WASHINGTON– When Michelle Obama worked in Mayor Daley’s City Hall in the early 1990s, she was “distressed” by how a small group of “white Irish Catholic” families — the Daleys, the Hynes and the Madigans — “locked up” power in Illinois.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Divided Nation

“But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom•Strongs 932: basileia, bas-il-i´-ah; from 935; properly, royalty, i.e. (abstractly) rule, or (concretely) a realm (literally or figuratively): — kingdom, + reign. divided•Strongs 1266: diamerizo, dee-am-er-id´-zo; from 1223 and 3307; to partition thoroughly (literally in distribution, figuratively in dissension): — cloven, divide, part. against itself is brought to desolation•Strongs 2049: eremoo, er-ay-mo´-o; from 2048; to lay waste (literally or figuratively): — (bring to, make) desolate(-ion), come to nought.; and a house divided against a house falleth.”
—Luke11:17

“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.”
—Isaiah 1:4

Wars and Rumors of Wars

“For nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people. shall rise against nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people., and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

And as she prepared to become first lady, Mrs. Obama naively wanted to delay a move into the White House for six months, so her daughters could finish the school year. Her initial thought was to “commute” to the White House from her South Side home.

And Marty Nesbitt, one of President Obama’s best friends, had been recruited to run for Chicago mayor by African-American leaders — but never ended up challenging Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff who went on to win City Hall.

Details about Mrs. Obama’s initial reluctance to embrace her new life, her time in City Hall, the influence she has in the White House, tensions between Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Emanuel and former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs — are in a new book about the first couple by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor.

The Chicago Sun-Times has obtained a copy of The Obamas, to be published Tuesday. Kantor hits Chicago for an East Lake Shore Drive book party on Jan. 16; the next day, Jan. 17, she headlines a 6 p.m. event at the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State.

Mrs. Obama worked in the Daley administration between Sept. 16, 1991, and April 30, 1993, according to City of Chicago personnel records. She was hired by Jarrett, then Daley’s deputy chief of staff.

Kantor writes Mrs. Obama “disapproved of how closely Daley held power, surrounding himself with three or four people who seemed to let few outsiders in — a concern she would echo years later with her own husband.

“…She particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white Irish Catholic — the Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans statewide.”

When Jarrett was forced out of City Hall in 1995 — even though she was close to Daley — “the Obamas were horrified, their worst suspicions about the world confirmed.”

Jarrett, Gibbs, Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod, Mrs. Obama’s former chief of staff Susan Sher and Chicago pals Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt “gave me many hours of interview time each,” Kantor wrote in her acknowledgements. In all, Kantor got the cooperation of 33 current and former members of the Obama administration and close friends.

Still, with reports about issues in the administration — and an Emanuel who did not welcome Mrs. Obama’s influence — the Obama White House gave the book a frosty reception.

“The book, an overdramatization of old news, is about a relationship between two people whom the author has not spoken to in years,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. “The author last interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a magazine piece, and did not interview them for this book. The emotions, thoughts and private moments described in the book, though often seemingly ascribed to the president and first lady, reflect little more than the author’s own thoughts. These secondhand accounts are staples of every administration in modern political history and often exaggerated.”

Camille Johnston, Mrs. Obama’s former communications chief, told the Sun-Times, “We had some disagreements over how certain things would be handled, but in the end we all got back to the place Mrs. Obama had set at the onset: nothing on my agenda is more important than what’s on his.”

Defense Department spokesman says U.S. Navy ‘committed to security and stability of region’; statement comes after Iran threatens retaliation against continued U.S. presence in Gulf.

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Wars and Rumors of Wars

“For nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people. shall rise against nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people., and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

The United States will continue to deploy its warships in the Gulf, a defense spokesman said on Tuesday after Iran threatened to take action if the U.S. Navy moves an aircraft carrier into the Gulf.

“These are regularly scheduled movements and in accordance with our long-standing commitments to the security and stability of the region and in support of ongoing operations,” Commander Bill Speaks said in an emailed response to Reuters questions.

“The U.S. Navy operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran said it would take action if a U.S. aircraft carrier which left the area because of Iranian naval exercises returns to the Gulf. The state news agency IRNA quoted army chief Ataollah Salehi as saying that “Iran will not repeat its warning … the enemy’s carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf.”

