What do they hope to achieve?

In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens's column argued something we have been saying on this blog for a long time: Russia’s flaying about and bullying neighbouring smaller and weaker countries are not a sign of strength, no matter what most of the media repeats ad nauseam; it is a sign of weakness.

Putin, supposedly the strong man of Russia and of the whole Eurasian sphere, has demonstrated his and his government's weakness on a number of occasions, in the international and, more importantly, the domestic arena.

"In Russia," wrote the great scholar of Russian imperialism Dietrich Geyer many years ago, "expansion was an expression of economic weakness, not exuberant strength."

Keep this observation in mind as Vladimir Putin and his minions bask in the glow of Western magazine cover stories about Russia's "resurgence" following its splendid little war against plucky little Georgia. The Kremlin is certainly confident these days, buoyed by years of rising commodity prices and a bullying foreign policy that mistakes fear for respect -- the very combination that made the Soviet Union seem invincible in the 1970s.

Then there is the question of demography. Russia is not reproducing itself by its birthrate and has the lowest life expectancy, especially for men, in the developed world (if one can really count it as a developed country). Given that its military strategy still seems to depend on "we have more soldiers than you have bullets", the demographic factor is very important as President Putin (before he became Prime Minister) for one, had noted.

Then there is the question of the all-important oil and gas production where many things are going wrong, not least because of the Russian state determinedly taking over and gradually easing out those Western firms that could provide investment and expertise.

There's bad news here, too. Oil production is set to decline this year for the first time in a decade, a decline that is widely expected to accelerate rapidly in 2010. Of Russia's 14 largest oil fields, seven are more than 50% depleted. Production at its four largest gas fields is also in decline. Russia drilled about four million feet of new wells last year. In 1990, it drilled 17 million.

None of this is because Russia is necessarily running out of oil and gas: Existing fields could be better managed, and huge expanses of territory remain unexplored. Instead, it is a function of underinvestment, incompetence, corruption, political interference and crude profiteering. "If you're running Gazprom but you don't really own it, then your interest is in maximizing short-term profits, not long-term development," a Western diplomat told McClatchy's Tom Lasseter.

Amazingly, the system is of deliberate design, as if nothing was learned from the collapse of communism. Parastatal companies are rarely if ever efficient. Yet Mr. Putin has gone about effectively nationalizing entire industries. Foreign investors crave predictability. Yet Mr. Putin has created conditions which his own president, Dmitry Medvedev, calls "legal nihilism." Foreign customers of Russia's commodities seek reliable supplies. Yet Mr. Putin has made no secret of his willingness to turn the energy spigot off whenever it suits his political convenience.

All of which makes one wonder why Russia has chosen to flex her muscle militarily rather than, as before, through her control of energy supplies now. For the attack on Georgia was carefully planned and was not a spontaneous reaction either to the Georgian attempt to reconquer South Ossetia or to the Kosovan declaration of independence.

It is not entirely clear what advice Saakashvili was receiving from his allies in the West or from his own cabinet, some of whom may well have wanted to provoke a fight at this point, knowing that the Georgian forces were not ready to fight a strengthened 58th Army (which is not an elite organization but quite the opposite).

There is some evidence that the Russian forces were not very well equipped technically, that the Georgian air force did rather better than expected and rumours that the Georgian ground forces managed to inflict more damage than the Russians had expected. Much of their advance, in any case, came after Saakashvili had ordered the Georgian troops to stop fighting and had asked for cease-fire negotiations.

The Russians are not releasing information about the numbers that had gone in or the numbers that came out after the long-delayed adherence to the agreement supposedly brokered by President Sarkozy but largely ignored by President Medvedev. Given that those early numbers about the supposed “genocide” in South Ossetia have been discarded even by the Russian authorities, any information emanating from that source can be described safely as mere propaganda. Independent journalists are not being allowed in to the occupied territories and the fog of war seems denser than ever.

It is possible to do a preliminary summing up of the situation. As these are largely well-known facts from news stories, there seems no point in linking them as it would be difficult to decide who to link to. On the other hand, if there is a story that has not been widely published, a link will be provided.

The Russian Duma, Prime Minister and President have all announced that the two break-away autonomous republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, will now be independent of Georgia. This is a reversal of Russian policy so far. Despite the presence of a large number of Russian "peace-keepers" in the two areas, there has been no formal recognition of their "independence" as Russia is not too keen on that subject, having the odd problem or two of her own in the Caucasus. The names of Chechnya, Ingushetiya and, possibly, North Ossetia spring to mind.

Interestingly enough, China has distanced herself from Russia, as have the other member states of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, though that is not how the Kremlin likes to put it.

In a joint statement, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan said they "support the active role of Russia in assisting peace and cooperation in the region."

The six in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) also "express their deep concern over the recent tensions surrounding the South Ossetia question and call for the sides to peacefully resolve existing problems through dialogue."

Echoing language used in the West over the conflict, a portion of the statement also said the summit members supported the principle of "territorial integrity" of states.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the statement showed a "united position" on the Georgia conflict, and Kremlin officials indicated they were happy with its phrasing.

China's foreign ministry reiterated, however, its concern over Russia's decision to recognise two breakaway Georgian provinces as independent states, and experts were split on how to interpret the Dushanbe statement.

This is not good news for Russia. They were undoubtedly expecting hostility from the West, though maybe not the NATO fleet in the Black Sea, which has produced some venomous statements from President Medvedev and various military spokesmen. One would expect a certain amount of venom but the shrillness of attacks both on the United States (whose fault it all is, naturally) and on its allies from the hitherto mild and rational Russian president has taken a lot of people aback. Though I must admit that his description of the EU's carefully worded non-threat of possible sanctions as the product of a "sick" and "confused" imagination made me smile.

President Medvedev's virulent language that descended into gutter speak at times in the weeks since the beginning of the invasion of Georgia indicates either that he is prompted by Prime Minister Putin, who has always spoken in that way, or that he is trying to show himself to be as tough as his predecessor was.

Of course, the two ex-Georgian autonomous republics are not going to be independent and from various reports it would appear that this fact is beginning to dawn on the unfortunate inhabitants there. While, one assumes, many were hoping for nothing more than Russian protection, the stark truth is that they will be subsumed into the country. How anyone who lives on Russia's border can make such a mistake is a mystery. Then again, they had very few choices.

Occupation forces in the guise of peacekeepers (Russian ones only) will be positioned in both republics with many missiles in South Osssetia. Abkhazia appears to be in the process of being bought up by various Russians who have always liked holidaying in Sukhumi and its surroundings.

Over and above that, the Russians are staying in a security zone that extends 14 kms beyond the borders of the two regions. Since most of the troops have been withdrawn from Georgia, leaving behind a certain amount of devastation and, as usual, tales of extensive looting, those occupying the security zone will be a sitting target, should the Georgians decide to take a leaf out of other Caucasian people’s book. Then again, the Kremlin might welcome some attacks, in order to re-invade.

All round, this does not appear to be a sufficient reward for what may have been unpleasant fighting and for losing whatever position they may have managed to achieve in international affairs. The idea spread by the Kremlin and its busy propagandists is that the West will forget after a while, since they need Russia as a supplier of energy and in the fight against terrorism.

As for the second, Russia is a questionable ally in that she plays a complicated game, which is of little use to any other country. As for the first, Russia’s behaviour may well be encouraging more European countries to start looking round for alternative sources of energy, especially as at some point in the not too distant future Russia may well have to start making decisions on whether to continue to sell abroad and deplete the domestic market with all that entails, or to satisfy the domestic market and forego income from Europe.

Another interesting development is the defiance shown by countries that may be next on the Putin-Medvedev shopping list, such as Ukraine. This is being openly encouraged by several Western countries, with the US and Britain in the lead. Reports of the military effort that was needed to invade Georgia does not indicate that Russia is ready to move into Ukraine, a much larger and more populous country with a better equipped military.

Of course, there is the possibility of fomenting a civil war, which will result in Russian intervention to guarantee stability there as well as in the Caucasus and the detaching of Crimea to be subsumed into Russia.

In the meantime, the expression a new Cold War has taken over all public discourse, whether it is the Foreign Secretary warning Russia not to start one or President Medvedev saying that Russia is not afraid of it or simply everybody discussing whether we are heading into one or not. One wonders whether all those somewhat pompous critics of Edward Lucas's book, like the ex-ambassador, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, who was so sure that Mr Lucas did not understand Russia, are feeling a little silly at the moment. Probably not, if I know anything about ambassadors (Charles Crawford being the honourable exception).

Was this really what the Putin-Medvedev ménage had intended? Or is the whole unpleasant saga aimed, as previous foreign sorties had been, at the domestic market? Is the invasion of Georgia, in other words, yet another way of whipping up fear in the Russian population?

Shouldn't Brown and Cameron do "foreign"?

