Egypt, the land of the greatest civilization that gave the world the wonders of the Pyramids and the Library of Alexandria, that has been known to be the light of the world.
Once it was swept by fundamental Islam, expelled the Jewish population, oppressed and keeps persecuting the native descendants of ancient Egyptians, the Copts (both Jews and Copts that made Egypt the most thriving, economy and culture in the Middle East).
[Now it has] become the motherland of the Muslim Brotherhood, which export[s] to the world the philosophy of Islamic terror through its satellites across the globe, and which gave birth to Al Qaeda and companies.
[But] now Egypt herself is hungry, and has become time bomb that could explode with repercussions felt all over the Western world.
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Muslims wanted to boycott Dutch and Danish products. Now they kill for a piece of bread
Egypt, the biggest country in the Arab world, has been experiencing the gravest situation of its modern history… shortage of subsidized bread that is the main food item for at least 60% of the population.
The economic situation in Egypt has been going from worse to catastrophic. We have been predicting that for the last year, warning that the Islamic radicalization would lead the country to a total bankruptcy and turmoil.
Islam is ruining the country, Besides the billions (disguised Jeziah) the US is giving Egypt, Al Azhar Islamic institutions are in command of an open budget that exceeds $10 billion for building mosques, paying sheiks’ salaries, sending Da’wah (missionaries) that are experts in bomb making all over the world.
While the infrastructure, school, universities, medical services, hospitals, transportation, water supply, sewer systems, roads, are falling into disarray, with the highest unemployment rate in the world, 60% of a population below the age of 30…
Not enough money for bread, yet ready to cancel the money Egypt could make on petroleum sales to Israel?
Al Azhar declared: If you die in the line of bread, you’re a Shahid
Now, and for the last three months Egyptians have to stand in line and fight to buy bread, which caused the death of seventeen people up to now. The funny thing in that misery, Al Azhar issued a fatwa, stating that whoever gets killed in the bread line would be considered a martyr (Shahid).
The jihad for the sake of bread. What a consolation for hungry and miserable people. Islam always has the solution. If Islam brings you misery, hunger and death, Islam won’t le[t] you depart empty handed; you’re a Shahid, and you will get those 72 virgin whores…
The situation is disintegrating rapidly, with a government in total paralysis and corruption, under a ruthless dictator (Mubarak), and the harshest living conditions ever for the majority of Egyptians.
[It is] worth noting that if Islam is the result of this catastrophic backwardness, corruption, and disintegration, it could lead to more radicalization and benefit the fundamentalist factions such as the “Muslim Brotherhood, that promote the slogan, “Islam is the solution.”
It would seem more accurate to say that the deadly “brotherhood” of Jihadism is the problem for which there does not appear to be a solution. Meanwhile -- in a supposedly civilized country like Egypt, people are literally dying for bread.
Where’s Tariq Ramadan? Maybe he could explain this conundrum for us. How come the Religion of Peace is not taking up donations world-wide to assuage the hunger of Egyptian Muslims?
The strikes should begin any time now, according to Sons of Apes and Pigs...
26 comments:
Isn't it a shame that the land that was once the bread basket of the Mediterranean cannot feed itself.
The reason Caesar took command of Egypt in the first place was due to its ability to grow all the wheat that Rome needed.
How the mighty have fallen!
Hunger has always been the guiding principle and now a new one in the next few years - thirst.
No nation on earth should have a population larger than it can support with its own resources. Outside support only exacerbates existing problems. Just look at sub-Saharan Africa. They are constantly experiencing feast or famine and during lean times are unable to feed themselves. Westerners come riding to the rescue creating a culture of dependency, like all welfare, that causes Africans to have more children then they could support without Western aid which only makes supporting them more and more costly for us and achieving independence more and more difficult for them. Charity is cruel.
@Charlemagne
Outside support only exacerbates existing problems. Just look at sub-Saharan Africa. They are constantly experiencing feast or famine and during lean times are unable to feed themselves.
