Watching the World
World Food Conference—How Meaningful?
High-level delegations from 130 countries met in Rome to debate and negotiate for 11 days in November. The hopes of nearly half a billion facing starvation hung on the outcome.
● “It must not disappoint mankind,” declared Conference Secretary-General Sayed Ahmed Marei shortly before it convened. The food crisis, said U.N. Food and Agriculture head A. H. Boerma on the opening day, “is the greatest scandal of our time.” U.N. Secretary-General Waldheim decried “the lack of foresight and sense of common interest” among nations that led to the crisis. Were hopes for changed attitudes realized? Judge for yourself:
● Resolutions striking at the heart of the problem met cynical disbelief. “Is this not an exercise in futility?” responded one delegate to a resolution proposing a global 10-percent reduction in military spending to finance food aid. Even if it passed, he said, it would immediately become a “dead letter.”
● As the delegate from Bangladesh spoke of mass starvation already rending his country, only about 50 of the more than 1,000 delegates were in attendance. Scores of others preferred to be next door at a cocktail party. Meanwhile the delegates’ restaurant served sumptuous imported delicacies and drinks between sessions. They have to eat, complained one, but “some expression, perhaps a lunch box,” would be more appropriate; “we’re talking about a million people starving to death.”
● As the conference ended, were hopes of relief for those starving now realized? Said conference head Marei: “A large number of people will face starvation despite all the resolutions and decisions.” “National selfishness prevailed,” observed Mexico’s representative.
● After the conference, the New York Times editorialized: “The display of irresponsibility to date by so many nations in the face of the clear threat of massive starvation gives little cause for optimism.” The New York Post said: “Criminal negligence was officially sanctified.” And ‘father’ of the “green revolution,” Norman Borlaug, added: “It was nonsense . . . Nothing tangible was done. It was just talk.”
Bees in the News
◆ Soaring sugar prices have helped spur a honeybee business boom, according to an Illinois bee broker. A starter package of about 12,000 bees and their queen costs about $25 there now compared with $15 a year ago. Bee rustlers are expanding too. “They drive up in trucks, plug the entrance of the hives, cart them away and mix the bees with their own bees,” says the broker. Many beekeepers are now branding their hives.
A World Food Conference report noted that the West German apple harvest is down 41 percent for lack of bees to pollinate the trees, and a Burma sunflower plantation went seedless a second year for the same reason. In some areas pesticides aimed against destructive insects have been killing the beneficial bees.
A not-so-benevolent variety of deadly African bees that escaped from a Brazilian scientific laboratory in 1957 has now reached Colombia. They are moving north about 200 miles per year, reportedly killing about 300 persons and thousands of animals annually.
Weather Puzzles
◆ Japan’s Meteorological Agency warns that a decade-long pattern of major deviations from normal weather shows no signs of abating. It is feared that the strange weather that began in 1963 will continue as a threat to the 1975 global harvest. Meanwhile, the Soviet paper Izvestia reports that the worst rains in memory recently flooded much of Russia’s Ukrainian breadbasket, destroying thousands of acres of crops. Elsewhere, twice as much rain as recorded for any previous autumn pounded Netherlands farmers almost daily for three months, ruining much of their harvest, as well as that of neighboring areas in Belgium and France.
Training Pays Off
◆ A 20-year-old New York grocery clerk recently demonstrated the value of his Christian training during a robbery at a supermarket where he is employed. Taken hostage by panicky gunmen seeking a way out as police closed in, the clerk spoke to them calmly, persuading them to give up their guns. “It was unbelievable, he really did a great job,” marveled a member of the police hostage negotiating team. Officers arrived at the scene to find that the clerk “was negotiating very well all by himself,” says the New York Times report. This young man, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, “said he had remained calm because he had ‘faith in my lord,’” notes the Times.
Energy Limits
◆ Pointing to huge U.S. coal reserves, many feel the U.S. has sufficient energy for years to come. But Smithsonian magazine says that they are missing a vital point: “It takes energy to produce new energy.” For example, from 1860 to 1870, oil was found at an average depth of 300 feet in the U.S. By 1900 the depth was 1,000 feet; by 1927, 3,000 feet; today, 6,000 feet. Thus drilling, building pipelines and other processes require far more energy now to get oil. “Most cheap and accessible fossil fuel deposits have already been exploited,” notes the journal, “and the energy required to fully exploit the rest may be equal to the energy contained in them.”
