Opening Obama's Eyes

This is a commentary on Obama’s handling of the Iranian situation It is hard to fault the comments and he is showing little leadership on the issue at this time. Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen. My problem here is that we are been confronted with a clear moral choice, however earned. The Iranian government is notionally putting down the will of the people whenever it displeases them and the external world has almost no leverage to affect it.

Obama’s efforts to open the door to reconciliation have been thrown on the floor as if they are of no consequence and that should have been expected anyway. A simple reading of the history of this conflict should have informed Obama of this. The original hostage crisis was a deliberate breach exploited by the Iranians and used to humiliate Carter. It presently serves their interest to humiliate Obama because it may restore street credit in the Arab street and aid in keeping their own citizens under control.

The proper response is a modest slap down to remind them that bad behavior has consequences. Except that the Bush administration did not have the answer to that either. And we are all getting tired of sanctions.

The current internal turmoil may resolve this now or later anyway. The country is financially strained and must continue to underperform. The fault is very much at the foot of the mullahs. Maybe we should cease all offshore bank accounts held by any mullah and his family. Even if they do not exist, it at least puts them on the defensive. We would certainly do that if actual war broke out.

The Obama reality is that he is naturally weak on both the economic file and the foreign file and must be dependent on his advisors. This was also George Bush’s flaw. You simply do not have the real world knowledge to discern when it is not working and mistakes are easily entered into if your advisors are biased in any way. It cost Bush two years in Iraq until he replaced Rumsfield who was too committed to a minimal strength approach long after it had clearly failed.

His feel good foreign initiative at least created a break and an opening. It had to be responded to by the dance partner. Failure to respond needed to be briskly rebuked. We all know who the rogues are, and by briefly opening the door, you reassure all your allies that you are not unreasonable at all and you can then task them with the job of changing all that.

The real bottom line is that we will be slowly returning to business as usual and with the State department perhaps taking a larger role. That will relieve Obama of much of this file that has had far too much presidential participation in the past decade. I am not sure what is worse; Clinton’s absenteeism which helped set up the 9/11 scenario (I am sorry, but if a nut bar publically goes around blowing up US assets and promises worse, then a declaration of war is the only correct answer), or Bush’s nation at war approach in which all the worst practices of military thinking is introduced. At least we have now returned to the proper approach and are optimizing resources to resolve it all.

Iran and North Korea are both determined to promote disaster in order to extract leverage. Both are economically crumbling and surely can not hold out much longer. Just ignoring them may well be the best policy.

I think that a deal is now available with Cuba that will ease the transition coming over the winding down of Castro’s regime. It is likely too much to expect real concessions, but establishment of friendly discussions is very appropriate so it becomes easy when the time arrives. I think Cuba’s transition to a modern economy will be breath taking



The Education of Barack Obama

By: Gregory Gethard

FrontPageMagazine.com Friday, June 26, 2009

One June 12, Iran’s population headed to the polls; over the next few days, an unexpected Green Revolution erupted, as millions took to the streets in protest to a vote that many say was a blatant fraud. The protesters faced incredible adversity; opposition leaders were jailed, cell phones and Internet services were cut off, independent journalists were banished and the regime’s police and militias beat and shot its own citizens.

It was not until Tuesday, June 23rd until President Barack Obama made a stern rebuke of the tactics of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and presumptive President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At a press conference, Obama said that he was “appalled and outrage” at the brutality but added that there was still a “peaceful path” that Iran’s government could take to resolve this crisis.

Under most circumstances, a president making tough remarks in reference to street-fighting after a corrupt election would not be seen out of the ordinary. However, Obama’s Tuesday press conference was an about face from his previous attitudes on Iran’s tumult.

For several days, Obama had been criticized by many for not taking a tougher stance on Iran. Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham both said Obama was “timid” and “weak” in his initial response. Many pundits made mention of how European Union leaders, in particular French President Nicolas Sarkozy, condemned the Iranian government’s actions while Obama stood off to the side. Many Congressional Democrats broke ranks with the President and his “measured response” and voted to support resolutions that reaffirmed America’s support of Iranians seeking basic human rights and freedoms, while also blasting Iran’s censorship of opposition leaders and media.