Iran completed 10 days of naval exercises in the Gulf on Monday, and said during the drills that if foreign powers imposed sanctions on its crude exports it could shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s traded oil is shipped.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, said it would not allow shipping to be disrupted in the strait.

Iran said on Monday it had successfully test-fired two long-range missiles during its naval drill, flexing its military muscle in the face of mounting Western pressure over its controversial nuclear program.

Iran also said it had no intention of closing the Strait of Hormuz but had carried out “mock” exercises on shutting the strategic waterway.

An ash cloud erupted some 15,000 feet into the air from Alaska’s Cleveland Volcano, according to satellite images and the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

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Earthquakes

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes•Strongs 4578: seismos, sice-mos´; from 4579; a commotion, i.e. (of the air) a gale, (of the ground) an earthquake:—earthquake, tempest.
•Strongs 4579: seio, si´-o; apparently a primary verb; to rock (vibrate, properly, sideways or to and fro), i.e. (generally) to agitate (in any direction; cause to tremble); figuratively, to throw into a tremor (of fear or concern):—move, quake, shake., in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

The last significant eruption of Cleveland occurred in February 2001 and resulted in three ash plumes that reached up to 39,000 feet above sea level and “a rubbly lava flow and hot avalanche that reached the sea.”

Cleveland, located in the Aleutian Islands about 45 miles west of the community of Nikolski, has been upgraded and downgraded several times over the last few months, flaring up in July and erupting in the form of a growing lava dome in August. Following several weeks of activity, the volcano was downgraded before being upgraded again to an alert level of “watch” and an aviation hazard color-code of “orange” in early September. Two months later, the alert level was again lowered after the volcano seemed to quiet down.

This latest activity comes six days after the most recent update on the AVO website. The AVO said that satellite imagery from about 5 a.m. Thursday confirmed the presence of a detached ash cloud, about 50 miles away from the volcano and moving southeast.

Aviators in the area are encouraged to exercise caution, but the AVO said that the eruption may be an isolated event.

“Satellite data indicate that this is a single explosion event,” the AVO said, “however, more sudden explosions producing ash could occur with plumes exceeding 20,000 feet above sea level. Such explosions and their associated ash clouds may go undetected in satellite imagery for hours.”

Cleveland volcano lacks any real-time monitoring equipment.

Strong earthquake strikes off Japan’s Izu islands but no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning issued

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Earthquakes

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes•Strongs 4578: seismos, sice-mos´; from 4579; a commotion, i.e. (of the air) a gale, (of the ground) an earthquake:—earthquake, tempest.
•Strongs 4579: seio, si´-o; apparently a primary verb; to rock (vibrate, properly, sideways or to and fro), i.e. (generally) to agitate (in any direction; cause to tremble); figuratively, to throw into a tremor (of fear or concern):—move, quake, shake., in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

A strong earthquake has jolted eastern and north-eastern Japan, but there are no immediate reports of injuries or damages. No tsunami warning has been issued.

The 6.8-magnitude earthquake measured 4 in central Tokyo, Fukushima and their surrounding areas on the Japanese intensity scale, which measures ground motion, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Tokyo Electric Power said there were no reports of any abnormalities at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plan following the quake.

Some high-speed train services in northern Japan were suspended but soon resumed operations, Kyodo news reported.

The earthquake, at a depth of nearly 217 miles, was recorded south-southwest of Hachijo-jima off Japan’s south-eastern Izu islands on Sunday at 5.27am GMT, the US Geological Survey reported.

The Hawaii-based US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has not issued a tsunami.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On 11 March 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami, which triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years since Chernobyl.

The disaster left up to 23,000 dead or missing.

Scientists seeking to fight future pandemics have created a variety of “bird flu” potentially so dangerous that a federal advisory panel has for the first time asked two science journals to hold back on publishing details of research.

