Philosophy of Religion

Fakery

2011-10-04T21:14:00.001+01:00

9Nania

2011-03-17T00:43:00.000Z

4'33"

2010-11-14T02:20:00.000Z

Debate/discussion

2010-11-12T11:38:00.000Z

Deedat

2010-11-04T01:11:00.001Z

To do later

2010-10-10T18:16:00.000+01:00

Scripture God and Time

Dimensions

2010-10-09T01:19:00.001+01:00

By believing that there is a God....

2010-10-06T18:32:00.003+01:00

....theists believe that there is a being who is:

a. personal
b. incorporeal/transcendent
c. omnipresent/immanent
d. omnipotent
e. omniscient
f. eternal
g. perfectly free
h. perfectly good
i. necessary

Any comments?

Philosophy of Religion

2010-10-06T17:35:00.003+01:00

Tim Mawson wrote 'Belief in God' - the Philosophy of Religion.

How would he define 'Philosophy of Religion'?

There are different definitions of Philosophy, none that is universally accepted. Let us just define it as love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline. The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means "love of wisdom"

The approach of philosophy is one that is critical and systematic and based on rationality. As Mawson says in his book (shown above) he only ignores Eastern religions out of 'methodological humility' - plus the limitations of the book's format.

In studying religion questions are asked:

a. Does God exist?
b. Is there life after death?
c. Why does evil occur?
d. Can God be experienced?

From that I suggest that Mawson's definition of the philosophy of religion would be:

A critical, systematic and rational examination of elements and concepts of religions in particular the claim that God exists.

A Universe from Nothing

2010-09-04T00:41:00.002+01:00

Then there's the Stephen Hawking stuff...

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

So he explains the existence of the universe from the laws of physics.

That's not 'nothing'; it is 'something'

Screwtape Letters

2010-09-03T04:21:00.001+01:00

Then look at the rest of the chapters...

Meanwhile, these are excellent....

Jihad IS prescribed

2010-09-01T22:43:00.003+01:00

And here indeed is an explanation of jihad from an "extremist," Muhammad Al-Munajjid, a Saudi Wahhabi sheikh. Show where al-Munajjid is wrong on Islamic grounds.

"The reason why jihaad is prescribed," from Islam QA :

Why do Muslims wage jihad?.
Praise be to Allaah.

Allaah has enjoined jihad for His sake upon the Muslims, for the great benefits that result from that and because of the harm caused by abandoning jihad, some of which are mentioned in Question no. 34830.

Some of the reasons why jihad for the sake of Allaah is prescribed in Islam are as follows:

1 - The main goal of jihad is to make the people worship Allaah alone and to bring them forth from servitude to people to servitude to the Lord of people. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allaah) and (all and every kind of) worship is for Allaah (Alone). But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zaalimoon (the polytheists, and wrong-doers)"

[al-Baqarah 2:193]

"And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allaah), and the religion (worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allaah), then certainly, Allaah is All-Seer of what they do"

[al-Anfaal 8:39]

Ibn Jareer said:

So fight them until there is no more shirk, and none is worshipped except Allaah alone with no partner or associate, and trials and calamities, which are disbelief and polytheism, are lifted from the slaves of Allaah on earth, and religion is all for Allaah alone, and so that obedience and worship will be devoted to Him alone and none else.

Ibn Katheer said: Allaah commands us to fight the kuffaar so that there will be no fitnah, i.e., shirk, and the religion will all be for Allaah alone, i.e., the religion of Allaah will prevail over all other religions.

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: ""I have been commanded (by Allaah) to fight the people until they testify that there is no god but Allaah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah, and they establish regular prayer and pay zakaah, then if they do that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning will be with Allaah." Narrated by al-Bukhaari (24), Muslim (33).

And he (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "I have been sent just before the Hour with the sword, so that Allaah will be worshipped alone with no partner or associate."

Narrated by Ahmad, 4869; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Jaami', 2831.