Did Obama become tougher on Iran’s leadership due to the increased political scrutiny? When asked by a member of the media if McCain’s criticism forced him to change his stance, Obama responded by rhetorically asking, “What do you think?”

The past few weeks have taught Obama a tough lesson, one of his own doing.

Since his ascent to the presidency, Obama has tried to warm ties with Iran in hopes to bring it to the nuclear arms negotiation table. However, it was clear to many that this was doomed to failure from the start. Since his election, Iran has shown no interest in Obama’s invitation; in many ways, the regime only increased its belligerence.

One example of this comes from April’s U.N. Conference on Racism, held in Geneva. Ahmadinejad used his bully pulpit at this forum to make anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments; in response, dozens of delegates walked off as he spoke, one protester even threw a rubber clown nose at Iran’s president. America’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations panned Ahmadinejad’s speech. Al-Jazeera’s Tehran correspondent said that it did not play well at home.

But, still, the Obama administration said it wanted to continue its attempts to keep an open dialogue with Tehran. And, according to both The Guardian and the Washington Times, Obama personally reached out to Khamenei in early May, writing a letter to him delivered through back channels. Details of this letter have yet to be made public; however, sources said that the letter “laid out the prospect of cooperation in regional and bilateral relations” while also touching on the nuclear weapons issue. It is not known if Iran responded.

In early June, Obama made his famed “Cairo” speech. During this speech, Obama strikes a conciliatory tone while addressing America’s involvement in the 1958 coup that brought the Shah to power. He also said that Iran had a right to pursue nuclear power, as long as it fell under the rules of the non-proliferation treaty. But, perhaps most importantly, he says:

It will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.

Despite Obama’s many overtures, not once did Iran respond. And Iran’s continued cold-shoulder came well before the June 12 election, when Khamenei’s and Ahmadinejad’s grip on the nation was firm and unquestioned.

It should have become clear by then that Iran had no interest in Obama’s Sunshine Policy; this was a regime that was hell bent on gaining regional hegemony by any means necessary and had no plans of ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The last thing it ever intended was to make amends with The Great Satan or “the Zionists.” In the few months of his presidency, this should have become clear to Obama. His desire to become friendly with Iran was a one-sided goal that never had any realistic chance of happening.

The aftermath of June 12 should have been a signal for the Obama administration to change its path immediately. Many pundits had predicted that Mir Hossein Mousavi had a chance at winning the election; he was seen as a “reformist” who, while not being particularly open to friendly ties with America, did want to focus on domestic issues while giving more rights to Iran’s citizenry.

As it became more and more clear that, most likely, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad perpetrated a huge electoral fraud, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. In response, the regime booted out journalists, shut down cell phone and Internet communication, arrested opposition leaders, and had its forces start to beat protestors and literally chase them into their home. Ahmadinejad referred to them as “dust.”

Four days after the election, Obama made his first public comments about Iran. When being interviewed on CNBC, he said that the difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad “may not be as great as advertised.” Later on, at a press conference, Obama said he did not want to be seen as “meddling” in Iran’s affairs. These statements came despite the millions who flooded Tehran’s streets in protest, literally putting their lives in danger in order to show their support for Mousavi.

Obama and his team continued to keep a low-profile during the week; however, Iran found itself embroiled in more unrest. During this tumult, Khameini sermonized at Friday prayers about the election’s aftermath, promising to crackdown on any protesters. And, despite Obama’s insistence on not placing America in the center of Iran’s electoral situation, the Ayotollah cast blame for the entire uprising on American/British/Zionist interests, which many pundits felt inevitable. Obama’s response to this was once again non-committal, saying that “the world is watching.”

The world was indeed watching as Tehran erupted into utter chaos; videos of Basiji militia members attacking citizens were widely available on YouTube. By far, the most well-known one showed the death of Neda Agha Soltan, a young girl who was repeatedly shot by a Basiji.

On Tuesday, Obama mentioned “Neda,” as she has become known throughout the world. Perhaps this was the breaking point for him; his silence didn’t prevent the grotesque actions of Iran’s government, and there’s no way to ever know what would have happened if he took a strong stance in support of The Sea of Green as soon as the uprisings began.

