Aftermath News

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Related: Top scientist says GM crops are the answer to food price crisis

The Guardian | Jul 4, 2008

By Aditya Chakrabortty

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world’s negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

“Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

“It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices,” said Dr David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, last night. “All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.”

500 knives were seized during Scotland Yard’s Operation Blunt
Adam Fresco, Crime Correspondent

In May the Metropolitan Police launched the high-profile Operation Blunt 2 - involving taking airport style metal detectors onto the streets and instituting Section 60 powers, allowing officers to search youths

Knife crime ‘overtakes terrorism as top priority for Met’

Times Online | Jul 4, 2008

Knife crime has overtaken terrorism as the top priority for the Metropolitan Police as one of Britain’s most senior officers admitted that the fight to stop teenagers carrying weapons was not working.

Deputy Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said today that the battle against knife crime has become “the No 1 priority” for the Met as the 18th teenager to die a violent death in the capital this year was named.

To try and stem the rising tide of young deaths he has ordered all senior officers to look at their current operations and see if any personnel can be diverted to help tackle the rise in stabbings.

In May the Metropolitan Police launched the high-profile Operation Blunt 2 - involving taking airport style metal detectors onto the streets and instituting Section 60 powers, allowing officers to search youths within a certain geographical area.

Despite 27,000 people being searched, 1,200 arrested and 500 knives seized with 95 per cent of people arrested being charged schoolchildren are still being murdered.

On Sunday Ben Kinsella died after being knifed “numerous” times after apparently getting caught up in an argument that spilled out of a pub in Islington, north London.

The latest teenage victim, Shakilus Townsend, 16, asked for his mother and said “I don’t want to die” as he lay bleeding in a street in Thornton Heath, south London on Thursday, a witness said.

He was attacked by a gang just before 2pm in what a senior detective described as “another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife”.

He died in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, south London, just after midnight, the 18th teenager to meet a violent death in London this year.

Earlier this year Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said that “there is no bigger challenge or threat to the whole of London, perhaps with the exception of terrorism, than youth violence”.

But it seems youth crime has now risen to the top.

Speaking at a Metropolitan Police Association Co-ordination and Policing Committee meeting this morning, Mr Stephenson said: “Clearly this message is not getting through.”

Full Story

Only al-Qaeda and Iran pose bigger danger

The Times | Jul 4, 2008

Philip Webster, Political Editor

Vital resources are having to be diverted to deal with industrial and military espionage by the Russians

Britain’s security services have identified Russia as the third most serious threat facing the country, it has emerged before Gordon Brown’s first meeting with President Medvedev.

Security officials say that only al-Qaeda terrorism and Iranian nuclear proliferation are greater menaces to the country’s safety than Russia.

The services are understood to fear that Russia’s three main intelligence agencies have flooded the country with agents, The Times understands.

There is reported to be deep irritation within the services that vital resources are having to be diverted to deal with industrial and military espionage by the Russians.

The disclosures come as Mr Brown prepares to hold his first meeting with Mr Medvedev on Monday amid rising anger about Russia’s treatment of foreign investors such as BP.

Russian agents were accused of the murder of the émigré Alexander Litvinenko in London, as well as other attempted killings, and relations between the two countries have deteriorated fast, culminating in a row between Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, the former President, at the G8 summit last year.

As Mr Brown and Mr Medvedev prepare to meet in Hokkaido, Japan, on Monday before the opening of this year’s G8, Russia has displayed signs of wanting to end the rift with Britain. In an interview with foreign correspondents Mr Medvedev said that international relations always required people to come together.

Reflecting the sensitivity of the encounter, senior British officials declined to give details of the issues that Mr Brown intends to raise, clearly not wanting to raise the temperature in advance. One said: “We will talk about that meeting after it has happened.”

He added that the Government agreed with Mr Medvedev’s comments about international relations and that Mr Brown looked forward to a “constructive discussion”.

Mr Brown seems certain, however, to raise the continuing fallout from the Litvinenko killing, the heightened tension between the security services, and the treatment of BP and its staff in Russia. The FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, raided the Moscow offices of BP and a joint venture, TNK-BP, this year.

The Prime Minister will use his first G8 summit to call on his colleagues to do more to meet their pledges to double aid to Africa. British officials said that the G8 was not on track to meet commitments made at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 to double aid to £50 billion a year worldwide and aid to Africa to £25 billion.

They expect the summit to reaffirm that commitment - although the words are not yet in the summit communiqué - but officials said that several G8 countries were not meeting their targets, and only Britain, the United States and Germany were doing so.

