How the rich starved the world The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, our governments brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.

What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.

The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Min ister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.

Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.

The threat posed by biofuels affects all of us. Global grain stockpiles - on which all of humanity depends - are now perilously depleted. Cereal stocks are at their lowest level for 25 years, according to the FAO. The world has consumed more grain than it has produced for seven of the past eight years, and supplies, at roughly only 54 days of consumption, are the lowest on record.

The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.

This is not just a short-term price blip, but the beginnings of a major structural change in the world food market. Population pressure - still something of a taboo subject - is also certainly playing a part. With the world population growing by 78 million a year, and expected to reach nine billion by the middle of the century, there are simply many more mouths to feed.

In addition, rapid economic growth in India and China has created tens of millions of new middle-class consumers, all demanding western-style diets high in meat and dairy products, thereby vastly increasing the quantity of grain required for livestock production.

Weather plays a major role, too: the FAO's latest food situation brief reports that, in 2007, "unfavourable climatic conditions devastated crops in Australia and reduced harvests in many other countries, particularly in Europe", while Southern Africa and the western United States have been hit hard by severe drought. Rising oil prices also increase the cost of food, as fossil fuels are important throughout the agricultural process, from tractor diesel to fertiliser production.

Inconsistency

The most important structural change, however, is the increasing interlinking of world energy and food markets. Once, food was just for people. Now rising demand for transport fuel - particularly in rich countries - is sucking supply away from the world food market and increasing the upward pressure on prices. In the words of Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP): "We are seeing food in many places in the world priced at fuel levels," with increasing quantities of food "being bought by energy markets" for biofuels.

Rising oil prices feed back into the process. With food and fuel markets intertwined, increases in the price of oil are shadowed by increases in the price of grain. The real-world result from this structural shift may be that hundreds of thousands of people starve in the next few years - unless policies promoting biofuels are urgently reversed.

This is not to suggest that government targets on biofuels are driven by some kind of malicious desire to starve the world's poor. Indeed, both Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, have expressed concern about the food supply crisis and the role of biofuels in causing it. But for these two political leaders to voice their concerns while allowing the increased use of biofuels in the UK to be pushed forward - all in the same week - is nothing short of bizarre.

As Oxfam's Robert Bailey puts it: "This inconsistency at the highest levels simply beggars belief." The aid agency calculates that the RTFO represents a £500m annual subsidy from motorists and taxpayers to the biofuels industry - more than double the amount the WFP is urgently seeking from donor countries to try to mitigate the impact of food price rises on the world's poor.

The EU, meanwhile, persists in the erroneous belief that biofuels can help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The main reason for its speedy introduction of the replacement fuel initiative was as a sop to motor manufacturers who were lobbying hard against proposed higher fuel economy standards. With biofuels, the EU hoped, it could cave in to the car industry while still getting reduction in emissions.

Yet recent research suggests otherwise: two major studies published in Science magazine in February showed clearly that once the agricultural displacement effects of the new fuels on rainforests, peatlands and grasslands are taken into account, emissions are many times worse than from conventional mineral petrol. In other words, it would be better for the climate if we just went back to fossil fuels. Biofuels are not a "necessary but painful" way of saving the climate; they are a calamitous mistake by almost every criterion, whether social, ethical or environmental.

CONTINUE

THE PETRODOLLAR

In November of 2000, Saddam Hussein switched to selling oil in Euros, when normally all OPEC nations sell their oil in US Dollars. Why?

As Ron Paul explains the US added a secret agreement to the overall OPEC Agreement where OPEC nations promised to sell oil in US dollars, and no other currency. This effectively backs the US dollar in oil, and all countries need US dollars in their reserves. This article explains why.

This is why some people call US currency The Petrodollar.

When Hussein started selling oil in Euros, it attacked the dollar’s dominance as the world currency. And of course, two other countries tried, or are trying, to follow suit. Venezuela tried in 2001, and within a year Chavez was almost removed in a military coup - in the Ron Paul speech I linked to above, he states it is widely rumored that our CIA was involved in that coup.

And now Iran is starting its own oil bourse (exchange).

Notice a trend here?

Luckily for Bush, 9/11 happened not long after Hussein started selling oil in Euros, otherwise we would not be in Iraq. Interestingly, all Iraqi reserves were quickly converted back to US dollars once we took over, and oil was once again sold in US dollars. Boy were we lucky we had an excuse to get our military into the Middle East. Whew.

To add some fuel to the fire, you have Peak Oil. The link goes to a US Department of Energy Report, called the Hirsch Report, that talks about the peaking of world oil supplies, and future ‘energy shortages.’ Oh, and US and UK oil companies are also going to reap profits from the sale of Iraqi oil. Like icing on the cake.

Luckily the US is in Iraq, making permanent bases to ’spread Democracy’. It is also very fortunate that Global Warming became widely known about a year and a half after the Hirsch Report stated:

“Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.

Most sources feel we either hit ‘peak’ in 2005, or will hit it by 2012. So fortunately Global Warming became an issue. How would the US Government explain to people why they had to save energy and drive more fuel efficient cars? What would happen if the morning news started with “we are headed for 20 years of energy shortages, the worlds oil is in decline!”.

Panic. People would at least go into Survival Mode™, not spending any more money than necessary… which would send our economy into a horrible spiral.