This purpose of jihad was present in the minds of the Sahaabah (may Allaah be pleased with them) during their battles with the enemies of Allaah. Al-Bukhaari (2925) narrated that Jubayr ibn Hayyah said: 'Umar sent people to all the regions to fight the mushrikeen... so 'Umar recruited us and appointed al-Nu'maan ibn Muqarrin to lead us. When we were in the land of the enemy, the representative of Chosroes came out to us with forty thousand troops. An interpreter stood up and said: "Let one of you speak to me." Al-Mugheerah said: "Ask whatever you want." He asked, "Who are you?" He (al-Mugheerah) said: "We are some people from among the Arabs. We used to lead a harsh and miserable life, sucking on animal skins and date stones because of hunger, wearing clothes made of camel and goat hair, worshipping trees and rocks. While we were in this state, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, exalted be His name and glorified be His greatness, sent to us a Prophet from amongst ourselves, whose father and mother we know. Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), commanded us to fight you until you worship Allaah alone or pay the jizyah. Our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) told us the message from our Lord, that whoever among us is killed will go to Paradise to enjoy delights such as no one has ever seen, and whoever among us is left will become your master."

This is the truth that the Sahaabah and leaders of the Muslims proclaimed in their military campaigns.

Rab'i ibn 'Aamir said, when Rustam the commander of the Persian armies asked him, "Why have you come?": "Allaah has sent us to bring forth whomsoever He wills from the worship of man to the worship of Allaah.

When 'Uqbah ibn Naafi' reached Tangiers, he rode his horse into the water until the water was up to its chest, then he said: "O Allaah, bear witness that I have done my utmost, and were it not for this sea I would have travelled throughout the land fighting those who disbelieve in You, until none is worshipped except You."

2 - Repelling the aggression of those who attack the Muslims.

The scholars are unanimously agreed that repelling the aggression of those who attack the Muslims is fard 'ayn (an individual obligation) upon those who are able to do that.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"And fight in the way of Allaah those who fight you, but transgress not the limits. Truly, Allaah likes not the transgressors"

[al-Baqarah 2:190]

"Will you not fight a people who have violated their oaths (pagans of Makkah) and intended to expel the Messenger while they did attack you first? Do you fear them? Allaah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers"

[al-Tawbah 9:13]

3 - Removing fitnah (tribulation)

Fitnah is of different types:

(i) That which is caused by the kuffaar who persecute the Muslims or apply pressure to them to make them give up their religion. Allaah has commanded the Muslims to fight in jihad in order to save those who are weak and oppressed. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allaah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help"

[al-Nisa' 4:75]

(ii) The fitnah of the kuffaar themselves and their preventing others from hearing and accepting the truth. That is because the kaafir systems corrupt the innate nature and reason of people, and make them get used to worshipping and submitting to things other than Allaah, getting addicted to alcohol, wallowing in the mire of sexual licence, and losing all characteristics of virtue. Whoever is like that can rarely tell truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong. So jihad is prescribed in order to remove those obstacles that prevent people from hearing and accepting the truth and getting to know it.

4 - Protecting the Islamic state from the evil of the kuffaar.

Hence the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) ordered that the leaders of the kuffaar be killed, those who incited the enemies against the Muslims, such as the Jews Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf and Ibn Abi'l-Haqeeq.

Another aspect of jihad is to protect the borders against the kuffaar. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) encouraged that as he said: "Guarding the border for one day for the sake of Allaah is better than this world and everything in it." Al-Bukhaari, 2678.

5 - Frightening the kuffaar, humiliating them and putting them to shame.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"Fight against them so that Allaah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people,

And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allaah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allaah is All-Knowing, All-Wise"

[al-Tawbah 9:14-15]

"And make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery) to threaten the enemy of Allaah and your enemy"
[al-Anfaal 8:60]

Hence it is prescribed to fight in a manner that will strike terror into the heart of the enemy.