A little while ago I was asked by the BBC Russian Service to comment on the ongoing problems in Russo-British relationship. What will happen at the Brown-Medvedev meeting at the G8 Summit? Not a lot, was my prediction, and I seem to have been right.

The larger point is one that I had made before in the selfsame studio: Gordon Brown’s views on foreign policy are completely unknown. Does he even have any views? Does he even know that there is a world out there? He certainly has no concept of what Britain’s foreign policy might be based on. And, sad to say, neither does the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, whose Shadow Foreign Secretary seems to be a part-time member of the front bench, even though he is shadowing one of the great offices of state.

This became painfully obvious during the last NATO summit when important matters were discussed. The question of whether Ukraine and Georgia should be asked to participate in the Membership Action Plan (MAP) went to the heart of several rather tricky problems. How far should NATO extend? What is to be done about making the Caucasus – important for all sorts of reasons, not least oil – secure? And, above all, is Russia to be allowed to interfere in internal NATO matters? Subsequent developments in the Caucasus with Russia, to all intents and purposes, invading Abkhazia, known as the break-away region of Georgia, have confirmed the importance of all these issues.

The summit divided rather sharply between those, led by the United States and Canada, who wanted to invite Ukraine and Georgia to participate in MAP and those, led by Germany and France, who opposed it, largely because they did not want to upset Russia, from whom Germany and some other West European countries are buying an ever larger proportion of their gas and oil and will do unless, as seems likely, Russian production is steeply reduced.

The final outcome was unexpected. While Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy with their acolytes, the Spanish and the Benelux governments, strutted round boasting of how they had stood up to America, President Bush quietly lined up his allies and the final statement promised both Ukraine and Georgia eventual membership of NATO. This went further than the original offer of the Membership Action Plan that had been defeated by Russia’s proxies.

What was Britain’s position? Did Gordon Brown line up with George Bush and Stephen Harper with their allies or with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and their allies? Neither. Prime Minister Brown sat on the fence, whining that there was no consensus he could adhere to. What was the Opposition’s attitude? Did they think Britain should go with the pro-MAP or the anti-MAP group and did they demand a debate because HMG had shown itself to be so utterly feeble? Well, no. The whole episode seemed to pass Messrs Cameron, Hague and Fox by without so much as a raised eyebrow.

The main problem here is the European Union, a subject, which seems to mesmerize most politicians, particularly the Conservatives. When asked what their views on foreign policy are, they (and their Labour counterparts) inevitably start talking of the EU and, possibly, the Lisbon (formerly known as Constitutional) Treaty. The trouble is that the EU is not a matter for foreign policy only. As it is the fount of most of this country’s legislation it has to be discussed under domestic matters. At the same time, it is well-nigh impossible for Britain to develop a coherent foreign policy as long as such matters as international trade agreements remain in the hands of the European Union and the Common Foreign Policy is an avowed aim of the integration process.

Of course, if neither the Government nor the Opposition express any ideas of what Britain’s foreign policy should be, the situation becomes even more difficult. Apart from an insistence that we must ratify the Lisbon Treaty, no matter what happens with promises to support the French desire to create a European force and a generalized bleating about the situation in Zimbabwe, we have heard very little from the youthful Foreign Secretary. Gordon Brown makes the odd comment about the need to send either more aid or just as much aid to countries that clearly need to be weaned off it in order to develop their economy. He is also sometimes in favour of a close alliance with the United States and sometimes against it.

On the other side David Cameron shows no interest in matters of foreign policy beyond the odd trip to help some African country and getting into a muddle as to what he intends to do or not do about the Lisbon Treaty. This would not matter if the Shadow Foreign Secretary made it clear what the Conservative ideas on British foreign policy are. William Hague, who cannot be seriously described as an opponent of the European Union or even of the integration process, has been known to make the odd comment about the Lisbon Treaty (he is against it) and the remote possibility of Tony Blair becoming the first President of the European Council (he thinks it’s funny).

There are the compulsory comments on the need to help poor countries without any serious ideas as to how this might be done and there was at least one major speech. In it the Shadow Foreign Secretary explained that Britain should move away from a close relationship with the United States and look to other countries, the growing economies of Asia such as China and India. The speech appeared to be rather random, written after a cursory glance at the atlas.

Surely Mr Hague must know that Britain’s relationship with India, with whom there are historic links, which is an Anglospheric country with similar political, legal, constitutional and, intermittently, economic ideas must be different from that with China, which is an oppressive Communist gerontocracy where political and economic tensions are becoming more and more apparent. Surely Mr Hague is aware of that entity we call the Anglosphere. Perhaps not, as he has never referred to it and has ignored the fact that both India and Australia have separate and close relations with America and both are developing into serious regional powers. In other words, there is no suggestion that under William Hague’s guidance and David Cameron’s leadership the Conservative Party has the slightest intention of developing a foreign policy.

Given Britain’s history it is, to put it mildly, disconcerting to find the country in a situation where neither the Government nor Her Majesty’s Opposition has the slightest interest in her position in the world.

Anything better than this!

Monday 12 June 2000 and I was riding the suburban train from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris Nord, then to switch stations and get the train to Strasbourg where I was to spend the next few days at the European Parliament.

When disaster struck, it was all so natural. About halfway through the journey, a young lad - of Arab appearance, maybe late teens or early twenties – came up to me as we were stopped at a station. He came quite close, asking me in French whether this was the train to Charles de Gaulle.

It took me a time to work out what he was saying but once I understood, I told him he was on the wrong train. In my best pidgin French, with much gesticulating, I told him he wanted one going the other way. The lad dashed for the doors, which were just closing, and the train moved off. Only then did I notice that my computer bag, containing my laptop, was gone. The bastard had nicked it!!

At Gare du Nord I was minded to report the theft to the police, but I could not see a police station or any sign of one. I thus resolved to report it at Gar de l'Est, where I recalled seeing a police post. I found it easily enough but the two policemen and the one policewoman behind the counter – none of whom, incidentally, spoke English - told me that it was outside their jurisdiction.

The crime had occurred "sur le train" so it had to be dealt with by "le bureau chemin de fer". Fortunately, or so I thought, their office was just round the corner, an anonymous door in the wall with only the tiniest of signs alongside. I pressed the entryphone button and was admitted, only to be told by the police there – who also did not speak English - that I had to report it to the police in Gare du Nord. "Forget it!", I told them – I had my train to catch to Strasbourg. I would report it on my way home, that Thursday – which indeed I needed to do in order to claim the insurance.

A mere routine, I thought. It was something I was going to regret.

Come the Thursday, I left Strasbourg on the 2.39 pm train, headed for Paris. A colleague had written me a letter in French, explaining the details of the theft, asking the police to prepare a certificate for the insurance claim. She also had written a letter on European Parliament writing paper, explaining that I was very pressed for time, having to catch an aeroplane at Charles de Gaulle at 8.15 that evening.

The train was due in at Gare de l'Est at 6.40pm and the trip from there to the airport would take an hour. Since I had to check in half an hour before the flight, that gave me only ten to fifteen minutes to make the report and get the certificate. I was going to be pushed.

At Gare de l'Est, I walked across to Gare du Nord – that was the quickest way. I had already found out that the police post was situated on Platform 3, but what I hadn't reckoned on was how big Gare du Nord really was. Needless to say, platform 3 was at the opposite end of the point I entered it. I made my best speed and found the bureau Chemin de Fer halfway down the long platform. There were absolutely no signs directing people to it, and only the tiniest name plaque adjacent the door, when I finally got there. No wonder I couldn't find it on my way out and, if I hadn't known to look for the "bureau Chemin de Fer", I wouldn’t have known what I was looking for anyway.

As with the other bureau – at Gare de l'Est – the door was guarded by an entryphone. I pressed the button and was admitted, to find three policemen. I gave them my colleague's letter and one of them read it, conferring with his own colleague.

As before, none of them spoke English but the first officer explained that this bureau only dealt with immigration matters relating to the Eurostar. In French, he explained to me that there was another "bureau" on the station, and I had to go there.

Here I was, at a major international station, dealing with police whose job was immigration, and none of them spoke English. Nevertheless, they did give me a photocopy of a hand-drawn map. Obviously, this was not the first time they had been confronted with this problem. As an additional clue, one of the policemen told me to look for the "porte bleu".

According to the map, the proper "bureau" was back the way I had come, but fortunately – as I thought – in the direction of the suburban station from where I was to catch my train to Charles de Gaulle. Indeed, as I followed the map, I found myself led into the very part of the station where I wanted to be.

But, for the life of me, I could not see the "bureau Chemin de Fer". In desperation, I asked the assistant of a newspaper kiosk, who pointed beyond the electronic barriers which guarded the entry to the platforms. I had to get a train ticket in order to get to the police station!

Fortunately – or so I thought – I had the return half of my ticket bought earlier in the week to get me to the Gare du Nord, but when I pushed it into the slot to open the barrier, all I got were insistent electronic bleeps. The damn thing refused to open.

