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Do You See What Is Coming? Do You See What Is Already Here? Nostradamus (1503-1566) Nostradamus Armageddon Prophecies In the year 1999 and seven months The Great King of Terror will come from the sky, He will bring back to life the great king of the Mongols. Before and after Mars [the God of war] reigns happily. After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches. The great cycle of the centuries is renewed: It will rain blood, milk, famine, war and disease. In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a tail of sparks. The Sun in 20 degrees Taurus [May 1-10, 2000?] There will be a great earthquake; the great theater full up will be ruined. Darkness and trouble in the air, on the sky and land, When the infidel calls upon God and the Saints. Saturn joined with (Scorpio) transiting toward Sagittarius, At its highest ascendant, Pest, Famine, Death through military hand, The century as well as the Age approaches its renewal. The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude, Fire approaches the great new city [New York City lies between 40-45 degrees] Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up When they want to have verification from the Normans [French]. At a latitude of forty-eight degrees At the end of Cancer (July 22) there is a very great drought. Fish in the sea, river and lake boiled hectic, Bearn and Biggore (Southwestern France) in distress from fire in the sky. Because of heat like that of the sun on the sea, The fish around Negrepont will be half-cooked. The local people will eat them When in Rhodes and Genoa there is lack of food. In a short time the colors of the temples; With black and white, the two will be intermingled. The red and yellow ones will carry off their possessions from (their temples). Blood, earth, plague, hunger, fire, maddened by thirst. Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth Will cause the towers around the New City to shake: Two great rocks will war for a long time, And then Arethusa shall color a new river red. Leave, leave Geneva everyone! The grim reaper will change gold to iron Those against RAYPOZ [?] will be exterminated. Before the invasion the heavens will show signs. In the year when Saturn and Mars are equally fiery, The air is very dry, a long comet: From hidden fires a great place burns with heat, Little rain, hot wind, wars and raids. Mabus will soon die, then will come A horrible undoing of people and animals, At once one will see vengeance, One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass. The great mountain, 4,247 feet in circumference, After peace, war, famine, flooding, [The impact?] Will spread far, drowning great countries Even antiquities and their mighty foundations. In the Cyclades, in Perinthus and Larissa, [Greece] In Sparta, all of Peloponnesus: [also Greece] A great famine, plague through false dust [fallout?] Nine months it will last and through the whole peninsula. Very near to Auch, Lectoure and Mirande, [Southwestern France] Great fire in the sky for three nights will fall: A very stupendous and marvelous event will happen, Very soon after the earth will tremble. The speeches of Lake Leman [Geneva] become angered. The days drag out into weeks: Then months, then years, then all will fail, The authorities will damn their useless powers. At the founding of the new sect, The bones of the Great Roman [Peter?] will be found, The sepulchre covered by marble will appear, The earth trembles in April, badly buried. Rain, famine and war in Persia [Iran] will not cease, A trust too great will betray the monarch; For the end was planned and conceived in France, A secret sign for one to be more sparing. You will see, sooner and later, great changes made, Extreme horrors and vengeances: For as the moon [Islam?] is thus led by its angel, The heavens draw near to the reckoning. One day the two great leaders will become friends, Their great power will be seen to increase: The new land will be at the height of its power, To the bloody one the number [is] reported. The two will not remain united for long, And within thirteen years [they give in] to Barbary [Libyan/Arab] power. There will be such a loss on both sides That one will bless the Bark and cape. The great famine which I sense approaching Will often turn [up in various areas] then become worldwide. It will be so vast and long-lasting that [people] will grab Roots from the trees and children from the breast. The great mountain, seven stadia [4,247 feet] in circumference, After peace, war, famine, flooding, [The impact?] Will spread far, drowning great countries Even antiquities and their mighty foundations. The voice of the unusual bird is heard, In the pipe of the breathing floor: Bushels of wheat will rise so high, That man will devour his fellow man. In the Cyclades, in Perinthus and Larissa, In Sparta and the entire Pelopennesus: [the Balkans and all of Greece] Very great famine, plague through false dust, Nine months will it last throughout the entire peninsula. From the vain enterprise honor and undeserved complaint, Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood, And diverse plagues will be upon mankind. Very great famine (caused) by a plague-ridden wave, Will extend through long rain the length of the Arctic pole: "Samarobryn" one hundred leagues from the hemisphere, They will live without law, exempt from politics. Those at ease will suddenly be cast down, The world put into trouble by three brothers; Their enemies will seize the marine city, Hunger, fire, blood, plague, all evils doubled. The horrible war which is prepared in the West, The following year will come the pestilence So very horrible that