Mr Brown will say that the richer countries should be doing more at a time of economic downturn as part of the overall solution to the problems facing the world, including food and oil prices. “Too many donors are not keeping the promises they made,” a senior official said.

Mr Brown wants a G8 commitment to helping countries to increase the number of health workers to 2.3 per 1,000 people and providing $60 billion (£30 billion) for health over a set period. He and other leaders want the summit to give much-needed momentum to the world trade talks, which are close to failure.

Appearing before a Commons committee yesterday, Mr Brown spoke of the “great responsibility” on the leaders of the G8 to pave the way for a deal by trade ministers at a crucial meeting on July 21. Mr Brown said: “We are a few minutes before midnight. If we can’t get a trade deal within the next few weeks it may elude us for many, many months, if not longer.

“I think we have got to show, in a world that is becoming increasingly protectionist, that we are capable of standing up to that and show that the world is capable of reaching an agreement on trade.”

Mr Brown made plain that his old adversary Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, had his full confidence in his battle with President Sarkozy of France over his handling of the trade talks.

Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, said yesterday that an agreement on the main points of the world trade liberalisation talks was “feasible” this month, despite the pessimism surrounding the round and significant reservations on the part of France, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

“I called for a ministerial meeting because I think it is feasible [to come to a framework agreement] but it is not a done deal,” he said.

Claims and disputes

November 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security officer and fierce critic of the Kremlin, dies in a London hospital after being poisoned

May 2007 Russia refuses a British request to hand over the prime suspect in the killing, Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer who is now a Russian MP

July 2007 Britain expels four Russian diplomats in response to refusal to extradite Mr Lugovoi

July 2007 Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian billionaire, claims that British intelligence thwarted a plot to kill him

August 2007 President Putin reinstates Cold War-style long-range air patrols by strategic bombers

April 2008 The MoD reveals that RAF fighter jets have been scrambled at least 21 times in 12 months to respond to Russian military aircraft encroaching on Nato airspace

Reuters | Jun 29, 2008

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”

Hersh has written previously about possible administration plans to go to war to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including an April 2006 article in the New Yorker that suggested regime change in Iran, whether by diplomatic or military means, was Bush’s ultimate goal.

Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S.  Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.

These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in Bush’s war on terrorism, who may be captured or killed, according to the article.

But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing current and former officials.

Many of these activities are not specified in the new finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature, it said.

Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

The article said U.S. support for the dissident groups could prompt a violent crackdown by Iran, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene.

None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

The United States is leading international efforts to rein in Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, although Washington concedes Iran has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian uses.

Report: Climate change linked to national security

Associated Press | Jun 25, 2008

By PAMELA HESS

WASHINGTON - Global warming probably will mean more illegal immigration and humanitarian disasters, undermining shaky governments and possibly expanding the terrorism threat against the U.S., intelligence agencies say.

“Logic suggests the conditions exacerbated (by climate change) would increase the pool of potential recruits for terrorism,” said Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia are most vulnerable to warming-related drought, flooding, extreme weather and hunger. The assessment warns of a global spillover from increased migration and water-related disputes, Fingar said in prepared remarks Wednesday to a joint hearing of a special House committee on global warming and a House Intelligence subcommittee.

Climate change alone would not topple governments, he said. But it could worsen problems such as poverty, disease, migration and hunger, creating conditions that could destabilize already vulnerable areas, Fingar said.

But he warned that efforts to reduce global warming by changing energy policies “may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself.”

“The operative word there is ‘may,’ we don’t know,” Fingar said.

The assessment of global climate change through 2030 is one in a series of periodic intelligence reports that offer the consensus of top analysts at all 16 spy agencies on foreign policy, security and global economic issues. Congress requested the report last year. The assessment is classified as confidential.

It predicts that the United States and most of its allies will have the means to cope with climate change economically. Unspecified “regional partners” could face severe problems.

Fingar said the quality of the analysis is hampered by the fact that climate data tend not to focus on specific countries but on broad global changes. For that reason, the intelligence agencies have only low to moderate confidence in the assessment.

Africa is seen as among the most vulnerable regions. An expected increase in droughts there could cut agricultural yields of rain-dependent crops by up to half over the next 12 years.

Parts of Asia’s food crops are vulnerable to droughts and floods, with rice and grain crops potentially facing up to a 10 percent decline by 2025.

As many as 50 million additional people could face hunger by 2020. The water supply, while larger because of melting glaciers, will be under pressure from a growing population and increased consumption. Between 120 million and 1.2 billion people in Asia “will continue to experience some water stress.”