It’s clear, however, that Obama has had a crash course on Iran. Has he learned that kind gestures to this regime go unanswered? Has he learned that being silent when a dictatorship is oppressing its citizenry is the same as compliance? The education of Barack Obama continues.

Pending Global Population Decline

This story has been below the radar for a number of years, but will certainly begin to rise into public awareness. A significant decline in human population is beginning and will make itself felt for the rest of the century. Public response has been meager because is has not been particularly obvious and because the memories of the past scare over overpopulation are still fresh.

The causes are supposedly many but actually are singular. The modern economy has made child rearing as an enterprise unprofitable to the parents. The modern economy is an expansion of the classic urban economy and that economy also was historically unprofitable in terms of child rearing. Lack of birth control failed to even offset internal urban losses in the non modern era. Today, birth control makes it a more purely economic decision.

Right now, the only modern polity able to sustain demographic breakeven has been the USA. The reasons for that are also many, but not yet obviously economic, which suggests that it would take little for the numbers to also drop below breakeven.

The continuing impact of global economic growth is that half the global population will achieve middle class status over the next twenty years. The remaining half will do exactly the same thing over the next twenty years. This means an end to mass migration as a supply of population to aging areas. Just as today we see few German or Italian young immigrates, in forty years we will be seeing few immigrates at all.

Obviously this is an untenable situation, unless you believe the earth should be depopulated. I personally have come to the conclusion that a population of thirty billion would serve the Earth best because it would support turning the deserts of Africa and Asia into productive climate moderating farm and forest lands. Yes we can create a ecological heaven on Earth, but we need human beings to make it happen. Those human beings need to be integrated with the land also in a way that modern economics has militated against.

My own personal vision includes integrating modern apartment housing and urban services with an agricultural complex with interlocking duties between the two. Most importantly, all child rearing is integrated with such a complex providing an economic framework that allows the child to begin early as a productive member while also providing a cooperative economic model for child rearing that permits both parents to work while having a healthy family life that is not a financial burden per se.

In a way this is a combination of deurbanization and social and economic engineering. The natural result should be a stable and if desirous, an expanding population.

Population Decline – Good or Bad for Envirnoment?
Going Down - Is too few people the new "population problem"?

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/12/14/wendling/index.html?source=daily

By Mike Wendling
14 Dec 2005
Alston wants your women.

And not just any old hags, either -- residents of this northern English town would prefer strapping young things who aren't afraid to get dirty. "Quite frankly, old people are not going to give us the vitality that we need," says Vince Peart, the cheerful if lovelorn spokesperson for the town's matchmaking campaign. "We're looking for young people who will work."

The area around Alston, a hamlet perched in the Pennine mountains, was once home to 20,000 people. Nowadays it's closer to 2,000. While Peart's booty call has proved to be a headline-grabbing move, he admits it's not just women the town is lacking. Warm bodies of all sorts are in short supply.

Peart is trying to keep positive as he crisscrosses Britain on a double-headed mission to lobby politicians on rural issues and get dates for his buddies. He and other lonely Alstonites should take heart, though: they're really not alone. Around the world, a demographic shift is under way, with people having fewer children. The resulting population decrease could -- more than hybrid cars or wind farms or policy shifts -- be our best hope for the salvation of the planet. Eventually.

Less Is More, More or Less

The little attention given to shrinking populations tends to focus on Europe. Among the nations with the lowest fertility levels in the world are relatively rich countries like Italy and Spain, but they are matched by still-developing Eastern European nations like Romania and Ukraine. Even the continent's comparatively lusty countries, such as France and Ireland, are only cranking out an average of 1.8 children per woman -- well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 that's needed to sustain current population levels.

Populations are declining in seven of the 25 European Union member countries, and the trend will continue. According to Eurostat [PDF], the E.U.'s pocket-protector brigade, population numbers will rise gradually over the next two decades to about 470 million, thanks mainly to immigration, before falling by 20 million people by mid-century, when immigration will no longer be able to offset rising death rates and falling birthrates. Germany alone is projected to lose 8 million by 2050, a drop of nearly 10 percent from its present population of 82.5 million -- that's a loss roughly equal to the populations of its five biggest cities combined.

