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Propaganda Alert! FAO claims world food prices 'stable in January after 3 months of falls'

Catherine Hornby
Reuters
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:34 UTC
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World food prices stabilised in January after falling in the previous three months as a rebound in oils prices offset declines in cereals and sugar, the United Nations' food agency said on Thursday.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 210 points in January, unchanged from December, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.

The Rome-based agency also raised its view of world cereal output in 2012 to 2.302 billion tonnes, up 20 million tonnes from its previous forecast.

Its outlook for world cereal stocks by end of season in 2013 remained unchanged at 495 million tonnes, which will be down 3 percent from their opening level.

Comment: What do SOTT readers think of this nonsense from the UN? Have YOU noticed food prices falling?

U.S. food prices rising sharply: Up 9% from December to January, 15% increase on January 2012

China's inflation accelerates as 'abnormal' weather boosts food prices

India: Soaring food prices hurt family budget

German food prices spike due to extreme weather in 2012

Indonesia: Food prices soar as bad weather strikes

Higher than expected food prices increase Turkish inflation in January

Hong Kong food prices rise more than 100 percent since 2007

Argentina freezes supermarket prices in attempt to break inflation spiral brought on by skyrocketing food prices

South Africa: Price of food 'set to soar'

Sudan's inflation eases but food prices remain 'very high'

Global food prices double in ten years: Unsustainable population growth a significant factor

Irish politician calls for inquiry into rising food prices

January food prices rise in Kenya

      Read More...
Star of David

Australia was investigating 'Mossad agent' Zygier who died in Israeli jail

Peter Beaumont and Alison Rourke
Guardian
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:42 UTC
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© Nir Elias/Reuters
Ayalon jail, in Ramle, near Tel Aviv, where Ben Zygier was held incommunicado. He was found hanged in his cell.
Ben Zygier, Melbourne man known as Prisoner X, also questioned by reporter over spying before death in 2010

Extraordinary new details emerged on Wednesday about the alleged double life of Ben Zygier - known as "Prisoner X" - an Australian-Israeli national and reported Mossad agent, who died after being secretly detained in an Israeli prison in 2010.

In the midst of an escalating diplomatic storm over the 34-year-old's treatment and the revelation that he was being investigated by Australian authorities as a suspected Israeli agent who used Australian passports for operations, it emerged that he was confronted shortly before his arrest by an Australian journalist who accused him of being a spy.

As the scandal over Zygier's suicide, while being held incommunicado in Ayalon prison, continued to grow in Israel and Australia, it was also revealed by Australian news organisations that he was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation [ASIO] as one of three citizens suspected of using of Australian passports on behalf of Mossad.

More details of the case emerged as the Israeli government partially lifted its blanket ban on reporting any details of Zygier's imprisonment, first imposed by an Israeli court after his arrest.
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Bizarro Earth

New York police drop rape investigation because victim and assailants have 'low IQs'

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:38 UTC
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© Shutterstock
The mother of a girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted at the Martin De Porres Academy in New York says that police walked away from the investigation because her daughter and her attackers all have "low IQs."

The 15-year-old girl was attacked during a science class on May 8, The New York Daily News reported Tuesday after obtaining internal police documents from the mother's attorney.

Two mentally challenged boys forced her to perform oral sex, then tried to have anal sex with her. All the while, a third assailant "banged her on the head" in an effort to keep her pinned down, the News reported. When the school's social worker informed the girl's mother of what happened, she went to a hospital and got the police involved.
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Vader

At least 20 prisoners still missing from CIA 'black sites'

Cora Currier
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:26 UTC
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© Shutterstock
In one of President Barack Obama first acts in the White House, he ordered the closure of the CIA's so-called "black-site" prisons, where terror suspects had been held and, sometimes, tortured. The CIA says it is "out of the detention business," as John Brennan, Obama's pick to head the agency, recently put it.

But the CIA's prisons left some unfinished business. In 2009, ProPublica's Dafna Linzer listed more than thirty people who had been held in CIA prisons and were still missing.

Some of those prisoners have since resurfaced, but at least twenty are still unaccounted for.
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Cowboy Hat

Obama signs executive order to defend U.S. infrastructure from cyberattacks


Raw Story
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:15 UTC
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Warning that cyberattacks pose a danger to US security, President Barack Obama signed an executive order designed to better protect critical infrastructure from computer hackers.

Obama, in his annual State of the Union speech to a joint session of the US Congress, said the United States is facing a "rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks."

"We know hackers steal people's identities and infiltrate private email," he said. "We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.

"Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems," Obama said.

"We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."

Obama said his executive order would "strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy."
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Sheriff

Did the police start fire that killed Christopher Dorner?

Paul Owen
Guardian
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:55 UTC
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© KABC-TV/AP
In this image taken from video provided by KABC-TV, the cabin where ex-police officer Christopher Dorner is believed to be barricaded inside is in flames.
Audio recording purporting to be of police scanner conversation during raid includes line 'we're gonna go forward ... with the burn', although this may be reference to tear gas

A six-day hunt for a former policeman suspected of a killing spree in California ended on Wednesday when a cabin in the mountains above LA went up in flames.

