Among the Global Food Crisis, Spirulina May Help Stave Off Starvation

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Tags: food supply, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Most of us who have seen the Poseidon Adventure movie have seen what a rouge wave can do. Most seamen know of this rare hazard of the deep sea. What are unknown are simultaneous rouge waves –- not much can be done against one, image several hitting your ship of life at the same time. Events are beginning to move faster –- the waves are building, in fact they are towering waves that the blind do not see because they don't want to.

In countries where people live on less than $1 a day, a day's serving of rice or beans now costs more than the average daily wage.

Today we can no longer separate and divide one subject area from another. Concurrent events are destroying our normal tendency to put subject areas into nice orderly compartments -- giving more support to quantum mechanics and other mystical areas of thought, which insist that everything is connected. Charles Perrow of Yale University says "Interconnectedness in the global production system has now reached the point where a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere". This is especially true of the world's financial systems, where the coupling is very tight. "Now we have a debt crisis with the biggest player, the U.S. The consequences could be enormous."

We are going to get a crash course in these dynamics as we not only watch but participate in the food crisis, which is running smack into the oil, financial, ecological, climate and water crisis's. "The most worrisome thing about the vulnerability of the U.S. economy circa 2008," Kevin Phillips writes, "is the extent of official understatement and misstatement -- the preference for minimizing how many problems there are and how interconnected they are."

The heart feels itself to be part of the whole.

Ten days ago I wrote about force five financial storms and this last week the Royal Bank of Scotland advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks. The news is bad and is getting worse and very soon cataclysmic shock waves will set upon us.

"The assertion that the economy was strong and getting stronger, repeated with the frequency of a mantra, hid the reality that working Americans have been taking a real beating," said United States Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont. We had only three months of relative stability even after central banks threw almost everything they had at the financial crisis. Now barely 12 weeks later we see the storm clouds are looming even higher threatening us with the end of the world as we know it and there isn't much the central banks can do about it. They lowered rates to the floor and the deflationary/inflationary contraction is just getting warmed up.

Examples of bad capitalism: subprime lending, exotic financial instruments and exploding debt.

Most of the populations around the world have been deliberately blinded by massive propaganda type conditioning that is cruelly delivered by the media on behalf of governments and corporations. In the United States this is especially nasty. "All federal agencies have a great fear of the truth and only by controlling the news media can they keep the world from caving in on their heads," writes Derry Brownfield. Even Bob Herbert wrote in the Times, "Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety -- and even dread, in some cases -- that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class."

A typical third world family which has a monthly food budget of about $100 has discovered that the money buys only about two-thirds of what it used to, so family's meals are quickly becoming smaller and more basic.

Meanwhile, the price of oil has jumped, raising the cost of producing crops and feeding livestock and causing an increase in grocery bills here and abroad, which through the recent months has sparked riots and protests in at least two dozen countries. At a moment when corn should be almost waist-high in Iowa, the country's top-producing corn state, estimates are that 5 million acres across the Midwest have been ruined and will not produce a crop this year.

The potential for massive food riots breaking out around the world in the coming months is increasing.

Early on it was estimated that 2 million acres of soy beans have been lost to water, with the numbers and devastation getting worse by the hour, as the flood waters continue to make their way down the Mississippi River. Iowa and Illinois usually produce one-third of all U.S. corn and soybeans. Estimates according to the state's agriculture secretary are that up to 3 billion dollars worth of food will be lost from world supplies from Iowa alone.

A breakdown anywhere in the food chain sets dire consequences in motion

The floods will mean more food inflation, not only for U.S. consumers, but also for dozens of countries that buy American grain. The United States exports 54 percent of the world's corn, 36 percent of its soybeans and 23 percent of its wheat. The floods mean that millions must starve and die. The human race is going to quickly be confronted with a brutal form of math when it comes to the supply and demand of food.

Already some 800 million people around the world suffer from chronic food shortages, millions more though are now going hungry because of the widening food crisis. Rising food prices hit the urban poor the hardest, those who throng the slums of sprawling capitals such as Lagos, Nigeria; Manila, Philippines; and Caracas, Venezuela. Yet it is hitting plenty of people in the United States with more and more people struggling to pay their grocery bills.

It was never a good idea to let credit and debt loads exceed by a huge factor the number of stars in the heavens. Thus the value of debt is going to crash and this is going to drive a stake into the heart of our financial system. In a world where debt has become money (credit) a rapid contraction in debt translates into a monetary contraction (deflation). This is already happening at flank speed in the housing sector but is just beginning to pick up steam in many other areas like credit cards, student loans, commercial real-estate and even corporate and municipal debt.

Everywhere around us debt will implode meaning more and more individuals, businesses, municipalities, state governments and corporations will run into the absolute brick wall of their credit limits. Bankruptcy is on the other side of the wall and so is hunger and starvation. No money no food, it's that simple and that terrible. In a rapidly contracting world with rising food prices, who is going to feed the growing millions who cannot afford their nutritional needs? Already relief organizations can afford to buy and distribute much less food then only last year. That translates almost immediately into massive malnutrition, starvation and death for tens of millions more.