By now I was running seriously short of time and, with no railway officials in sight, I resolved that the quickest way to get access was to buy yet another ticket. That cost me ten minutes, working up the interminable queue to the ticket office, and left me 49FF (£5.00) poorer. Nonetheless, I did get past the barrier, into a cavernous hall, with no sign whatsoever of the fabled "bureau Chemin de Fer". On the verge of giving up entirely, I tried walking up what appeared to be a completely unused area of the expanse. Lo and behold, at the very end, I spotted a blue door.

Once I got right up to it, I spotted the tell-tale plaque alongside, announcing the presence of this fabled bureau. I pressed the button on the entryphone – what else did I expect? – and the door clicked open. Inside, I was confronted with… another door and another entryphone.

After the ritual pressing and pushing, I then found myself in an enormous room, an absolute hive of activity with policemen in uniform rushing hither and thither. In the corner was an American-style lock-up cage, housing a very unsavoury-looking character. At the very far end of the room was a small counter, behind which stood a single policeman, with a single chevron on his epaulettes. He looked at me expectantly as I approached, almost quizzically as if to say, "What are you doing here?"

To my complete lack of surprise, he did not speak English. I gave him my colleague’s letters, and made sure he read the one saying I was in a hurry. He read both slowly and deliberately and then asked, "Passport, monsieur?" That was my big mistake. I gave it to him, whereupon he disappeared, with it and my letters. Ten minutes latter, with me still standing at the counter, he reappeared, drinking a cup of coffee from a vending cup, sans passport and letters, completely oblivious to my presence.

As I summoned up the courage to challenge him, I was approached by a sergeant who had my letters – but no passport. Would I look at some photographs, he asked – in French. Like his colleagues, he could not speak English. I demurred, saying a had only seen the thief for a matter of seconds, and in any case, I had a plane to catch.

The sergeant disappeared, only to be replaced by another. Suivez moi, this officer commanded, leading me to a booth in which there was a desk and a computer terminal, and my original sergeant. I was given a chair and told to wait.

Alongside me in the booth, also seated, was a young man. It turned out he was another "victim" who had managed to discover where the police were hidden. He was there – like me as I now discovered – to look at photographs. Once the sergeant returned, it was obvious he did not know how to work to computer, and had to ask for help from his fellow sergeant – who had little more idea.

Once they got the machine working, they turned to my fellow victim. He had fallen foul of a black perpetrator, aged between 35-45. Between them, the sergeants loaded up some rather poor pictures of blacks between 35-45, all of whom looked the same. Despite my letter telling the police my perpetrator was an Arab in his late teens to early twenties, the sergeant thought it a good idea if I looked at each the photographs as well, requiring from me a ritual "non" as each picture came up on the screen.

My fellow victim was dismissed – with equally negative results - and the sergeant then tried to load the "Arab" file. To my horror, the database then kindly reported that there were over 7,000 entries to review. By now I had visions of being there all night.

However, perhaps prompted by my increasingly despairing cries of "l'avion", accompanied by my tapping my watch, the sergeant relented and, with a Gallic shrug, switched off the computer. It was now just gone half-past seven and, a pinch, I could just make Charles de Gaulle. If I was very, very lucky, they might let me on the plane. But I did not have my certificate for the insurance.

The sergeant led me to an interview booth and left me there, where I was joined across the desk by the original sergeant. He had my passport, which he returned to me. I considered making a bolt for it but the man demanded my attention. He was going to fill in a form on the computer.

Working from a type-written instruction sheet, he started asking me questions, in French, the answers to which he laboriously tapped in to the computer, one-finger style. At least I learned the words for "Windows 98", which had been in my bag with the computer: "Windows quatre-vingt dix-huit".

At last, after what seemed an age, but in fact wasn't very long, he finished. There was just an outside possibility I could catch the plane. But it was not to be. With a flourish, my sergeant pressed the button on the keyboard to print out my coveted certificate, but nothing happened. He looked puzzled and called over his fellow sergeant. "Il a disparu", he complained. He had wiped the file from the computer and we had to start all over again.

By the time he had finished, it was five to eight. My flight was 8.15 and the train took at least 25 minutes. You will have to hurry monsieur, said my sergeant, exhausting his English vocabulary. What could I do? I thanked both officers gravely, shook them each by the hand, and departed. I arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 8.35. My flight had long gone.

COMMENT THREAD

It's a hard life in the tranzi world

Well, not hard in the usual sense of the word but one does have to do a certain amount of twisting and turning. Take the case of Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s Culture Minister, a close friend of President Mubarak and leading candidate for the top job at the UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco.

An article in the Wall Street Journal gives a delightful account of his many twists and turns to accommodate everybody. First he tells a Muslim Brotherhood MP that he would burn Israeli books himself if he found any in the Egyptian libraries (what else would be the job of a Culture Minister?); then he backtracks in the light of the various protests, though UNESCO seems to have had no official or unofficial reactions to that comment.

Why should anyone wonder? Is that not what politicians do on a regular basis? Backtracking, I mean, not burning books, though that comes up from time to time as well. Sadly for Mr Hosni, the issue is a little harder to deal with.

With a plum U.N. job slipping out of his reach, Mr. Hosni backtracked. He said the "book burning" remark was merely "a hyperbole -- a popular expression to prove something does not exist." The minister, who is close to President Hosni Mubarak and his wife and considered a liberal by local standards, went further the following day. He told Agence France-Presse that it is "a big mistake that Israeli books have not yet been translated (into Arabic). I have officially asked for it to be done. If people protest, I don't give a damn."

So, three decades after the Camp David accords, would Mr. Hosni support the opening of so far nonexistent cultural ties with Israel? What about a museum of Jewish antiquity and culture in Cairo? The Egyptian went into reverse again. Impossible, Mr. Hosni said, as long as "there are bloody attacks every day against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza strip."

Let me guess. There will be no Israeli books translated into Arabic and stocked in Egyptian libraries and bookshops, not even those that oppose Israeli policies. Perhaps Mr Hosni would not be too happy about Egyptians wondering why it is that writers in Israel can oppose their government's policies with no fear of being silenced or imprisoned while in Egypt even blogging is hazardous if it happens to be outside the accepted political line.

Needless to say, France is officially backing Mr Hosni's candidacy for the UNESCO job. There may be a certain amount of embarrassment on the subject.

Meanwhile, as the indispensable UN Watch has documented, the new expert acquired by the UN Human Rights Council to oversee its standing enquiry into "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law" is Richard Falk, known for his support for truther 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Here is Hillel Neuer of UN Watch trying to find out what Mr Falk's explanation is for his curious ideas and why is the UNHRC continuing to ignore SecGen Ban Ki-Moon's suggestions that they should start looking at other violations of “the principles and bases of international law” (whatever that may be), not to mention serious human rights problems across the world:

Thank you, Mr. President.

Professor Falk, we appreciate this opportunity to ask you questions.

As we gather to address the Middle East, let us all commit to a future where every child, Palestinian and Israeli alike, will see the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become reality.

With this goal in mind, Professor Falk, let us turn to the report that you presented today, HRC 7/17.

One of the report's exceptional features is its sharp criticism of the United Nations itself. Leading UN institutions and officials are accused of being insufficiently supportive of the Palestinians, of failing to acknowledge international law, which, according to paragraph 54, "brings the very commitment of the United Nations to human rights into question."

The report criticizes the United Nations role in the Quartet and the Road Map for Peace. It criticizes the United Nations Security Council and one of its permanent members in particular. It criticizes the United Nations Secretary-General, suggesting, in paragraph 53, that he may be refusing to fulfill legal obligations out of political reasons.

Professor Falk, my first question to you is by what methodology does one challenge some UN decisions, while accepting others uncritically?

Why are there no questions about today's Agenda Item targeting Israel, as expressed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on 20 June 2007, and I quote: “The Secretary-General is disappointed at the Council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of Human Rights violations throughout the world.”

Finally, in light of the concerns expressed by the President of this Council -- in the newspaper Le Temps and elsewhere -- about the credibility of this council on the Middle East, could you tell us what credibility you expect your reports to have, when leading newspapers such as The Times of London are commenting on your support for the 9/11 conspiracy theories of David Ray Griffin, who argues, and I quote from the Times article of April 15th, "that no plane hit the Pentagon," and that "the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition"?

Thank you, Mr. President.

There is then an attempt by the Egyptian delegation to delete the entire statement and question as being irrelevant to the Palestinian issue. This is rather interesting as normally we are told that everything is relevant to the Palestinian issue. Still, the request was refused, which is a step forward for the UNHRC. Here is the video.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has voted unanimously in favour of classifying rape as “a tactic in war and a threat to international security”, apparently in the teeth of objections by China, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam and to the delight of human rights organizations.

As a matter of fact, the definition is accurate enough – mass rape as a method of waging deliberate war is not new and well understood. Next up is a report on how widespread the practice is and what can be done about it. We are looking forward to proposals on severe action by the UN in cases of widespread rape by UN peacekeepers.

