S7ven Seals Report

Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

2011-05-05T18:33:00.000-04:00

Saeed Kamali Dehghan
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011 19.23 BST

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is described as 'the actual president of Iran' by allies of the country's supreme leader.
Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.

On Sunday, Ahmadinejad returned to his office after an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest over Khamenei's reinstatement of the intelligence minister, who the president had initiallyasked to resign.

Ahmadinejad's unprecedented disobedience prompted harsh criticism from conservatives who warned that he might face the fate of Abdulhassan Banisadr, Iran's first post-revolution president who was impeached and exiled for allegedly attempting to undermine clerical power.

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a hardline cleric close to Khamenei, warned that disobeying the supreme leader – who has the ultimate power in Iran – is equivalent to "apostasy from God".

Ahmadinejad has so far declined to officially back Khamenei's ruling over Heydar Moslehi, the minister at the centre of the row. In the first cabinet meeting since the president returned, Moslehi was absent.

Khamenei's supporters believe that the top-level confrontation stems from the increasing influence of Mashaei, an opponent of greater involvement of clerics in politics, who is being groomed by Ahmadinejad as a possible successor.

But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus.

Conservative clerics, who say that the Mahdi's return cannot be predicted, have accused a "deviant current" within the president's inner circle, including Mashaei, of being responsible for the film.

Ahmadinejad's obsession with the hidden imam is well known. He often refers to him in his speeches and in 2009 said that he had documentary evidence that the US was trying to prevent Mahdi's return.

Since Ahmadinejad's return this week, at least 25 people, who are believed to be close to Mashaei, have been arrested. Among them is Abbas Amirifar, head of the government's cultural committee and some journalists of Mashaei's recently launched newspaper, Haft-e-Sobh.

On Saturday, Mojtaba Zolnour, Khamenei's deputy representative in the powerful Revolutionary Guard, said: "Today Mashaei is the actual president. Mr Ahmadinejad has held on to a decaying rope by relying on Mashaei."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

The Coming Chaos: Systemic Collapse

2011-04-25T16:49:00.000-04:00

The Coming Chaos: Systemic Collapse
April 23, 2011

by Peter Goodchild

Systemic collapse, the coming dark age, the coming crash, overshoot, the die-off, the tribulation, the coming anarchy, resource wars — there are many names, and they do not all correspond to exactly the same thing, but there is a widespread conviction that something ominous is happening. This event has 10 elements, each with a somewhat causal relationship to the next. (1) Fossil fuels, (2) metals, and (3) electricity are a tightly-knit group, and no industrial civilization can have one without the others. As those three disappear, (4) food and (5) fresh water become scarce. Matters of infrastructure then follow: (6) transportation and (7) communication — no paved roads, no telephones, no computers. After that, the social structure begins to fail: (8) government, (9) education, and (10) the large-scale division of labor that makes complex technology possible. Excluded from the list are such uncertainties as anthropogenic global warming (Singer, 2008), and there are matters such as epidemics that may become important but that are nevertheless tangential. The international credit collapse that began in 2007 is vaguely connected to fossil-fuel decline, but mainly in the sense that both can be partly ascribed to the above-mentioned failure of government.

It should be mentioned that when discussing the 10 elements the terms “sustainable,” “overshoot,” and “carrying capacity” are usually not very helpful. Although Catton (1982) uses the terms appropriately, most attempts to define them lead into ambiguities and self-contradictions. As a result, they often serve merely as buzzwords and fail to clarify the basic issue: the imbalance of population and resources.

After those 10 elements, there are others, forming a separate layer. These are in some respects more psychological or sociological, and are far less easy to delineate, but we might refer to this mixture as “the four Cs.” The first three are perhaps (1) crime, (2) cults, and (3) craziness — the breakdown of traditional law; the ascendance of dogmas based on superstition, ignorance, cruelty, and intolerance; the overall tendency toward anti-intellectualism; and the inability to distinguish mental health from mental illness.

Those three are followed by a final and more general element that is (4) chaos, which results in the pervasive sense that “nothing works any more.” Think of the future USA as a transplant from one of the least-fortunate parts of the ex-Soviet world: vodka-swilling policemen in ill-fitting uniforms, parks strewn with garbage, and apartment buildings devoid of straight lines — nothing that is easy to define, but the subtle and often subliminal indications of general dysfunction.

China is another vision of End Times. It has about 20 percent of the world’s population but produces only about 5 percent of the world’s oil, it uses up coal so quickly that its reserves will not last beyond 2030 (Heinberg, 2009; 2010, May), its water table is falling rapidly, its topsoil is saline, and its pollution problems are terrible. The population has outgrown its food supply: the ratio of population to arable land is more than twice that of the world average (CIA, 2010), which is bad enough in itself. Canada and China are roughly the same size, with roughly the same amount of arable land and a similar range of climates, but China’s population is 43 times larger. In spite of the myth of a vaguely post-Communist utopia, the reality is that Chinese wealth comes from the mountains of cheap goods that are sold everywhere. Those goods are produced by what is virtually slave labor: China is about as far from a worker’s paradise as has ever existed, and it has a dreadful human-rights record. And, of course, shipping cheap goods halfway around the world is not going to work very well without fossil fuels.
Oil Production

Oil is everything. That is to say, everything in the modern world is dependent on oil and other hydrocarbons. From these we get fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. On a more abstract level, we are dependent on these fossil fuels for manufacturing, for transportation, for agriculture, for mining, and for electricity. When oil goes, our entire industrial society will go with it. There will be no means of supporting the billions of people who now live on this planet. Above all, there will be insufficient food.

Studying American oil fields in the 1950s, M. King Hubbert found that as the years went by, oil production decreased, mainly because new discoveries became fewer and smaller. The changes in production could be plotted on a graph, forming the left side of a bell curve (Grove, 1974, June; Hubbert, 1956). Looking at the graph, Hubbert could see that the peak of American oil production would be about 1970; after that, there would be a permanent decline. When he announced this, most people laughed at him. But he was right: after 1970, American oil production went into a decline from which it never recovered.

Hubbert also reasoned that the same sort of pattern must be true of oil production in the whole world, not just in the US. Plotting the available data, he calculated that global production would peak in 1995. His reasoning about the world situation was the same as that for the United States: the big discoveries were lessening, and newer discoveries were becoming fewer and smaller. Again he was right: in 1960, about 7 billion barrels were being produced yearly, and in 2000 production had increased to about 30 billion, but the peak is close to the latter date.