We now have to push the reset button and relearn economic and financial theory. By any tried measure we are in the beginning of a deflationary collapse not an inflationary spiral. Most values of wealth are shrinking with the dollar leading the way. When Federal Express reported massive reversals of profits last week we began to see that everyone everywhere is going to experience the contraction of wealth in these next six to 12 months. Almost everyone is going to lose money, earn less, and experience sharp depreciations in asset values.

What is going to happen to the unemployed in the first world? Is the homeless population going to explode? Has it not already done that? Can it get that much worse? The answers are excruciatingly painful. One might get a clearer view of what is coming from the hidden side of the Great Depression presented by a Russian researcher who insisted that approximately seven million Americans perished.

In many cities in the United States during the Great Depression there was food but many people had no money to buy it. People starved in the streets against the background of stores selling a variety of foodstuffs.

"Few people know about five million American farmers (about a million families) whom banks ousted from them lands because of debts. The U.S. government did not provide them with land, work, social aid, pension –- nothing," wrote Boris Borisov, in his article titled "The American Famine." "Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced to leave their homes and go somewhere without any money and any property. They found themselves in the middle of nowhere enveloped in massive unemployment, famine and gangsterism." That's right; The Great Depression was not just rich cats jumping off of high buildings. Millions suffered and died.

The first real food riots in the Great Depression broke out in February 1931.

Thousands of unemployed workers looted food stores (afraid of their contagious effect, the press usually did not report food riots); indeed, Irving Bernstein reports, "By 1932 organized looting of food stores was a nationwide phenomenon." As far as the media was concerned, the poor in America were starving to death in silence.

"Working families are not just changing their travel plans and tightening up on purchases at the mall. There is real fear and a great deal of suffering out there." - Bob Herbert, NY Times

The sharp rise in food prices is being felt acutely by poor families on food stamps. In the past year, the cost of food for what the government considers a minimum nutritional diet has risen 7.2 percent nationwide. The cost of certain items like eggs has increased nearly 20 percent, and the price of milk and other dairy products has risen 10 percent. For millions of American families on food stamps, the amount received, intended to cover only minimum needs, have not changed since last fall.

Many families could only keep the heat just high enough to keep their pipes from bursting this past winter. It has already started and is already biting on many. Remember those rogue waves coming in multiples? Well one of them reads out as real contractions in the world's supply of food. Food stocks have already crashed by historic 20th Century standards but we have not seen anything compared to what is coming in the next 12 months.

"If a modern state is to rest upon a firm foundation its citizens must not be allowed to starve. Some of them do. They do not die quickly. You can starve for a long time without dying." - Children's Bureau of Philadelphia, 1931

For a while it is the rich who will eat and I am not only talking in terms of individuals with their families. We can talk in terms of countries who grow their own food and countries like China who can afford to buy the entire world's supply. Either way you cut the mustard, untold unimaginable numbers of people are going to drop out the bottom and starve.

"The death of children from hunger is the product of a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them, myself included. If not, this would not be happening." - Anibal Fernandez, Minister of Argentina

Starvation has historically been used as a death sentence. From the beginning of civilization through to the Middle Ages people were immured, or starved to death. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people died of starvation every day in 2003 and as of 2001 to 2003, about 800 million people were chronically undernourished. The year 2009 might be the date for the beginning of a new famine that will reach into every corner of our globalized world.

Every civilization in history has collapsed. Why should ours be any different?

We are heading into this dark hole at warp speed. This year's food stocks promise to be razor thin with floods in the U.S. Midwest, drought in Australia, multiple problems in China and now political turmoil in Argentina all causing steep cuts in grain production. One can see the giant waves approaching. What do we do besides cry? It is sadly late for most people to do much of anything about the circumstances they find themselves in. Options are just not affordable since just about everything costs money.

There are though, always some things we can do. In regards to all of the above my recommendation for my readers is to buy Green Gold. Yes regular gold too, as the dollar gets set to fall off a cliff gold will finally take off. But Green Gold, what is that?

Green Gold is the closest you can come in the world of medicine and nutrition to crystallized light meaning its valuable stuff. It is actually better than regular gold because in the case of Green Gold, you can eat it. What I am talking about is spirulina and my advice is buy it, buy as much of it as you can afford. It has a shelf life of two years or more if you buy it in powder or tablet form. It will bring you a lot of security and piece of mind and even healing if you are sick or tired of the almost overwhelming stress from life lived in our most recent modern era.

You can go to (http://www.magnesiumforlife.com/spirulina.sh...) to read one of several chapters I have written on spirulina and it is the ultimate survival food as well as one of the most useful medicinal items a person can have in one's home. Spirulina is a super food and it even has been shown to be effective in cases of radiation exposure as well as cancer.

