a new record in the year to April last month.

Gaddafi to be told to stand down or face Apache attack
According to the UK’s Guardian newspaper if South African president Jacob Zuma’s peace mission fails, Nato will deliver its heaviest blow to Libyan leader’s forces. Nato has only one question as it prepares to unleash Apache helicopters against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi this week, and Captain Ali Mohammed, one of the defenders of the besieged rebel city of Misrata, can supply the answer.British Apaches, together with French Tiger attack helicopters, will launch surgical strikes on Gaddafi’s forces besieging Misrata. They have the ability to destroy individual gun positions in the town of Zlitan, west of Misrata, with less risk to the civilian population kept there as human shields.But there is a problem. This kind of war takes time, and time is the commodity Nato does not have as critics complain it has extended the original United Nations no-fly zone mandate into what is regime change in all but name.The big question is whether the defenders will crumble under the onslaught, or fight with the same tenacity shown by their rebel enemy in Misrata. “If you use Apaches, it is sure they will run away,” said Mohammed. “There is a big difference between Gaddafi’s men and ourselves. I am defending my home, my family, my city. But Gaddafi’s forces do not believe in what they are doing.”Given enough time, the Apaches can take out gun positions one by one, but time is not on Nato’s side. Many members, notably Germany and Turkey, were reluctant partners from the start and at the United Nations China and Russia have complained that the western alliance did not consult over the extension of a mandate designed to protect civilians into what is a full-scale war. Nato needs victory quickly by breaking the will of Gaddafi’s troops.

British Think-Tank: Saudi, US Blunders Increasing Iran’s Might, Clout
A well-known British think-tank said the US mistakes in its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the harsh military approach adopted by the Saudi and Bahraini dictators against peaceful protesters have increased Iran’s might and power in the region. The June 2011 analysis written by Shashank Joshi for Chatemhouse noted the ongoing revolutions in the region, and said the current trend of affairs and developments will only serve Iran’s interests. It added that the US war on Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the recent Saudi invasion of Bahrain have all failed to materialize the western politicians’ premeditated plans and demands. The era of the Persian Gulf’s most iconic bête noire, Saudi born and raised Osama bin Laden, has drawn to a close. But outsiders persistently underestimate the degree to which it is a state – the Islamic republic of Iran – rather than a non-state group, al Qaeda, which today captures the strategic attention of those in the corridors of power in Riyadh, Manama, and Amman, the analysis said. Dangling a few hundred kilometers above the Gulf states, like a geopolitical Sword of Damocles, post-revolution Iran has long been the principal strategic concern for the tyrannical sheikdoms and emirates on the other side of the water, it said. And yet, the strenuous efforts to place Iran at the heart of pro-democracy uprisings reveal a more cynical and self-serving effort at threat inflation, distracting attention from the unavoidable reform agenda dodged for so long by the Persian Gulf Arab autocracies, the analysis continued.

US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive, leaked cables reveal
The Obama administration has been quietly putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive, according to leaked US embassy cables. But the jailing of a woman protester, Manal al-Sharif, after she posted online a video of herself at the wheel of a car in Khobar reveals the extent of the US diplomatic failure.The cables, part of the treasure trove allegedly given to WikiLeaks by the US soldier Bradley Manning, reveal previously unreported clashes over women’s rights.Dispatches from Riyadh describe Saudi Arabia as “the world’s largest women’s prison”. Those words are a quote from Wajeha al-Huwaider, a female campaigner with whom US diplomats have been in contact. She posted a video on YouTube in 2008 of herself driving. Claiming millions of Saudi women were prisoners in their homes, she challenged male control over work and travel.The billionaire tycoon Prince Waleed, a Saudi royal, assured a visiting Democratic congressman in July 2009 that King Abdullah did support women’s rights, the embassy noted optimistically. The driving ban was reportedly about to be overturned.Speaking at his 99-storey Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, Waleed said the ban was merely a “demeaning” tribal custom and that he “relished relating his run-ins with the kingdom’s religious conservatives. He was involved with the first public showings of films in the kingdom in many years. His wife has openly requested that women be allowed to drive. He supports French president Sarkozy’s campaign against women wearing coverings hiding their faces.”

Pakistani military ‘bows to US pressure’ on Taliban
Pakistan’s military will launch an offensive in the militant bastion of North Waziristan, a newspaper reported yesterday, days after the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said Islamabad must tackle sanctuaries for al-Qa’ida and the Taliban on the Afghan border. An understanding for an offensive in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary in Pakistan for militants fighting in Afghanistan, was reached when Ms Clinton and the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, visited Pakistan last week, Pakistan’s The News reported.

30 Jumada II 1432
2011/06/01