Perhaps the most common response to the “peak oil” problem is: “The oil isn’t going to disappear overnight. We have plenty of time to prepare.” Unfortunately, the fact that the decline in oil is a curve, not a vertical line, makes it difficult to comprehend. What matters is that the serious damage will be done long before we get to those tiny remaining drops in the distant future — if we decide it is even economically feasible do so.

A good deal of debate has gone on about that “peak,” the date at which the world’s annual oil production will reach (or did reach) its maximum and will begin (or did begin) to decline. The exact numbers are unobtainable, mainly because individual countries give rather inexact figures on their remaining supplies. The situation can perhaps be summarized by saying that at least 20 or 30 major studies have been done, and the consensus is that the peak is somewhere between the years 2000 and 2020. Within that period, a middle date seems rather more likely.

After the “peak” itself, the next question is that of the annual rate of decline. Estimates tend to hover around 3 or 4 percent, which means production will fall to half of peak production by about 2030, although there are reasons to suspect the decline will be much faster, particularly if Saudi reserves are seriously overstated.

Even we consider that range of 3 or 4 percent, however, there are all sorts of other variables that could distort the picture. To what extent are various nations exaggerating their reserve figures? Is it possible that fuels outside the range of conventional oil can make a significant difference? To what extent will enhanced production methods (water-flooding etc.) result in a “cliff” rather than a “slope”? How would a major financial recession (i.e. one not caused by oil scarcity), resulting in lowered demand, affect both production and prices? The biggest problem may be the synergism of fossil fuels, electricity, and metals: as one of the three declines, there is a decline of the other two, and the result is a chain reaction, a feedback mechanism, a tailspin, or whatever metaphor one chooses, so that industry in general comes to a sudden halt. Perhaps some of these unknowns will work out to be either irrelevant or identical in the long run, at least in the sense that (e.g.) a cliff and a slope both end at rock bottom.

The argument about the date of “peak oil,” and about the ensuing rate of decline, will probably go on for a few more years. The basic issue, however, was made clear in the 1950s, when Hubbert made his predictions, and in 1986 and 1991, when Gever described the situation; after all, there is no enormous change in the data from one decade to another. Perpetual doubt about the decline in oil production is less useful than genuine preparation for the event. During the Cold War, “emergency measures” were a common topic of discussion, but no serious measures are now being taken for a much greater emergency.

In 1850, before commercial production began, there may have been 2 trillion barrels of usable, recoverable oil in the ground. By about the year 2010, roughly half of that oil had been consumed, but perhaps as much as 1 trillion barrels remain. A trillion may sound like a great deal but is not really so impressive in terms of how long it will last; in any case, the estimates for recoverable reserves are constantly reduced over the years. At the moment about 30 billion barrels of oil are consumed annually, and that is probably close to the maximum that will ever be possible. When newspapers announce the discovery of a deposit of a billion barrels, readers are no doubt amazed, but they are not told that such a find is only two weeks’ supply.

As the years go by, new oil wells have to be drilled more deeply than the old, because newly discovered deposits are deeper. Those new deposits are therefore less accessible. But oil is used as a fuel for the machinery and for the exploration. When it takes an entire barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground, as is increasingly the case with new wells, it is pointless to continue drilling.

Coal and natural gas are also not as plentiful as before. Coal will be available for a while after oil is gone, although previous reports of its abundance were highly exaggerated. Coal, however, is highly polluting and cannot be used as a fuel for most forms of transportation. In addition, coal mining requires large amounts of oil (mostly in the form of diesel fuel) and electricity to be extracted, making its production dependent on oil also. As for natural gas, it is not easily transported, and it is not suitable for most equipment.

In terms of its effects on daily human life, the most significant aspect of fossil-fuel depletion will be the lack of food. “Peak oil” basically means “peak food.” Modern agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers (the Haber Bosch process combines natural gas with atmospheric nitrogen to produce nitrogen fertilizer), pesticides, and the operation of machines for irrigation, harvesting, processing, and transportation. Without fossil fuels, modern methods of food production will disappear, and crop yields will be far less than at present. We should therefore have no illusions that several billion humans can be fed by “organic gardening” or anything else of that nature.

The Green Revolution involved, among other things, the development of higher-yielding crops. These new varieties could be grown only with constant irrigation, as well as with large inputs of fertilizer and pesticides, requiring fossil fuels. In essence, the Green Revolution was little more than the invention of a way to turn petroleum and natural gas into food.

Much of modern warfare is about oil, in spite of all the rhetoric about the forces of good and the forces of evil (Klare, 2002). The real “forces” are those trying to control the oil wells and the fragile pipelines that carry that oil. A map of American military ventures over the last few decades is a map of petroleum deposits.

Alternative sources of energy will never be very useful, for several reasons, but mainly because of a problem of “net energy”: the amount of energy output is not sufficiently greater than the amount of energy input (Gever et al., 1991). With the problematic exception of uranium, alternative sources ultimately don’t have enough “bang” to replace 30 billion annual barrels of oil — or even to replace more than the tiniest fraction of that amount.

At the same time, alternative forms of energy are so dependent on the very petroleum that they are intended to replace that the use of them is largely self-defeating and irrational. Petroleum is required to extract, process, and transport almost any other form of energy; a coal mine is not operated by coal-powered equipment. It takes “oil energy” to make “alternative energy.” “Alternative energy,” in other words, is always riding on the back of a vast fossil-fuel civilization.

The use of unconventional oil (shale deposits, tar sands, heavy oil) poses several problems besides that of net energy. Large quantities of natural gas and water are needed to process the oil from these unconventional sources. The pollution problems are considerable, and it is not certain how much environmental damage the human race is willing to endure. With unconventional oil we are, almost literally, scraping the bottom of the barrel.

More-exotic forms of alternative energy are plagued with even greater problems (Younquist, 2000, October). Fuel cells cannot be made practical, because such devices require hydrogen obtained by the use of fossil fuels (coal or natural gas), if we exclude designs that will never escape the realm of science fiction; if fuel cells ever became popular, the fossil fuels they require would then be consumed even faster than they are now. Biomass energy (from corn or wood, for example) requires impossibly large amounts of land and still results in insufficient quantities of net energy, perhaps even negative quantities. Wind and geothermal power are only effective in certain areas and for certain purposes. Hydroelectric dams are reaching their practical limits. Nuclear power will soon be suffering from a lack of fuel and is already creating serious environmental dangers.