I disagree that aid is the root of the problem. Its foundation is cemented in corruption and tribal rivalries. We need to overhaul our systemically flawed forms of aid so that we don't end up paying the salaries and SUVs for ngo's who are symbiotic parasites who keep it all going.
Take away the "non-profit" profit in aid to poor countries and you'd have a leaner, cleaner method of helping others.
But not while governments are involved.
Semaj Mahgih--
Water is a problem in the US already. The southeast and the far west are going to have to change how they manage water. We have too many people using too few resources...and using them profligately.
Water will be the new global warming (i.e., the new item in nature to panic about) in the next decade or so.
BTW, an excellent example of aid is donations to Grameen and similar projects. They rely on the "teach a person to fish" method of aid. And they build communities at the same time.
If you're not familiar with Grameen, you can google it. Fascinating ...and it works.
Dymphna
Charlemagne is correct. The foundation problem of all the difficulties facing humanity is population level. There are simply too many people.
All cross-border movement of food should cease immediately. All cross-border permanent movement of people should cease. After a few years and a couple of billion death famines, no country would have more people than it could sustain from its own resources. These famines would embrace us all, as we in the West are over-populated too. Just take the UK as an example: from our own resources we could sustain something like 27 million people; we actually have 60 million, and there's talk of it being over 80 million this century alone. Fantasy.
When does population growth end? There's talk of 8 or 10 billion ... but why should it stop there other than by starvation?
Agricultural advances producing more food? What? Forever? And anyway, produce more food and humans will just have more babies. It's a game we must ultimately lose because there is only so much world.
Malthus was, is, and always will be correct. Just like Charlemagne above. I don't have all that many years to live, but I still expect to see (participate in?) the first billion death famine before I die.
People just will not face that foundation problem - population.
When God (for believers) said "Go forth and multiply" he didn't mean go and have unlimited numbers of babies - he meant he'd had enough of us and would we please just F*** off.
You say we can only support 27 million without resources? Bollocks. The UK has enough arable land to supply a staple diet to the entire current population and then some, and has always been an overproducer of staple crops until very recently. The only reason we're reliant on imports is because of the intervention of the EU and our own benighted government interfering with subsidies and regulations and now the biofuel boondoggle.
It's true that populations can't grow indefinitely, nor can crop yields, but to say that we don't have the capacity to support ourselves right now is stupid. We have plenty of land that simply isn't being used, or is being used for industrial crops that could be grown on other lower quality land if necessary.
Before looking to Malthuses and Erlichs of the world for advice, bear this simple dictum in mind: It's always the fault of the government. In the modern world government interference is what causes famines. The famine in Zimbabwe wasn't caused by overpopulation, it was caused by the government seizing white owned farms and destroying their ability to produce even subsistence levels of food. The famine in Ethiopia wasn't caused by overpopulation, it was caused by the government prosecuting a war, killing off a large chunk of the productive age population and driving the rest off their land out of fear of being killed. The coming famine in Egypt isn't caused by population pressure, it's caused by the government.
If there's a famine in Europe it won't be caused by population pressure, because Europe has proven itself capable of producing far too much food. If there is a famine here it'll be because the European Common Agricultural Policy destroyed our agricultural base - which is precisely what it was intended to do, in order to "manage" surpluses.
I will not argue that population can continue to grow indefinitely without problems, nor will crop yields grow indefinitely but, with the technology we have right now, we could feed a population far greater than currently exists. Right after Malthus wrote his book there was an agricultural revolution. Crop yields started going up year on year every year until this one. Right after Erlich wrote his book there was another agricultural revolution. Now we have people predicting a "population bomb", in the face of biotechnology allowing massive yield increases and use of land previously unsuitable for arable farming, and the UN dramatically revising its population predictions down. The current preduction is for the world population to peak well before the middle of the next century and start shrinking, whilst crop yields - already capable of feeding more than that number - show no sign of slowing their increase just yet.
