Emerging global food crisis

The day World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its fight against hunger, fresh numbers from the US government showed that tighter crop supplies could worsen the food inequality crisis that’s sweeping the globe.

In its hotly watched monthly crop report, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said world soybean stockpiles will be smaller than expected, signaled growing competition over global wheat shipments and highlighted dry weather as a threat to crops in parts of South America and Europe.

Taken together, the report indicated that global food prices could keep climbing, making adequate nutrition more expensive as millions are thrown out of work and economic woes deepen.

United Nations also released its gauge of global food prices, which showed costs rose 2.1% in September, mainly driven by grains and vegetable oils. The index is approaching a multi-year peak set in January. The USDA figures show that the increases could continue as China imports more soybeans and wheat, tightening the global balance sheet.

Prices are rising as the world is forecast for a sharp rise in food insecurity because of COVID-19 impact. As many as 132 million more people globally may fall into the grip of hunger this year, including in many places that used to have relative stability.

While global grain and oilseed supplies remain relatively robust, wild weather including a recent severe wind storm in Iowa means harvests are smaller than initially hoped. Average yields for US corn and soybeans are still record large, though there are fewer acres that will be harvested.

Meanwhile, in Russia, top wheat exporting country production increased by 5 million tons to 83 million tons, the second biggest ever, according to the USDA’s report. Wheat output was cut in Argentina, Canada, Ukraine and the United States.

Prices have been surging in Chicago, with investors enticed by a demand driven rally. Soybeans for November delivery climbed as much as 2.8% to US$10.7975 a bushel, the highest for a most-active contract since March 2018. Wheat prices touched a five-year high earlier this week.

The crop outlooks and higher prices come as the World Food Program warned of hunger crisis of inconceivable proportions, unless it and other groups with a similar focus get the financial backing they need to do their work.

United States the biggest war machine

It may not be wrong to say that military bases of the United States are the key pieces of the global war machine, but people don’t hear about these very often. It is estimated 800 US military bases are located around the globe that play an essential role in turning the whole world into a bloody battlefield. These bases are located in more than seventy countries around the world and represent a mighty military presence, yet rarely acknowledged in US political discourse.

The Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa might occasionally grab a headline thanks to sustained and vigorous anti-base protests, and US military bases in Guam might briefly make news due to public opposition to “Valiant Shield” war exercises that have taken place on the US colony during the pandemic. But, overwhelmingly, foreign bases simply are not discussed.

They are immutable, unremarkable facts, rarely considered even during elections that repeatedly invokes concepts like “democracy” and “endless war” and, thanks to a raging pandemic and climate crisis, raises existential questions about what United States is and should be.

The people living in the countries and US colonies impacted by these bases — the workers who build their plumbing systems, latrines, and labor in the sex trades that often spring up around them, the residents subjected to environmental toxins and war exercises — simply do not exist.

These military bases hold the key to understanding why the United States has consistently been in some state of war or military invasion for nearly every year of its existence as a country.

US military bases around the world, from Diego Garcia to Djibouti, are nuts and bolts in the war machine itself. Military bases provide the logistical, supply, and combat support that has allowed the United States to turn the whole world into its battlefield. They make conflict more likely, and then more wars lead to more military bases, in a vicious cycle of expansion and empire. Put another way, “bases frequently beget wars, which can beget more bases, which can beget more wars, and so on.”

While the idea that the global expansion of military bases corresponds with the rise of US empire may seem obvious, it is both consequence and cause. The way global military positions spread — which are always sold to the public as defensive — are by their very nature, offensive and become their own, self-fulfilling ecosystems of conquest.

Just as the induced demand principle shows, building more lanes on highways actually increases traffic, United States of War makes the argument that military bases themselves incentivize and perpetuate military aggression, coups, and meddling.

The trajectory toward empire started with white settler expansion within the United States. In 1785, the US Army initiated what “would become a century-long continent-wide fort-construction program. These forts were used to launch violent invasions of Native American lands, to protect white settler towns and cities, and to force Native Americans further and further away from the East Coast.

They were also used to expand the fur trade, which, in turn, encouraged other settlers to keep moving west, with some forts functioning in part as trading posts. The famed expedition of Lewis and Clark was a military mission to collect geographic data that would be used for more “fort construction, natural resource exploitation and westward colonization by settlers.”