The current favorite for alternative energy is solar power, but it has no practicality on a large scale. There is a great deal of solar energy reaching the Earth, but it is too diffuse to be of much value. A good analogy to that diffusiveness, and in fact a somewhat related problem, is that metals have been of use to mankind only because they were found in concentrated deposits.

Proponents of solar energy must therefore close their eyes to all questions of scale. The world’s deserts have an area of 36 million km2, and the solar energy they receive annually is 300,000 exajoules (EJ), which at a typical 11-percent electrical-conversion rate would result in 33,000 EJ (Knies, 2006). Annual global energy consumption in 2005 was approximately 500 EJ. To meet the world’s present energy needs by using thermal solar power, then, we would need an array (or an equivalent number of smaller ones) with a size of 500/33,000 x 36 million km2, which is about 550,000 km2 — a machine the size of France. The production and maintenance of this array would require vast quantities of hydrocarbons, metals, and other materials — a self-defeating process. Solar power will therefore do little to solve the world’s energy problems.

The quest for alternative sources of energy is not merely illusory; it is actually harmful. By daydreaming of a noiseless and odorless utopia of windmills and solar panels, we are reducing the effectiveness of whatever serious information is now being published. When news articles claim that there are simple painless solutions to the oil crisis, the reader’s response is not awareness but drowsiness. We are rapidly heading toward the greatest disaster in history, but we are indulging in escapist fantasies. All talk of alternative energy is just a way of evading the real issue: that the Industrial Age is over.

Petroleum, unfortunately, is the perfect fuel, and nothing else even comes close. The problem with flying pigs (as in “when pigs can fly”) is not that we have to wait for scientists to perfect the technology; the problem is that the pig idea is not a good one in the first place. To maintain an industrial civilization, it’s either oil or nothing.

Most schemes for a post oil technology are based on the misconception that there will be an infrastructure, similar to that of the present day, which could support such future gadgetry. Modern equipment, however, is dependent on specific methods of manufacture, transportation, maintenance, and repair. In less abstract terms, this means machinery, motorized vehicles, and service depots or shops, all of which are generally run by fossil fuels. In addition, one unconsciously assumes the presence of electricity, which energizes the various communications devices, such as telephones and computers; electricity on such a large scale is only possible with fossil fuels.

To believe that a non petroleum infrastructure is possible, one would have to imagine, for example, solar powered machines creating equipment for the production and storage of electricity by means of solar energy. This equipment would then be loaded on to solar powered trucks, driven to various locations, and installed with other solar powered devices, and so on, ad absurdum and ad infinitum. Such a scenario might provide material for a work of science fiction, but not for genuine science — and most certainly, not in the context of the next few years.

It is not only oil that will soon be gone. Iron ore of the sort that can be processed with primitive equipment is becoming scarce, and only the less tractable forms will be available when the oil powered machinery is no longer available. Copper and other metals are also in decline. These materials are now becoming irretrievably scattered among the world’s garbage dumps.

The infrastructure will no longer be in place: oil, electricity, and asphalt roads, for example. Partly for that reason, the necessary social structure will also no longer be in place: efficient government, high-level education, and large-scale division of labor.

Without the infrastructure and the social structure, it will be impossible to produce the familiar goods of industrial society. Without fossil fuels, the most that is possible is a pre industrial infrastructure, although one must still ignore the fact that the pre industrial world did not fall from the sky in a prefabricated form but took countless generations of human ingenuity to develop. Furthermore, pre-industrial technolgy had a very much smaller population to support.

Fossil fuels, metals, and electricity are all intricately connected. Each is inaccessible on the modern scale without the other two. Any two will vanish without the third. If we imagine a world without fossil fuels, we must imagine a world without metals or electricity. What we imagine, at that point, is a society far more primitive than the one to which we are accustomed — and also far more primitive than the one our great-grandparents knew.

Arable Land
With “low technology,” i.e. technology that does not use fossil fuels, crop yields diminish considerably. David Pimentel explains that the production of so-called field or grain corn (maize) without irrigation or mechanized agriculture is only about 2,000 kilograms per hectare. That is less than a third of the yield that a farmer would get with modern machinery and chemical fertilizer (Pimentel, 1984; Pimentel & Hall, 1984; Pimentel & Pimentel, 2007).

Yields for corn provide a handy baseline for other studies of population and food supply. At the same time, corn is an ideal crop for study because of its superiority to others: it is one of the most useful grains for supporting human life. For the native people of the Americas, it was an important crop for thousands of years (Weatherwax, 1954). Corn is high-yielding and needs little in the way of equipment, and the more ancient varieties are largely trouble-free in terms of diseases, pests, and soil depletion. If it can’t be done with corn, it can’t be done with anything. Of course, in reality no one would live entirely on corn; the figures here serve merely as a basis of comparison with other crops in a mixed diet.

A hard-working (i.e. farming) adult burns about 1 million kilocalories (“calories”) per year. The food energy from a hectare of corn grown with “low technology” is about 9 million kilocalories (Pimentel, 1984). Under primitive conditions, then, 1 hectare of corn would support only 9 people. Those figures are rather idealistic, however. We are assuming that people will follow a largely vegetarian diet; if not, they will need much more land. We need to allow for fallow land, cover crops, and green manure, for inevitable inequities in distribution, and for other uses of the land. We must account for any rise in population. Finally, most other crops require more land than corn in order to produce the same yield. On a global scale, a far more realistic ratio would be 4 people to each hectare of arable land.

The average American house lot is about a tenth of a hectare, including the land on which the house is sitting (Mason, 2010). Those who expect to get by with “victory gardens” are therefore unaware of the arithmetic involved. Perhaps some of that misunderstanding is due to the misconception that humans can live on “vegetables” in the narrow sense of the word (i.e. in the sense of “green vegetables”). In reality, it is not “vegetables” but grains that are the present foundation of human diet. During the Neolithic Era, our ancestors took various species of grass and converted them into the plants on which human life now depends. Wheat, rice, corn, barley, rye, oats, sorghum, millet — these are the grasses people eat every day. It is members of the grass family that are used in raising the pigs and cows that are killed as other food. A diet of green vegetables would be slow starvation; it is grains that supply the thousands of kilocalories that keep us alive from day to day. There are reasons to question the benefits of a diet of cultivated grains (Diamond, 1987; Ferguson, 2003), but at least over the next few decades it will be the localized production of grains that will support those who survive the collapse of civilization.