This trend isn't brand-new; in fact, Oxford demographer David Coleman dates declining birthrates in Europe to the social-welfare state that began in the 1930s. In a society veering away from agriculture, he points out, children were no longer worth it, in hard economic terms. Other explanations for falling birthrates include women's rights, increasing female participation in the workforce, and birth-control programs.

Outside Europe, a notable trend toward depopulation is also occurring in Japan, where the fertility rate has fallen in recent years. The government estimates that by 2050 there will be 25 million fewer Japanese -- that's like saying goodbye to one-fifth of the current population, or all of greater Tokyo.

But the real surprise may be that birthrates are falling even in developing nations. Throughout the developing world, the U.N. says, people are having fewer babies -- an average of fewer than three per woman -- and 20 developing countries have fertility levels below the 2.1 replacement level. China's policies, including the notorious one-child rule, have driven its birthrate from 5.9 in the 1970s to sub-replacement level. An even larger decrease -- the fastest ever recorded -- occurred in Iran, which dropped from seven births per woman in the early '80s to around the replacement level today.

So is this good news for those concerned about crowding and consumption? Well, here's where it gets a bit tricky. Even though birthrates are falling, we're decades away from feeling the effects. According to the U.N.'s best guess, anyone still kicking in 50 years will be sharing the world with about 9 billion others. Even where birthrates are below replacement level, populations continue to grow -- there's a time lag before the effects of declining birthrates are felt. For instance, one estimate projects that China will still add 260 million people by 2025.

Immigration and urbanization also create a sort of demographic microwave, leaving some areas ice cold and others blisteringly hot. In much of Europe and Japan, while rural areas are emptying out and birthrates are plunging, cities are coping with an influx of newcomers. For every amusing feature about a town like Alston, there's a corresponding news flash about thousands of Eastern Europeans moving to the U.K. In Rome, squatters are angry about spiraling housing costs caused by overcrowding. Meanwhile, in the former East Germany, where a sagging economy and the ease of migration to the West are compounding downward population trends, they're chopping up old communist apartment blocks to make nice low-density family homes -- that is, if concrete can ever be considered either nice or low-density.

But still, the big picture is getting smaller. After 2050, the U.N.'s medium-scenario estimates say the world will grow more slowly, hitting a peak of about 10 billion people in 2200 before stabilizing or entering a period of slow decline. This involves a huge amount of guesswork -- we're talking about estimating the number of children born to parents who aren't yet born themselves -- but the ultra-long-term trends are down.

Crave New World

This may be bad news if you sell cradles or run a mommy podcast, but environmentalists could have cause for celebration. In Europe, some of the effects are already being felt. "The decline in population is opening room for species that have been pushed back by humans," says Reiner Klingholz of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. "We're seeing an increase in animals such as wolves and deer.

"In [eastern] Germany, for example, you have old buildings, houses, factories, railway lines, and so forth where nature has taken over," he adds. "In places where there was nothing but humans and industry, now you have birds nesting in the rafters and foxes lurking around."

And fewer people could also benefit -- well, people. Oxford environmentalist and population expert Norman Myers says a smaller population is a more sustainable one. A drop in numbers could lead to a drop in energy use -- think fewer cars on the road, fewer power plants, smaller towns -- which bodes well for the climate. "This is something to be applauded solely because the sooner we move to declining populations, the less strain we place on the environment," Myers says, "and the better off we'll be."

But let's put the champagne and condoms on ice for a moment. Shifting populations bring their own set of concerns. For instance, Europe's population is still rising -- but four-fifths of that increase is due to immigration. Since new arrivals tend to be shunted into low-wage jobs, some demographers warn that European societies could fissure into two castes: childless Brahmins and the foreign underclasses who serve coffee, sweep streets, and shell out taxes to support them.

On top of that, a declining population is an aging one. And in an aging society, says Philip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, "gray competes with green." Older people tend to have more disposable income, and thus tend to consume more. They use more housing units per person than families, swelling their environmental footprint. And ultimately, says Longman, "aging societies will face budgetary pressures" -- think Social Security and other pension plans -- "that will leave less resources available for investment in cleaner energy, conservation, remediation, mass transit, and all other environmentally friendly goods."