A body suspected to be that of Christopher Dorner was found in the ruins of the building. Dorner is suspected to have killed four people in a vendetta against LA police officers and their families; the fourth was an officer from San Bernardino County Sherrif's department killed in a shootout at the cabin on Tuesday night.

Dorner had threatened to bring "warfare" to the LAPD, having claimed he had been the subject of racism when he was sacked from his job as a policeman there. Rory Carroll has the full story.

It is not yet clear how the fire at the cabin was started, but there is speculation that the police's actions triggered the fire.

The audio track of this video purports to be the conversation on police scanners as they surrounded the cabin where Dorner was hiding. The Guardian cannot confirm that the audio track is a genuine recording of the police scanner.

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Eye 2

Alleged victims to sue BBC and TV host's estate over sex abuse claims

Laura Smith-Spark and Susannah Palk
CNN
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:29 UTC
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BBC star raped dozens, police say
Dozens of alleged sexual abuse victims of the late BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile are suing both the British broadcaster and Savile's estate, a lawyer said Wednesday.

A recent police investigation, conducted after Savile's death, suggested that the DJ and children's entertainer could be among the most prolific abusers in the country's history.

Some of alleged sexual assaults occurred on BBC premises, police said.

Alan Collins, of the law firm Pannone, said it had prepared 31 cases so far against Savile's estate "and others including the BBC."

"The purpose of issuing the writ is to protect our clients' position and to seek management directions from the court to ensure the claims are administered as efficiently as possible," Collins said in a statement.

The attorney said he could not comment in detail about the nature of the cases or the allegations, but said they "range in seriousness from inappropriate behavior to serious sexual abuse."

An anonymity order has been put in place "given the highly sensitive nature of the case," the law firm said.
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Vader

Obama defends drone assassinations in State of the Union address

Barry Grey
World Socialist Web Site
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:53 UTC
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© Latuff
The most significant point in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night was a passing and euphemistically worded reference to his program of extra-judicial drone assassinations. "Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans," he declared.

Every congressman, senator, cabinet member, Supreme Court justice and general in the House chamber knew that with that statement Obama was defending his asserted power to secretly order the assassination of anyone in any part of the world, including American citizens. The president went on to make clear he was intent on making state murder a permanent and completely institutionalized government function.

His administration, he said, had worked "tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework" to guide such operations. He went on to indicate he might be open to suggestions for giving the assassination program a fig leaf of "transparency" and legality, pledging to "engage with Congress to ensure... our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances..."
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Vader

The War in Mali and AFRICOM's Agenda: Target China

William Engdahl
Global Research
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:47 UTC
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Part I: Africa's New Thirty Years' War?

Mali at first glance seems a most unlikely place for the NATO powers, led by a neo-colonialist French government of Socialist President Francois Hollande (and quietly backed to the hilt by the Obama Administration), to launch what is being called by some a new Thirty Years' War Against Terrorism.

Mali, with a population of some 12 million, and a landmass three and a half times the size of Germany, is a land-locked largely Saharan Desert country in the center of western Africa, bordered by Algeria to its north, Mauritania to its west, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Niger to its southern part. People I know who have spent time there before the recent US-led efforts at destabilization called it one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on earth, the home of Timbuktu. Its people are some ninety percent Muslim of varying persuasions. It has a rural subsistence agriculture and adult illiteracy of nearly 50%. Yet this country is suddenly the center of a new global "war on terror."

On January 20 Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron announced his country's curious resolve to dedicate itself to deal with "the terrorism threat" in Mali and north Africa. Cameron declared, "It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that...has an absolutely iron resolve..." [1] Britain in its colonial heyday never had a stake in Mali. Until it won independence in 1960, Mali was a French colony.
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War Whore

French military oversees power-sharing deal in 'former' colony, the Central African Republic

Patrick O'Connor
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:09 UTC
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Areva is the world's largest provider of nuclear power, from the mining of uranium through to supplying customers electricity. Areva is 90% owned by the French State. Areva's most important mines are in Central African Republic and Niger. Get it?
After deploying several hundred troops to the Central African Republic late last month, the French government has overseen the signing of a peace agreement between President François Bozizé and leaders of the rebel militias that had threatened to overrun the capital, Bangui.

As well as agreeing not to nominate for another term as president after 2016, Bozizé has sacked his government and appointed rebel-nominated Nicolas Tiangaye as prime minister. Tiangaye will soon establish a so-called national unity government ahead of fresh legislative elections next year.

The political realignment underway is being driven by the French government, which aims to reassert control over its former resource-rich colony and counter China's growing economic and diplomatic influence. The operation in the Central African Republic forms part of a wider drive by US and French imperialism to bolster their strategic domination over Africa through direct military interventions. The latest involves a French-led ground offensive in northern Mali and the stationing of US drones and French troops in neighbouring Niger.
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