Aren't we glad to be funding NGOs?

That is, needless to say, a rhetorical question. Apart from anything else, if we were glad to be funding them, we would do so and not have money compulsorily extracted from us for the purpose. NGOs are not charities that live on voluntary donations but are provided by taxpayers’ money.

This story comes via the Taxpayers’ Alliance blog, which quotes a recent report from NGO Monitor, to which they do not link. Tsk, tsk. But then, it is not always easy to do so, which makes me wonder how often NGO Monitor might suffer from hackers.

The Executive Summary, which is only one page, outlines the problem. The EU is, according to its own propaganda, committed to a peaceful solution that will not involve the destruction of Israel or the expulsion and worse of the Jewish population of that country. (Anyone who thinks that the destruction of Israel will bring peace to that part of the world has not been paying attention.)

That’s the propaganda. The reality is that

Between 2005 and 2007, the European Union provided tens of million Euros from public funds to numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), many of which are politically active in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In addition to offering services, their reports are perceived as providing expert information to policy makers, journalists and others, and their campaigns have significant political impacts. These activities however, are often inconsistent with the stated objectives of both the NGOs and EU frameworks under which they are funded, including the use of funds ostensibly designated to promote peace, for pursuing political objectives which undermine the protection of human rights.

The Report gives details of the NGOs that have received money to promote their political agenda:

This detailed research documents the degree to which EUfunded NGOs exacerbate conflict and advance particular political agendas. Many of these groups participated in the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban conference, and their reports and campaigns repeatedly refer to Israel as a “colonial entity”, and “racist and apartheid state”, while promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Some EU-funded NGOs also consistently advocate a rejectionist Palestinian narrative of the conflict, erase the context of Palestinian terrorism, falsely accuse Israel of “war crimes” and seek to undermine Israel’s Jewish identity.

The chances of the next Durban conference, scheduled for 2009, being anything but another anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western hatefest are slim.

Some of the problems are endemic to NGOs and all tranzis, particularly the European Union, the one fully political expression of tranziedom and it boils down to one word: unaccountability. Forget transparency – it means nothing. You can open up the odd meeting to audiences and publish any number of documents. As it happens the EU is quite good at publishing documents; considerably better than our own government or civil service. As long as there is no direct line of accountability to those who provide the money, which is the poor benighted taxpayers, corruption, both financial and political, is inevitable.

Whether the organization in question is a relatively small one like the London Development Agency, whose shenanigans played their part in Ken Livingstone’s downfall, or a much larger and better financed NGO or those über-tranzis, the EU and the UN, the result is always the same.

Naturally enough, the most ruthless and corrupt players take control. So far I have not seen any suggestions for reform that would overcome these problems as unaccountability is endemic to NGOs and tranzis, there being no direct link between funding, political decision making and specific project management.

After all, there is nothing particularly surprising about the following:

This report also examines the limited transparency and accountability in EU funding for NGOs. Despite the tens of millions of Euros provided by taxpayers, there is no uniform framework or central database for obtaining information regarding which NGOs the European Commission funds. Moreover, much of this funding information is unavailable or hidden beneath numerous bureaucratic layers. The various EC offices that do provide some information on NGO funding use different systems to display this data, making comparison and analysis particularly difficult. Although some EC officials cooperated in providing funding information to NGO Monitor, the difficultly in obtaining this data reflects the lack of transparency. Some requests for specific funding information went unheeded.

In addition, the official guidelines by which the NGOs are selected to receive public funds are very vague, allowing for a high degree of individual preference and bias on the part of EC officials. These (often) anonymous officials and outside experts decide on the allocation of millions of Euros to highly political NGOs, yet are not subject to any external process of accountability. The absence of specific performance indicators to evaluate the impact of EU-funded NGO projects adds to the accountability deficit.

Outrageous, maybe; surprising, no. To be fair, I do not get the impression that NGO Monitor is surprised.

While we are on the subject of NGOs, let us take another look at that interesting and self-righteous organization, Amnesty International. We have written about it on various occasions, for instance here and here. To sum up a long and tedious development, Amnesty International has fulfilled its exemplary role in O’Sullivan’s First Law – not being specifically a right-wing organization it became a left-wing one.

No longer does it limit itself to helping prisoners of conscience in various oppressive countries. The organization’s main role now seems to be, despite the research done by its overworked and underpaid staff (not, naturally enough SecGen Irene Khan), to attack the West, particularly the United States and Israel with other countries that have the temerity to fight terrorists and terrorism coming close behind.

NGO Monitor has been looking at Amnesty International in connection of that organization’s reports on the Middle East. Here is the summary of its latest findings:

NGO Monitor has systematically analyzed Amnesty International’s Middle East coverage in 2007, applying a quantitative methodology, similar to that used to examine the agenda of Human Rights Watch.

The results show that in 2007 Amnesty singled out Israel for more condemnation than Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Lebanon, and Algeria.

More items were published condemning Israel, than the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah combined. If detailed reports are used as an indicator, Amnesty ranks Israel and Iraq as equally the worst human rights abusers in the Middle East.

Israel’s democratic and open society ironically invites disproportionately negative reporting from Amnesty International. Access to information facilitates more comprehensive research than in less democratic regimes; democracy demands higher standards of human rights, according to Amnesty International’s Israel branch; external factors, such as media attention, dictate AI’s policy.

Amnesty's 2008 annual report (covering events in 2007) is yet another example of the NGO's highly biased approach. It presents a gross distortion of the conflict, selectively reports events to remove the context of terrorism and ignore human rights issues not related to its political agenda, while repeating un-sourced and anecdotal claims.

Not precisely what Amnesty International should be doing but as a tranzi NGO it has long ago abandoned its useful role of campaigner on a single but very important issue.

On the organization’s own website one can find all sorts of interesting matters. There is, for instance, the appeal to world leaders to do something about human rights. Well, not to the ones who can do something about it, with the exception of China and Russia, both up to a point, but leaders in general.

Amnesty International’s Report 2008, shows that sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations, people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 countries and are not allowed to speak freely in at least 77 countries.

True enough, but then all those countries are in the United Nations and have all signed the Universal Declaration as well as any other declaration going. In any case, the collapse of the Soviet Empire has brought about a certain amount of alleviation on the subject of human rights though that event had little to do with the UN or that wretched Declaration, which had been strongly influenced by the Soviet Union back in 1948.

So, apart from bringing down unpleasant regimes, something AI does not approve of, as we know, what else can be done?

“The most powerful must lead by example,” said Ms Khan.

China must live up to the human rights promises it made around the Olympic Games and allow free speech and freedom of the press and end “re-education through labour”.

The USA must close Guantánamo detention camp and secret detention centres, prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them, and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.

Russia must show greater tolerance for political dissent, and none for impunity on human rights abuses in Chechnya.

The EU must investigate the complicity of its member states in “renditions” of terrorist suspects and set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.

Ms Khan warned: “World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost. As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses that can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

An interesting list and even more interesting emphasis on what matters in human rights. Apparently, it is the war on terror that produces most of the crimes and they are the ones Amnesty International feels the need to emphasise. Iraq and Afghanistan, eh? Not Iran or Syria, one assumes, or is it to be assumed that those two countries are looking to the United States for leadership?

China and Russia are chided lightly and in a very limited fashion, particularly the former. We must not get too worked up about real tyrannies where free speech is suprressed and all critics of the political regime and of officialdom are imprisoned. Oh and it has the highest number of capital crimes and rate of executions after trials that are the shortest in history. Not something Amnesty International should pay attention to?

What of the latest annual report? The Introduction lives up to all one’s worst expectations. It seems that matters have become worse in the last sixty years despite the hope that was engendered by the end of the Cold War which “were dashed by the explosion of ethnic conflicts and implosion of states that unleashed a spate of humanitarian emergencies, marked by massive and vicious human rights abuses”.

So, um, how did the Cold War end, what were the immediate results, why were there these hopes and who unleashed the various conflicts? Indeed, why was there a fertile ground for those conflicts? And why is the name of the Soviet Union not mentioned in this rather sketchy outline of the last sixty years?

Could it be that the powers that be in Amnesty International actually share ex-President, now Prime Minister Putin’s view that the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the greatest geopolitical disaster?

Moving down we find that the worst human rights abuses happen in the United States (our old friend Guantánamo again) and the EU is rapped over the knuckles for not controlling the member states when they exercise “rendition” of terror suspects to countries where they might be ill-treated at the CIA’s behest. No, since you ask there is no particular evidence and no mention in the Introduction of the fact that there are human rights abuses in other countries. And since when have terrorists been political prisoners to be supported by international NGOs?

There is no question about it, Amnesty International sees the war against terror a far greater problem than the terrorism itself, no matter what some of the more detailed chapters in the Report might say. Their website talks far more about protecting rights in the fight against terrorism than about protecting rights against terrorists.