Could the environmental dream of zero population growth be a nightmare? Some think so. I ask Vince Peart if he sees any benefit to undercrowding. He thinks for a moment -- long enough for a few Alston old-timers to drop off -- but can't come up with an answer. There aren't more trees around or more native species to admire in his town. Perversely, the cost of living is going up as city people snap up second homes in the area. And the weekenders don't tend to support local businesses. Finally, he just says, "We're at risk of turning into something of a ghost town, a tourist attraction."

The Incredible Shrinking Debate

With the global population zooming upward, it's hard to drum up much talk about future depopulation. And even those you might expect to be excited at the prospect aren't talking about it much, because advocating smaller populations isn't very ... sexy. Groups like Greenpeace and Oxfam, which once championed population control, now barely mention it, according to David Nicholson-Lord of the Optimum Population Trust. He says progressives haven't been able to blend commitments to reproductive choice with sustainability, so raising the banner for population control has been left up to a few lonely voices on the left and, on the other end of the spectrum, the anti-immigration right.

"I think [population control] is deeply unfashionable, and taboo, and has fallen off of a lot of agendas -- and that's due partly to that broad agenda known as political correctness," Nicholson-Lord says. "It's seen as the wrong diagnosis and also as disempowering ... it has a bad name, and unfairly, I think."

Nicholson-Lord and his trust embrace positions that would make most liberals queasy, like zero net immigration for the U.K. He argues that more groups should concern themselves with such issues, since the environmental benefits of a lower population are just too high -- and the world's environmental problems too urgent -- to push for anything less. "We have to think seriously about the world's population," he says, "and about what kind of levels can be sustained in the long term."

If anybody running Europe is doing this type of pondering, they're not saying. In the playground of public policy, population decrease is seen as a problem, not an opportunity. Several countries, including France and Estonia, offer generous pro-family benefits, while others, including Britain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, are tinkering with their retirement systems to keep older residents working longer. But in debates over pensions and child and family benefits, serious discussion about proper population levels doesn't really happen.

And there's the challenge. The issue of population, once a key part of the green agenda, is today limited to a few demographers, think-tankers, and wonks. If countries can manage with fewer people, and even turn depopulation into an environmental benefit, we could be onto something big. Political tussles over whether to cut emissions or pursue clean technologies might seem as quaint and empty as a pub in Alston. But before that happens, we'll have to start talking about it again.

Han Joachim Braun on Wheat Fungus

This is a red alert that warns us that a rust variety is spreading that has the ability to collapse huge sections of the global wheat crop. And as is pointed out, it has almost passed in living memory in North America. I do recall it been discussed in the fifties when it scared farmers of wheat if a better alternative existed.

The vulnerability is very real and can abruptly slash wheat harvests almost anywhere by forty to eighty percent

This reports on the emergency action now underway, but as observed, new seed stocks need time to be grown and distributed. In the meantime, let us hope that customs are now doubly vigilant, and ask anyone returning from the affected countries it they visited farms there. This time it is for real.

That it has not devastated China and India is only because Iran is suffering severe droughts.

I actually cannot see us dodging this particular bullet in the next couple of years. A weather change in Iran and an air traveler can do the rest just too easily.

Global Wheat Crop Threatened by Fungus: A Q&A with Han Joachim Braun

A new strain of a devastating fungus could impact wheat crops the world over--and scientists are scrambling to nip it in the bud
By David Biello

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=global-wheat-crop-threatened-by-fungus&sc=CAT_INNO_20090320

In 1999 agricultural researchers discovered in Uganda a new variety of stem rust—a fungus that infects wheat plants and wiped out 40 percent of U.S. wheat harvests in the 1950s. Millions of spores have spread from Uganda to neighboring Kenya and beyond to Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, wiping out as much as 80 percent of a country's harvest. In fact, the only thing that has stopped the rust from devastating the breadbaskets of China, India and Ukraine has been several years of drought in Iran.

The world should hope for three more dry years in that region, because that's how long it will take to breed enough seeds of wheat strains that are resistant to the fungus, according to Hans Joachim Braun, director of the global wheat program at leading agricultural research institute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico. An international symposium on the agricultural threat was held this week in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico, and ScientificAmerican.com spoke with Braun, who attended, to glean the latest developments on efforts to defeat the fungus.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

What is the problem we are facing?