In the entire world there are now about 15 million km2 of arable land (Bot, Nachtergaele, & Young, 2000; CIA, 2010). This is about 10 percent of the world’s total land area. The present world population (in 2010) is approaching 7 billion. Dividing the figure for population by that for arable land, we see that there are about 470 people per km2 of arable land. On a smaller scale that means about 5 people per hectare, more than the above-mentioned ideal ratio of 4:1. In fact, most of the world’s 200-odd countries have more than 7 people per hectare; these countries, in other words, are already beyond the limits of the number of people who can be supported by non-mechanized agriculture. The UK, for example, has a population-to-arable ratio of slightly more than 10 people per hectare; what exactly is going to happen to the 6 people who will not fit onto the hectare? But many countries have far worse ratios.

Population
The world’s population went from about 1.7 billion in 1900 to 2.5 in 1950, to nearly 7 billion in 2010. Most of this increase, of course, has been in “developing” countries, suggesting that the term “developing” is less of a euphemism than a misnomer, since a combination of environmental degradation and rapid population growth makes development impossible (Catton, 1982; Kaplan, 2001). It has been said that without fossil fuels the global population must drop to about 2 or 3 billion (Youngquist, 2000, October), although even a number of that size may be questionable. The above figures on arable land indicate that in terms of agriculture alone we would not be able to accommodate the present number of people.

Another calculation about future population can be made by looking more closely at the rise and fall of oil production. The rapid increase in population over the last hundred years is not merely coincident with the rapid increase in oil production. It is the latter that has actually allowed (the word “caused” might be too strong) the former: that is to say, oil has been the main source of energy within industrial society. It is only with abundant oil that a large population is possible. It was industrialization, improved agriculture, improved medicine, the expansion of humanity into the Americas, and so on, that first created the modern rise in population, but it was oil in particular that made it possible for human population to grow as fast as it has been doing (Catton, 1982). When oil production drops to half of its peak amount, world population must also drop by half.

There may be a time lag in the population decline while people manage to get by with less. Any such “bulge” in the middle of the decline curve, however, would not make much difference in the long run. In fact, if we consider that famine is already rampant it is questionable if there will be any spare capacity for such a bulge.

Of course, all of this calculation of population on the basis of oil is largely the converse of the calculation on the basis of arable land, since in industrial society the amount of farm production is mainly a reflection of the amount of available oil.

If we look further into the future, we see an even smaller number for human population, still using previous ratios of oil to population as the basis for our figures. But the world a hundred years from now might not be a mirror image of the world of a hundred years in the past. The general depletion of resources might cause such damage to the structure of society that government, education, and intricate division of labor will no longer exist.

The matter of division of labor might be illustrated by a simple thought-experiment. If we grant that a thousand workers can produce a billion widgets per year, does it then follow that one person stranded on a desert island can produce a million widgets per year? No, of course not. Yet the ratio — one person per million widgets — is the same in both cases. The difference is implied in the words “large scale.” The complexity of division of labor in the modern world is truly staggering: in order to produce almost any of the goods of modern society, there must be very large numbers of people trained in many different roles. These roles must then be fitted together to form interactions of tremendous complexity. In a milieu of social chaos, therefore, what are the chances that the oil industry will be able to use extremely advanced technology to extract the last drops of oil?

Even then we have not factored in war, epidemics, and other aspects of social breakdown. The above-mentioned figure of 2 or 3 billion as a surviving population may be wildly optimistic. In fact, if we assume that agriculture is ultimately unsustainable (Diamond, 1987, May; Ferguson, 2003, July/August; Lee, 1968), we must regard an ultimate global population of 1 million, as existed in 10,000 BCE, as more likely.

Overpopulation is the overwhelming ultimate cause of systemic collapse (Catton, 1982). All of the flash-in-the-pan ideas that are presented as solutions to the modern dilemma — solar power, biofuels, hybrid cars, desalination, permaculture, enormous dams — have value only as desperate attempts to solve an underlying problem that has never been addressed in a more direct manner. American foreign aid has always included only trivial amounts for family planning (Spiedel, Sinding, Gillespie, Maguire, & Neuse, 2009, January); it would seem that the most powerful country in the world has done very little to solve the biggest problem in the world.

The reasons for this evasion of responsibility are many, including the influence of certain religious groups with the misnomer of “pro-life”; left-wing reluctance to point a finger at poor people, immigrants, or particular ethnic groups; right-wing reluctance to lose an ever-expanding source of cheap labor and a growing consumer market; and politicians’ reluctance to lose votes in any direction (Kolankiewicz & Beck, 2001, April).

Overpopulation can always be passed off as somebody else’s problem. It is the fundamental case of what Garrett Hardin calls “the tragedy of the commons” (1968, 1995): although an oversize family may have a vague suspicion that the world will suffer slightly from that fecundity, no family wants to lose out by being the first to back down. Without a central governing body that is both strong and honest, however, the evasion is perpetual, and it is that very lack of strength and honesty that makes traditional democracy an anachronism to some extent.

For all that might be said about their politics and economics, the Chinese have made quite an effort at dealing with excess population growth, but even they have not been entirely successful. Since 1953, the year of the first proper Chinese census and approximately the start of concerns with excessive fertility, the population has gone from 583 million to over 1.3 billion. For that matter, since the official starting of the one-child campaign in 1979 the population has grown by over 300 million (Riley, 2004, June).