The real problem about NGOs is that they are not charities who live exclusively from private donations. There are big donors, of course, but a reasonable amount comes from government and tranzi funds, in other words, from the taxpayer, whether we like it or not.

What the future might hold

Last Monday I attended no less than two separate talks on, as it turned out, related topics. In the morning Michael Barone, one of the best known American political commentators, author of many, many articles and columns and of several books, most recently, of “Our First Revolution: the remarkable British uprising that inspired America's founding fathers”.

Barone spoke about the presidential race in the United States, not a subject we cover too much on this blog for several reasons. In the first place, it is much written about in the main stream media, though I would not trust British journalists on the subject. They were, after all, convinced that Kerry would win in 2004, a position whose absurdity was clear to anyone who followed events in the American media and the blogosphere.

Secondly, it is a subject that is widely discussed in the American blogosphere. Nothing we say can rival the extensive knowledge and grasp of detail displayed by the likes of Barone himself, Michelle Malkin, Christopher Hitchens or Mark Steyn, to name just a few.

Thirdly, this is not really our subject, apart from the need to point out periodically, that there is this country in which the executive and legislative, properly separated, are both elected by the people of that country. Look upon it and despair about our own situation. No wonder people are gnashing their teeth in envy and calling for the rest of the world a.k.a. the great and the good as well as the tranzis and the NGOs to impose their decisions on the American people.

Still, the President of the United States is an important person for all of us and occasionally we need to look, at least in general terms, at the process that will decide who that person is going to be. A briefing by Michael Barone is a good opportunity for doing just that.

The first thing to be noted (and I do wish British commentators in both the old and new media would do so) is Michael Barone’s strong and reiterated assertion that the result of the presidential election is, at this stage, unpredictable. Obama is not about to be anointed as POTUS, though it is more than likely that he will be the Democratic nominee, not without some trouble there, as it happens.

I may add that Obama’s recent faux pas of threatening people with all sorts of nameless things if they keep quoting what his wife said in a public speech as part of her campaigning on his behalf “inappropriately” has not won him many supporters. The ones who have descended into Obamania are there and will stay there. He needs many more votes, though.

Michael Barone is not an Obama fan but that is not why he remains uncertain about the outcome. He is far too good a commentator to take the wish for the deed. The truth is that the outcome is uncertain because American electoral politics is once again experiencing a big shift and because there are many doubts about all the candidates, Barack Obama, in particular.

His description of American politics was that it has moved from trench warfare with clearly signposted lines and entrenched positions to open field warfare with politicians and voters moving around, separately or in groups.

It is true the President Bush’s approval rating is low but the Democratic Congress, elected with much fanfare in 2006, rates even lower. Recent by-elections have gone the Democrats’ way but, as in this country, people vote differently and less “responsibly” in by-elections than in general ones.

Another sign that the Democrats are doing well is a much higher proportion of people identifying with them than with the Republicans. This, however, is a tricky issue. Republican self-identification was at its highest in 2004 since the 1930s when these questions were first asked. What Mr Barone did not add, as all of us know, is that the Republicans did win the odd election or two during that period. So self-identification is not necessarily a guide to a more general voting pattern in the country.

Democrats this time round have shown themselves much better at fund raising, utilizing the internet for that purpose very successfully. But all indicators that there is a swing to them from the Republicans go fuzzy when it comes to the presidential campaign, whose intra-party bitterness has had a negative effect, so far as one can tell, on the electorate.

Above all, the presidential campaigns hinge on responses to specific candidates.

Within the Democratic Party there is tribal warfare being waged between the black and other groups (the latter including Hispanic and Asian ones as well as Jewish), between older and younger voters and between upscale and downscale ones. How that will play itself out when the candidate is finally chosen remains unpredictable. Notoriously, Obama is very unpopular among non-black working class voters, who still make up a very large part of the Democratic Party’s supporters. On the other hand, will any of them go so far as to vote for John McCain? It’s not impossible as McCain is centre-left but it is far from a given.

Much of Mr Barone’s talk concerned detailed analyses of figures and groupings, subjects that are not for this blog. He did mention that, so far, there has been little concentration on specific issues and a good deal of discussion as to whether this election will mean the end of the forty year long conservative political hegemony. Again, that is not a given, since in those forty years there were various electoral results.

However, it is fair to say that there is a new generation of electors who do not remember the horrors of the seventies and cannot be scared by them. We face a similar situation in this country and it is an inevitable one.

Voters of that kind in the States cannot see that big state is necessarily a bad thing. Voters of any kind in Britain find it hard to believe that big state is not a good thing so we part company from our brethren over the Pond.

However, the same generation of voters, added Mr Barone, wants to have choices and knows about them through the internet. This could mean a possible Republican opening to that generation. Oddly, he did not mention the widespread popularity and influence of right-wing blogs, who definitely do have a link with the post 1970s generation.

The economy, which is stubbornly refusing to sink as low as it has been predicted for some time, could give either candidate an advantage. If things are not as bad as people say, voters might want to stick with the existing party or they might decide to give the other guys a chance, knowing that things remain fairly safe.

Then there is the question of foreign policy, one that does concern us on this side of the Pond.

Foreign policy may or may not play an important part in the election though the question of security undoubtedly will. Again, one cannot quite predict the outcome as the situation in Iraq has improved considerably and not all the efforts of the MSM and of Democrat politicians can disguise that fact. McCain, as the man who had always advocated something like the present surge, may well reap the benefits.

This is one of Obama’s weak points as he stumbles from one idiotic statement to another and tries to bluster his way out of it. His extraordinary outrage at Bush’s general comments on appeasers in the Knesset, which stated to all the world that he thinks of himself as one, is one more thing that might harm him later on in the fight against McCain.

Barack Obama’s pronouncements on foreign policy have been muddled and full of contradictions as well as showing a distinct lack of knowledge or understanding. It is hard to decide on the biggest gaffe. Was it the reference to 57 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii? Or was it his completely unhistorical assertion that in talking to the enemy, in this case Baby Assad of Syria and Ahmadinejad of Iran, not to mention various terrorists, he would be following in the footsteps of FDR, Harry Truman and JFK.

Sadly, neither Roosevelt nor Truman are known for too much parlaying with the enemy and the one time Kennedy tried it, in 1961 at the Vienna Summit with Khrushchev, the results were disastrous and he foreswore any future exercise of that kind.

A fascinating article in the IHT gives a good account of that event and its outcome, suggesting that Obama should pay a little more attention to what Kennedy really learnt from it all.

One interesting point about foreign policy ties up with the other talk I attended later that day. In his recent speech on foreign policy John McCain suggested that a new organization should be created perhaps in place of, perhaps in parallel to the United Nations – a league of democracies.

The Henry Jackson Society hosted Professor Thomas Cushman, Founding Editor and Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Human Rights and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College when he spoke on that very subject.

The first part of that proposition is easy to outline and prove. Just a few examples to do with UN peacekeeping scandals and the Human Rights Commission, not to mention the Durban Anti-Racism Conference, and you have managed to prove to many people’s satisfaction that there is a great deal rotten in Turtle Bay, though the chap next to me did not really like Professor Cushman’s description of the UN as a league of autocrats. According to him matters could be improved if we could make the Security Council function better. When asked how he envisaged that he became somewhat coy.

The problem is, of course, with the second part of the proposition, the creation of a league of democracies, as proposed by Professor Cushman and various colleagues of his. The international community, as it exists, explained the good professor, is problematic in that it pays more attention to “international law” than humanitarian principles, which means that individual countries can do what they like with the UN, as representative of that community, powerless to act.

Which leaves us with the need to define "international law".

There is also the problem that the UN consists of those very countries that break all the supposed founding principles of the organization. The idea of setting up a parallel organization that would consist only of countries who agreed on certain principles and would accept that desirable interests, such as freedom, democracy and human rights, should also be vital interests, sounds tempting. I have heard it enunciated in general and not so general terms on several occasions. But the devil, if one may say so, is in the detail.

First of all, it is interesting to note that, though the idea of a parallel organization to the UN is seen by many on the left as being neo-con and, therefore, an emanation of Satan, it has actually become a talking point among politicians of differing hues. And the left with some exceptions, as Professor Cushman rightly pointed out, ceased to interest itself in human rights or freedom some time in the middle of the twentieth century if not earlier.

Thus there are suggestions from Democrat-supporting think-tanks of such names as Alliance of Democracies, Community of Democracies (this one from Madeleine Allbright) and Concert of Democracies. John McCain has suggested League of Democracies and mused about the possibility of about 100 members.

Given that the name League of Democracies irresistibly reminds one of the ill-fated League of Nations, it may not be the right one to go with but none of the others sound particularly attractive either.

Professor Cushman thinks that’s too many as it would be hard to find 100 certified democracies. I’ll say. His idea that at first the new voluntary organization should be restricted to just a few – number unspecified – of solid democracies that will not turn into anything else.