So you'll forgive me if I'm sceptical about this billion death famine. If it happens it'll be because of governments, not population pressure.
" The UK has enough arable land to supply a staple diet to the entire current population and then some, and has always been an overproducer of staple crops until very recently. "
So, Graham, during WW2 we were never within an inch of being starved into submission? All those deaths in the Battle of the Atlantic were unneccesary?
All our difficulties reduce to one thing - population level. When is the increase in human population going to stop? 8 billion? 10? 20? ... and what is going to stop it increasing? What is the sustainable population level for the UK? 27 million? 60 million (as now)? 100 million? 1 billion? Why don't we just let the whole of Africa and Asia immigrate into the UK? What number of people do you have in mind as a number beyond which it will be unsustainable? You must surely have some idea and evidence on which to base it?
Or do you just refuse, like so many, to think about 'population' because it might lead to disturbing thoughts?
Sir Henry and Irish Tory:
I disagree that population is the problem.
Corruption is the problem. In each of the places you name, corruption is at the core of the situation. Remember the Christmas tsunami? They were given enough food for several years and it rotted on the docks.
The ethanol boondoggle is going to make feeding people even harder as more arable land is used to grow "petrol" -- and not very efficiently at that. Central and South American countries are furious that they turned food into fuel and then the US placed such high tariffs on it that they can't sell it. Of course, now no one can eat it, either. Protecting markets can really induce famine.
You guys sound like the Club of Rome. How 1970's can you get?
C.O.R.R.U.P.T.I.O.N.
Coming soon to a country near you. Look at my Porker post from Carpe Diem. The US wasted 17 BILLION dollars on useless pet projects designed to protect the incumbent senators and congressmen.
That's $7,000,000,00 less than Eygpt wasted on their terrorism projects. And so Egyptians are literally dying in bread lines because pride of place comes before feeding your people.
We subsidize farmers *not* to grow foods. We're as bad as France, if not worse.
This is a moral problem, not a population problem.
So, Graham, during WW2 we were never within an inch of being starved into submission?
If we'd lived on nothing but wheat and barley and had modern strains rather than the landraces still in use at that point, we could have lasted out the war indefinitely. However, a large proportion of our arable land was used in the production of industrial spirits - alcohol - for use in high octane aircraft fuel, and the strains of wheat and barley used in those days couldn't produce a fraction of the yields we get today. We could have slaughtered all our animals to make way for more crop planting, and survived for the duration on just bread but, as the bible says, man cannot live by bread alone.
The larger part of the goods brought over by those convoys wasn't grain. It was meat, fuel-oil, sugar, cotton and other 'essential luxuries'. Things that, back then (and sometimes even now), were difficult or impossible to produce in this country, or which would have taken up land and resources being used for war production.
Now there, you see, is the key to it all. War production. Everything this country produced natively was appropriated for the war effort as far as possible. Food was prioritised for the army, grain was used for producing the aforementioned industrial spirits, manufacturing was re-organised to produce weapons. The convoys were to keep that war machine supplied and fed.
We are not at war now. We use modern strains of all sorts of crops, we use modern methods of farming. What in those days would have taken a hundred acres to produce today takes less than five.
So, mr sir henry morgan, what sort of "disturbing thoughts" should you propose I consider? The purposeful starvation of large parts of the world? Forced sterilisation to bring down the population? Outright slaughter? Where does one start, how does one choose? Who lives and who dies?
Perhaps better the encouragement of people to consume a little less, not have so many kids and simply watch the population stabilise and begin to shrink naturally, as it is already predicted to do. The last thing we want to do is close our borders to international trade. That would be governments meddling. That would bring about your famine as surely as the earth turning brings about night and day.
Don't forget the role of corn ethanol mandates in reducing food availability.