Spirulina offers tremendous advantages in economically challenged times. Though most recent research has focused on the medical fact that it is comprised of 65% vegetable protein, it has proven its value in many countries where hunger has threatened the lives of many. It is safe for children, but spirulina research since the 1970s has focused more on its disease-fighting and prevention potential than its starvation-prevention potential.

Spirulina's growth rates are very high. Its rapid growth means spirulina protein needs 20 times less land than soybeans, 40 times less than corn, and 200 times less than beef production. Spirulina offers more nutrition per acre than any other food, but doesn't even need fertile soil. In a shallow pond in an ideal environment, spirulina can double its biomass every 2 to 5 days.

Forests help absorb carbon dioxide. Trees are the best land plants for fixing carbon, from 1 to 4 tons per hectare per year. Spirulina is even more efficient. In the California desert, spirulina fixes 6.3 tons of carbon per hectare per year and produces 16.8 tons of oxygen. In the tropics it is 2.5 times more productive.

Another useful recommendation I would make has to do with our principle relationships with others. My success in recent years is bound up with my willingness to create what I have called strategic relationships but many of them are bordering already on the deepest imprint in my being, The Marriage of Souls, which is the title of my first book. We are going to need close committed relationships in the months and years ahead, for there is no doubt in times of crisis and despair -- together we survive, divided we fall.

Over 33,000 people took their lives in Japan last year mostly because of debt, family problems, depression and other health issues. What is wrong on our planet is serious and our pain is profound. The individual cannot completely escape collective events and the collective is the sum total of all individual components. There is a oneness of experience on a certain level of being that we cannot escape. We can distort that oneness and fragment into millions of individual pieces but reality is what it is and will be what it is going to be.

Viktor Frankl, in his book "Man's Search for Meaning," offers a penetrating vision into the realities of human suffering. Founder of the third way movement of psychology in Austria, Frankl was the only one in his family to survive the concentration camps in Germany. Viktor Frankl speaks thus:

"When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

"There was plenty of suffering for us to get through (in the concentration camps). It was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer."

This morning I read that people who exist in a vibratory rate that is harmonious with the planet will find themselves in safe places. Those safe places will exist where those individuals are. There are no "safe places" as designated on planet earth despite any and all predictions. There will be safe places in the midst of any and all disaster experiences. It is the consciousness of the individuals themselves that will create those places. Those that are able to transcend the victim stance and take on the mantle of responsibility to create a new experience will come through the years ahead.

If industrialized civilization does fall, the urban masses -- half the world's population -- will be most vulnerable. We are entering an era where there is a great unraveling of certain things long taken for granted. Certainly we are going to be challenged in ways we can hardly imagine. Certainly our governments are going to fail us but the police and military are trained to step in so we need not worry right?

Alan Fram and Eileen Putman writing for the Associated Press said today, "The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance. Americans need to do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire."

Special Note: But never forget, never, that the mass media is censored meaning it does not broadcast the truth. It broadcasts what the authorities want you to read and yes there are certain things even they cannot hide. The media is a gigantic propaganda machine perfect for crowd control and that's all we are to certain people -- obscure members of the crowd to be controlled at all cost.

Many people I have met do not believe in anything called truth yet the truth is racing toward us at increasing speed. Truth has never been a very comfortable thing and that is why we avoid it. Certainly messengers of truth get harassed. Once I even met a person who did not believe in manipulation, nor that it was even possible to be manipulated, nor that anyone had the power to do the manipulating. This was a doctorate level person and I was amazed. I think it took life 55 years to teach me the meaning of naïve. This is not the time to be naïve; it's not a good idea to stand in headlights like a dear paralyzed with fear. Fear is a good thing when it does not paralyze us for the feeling stimulates cognitive function that will hopefully lead to some kind of action.

And do yourself a favor, go back and reread and read again the warning from the Royal Bank of Scotland, which advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months. Not a bad idea to set one's course in life as well as one's investments to be guided by such warnings from such a mainstream source.

And in a special report this week by Johann Hari we find that Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves. The fate of 150 million living in a similar land size as the state of Iowa gives us another reference point. Johann Hari took a journey to see for himself. It was also reported to me that gasoline theft is on the rise. Anyone remember Mad Max? And in New York (home to a million people on food stamps) they are trying to pass legislation making childhood vaccines absolutely mandatory, which of course would turn the state into a massive medical concentration camp. Yes, surrounded by rogue waves we are, even if some of them are on the other side of the earth.

References:

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?...) Was also reported by CNBC

(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080622/ap_on_bi...)

(http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cf...)

(http://www.spirulinasource.com/earthfoodch7b...)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/...)

About the author

Mark A. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA)http://www.imva.info/. Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and in the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla, in México, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book The Terror of Pediatric Medicine is a free e-book one can read. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites.

He has most recently released his Survival Medicine for the 21st Century compendium (2,200 page ebook) and just released the Winning the War Against Cancer book. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and is fathering in a new medical approach that uses sea water and different concentrates taken from it for health and healing. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions.
International Medical Veritas Association: http://www.imva.info/