"networkedblogs.com" - WikiLeaks: Saudis Often Warned U.S. About Oil Speculators

http://networkedblogs.com/iuEb0

Further evidence of the vacuity of the ‘war for oil’ argument. Much of the price for oil is today determined in the derivatives market by Wall Street speculators rather than by producers or suppliers. The underlying commodity usually has a minimum impact on the actual price. But the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will not investigate this for the same reason why it was prevented from investigating the banks. Because Wall Street owns the executive branch.

Kevin Hall: The Saudis have been saying for years something should be done to curb the influence of banks that are speculating on the price of oil

The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinian “Authority” – one has to put this word in quotation marks – was prepared, and is prepared to give up the “right of return” of perhaps seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a “state” that may be only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.

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"Mark Hennessy" - Oxfam Warns of Mass Hunger Over Food Prices

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by the Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0531/1224298145343.html

by Mark Hennessy

Prices of staple foods will more than double over the next two decades unless urgent action is taken to change the rules of world agriculture, Oxfam has warned, raising fears that hundreds of millions more could face hunger.

Maize, one of the main foods of the world’s poor, will cost between 120 per cent and 180 per cent more by 2030, with up to half of the price hike coming from the impact of climate change, said the London-based charity.

“Depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and the gathering pace of climate change is already making the situation worse,” it said, in a report titled Growing a Better Future. The dangers, caused by demand outstripping production, threaten to erase much of the “steady progress in the fight against hunger” made over recent decades, said Oxfam.

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