Population in general is not the problem. The over-population of lazy, uneducated and nonproductive masses like the ones in this report represents the real issue. I think this is what Sir Henry Morgan is trying to put forward.
Do I feel sorry for any person that is starving? Absolutely. If they were productive and responsible members of their society this would not be happening. Donating aid to these countries is like giving a drunk another drink.
There is an old bumper sticker that I used to see here in Georgia – “If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em!”
Al Azhar Islamic institutions are in command of an open budget that exceeds $10 billion for building mosques, paying sheiks’ salaries, sending Da’wah (missionaries) that are experts in bomb making all over the world.
As always, Islam's agenda transcends such niggling issues as human suffering or deprivation. It is this utter disregard for the welfare of Muslims that makes shari'a law a crime against humanity.
Al Azhar declared: If you die in the line of bread, you’re a Shahid
Isn't this a sort of self-absolution?
"Oh well, if you starve due to our incompretence, we grant you access to our ficticious paradise."
Does anyone honestly think that the clerics at Al Azhar ever happen to go hungry? If so, I have several bridges to sell you.
Semaj Mahgih: Hunger has always been the guiding principle and now a new one in the next few years - thirst.
You are closer to the point than you may think.
Wheat importation is merely a way of importing water. The MENA (Middle East North Africa) region is the fastest growing importer of wheat in the entire world. Iran recently eclipsed Japan as the world's biggest importer of wheat.
The entire MENA region is subject to Water Poverty. The area is undergoing such rapid population expansion that whatever hydro-reserves they have are being diverted from agricultural irrigation over to municipal drinking supplies.
Irrigating the same quantity of wheat as that imported yearly by the MENA region would require the entire annual flow of the River Nile.
This Water Poverty makes the entire region evermore dependent upon foreign grown wheat. It is ironic in the extreme that even as Islam stabs at the West, America, Canada and Australia could halt wheat exportation to the MENA area and watch the onset of mass starvation in only a few short weeks. Russia and China could not possibly triangulate against such an embargo as they are both major food importers.
Although their actions make it difficult to tell, Islam is balanced on a knife-edge of survival. Be it through nuclear annihilation or simple starvation, the entire MENA could be brought to its knees before we even ran out of domestic oil reserves.
Charlemagne: Charity is cruel.
It is rapidly turning out that way. As James Shikwati says, " For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid ".
Some excerpts:
Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.
Dymphna: I disagree that aid is the root of the problem. Its foundation is cemented in corruption and tribal rivalries.
To an extent, this is correct. Our world produces more than enough food to feed all of its people and only politics and corruption prevent that. Nonetheless, the current format of foreign aid distribution is hopelessly flawed. On look at the UN's Palestinian aid program tells the entire story.
Water will be the new global warming (i.e., the new item in nature to panic about) in the next decade or so.
Water Poverty will make the Great Warmening look like the cowfart that it is.
They rely on the "teach a person to fish" method of aid.
As I've always said, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he drinks for a lifetime."
Archonix: with the technology we have right now, we could feed a population far greater than currently exists.
... So you'll forgive me if I'm sceptical about this billion death famine. If it happens it'll be because of governments, not population pressure.
As noted above, this is most definitely the case. Corruption and criminality play a much larger role than natural disasters or drought.
Dymphna: Corruption is the problem. In each of the places you name, corruption is at the core of the situation.
Please examine the following 2006 Corruption Perceptions Map published by Transparency International. Notice how the worst famine stricken areas correspond almost perfectly with the most corrupt regions? THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.
Archonix: as the bible says, man cannot live by bread alone.
Perhaps so, but look at those who get by on crust.
Irish Tory --
Please don't paste long URLs into the comments; they make the post page too wide and mess up the appearance of the permalink page.
Use link tags; the instructions are at the top of the full post's comment section.
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Irish Tory said…
Its not just Egypt that is feeling the pinch, India, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, the Philipines and others are begining to see their food stocks dwindle!
