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Friends,
Tomorrow (1 February 2011) Cairo, Egypt, will see a million people march demanding President Hosni Mubarak and his dictatorial regime of nearly 30 year’s get out of power. This will be the most epic of demonstrations rocking Egypt — the most populous, elder state, and the pillar of the Arab world for. The Egyptian Army acknowledged officially today that it would not fire on the people and that they have authentic grievances. The Army will increase its presence on the streets tomorrow, yet they apparently will stand down, waiting for orders from the military regime of their former general-turned-President Mubarak, who seems to be a dust clot of intransigence stuck in the power vacuum cleaner of history that wants to suck him into the dust bag of history.

At HogueProphecy.com, I try to give you the core causes that mainstream news either do not type into their TV prompters out of ignorance or corporate censorship, or they set data down on their scripts unmindful of the right emphasis. I try to catch the right sources of the “current” in current events so that I can show how the flow of reactions from our actions “currents” down possible future rivers of history.

The headwaters, if you will, for this current flow of history throughout North Africa and the Middle East has its source in the most fundamental need of life, after potable water — which in itself is a dwindling commodity in these overpopulated regions that climate change will return to desert a few decades hence. When David Brinkley, one of the last of the great US nightly news anchor’s, a contemporary of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, had retired in 1997, one would see him appear randomly on television passionately promoting an idea that seemed to cause more acerbity than garner respect by news colleagues. Brinkley had become a spokesman for the agribusiness giant, Archer-Daniels-Midland, who had earlier been fined $100 million fine for price-fixing of food and feed additives. What was lost in the controversy but not lost by me was Brinkley’s message: “Since television began, I have brought you the news — wars, elections, victories, defeats. The news, straight and true. I will still speak straight and true. I’ll never change that, but now I will bring you information about food, the environment, agriculture, issues of importance to the American people and the world.”

I thought David Brinkley, ever having a keen nose for future news, was not having an elderly moment in his final days or had sold out to big business, but was far ahead of his times in these ad spots, warning the world about its number one security danger: Food.

Yes, food. A lack of it could be the headwaters source for a whole plethora of social, economic and political deluge in our near future. Brinkley may not have been interested in prophecy but prophecy backs his forecast concerns. I can tell you as a prophecy expert for 30 years collecting thousands of documented predictions both ancient and modern from all corners of the planet, from all known eras of recorded civilization.

I have publishing many of them in books like 1000 for 2000 Startling Predictions for a New Millennium and in The Millennium Book of Prophecy. The best seers share a message. A collapse of food sustainability is the catalyst for many foretold catastrophes set to suddenly spring as fast as an Egyptian Revolution overnight, some oncoming night in our near future. Famine is the most immediate and least anticipated threat to human civilization. It is triggered by another shared collective threat foreseen by prophets throughout history: climate disruption.

I cannot emphasize this enough, the historic fires and drought across European Russia taking Russian grain exports off the market in 2010 makes climate change a source of future social and economic upheaval. Begin magnifying Russian fires with Australia’s 500-year drought in 2010 transforming into a 100-year flood in early 2011 disrupting their grain exports. You then add to that an inundation of Pakistan’s grain belts by a relentless monsoon flood in the summer of 2010 displacing 25 million people, leaving vast tracts of the South Asian wheat belt of the Pakistani half of the Punjab “STILL” under water at the time of this writing. You add the multiplication of perversely intensifying natural force to all of these climactic extreme events and do you now hear an alarm ringing?

Do you not hear the first “clang” of an alarm in the future sustainability of the supersystem of food production and export?

The climate’s disruption of the agri-business across important grain producing regions HAS greatly increased the price of food.

The Food and Agriculture Organization said prices reached a record high at the end of 2010, above the peaks of the 2007-2008 food crisis also caused — I would add by an uptick in climate change I presaged in 2006 on this web site. As January ends, calls from North Africa and the Middle East for soft red winter wheat is the most actively traded contract, so reports FAO, reaching as high as $8.61¼ a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade, eclipsing an intraday high set last August when the Russian drought cut Russian grain exports. At that time wheat futures ended up 18¼ cents, or 2.1 percent, to $8.56½. US wheat futures surged to a fresh 29-month high last Wednesday as growing concern over food prices drove Algeria to order another large grain purchase on the world market.