Overpopulation, however, is a problem that occurs not only in poor countries. The evidence is also clear in the US:

. . . Mounting traffic congestion; endless disruptive road construction; spreading smog; worsening water pollution and tightening water supplies; disappearing wildlife habitats, farmland, and open spaces; overcrowded schools; overused parks and outdoor recreation facilities; the end of small-town life in communities that until recently had been beyond the city; the impending merging together of separate, unwieldy metropolitan areas into vast megalopolitan miasmas; and the overall deterioration in quality of life and the increasing social tensions of urban dwellers reflected in such phenomena as gated communities and road rage (Kolankiewicz & Beck, 2001, April).
Discussion of overpopulation, however, is the Great Taboo. Politicians will rarely touch the issue. Even the many documents of the United Nations merely sidestep the issue by discussing how to cater to large populations, in spite of the fact that such catering is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

To speak against overpopulation is an exercise in futility. How likely is it that the required massive change in human thinking will ever take place? Even in “developed” countries, to broach the topic of overpopulation is often to invite charges of racism and elitism. And after living in one or two “developing” countries myself, I must say that there seems something both naïve and presumptuous in the common liberal American belief that people in such countries are waiting to be “enlightened” to American ideals. On the contrary, my impression is that inhabitants of poor countries are often quite determined to hang on to their present systems of politics and religion, no matter how archaic and oppressive those systems may seem to outsiders, and would prefer that any proselytizing go in the opposite direction. Indeed, there is the frightful possibility that one reason why the US government gives so little aid to some countries is that the problem of overpopulation there is regarded as hopeless, and any assistance would be just money down the drain (Kaplan, 2001). Instead of dreaming of ways to reduce a population of several billion to a reasonable number overnight, therefore, it might be more sensible to think in terms of the medical system of triage: let us save those who can be saved.

One solution that is sometimes proposed for the dilemma of fossil-fuel decline is a global campaign for the humane implementation of rapid population decline. With all due respect for the attempt to find a satisfying answer to the question of overpopulation, such a proposal would conflict with the available data on the rate of decline in fossil fuels. The annual rate of population decline, in a civilization in which fossil fuels are by far the most important sources of energy, must roughly equal the 3-percent (if not greater) annual rate of fossil-fuel decline.

Unfortunately there is no practical humane means of imposing a similar annual rate of decline on the world’s population. If we allow the loss of petroleum to take its course, a decline of 3 percent would result in a drop in world population to half its present level, i.e. to 3.5 billion, by about the year 2030. The only means, however, would be a rather grim one: famine.

A deliberate global campaign of rapid population decline, even with the immediate implementation of an utterly hypothetical fertility rate of zero, i.e. the implementation of a “zero-child policy,” would have far less dramatic results. The rate of population decline would exactly equal the death rate. This is true by definition: “growth rate” equals “birth rate” minus “death rate”, and we have already postulated that the “birth rate” would be zero. The present death rate is only about 1 percent (CIA, 2010). At such a rate of decline, the global population in the year 2030 would still be more than 5 billion. (With an aging population, the death rate would increase slightly over the two decades, but not significantly.) There would therefore be no means for a program of planned population decline to work before the effects of fossil-fuel depletion take their own toll. Such figures, of course, disregard any other possible catastrophic future events such as famine (the above-mentioned means that is likely to prevail), disease, war, and a thousand other side-effects of societal breakdown.

Like so many other species, humanity expands and consumes until its members starve and die. The basic problem of human life has still never been solved: the imbalance of population and resources. As a result, the competition for survival is intense, and for most people life is just a long stretch of drudgery followed by an ignoble death. It is ironic that birth control, the most important invention in all of human history, has been put into practice in such a desultory manner. There is still no intelligent life on earth.

In view of the general unpopularity of birth-control policies, it can only be said euphemistically that Nature will decide the outcome. It is St. John’s Four Horsemen of war, famine, plague, and death who will signify the future of the industrial world. Nor can we expect people to be overly concerned about good manners: although there are too many variables for civil strife to be entirely predictable, if we look at accounts of large-scale disasters of the past, ranging from the financial to the meteorological, we can see that there is a point at which the looting and lynching begin. In fact, the basic cause of warfare throughout history and prehistory has been, quite simply, a lack of food (Harris, 1989). The survivors of industrial society will have to distance themselves from the carnage.

The need for a successful community to be far removed from urban areas is also a matter of access to the remaining natural resources. With primitive technology, it takes a great deal of land to support human life. What may look like a long stretch of empty wilderness is certainly not empty to the people who are out there picking blueberries or catching fish. That emptiness is not a prerogative or luxury of the summer vacationer. It is an essential ratio of the human world to the non-human.

REFERENCES

Bot, A. J., Nachtergaele, F. O., & Young, A. (2000). Land resource potential and constraints at regional and country levels. World Soil Resources Reports 90. Rome: Land and Water Development Division, FAO. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/terrastat/

Catton, W. R., Jr. (1982). Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

CIA. World factbook. (2010). US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook

Diamond, J. (1987, May). The worst mistake in the history of the human race. Discover. Retrieved from http://www.environment.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf

Ferguson, R. B. (2003, July/August). The birth of war. Natural History.

Gever, J., Kaufmann, R., & Skole, D. (1991). Beyond oil: The threat to food and fuel in the coming decades. 3rd ed. Ed. C. Vorosmarty. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado.

Grove, N. (1974, June). Oil, the dwindling treasure. National Geographic.

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162 (3859), 1243-1248. doi: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243

——. (1995). Living within limits: Ecology, economics, and population taboos. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harris, M. (1989). Our kind: Who we are, where we came from, where we are going. New York: Harper Perennial.

Heinberg, R. (2009). Blackout. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society.

——. (2010, May). China’s coal bubble . . . and how it will deflate U.S. efforts to develop “clean coal.” MuseLetter #216. Retrieved from http://richardheinberg.com/216-chinas-coal-bubble-and-how-it-will-deflate-u-s-efforts-to-develop-clean-coal

Hubbert, M. K. (1956). Nuclear energy and the fossil fuels. American Petroleum Institute. Retrieved from http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf

Kaplan, R. D. (2001). The ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia — A journey to the frontiers of anarchy. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publisher.

Klare, M. T. (2002). Resource wars: The new landscape of global conflict. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Knies, G.. (2006). Global energy and climate security through solar power from deserts. Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation in Co-operation with the Club of Rome. Retrieved from http://www.desertec.org/downloads/deserts_en.pdf

Kolankiewicz, L., & Beck, R. (2001, April). Forsaking fundamentals: The U.S. environmental movement abandons U.S. population stabilization. Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies.

Lee, R. B. (1968). What hunters do for a living, or, How to make out on scarce resources. In R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

Mason, M. K. (2010). Housing: Then, now, and future. Retrieved from http://www.moyak.com/papers/house-sizes.html

Pimentel, D. (1984). Energy flows in agricultural and natural ecosystems. CIHEAM (International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies). Retrieved from http://www.ressources.ciheam.org/om/pdf/s07/c10841.pdf

——, & Hall, C. W., eds. (1984). Food and energy resources. Orlando, Florida: Academic Press.