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@georgia Kafir--
Population in general is not the problem. The over-population of lazy, uneducated and nonproductive masses like the ones in this report represents the real issue.
You give the poor in places like Bangladesh more power to make change in their "lazy" lives than they will ever have in reality. These are not welfare moms.
For many, working to get enough to eat is often impossible. And what "lazy" parent would see their child starve?
These people are unfortunate enough to live in failed states under impossibly primitive conditions due to the wholly corrupt nature of their so-called "governments."
Organizations like Grameen, which solve the problems at the margin, actually *work.* IOW, get government out of the aid business, either at the giving end or the receiving end.
The supposedly lazy people who are given the opportunity for micro-credit work harder than we'll ever have to do to be eligible for these loans.
Grameen:
From the website:
Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. GB provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral. At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the over all development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable.
Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of "Grameen Bank" and its Managing Director, reasoned that if financial resources can be made available to the poor people on terms and conditions that are appropriate and reasonable,
"these millions of small people with their millions of small pursuits can add up to create the biggest development wonder."
As of February, 2008, it has 7.45 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. With 2,499 branches, GB provides services in 81,334 villages, covering more than 97 percent of the total villages in Bangladesh.
Grameen Bank's positive impact on its poor and formerly poor borrowers has been documented in many independent studies carried out by external agencies including the World Bank, the International Food Research Policy Institute (IFPRI) and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
Just like everything else in the economic world, change occurs at the margins. This was one man's idea and with it he has transformed thousands of individual lives in his native country.
Here is a book on the subject, written by students of Dr. Yunus:
"The Poor Always Pay Back
I do not agree with the sentiments of your bumpersticker. It reduces the insuperable problems of the truly poor to a slogan.
We need to get government out of the equation.
The UN population predictions are based on South America, Africa and the Muslim world following the same population trajectory as South East Asia. That's the basis of the peaking and reducing predictions. If that assumption is wrong we are heading for major famine and immigration pressures that will make the current flood look like a trickle.
Whether you believe over-population is the cause in itself, or believe it's other factors, I don't think it matters. Our current political class can be relied upon to do the wrong thing. Therefore there *will* be mass famine and population movements on an immense scale.
imo
Dymphna: These people are unfortunate enough to live in failed states under impossibly primitive conditions due to the wholly corrupt nature of their so-called "governments."
People get the government they deserve. Cultures cannot be entirely absolved of what they have become. While Islam is not the most volitional of systems, there still remains a fundamental personal responsibility that individuals have for steering where their socieites go.
As Solzhenitsyn observed in "The Gulag Archipelago", when the KGB started their midnight arrests of Soviet citizens, if people had stormed out of neighboring apartments and strung up those agents from balconies by their shoelaces, things might have turned out quite differently. If ever there has been a supreme example of people getting the government that they deserve, it is the Soviet Union.
So it is with many Third World cultures. People have forgotten that they must, sometimes, take back their governments by force. The fact that Robert Mugabe continues to steal oxygen is proof of this.
Please don't barrage me with the usual blather about how the crooks have all the guns and so forth. At a basic level, there is a moral abdication taking place whereby underlings continue feeding crocodile like Mugabe instead of killing the beast. Similarly, citizens need to organize their own resistance and begin killing nighttime partols for their weapons and turning those captured guns on even more of the thugs.
If tiny Denmark could so successfully resist the Nazis, there must also be some way for oppressed men and women in Muslim cultures to begin slitting the throats of their oppressor imams and others who participate in their enslavement. A little acquiescence to tyranny goes a long way towards destroying freedom.
Liberty has always been far more fragile than dictatorship. However, tyrannies are brittle and correctly applied force can shatter their effectiveness. Refusal to apply that force is what gets you all these Islamic and sub-Saharan pissholes.
There must also be some way for oppressed men and women in Muslim cultures to begin slitting the throats of their oppressor imams and others who participate in their enslavement.