While the United States was expanding its frontier, its Navy was also pursuing fort construction overseas, from North Africa’s Barbary Coast to Chile, often for the purpose of securing trade advantages. In the thirty years following the war of 1812 — primarily a war of US expansion — settlers pushed westward within the United States, building infrastructure as they went: roads, trails, and more than sixty major forts west of the Mississippi River by the 1850s. After the United States went to war with Mexico, army bases were constructed in the annexed territory. Forts in Wyoming protected wagon trails, allowing settlers to expand through the western United States.

The violent conquest and massacre of Native Americans did not stop during the Civil War, and it escalated from 1865 to 1898, when the US Army fought no fewer than 943 distinct engagements against Native peoples, ranging from skirmishes to full-scale battles in twelve separate campaigns. White supremacist policies were particularly pronounced in California, but took place across the West. After 1876, when President Ulysses S. Grant turned over Native Americans to the War Department, Fort Leavenworth was transformed into a prisoner of war camp for the Nimi’ipuu tribe.

Over almost 115 consecutive years of US wars against indigenous nations, US military forts played a consistent role in protecting white settler pillaging and conquest.

The War of 1898 was the start of a new form of overseas empire which saw the country expanded across the continent with the help of US Army forts and near-continuous war. In some cases, it’s possible to draw a direct line between expansion within the United States and conquest abroad.

US Army waged brutal battles against the Kiowa, Comanche, Sioux, Nez Perce, and Apache tribes, then ordered cavalry to massacre as many as three hundred Lakota Sioux in 1890, and then violently put down the Pullman, Illinois railroad workers strike in 1894.

A bloody counterinsurgency war in the Philippines was aimed at defeating its independence movement. Similar continuity between domestic and global repression can be found today as counterinsurgency tactics and military weapons and equipment are used by US police departments.

Organized labor, immigrants, recently freed slaves and indigenous peoples at home and abroad were all subdued by the same military and police forces making way for white settlement and capital expansion.

After seizing Spanish colonies during the 1898 war, the US began to pursue a new form of imperialism that was less dependent on the creation of new formal colonies and more dependent on informal, less overtly violent — but violent nonetheless — political and economic tools backed by military might, including bases abroad. The US built up the military presence in the Philippines to seventy thousand troops, using these forces to help put down China’s Boxer rebellion, and used its military might to intervene ruthlessly in Panama.

World War II saw the dramatic expansion of military bases, an era commencing in 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a deal with Prime Minister Winston Churchill to trade naval destroyers for ninety-nine-year leases in eight British colonies, all located in the Western Hemisphere. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the US temporarily shrank military personnel spending, and returned roughly half its foreign bases.

Yet the basic global infrastructure of bases remained entrenched and a permanent war system was established. During the post–World War II era of decolonization, the US used its military base network and economic influence, buttressed by new institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to protect its preeminence.

During the Cold War, overseas base expansion became central to the goals of containment and forward positioning, premised on the idea that global bases allow quick response to threats and rapid interventions and deployments in crises. While giving the illusion of increased safety, these bases actually made foreign wars more likely because they made it easier to wage such wars. In turn, conflict increased construction of US bases.

The Korean War, which killed between three and four million people, prompted a 40 percent increase in the number of US bases abroad, and increasing concern about maintaining bases in the Pacific Ocean. Bases also spread across Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

CIA stations expanded alongside military bases, and clandestine meddling and supporting coups became a preferred tool of US Empire. When the US waged brutal war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, it was assisted by hundreds of bases in Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Guam.

The fate of the roughly one thousand Chagossians (descendants of Indian indentured workers and enslaved Africans) from Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, spotlights the remarkable cruelty the US during this period of strategic island approach, whereby the US established control over small, colonial islands.

After making a secret agreement with Britain in 1966 to purchase basing rights, the US and UK governments expelled its residents between 1967 to 1973, leaving them trapped on Mauritius and Seychelles, without jobs or homes, many of their possessions lost to them forever.

During some phases of the expulsion, residents were forced onto cargo ships, their dogs killed. By 1973, the US was using this base to support Israel in its 1973 war with Arab nations. To this day,” Vine notes, Chagossians and many others among the displaced are struggling to return home, to win some justice and recompense for what they have suffered.”

The United States used bases from Diego Garcia to Oman to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and, once there, established more bases, and took over former Soviet ones. Likewise, bases from Kuwait to Jordan to Bahrain to Diego Garcia were critical for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where the US immediately began building bases and installations post-invasion.

