Tag Archives: fighting
A rush to evacuate as truce extended in Syria’s Homs city
A rush to evacuate as truce extended in Syria’s Homs city (AP) / 11 February 2014 Second round of peace talks in Geneva become mired in recriminations between government and opposition delegation. Aid officials rushed to evacuate more women, children and elderly from rebel-held areas that have been blockaded by government troops for more than a year in Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, after a UN-brokered ceasefire in the city was renewed for three more days on Monday. The truce, which began on Friday, has been shaken by continued shelling and shooting that prevented some residents from escaping and limited the amount of food aid officials have been able to deliver into the besieged neighbourhoods. UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos sharply criticised the two sides, saying UN and Syrian Red Crescent workers were “deliberately targeted.” The drama in Homs, where Amos said around 800 civilians have been evacuated so far, played out as activists on Monday reported new sectarian killings in Syria’s civil war. Al Qaeda-inspired rebels killed more than two dozen civilians, including an entire family, when they overran a village populated by minority Alawis on Sunday, Rami Abdurrahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. They also killed around 20 local fighters in the village, he said. The violence further rattled peace talks that entered their second round on Monday in Geneva — and which quickly became mired in recriminations between President Bashar Al Assad’s government and the opposition in exile. The two sides’ first face-to-face meetings adjourned 10 days ago, having achieved little. This time, the two appeared even further apart, with no immediate plans to even sit at the same table. UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was holding separate talks with each side. “The negotiations cannot continue while the regime is stepping up its violence against the Syrian people,” opposition spokesman Louay Safi told reporters after talks with Brahimi. The opposition insists the talks’ aim is to agree on a transitional governing body that would replace Assad. But Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said the issue of Assad stepping down was not on the agenda. “Please tell those who dream of wasting our time here in such a discussion to stop it,” he told a reporter. The events of the past few days have only underscored each side’s position. The government says it is trying to defeat an extremist, Al Qaeda-style insurgency. Syria’s opposition, in turn, points to government blockades of dozens of rebel-held areas that have caused widespread hunger and sickness among civilians as proof of the cruelty of Assad’s rule. The aid operation in Homs laid bare the desperation in the besieged areas. Homs, in central Syria, was one of the first cities to rise up against Assad, and while government forces have retaken much of the city, several rebel-held districts in its historic old center have been under a suffocating siege for more than a year. Many of those evacuated since Friday “were traumatized and weak,” Amos said in a statement. They reported “terrible conditions at the field hospital in the Old City, where the equipment is basic, there are no medicines and people are in urgent need of medical attention,” she said. She said around 800 had been evacuated since Friday, though the governor of Homs province put the number at around 1,070, including 460 evacuated on Monday. Under the UN-brokered truce, the government refused to allow males between the ages of 15 and 55 to leave, presuming them to be fighters. Those leaving are women, children and elderly. Amos said the truce had been extended for three days. The original truce ran from Friday to Sunday, but the continued shelling and shooting between the two sides severely limited efforts. Eleven people were killed by the fighting. Over the weekend, some women and elderly tried to leave but were unable to make their way through checkpoints to evacuation buses, according to Khaled Erksoussi, the head of operations of the Syrian Red Crescent. He said some food aid was brought into the areas over the weekend — “but not the quantity we had hoped for” — and none made it in on Monday. On Sunday, residents rushed through gunfire to reach UN vehicles carrying food that did make it in. Then they fought over the oil, sugar and other supplies, according to one activist in Homs who uses the nickname Eman Al Homsy for security reasons. “They didn’t care about death; the hunger was killing them,” Eman said. Erksoussi echoed the worries of activists who said they fear that once civilians are evacuated, fighting will only escalate. “We know that not all civilians will leave, but the fighting parties will claim that they did and step up the shelling and shooting,” he said by phone from Damascus. Around a quarter-million people in 40 districts besieged by government forces have been cut off from humanitarian aid for months, said Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program. In the Yarmouk area, on Damascus’ southern fringe, activists estimate over 100 people have died from hunger-related illness and a lack of medical aid because of a year-long blockade. The new sectarian killings came in the village of Maan, north of the central city of Hama. Hard-line Islamic fighters overran it on Sunday after mortars from the village hit rebels on a nearby road, according to Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory. On Monday, the Al Qaeda linked Nusra Front announced it had pushed out Islamic State rivals from the eastern province of Deir Al Zour after four days of clashes, the Syrian Observatory said. Meanwhile, a third batch of Syria’s chemical weapons material was shipped out of the country on a Norwegian cargo vessel, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Monday. The Hague, Netherlands-based OPCW, which is overseeing Syria’s attempts to destroy its chemical weapons, said an unspecified amount of chemicals used in making weapons has also been destroyed inside Syria. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Attacks strike fear into Kenyan business community
The Al-Shabab attack in Nairobi has struck fear into businesspeople across Kenya and especially… euronews, the most watched news channel in Europe Subscrib… Continue reading
