| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (3956) | 6/28/2005 12:26:58 PM | | From: pie-faced-mutt | | | | I like what this chap had to say in the latest issue of the Economist:
Islam and democracy
"SIR – You seem surprised by the failure of militant Islam in South-East Asia (“Turning back the tide”, June 4th). The word “tide” itself suggests an inevitable movement that was quelled in the nick of time by liberal democracy. This is not so. If militant Islam doesn't appear to pose an immediate threat now it is because the threat was largely illusory. In the last 20 years, only Sudan and Afghanistan have had radical Islamic governments, with large swathes of their populations opposing such government (incidentally, in both cases the Islamists were funded and supported by the United States as anti-communist forces prior to taking office). You also suggest that America's recent actions have helped stem this tide with a new secular and democratic order. I fail to see how. Secularism is not going to be made popular in the Muslim world by continuing support for dictatorships such as Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan or Islam Karimov's Uzbekistan. Moreover, the implication that a positive, anti-Islamist order has been established partly by the toppling of Saddam Hussein is absurd. How have Islamists been hurt by the replacement of a stable secular regime with an impoverished, unstable, insecure democratic regime dominated by a non-secular Islamist party, with ties to Iran, and whose parliamentary politics are reminiscent of Weimar Germany?"
Craig Willy
Roquefort-les-Pins, France |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (3935) | 4/21/2008 10:57:02 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Amid grain shortages, resistance relaxes to modified wheat
By Andrew Pollack
Monday, April 21, 2008
Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.
In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.
"We cannot afford it," said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.
In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.
"I think it's pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today," said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a government supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad.
The group, which once cautioned farmers about growing biotech wheat, is working to get seed companies to restart development of genetically modified wheat and to get non-U.S. buyers to accept it.
Even in Europe, where opposition to what the Europeans call Frankenfoods has been fiercest, some prominent government officials and business executives are calling for faster approvals of imports of genetically modified crops. They are responding in part to complaints from livestock producers, who say they might suffer a critical shortage of feed if imports do not accelerate.
In Britain, the National Beef Association, which represents cattle farmers, issued a statement this month demanding that "all resistance" to such crops "be abandoned immediately in response to shifts in world demand for food, the growing danger of global food shortages and the prospect of declining domestic animal production."
The chairman of the agriculture committee in the European Parliament, Neil Parish, said that as prices rise, Europeans "may be more realistic" about the issue of genetically modified crops.
"Their hearts may be on the left, but their pockets are on the right," he said.
With food riots in some countries focusing attention on how the world will feed itself, biotechnology proponents see their chance. They argue that while genetic engineering might have been deemed unnecessary when food was abundant, it will be essential for helping the world cope with the demand for food and biofuels in the decades ahead.
Through gene splicing, the modified crops now grown - mainly corn, soybeans, canola and cotton - typically contain bacterial genes that help the plants resist insects or tolerate a herbicide that can be sprayed to kill weeds while leaving the crop unscathed. Biotechnology companies are also working on crops that might need less water or fertilizer, which could have a bigger impact on improving yield.
Certainly any new receptivity to genetically modified crops would be a boon to American exporters. The United States accounted for half the world's acreage of biotech crops last year.
But substantial amounts of corn, soy or canola are grown in Argentina, Brazil and Canada. China has developed insect-resistant rice that is awaiting regulatory approval from Beijing.
The pressure to re-evaluate biotech comes as prices of some staples like rice and wheat have doubled in the last few months, provoking violent protests in several countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti and Thailand. Factors behind the price spikes include the diversion of crops to make biofuel, rising energy prices, growing prosperity in India and China, and droughts in some regions - including Australia, a major grain producer.
Biotechnology still certainly faces obstacles. Polls in Europe do not yet show a decisive shift in consumer sentiment, and the industry has had some recent setbacks. Since the beginning of the year, France has banned the planting of genetically modified corn while Germany has enacted a law allowing for food to be labeled "GM free."
A new international assessment of the future of agriculture, released last week, gave such tepid support to the role genetic engineering could play in easing hunger that biotechnology industry representatives withdrew from the project in protest. The report was a collaboration of more than 60 governments, with participation from companies and nonprofit groups, under the auspices of the World Bank and the United Nations.
Hans Herren, the co-chairman of the project, said that providing more fertilizer to Africa would improve output much more than genetic engineering could. "What farmers really are struggling with are water issues, soil fertility issues and market access for their products," he said.
