by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

More than 60 percent of the United States now has abnormally dry or drought conditions,
stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and
Wisconsin, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the
University of Nebraska at Lincoln. An area stretching from south central North Dakota to central
South Dakota is the most drought-stricken region in the nation.

Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta,
bread or beer. America’s "Bread Basket" is drying up and her farm land is cracking under
the two-fold forces of drought and 100 degree heat. So as the Constitution holds black men and woman
as 3/5ths of a human, this drought is scorching 3/5ths of the land.

Brad Rippey, a federal Agriculture Department meteorologist in Washington, said this year’s
drought is continuing one that started in the late 1990s. "The 1999 to 2006 drought ranks only
behind the 1930s and the 1950s. It’s the third-worst drought on record — period," Rippey
said.

According to the Agriculture Department, the hardest hit state, North Dakota last year led the
nation in production of 15 different commodity classes, including spring wheat, durum wheat, barley,
oats, canola, pinto beans, dry edible peas, lentils, flaxseed, sunflower and honey. While many of us
might not be able to find North Dakota on a map, her demise may force fat America to replace the
calls for "super-size me" and "where’s the beef" to "where’s the bread
and beans."

In the past America has used her great agricultural wealth for less than humanitarian ends. The
PL480 program which presented itself to the world as an altruistic give away program to supply
needed grains to the Third World was in fact and economic weapon used to destroy foreign economies.
Public Law 480 (PL 480) was passed by the US government in 1954 to get rid of agricultural surpluses
and serve American foreign interests. If a country faced famine, America would send in food if that
country aligned itself with America instead of Russia.

However, the timing of the PL 480 shipments could be devastating for the future of a country’s
local growers of those commodities. America would send in this free food at the same time when local
farmers were trying to sell their meager harvest to the consumers in the big cities. Eventually
these small farmers went out of business and joined the jobless hoards in the big cities of the
Third World.

This present great drought may permanently eliminate those surpluses, and run the last American
family farmers to the cities awaiting the ships from Brazil to bring them the grain for their
"daily bread". The wealthier American farmers have already left the "bread
basket" with the help of the American government and agricultural supply firms which sell farm
production inputs cheaper in South America. The United States is fast becoming a "Third
World" country, importing manufactured goods from China and now food from South America.

On May 3, 2004 the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned Bush to pull out of Iraq or suffer
the consequences. He warned all of us to watch the weather. We started doing that and noticed the
unprecedented number of major hurricanes that struck the shores of America. Five hit in 2004: Alex,
Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jean. The tracts of those hurricanes can be viewed in our article called
"The Hand of God: Hurricanes and Mighty Snow" at www.Muhammadfarms.com.

Evidently President Bush did not regard this unusual weather as any type of sign or indication
that he should pull out of Iraq. Instead he began to beat the war drums towards Syria and Iran. Then
Hurricane Katrina hit in August of 2005. The devastation was unprecedented and the level of disaster
preparedness and response was abysmal. Yet, Mr. Bush has "stayed the course".

Minister Farrakhan has likened Mr. Bush to the "Pharaoh" of the Bible. The
"Pharaoh" that confronted the Biblical Moses was struck by 10 plagues and yet "stayed
the course." This "Pharaoh" unexplainably sent his army into the Red Sea running
after Moses and his "rod", after personally witnessing the power of that "rod".
Here we are in 2006. The insurance companies and US Treasury are reeling behind the loses of Katrina
and now both are faced with the worse drought since the 1930s and ‘50s.

From July 17-19, 2006 Minister Farrakhan headed a fact finding delegation to uncover why would so
many Navajo be in poverty, while as a people they own 27,000 square miles of land. As we drove
through desert that was once farmland, we wondered what happened to the water.

Since 1965 the Peabody Energy Corp has operated a coal strip-mining operation in the Black Mesa
plateau on Navajo land. In 1974 Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., backed by a number of energy
companies pushed through the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act which expanded the reach of Peabody
Energy by running the Navajo and Hopi people off of their land.

Until this year Peabody Energy has been extracting over 3.3 million gallons of pristine, potable
water from the region’s sole-source aquifer every day to slurry coal 273 miles to Laughlin, Nevada
to the Mohave electric generation plant. As a result the local springs and streams have dried up and
the water level has decreased by as much as 100 feet.

But now if you stay tuned to the Weather Channel, you will see that over the last few weeks it
has rained somewhere in Arizona almost every day while America’s agricultural heartland is drying
up. President Bush not only ignores "scriptural prophecies", he continues to deny the
research findings of his own scientists. Bush has stated that he does not believe in "global
warming", even though the average world temperature is creeping up each year, the oceans are
rising and America is being scorched by 100 degree plus weather even in North Dakota.

Will Black America go down with the modern Pharaoh? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and now the
Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have warned Black people to "…Come out of her, my people,
that ye be not partakers of her sins, and ye receive not of her plagues."

Could it be that Black America would rather eat itself sick in its enemy’s kitchen and burn in
a "house on fire", than accept that it made a mistake by rejecting the calls for
separation from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? Is pride better than life? Will Black people fall
through the cracks as America’s ground bakes in the oven of retribution?