young, old, nor beast (will survive), Blood, fire, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter in France. Very near to Auch, Lectoure and Mirande, [Southwestern France] Great fire in the sky for three nights will fall: A very stupendous and marvelous event will happen, Very soon after the earth will tremble. With Mars and Mercury and the Moon in conjunction, Toward the south there will be extreme drought: In the depths of Asia one will say the earth trembles, Corinth, Ephesus then in a troubled state. The trembling of the earth at Mortara The tin island of St. George half sunk; Drowsy with peace, war will arise, At Easter in the temple abysses open. Sun twentieth of Taurus the earth will tremble very mightily, It will ruin the great theater filled: To darken and trouble air, sky and land, Then the infidel will call upon God and saints. I weep for Nice, Monaco, Pisa, Genoa, Savona, Siena, Capua, Modena, Malta: For the above blood and sword for a New Year's gift, Fire, the earth will tremble, water an unhappy reluctance. A very mighty trembling in the month of May, Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury in Taurus: Venus also in Cancer, Mars in Virgo, At that time hail will fall larger than an egg. From the three water signs will be born a man who will celebrate Thursday as his feast day. His renown, praise, rule and power will grow on land and sea, bringing trouble to the East. One who the infernal gods of Hannibal Will cause to be reborn, terror of all mankind Never more horror nor the newspapers tell of worse in the past, Than will come to the Romans through Babel (Iraq). Mabus then will soon die, there will come A horrible slaughter of people and animals: At once vengeance is revealed coming from a hundred hands, Thirst and hunger when the comet will run. One day the two great leaders will become friends (and/or "halved, split"), Their great power will be seen to increase: The new land will be at the height of its power (America), To the bloody one the numbers are reported. The rule will be left to two; they will hold it for a very short time. Three years and seven months passed, they will go to war: Their two vassals rebel against them, The victor is born on Armenian (?) soil. The Antichrist very soon annihilates the three, Twenty-seven years the blood of his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled; With blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth. The chief of London through the realm of America, The Isle of Scotland will be tried by frost: King and "Reb" will face an Antichrist so false, [or "Roy Reb" or "Reb the King"] That he will place them all into the conflict. Michel de Nostradame was born on December 14, 1503 at St. Remy in Provence, France to a family of "Christianized" Jews. He was taught a wide range of subjects by both his grandfathers. By the time that Michel began his formal education in Avignon, where he learned philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric, he was already well versed in classical literature, history, medicine, astrology (then a legitimate science), and herbal and folk medicine. Nostradamus (the Latin version of his name) first became well known due to his novel and very successful treatment of bubonic plague, the infamous Black Death that ravaged France in the early 16th century. His innovative cure consisted basically of cleanliness and vitamin C. The first step when he entered a village was to have all of the corpses removed from the streets. He then prescribed for his patients plenty of fresh air, unpolluted water, and his "Rose Pills," which consisted of rose petals (and, perhaps, rose hips), sawdust from green cypress, iris, cloves, calamus, and lign-aloes. He did not allow his patients to suffer "bleeding," then a popular, although futile, treatment for everything from a minor cold to the Great Plague. He truly was successful in combating a disease for which there appeared to be no cure and no relief. It is estimated that over one-quarter of the entire population of Europe was killed by the Black Death during its sporadic visits. In 1537, plague struck Agen, where Nostradamus was living with his wife and two children. He confidently began to treat his fellow citizens but, unfortunately, was unable to save his family from his old enemy. Distraught and questioning his own abilities, Nostradamus began to wander through Europe aimlessly for the next six years. It was during this time that he first became aware of the awakening of his prophetic powers. When plague broke out in Aix, capital of Provence, for nine months Nostradamus again applied his proven skills to save as many of the populace as possible. After the plague dissipated, the city showed its gratitude by bestowing upon him a pension for life. Ten years after the death of his wife and children, Nostradamus settled in Salon and remarried, eventually fathering three daughters and three sons. He had the upper floor of his house transformed into a private study, where he installed his magical equipment: astrolabe, magic mirrors, divining rods, and a brass bowl and tripod, designed after the type used by the great Delphic oracles. Under cover of night, he would retire to his study where he would sit before the tripod upon which simmered the brass bowl filled with water and pungent herbs (probably bay laurel or a combination of herbs). For a few years, Nostradamus struggled with the dilemma of whether he should make his findings public. In 1550, he published his first almanac of prophecies -- twelve four-line poems called "quatrains." Each quatrain gave a general prophecy for the coming year. The acclaim that he received due to the almanac encouraged Nostradamus to