Latin America may experience increased precipitation, possibly cutting tens of millions of people from the ranks of those in need of water. But from 7 million to 77 million people could be short of water resources because of population growth.

Fingar’s statement strikes a considerably less ominous tone than a report issued a year ago by the Center for Naval Analyses.

Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, accused the White House of trying to “bury the future security realities of global warming” in Fingar’s prepared statement. Markey, D-Mass., received a briefing on the classified assessment, which he said is “first-class.”

Fingar said no one in the White House changed any of his public testimony.

The center’s report, by retired military leaders, drew a direct correlation between global warming and the conditions that lead failed states to become the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.

“Climate change will provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror,” said Adm. T. Joseph Lopez, who commanded U.S. and allied peacekeeping forces in Bosnia in 1996.

“Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies,” the center’s report said. “The U.S. will be drawn more frequently into these situations,” according to the report, which drew on 11 retired generals and admirals.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the request for the intelligence agencies’ report was “a dangerous diversion of intelligence assets.” He said the issue should be studied by climate scientists, not intelligence agencies.

Republicans used the hearing to argue for domestic oil drilling and nuclear power to reduce reliance on foreign energy.

They’ve created a monster: Robert Mugabe pictured with the Queen during his state visit to Britain in 1994, when he was awarded the honorary knighthood. Mugabe was made a Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Bath on the advice of John Major’s government.

Daily Mail | Jun 26, 2008

By Benedict Brogan

Robert Mugabe was stripped of his honorary knighthood as a statement of ‘revulsion’ last night as Gordon Brown ordered tougher sanctions against his increasingly violent regime.

The Queen approved the rare step of removing the award, issued 14 years ago, to mark British anger at human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

With international outrage growing, Mugabe was condemned for terrorising the people of Zimbabwe by one of his former allies.

South African archbishop Desmond Tutu said: ‘He has mutated into something quite unbelievable. He has turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people.’

And former South African president Nelson Mandela broke his silence over the situation in Zimbabwe, expressing ‘deep concern and sadness’, according to a source.

At the same time the England Cricket Board decided to scrap next year’s cricket tour and suspend relations with Zimbabwe.

The removal of Mugabe’s knighthood was authorised by the Prime Minister as a symbolic gesture following opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to pull out of Friday’s presidential election in the face of escalating violence.

Organised thugs from Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party have embarked on a reign of terror aimed at sealing their stolen victory over Mr Tsvangirai’s beleaguered MDC.

A statement from the Foreign Office said: ‘This action has been taken as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe over which President Mugabe has presided.’

The Government had been reluctant to hand Mugabe a propaganda coup in the election campaign by taking a step that would allow him to claim he was being victimised by his country’s former colonial masters.

But with his position now unopposed and worldwide condemnation growing by the day, the Queen agreed to make him only the second world leader after Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu to have an honour removed.

Ceaucescu lost his knighthood in 1989, the day before he and his wife were executed after being removed from power in a popular uprising.

Mugabe was made a Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Bath on the advice of John Major’s government during a state visit in 1994.

Leaders on such visits are routinely offered an honour by the Queen on the advice of the Foreign Office.

Mr Brown is in talks with other countries about tougher sanctions against Zimbabwe to mark international revulsion at the way Mugabe has trampled democracy in what was once one of Africa’s most successful countries.

In the Commons yesterday he called on other countries to help bar Zimbabwe from cricket’s Twenty 20 World Cup being hosted by England next year.

The ECB ban will apply to two Test matches and one-day fixtures planned for next year’s tour, but the International Cricket Council has to approve the team’s bar from the Twenty 20 series.

‘We want to ensure that Zimbabwe does not tour England next year,’ Mr Brown said at Prime Minister’s question time.

He said the whole world had woken up to the ‘evils’ of Mugabe’s ‘criminal cabal’. He called for a ‘peaceful transition’ government as soon as possible.

David Cameron urged Mr Brown to act against British companies with investments in Zimbabwe that could be propping up the regime.

But firms led by Tesco, Barclays and mining giant Anglo American defended their involvement as crucial to the people of Zimbabwe and their chances of rebuilding their economy if Mugabe goes.

Downing Street confirmed it was looking at ways of applying sanctions to the key figures around Mugabe who are orchestrating his terror campaign.

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UPI | Jun 24, 2008

Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.

The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment.

Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization.

“You know, maybe it’s really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed,” Petra Faile said. “I don’t like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse.”

Calculator reveals when your share of Earth’s resources fully consumed

WorldNetDaily | Jun 5, 2008

By Bob Unruh

The Australian Broadcasting Company has created a “green” website that tells you when you should die, based on your usage of Earth’s resources.