A critical perspective must not be lost as people surge forward into the streets of the Middle East demanding the toppling of dictatorships. In your shared excitement of anticipating a wave of democracy spreading across the Arab world, do not forget that climate change saddled with rising demand from a human race pushing beyond the 7 billion mouths-to-feed mark in 2011 is pushing grain prices to record levels. Changing from totalitarian regimes to democratic regimes does not change this apocalyptic fact!

Food price protest sent people of Tunisia into the streets to overthrow their dictator, Ben Ali, earlier in January. Food prices will send them into the streets again against the democratic reformers.

It was not tweets but where to find cheap “eats” that started this spontaneous wave of revolution pouring in floods of people by the millions into the streets of Egypt. Yes, there are other grievances in the laundry list of revolution but as I said in my last blog (click on Egyptian demonstrations) revolutions may soon adopt famous and iconic slogans, such as the French Revolution’s liberté, égalité, fraternité! However, in the earliest days of revolt it was a call of faim a need to mange that energized a mob to storm the Bastille and start the French Revolution.

Hunger for Food is first. Unemployment, economic uncertainty, a close second. Third is political reform driving people to face death on the barricades. Steps one and two are often overlooked or under reported.

When I see Russia, the third largest grain exporter ban exports because of climate change droughts and fires burning a fifth of their grain, when I see other markets arrest or greatly diminish their exports so that livestock in their countries can keep eating, just look to where they formerly exported for oncoming trouble. Look into Africa. Look into North Africa and the Middle East, all chief importers of Russian grain. Follow the dwindling bread trail into overpopulated, economically-marginal developing nations and you will see the paroxysm of hunger and food sticker shock fuel the paroxysm of revolution in 2011.

US global wheat exports have doubled since the Russian export ban last summer. The intensifying weather of climate change that caused the Russian ban has so far profited US wheat exporters because violent weather is stifling competitors, like Canada and Australia, the latter seeing much of its grain crop under water from floods.

Algeria’s government in January is trying to buy their way out of a revolution like Egypt’s by purchasing — this time from the US — in one huge order what will be a third of their expected annual wheat purchase: 800,000 metric tons! The Algerian order pushed wheat futures in Europe to their highest level since March 2008.

North African and Middle East nations threatened with upheaval have also dramatically stepped up their grain orders since the Tunisian revolution. Yet, it is not just Middle Eastern governments like those of Yemen and Jordan piling up debt by absorbing and lowering the price hike, to stem the escalation of demonstrations on their streets. Even Far Eastern nations like Taiwan are bracing for a rush on grain exports hiking prices to levels potentially setting their own populations out on the streets in protest. Taiwan plans to lower its wheat tariffs by 50 percent to stop the tide. Even now, there are demonstrations on the streets of Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast of Russia against price hikes on food.

Once a revolution is on, foodstuffs can quickly deplete. Political limbo reigns. Economies grind to a halt. Transport halts. Replenishing basic necessities, food being one of the most essential and socially volatile if cut off, can fuel violence and cause revolutions to descend into mass terror and destruction.

Foodstuffs in Egypt are running out because of the lawlessness and chaos. At the time of the writing, the revolution will be a week old. How many more days before the food issue that started this rebellion becomes a survival issue that takes it to a new level of chaos and violence?

If you are not in or one of my Egyptian readers, step back and ponder this.

Every one of you reading this, wherever you live on this earth, will be directly impacted by Egypt descending into chaos this week and later Jordan, Syria and Yemen in the weeks to come. Egypt’s Suez Canal is the source of 7.5 percent of the world ocean trade amounting to 6 Billion in revenue — much of this is oil coming out of the Persian Gulf to EU and US markets.

The oil crisis I foresaw as a potential and unexpected source of the second global economic crisis did not begin in October 2010. However, what I also said in Predictions for 2010 is the window of economic danger stretches from October 2010 into June 2011.

Sometimes we do the right thing and delay dire futures. Sometimes dire futures can be postponed forever by our right and intelligent actions as individuals, as nations, as members working together as a family of humans in a human global civilization.

From food to fuel hikes we go, into the oncoming and most dangerous months of potential economic turmoil that can lead to significant, riotous social unrest in the first half of 2011.

You can read a more detailed account of these and other alarm bells of unsustainable ecological, economic and spiritual habits by reading Predictions for 2011.

John Hogue

(31 January 2011)