——, & Pimentel, M. H. (2007). Food, energy, and society. 3rd ed. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.

Riley, N. E. (2004, June). China’s population: New trends and challenges. Population Reference Bureau. Population Bulletin, 59 (2).

Singer, S. Fred. Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate. (2008). Chicago: The Heartland Institute. Retrieved from http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/22835.pdf

Spiedel, J. J., Sinding, S., Gillespie, D., Maguire, E., & Neuse, M. (2009, January). Making the case for US international family planning assistance. US Agency for International Development. Retrieved from http://www.jhsph.edu/gatesinstitute/_pdf/publications/MakingtheCase.pdf

Starr, C. G. (1991). A history of the ancient world. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weatherwax, P. (1954). Indian corn in old America. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Youngquist, W. (2000, October). Alternative energy sources. Oil Crisis. Retrieved from http://www.oilcrisis.com/youngquist/altenergy.htm

7 Seals Report

Wind and waves growing across globe:

2011-04-18T18:29:00.000-04:00

Luke 21:25-26 (King James Version)And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; 26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Wind and waves growing across globe:

Published in Science, the study is the most comprehensive of its kind ever undertaken.

Other authors include Swinburne University oceanographers Professor Alex Babanin and Dr Stefan Zieger.

“Careful analysis of satellite data shows that extreme oceanic wind speeds and ocean wave heights have increased dramatically over the last 23 years,” Professor Young said.

“Off the southern coast of Australia, the highest one per cent of waves have increased in height from approximately five metres to almost six metres over the last 20 years”

“Extreme conditions are where we are seeing the largest increases, but mean conditions are also going up.

“Extreme wind speeds have increased over most of the globe by approximately 10 per cent over the last 20 years, or 0.5 per cent every year.

“Extreme wave heights have increased by an average of seven per cent over the last 20 years, or 0.25 per cent a year in equatorial regions and 0.5 per cent a year in higher latitudes.

“The results have potential impact on the design of coastal buildings and other structures as well as shipping. They could also have a profound effect on the transfer of energy (heat) between the sea and the atmosphere – one of the great unknowns of climate change.

“Using recently developed satellite data allowed us to investigate trends on a global scale for the first time. This has really given us a much clearer picture of what is happening in the world’s oceans.”

The study looked at satellite data over 23 years from 1985 to 2008, and was funded under an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, with sponsorship from MetOcean Engineers.

Provided by Australian National University

7 Seals Report

20 Signs World Hunger is Increasing

2011-04-17T17:31:00.000-04:00

20 Signs That A Horrific Global Food Crisis Is Coming

In case you haven't noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen. Crazy weather and horrifying natural disasters have played havoc with agricultural production in many areas of the globe over the past couple of years. Meanwhile, the price of oil has begun to skyrocket. The entire global economy is predicated on the ability to use massive amounts of inexpensive oil to cheaply produce food and other goods and transport them over vast distances. Without cheap oil the whole game changes. Topsoil is being depleted at a staggering rate and key aquifers all over the world are being drained at an alarming pace. Global food prices are already at an all-time high and they continue to move up aggressively. So what is going to happen to our world when hundreds of millions more people cannot afford to feed themselves?

Most Americans are so accustomed to supermarkets that are absolutely packed to the gills with massive amounts of really inexpensive food that they cannot even imagine that life could be any other way. Unfortunately, that era is ending.

There are all kinds of indications that we are now entering a time when there will not be nearly enough food for everyone in the world. As competition for food supplies increases, food prices are going to go up. In fact, at some point they are going to go way up.

Let's look at some of the key reasons why an increasing number of people believe that a massive food crisis is on the horizon.

The following are 20 signs that a horrific global food crisis is coming....

#1 According to the World Bank, 44 million people around the globe have been pushed into extreme poverty since last June because of rising food prices.

#2 The world is losing topsoil at an astounding rate. In fact, according to Lester Brown, "one third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes".

#3 Due to U.S. ethanol subsidies, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is now used for fuel. This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.

#4 Due to a lack of water, some countries in the Middle East find themselves forced to almost totally rely on other nations for basic food staples. For example, it is being projected that there will be no more wheat production in Saudi Arabia by the year 2012.

#5 Water tables all over the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate due to "overpumping". According to the World Bank, there are 130 million people in China and 175 million people in India that are being fed with grain with water that is being pumped out of aquifers faster than it can be replaced. So what happens once all of that water is gone?

#6 In the United States, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer could eventually turn "America's Breadbasket" back into the "Dust Bowl".

#7 Diseases such as UG99 wheat rust are wiping out increasingly large segments of the world food supply.

#8 The tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis in Japan have rendered vast agricultural areas in that nation unusable. In fact, there are many that believe that eventually a significant portion of northern Japan will be considered to be uninhabitable. Not only that, many are now convinced that the Japanese economy, the third largest economy in the world, is likely to totally collapse as a result of all this.

#9 The price of oil may be the biggest factor on this list. The way that we produce our food is very heavily dependent on oil. The way that we transport our food is very heavily dependent on oil. When you have skyrocketing oil prices, our entire food production system becomes much more expensive. If the price of oil continues to stay high, we are going to see much higher food prices and some forms of food production will no longer make economic sense at all.

#10 At some point the world could experience a very serious fertilizer shortage. According to scientists with the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative, the world is not going to have enough phosphorous to meet agricultural demand in just 30 to 40 years.

#11 Food inflation is already devastating many economies around the globe. For example, India is dealing with an annual food inflation rate of 18 percent.

#12 According to the United Nations, the global price of food reached a new all-time high in February.

#13 According to the World Bank, the global price of food has risen 36% over the past 12 months.

#14 The commodity price of wheat has approximately doubled since last summer.

#15 The commodity price of corn has also about doubled since last summer.

#16 The commodity price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#17 The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.

#18 There are about 3 billion people around the globe that live on the equivalent of 2 dollars a day or less and the world was already on the verge of economic disaster before this year even began.