Shaykh al-Islam [Ibn Taymiyah - may Allaah have mercy on him] was asked whether it is permissible for a soldier to wear silk or gold or silver when fighting or when the envoys of the enemy come to the Muslims.

He replied:

Praise be to Allaah. With regard to wearing silk in order to frighten the enemy, there are two scholarly views, the more correct of which is that it is allowed. The soldiers of Syria wrote to 'Umar ibn al-Khattaab saying: "When we met the enemy we saw that they had covered their weapons with silk and we found that this struck terror in our hearts." 'Umar wrote back to them saying: "You should cover your weapons as they do." And wearing silk is a kind of showing off, and Allaah likes showing off at the time of fighting, as it is narrated in al-Sunan that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "There is a kind of showing off that Allaah likes, and a kind of showing off that Allaah hates. The showing off that Allaah likes is when a man shows off at the time of war. The kind of showing off that Allaah hates is showing off for the purpose of pride and boasting." On the day of Uhud, Abu Dujaanah al-Ansaari showed off among the ranks, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "This is a kind of walking that Allaah hates except in this situation." Majmoo' al-Fataawa, 28/17

6 - Exposing the hypocrites

Allaah says (Interpretation of the meaning):

"But when a decisive Soorah (explaining and ordering things) is sent down, and fighting (Jihaad -- holy fighting in Allaah's Cause) is mentioned (i.e. ordained) therein, you will see those in whose hearts is a disease (of hypocrisy) looking at you with a look of one fainting to death"

[Muhammad 47:20]

At times of ease and plenty, the Muslims may be joined by those who seek to make worldly gains, and they do not want to make the word of Allaah prevail over the word of kufr. These people may conceal their real nature from many of the Muslims, and the most effective means of exposing them is jihad, because jihad means sacrificing oneself but these hypocrites are only indulging in hypocrisy in order to save themselves.

Exposing the hypocrites was one of the major purposes that Allaah wanted the believers to achieve on the day of Uhud.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"Allaah will not leave the believers in the state in which you are now, until He distinguishes the wicked from the good"

[Aal 'Imraan 3:179]

Ibn al-Qayyim said:

This means: Allaah will not leave you in the state in which you are, where the believers are indistinguishable from the hypocrites, until the believers are made distinct from the hypocrites, as they were distinguished by the test on the day of Uhud, and Allaah will not disclose to you the unseen matters by which the one group is distinguished from the other, for they are distinguished from one another in the knowledge of the unseen that He has, but He wants to distinguish them from one another in a clear and visible manner, so that His unseen knowledge will become known and visible.

7 - Purifying the believers of their sins and ridding them thereof

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"And so are the days (good and not so good), that We give to men by turns, that Allaah may test those who believe, and that He may take martyrs from among you. And Allaah likes not the Zaalimoon (polytheists and wrongdoers).

And that Allaah may test (or purify) the believers (from sins) and destroy the disbelievers.

Do you think that you will enter Paradise before Allaah tests those of you who fought (in His Cause) and (also) tests those who are As-Saabiroon (the patient)?"
[Aal 'Imraan 3:140-142]

8 - Acquiring booty

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "I have been sent ahead of the Hour with the sword so that Allaah will be worshipped alone, and my provision has been placed in the shade of my spear, and humiliation has been decreed for those who go against my command, and whoever imitates a people is one of them." Narrated by Ahmad, 4869; Saheeh al-Jaami', 2831.

Al-Haafiz said:

This hadeeth indicates that war booty is permissible for this ummah, and that the provision of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) has been placed in war booty and not in other kinds of earnings. Hence some of the scholars said that it is the best kind of earnings.

Al-Qurtubi said:

Allaah sent provision to His Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) by means of his striving and He made it by means of the best kind of striving which is earning it by means of force and strength.

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) went out for the battle of Badr to meet the caravan of Abu Sufyaan.

Al-Qurtubi said: The fact that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) went out to meet the caravan indicates that it is permissible to take booty because it is a halaal source of income. This refutes Maalik's view that this is makrooh, when he said that this was fighting for worldly gains.