continue. He produced an almanac every year for the rest of his life. His most famous work, The Centuries, was begun in 1554. Eventually these prophecies were to consist of ten volumes of 100 quatrains each. Centuries 1 through part of 4 were published in Lyons in 1555. The remainder of 4 and the subsequent Centuries through 7 were published later that same year. The last three were printed in 1558, but Nostradamus decided not to have them widely distributed. The Centuries have remained constantly in print for over 400 years. In his own time as is true today, Nostradamus' quatrains have received mixed responses. The combination of French, Provencal, Greek, Latin, and Italian written as riddles, puns, anagrams, and epigrams are complex and demand that the potential interpreter have knowledge in a wide range of subjects. Many people from the 16th century through modern times have been enthralled by the prophecies and have tried to make sense of them. Some quatrains could fit descriptions of just about any era. Others are more exact, and it is those quatrains that have established the well-earned reputation of Nostradamus as one of the world's greatest prophets. To the ignorant, closed mind, Nostradamus was a creature of the devil, babbling in cryptic, evil verse. From philosophers, Nostradamus continues to draw praise and curses. Poets remain perplexed by the meaning of his wild verses. Interpretation is open to all. Except for those prophecies that were fulfilled in his own time and acknowledged by the prophet himself, no one can give a final, definite interpretation to any of the prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled. This is an area that is open to individual, solitary study. Perhaps that was the intent. According to witnesses, Nostradamus stayed alert to the end of his life, even though he was in great pain caused by arthritis, gout and dropsy. When his assistant wished him goodnight on July 1, 1566, Nostradamus replied, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." As one might expect, he had predicted his own death. In his last almanac, Nostradamus had written: On his return from the Embassy, the King's gift put in place, He will do nothing more. He will be gone to God. Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood (will find him) Completely dead near the bed and the bench. On the morning of July 2, the assistant escorted family and friends to the study, where Nostradamus had spent the previous night. They found his body on the floor between the bed and a bench that he had placed there for aid in getting out of bed. His wife carried out his last wishes, that he be interred standing upright and that his coffin be enclosed within the walls of the Church of the Cordeliers of Salon. The translation from Latin of the inscription on his tomb reads: "Here rest the bones of the illustrious Michel Nostradamus, alone of all mortals, judged worthy to record with his near divine pen, under the influence of the stars, the future events of the entire world. He lived sixty-two years, six months and seventeen days. He died at Salon the in year 1566. Let not posterity disturb his rest. Anne Posart Gemelle wishes her husband true happiness." [From: Nostradamus: The New Revelations by John Hogue] "Christianized" Jews in the Time of Nostradamus In the 15th and 16th centuries, religious feeling against Jews was strong and hateful. Devout Christians condemned them as Christ-murderers. Rumors that Jews had poisoned water supplies, thus causing the Black Death, were rampant. The Inquisition was in full swing in Europe. Throughout Europe, particularly in Spain, Jews were presecuted and killed. Many from Spain and other ghettos flocked to Provence where they found sanctuary -- until 1501. In that year, Charles of Maine, heir to the throne of Provence, died, and the region was formally acquired by France. The new French king, Louis XII, decreed that all Jews must be baptized as Christians or be banished. Members of Nostradamus' family were baptized and were accepted in St. Remy as model Christians by the time he was born. However, in private, they followed the Jewish faith and preserved their religious and cultural traditions. This may help to explain why Nostradamus had to be exceedingly cautious when exercising his prophetic skills and publishing The Centuries. This was an era without constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Indeed, it seems as if the only guarantee one would have while expressing unorthodox thoughts was that of personal harm in one form or another. Stumble It!

Globalism: the New World Order "Deluded people: You must understand that there exists a conspiracy in favor of despotism and against liberty; incapacity against talent; of vice against virtue; of ignorance against light! It is formed in the depths of the most impenetrable darkness, a society is to rule the world, to appropriate the authority of sovereigns, to usurp their place." Marquis de Luchet, 1789 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anti-Globalism = Anti-Americanism By Jean-Francois Revel How to understand this war against globalization, which has grown in scope and virulence over the past five years? First, we must realize that it is a war in the real, not the figurative, sense of the word. It is a physical struggle being fought in the streets, not just theoretically. The demonstrators who are its shock troops are organized by activist organizations, many of them subsidized by governments, and they sack cities and lay siege to international meetings during their battles. anti American Rally in Pakistan What motivates this extraordinary resistance? Globalization simply means freedom of movement for goods and