While the Bush-Cheney administration closed some bases in Europe, overall spending on bases reached record highs during their time in office. The war with ISIS has seen troops return to Iraq, and the acquisition of bases, even after the Iraqi parliament in 2011 rejected a deal to keep fifty-eight bases in the country.

Since September 11, 2001, the US has also expanded its presence in Africa, building “lily pads” across the continent — smaller profile, somewhat secretive installations, suggesting a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad toward its prey. US bases have been central to waging the 2011 NATO war in Libya, drone strikes in Yemen, military intervention in Somalia and Cameroon. The military has been conducting a variety of operations regularly in at least 49 African countries.

Meanwhile, base spending has played a key role in the steady uptick of overall military spending. In addition to the direct harm they do through enabling war, bases are associated with incredible fraud and waste, and base contractors renowned for their significant political contributions. This political force, and self-contained logic of sustenance and expansion, is the key to understanding how the Military Industrial Complex can be like Frankenstein’s monster, taking on a life of its own thanks to the spending it commands.

The War on Terror ethos, in which the whole world is considered a US battlefield and the US grants itself broad latitude to wage preemptive war, has come to define US foreign policy. George W. Bush talked about the importance of having a military ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world to the Middle East, Africa, and Muslim areas of Asia.

Today, the war on ISIS — responsible for significant civilian deaths — continues, so does brinkmanship with Iran, hedging against China, brutal war in Afghanistan, and US support for the war on Yemen, which has unleashed a profound humanitarian crisis.

Iran Afghanistan discuss completion of Khaf-Herat railway

Reportedly, Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister, Mohammad Eslami and his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Yama Shams discussed the details of Khaf-Herat railway project.

In the meeting, held through video conference, the officials discussed several issues including the inauguration of the project, the financial issues, insurance services, manpower training, freight and passenger transportation, customs, technical and security issues, etc.

Speaking in the meeting, Eslami stressed the need to pay attention to the details and various aspects of the contracts for the operation of the Khaf-Herat railway, and said: "High goals can be established for this railway line."

“The work is not done with the construction and operation of this railway line…. it is the starting point and the cornerstone for the development of strategic relations between the two friendly and neighboring nations,” Eslami said.

Khaf-Herat railway which is part of the Iran-Afghanistan rail corridor connects Iran’s eastern city of Khaf to Afghanistan’s western city of Ghoryan.

The construction of the 193-kilomeres-long railway, which is underway in four parts taht began in 2007.  

In a meeting with Afghanistan’s Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar in Tehran on June 22, Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said that the third section of Khaf-Herat railway project which connects the rail networks of Iran and Afghanistan will come on stream in the third quarter of the current Iranian calendar year.

In early July, Iranian and Afghan officials held a committee meeting to investigate the ways to complete Khaf-Herat railway.

Afghan official with Herat Governor's Office Jilani Farhad informed that the joint committee was set up following the emphasis of the Afghan president to accelerate construction and completion of the project considering its significance to improve transit between Iran and Afghanistan.

Two parts of the railway (77 km), which is located in Iran, has been completed a long time ago but the two other parts (116 km), on the Afghan soil, are yet to be worked out.

Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin

While Donald Trump and Joe Biden bitterly criticize each other’s Iran policy, it may not be wrong to say there are no differences in their policies. They pursue the same goal, but their tactics are different. Regardless of who wins election, the US may change its policy towards Iran after the November election.

Trump has said repeatedly that if he loses the November presidential election, Iran and China would “own America.” Trump reiterated that Iran, along with countries, prefers Biden victory over him.

However, Iran has made it clear many times that it does not attach importance to the victory of a certain candidate in the US election. In fact, Iranian officials have stated that it does not matter for them who will win the November election.

Some analysts and commentators have claimed that Iran prefers the election of Biden because he would reenter the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and other world powers if he is elected. These analysts argue that Biden’s election means, Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran would come to an end.

The US intelligence community also strengthened the narrative of Iran preferring a Biden victory. In a statement, William Evanina, the chief of the National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center, alleged that Iran seeks to undermine President Trump. 

“We assess that Iran seeks to undermine US democratic institutions and to divide the country in advance of the 2020 elections by spreading disinformation,” Evanina said.

Tehran’s motivation to conduct such activities is driven by a perception that President Trump’s reelection would result in a continuation of US pressure on Iran in an effort to foment regime change.

“Democrats are not better than the Republicans. The only difference is that President Obama worked quietly, while Trump works vociferously. These sanctions have been imposed by the Democrats especially under Obama, said Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution on international affairs.
 