That raises one or two problems. How do you define a solid democracy? How long does it have to have been one? What are its characteristics? Let’s see now. We’ll have the Anglospheric countries, Britain, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India. India? Hmm. There are a few problems there but, I suppose, one could overlook them.

What of the other European countries? The Scandinavian ones, certainly. France, I suppose. Germany has been a successful democracy long enough to count. But what about Spain, Portugal, Greece and the East European countries? Russia, presumably, would not qualify and neither would China. Japan probably yes. But what of Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and other South-Eastern countries? It exhausts me just to think of all the problems of definition.

Naturally, I was unimpressed by Professor Cushman assuming that the EU, of all organizations, could be a model for the new one in the way it has assimilated new members, first providing them with strong guidelines on how to become worthy of membership. The EU is not a loose organization of democratic states but a less than democratic state in the making and Professor Cushman, with all his astonishing qualifications, fails to realize that. How seriously should we take his other statements?

Furthermore, it is unclear whether this organization is to be anything more than just another talking shop, though this time not with an anti-American, anti-Western bias (maybe we had better keep France out, after all). When I asked whether he envisaged an integrated force that would intervene in countries that abused human rights most flagrantly, the good professor openly told me that he was being evasive because he sees that problem as being well into the future. I think not. If you set up an organization you need to decide at an early stage what the aim is and, in general terms, how that aim is to be achieved. Otherwise, you blunder into badly planned scenarios.

There are a few points to be made here, though. Firstly, it is good that the subject of how to by-pass the UN to the point when it might disappear, is becoming part of mainstream American political discussion. Of course, the best way of achieving that objective would be to stop giving the wretched organization money but, I suppose, it is reasonable for politicians to be able to say that there is an alternative to something that is completely rotten and corrupt but is seen as a shining star of human hopes, if only it could be polished up a bit.

On the other hand if Obama does become President (and with all those idiotic gaffes, McCain’s chances are looking better and better) he will not want to do anything. He, as Professor Cushman said, will be a hero at the UN.

Secondly, the idea of making it clear that countries that actually believe in certain principles, even if they do not always act on them, are basically different from those that merely sign up to agreements and proceed to violate them before the ink is dry is full of potential.

Thirdly, there is no harm in affirming that those principles, based on freedom and democracy should become part of the democratic countries’ interests. Nor is there any harm in creating some organization in which the United States will be merely first among equals and, surrounded by allies, will take cognizance of them. Actually, as we have written before, it is not true that President Bush or any of his predecessors refused to listen. He merely refused to listen to America’s enemies.

Fourthly, national sovereignty is a severely overrated concept. The only reason the UN is stuck with it is because the Soviet Union insisted on putting it into the founding charter (and the meeting that signed it was organized and managed by the well-known Soviet agent Alger Hiss), wishing to prevent any discussion of its own record on freedom and human rights. But if those concepts are to trump national sovereignty there has to be a decisiveness about the need to intervene if necessary, a way of defining when that necessity arises and a method of achieving that intervention. None of which, it seems to me, are even close to being discussed seriously by the potential founders of the League of Democracies.

The real crisis has yet to come (Part 2)

If, as we argue, the worst of the current "food crisis" may be over – in the short-term – if the obscene rush to turn food into fuel continues, we will over the medium to long-term be seeing massive shortages of food, precipitating a global crisis. The problems of the last two years will be seen as but a harbinger.

The devil, as always, is in the detail, and that detail is extremely difficult to find – itself a telling indicator. But, starting that the beginning, the figures tell an alarming tale. Here, we rely on an 2006 FAO report, ethanol production had expanded by 53 percent from 30 billion litres in 2000 to about 46 billion litres in 2005.

That report was based on the EU share of renewable fuels in total transport rising to 5.75 percent, when it was expected that world ethanol consumption (the favoured biofuel) would reach 54 billion litres by 2010. As we know, though, the EU is not stopping there. It current 2020 target is ten percent.

In broad terms, the FAO provides a damning indictment of that target. It estimates that the EU would need to convert about 70 percent of its agricultural land to provide that amount of energy, adding that the United States, Brazil, and Canada would require about 30, 3, and 0.3 percent of agricultural land, respectively.

At the moment though, we have an interesting situation. Ethanol production in Europe is in a state of collapse. Owing to the bizarre tax situation which allows US ethanol to undercut European-produced product, much of the supply is produced from US-grown corn (maize).

The problem here is that this situation cannot last. According to latest market reports, global maize production is currently 772 million tons, with US corn at 332 million.

Next year, the harvest is only expected to increase to 777 million tons, which will not meet the increased ethanol demand arising from the United States. As a result, it is expected that we will see a global decrease in stocks of 103 million tons. Furthermore, since corn is also used for animal feed, increased production in this sector would require replacement by sorghum, barley, oats, and wheat, creating pressures elsewhere in the supply chain.

From that, it would appear that increased European demand to meet the EU target - which has just been increased to 2.5 percent of total transport fuel consumption, as an interim step toward the 10 percent target - cannot be met from US sources.

Nor is that situation likely to improve. The week before last, President Bush proposed a new energy bill which would increase the US biofuels mandate to 162 billion litres by 2022, or quadruple the volume required under the current "Renewable Fuel Standard". This alone dwarfs the 75 billion litres previously predicted for 2020, based on earlier targets set in the United States, China, Europe, Japan and Brazil.

Brazil is a good indicator of the way things are going. Initially, EU member states though they could rely on importing some of their requirements. One place they looked was Brazil, which is planning to increase its ethanol production from sugar, producing 32.7 billion litres in 2015, as compared to 13.5 billion in 2005.

Unfortunately, Brazil intends to absorb most of its increased production domestically and is looking to export only six billion litres of ethanol per year. That would barely dent Europe's needs, which – according to one estimate - are expected to grow to 21.5 billion litres a year. For each ton of wheat, 336 litres (approx) of ethanol is produced, so this would need 63.9 million tons of wheat, nearly half the EU's total wheat harvest.

That is the measure of the scale of the EU's problem, even if the figure came from a Brazilian website. That we had to look there illustrates the extraordinary difficulty in finding hard data on the level of biofuel needed to meet the EU's ten percent quota.

The only hard figure we were able to find from commission sources, in a study dated 2001, related not to the 10 percent target, but to the original 5.75 percent quota settled at that time, applying only to the EU-15 (pre-enlargement).

The contribution from biofuels needed to meet that lower quota was estimated then to be around 17.5 Mtoe (Million tonnes oil equivalent) on which basis the 10 percent quota, calculated on the same basis, equates to 30.4 Mtoe. The 30.4 figure equates to not 21.5 but 38.5 billion litres of ethanol.

In fact, the EU anticipates that the quota will be met by a mixture of ethanol (blended with petrol) and biodiesel, but such is the lack of data that, to develop the argument, it is easier – for the time being – to work with a notional 100 percent ethanol production as a basis of calculations.

Identifying an annual requirement of nearly 40 billion litres of ethanol (or equivalent) truly points up the enormity of the task the EU has set its member states. If wheat were used as the feedstock, 120 million tons would be needed. That would absorb well over 90 percent of the entire EU wheat production and use 15.6 million hectares of prime agricultural land – or more than a quarter of the total cereal area in the EU. (Currently, the usable agricultural area of the EU-27 amounts to 183 million hectares. About 108 million is arable land, of which the cereal growing area is 59 million.)

Herein lies the huge disconnect. In its 2001 report, when the EU was considering only a 5.75 percent biofuels quota, it drew attention to the amount of set-aside available. At that time, with voluntary set-aside of 1.6 million hectares, the total stood at 5.6 million hectares.

"Given this surface of set-aside and considering only primary biomass as a function of the crop grown," said the commission, "between 4 and 15 Mtoe of biofuels would be supplied for transport uses, making for between 1.2 and 5 percent of total European petroleum products consumption."

From this, two points emerge. Firstly, the commission was effectively relying on turning the whole of the set-aside allocation to biofuel production. But, even then, much of it was already being used for a variety of industrial purposes, ranging from animal feed to hemp and even lavender and linseed production. Secondly, after the "food crisis" had taken hold last year, the commission suspended set-aside to allow the land to be used for food production.

Given the much of the land was already in use, the commission was indulging in what amounted to Enron-style triple-counting, allocating the same land to general industrial use, then to biofuel production and finally to food production.

Furthermore, the range of figures offered by the commission, on the amount of land needed, is extraordinarily wide. At its most pessimistic, we see that to produce 1.2 percent of biofuel would need 5.6 million hectares. On that basis, the ten percent quota would use up to 46 million hectares, nearly all of the total EU cereal and four times our estimate. Even at the most optimistic, the commission figures put the land requirement at over 11 million hectares.

If by now, the impression is of a confusion of figures, that is an accurate reflection of the state of play. Furthermore, the various estimates must be seen against the recent performance of the commission, in forecasting cereal yields and prices.