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Pestilences

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences•Strongs 3061: loimos, loy´-mos; of uncertain affinity; a plague (literally, the disease, or figuratively, a pest):—pestilence(-t) and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

Iniquity Abounding

“For the mystery•Strongs 3644: musterion, moos-tay´-ree-on; from a derivative of mu/w muo (to shut the mouth); a secret or “mystery” (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites): — mystery. of iniquity•Strongs 458: anomia, an-om-ee´-ah; from 459; illegality, i.e. violation of law or (genitive case) wickedness:—iniquity, x transgress(-ion of) the law, unrighteousness.
•Strongs 459: anomos, an´-om-os; from 1 (as a negative particle) and 3551; lawless, i.e. (negatively) not subject to (the Jewish) law; (by implication, a Gentile), or (positively) wicked:—without law, lawless, transgressor, unlawful, wicked. doth already work: only he who now letteth•Strongs 2722: katecho, kat-ekh´-o; from 2596 and 2192; to hold down (fast), in various applications (literally or figuratively):—have, hold (fast), keep (in memory), let, x make toward, possess, retain, seize on, stay, take, withhold. will let, until he be taken out of the way.”
—2Thessalonians 2:7

In the experiments, university-based scientists in the Netherlands and Wisconsin created a version of the H5N1 influenza virus that is highly lethal and easily transmissible between ferrets, the lab animals that most closely mirror human beings in flu research.

Members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which was created after the anthrax bioterrorism attacks of 2001, worried that such a hazardous strain might be intentionally or accidentally released into the world if directions for making it were generally known.

After weeks of reviewing papers describing the research, the NSABB said Tuesday it had recommended that the experiments’ “general conclusions” be published but not “details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm.”

“Censorship is considered the ultimate sin of original research. However, we also have an imperative to keep certain research out of the hands of individuals who could use it for nefarious purposes,” said Michael Osterholm, a member of the board who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It is not unexpected that these two things would clash in this very special situation.”

The board cannot stop publication. Its advice went to the Department of Health and Human Services, whose leaders asked the authors of the papers and the journals reviewing them — Science, published in Washington, and Nature, published in London — to comply.

The journals’ responses to the request were chilly, although both hinted they were willing to go along under certain conditions. Dutch researchers said they “are currently working on a new manuscript that complies with the recommendation.” The scientists at the University of Wisconsin could not be reached.

The work was paid for by the National Institutes of Health as part of a large portfolio of research aimed at “pandemic preparedness.”

The recommendation from the board puts the federal government in a distinctly controversial and embarrassing position.

It calls for a limit on the free exchange of information, something viewed as anathema by most scientists. It also suggests there wasn’t sufficient forethought about what might happen if the experiments actually worked.

The board reached the decision unanimously, Keim said.

The substance of the experiments has been known to some members of the influenza research community since early summer. There are strong and widely divergent views of what should be done with the results. A few scientists say the work should never have started.

About 600 people, mostly in Southeast Asia, have become ill from the H5N1 virus since 1997. About 60 percent have died. The virus is rarely passed from person to person. In most cases, infection requires close contact with sick birds.

Because of its extreme virulence, H5N1 has been the flu strain most feared as the source of a possible influenza pandemic. What it lacked were the genetic changes permitting easy transmission by coughing, sneezing and touch. The new research has apparently produced those changes for the first time, at least in ferrets.

Exactly how the key new mutations occurred is unclear, although it seems in part to be the product of chance. Influenza viruses are constantly changing in small ways. Simply infecting ferrets enough times with the virus may have been sufficient to allow mutations favoring easy transmissibility to emerge by chance and then be “saved” by natural selection.

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Wars and Rumors of Wars

“For nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people. shall rise against nation•Strongs 1484: ethnos, eth´-nos; probably from 1486; a race (as of the same habit), i.e. a tribe; specially, a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually, by implication, pagan):—Gentile, heathen, nation, people., and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2066624/Anthrax-isnt-scary-compared-Man-flu-virus-potential-wipe-millions-created-warns-frightened-scientist.html#ixzz1f2qKQSIX

Scientist responsible is bracing himself for a media storm
Just five tweaks to H5N1 makes it more contagious
Contagious version of bird flu could cause pandemic
Scientists divided over whether findings can be released

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Pestilences

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences•Strongs 3061: loimos, loy´-mos; of uncertain affinity; a plague (literally, the disease, or figuratively, a pest):—pestilence(-t) and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation.
The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time.
The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out.

