News Round-Up 9/11/07 II

Every year, a chunk of the Amazon rainforest the size of Connecticut is cut down, releasing a huge quantity of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Amazon still comprises some 300 million hectares of tropical forest, comparable to the Indian subcontinent, and home to an estimated 90% of the species on Earth. At present rates, this hub of fecundity will be a barren moonscape by the end of the century. Deforestation comprises an estimated 70% of greenhouse emissions from Brazil, which has become the fourth-largest emitter in the world. The largest is the United States (and you wonder "why they hate us?"), the second-largest is China, and the third-largest is Indonesia (which is massively cutting down its own rainforests for palm-oil plantations, among other things).

In other news, how do U.S. planners feel about the increasing presence of China in Africa as a raw-materials (especially petroleum) consumer? One word: AFRICOM. Ryan Henry, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, describes in a Reuters story the conditions under which the U.S. might, Afghanistan/Iraq-style, invade an African country:

"It would depend on a myriad of circumstances. If we thought that someone was going to unleash an attack somewhere in the world that was on the scale of 9/11 or greater, we're obviously going to do something about it," he said.
But "it's obviously best to work with the host country," Henry added.

And what are the potential "host countries"? The U.S. is not only positioning troops in East Africa, where U.S. helicopter gunships reportedly carried out air air strikes in Somalia in January 2007. There, Al-Quaeda links can be found with at least some plausibility, but the U.S. is (with little subtlety) establishing bases in the neighborhood of West African petroleum sources: Mali, Senegal, Niger and Ghana. Bases will also be established in Algeria and Morocco, where an estimated 25% of "foreign fighters" in Iraq are said to originate. But the more important context is the ongoing struggle between Nigerian militants and the extraction of Nigerian oil by Shell, Chevron and other multinationals; the recent discovery of oil in Ghana; and ongoing oil extraction in the Gulf of Guinea and Angola. The U.S. gets over a fifth of its oil from Africa every year, and will soon get over a quarter; those supplies will evidently be ensured at gunpoint.

In July, NATO deployed six warships to orbit the African continent, passing the Niger Delta in what was widely seen as a show of force.

In South, some 2.5 million people have been made homeless by flooding due to heavy rains. An estimated 30 million people in Assam, Bihar, Bangladesh and mountainous Bhutan (due to the flooding of Himalayan streams) have been effected. More than half of Bangladesh is covered in floodwater. Thousands of familes are living in bacteriologically dangerous relief camps along embankments and highways.

Meanwhile, Afghan insurgents contine to attack police and military affiliated with the U.S. occupation forces. 26 Afghans, half of them civilians, were killed in a crowded market in southern Afghanistan on Monday night. There have been 107 suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan in 2007, a 69% increase over the same period in 2006, according to the New York Times.