The regime change policy is nothing new in the US foreign policy. The US has pursued this policy against many countries. It launched military campaigns to overthrow the regimes of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In addition to overt military campaigns, the US has also launched covert operations to topple political systems in Iran, Venezuela, and Syria. The government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, the first democratically-elected prime minister of Iran was toppled in 1953 in a CIA and MI6 orchestrated coup.
 
During and after the revolution, the US sought to topple the newly established Islamic Republic. The policy of regime change in Iran once again gained steam in Washington’s foreign policy circles after it became clear that the US has forever lost its grip on Iran.

The US imposed sanctions, which still remain in place. Trump has increased the sanctions pressure on Iran to an unprecedented level, a move widely seen as a way to overthrow the government of Iran through fomenting social unrest across the country.

Trump or Biden: Who will be the next US President?

There are growing feelings that Donald Trump, regardless of how much he is hated even by some segments of the American society, may win the November election. Ignoring the survey results, it will not a bad idea to explore, can Joe Biden be the next president. 

The same happened in 2016. Many surveys showed Hilary Clinton would be the next president, but she did not. Many ask how it happened and why surveys made a mistake in their conclusions. 

Many analysts around the world are saying Biden is not the best candidate for the presidency. He is not as charismatic as Barak Obama. He has a problem in social connection that gives Trump an edge. 

Biden is also termed too old, but many analysts are sure he could be the next president. This belief comes of Trump’s actions. The biggest Trump’s ability is how he could use Machiavelli's advice in his work. He is a big liar. He is a populist and has the ability to gather vulnerable people around himself. 

Trump uses the conspiracy theory in his speeches to show that every miserable thing that happens in the world is because of the small groups who rule the world. He hates China because many workers in America hate China, a good card to play with it. He blames all those who are against him. He knew everything about the coronavirus at the beginning but he intentionally did nothing. 

He coined a new name for coronavirus and called it China virus. He uses this term to blame China. He says China made it. Scientists disagree, but he insists on it. He is a showman. He exaggerates in his speeches and uses words, like tremendous, great job or biggest. 

Trump always use these words without comparing things to each other. He said except the Lincoln government, his government was the best in history that worked for the black people. Nobody asks him how he says such junk words. 

He lies without any shame. He does not know the difference between bacteria and virus but he shows himself as a great scientist that knows what is good for people in the coronavirus pandemic. Such behavior is good for millions of Americans. It wrongly shows that he is a determined and reliable leader in crises. 

Abraham Lincoln has a very famous quote that says, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” From the first day he took over as president, he started to divide people into different groups. He tried to scare one group from another. He is popular between the poor and religious people. 

Trump is not a good candidate for the people who are logical. All know he is a billionaire and not a religious person but he is a good actor. He had run casinos during his life and had relations with prostitutes. But he could play his role as a superman for these groups very well. 

The Oscar academy should nominate him as the best leading role actor. He could fool people very easily but from the first day he made a very big mistake. He did not care about the difference between politics and business.

From the first day, he ignored women, black people, and minority groups. In the beginning days, all women understood he wanted to keep his seat for the next term. He could do everything to make white and religious people happy. Abortion rights and many other rights that women have gained over the past 100 years are now under threat.

Since he became president, black people faced an increased rate of racism in the US. Hate and discrimination have again resurfaced in many neighborhoods. Hispanic groups and Asian have been insulted for nearly four years of his presidency. 

Hispanic people are mentioned in Trump’s speeches as a big problem for the U.S. economy, calling them rapist, burglar and smuggler. Asians and now Chinese are blamed for the coronavirus pandemic. 

It is absolutely clear most of these groups will participate in the election and will give vote to Biden. One point is important and no analyst should ignore that the US election is different from other countries.

Tiny and small groups could change the result of the election. The electoral vote has the ability by only one vote in bailout to give all of the votes in one state to one candidate. For example in the 2000 election only a hundred votes in Florida made Gorge W. Bush the president.

In this situation the role of the Supreme Court is important. It is evident that most of the Republicans in the Senate want to choose a new judge for the Supreme Court as soon as possible. 

However, nobody can manipulate the election if people participate in the election. Now many analysts believe that one can count on the votes of the blacks, Asians, and Hispanics for Biden and he could be elected the next president.

What could be the outcome of US presidential election if a candidate dies or becomes incapacitated?

