Famine Will not Go Away
Man seeks a Fountain of Youth
Primary Goal of flesh is to Stay Alive
Our Ability to stay alive by Food has Limits
God’s Ability to provide Men Bread has no Limits
Man’s Ability to wipe out his race also does have Limits
God’s Ability to fulfill his Prophecies by Nature has no Limit!
June 10, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Luke 21:11 – And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. (See Archive Prophecy Update Numbers 18 and 19)
Revelation 6:5,6 – And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. [6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil
and the wine. (See Archive Prophecy Update Number 20)
Isaiah 29:6 – Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.
(See Archive Prophecy Update Numbers 204C, 205, 205A, 205B, and 206)
Luke 17:28-30 – Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; [29] But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven,
and destroyed them all. [30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (See Birth Pang Archive Numbers 1 to 4)
Revelation 8:7 – The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt
up. (See Archive Prophecy Update Number 182B)
Begin Middle East On Line Article
Can We End World Hunger
?
By Patrick Seale
June 9. 2008
Nearly one billion people on earth go hungry every day, and solving this hunger now proves even more difficult as the long era of cheap food appears to be over, says Patrick Seale.
Every day, nearly one billion people in the world go hungry.
They simply cannot find food, or afford to buy it when they do find it.
There is no greater condemnation of the present international system than the shocking disparity between the groaning tables of the rich and the heroic struggle of the world’s poor to feed their children a few scraps of food, even once a day.
Can the problem be solved
? Evidently, not any time soon.
The present crisis – which has sparked food riots from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh, and caused several countries to ration food and ban food exports – is the result of two opposing trends: Farm productivity has slowed down while, at the same time, demand for food has risen sharply, driving prices skywards.
The soaring demand for food and the exploding prices of agricultural commodities are thought to be primarily the result of the expansion in the world’s population. To quote a single example, when Gamal Abdel Nasser’s “Free officers” seized power in Cairo in 1952, Egypt’s population was 18 million. Today, it is close to 80 million.
Not only are there more mouths to feed in the world, but in countries like China a new middle class is no longer content with the simple diet of the past. It wants to consume more proteins, such as meat and milk.
It wants to eat like the Americans.
A second reason for the world-wide food crisis is the strange new volatility of the climate, which has produced lethal droughts and devastating floods in many parts of the world.
To meet such emergencies, world food stocks are at a record low – again driving up prices.
A third reason is that vast agricultural regions – principally in the United States and Brazil – have been converted from producing food to producing raw material for biofuels. This year, the US biofuel industry is estimated to have devoured one-third of the US corn crop. Brazil uses vast amounts of sugarcane to produce ethanol, thus becoming the world’s second producer of biofuels after the US
Earlier this month, over 40 heads of state and government met at the Rome headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to assess the crisis and propose solutions. They agreed on the urgency of the problem, but not on what should be done.
Some speakers, like US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer defended biofuels, as did Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. O ther speakers said
the problem lay in the dramatic rise in the price of oil, which has driven up the price of fertilizers and pesticides, and also the price of transporting food across the world.
The price of phosphate, for example, has jumped from $365 a tonne last year to $1,000 today, while potassium has jumped from $230 to $700 a tonne. Henrietta Fore, head of the US Agency for International Development (AID) says that transport costs are soaking up 50 per cent of agency’s food aid money.
Some experts believe the food problem lies in the increasing scarcity of water for irrigation, due to climate change and to the explosive growth of cities in the developing world. New irrigation techniques, like sprinkler and drip systems, need to be adopted, but these are expensive to install. Others argue that the only way to solve the food crisis is with a technological revolution centered on genetically modified crops – regardless of the as yet unknown risks.
Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero called on world governments to draw up a charter for food security.
What seems clear is that something will need to be done to coordinate the activities of the many bodies concerned with the food crisis – including the UN itself, the FAO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.
Whatever the complex reasons for the crisis, world leaders have suddenly awakened to the fact that the era of abundant and cheap food of the past 30 or 40 years is now definitely over.
Increasingly, investors – including Arab investors from the Gulf – are turning their attention towards Africa, where the possibility exists to create mega-farms on tens of thousands of hectares of arable land. High food commodity prices are creating tempting opportunities for corporations and sovereign wealth funds.
In the world in which we live, apparently, financial greed may, in the end, be the way to put food on the poor man’s table.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
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