people, and it is hard to be violently hostile to that. But behind this fight lies an older and more fundamental struggle—against economic liberalization, and against the chief representative thereof, which is the United States. Anti-globalism carnivals often feature an Uncle Sam in a Stars-and-Stripes costume as their supreme scapegoat. In this way, the new movement taps into an old socialist tradition, where opposition to economic freedom and opposition to America are impossible to separate. The simplistic article of Marxist faith that capitalism is absolute evil, and that it is incarnated in and directed by the United States, may be the most important principle shared by the current crop of anti-globalizers. America is the object of their loathing because for a half century or more it has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on earth. But ultimately it is something even bigger that the anti-globalizers want to destroy: liberal democracy and free-market economics. Or quite simply liberty itself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- American anti War Rally According to the anti-globalists, the global marketplace will breed ever-increasing poverty for the profit of an ever-richer minority. This is of course the outcome Karl Marx predicted in the middle of the nineteenth century for the industrialized nations of Western Europe and North America. But we all know how history has confirmed that brilliant prophecy. So the old prediction has been transferred to a new locale, new time, and new active agency. Ah, the genius of “scientific socialism.” But today’s anti-globalists are much more than false prophets. Their violence has gone far beyond legitimate protest into real savagery. They have killed people through charming acts like bombing McDonald’s restaurants. In Seattle, Nice, Genoa, and other cities, rioters destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and attacked officials and police. Anti-globalists have tried to replace democracy with a despotism of the mob, advancing the brutal proposition that street demonstrators are more legitimate than elected governments. Wherever they have been active, their goal has been to prevent elected heads of state or appointed officials of international organizations from meeting. Like other totalitarians, they treat the mere expression of ideas contrary to their slogans as a crime. Anti-globalizers have no ambition to advance a program by democratic means, for the simple reason that they don’t have a program, or coherent ideas, or facts on their side. So instead they beat relentlessly on the archaic anti-capitalist and anti-American drum. In Genoa we saw red flags adorned with hammer and sickle, effigies of Che Guevara, and the acronym for the Red Brigades. American Anti War Protester in San Francisco The anti-globalists are often incoherent. They brought mayhem to Seattle in the name of combating a “savage” globalism that “profits only the rich.” Yet which groups met in Seattle? The World Trade Organization (WTO), whose role is precisely to monitor international economic transactions so as to prevent them from being “savage.” There has not been a country in the world that hasn’t been eager to be admitted into the WTO, and the poorest are the most eager. At Genoa, the hooligans who smashed the facades of banks before the conference even began said they objected to rich countries that didn’t care about the poor countries of the world. Actually, the goal of the international summit they were warring against was specifically to help poor countries. The eight leading industrial countries present were meeting to target aid for economic development in the Southern Hemisphere, and for creation of a global fund to finance the medical campaigns against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you ask the developing countries what they want, they will tell you they want more globalization, not less. What they desire most of all is freer access to the world’s best markets for their products. So when well-heeled young radical protestors try to subvert meetings whose goal is to extend free trade and strengthen poor countries’ ability to export goods, they actually act as enemies of the world’s poor. The 2001 conference meeting in Quebec City that was invaded and wrecked by protestors, for example, had been organized to lay out the basis for a single American market that would open the rich northern countries of U.S. and Canada to the products of the poorer South American countries. So it is astonishing when European leaders declare themselves “impressed” by the rioters, and convinced of the necessity to “dialogue” with them. It is grotesque to see the leftist press and political stratum, seemingly having learned nothing from the socialist catastrophes and absurdities of the last generation, now greet this new crusade against capitalism with open arms. The president of the French republic, Jacques Chirac, paid tribute to a “global social consciousness” and pleaded before his peers in favor of “normal and permanent dialogue” with the demonstrators. Governments discredit themselves when they give in to violent demonstrators, because violence paralyzes democracy itself. Democrats worthy of the name should not forget that power is conferred by ballots, not by bricks hurled through windows. It is disturbing that the Left too often ignores this principle. Republicans Gone Wild Rally in the USA It’s important to recall that it is only market globalization that the Left rejects. In fact, the Left has always hoped for globalization without the market—an ideologically correct world government. Soviet and Maoist communists always felt the vocational urge to impose their