Opponents of biotechnology say that they see not so much an opportunity as opportunism by its proponents to exploit the food crisis. "Where politicians and technocrats have always wanted to push GMOs, they are jumping on this bandwagon and using this as an excuse," said Helen Holder, who coordinates the campaign against biotech foods for Friends of the Earth Europe. GMO refers to genetically modified organism.
Even Michael Mack, the chief executive of the Swiss company Syngenta, an agricultural chemical and biotechnology giant, cautioned that the industry should not use the current crisis to push its agenda.
Whatever importance biotechnology can play in the long run, food shortages are making it harder for some food buyers to avoid engineered crops.
The main reason some Japanese and South Korean makers of corn starch and corn sweeteners are buying biotech corn is that they have dwindling alternatives. Their main supplier is the United States, where 75 percent of corn grown last year was genetically modified, up from 40 percent in 2003.
"We cannot get hold of non-GM corn nowadays," said Yoon Chang-gyu, director of the Korean Corn Processing Industry Association.
But the tightening global supply has made it harder to get nonengineered corn from elsewhere. And as corn prices soar, millers and food companies are less able to pay the surcharge to keep nonengineered corn separate from biotech varieties. The surcharge itself has been rising.
Yoon said nonengineered corn cost Korean millers about $450 a ton, up from $143 in 2006. Genetically engineered corn costs about $350 a ton.
In Europe, livestock producers say that regulations on genetically modified crops could choke feed supplies at a time when they are already reeling from higher prices. Even after a new genetically engineered variety is approved for growing in the United States, it might take several years for Europe to approve it for import.
Moreover, European rules require a whole shipment of grain to be turned back if it contains even a trace of an unapproved variety. Such a problem last year disrupted exports of corn gluten, a feed product, from the United States to Europe.
Feed makers and livestock producers want faster approvals and a relaxation of the rules to allow for trace amounts of unapproved varieties in shipments.
Even in the United States, where genetically engineered food has been generally accepted, the wheat industry has had to rethink its reluctance to accept biotech varieties.
Because about half of the U.S. wheat crop is exported, farmers and processors feared that foreign buyers would reject their products. Facing resistance from farmers, Monsanto in 2004 suspended development of what would have been the first genetically modified wheat.
But some farmers and millers now say that the lack of genetically engineered wheat has made growing the grain less attractive than growing corn or soybeans. That has, in turn, contributed to shrinking supplies and rising prices for wheat.
Milling & Baking News, an influential trade newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri, said in an editorial that companies using wheat were now paying the price for their own "hesitancy, if not outright opposition" to biotechnology.
Su-hyun Lee in Seoul and Yasuko Kamiizumi in Tokyo contributed reporting.
iht.com |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2705) | 6/30/2017 2:15:54 PM | | From: Deanerenata32 | | | | Where do you think you would spend eternity, if God forbid, you were to die later today?
I am not sending this to you to preach religion. I am asking you if you were standing before a Holy God do you think that He would have an issue with your sin if you were standing in front of a Holy God?
Because that is exactly what the Bible tells us. That a Holy God can not be in the presence of sin. So every human being that has ever lived has had the exact same problem. This sin problem. But do you also know that Jesus Christ offers all of us a free gift, the forgiveness of sin. And faith and belief is all God wants from you. So, do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God who came to earth and lived a perfect life? Do you know that God will accept Christ's perfect life and let Christ be your Advocate, so on Judgement Day God doesn't look at all the bad stuff you've done. Instead, God will look at His perfect Son when He see's you. Because Jesus and His perfection literally stand in our place.
Something like that. I would try to lay it out in the most simple terms so they know what the problem is and what the solution is and how it works.
Then in the last sentence just write a quick sentence like "there really is little difference between you and I, I am a sinner too. But I have accepted Christ's free gift of salvation and I know that I will be with God in eternity. I sincerely hope that this has helped you and I do apologize for being so forward, but I have to share this with you because I'm sure neither of us gets free gifts often. At this point, I would recommend for you a good Bible-based church that can answer any questions you have and will surround you with like-minded believers. Just Google bible church in your local area. God bless you!"
Rom 3:23 :
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Now that you know that no one is good in God's eyes, how do we then become good? How do we become vindicated before God? The Bible teaches that we need to have Jesus' righteousness but the only way to do that is to come to Him by faith:
Rom 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Rom 10:10
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Jesus commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins, to ask for His forgiveness, and to turn from their sins and to put their faith and trust in Him. Repenting means that you are sincerely sorry for all the bad things you have done in life and you want Jesus to change you into his holiness and righteousness. |
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