Ten years ago we identified a new stem rust race in Uganda—that's why it's called Ug99. More than 90 percent of the world's wheat varieties are susceptible to it. Clearly, this represents a major threat to production because, historically, stem rust was the most important wheat disease.

In the late 1950s stem rust was the first disease for which agricultural scientists developed resistant wheat strains. Resistance was so good that for 50 years, we didn't worry. Norman Borlaug [1970 Nobel Peace Prize–winner and developer of resistant wheat] saw the susceptibility to Ug99 and he rang the alert bell. The Global Rust Initiative was established then to fight stem rust on a global level.

Some 300 to 350 people involved in wheat breeding, and particularly rust resistance, gathered this week [at the international symposium] to discuss the latest progress in developing varieties resistant to stem rust.

How big is the problem?

Stem rust has been confirmed in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan and Iran. Historically, central and eastern Africa is a big center for new rust races. We know that it spreads very fast from East Africa to Asia, southern Africa, even Australia.

From our monitoring system, the rust from eastern Africa is already moving into Asia. It is already established in Iran. Then it can travel via Afghanistan to Pakistan into India and then China. That happened before in 1986.

Back then, a yellow rust race was discovered in East Africa. Within six years, it moved from there to India and caused more than a billion dollars in wheat losses, mainly in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Pakistan.

We have what is called a Rustmapper, which continuously monitors wind movements. At any time, we can look up where there is an outbreak of rust disease and check the direction in which the wind is blowing. That allows us to predict where to look for rust movement.

Based on wind direction, we've seen spores move in 72 hours from Yemen via Pakistan to India and up to China. At any point, if it rains and the spores come down, we could have a new epidemic.

Remember, there are billions of spores produced once a susceptible variety is infected, so it multiplies very fast in the right environment. They go into the air, are carried by the wind and, in a short period, infect large areas. Last year, we were lucky that Iran had a very sever drought so the rust would not be multiplying. I am sorry for Iranian farmers but it really protected the world from Ug99.

How was the yellow rust stopped?

We identified new sources of resistance and replaced susceptible varieties with new varieties. In the case of Ug99, this process is slower because resistance can only be tested in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Every wheat breeder who knows that stem rust could be a problem is sending breed lines to Kenya and Ethiopia for screening. Some 20,000 to 30,000 lines have been tested for response to this rust. The world really has to thank these two countries for making their resources available. Otherwise, we could not screen for resistance to this disease and the world would just have to wait for this disease to arrive.

What has the testing found so far?

We have found wheat that is resistant to the fungus. This [symposium] brings rust researchers together so they can exchange what new genes are available to fight the infection. Most of the rust-resistant genes are not effective anymore.

Generally, rust resistance is based on one gene. Either the plant is resistant or susceptible. A spore lands on the surface of the leaf. The spore germinates. The plant responds [if it's resistant]. The cells that the spore tries to open kill themselves and the spore cannot grow and also dies. This is a typical resistance reaction.

But it only takes one mutation on the rust side, and then it can overcome this resistance. Such resistance genes typically last for four or five years. Then nature produces a mutant that can overcome this resistance.

CIMMYT has developed another approach where we try to bring together four or five minor genes. None of these individual genes provide total resistance or immunity but each reduces the infection by 15 to 20 percent. If you bring four or five genes like that together, you can bring the level of resistance very high. Then a mutation that overcomes one gene doesn't cause as much of a problem.

That worked with leaf rust. We are now producing lines for stem rust that combine such minor genes. We have identified such lines in Kenya, and USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] has provided funds for seed production in countries such as Ethiopia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The multiplication of resistant varieties is well underway.

How vulnerable are countries like Australia, Canada, the U.S. and Ukraine, which provide the bulk of the world's wheat?

They are as vulnerable as the rest of the world. Seventy-five percent of the varieties in the U.S. are susceptible. Historically, stem rust was the major disease in Australia, U.S., Canada and Ukraine. Their [temperate] environments allow the rust to move fast.