There is. The name is 'Christianity'.
@zenster:
As Solzhenitsyn observed in "The Gulag Archipelago", when the KGB started their midnight arrests of Soviet citizens, if people had stormed out of neighboring apartments and strung up those agents from balconies by their shoelaces, things might have turned out quite differently. If ever there has been a supreme example of people getting the government that they deserve, it is the Soviet Union.
This does not address what I am talking about. Those were literate, educated people. Their traumatized condition is of a different quality than people in Somalia or Bangladesh.
Dr. Yunun began by helpiing destitute women living in huts (sans any roof) who did handicrafts to sell to middlemen. They had to borrow money at ursurious rates to get their materials. And it was their landlords who fronted them the money. Now I suppose these women could have gotten together and killed the various landlords, but to what end? Their children would starve without their mothers there to provide the little they did.
These women do not "deserve" their poverty, and they have proven over the last twenty years that when they are given the opportunity to better their lives incrementally they so do with enthusiasm and gratitude.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Or maybe pippins and penguins.
Dymphna: Dr. Yunun began by helping destitute women living in huts (sans any roof) who did handicrafts to sell to middlemen. They had to borrow money at ursurious rates to get their materials. And it was their landlords who fronted them the money. Now I suppose these women could have gotten together and killed the various landlords, but to what end?
Which is why I am currently creating a way by which Third World artisans may be able to submit their designs to modern manufacturers using a widely available coding technique whose authors are already involved with philanthropy in those impoverished areas.
I have just finished basic instruction in PowerPoint so that I may submit proposals to these large corporations in order that those who yearn to be free of such repression might have an avenue of opportunity.
I am not at liberty to describe my exact methodology but if you would be so kind as to contact me (the Baron has my email and phone number), I would gladly describe my strategy upon agreement to non-disclosure.
My method represents a way for some of the very poorest to gain a modicum of financial security. I believe that micro-credit and micro-finance all represent cost effective ways of thwarting tyranny and I am currently devoting myself to method whereby such oppressed people may gain relief from such tyranny.
Please pardon any vagueness upon my part but the idea I am promulgating is worth many millions or billions of dollars and I will not spread it freely. I am happy to provide Gates of Vienna images whereby all who participate here can witness the tools I hope that those who are less advantaged in this world might learn to use.
Finally, even the most illiterate and traumatized people must arrive at the conclusion that death is preferrable to existence under the tyrannous fist of totalitarianism. I give you as proof the genocides of the Hutu and Tutsi in Africa. Both knew damn well enough to NOT engage in such mass slaughter. Both freely did so.
@zenster said-
Finally, even the most illiterate and traumatized people must arrive at the conclusion that death is preferrable to existence under the tyrannous fist of totalitarianism.
Yes, this is true. And people as individuals may reach that point in tyrannical personal relationships (intimate violence is certainly not limited to men, just more the norm).
Sometimes a person can make an inner decision -- "Basta!" -- and simply accept the notion of death at the hands of someone who is supposed to love her rather than continue under crazed, unpredictable tyranny.
In my case, the inner surrender to that fate, while never voiced then or spoken of later, ended the violence.
In the final analysis, there is mystery at the core of the self that we can never plumb.
________
I am interested in your project. If you want to put up a post for our readers, one that would explain what you're doing while still protecting your proprietary rights, please consider doing so.
It's important to me because it is action. It moves past kvetching into the realm of the possible. The miraculous possible.
Please let us know if this is feasible...and thank you.
dymphna is right, all the talk about overpopulation is bull. Forget Ehrlich, up with Simon.
Dymphna, I have sent you and the Baron examples of my art along with a proposal to share this information. Sadly, the basic idea is far too "portable" and I am unable to share it in detail at this forum. Feel free to insert the color example in this thread if it can be done. I'd love to share my art with the denizens of GoV.
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