#19 2011 has already been one of the craziest years since World War 2. Revolutions have swept across the Middle East, the United States has gotten involved in the civil war in Libya, Europe is on the verge of a financial meltdown and the U.S. dollar is dying. None of this is good news for global food production.

#20 There have been persistent rumors of shortages at some of the biggest suppliers of emergency food in the United States. The following is an excerpt from a recent "special alert"

So what does all of this mean?

It means that time is short.

For years, many "doom and gloomers" have been yelling and screaming that a food crisis is coming.

Well, up to this point there hasn't been much to get alarmed about. Food prices have started to rise, but the truth is that our stores are still packed to the rafters will gigantic amounts of relatively cheap food.

However, you would have to be an idiot not to see the warning signs. Just look at what happened in Japan after March 11th. Store shelves were cleared out almost instantly.

It isn't going to happen today, and it probably isn't going to happen tomorrow, but at some point a major league food crisis is going to strike.

So what are you and your family going to do then?

You might want to start thinking about that.

Internationalists Renew Call for a North American Union

2011-04-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

Written by Daniel Sayani
Thursday, 10 March 2011 12:59

One of the most dangerous and pressing threats to American sovereignty is the proposed creation of the North American Union, a European Union-style amalgamation of the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a borderless, unified continental body. In the United States, one of the main proponents of the NAU has been former President George W. Bush, whose policy of open borders and a lenient approach to immigration is indicative of his desire to erase national borders, under the guise of a “Security, Peace, and Prosperity Partnership of North America.”

While many pundits on the left, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, falsely claim that constitutionalists and patriotic Americans are paranoid, and that their warnings about the threats of the erosion of American sovereignty are unfounded conspiracy theories, the objective evidence clearly indicates that a European Union-style confederation is a desired policy goal in the works among globalist elites.
Aside from former President Bush, one of the leading proponents of the North American Union is the powerful Canadian member of Parliament Hugh Segal, who argues that such an arrangement would benefit Canada (presumably at America’s expense). In his new book The Right Balance: Canada’s Conservative Tradition, Senator Segal offers a flimsy “conservative” defense of a North American Union, not unlike the faux conservative defense of the same globalist venture offered by the neoconservative (as distinguished from paleoconservative) President Bush.

Segal gives the following reasons why a North America Union would be beneficial for Canada (and, he believes, the United States as well):

A North American Community is not about the victory of the right or the left in this country, the United States or Mexico. With just a touch of statecraft and leadership, it could be about the coming together of our Canadian commitments to both economic performance and social justice with a far-sighted vision that sees Americans and Mexicans as among the very best allies in the world. Who in the world would we rather have as allies and fellow travelers in pursuing the twin challenges of economic performance and social justice?

We have reached the point where our national interests — economic, social, security and the rest — are now best served by a North American Community engaged in the economic broadening and institutional cohesion that generates focus and opportunity.

Segal also admits that he sees national sovereignty and its defense as antiquated, misguided goals, and advocates for the North American Union on the grounds of social democracy (i.e., he sees it as an ideal means of advancing an agenda of socialism under the guise of democracy):

Sovereignty is not a goal. The narrow-minded focus on sovereignty as a purely self-fulfilling goal is the refuge of those who fear the broader context of visionary thinking. The opportunity to create a community that enshrines democratic principles, enhances economic growth and opportunity, deepens trade and regulatory cooperation, increases social justice and economic development, and forms a basis for a hemispheric Community of the Americas should excite and inspire.

With “Conservatives” Like These, Who Needs Liberals?

Ironically, the one common thread uniting Bush and Segal is their supposed “conservatism,” better defined as neoconservatism. Such “conservatives” have been the leading proponents of the North American Union, and share several common political beliefs.

The similarities between Bush and Segal are uncanny. The Canadian Senator is a self-identified “progressive conservative,” with an ideology even to the left of Trotskyite neoconservatism, or British Thatcherism — described by political scientist Gad Horowitz as “Red Toryism,” because of its similarities with socialism, which is associated with the color red.

Segal does not stand for such principles as free markets, natural rights, his nation’s sovereignty, or limited government (ideas which are distinctly, although not exclusively, American), but instead advocates for “good government, order, balance between left and right, mutual responsibility, harmony between the classes, economic progressivism, and social justice.”

Segal even stated that “individual rights and personal responsibility are not absolute.” This opinion should not be surprising, considering that his own party claims to extol the diametrically opposed ideologies of progressivism and conservatism at the same time, explaining its support for basic elements of the welfare state (i.e., a social safety net) and its belief in “good government,” as opposed to limited government.

Unsurprisingly, this cheerleader for the North American Union also harbors animosity toward those who fought for America's independence. Segal denigrates the memory and cheapens the dedication of the brave early patriots who gave their lives for the principles of life, liberty, and property, by claiming in a speech to the National Press Club in 1995 that the American Revolution was fought to satisfy “uniquely American materialistic impulses":

The American Revolution was of a selfish and directionless nature. It was more about self-interest, mercantile opportunity, and who collected what tax than it was about tolerance or freedom. Americans hounded the Tories and Loyalists out of their newly independent colonies. America’s beginnings were profoundly exclusionary, anti-communitarian and repressive of free speech.

These new conservative Canadian residents, who were loyal to the Crown, would help build our national identity in English Canada, help influence our social, economic and political landscape, help defend the role of faith in society — not negate it — and help define Canada as a place different from ... the United States. Their politically conservative, economically progressive and deeply-suspicious-of-American populism tenor would become foundational for Canadian conservatism itself.

Similarly, former President Bush cannot be said to be a proponent of true American conservatism, often called paleoconservatism, the philosophy perhaps best manifested by Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio) who served in the Senate from 1939-1953. Bush's policies ultimately entailed a greater centralization of government, an increase in the size and scope of the federal government, and fiscal recklessness — hardly conservative ideals. These included:

• A foreign policy of democracy-building
• The largest expansion of the welfare state in 40 years (Medicare Part D and the federal Child Insurance Plan, among others)
• The creation of new federal agencies and the expansion of bureaucracy
• Keynesian economic policies (i.e., TARP and stimulus spending)
• Repression of civil liberties and violation of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments
• Seeking the approval of the United Nations as a pretext for entering war
• Appeasing Russia and China, while abandoning America’s ally Taiwan
• Meddling in Israel’s affairs as well as those of other countries
• Allowing the flood of illegal immigration to continue unchecked

These are all policies which can hardly be considered conservative, though they do fit into the neoconservative agenda. In fact, Bush’s prevailing ideology was oddly labeled “compassionate conservatism,” thematically similar in intent and focus to Segal’s “progressive conservatism.”