Imagine a tourist in a wheat field in Kenya. Millions of spores cling to his trousers and shoes. He doesn't wash them and goes into a wheat field that is ready to be infected. You only need a few spores.

The most dangerous transmission is through people. A very virulent yellow rust was introduced to Australia by a farmer who visited Europe.

Will farmers plant these new strains?

We must provide farmers with varieties that are better than what they currently grow. Farmers haven't seen stem rust for 50 years so they will just ignore [the threat]. We have to have strains with 10 percent higher yield, otherwise they won't change.

Will these new strains offer benefits for other problems, like drought?

We cannot develop a cultivar only for one specific trait. They have to have a package. That package includes drought tolerance, yield, ability to withstand nutrient deficiency, and resistance to a wide spectrum of disease.

I am concerned about investment in wheat research. The private sector has limited interest in investing in wheat. Most wheat research is done by public institutions. But we could have similar progress in wheat like genetically modified cotton, canola and soy. Five or six big international companies invest more than a billion dollars each year in maize research. That's twice as much as the budget of all [public sector] international agricultural research centers.

Transgenic wheat [which incorporates modified or imported genes] would be interesting. But we're not allowed to use it. No country has released a genetically modified wheat. If we could use genetic modification, that would be a new road to address production constraints in wheat.

Will the new cultivars be susceptible to some new form of rust?

If we have only major genes the [new strains] will not last very long, that's why [CIMMYT] is pushing this minor-gene, or durable-gene, resistance concept. Bring together four or five genes [where] each has a smaller effect. [Combine] all five [of these] genes, each of which provides 20 percent resistance, and you may have zero infection. This resistance will last much longer than [that] based on only one gene.

Have farmers started planting the new strains?

We did an emergency multiplication last summertime. We made 3.5 tons of a total of 12 resistant lines. This seed has been sent to the six countries I mentioned earlier, plus Turkey. The multiplication is going well. The lines will produce all together several hundred tons of seed in these countries.

Larger areas will be planted this and next fall, then the year after that [the seed will] also be given to farmers. What we really need, what we really pray for, is another three to four years where the environment is not conducive to a stem rust epidemic. Then we would have sufficient varieties out there to avoid disaster.

Gaza Cease Fire

Today Gaza went into cease fire mode. Of course we are regaled with immediate claims from whatever passes for Hamas leadership that this represents a ‘heavenly victory’. I cannot imagine someone so dense as to accept such nonsense. The international press is saying that neither side achieved their long term aims. A fair assessment if long term aims include the immediate destruction of Israel or the conversion of Hamas to common sense.

Israel entered Gaza, inflicted thousands of casualties and destroyed billions in property and public infrastructure. It has brought Egypt to the table as a possible guarantor of Hama’s good behavior. The leadership and direct supporters of Hamas have been hard hit.

While the cease fire discussions are been held, Israel can reposition for the next phase of combat while isolating a fresh inventory of targets. You usually do not have the luxury of a time out in most wars, because no opponent will be dumb enough to give it to you. We even have pretty stories of smiling Israelis leaving the Gaza.

In the meantime, Hamas will attempt to create defensible positions in civilian homes.

That leaves the remaining option for Hamas. Actually entering into a real cease fire and sticking to it. Because right now, Israel can answer every single rocket launch, with a 500 round artillery barrage. Hamas is discovering that no one is blaming anyone else for the Palestinian dead and the past three weeks have completely inured world opinion to sight of all those gratuitous injured children photo ops.

If this cease fire holds, it will because Hamas accepts virtually all of Israel military demands and Egypt possibly steps in to act as the peace keeper. Or perhaps we can get an all African peace keeping force to go in and inspect the magazines.

Hamas strategic thinking will forever mystify me. You acquire and fire rockets that are certain to miss, but as certain to upset the neighbors until they unleash their full military power on your community. When that happens, your highly trained combat specialists put up a spirited defense inflicting almost no casualties while absorbing prodigious losses. This was totally predictable.

The only rational explanation is that the Iranian paymasters love to give stupid orders to their dupes to stir things up a bit. A few hundred dead Palestinians here and there serve only to advance Iranian interests. Especially if your name is Prime Minister Whack Bar.