So here we are. Our military is smack dab in the middle of the remaining oil left in the world, people are working to ‘become energy independent’ and never think to ask why we didn’t need to be independent back when Saddam was killing the Kurds… and they don’t panic because luckily, we have another reason to use to explain to people why they need to cut back on energy usage and of course, why other countries should too. We are ensuring that the worlds oil is sold in dollars… except for those pesky Iranians, trying to set up their oil bourse. I wonder what will happen when Iran gets that set up?

Iran completes oil bourse, February 17th, 2008. [IMPORTANT READ]

Oh yes, the next time you see tiny speedboats ‘menacing’ US warships, remember that The Gulf of Tonkin never happened. 50K Americans, and millions of Vietnamese died and years later it turns out there were not even any Vietnamese boats there at all on the second day… and on the first day, OUR soldiers shot at the Vietnamese - and they still did not fire back at us.

So ask yourself: do you think Bush would care about 3000 dead Americans, now that you see there were solid, very real motives for attacking Iraq?

DFTT
Come september

Catholicism's Neophyte is a Fraud

Magdi Allam, the notorious Egyptian-born Italian Islamophobe-turned-Catholic, has been trying to create the impression that his highly-publicized conversion to Roman Catholicism at the Vatican last week is a genuine spiritual transformation.

However, a plethora of anti-Islam statements and remarks by the controversial neophyte suggests that the man is an imposter and that his conversion had more to do with morbid hatred of Islam and Muslims and less with true spirituality.

In fact, during and immediately after the conversion ceremony, Allam took the opportunity to besmirch the religion of up to 1.5 billion human beings, lumping all Muslims, the good, the practicing, the nominal, the peaceful, the violent, the extremist-in one category.

This is obviously an expression of morbid thinking, because a truly reasonable person would always seek to make a careful distinction between what religion says and what some followers do.This is true with regard to Christianity, Islam and all other religions.

A few months ago, Tony Blair also converted to Catholicism at the Vatican. However, unlike this fraudulent Allam, he didn’t use the conversion occasion to vilify the Anglican Church or heap calumnies on non-Catholic Christian religions.

Similarly, I have seen testimonies by numerous recent Christian converts to Islam who spoke solemnly of the common source of monotheistic religions, and none of them would label Christianity as “evil” and “physiologically violent” as Allam sought to smear Islam. This is despite all the wars, genocides, holocausts, inquisitions and crusades that have been carried out in the name of the Catholic Church, rightly or wrongly.

So why is it that Allam has been a conspicuously repugnant exception? And why has the Holy See remained silent, even acquiescent, toward this travesty of truth? Does offending the sensibilities of 1.5 billion human beings who hold Islam dear bring honor to Christianity? Is Allam going to serve his new religion by besmirching another religion? By fostering hatred for Islam and Muslims? By showing infatuation with Zionist racism and apartheid in Palestine? By embracing a state that practices ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass murder of men, women and children whose only crime is their enduring determination to be free from oppression and foreign occupation?

What kind of a good Catholic will this man be when he wholeheartedly embraces a state that murders school children in the thousands and then claims the murder was done by mistake, a state that allow fanatical thugs to take over Arab homes, Arab farms and Arab property and then calls itself the “only true democracy in the Middle East.”?

Last year, Allam published a book titled “Long Live Israel: From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life, My story.” This work caricatured a psychologically disturbed person who doesn’t hesitate to lie to serve his morbid thoughts, a man who ignores historically-established facts and who readily cites obscene Zionist lies in order to vindicate and glorify this Zio-Nazi state. What else can be said of a man who calls the destruction and obliteration of 500 Palestinian towns and villages, along with the expulsion of all their native inhabitants, “civilization of life”?

Allam is not ignorant of realities in Palestine-Israel. He knows that the Israelis are acting very much as the Third Reich did more than six decades ago. But he chooses to ignore all of this, because his entire approach is based on malice and hate, not honesty and conscience. He is a man without moral conscience, because truly conscientious people wouldn’t call genocide, racism and ethnic cleansing “ expressions of liberty and civilization.”

I really wonder what Allam would think of testimonies made by hundreds of Catholic clergymen, including some from Italy and Germany, who have compared between Israel and Nazi Germany.Last year, German Bishop, Gregor Maria Franz Hanke, while on a visit to the West Bank, described the Israeli policy toward the Palestinian in the following words:

“This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto.”

Similarly, in 2002, Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago, who also was on a visit to the West Bank, had this to say about Israel, which Allam believes represents light, culture and civilization.

“I didn’t know that in order to protect a few people, farmland had to be confiscated and crops had to be destroyed; I didn’t know that in order to provide security for a few people, hundreds had to be kept waiting at checkpoints and roadblocks before being allowed to return home exhausted, that is if they are not killed.”

In truth, Allam is a pseudo-Intellectual because if he were a real, let alone “courageous” intellectual, he would have dealt with the facts of Israeli criminality. Indeed, the fact that Allam chose to ignore these cardinal facts, which many conscientious Israeli intellectuals have exposed and highlighted, shows that he is a liar, a charlatan, and psychologically insecure figure that is seeking to find refuge in mendacity and hatred of Islam and Muslims on Israel’s behalf.
Christianity, a great religion, shouldn’t court liars and messengers of hate.

Ziopedia