It is therefore no surprise that these individuals have been most influential in leading Canada and the United States down the road of an eroded national sovereignty. Segal himself is a man of great power and influence within the upper echelons of the Establishment: He is a former member of the Trilateral Commission, and in an editorial in The Globe and Mail, advocates for a guaranteed annual income for all Canadians, a prime example of socialism:

Thousands of working men and women have come to look to me as their protector and their champion. I feel that I cannot now fail them. In my official capacity I have traveled the middle of the road, but now that you have put the extreme alternative to me, my place is marching with the workers rather than riding with General Motors. Forty years later, the time for action on the GAI is upon us. Leaving the challenge of poverty to the side is to deny the essential decency and balance Canadians have always shared.

Likewise, it is the presence of so-called moderate Republicans in internationalist bodies such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that also serves to legitimize the North American Union.

Gathering storm , Part 2

2011-04-15T19:34:00.000-04:00

Psalm 7:4 If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:)

America forsakes an ally, and the apple of God's Eye

Obama Bans Weapons Sales To Israel, Sells Billions In Arms To Arab States

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs reported that the Israeli government was also refusing to protest massive U.S. weapons projects for Arab rivals in the Middle East, which has eroded Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors

Over the last year, the United States refused to approve any major Israeli weapons requests. Government sources asserted that the refusal represented a White House policy to link most arms sales to Israel to progress in the U.S. plan to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

At the same time, Obama has approved more than $10 billion worth of arms sales to Arab League states, including Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. JINSA said Israel, which receives more than $2.4 billion in annual American military aid, refrained from objecting to U.S. plans to sell F-16s, Harpoon Block 2 anti-ship missiles, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, fast attack craft and helicopters to Egypt.

In a Jan. 27 report, the institute, regarded as close to the Defense Department and U.S. military, said the White House has blocked key weapons projects and upgrades for Israel. JINSA said Obama rejected Israel’s request for AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters while approving advanced F-16 multi-role fighters for Egypt. “Indeed, Israel’s request for six AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters was blocked by the Obama Administration in June – the same time the Egyptian sale was approved,” the report said.

The administration’s policy, the report said, has violated a pledge given more than 40 years ago to maintain Israel’s military superiority over its Arab neighbors.

“How does Israel compete when the Obama administration announces 24 more F-16s for Egypt and 24 additional F-16s for Morocco,” the report said. “The concept of the Qualitative Military Edge failed to keep up with the changes in U.S. arms sales and training policy over the decades.”

JINSA dismissed Israeli government claims that the White House was ready to address the erosion of Israel’s military superiority. The institute said the January 2010 visit by U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones did not concern Israel’s qualitative military edge.

“Actually, it was to push Israel into more pointless talks with Palestinians, who declined to cooperate,” the institute said.

The U.S. aid to Arab states, the report said, has hampered Israeli military cooperation with Washington. More than 20 years ago, the Israel Air Force stopped participating in U.S.-sponsored regional exercises to prevent the leakage of combat tactics. ”It’s one thing for our lover to take pictures in the bedroom,” the report quoted an Israeli combat pilot as saying. “It is another for them to sell the pictures on the street.”

JINSA said Israel has lost its advantage over the Arabs regarding the quantity and quality of weapons. The institute said the Arabs also appear to have caught up to Israel in the area of tactics and training. The sole advantage was said to concern the quality of Israeli soldiers and officers. ”Changing Israel’s local security paradigm at the same time as increased sales to the neighbors — and no new sales to Israel – means the balance is pushed further out of whack,” the report said.

Gathering storm, the world wars against God

2011-04-10T15:36:00.000-04:00

As we read the todays headlines or watch the nightly news we see some frightening events unfolding. Nations at war leaders being over thrown, earthquakes, riots and hatred of the most evil kind. Most Chirstians knowing the these things where spoken of in the Bible, over two thousand years ago. We see as the book of 7 Seals are broken and the climax of world history coming to a close. First we should understand that it is Israel that most if not all prophecy pertains to, and that the nations of the world will be judge by the treatment they treat Israel. The Philistines in the time of David had decieved Israel just as they are now by a giant named Goliath all of Israel where afraid to fight the blasphemer and deciever. Today the Goliaths are the UN And EU. But this time the one from the lineage of David the one the stone represented will judge the nations with a rod of iron as in the book of Daniel. Palestine will force Israel once again to divide into a two state nation. As in 1 Kings 16:21 when Israel divided into two parts by Tibni, meaning "intelligent or krafty" and Omri meaning "pupil of Jehovah". Prophecy that was for told in these two is coming to pass today. An article in Ynet News titled; Paradoxically, UN endorsement of Palestinian state may prompt outbreak of war. talks of the Gathering storm and the conflict that has been set in motion so that the world wars against God. Part 1

New Every Morning

2011-04-09T20:01:00.000-04:00

The reason for 7 Seals Report, is to show through the headlines and daily news, that end time prophecy is being fulfilled today, with teaching of scriptures. And showing the merciful love God has for us.
The reason God gave prophecy was to prove He is God by telling us the future before it happens, like in Genesis 3:15 NIV where it says, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; HE (Jesus) will crush your head, and you (Satan) will strike his heel.” The fulfillment of that prophecy was the birth of Christ Jesus, some four thousand years after the fall in the garden. We see in Genesis that Jesus was with God at the beginning of creation and Jesus was God. Genesis 1:1-3 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. John speaks of Jesus being God in this way. John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. And John 17:24 says, Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me:

for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.Again we see from the beginning God foretold the future.
The Book of Seven Seals (Revelation 5:1) is God's warning to the world of judgements to come in the future. We are in the future now, the events unfolding today in the news are the fulfillment of prophecy foretold. The other reason God tells the future is because of his love for us, giving warning and signs to the believer and those that will heed the warnings and repent of their ways. In Lamentations 3:22-23; it says, It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. God is not an old man waiting for us to sin so that He can punish the sinner, but a Father with compassion and love toward us all. I will be posting news and events that have an impact on these end times. Always remember Psalm 118:29 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Psalm 86:15 But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. As the seals are broken and do not fear.