Al-Shawkaani said: Ibn Abi Jamrah said: The scholars of hadeeth are of the view that if the primary motive is to make the word of Allaah supreme, it does not matter what else is also achieved.

9 - Taking martyrs.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"If a wound (and killing) has touched you, be sure a similar wound (and killing) has touched the others. And so are the days (good and not so good), that We give to men by turns, that Allaah may test those who believe, and that He may take martyrs from among you. And Allaah likes not the Zaalimoon (polytheists and wrongdoers).

And that Allaah may test (or purify) the believers (from sins) and destroy the disbelievers"

[Aal 'Imraan 3:140-141]

Martyrdom is one of the highest statuses before Allaah, and the martyrs are the closest of His slaves to Him. There is no status higher than that of siddeeq apart from martyrdom. Allaah loves to take martyrs from among His slaves, who shed their blood for His love and to earn His pleasure, preferring His pleasure and His love above themselves. There is no way to attain this status except by circumstances that may lead to it such as enemies coming against the Muslims.

This was said by Ibn al-Qayyim in Zaad al-Ma'aad.

This is the great wisdom and those who try to put the Muslims off jihad and make them fear it, and say that jihad is no more than death, and making women widows and children orphans, pale into insignificance.

10 - Ridding the world of corruption.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

"For had it not been that Allaah checks one set of people by means of another, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, wherein the Name of Allaah is mentioned much would surely, have been pulled down. Verily, Allaah will help those who help His (Cause). Truly, Allaah is All-Strong, All-Mighty"

[al-Hajj 22:40]

"And if Allaah did not check one set of people by means of another, the earth would indeed be full of mischief. But Allaah is full of bounty to the 'Aalameen (mankind, jinn and all that exists)"

[al-Baqarah 2:251]

Muqaatil said:

Were it not that Allaah checked the mushriks by means of the Muslims, the mushriks would have overrun the earth and killed the Muslims and destroyed the mosques.

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah said in al-Jawaab al-Saheeh, 2/216:

So the kuffar are repelled by means of the Muslims and the worse of the two parties is repelled by the better, just as the Magians (Persians) were repelled by the Christian Byzantines, then the Christians were repelled by the believers of the ummah of Muhammad.

Al-Sa'di said: The world would be corrupted if the kuffaar and evildoers were to prevail.

These are some of the reasons why jihad is prescribed.
We ask Allaah to bring the Muslims back to their religion. May Allaah send blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad.

Jihad

2010-08-23T15:05:00.001+01:00

1. Jihãd in the Koran

2. Jihãd in the Hadis

3. Ghanîmah or Plunder in the Koran

4. Plunder (Ghanîmah) in the Hadis

5. Islamic Expansion through Jihãd: The Evidence of the Sunnah

6. Destruction of Idols and Idol-Temples in Jihãd: The Evidence of the Sunnah

7. Slaughter of Infidels in Jihãd: The Evidence of the Sunnah

8. Plunder (Ghanîmah) in Jihãd: The Evidence of the Sunnah

9. Jihãd in the Shariat

10. Jihãd and Religious Riot

11. Recapitulation

12. Conclusion

Appendix

I. Jihãd and Expulsion of Non-Muslims from Islamic Countries

II. Jizyah and the Zimmî

III. Development of the Doctrine of Jihãd in the Koran

IV. Akbar’s Attitude to Jihãd

V. Doctrine of Jihãd as Defensive War

Science and Miracles...or not

2010-08-23T15:02:00.001+01:00

Future...

2010-07-20T05:49:00.001+01:00

Food Ethics

2010-07-20T05:39:00.000+01:00

Trading in death: Rapacious bankers are making fortunes by forcing up the price of food and leaving millions to starve

Source.....

The women crouch in the dust, hacking into the hard African dirt.

They are looking for food. This is Chad, West Africa.

Sedoisa, a 71-year-old grandmother, sifts through the soil, searching an anthill for grains.