Having seen relatively high commodity prices in 2006, it actually forecast a record harvest for 2007 and declining prices. In fact, we saw the price of milling wheat in Rouen rise from €179 to almost €300 per ton while market prices for feed barley increased in the wake of rising wheat prices. In France barley prices have doubled since the summer of 2006, reaching €270 per ton in Rouen at the end of September 2007.

At the same time, its forecast of a total cereal production of 270.9 million tons for the year actually turned out at 255, while consumption hit 267 tons against a forecast of 268.

The commission having sold off much of its intervention stocks, this turned the EU - which has traditionally been a net exporter - into a net importer (eventually having to import 18.9 million tons), forcing the commission to take emergency action in December 2007, suspending import duties on all cereals except oats, buckwheat and millet.

What this basically amounts to is that the commission was comprehensively caught out, displaying a lack of competence that is quite staggering. And it is this same commission which is offering what amount to back-of-the-envelope calculations and indulging in triple-counting of land availability, all in an effort to assure us that its biofuel policy will have little or no impact on the price or availability of food.

If the EU was the only player in the game, this could be the case but, with biofuel having become a global obsession, the 27 member states are at the centre of an epidemic of insanity. They will be competing in a cut-throat market where the total demand will outstrip supply. The net effect can only be shortages and price hikes, with developing countries the main losers.

But, as we have seen in recent months, even marginal shortages of some commodities can have a dramatic effect on prices even in developed countries, adding significant amounts to food bills.

Despite this, the commission rejects criticsm of its policy. The huge tragedy of that is, without the insane rush to biofuels, the world agricultural system is well capable of meeting current food needs and the increases in demand for the foreseeable future. The crisis that has yet to come will be artificial, unnecessary and devastating in its effects.

COMMENT THREAD

The real crisis has yet to come (Part 1)

Some 40 percent of the EU budget still allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy. With the commission claiming as its flagship policy the fight against "climate change", and its biofuels quotas an important part of that strategy – all in the context of the current "food crisis", this puts European agriculture once again at the centre stage of EU politics.

Rises in food prices also have a strong domestic impact, giving a political "edge" to a matter of strong international concern.

It should thus come as no surprise that these issues have risen up the political agenda and have captured the interest and much of the attention of this blog, especially as the serpentine twists and turns of a rapidly developing situation defy easy analysis and require careful attention. Inevitably, therefore, these issues will tend to dominate the posts, and will do until some clarity or resolution is reached.

That said, there seems to be no resolution on the horizon, the latest development being a dramatic downturn in the price of wheat futures on the Chicago market, the benchmark soft red winter wheat falling to its lowest level since November at $8.01 a bushel on yesterday, 40 percent below its record peak of $13.50 a bushel in February.

This is variously reported by the BBC and others, lending sustenance to those who claim that the recent spikes in wheat prices reflect speculative pressure rather than any real market shortage.

Nevertheless, it was the case that the global wheat production for 2007 was 601 million tons while demand peaked at 612 million, and although the shortfall was met from global reserves, imbalances – often caused by government intervention (or lack of it) – did contribute to the upwards price pressure.

Anyhow, as would be expected, soaring prices have triggered increased wheat plantings for the current season, estimated at 3.6 percent globally, allowing the International Grains Council to project a record world wheat crop of 645 million tons for the 2008/9 harvest, weather conditions permitting, against a projected consumption of 619 million tons.

This global estimate includes predictions from the China National Grain and Oil Information Centre, and important player on the global scene. Although the US is known for its wheat growing, China is in fact the world's largest producer, delivering over 100 million tons annually, more than double the US output. India, incidentally, is number two, producing 70 million tons or thereabouts.

According to the Chinese figures, winter wheat output will grow 1.3 percent this year to 102.6 million tons, lifting its total wheat output, including spring wheat, to 107.6 million tons this year, up 2.5 percent from 2007.

What is puzzling about this buoyant forecast is that yields seem unaffected by the agricultural damage, estimated at 80 billion yuan (about $11 billion), caused by the great winter snow disaster.

This may be explained by the fact that the snows largely affected production in Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou provinces, while the major wheat growing areas are in the eastern Shandong and northern Hebei provinces.

However, Anhui, and Jiangxu are also important wheat-growing areas, so one wonders just how accurate the estimates are, given a totalitarian regime where information is tightly controlled. The USDA, though, seems to think that it is mainly the rapeseed crop that is affected. The snow may even have been beneficial to the wheat crop, in easing some local drought conditions.

With the focus on wheat, we are not entirely out of the woods. Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, an agricultural analyst at Barclays Bank, suggests that the price of other grains like rice, sugar and corn could remain high. "The increase in wheat planting could come at the expense of other crops - it's a zero sum game," she says.

This seemed to be borne out by Chicago prices. July rough rice futures soared 2.3 percent last Wednesday to a record $24.85 per hundredweight. Said Kenji Kobayashi, a grains analyst at Kanetsu Asset Management in Tokyo, "Some of the main rice producing countries have imposed export curbs ... and this has combined with low global stocks to drive rice higher."

A day later, though, US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer was exuding reassurance, saying there was no shortage of rice in the United States. He put the surge in rice prices down to speculation about future rice shortages – in part, at least. "We don't see any evidence of the lack of availability of rice. There are no supply issues," he declared.

Ramming in the message, he then added, "Part of the price issue is speculation because we're so close to capacity...that if something disrupts it like the weather pattern then you can start seeing some supply issues. But today there are no supply issues that we see in the marketplace or in the foreseeable future."

On the face of it, therefore, one could perhaps tentatively suggest that the crisis is over, or largely under control – given that there are no weather events which have a major impact on yields. But what is missing from the equation is any estimate of the crops needed for biofuels. This we explore in Part 2.

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Lies, damn lies and David Milband

We lost – wholly predictable, but that does not make it any easier.

Meanwhile, despite horrendous problems with the internet (remaining connected for no more than a couple of minutes at a time), I have managed to complete the transcript of the Milband – Hague "debate". It is posted on EU Referendum 2.

When it comes to defending his beloved treaty, foreign secretary David Miliband is a liar. Not once, but many times offering a naked, unreconstructed, obvious lie. And the worst of it is that is opposition counterpart, William did not pick him up on it, thus letting him get away with it without a serious (or any) challenge.

The particular lie is familiar to use all, uttered on the Today programme this morning, when Milband told listeners, again and again that, the "constitutional treaty has been abandoned". This, he claimed, Angela Merkel had claimed, along "with every other European head of government".

Thus does the whole of the foreign secretary's case for opposing a referendum stand, building on his careful omission of the term "constitutional concept" which was actually what Angela Merkel and her fellow heads of state said.

Thus is Miliband's case built. It is rather appropriate that, like the construct he so loves, he has to rely on a diet of lies and deception. Read the transcript, and note the comments from Nick Robinson. None of the political parties come well out of this and, as for Hague … beyond contempt.

I'll post an analysis of the debate as soon as I can, internet connection permitting.

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The clash of the giants (not)

This morning, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and William Hague, the Tory spokesman on foreign affairs, debated on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the referendum issue on the constitutional Lisbon treaty. This is the transcript:

James Naughtie: The Commons will decide today whether or not there will be a referendum on the European Reform Treaty – the Lisbon Treaty. The Government says it's not necessary because the treaty is no longer a constitution on which a referendum would have been justified.

The Conservatives say that it is a constitution in all but name and that there should be a national vote. The Liberal-Democrats who could put the government in real peril if they joined the Tories in the voting lobby are abstaining although there may be some rebels. We heard from their leader Nick Clegg earlier in the programme and he reaffirmed the abstention pledge.

So let's hear the argument. The Foreign Secretary David Miliband is in the radio car. The Conservative’s foreign affairs spokesman William Hague is at Westminster. Good morning to you both.

Both: Good morning.

James Naughtie: Mr Hague: What is it that convinces you that, despite the changes made to this treaty, it is still a constitution in all but name?

William Hague: Well every government in Europe other than the British government maintains that the substance of the constitution is still there. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the fundamentals of the constitution have been maintained and indeed when you look at it, ninety percent of the constitution is still the same: the new EU president; the EU foreign minister - albeit renamed the High Representative - the loss of more than 50 national vetoes. We could go on with a long list of these things. And I asked the government, I asked the Foreign Secretary last autumn to publish a comparative table, a comparative analysis clause by clause of the constitution and the treaty. Significantly they were not willing to do so.

James Naughtie: David Miliband, why if Angla Merkel for one says that the fundamentals are the same, why do you insist that the constitution has been abandoned.

David Miliband: Well, I oppose a referendum on this treaty for the same reason that William Hague voted against a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which is that neither of these treaties exercise a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the nation state and the European Union.

And as for Angela Merkel she, along with every other European head of government, announced last June that the constitution had been abandoned – the words of every single European head of state. Why did they say that? Because voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the previous Constitution.

James Naughtie: Mr Hague, if it hasn’t been abandoned, why did they say that it had?