Farm Subsidies: A Welfare Program For Agribusiness
t’s one of the most widely reviled federal programs. So why is Congress fighting to save farm subsidies? By The Week Staff | August 10, 2013 Most farmers are wealthier than the average American, with a household income of $87,289 in 2011 — 29 percent higher than the $67,677 average for all U.S. households Why is the farm bill so controversial? Critics contend that the subsidies it hands out are wasteful, illogical, and counterproductive — a welfare program for millionaires and giant agribusinesses. Over the last decade, the farm bill has cost taxpayers more than $168 billion. In theory, the program uses loans, price supports, and payments to protect family farmers from the fickle fluctuations of weather, price, and economic conditions, so that their businesses remain stable and Americans are ensured a steady supply of affordable food. In practice, the program keeps food prices high, costing consumers billions, while funneling most of its aid to giant agribusinesses and wealthy farmers. About 75 percent of total subsidies go to the biggest 10 percent of farming companies, including Riceland Foods Inc., Pilgrims Pride Corp., and Archer Daniels Midland. Among the “farmers” who get federal subsidies are Bruce Springsteen (who leases land to an organic farmer), Jon Bon Jovi (who owns bee colonies), former President Jimmy Carter, and billionaire media mogul Ted Turner. “The typical farmer has literally millions of dollars of wealth,” said Dan Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. What about the average farmer? He’s doing pretty well too. Despite droughts and high temperatures, farmers have enjoyed record crop-production levels and prices, as well as double-digit increases to the value of their land for the third year in a row in 2013. In fact, most farmers are wealthier than the average American, with a household income of $87,289 in 2011 — 29 percent higher than the $67,677 average for all U.S. households. And yet many still get taxpayer dollars to protect their incomes. In fact, the farm bill pays some farmers not to grow crops — in order to avoid oversupply that would drive food prices down for the rest of us. “Only an evil genius could have dreamed this up,” said Scott Faber, vice president for governmental affairs at the Environmental Working Group. How did the program start? Subsidies originated during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl catastrophe of the 1930s, when there was a genuine fear that the nation’s agricultural sector was on the brink of collapse. At that time, about a quarter of the country’s population lived in rural areas, and tens of thousands of American families found themselves literally in danger of “losing the farm.” So President Roosevelt pushed through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which pegged crop prices to their historic highs and introduced the policy of paying farmers not to produce. It was supposed to be a “temporary solution to deal with an emergency,” as Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace put it. But in 1949 the Agricultural Act was made permanent, and — more than six decades later — a version of that same legislation still exists today. Why not reform the program? Congress tried that in 1996, with the Freedom to Farm Act, which removed price supports and grain management in an attempt to let the free market dictate prices. That reform didn’t last long. As commodity prices fell and farmers began to complain, lawmakers caved in and introduced several new programs that continue today. They include the much-criticized “direct payments” to farmers — checks written regardless of market conditions or the farmer’s crop yields — and the controversial crop insurance program, which critics say has encouraged widespread fraud. In that program, taxpayers pick up 62 percent of any farmer’s insurance premiums and help fund payouts if a claim for crop damage is made. Why not kill subsidies altogether? Politics. The farm lobby has immense power in Washington, thanks to its generous contributions to congressional campaigns and political parties, and to the large number of legislators from farm states — most of them Republican. Democrats have also traditionally supported the farm bill because it contains food stamp funding. This year, that partnership broke down, when House Republicans passed a version of the farm bill that strips the legislation of its food stamp provisions for the first time since 1973. President Obama responded by threatening to veto any legislation that doesn’t include food stamp funding. At the moment, the situation is at a stalemate. What’s likely to happen? A deal will probably get cut that will keep farm subsidies fairly intact. The House version of the bill, in fact, contains some of the most generous farm spending in history: While ending direct payments, the legislation channels $8.9 billion into an expanded crop insurance program, which already ballooned from $1.5 billion in 2002 to $7.4 billion by 2011. In the House bill, moreover, the farm subsidies that used to expire every five years are made permanent. “It’s hard to understand how anyone in the House who calls himself a conservative could support this, but many did,” said Chris Chocola, president of the free-market-oriented Club for Growth. “They’re locking in historically high commodity prices at taxpayer expense.” New York City’s ‘farmers’ New Yorkers wouldn’t know it, but they live in a city of farmers. Over the last decade, the farm bill has paid out millions of dollars in subsidies to more than 1,500 city residents — 374 on the plush Upper East Side alone. They aren’t receiving payments for farms in the city, but for property they own elsewhere. Recipients include Mark F. Rockefeller, a fourth-generation heir of the famous family who was paid $342,634 to not farm from 2001 to 2011, so that his land in Idaho could return to its natural state. Other top New York farmers include a managing director at Wells Fargo bank, and a neurologist in Queens. “Payments are going to people in Manhattan who simply have invested in farmland and are about as far away from farmers as one could imagine,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the Environmental Working Group. “That should really make people wonder what on earth has happened to the farm program.” Continue reading