The current strain of H5N1 has only killed 500 people and is not contagious enough to cause a global pandemic.
But their are fears the modified virus is so dangerous it could be used for bio-warfare, if it falls into the wrong hands.
Virologist Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands lead a team of scientists who discovered that a mere five mutations to the avian virus was sufficient to make it spread far more easily.
He conducted his tests on ferrets as the animals have become a model of choice for influenza and have similar respiratory tracts to humans.
Fouchier is so prepared for a media storm that he has hired an advisor to help him work on a communication strategy.
The research done was part of an international drive to understand H5N1 more fully.
Fouchier admitted the strain is ‘one of the most dangerous viruses you can make’ but is still adamant he wants to publish a paper describing how it was done.
The study is one of two which has caused serious debate about scientific freedom and about regulating research which might have potential public health benefits but at the same time could also be useful for bio-terrorism.
The other paper, also on H5N1, was done by a joint team at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Tokyo.
It is understood to have had comparable results to the study done by Fouchier.

Both papers are now being reviewed by the U.S National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).
NSABB does not have the power to prevent the publication but it could ask journals not to publish.
Paul Keim, chairman of NSABB, said: ‘I can’t think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one. I don’t think anthrax is scary at all compared to this.’
Traditionally scientific research has always been open so that fellow scientists can review the work of others and repeat their methods to try and learn from them.
But numerous scientists have said they believe research on the avian flu should be suppressed.
However bio-defense and flu expert Michael Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of innesota, said the work carried out was important medically.
He added he could not discuss the papers because he was a member of NSABB but said if they were published certain information could be withheld and made available to those who really need to know.
‘We don’t want to give bad guys a road map on how to make bad bugs really bad,’ he said.

ATLANTA – The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis.

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Pestilences

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences•Strongs 3061: loimos, loy´-mos; of uncertain affinity; a plague (literally, the disease, or figuratively, a pest):—pestilence(-t) and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.

“Over the last three months were have been two persons who have resided in this facility who have been diagnosed with confirmed or suspected infectious tuberculosis (TB),” said Fulton County Services Director Matthew McKenna in a written statement to CBS Atlanta. “One of these persons was confirmed to have a strain of TB that is resistant to a single, standard medication used to treat this condition. All person(s) identified as positive have begun treatment and are being monitored to ensure that medication is taken as directed.”

The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless has indicated that two cases have been made public knowledge to the group, the first coming from someone who contracted the disease in September. The identities of the people who have contracted the disease, however, have not been disclosed by the health department to this point.

The news of the tuberculosis contractions could force Occupy Atlanta to move once again. WGCL reports that more than 100 protesters made the move to the homeless shelter Oct. 30 after Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed evicted Occupy Atlanta from Woodruff Park, citing that they were no longer allowed to camp out overnight. The homeless shelter is also facing an eviction of its own from the city.

Tim Franzen spokesman for Occupy Atlanta told WAOK’s Rob Redding that the group is not thinking about moving its headquarters from the homeless shelter because of the tuberculosis report. Read more about the report here

Trying to tap into the best thinking about the future of global agriculture, as I have tried to do in my work as a reporter, can be an exercise in frustration. Many groups and many bright people go at the problem, but not many of them go at it in a holistic way.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

The environmental crowd is worried mainly about the ecological damage from agriculture and is prone to recommend solutions that farmers say would undercut the food supply. Traditional agronomists are mainly worried about supply — and tend at times to recommend fixes that might worsen the environmental damage.

A separate crowd is primarily worried about the inequities in the global food system: that a billion people at the top end are killing themselves eating overly rich diets while a billion poor people live desperate lives circumscribed by malnutrition.

Can’t we figure out how to fix all this at once?

It’s a tall order, but a heartening development in global agricultural policy is that some people are starting to try. Now comes an interesting new installment in the literature of the Big Fix. It’s an analysis by an international team of scientists led by Jonathan A. Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

Their paper, “Solutions for a Cultivated Planet,” was released online and is scheduled as the cover article of the Oct. 20 issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Foley is also publishing a piece in the November issue of Scientific American, due on newsstands next week, that summarizes the team’s analysis in layman’s terms.

The group finds, as others have before them, that the challenge of doubling global food production in coming decades can probably be met, albeit with considerable difficulty. The interesting thing to me about the analysis is that it doesn’t treat any of the problems confronting the food system as superior to the others — it treats the environmental problem, the supply problem and the equity problem as equally important, laying out a case that they all need to be tackled at once.

“Feeding nine billion people in a truly sustainable way will be one of the greatest challenges our civilization has ever faced,” Dr. Foley says in the Scientific American article, referring to the projected global population at midcentury. (He outlines some of the links between environmental problems and agriculture in this talk, and his group produced a popular animated clip that gives a sense of the scale of the problems here.)

