[Arabic]

The World of Increasing Needs and Shrinking Resources

I have been in prison for 31 years straight, mere drop in the ocean of the time humankind has lived on this earth. Yet in those 31 years, the total population of the earth has more than doubled. It does not take a scientist or even mathematician to realize that the Earth cannot continue to sustain that kind of exponential growth—even if every human conscientiously becomes concerned about waste, recycling, responsible reproduction, minimal expenditures of energy and fisheries management.

I guess the reasons for this unprecedented spurt in population growth would be attributed to advances in medicine, agriculture, and sanitation. I am not the only watched who has noticed.

The leaders of every developed country knows that they cannot sustain prosperity without an enormous supply of food, energy, and room for population growth. Every modern military man knows that you cannot win a war without a huge supply of petroleum. Presently, there is no good substitute for petroleum to sustain a modern economy and a nation's readiness for way. Thus, it stands to reason that there will continue to—among the so-called developed nations—be a call to war against oil rich countries under the guise of moral indignation, atrocities, until the public becomes so desperate and frightened by the economic loss by oil shortages and skyrocketing prices—which have not even begun, considering it's a rapidly shrinking non-renewable resource—that they openly condone predatory wars to seize oil.

Currently, it is necessary to use a pretext to sell the voting masses on the idea of war. USA and the EU have, if to be believed, become the conscience and the police of the world. Yet where is the conjoined effort and invasion of the Congo? There have been outrageous ethnic slaughter there in the millions for decades, but they have no oil.

Iraq and Libya have, true enough, a bad human rights record and some sponsorship of terrorism by high government officials. So do a lot of other badass countries.

As the vacuum increases and oil becomes more scarce, and with it, food and other necessities of life, the necessity of using a pretext for a predatory invasion will vanish.

Petroleum is not the only thing that is looming as a cause for war. Portable water supplies, fishing rights, and any lands capable of yielding edible foodstuffs will all be tacked on to any country's jingoist rhetoric. The time is rapidly approaching when our politicians will not even need to use a pretext to stir patriotic zeal to go to war.

Or not.

Delving into the paranoid, it is widely believed by people of color that there are factions of the government that want to exterminate them with disease. They point to, as proof, the strange outbreaks of incurable deadly ailments carried by the winds in rural parts of Africa. It is a behavior that is not without precedent. The extermination of the indigenous Americans with smallpox infected blankets, poisoned whiskey, sold watered down gunpowder, ect. all to dispossess them of their extremely valuable land is historical fact. What better place to tinker with biology than a far off place with no mass communication, out of sight of the watchful eyes of the truly conscientious?

But not about race. What if it were perhaps just an experiment to release genetically modified bacteria or virus or molds, or things we as people commonly cannot even fathom, just to see if it could be done?

Yes, I tend to go to paranoid extremes. Guilty of being paranoid. Still, it would be irresponsible for anyone to think that the so-called world's greatest thinkers have not noticed the population explosion and the shrinkage of available resources without suspecting that they have not schemed of some way of perpetuating their place at the top 2% that have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes and exclude the encroaching have-nots from rushing them out of desperation and hunger.

If they haven't thought about it until reading this, never mind. I'm not trying to put ideas that evil in anyone's head.

In my religion of Islam, we believe there will be an end of the world brought about by the God, the God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Allah's peace on them.

But we as Muslims also believe that before that happens, there will be an increase in killing, so much so that there will be only one man to look after 50 women. There will be an abundance of money, so much so that no one will accept charity and men will boast to each other of who has constructed the tallest building. All of this was prophesied about 1,400 years ago.

The God says in Holy Scripture that he keeps the Hour of the end of the world a secret. No one, not even the Angels, can know when it will be. In religious context, I would conclude that somehow this problem of population explosion will have a mechanism built by God to correct it and bring it back into balance. But that will not stop the faithless from using pretext and jingoism to prosecute wars for oil, water, land, fish, and arable land.

What I would like is for the developed countries to use human ingenuity to solve the population problem without resorting to hideous solutions and to develop alternative energy sources that do not require any pretext for preying upon weaker countries.

Let us pray.

*** for information about prisoner James Riva, go to www.jamesriva.info

James Riva W38533
OCCC
One Administration Rd.
Bridgewater, MA 02324