After the breaking news that US President, Donald Trump and First Lady Melania have tested positive for coronavirus, stocks in Europe, United States and Asia nosedived on Friday. The news heaps even more uncertainty onto a growing pile of unknowns facing investors, including how the diagnosis might affect the 3rd November 3 election and policies on trade, tariffs and many other issues beyond then.

According to White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, Trump has mild symptoms, but the diagnosis less than five weeks ahead of 3rd November election. However, the news has raised questions, what happens if a presidential candidate or the president-elect dies or becomes incapacitated.

The most important question being asked is, will election be postponed? It is very unlikely to happen because the US Constitution gives Congress the power to determine the election date. Under US law, the election takes place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, every four years.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would almost certainly object to delaying the election, even if the Republican-controlled Senate voted to do so. The presidential election has never been postponed.

Another question is what happens if a candidate dies ahead of the election?

Both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee have rules that call for their members to vote on a replacement nominee. However, it is likely too late to replace a candidate in time for the election.

Early voting is underway, with more than 2.2 million votes cast. The deadline to change ballots in many states has also passed; mail ballots, which are expected to be widely used due to the coronavirus pandemic, have been sent to voters in two dozen states.

Unless Congress delays the election, voters would still choose between the Republican Trump and Democrat Joe Biden even if one died before 3rd November. If the winner is deceased, however, a new set of questions emerges.

What happens if a candidate dies before the Electoral College votes?

Under the Electoral College system, the winner of the election is determined by securing a majority of “electoral votes” allotted to the 50 states and the District of Columbia in proportion to their population. The Electoral College’s electors are scheduled to meet on 14th December to vote for president. The winner must receive at least 270 of the 538 total Electoral College votes.

Each state’s electoral votes typically go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Some states allow electors to vote for anyone they choose, but more than half of the states bind electors to cast their votes for the winner.

Most state laws that bind electors do not contemplate what to do if a candidate dies. Michigan’s law requires electors to vote for the winning candidates who appeared on the ballot. Indiana law, by contrast, states that electors should switch to a party’s replacement if the candidate has died.

In the event of a candidate’s death, the opposing party might challenge in court whether bound electors should be allowed to vote for a replacement. How will the Supreme Court handle a controversy like this? It is unlikely that a party would try to defy the will of voters if it was clear a particular candidate won the election.

What if a winner dies after the Electoral College has voted, but before Congress has certified the vote?

No winning candidate has ever died after the election but before inauguration. The closest instance came in 1872, when Horace Greeley died on 29th November, weeks after losing the election to Ulysses Grant. The 66 electoral votes that Greeley earned ended up largely split among his running mate and other minor candidates.

Rising fears of war in Iraq

Reportedly, the United States has started making preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy. Any move by the US to scale down its diplomatic presence is being seen as an escalation of its confrontation with Iran.

“The American threat to close their embassy is merely a pressure tactic, but is a double-edged sword,” said Gati Rikabi, a member of Iraq’s parliamentary security committee. He said US moves were designed to scare Iraqi leaders into supporting Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

However, there are growing concern among Iraqis is that pulling out diplomats could be followed by military action against forces Washington blamed for attacks and turn their country into a battle zone.

Many fear the possibility of military action, with just weeks to go before an election in which US President Donald Trump has campaigned on a hard line towards Tehran and its proxies.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened to close the embassy in a phone call a week ago to President Barham Salih.

Populist Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands a following of millions of Iraqis, issued a statement last week pleading for groups to avoid an escalation that could turn Iraq into a battleground.

One of the Western diplomats said the US administration did not “want to be limited in their options” to weaken Iran or pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, Washington is expected to respond militarily.

Earlier it was said the US would reduce its presence in Iraq to 3,000 troops from 5,200. Pentagon reinforced its committed to support Iraq’s long-term “security, stability, and prosperity”.

In a region polarized between allies of Iran and the US, Iraq is the rare exception, a country that has close ties with both. But that has left it open to a perennial risk of becoming a battleground in a proxy war.

That risk became more evident after Washington killed Iran’s most important military commander, Qassem Soleimani, with a drone strike at Baghdad airport. Iran responded with missiles fired at US bases in Iraq.

Since a new prime minister has taken power in Iraq, supported by the US, Tehran is still maintaining close links with powerful Shia factions.

Rockets regularly fly across the Tigris towards the heavily fortified US diplomatic compound, constructed to be the biggest US embassy in the world in central Baghdad’s so-called “Green Zone” during the US occupation after a 2003 invasion.