On the brink: There are fears that the current situation in West Africa will develop into a famine

Bringing a wrinkled hand to her mouth, she gestures that she is looking for something to eat. It is 7am. Along with a team of 'termitieres', she searches all day long.

The villagers, among them heavily pregnant women and small children, are looking for the nest containing the queen ant. This is the prize, where the worker ants have stored their hoard.

If they find it, the villagers will raid the ants' small stock of grain, collected from the barren, windswept plain.

On good days, the termitires might find 2.5kg of precious food. It is hard work, and each day the number of women searching increases.

The country stands on the brink of famine.

The rains have failed, and - crucially, imported food is too expensive for Chad's people to buy. In neighbouring Niger, the situation is even worse.

Trading in life and death? Workers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have become used to buying and selling food deritvatives

One woman describes the crisis. She says: 'Soon the day will come when there will no longer be enough anthills for everyone.'

The people of West Africa are starving. Almost 10 million people in the region are facing a food crisis.

Why?

In order to answer that question, we need to visit Manhattan's financial district - although no one is starving there.

At 200 West Street, another type of anthill exists. It is the gleaming New York headquarters of Goldman Sachs investment bank.

The £1.5 billion 43-storey building, which opened this year, houses 11,000 staff - who reaped a staggering $20.2 billion in bonuses in 2007.

Market leaders: Goldman Sachs have led the way in food derivatives

Just as in the African anthill, there is a strict hierarchy in this house of Mammon.

Vice-presidents sit at shared workbenches. Managing directors get windowless offices. The 300 elite partners get a room with a view.

High above are the executive suites, with panoramic vistas of New York Harbour. Here, Goldman's Masters of the Universe - each worth many millions of pounds - set the bank's strategy.

As it became clear there were problems in the U.S. mortgage market, this band of select bankers decided to switch a large number of Goldman Sachs's investments to other commodities - namely rice, wheat, corn, cattle, coffee and cocoa.

Such investments had been going on for some time, but this marked a major shift towards them.

Goldman Sachs was not alone. Other investment houses such as Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers followed a similar strategy.

More...

Retired British couple found dead in boot of Volvo after robbery at their South Africa home

Indeed, it was recently reported that British financier Anthony Ward, dubbed ChocFinger, has amassed 214,000 tons of cocoa beans, worth £658 million.

Some suspect he wants to exert a stranglehold over the market and force prices higher. Admittedly, cocoa beans are not a basic foodstuff, but it does illustrate how one individual or corporation can affect the market.

Either way, the investment houses' momentous decision to move into food investments has had tragic consequences. The strategy has caused world food prices to soar, leading to riots, famine and many deaths.

At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise sharply.

Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent.

Around the world, 200 million people - mostly children - who relied on cheaply imported foodstuffs sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries. The crisis continues today.

'A herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror'

And indirectly, through a pension, shares or other investment, it could be your money which is being used to make others go hungry.

Jean Ziegler, former UN chief food expert, says this speculation has led to 'silent mass murder'.

He warns: 'We have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror.

'We have to put a stop to this.'

And yesterday, the World Development Movement spoke out against this trend.

Its director, Deborah Doane, said: 'Investment banks like Goldman Sachs are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods.

'Nobody benefits from this kind of reckless gambling except a few City wheeler-dealers.

'British consumers suffer because it pushes up inflation, British companies suffer because of unpredictable oil and raw material prices, and the world's poorest people suffer because basic foods become unaffordable.'

Just how did this happen?

The real cost: A Save the Children worker measures a child's arm. The charity has estimated that more than eight million children are starving because of the global economic crisis

To answer that question, we have to go back to the early 1990s.

Until then, farmers had been able to protect themselves against risk by selling their crops to traders in advance at a fixed price, known as 'futures' trading'.

If the sun shines, growth is abundant and the crop is good, the farmer might make less than he would have done selling on the open market at harvest time.

But if the summer is disappointing, he will do better than he could have - cushioning himself against failure.