William Hague: Well, of course it suits people promoting the constitution to say its no longer a constitution …

James Naughtie: By your argument they don't need to make that case in Europe because they’re not fighting the same kind of battle of battle that the government is here.

William Hague: But of course they want to help those governments that have difficulty with the concept, as here in Britain but the important thing of course is what is in the thing and ninety percent of the content is absolutely the same. Many of the Articles …

James Naughtie: Give us an example of one thing which changes the relationship between the national state and the EU, so that we can discuss the specifics.

William Hague: Fifty vetoes are lost, for instance where we now have a unanimity requirement, in fifty of those areas we move to qualified majority voting…

James Naughtie: OK …

William Hague: Let me just add one thing. Very significantly, what we were debating in the Commons last night, the power is taken in this treaty to abolish all remaining vetoes other than in defence without any recourse to any further treaty. And that is something quite different, on a scale different from what we've seen before.

James Naughtie: David Miliband.

David Miliband: I think that exposes exactly the argument that there isn't a fundamental shift in the balance of power. William Hague talks about fifty-one vetoes. Sixteen of them don’t apply to the United Kingdom because we're not members of the economic and monetary union and because we have our own opt-in on justice and home affairs. Another fifteen or so of them are purely technical matters to do with pension rights and the appointments of various committees. Twenty of them are actually in the British national interest in areas where William Hague wants to see more action. Let me give you examples: in development assistance, for example, and disaster aid relief or in terms of some of the energy deregulation

These are areas where it is actually in the British national interest. And it’s absolutely clear that on any reckoning that there are fewer changes in qualified majority voting in this treaty than in the Single European Act or the Maastricht Treaty. So I think that this exactly exposes the core of the argument which is that we are a parliamentary democracy and only in circumstances where there is a fundamental shift in the balance of power, for example if we wanted to join the euro, then we should we go back to the people. Otherwise we have our own parliament people make their choices at general elections and there simply cannot be stood up that there’s a shift in the balance of power.

As for the second example that William Hague gave, there is a triple lock on all of the changes that he alleges are going to be smuggled in by the back door. Every government has to agree them, including our own, so we have a veto. Every parliament has to agree them, so our own parliament for the first time has a veto on change. In additional the European Parliament has to play a role. And the truth is that the isolation of the Tories is not just on the issue of whether or not there should be a referendum, because as I say every government in Europe has said the constitution has been abandoned. The real issue is that they oppose the Lisbon Treaty itself, even though it means more voting weight in the European council of ministers for Britain, even though it cuts the size of the commission, whose bureaucracy is always being attacked, and even though in important areas of foreign affairs it actually streamlines the delivery of foreign policy delivery that is decided by member states

James Naughtie: William Hague.

William Hague: Well yes, let me come back on that because first of all large parts of this treaty were opposed by the government itself as David Miliband himself knows. He often tries to portray that the Conservative party as being alone against it but many of the foreign policy provisions in it were opposed by his predecessor Margaret Beckett until the final few days of the negotiation on the treaty. Now David argues that the loss of vetoes, the twenty particular vetoes he mentions, are in the national interest and I say they are not …

James Naughtie: All of them?

William Hague: Yes. The issue today, however, is something different. It is should the people be able to decide about that. And while he says that none of us argued at the time of Maastricht for a referendum, no political party in the 1992 general election said it would hold a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. Every political party in the 2005 election said it would hold a referendum on what is essentially this treaty.

James Naughtie: Are you making the point that the commitment to the referendum on Maastricht would have come from a pledge in the manifesto and not from the content of the treaty itself?

William Hague: Absolutely because what we're dealing with here is something that goes wider than Europe. It is an issue of trust in politics. What are we going to say to all those people … we as members of parliament go around and say you must vote, politics matter, elections count and in future we will have to explain that an entire House of Commons, elected with a commitment to a referendum, decided by a majority that it would not have that referendum because the majority thought it would not win …

James Naughtie: In practical terms, Foreign Secretary …

David Miliband: Let me come back there because William Hague has said something that is absolutely extraordinary, which is that the content of a treaty that parliament is discussing has no impact on whether or not there should be a referendum.

Illegible

David Miliband: Don't interrupt because you have said something that I think is very, very unwise. You’ve just said that the content of a treaty has no impact on whether it should be in a manifesto. So, for example, if there wasn’t a manifesto commitment to have a referendum on the euro, but a government decided that it should … enter the euro, it wouldn’t be bound to go to the people. I say that it's the content of a treaty that matters. So in the case that I've just given, if the government suddenly decided it didn’t want to join the euro, it would be bound to consult the people by virtue of the nature of the fundamental constitutional issue that it involved. And I really think that, on reflection, William Hague will realise that it’s absurd to turn over hundreds of years of precedent, where are parliament is the place to decide these issues. How many people have come onto this programme saying they want parliament to play a bigger role in our national life. Here is chance for parliament to do its job in a competitive way, as you see from all the debate about this vote today. And then for general elections to decide the nature of the government. It must be the case that it's on fundamental issues of principle where people are consulted

William Hague: The overriding issue of principle here is that a referendum was promised …

David Miliband: On a constitution which has been abandoned.

William Hague: Which has not been abandoned. And a family solicitor who told people that a document had been abandoned when ninety percent of its content was the same would be drummed out of his job.

David Miliband: Hang on, 27 heads of government have .. [illegible]

William Hague: … hundreds of years … Well look at the heads of government. Bertie Ahern says thankfully they haven’t changed the substance. Ninety percent of it is still there. The Spanish Prime minister said a great part of the content of the constitution is captured in the new treaty. This is what the heads of government have said.

David Miliband: But I can trade you quotes as I've shown because you've started by alleging that Angela Merkel, the head of Germany said it was the same as the constitution … [interruption] Hang on, hand on, well I've said she said its abandoned. I can give you back the Conservative Dutch prime minister ….

James Naughtie: We've heard quotes from both sides, yes. Let's move on, finally.

David Miliband: The constitutional treaty abolished all previous treaties of the European Union. It did something that was legally unprecedented. This treaty – it was rejected by the voters - this treaty says we should not abolish all previous version of the treaties of the European Union. Instead, we should amend the institutions of the European Union. That seems to me to be something that parliament was created to scrutinise and decide on.

William Hague: And look at what has happened when parliamentary committees, cross-party committees with a Labour majority have examined this question: the foreign affairs committee, the European Scrutiny Committee. The European Scrutiny Committee concluded that the treaty, the Lisbon Treaty was substantially equivalent to the constitution and efforts to portray it as otherwise were likely to be misleading.

David Miliband: I'll have to come in there …

James Naughtie: Very quickly, foreign secretary, very quickly foreign secretary …

David Miliband: William Hague has read half of the sentence. What the ESC has said, the European Scrutiny Committee said, was that for those counties didn't have the protocols that Britain has negotiated, in respect, for example, justice and home affairs, there were significant similarities. So let's be absolutely clear about what parliamentary committees have said. In key areas of structure, in key areas of content, and in consequence as well, the Reform Treaty has significant differences from the constitutional treaty. And those are important in our discussion. But the fundamental issue is, does it constitute a fundamental shift in the balance of power, in which case the people should be consulted or is in fact a job for MPs. And I believe that, as an amending treaty, it's a job for MPs.

James Naughtie: Can I just ask you foreign secretary, one last question. Isn't the politics of this clear? And isn't it the case that you as a government are pretty well losing the argument on Europe because, by every measure of opinion we've got that you'd lose it?

David Miliband: I am sorry that you have given William Hague a points victory in the last ten minutes discussion [illegible]. I would dispute that. No, I don't accept that proposition. I think that there is an important principle here, which is what's the job of parliament? And the job of parliament must be to scrutinise legislation and then decide whether or not to pass it. In exceptional cases where there is a fundamental shift in the balance of power, then of course there should be a referendum, and the scrutiny should be intense and the scrutiny should be serious. But in the end this is what we pay MPs for.

James Naughtie: Foreign secretary, William Hague, thank you both very much.

Comment by Nick Robinson, political editor (abbreviated).

What's striking though about this I think Jim, is that we thought that this would be a huge story, didn't we – this story of the Lisbon Treaty. This debate seemed likely to dominate the Spring and it really hasn’t. This is the first bit of attention it's got.

Now some people have criticised the media, the BBC for not giving it enough attention. But shall tell you why. The front benches have conspired to make it dull. The government doesn't really want much attention on it, there is a degree of embarrassment on it, that they’ve changed their position on the referendum, not one but twice in recent years.

The Conservatives, yes, are united in the main in favouring a referendum, but they believe that William Hague tried winning elections by being eurosceptic and failed. And he's one of the leading Tories in saying let's not bang on about this issue. And the Lib-Dems for their own reasons, really know that they are split on the issue of the referendum and therefore have also chosen not to give it a great deal of attention.

So it is likely that there will be no referendum. The Lisbon Treaty will be signed …

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