The “calculator” is made like a children’s video game, with cartoon characters who look like a detective dog and a pig, and asks, “How big a greenhouse pig are you?”

The user goes through a series of questions about how much one drives, is the vehicle fuel efficient, how many miles the person flew – divided by pleasure travel and business travel as if one would be more Earth-friendly than the other, and others.

Those responses are added to answers to questions about the size of your home, how many people live there, how big the utility bills are and does any of the energy come from a renewable resource, and queries about recycling.

Planet Slayer website telling how long you can live your lifestyle before using up your allotment of resources, at which point you should die
Then you click on a skull-and-crossbones button to find out that you should die at 23.4 years, or 9.3, or 5.2, depending on your answers.

With the click on the skull-and-crossbones button, a pig representing the survey-taker, positioned between a fat pig for energy usage and a lean, “green” pig, explodes.

Other parts of the website promote the Kyoto Protocol international agreement under which greenhouse gases are supposed to be regulated and reduced, and various question-and-answer resources.

Regarding the efficiency of various types of heat, for example, the website tells, “As a rule, gas is better than electric, which is better than open flames. The exception to this scenario is on nights where romance is in the air and a deep shag pile is on the floor.”

Generally, “For each hour of heat, you’ll produce about 0.7 kg CO2 (gas heater), 2 kg CO2 (2 bar electric radiator), 3.3 kg CO2 (open fire).”

“Gas is more efficient because you just burn it where you are – about a quarter of the heat gets lost up the flue, but the rest heats up the room. Electricity on the other hand is pretty hopeless efficiency-wise – 2/3 of the coal’s energy is lost at the power station,” the report said. “Open fires vary on a scale from pretty inefficient to hellishly inefficient. And as well as their greenhouse excesses, they produce a heap of other pollutants and the odd irate asthmatic neighbor.”

As for mitigating such “excesses” by planting trees, the website advises that to counter the usage of an ordinary family, members would have to plant “a helluva lot” of trees.

“Your average Aussie belts out about 24.5 tons of CO2 each year (that covers everything from housing and transport to your share of government and industry). Your average Aussie native tree can soak up about 270 kg CO2 in that time. And your average Aussie science journalist with a calculator reckons that’s about 91 trees you’d need to plant every year,” the website advises.

“On a national scale, we’d be talking about planting 1729 million trees … EVERY YEAR.”

It also includes links to organizations such as the Climate Action Network Australia, the international IPCC, the Australian Greenhouse Office, the Sustainable Energy Development Authority and others.

WND reported only two weeks earlier that more than 31,000 scientists now have signed a petition rejecting the global warming agenda.

That list includes more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate,” the petition states. “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

The Petition Project actually was launched nearly 10 years ago, when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then, between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign.

But now, a new effort has been conducted because of an “escalation of the claims of ‘consensus,’ release of the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Mr. Al Gore, and related events,” according to officials with the project.

“Mr. Gore’s movie, asserting a ‘consensus’ and ’settled science’ in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore’s movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse,” said project spokesman and founder Art Robinson.

WND submitted a request to Gore’s office for comment but did not get a response.

Robinson said the campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded. And reducing energy use “now threaten[s] the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries.”

The Petition Project’s website includes both a list of scientists by name as well as a list of scientists by state.

Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

Associated Press | May 15, 2008

by LINDA STEWART BALL

DALLAS - In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as “crazy rasberry ants” — crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and “rasberry” after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

“They’re itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they’re just running everywhere,” said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. “There’s just thousands and thousands of them. If you’ve seen a car racing, that’s how they are. They’re going fast, fast, fast. They’re crazy.”

The ants — formally known as “paratrenicha species near pubens” — have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

“At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed,” said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

But the ants also like to suck the sweet juices from plants, feed on such beneficial insects as ladybugs, and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken.

They also bite humans, though not with a stinger like fire ants.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants — which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season — appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

“The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good,” said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.

It’s not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.

At the same time, the ants aren’t taking the bait usually left out in traps, according to exterminators, who want the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen restrictions on the use of more powerful pesticides.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

“It looked like someone had come along and poured coffee granules all around the perimeter of the rooms,” said Lisa Calhoun, who paid exterminators $1,200 to treat an infestation of her parents’ home in the Houston suburb of Pearland.

The Texas Department of Agriculture is working with A&M researchers and the EPA on how to stop the ants.

“This one seems to be like lava flowing and filling an entire area, getting bigger and bigger,” said Ron Harrison, director of training for the big pest-control company Orkin Inc.