When this process was tightly regulated, and only those companies with a direct interest in the field could get involved, it worked.

Then the big investment banks turned their interest to agriculture, and decided they wanted to trade in futures.

'This isn't just any commodity. It is food, and people need to eat'

Goldman Sachs and others lobbied for the rules to be changed. Eventually, the regulations were abolished.

Suddenly, the simple risk-management deals with farmers were turned into 'derivatives' - or contracts - that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with farming.

A market in speculation on the price of food was born.

Put simply, a derivative is a financial contract with a value which is linked to the expected future price movements of the asset it is linked to - such as wheat or rice.

This meant that Farmer Jones could agree to sell his crop in advance to a trader for £10,000 as he had done every spring previously.

But under the new rules, the contract could be sold on at ever-inflated prices to speculators who believed the value of the crop - and therefore the derivative - would go up.

Goldman Sachs - nicknamed 'the Vampire Squid' for its overweening influence on financial markets - could buy a £10,000 contract and sell it on for £20,000 to Deutsche Bank, who would sell it on for £30,000 to Merrill Lynch - and so on.

And so, the highly-paid analysts from these banks began turning food into a 'concept' - something to be traded and transformed into complicated mathematical formulae.

Get the message: A protester makes his feelings known outside Goldman Sachs headquarters in the financial district of New York

These were transformed into the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.

An influential academic paper published in 2005 showed that huge profits could be made in commodities, rivalling the returns from traditional stocks, shares and bonds.

Investment banks needed fertile new ground for growth, of course because they had left scorched earth behind in their previous areas of interest.

The mortgage market had collapsed, and money managers had to find new places to invest. Commodities became the latest hot thing in investment banking circles.

In 2003, commodity index holdings amounted to $13 billion. By 2008, $317 billion had poured into the funds investing in this area.

The bank's money was not at risk, of course.

Putting food on the table: Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein awarded himself a record bonus at the height of the food derivatives boom

It was investing in a price index - little more than gambling - using other people's money: the savings accounts, pension funds and life insurance policies of the general public.

Soon, the prices of foods being traded on this index went up. The banks' investors were, of course, delighted.

Take the case of wheat. American grain prices had long been set by the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

For more than a century, prices had steadily declined. Then, in 2005 - as banks became involved in trading it, the price of wheat began to rise. So did the cost of rice, corn, soy, oats and cooking oil.

In the case of grain, between 2006 and 2008, the price of Chicago soft red winter wheat shot up from $3 a bushel to $11 a bushel.

In 2008, U.S. wheat giant Cargill announced an 86 per cent jump in profits, thanks to commodity trading.

The more prices went up, the more traders wanted to trade.

There were a few voices of sanity.

One old-fashioned grain seller said: 'This isn't just any commodity. It is food, and people need to eat.'

There were huge profits to be made, however. It is no coincidence that Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein rewarded himself with the highest payouts in Wall Street history in these years.

He gave himself $53 million in 2006, and $68 million in 2007. Quite simply, making money is the foremost principle at Goldman Sachs.

The global speculative frenzy over food prices sparked riots and helped drive the number of people going hungry in the world to more than a billion.

The price of basic foodstuffs rose by 80 per cent between 2005 and 2008.

Poor countries import large quantities of rice, wheat and maize. Now, they could not afford them.

The 2008 harvest of grain turned out to be the most bountiful the world had ever seen, so much so that even as hundreds of millions starved worldwide, huge stocks of grain were sold for animal feed.

Livestock owners could afford the wheat, but poor people could not.

Shockingly, people were starving not because there was not enough food but because the banks' profiteering had made food unaffordable.

Merchants also began to hoard food - greedy for the profits that could be made. There were reports of rice traders in India holding onto huge stocks in the hope that prices would rise still further.

Then, something happened. Frederick Kaufman, who wrote The Food Bubble, How Wall Street Starved Millions And Got Away With It, says: 'Like all speculative bubbles, the food bubble popped.'