Many elements of the new paper will be familiar to readers who follow these issues. Yet it is interesting to see these building blocks of a smarter food system spelled out in one paper, with hard numbers attached.

For starters, the group argues that the conversion of forests and grasslands to agricultural use needs to stop now; the environmental damage we are doing chopping down the Amazon far exceeds the small gain in food production, it says.

Next, the paper contends that increases in food supply need to come from existing farmland by a process of intensified production in regions where yields are low: northeastern India, Eastern Europe, parts of South America and large parts of Africa being good examples.

If yields in these regions could be brought to within 75 percent of their known potential using modern farming methods, including fertilizer and irrigation, total global supply of major foodstuffs would expand by 28 percent, the paper found. If yields were brought to 95 percent of their potential, close to those achieved in rich countries, the supply increase would be a whopping 58 percent.

The paper does not say so, but I suspect that either development would be enough to reverse the soaring food prices of recent years.

Another important strategy laid out in the paper is to improve the efficiency of agriculture in places where yields are already high. If farmers in Africa need more fertilizer, farmers in the United States need less.

The paper essentially argues that high yields can be attained with fewer chemicals and less water, which would not only cut pollution but in some cases also cut costs for farmers.

And finally, the paper argues that more of the food we grow needs to wind up on people’s plates. That means cutting food waste, not just the kind so common in Western kitchens but also the tremendous post-harvest losses caused by bad storage conditions in poor countries.

And it means a shift in diets away from meat and dairy products, which are inefficient to produce, and toward plants. The paper acknowledges that a massive transition to vegetarianism is unlikely but argues that even incremental changes — getting many people to move from less-efficient beef to more-efficient chicken, for instance — would make a difference.

The paper studiously avoids taking sides in the ideological wars over the food system. It does not adopt the left-leaning argument that organic production is the answer to the world’s food issues, nor the rightward view that markets will solve all problems.

It does argue for pulling as many good ideas as possible from emerging food movements into the conventional system — but only if they serve the three goals of increasing supply, reducing environmental damage and improving food security.

As a scientific report, not a policy document, the Foley paper does not offer any big new proposals for how to make all these things happen. Many commentators who have studied these issues have come to the conclusion that the barriers are not primarily technical but involve a lack of political will to solve the problems, leading to low public investment in agriculture.

In his Scientific American article, Dr. Foley does make one intriguing proposal. Pointing to the certification system that has encouraged the construction of green buildings, he asks: what about a new certification system for sustainably produced food?

Instead of catering to a single ideological predilection, the way the organic label does now, the new label would be based on a system that awards points for public benefits and subtracts them for environmental harm. Foods produced according to the best practices would get the highest scores, or possibly the highest letter grades. If consumers adopted it, such a certification would put pressure on companies and farmers to clean up their practices.

“This certification would help us get beyond current food labels such as ‘local’ and ‘organic,’ which do not tell us much about what we are eating,” Dr. Foley writes in Scientific American.

I can only imagine the ideological battles that will erupt if this idea is taken seriously. Yet some of the needed elements are already falling into place, like attempts in Europe to measure the carbon footprint of various foods.

If scientists with no axes to grind could manage to keep control of the certification system, using it as a vehicle to apply stringent performance criteria to farming systems while turning the label into a global brand, the world might have a powerful new tool for improving the food supply — and the health of the planet.

The head of the world’s biggest food company Nestle said on Friday that rising food prices have created conditions “similar” to 2008 when hunger riots took place in many countries.

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Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

“The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality,” the Swiss giant’s chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview.
“We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level.
“If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of course you are going to feel it more than here (in Europe) where it is maybe eight percent.”
In 2008, the price of cereals reached historic levels, provoking a food crisis and riots in a number of African countries, as well as in Haiti and the Philippines.
In September the UN food agency’s food price index came in at 225 points, just higher than the peak it hit in June 2008. It is down from the record 237.7 points hit in February this year.
Food price inflation this year is seen as having contributed to the “Arab Spring” unrest in north Africa and the Middle East and there are fears of fresh unrest elsewhere.
The increases are blamed on speculative commodity trading, climate change, rising populations and changing eating habits in countries like India and China, most notably an increase in meat consumption by a growing middle class.
Brabeck-Letmathe said another factor was water, saying humans were “using more water than is sustainable” and calling for the price of water to rise in order to encourage firms and consumers to be less wasteful.