Under The Sun

$913 Per Cow

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. [James 5:4-5]

Agricultural subsidies maintain the prosperity of the West at the expense of many of the world’s poorest farming communities. If Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America were each to increase their share of world exports by one per cent, the resulting gains in income could lift 128 million people out of poverty. In Africa alone, this would generate $70bn - approximately five times what the continent receives in aid. On July 17th, Lance Knobel quoted these statistics from the Financial Times:

• The OECD countries — essentially the world’s 30 richest nations — spent $311 billion on domestic agricultural subsidies in 2001.
• They spent $52 billion on aid to all countries.
• The 2001 GDP of sub-Saharan Africa was $301 billion.

• The annual dairy subsidy in the European Union in 2000 was $913 per cow.
• The average income in sub-Saharan Africa was $490 per capita.
• The EU’s annual aid to sub-Saharan Africa was $8 per person.

On August 15th, the Guardian reported on the Cancun, Mexico, round of WTO talks:

One would have thought that the developing countries would look forward to the meeting as a chance to achieve a fairer global trading system. Instead, many fear that what has happened in the past will happen again: secret negotiations, arm twisting, and the display of brute economic power by the US and Europe aimed at ensuring that the interests of the rich are protected.

The Guardian has launched a campaigning weblog (on TypePad) with the justifiably militant name of “Kick All Agricultural Subsidies” (Kick-AAS). A worthy cause.

Baghdad

Salem Pax, angry and despairing over the bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad: “we have plunged into darkness”.

Idi Amin

The Guardian has an obiturary for the former dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin, who “brought bloody tragedy and economic ruin to his country, during a selfish life that had no redeeming qualities”. It is estimated that up to 500,000 people were killed, raped or tortured by his 8 year regime, which also destroyed the economy of a country possessing some of the richest resources in Africa. In 1979 Amin was deposed by Milton Obote, who may have tortured and killed on an even greater scale than his predecessor.

The heat, the flies, those damned drums!

101 °F ! That’s just too hot for an Englishman!/p> — (it even melted my brackets!)

Extreme Prayer

I just caught the last few minutes of a documentary on Channel 4 about a youth mission to the clubbers in Ibiza (we had a family holiday in Ibiza last May, which raised a few eyebrows — Ibiza is actually perfectly civilized and charming from September to May, but in June, July and August it becomes the clubbing capital of Europe, with the reputation of a modern Sodom and Gomorra). The mission is run by a youth prayer movement called 24-7 Prayer. Inspired by the example of the 18th century Moravians, the movement, which has spread internationally and across many denominations, uses a network of prayer rooms each pledged to pray 24 hours a day for a week or more, with the aim of “turning the tide of youth culture back to Jesus”.

As a Boomer-generation Calvinist, I can see any number of reasons to criticize a movement that is doctrinally vague, charismatic and ecumenical, and yet this movement seems to be motivating young Christians to pray, and is reaching out to people to whom most churches might as well be on another planet.

There is a similar theme of reaching out to the Post-Modern generation in a white-paper Effective Church Websites for Emerging Generations [PDF document] (via Boyink), which argues that most churches are, in effect, immigrants attempting to reach a native population while remaining largely ignorant of it’s culture and patterns of thought and communication.

When the 19th centrury English missionary C. T. Studd sailed to China, he dressed in Chinese clothing, ate their food, and learned their language. He wrote the words:

Some wish to live within the sound
of Church or Chapel bell;
I want to run a Rescue Shop
within a yard of hell!