… nor is it about meat eating. There is something else going on.

Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run’s neighbours were knocked unconscious.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Cambodia where extensive speculation is leaving land fallow and removing people from their homes. Why is this happening? One speculator says it all,

We are going to move as fast as we can. It’s fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc.

At the heart of the world food crisis is the dispossession of the rural poor. Whether for commercial and industrial development or for building golf courses for the super rich, land is passing out of food production and being taken away from the small farmers who grow much of the food consumed locally. They, in turn, are becoming destitute, and they are the ones who will starve. The driver is more than human greed and governmental corruption.  Rampant global inequality privileges the exotic holidays of the rich over the feeding of the poor, turning productive farmers and fishers into supplicants at the rich man’s table.  Some will be lucky to get crumbs.

You have to love CIF for its comedy moments. In a discussion about GM food, we discover that 911 occurred because rich Westerners eat Big Macs.

A less risky solution is simply for people to eat less meat. This would improve public health as well as making sure there is enough food to go around. But it won’t happen, because rich westerners will ignore anyone who wants to stop them eating a Big Mac. And we wonder why people will fly planes into buildings.

That’s in the first ten comments, I rarely read beyond the first three. Truly, the web has become a veritable goldmine of intelligent, knowledgeable, and balanced discussion.

Tariq Aziz is to stand trial. Here’s a rap sheet from Indict.

The Crime of Aggression

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in launching two wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait; invading Saudi Arabia and attacking the town of Khafji in January 1991.

War Crimes

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the gross violations of Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time Of War and Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, committed by Iraqi forces during the war with Iran and during the occupation of Kuwait between August 1990 - March 1991.

Personally lent himself to the act of hostage taking in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf Conflict, in breach of the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages.

Genocide

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the use of excessive military force against the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq as part of an ongoing campaign against the Shi’as, including the deliberate destruction of the Marsh Arabs’ way of life.

As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the genocidal Anfal campaigns waged against the Kurds, including chemical weapons attacks, destruction of rural villages and the rural infrastructure and mass executions.

To help any moral guardians of liberalism who may be reading, who may be more concerned with imagined war crimes of democratic leaders, I append the thoughts of the top three recommended comments from the BBC’s Have your Say page.

Tariq Aziz? Oh yes,,, isn’t he the guy that stood before the United Nations and told the truth Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction whilst at the same meeting Colin Powell stood before the United Nations and told a parcel of lies about WMA so as to make a case for war?

I think they’ve got the wrong man on trial this time. BTW where is Colin Powell these days? We don’t seem to hear much about him.

It’s enough to make you sick…

Ron Martin, bridge of allan

They’ve got it backwards. George Bush & Tony Blair should be tried for illegally invading a soverign state. Tariq Aziz should be the prosecution.

Zamir Zamora, Milpitas, Ca

The blood letting should stop. This man was a true statesman and the best face of Iraq to the outside world even in the darkest days of Saddam Hussein. What’s more, he has no ethnic agenda like the Sunnis, the Shiites or the Kurds, as he is a Chaldean, a member of the most persecuted people in Iraq. Enough is enough.

Joe Akinmusuru, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

While it is unfair to single out these comments as being representative of anything other than their owners’ own bizarre opinions, they (and their recommendations) come from a certain “moral” climate that is spread far and wide. That even includes apparently well-regarded liberals, who playfully point to the opinions of anti-semitic reactionaries that fit within that general climate, and who rarely take the time to acknowledge the undoubted criminality of the former regime in Iraq. Still less, do they take the time to look further than their own egos to support democrats within Iraq emerging from the darkness of tyranny through a veil of blood and loss.

The election for Mayor of London and seats on the city assembly is just two days away, and I have had about as much as I can take of this bollocks. I’m sick of the candidates, and I’m sick of the endless pseudo-analysis of policies, personalities and the conduct of the election campaign.

Esteemed comrade Paulie has on his blog today issued a call for Londoners to vote for his least unfavourite candidate, Kenneth Robert Livingstone Esq.. In his post Paulie complains about the London Evening Standard and that newspaper’s vicious and relentless campaign against the re-election of Livingstone. Paulie is particularly upset about “revelations, smears and innuendo” published this week in the run-up to the poll.

The thing about such “smears” is that there is very often a ring of truth about them.

So exactly how much truth is contained in the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan in yesterday’s Standard? I’m talking of Labour leaflets handed out at mosques with Bengali text reportedly accusing Johnson of hating Islam, the Qu’ran and Muslims, claiming that Johnson is calling for the Qu’ran to be banned, and insisting that Muslims have a moral duty to support Livingstone.

If these leaflets are forgeries, then Labour should take the Tories and the Standard to court and have Johnson disqualified if he wins the contest. But Labour cannot complain about the moral deficiencies of others when their own camp is so compromised. Don’t talk to me about morality in an election where Livingstone is using every means at his disposal to cajole, scare and bully Londoners into voting for him.

In the Labourite blogosphere we are currently inundated with “If Boris wins the sky will fall” hysteria. Livingstone, we are told, may be a toad, but he’s our toad, and all caring, sharing Londoners should fall into line behind him. Where is the morality in this?

Despite spending much of my time in London, I do not have a vote in the city. But if I did have a vote I would not know what to do with it. Vote for the tosspot to get Ken out? Possibly, though in some ways this would be an abdication of moral responsibility.

Brian Paddick? He may have been an respected senior police officer, but in the political sphere he hasn’t a clue. And Siân Berry is part of an organisation contaminated by association with the moral-relativist and antisemitic left. The Green Party of Englandandwales is no Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.

Paulie also calls for the breakup of the Standard’s “monopoly”. I beg his pardon? The Standard’s backers and editors may or may not have indulged in some dodgy practices over the years, but the paper does not hold a monopoly position. There is nothing bar the lack of a viable business plan preventing the establishment of one.

What business is it of an elected mayor to interfere with the privately-owned press? He or she is not far off being president of a city-state, for goodness sake. When Hugo Chávez effectively nationalises the Venezuelan media we scream dictator, and rightly so.

I still don’t understand why we need executive mayors. I mean, it’s not as if Livingstone is a unifying figure, is he? Paulie somewhat bizarrely compares London with Ireland, but Livingstone is no Mary McAleese. Everyone in London bar a tiny coterie of advisors and cronies hates his guts, including many of those now calling for his re-election. How perverse can London politics get?

Sorry, Paulie, but your post reads like official Labour Party election propaganda or a press release. My recommendation, for what it’s worth, is for Londoners to give their first and second preference votes to candidates they approve of, and none other. If they do not like what is presented to them on the ballot paper, then they should spoil that paper by writing the word “ABSTAIN” across it.

“The challenges of national reconciliation, reconstruction and development after decades of dictatorship and war are massive. I was impressed, however, by the seriousness and commitment of the Government of Iraq to address these challenges with a view to ending the suffering and achieving a tangible improvement in the lives of the Iraqi people. This is a long-term endeavour that requires the sustained support of the international community.”

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe

Whereas John Quiggin is recycling Mahathir Mohamad’s ranting about war crimes. Mahathir Mohamad is a man who opposed the universal declaration of human rights as an oppressive Western project.