Values fell. Food prices began to go down only slowly, but remain higher than they were.

Kaufman says that whereas grain traders of old had a vested interest in creating a stable market, Goldman Sachs and others wanted only to make money at any cost - and they did.

The World Development Movement recently published a paper, Speculation In Food Commodity Markets.

It explains what happened, saying: 'Financial investors do not mind how they make money, as long as they make it.

'After the credit crisis started in August 2007, prices for shares, commercial property and financial derivatives stopped going inexorably upwards.

'But commodity prices were doing so and they piled into them. Some of the fastest moving prices were for corn, wheat and rice.'

The report adds: 'In the first two months of 2008, more and more money was diverted into commodity funds, and prices shot up faster than ever.

'In March 2008, the banks cut back their loans because of their own financial difficulties - and commodity prices fell back by up to 20 per cent in two weeks.

'Then the U.S. launched the first of its schemes to save the banks' finances, and the credits flowed and commodity prices took off once more.'

It concludes: 'When those loans finance grain price speculation, we find that ordinary people's savings are used (without their knowledge) to make poorer people go hungry.

'It is such speculation that turned a food price problem into a world crisis.'

In 2009, commodity prices began to escalate again.

Back in West Africa, the poor reap the fall-out from this crisis. Oxfam warns that the region stands on the very brink of a devastating famine.

Oxfam' s food policy adviser, Chris Leather, told the Mail: 'West Africa is suffering a very real crisis. This came about because of a lack of rain, but another factor is speculation on commodities.

'This has pushed world food prices up, and it is the poorest and most vulnerable in the world who suffer most. We are very concerned by the situation.'

Jean Ziegler of the UN says: 'In a world overflowing with riches, it is an outrageous scandal that more than one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition and that every year over six million children die of starvation and related causes.'

It seems that the big shots of Goldman Sachs feel very little outrage, however.

They have weathered a series of storms in recent months, including being charged with a £650 million fraud in the U.S.

Emails from executives boasted they were making 'serious money' while millions of homeowners were plunged into misery by the housing crash.

Famously known as 'the haves and the have-yachts' for their amazing bonus-fuelled lifestyles, executives have seen a series of record profits since inventing the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.

Indeed, 2009 was the most profitable year in the bank's history.

Do they care if Africa starves? It appears not.

Humour....

2010-07-20T03:18:00.000+01:00

The W Anka tests

2010-05-25T15:08:00.004+01:00

Battleground God

DIY deity

Morality Play

Health Check

Taboo

Playwriting Course

2010-04-02T11:36:00.001+01:00

Just click here for full details

Has God a Future?

2010-03-24T12:42:00.000Z

Make up your own mind....

Worth Watching

2010-03-02T03:25:00.001Z

Essential viewing

2010-02-26T12:50:00.000Z

Think Week!

2010-02-19T17:15:00.000Z

You should go...

Think Week, a series of high profile (free!) events organised jointly by the Oxford Atheist Society, Oxford Secular Society, Oxford Humanists, Oxford Sea of Faith and Oxford Skeptics in the Pub. The aim of the week will be to expose the type of discussion and debate that these societies offer to a wider audience and raise the profile of the issues involved, among the whole Oxford community - Oxford city, Oxford University and Oxford Brookes. We won't be covering base questions like "Does God exist?" but instead be providing events in a similar vein to those our various societies provide during the rest of the year. The events will be intended to make people think about things they probably haven't thought about before.

Refreshments will be provided at all events. Attendees are welcome to bring food to lunch time events.

Change of venue: The venue for Stephen Law's talk on Tuesday at 1 pm will be in Wadham College's Moser Theatre, not Lincoln College's Lower Lecture Theatre, as previously advertised.

Event confirmed: Think Week will feature stand-up comic Iszi Laurence in Bar Copa on George Street at 9.30 pm on Friday the 26th.

Events

For full details of all events, see the Events page.

Monday 22^nd - Think About Belief