Smoke-filled Rooms
◆ Political decisions traditionally issue from cigar-clouded rooms. But recently an indignant Italian lawyer heard that churchmen at the Rome Synod “officially decided that the bishops addicted to smoking . . . were allowed to smoke freely during the assembly.” So he wrote to the paper il Giornale: “We lawyers do not smoke when we have our court hearings . . . How can [the bishops] justify such behavior in regard to the needs of their own health, and, above all, to the forcing of cigarette smoke on their colleagues who are not addicted, in view of the Gospel principles to love ourselves and not to do to others what we should not do to ourselves?”
Spare Body Parts
◆ Ethical, moral and legal problems arising from taking organs from one human for use in another are creating a growing trend to artificial materials, according to Modern Medicine. At least $25,000 worth of such spare parts are now available for implantation in patients who need them. A sampling from U.S. laboratories and medical institutions reveals that a complete shoulder can be had for about $300 plus surgical fees averaging about $1,100; a hip, $350 plus $950 for installation; a knee, $650 plus $1,200; a larynx to restore speech, $950 plus $250. Elbows, wrists, ankles, finger and toe joints, arteries and many others are also available.
Adjusting to Stress
Stress should not be confused with distress, which can lead to violence, says a renowned Canadian medical scientist in his recent book Stress Without Distress. Dr. Hans Selye says that normal stress is the “readjustment of the body to any demand made upon it.” His experiments and studies of patients indicate that suitable work at a reasonable pace, without overexertion or exhaustion, is important to keeping stress in bounds—“Work is a basic need of man.” Especially is the kind of work that earns “your neighbor’s love for you” beneficial, he notes, in giving one a “purpose, a port of destination.” Thus, again, Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” is shown to make good sense scientifically as well as morally.
Vast Alcohol Supply
◆ Astrophysicists have turned up what they calculate to be enough ethyl alcohol to make about 10 billion billion billion fifths of 80-proof liquor near the center of our galaxy. However, it is in the form of rarefied molecules spread across vast reaches of space.
Mutineers’ Descendants
◆ About 90 descendants of the famous mutineers who took over the British ship HMS Bounty in the late eighteenth century still live on tiny Pitcairn Island far out in the South Pacific. The men, who have been called “the world’s finest surf boatmen,” row out through treacherous surf to passing ships for mail and trade. By this means even these isolated ones are being reached with the Bible’s truth. Besides their ancient Bible, preserved from the Bounty, they now have 60 New World Translations in modern English, one for each adult. Their tiny library is also well stocked with Bible study aids, the fruits of more than 300 letters exchanged with islanders over a ten-year period by one of Jehovah’s witnesses in Ohio.
Giving That Hurts
◆ Nearly 40 percent of blood donors are smokers whose blood carbon monoxide levels average nearly five times as much as nonsmokers, according to a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Gustave L. Davis warns that “in the susceptible patient population—specifically those with coronary artery disease—there might be a significant effect” from blood transfusions with monoxide content just three times the nonsmokers’ level. Would smokers renounce their addiction for a day before giving blood to reduce the hazard? “They probably could not live with that,” observes Davis realistically, fearing a massive loss of donors.
On the Warpath
◆ How do American Indians regard the churches that have been set up in their midst for so long? The national director of the American Indian Movement asserts that they are “the largest single landholders on the American Indian reservations.” (New York Post) “They hold enough acreage to support entire tribes,” he said, “but they have never done anything about it.” If they do not cultivate the land, he warns, “we shall request that church missions are closed and get out. And we shall call a boycott against the churches and move to end their leases.”
Flying Update
◆ Until now only about one in 25 of earth’s people have been able to afford air travel. Even so, spiraling costs are turning the industry into a nightmare for overworked staffs and money-losing carriers and manufacturers, says German documentary writer Hans Dollinger in his recent book Der Himmel hat Grenzen.
Adding to industry gloom are 461 U.S. airline fatalities through December 2, 1974—the second-highest year in history. Paradoxically, seventeen crashes killed 499 in the record year of 1960, while just seven crashes killed almost as many in 1974. The larger size of today’s planes accounts for the difference.
‘Not a Lollipop’
◆ Pressure to legalize the use of marijuana is being met by growing evidence of its highly damaging effects, especially on youth. Irreversible brain damage, weakened infection-fighting capacity, retarded maturity and dangerous driving reactions are known dangers. Even effeminate characteristics and enlarged breasts in males have been added to the growing list. Marijuana is “no harmless lollipop,” declared former U.S. Attorney General Saxbe recently. “The question I think we should be asking ourselves is whether we want a society where 10-year-olds can buy marijuana at the candy store and no one [cares].”
“Most Profitable Business”
◆ Crime is the most profitable business in the nation, says U.S. News & World Report. The cost to the people totals about $83 billion, equal to over one twentieth the value of the country’s entire yearly output of goods and services. More than $37 billion lines the pockets of organized crime alone. The cost of law-enforcement agencies is another $20 billion.