models on the whole of humanity, if need be by armed subversion, which they did not hesitate to use on five continents. Although they lack the means to undertake bellicose operations on such a scale, today’s anti-globalizers are no less internationalist in their ambitions. But history shows that only capitalism can deliver a form of globalism whose balance sheet, while not without liabilities, is on the whole positive. The beneficial effects of widening commerce were evident as far back as the Middle Ages and ancient Rome. But it was not until after the great explorations of the late fifteenth century and the growth of transatlantic trade that globalization in the modern sense of the term began. Merchant capitalism developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the industrial revolution spread throughout Europe and North America from about 1840 to 1914. It was Europe that created the first world markets, as her capital, technologies, languages, and people spread over every continent. She was the driving force of an international circulation of commodities, scientific knowledge, ideas, and techniques. After the catastrophe of World War I, Europe drew back and turned in on herself. Her supremacy became a thing of the past. She even became divided within as her countries erected barriers against each other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- anti War Rally in Berlin On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States, Argentina, and Brazil, whose immense territories were traditionally open to immigrants and foreign products, barricaded themselves in turn. International trade plummeted, capital could no longer circulate, exchange controls were instituted and there were efforts to fix currencies by decree. All over the world, economic life stagnated and came to resemble what today’s enemies of globalism desire for us. The result was not long in coming: the stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression, with tens of millions unemployed. (France would not return to her 1914 per capita income level until the beginning of the 1950s.) After World War II, the United States became a powerful advocate in favor of free world commerce. If world economic activity at the turn of the millennium is now thoroughly global, capitalist, and U.S.-led, this has nothing to do with “arrogance.” The enfeebling of the Europeans’ position in the world is self-caused: They alone are responsible for their own heaped-up aberrations and follies over the first half of the past century. This weakening entailed the corresponding and virtually automatic rise of the United States. Strikingly, Americans continue to increase their lead, even since the consolidation of the European Union. That a united Europe hasn’t yet risen to the challenge is obviously not for lack of material and human resources, but rather for lack of understanding of how to use them. Inhibited by ideological prejudices, Europe, despite her successes, continues to live overshadowed by America. Witness the fact that the health of her economy is dependent on the state of America’s economy: Whenever the latter goes into recession, as in the beginning of 2001, Europe falters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elsewhere, American-style market capitalism is equally successful and dominant. Third World countries have developed at sharply different rates basically according to the degree to which they have respected free markets, and left economic activity to private enterprise rather than to undertakings of the state. Even in nations like China where political communism has artificially prolonged its existence, it has done so only by thoroughly expunging economic socialism through privatization, appeals to foreign investors, deregulation of commerce, and establishment of cross-border trade agreements. Only Cuba and North Korea have clung to economic collectivism, with utterly disastrous results. Corporate Pigs for Profit Only Will jealous activists from Europe and some other nations treat globalism as poisonous merely by virtue of its association with America? In July 2001, when the “Network of French Cultural Cooperation” gathered at France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French foreign minister Lionel Jospin called upon the participants to fight liberalizing, American-style globalization with their brand of globalization, which Jospin said would be based on the “affirmation of states against the unbridled laws of the market.” In the process, France would replace America as the global leader. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This crusade has deep roots. Back in May 1944, Hubert Beuve-Méry, the future founder and editor of Le Monde, the most influential journal in France today, was able to write that “The Americans constitute a real danger for France…. They cling to a veritable cult of the idea of liberty [and] don’t feel the need to liberate themselves from the servitudes that their capitalism entails.” The fact that an important Frenchman was able to argue this even while France was occupied by the Nazis, with the possibility of American liberation being their only hope for a different future, indicates the depth of both the hatred for economic liberty and the anti-American obsession in France. Resentments that lead to the rejection of every idea that comes from America simply because it is American can only weaken countries. To follow such a course is to let phobias become guiding principles. Does anyone really believe today that nations which substitute government edicts for economic markets are likelier to prosper? Must we close our eyes to the achievements of the last 50 years of increasing economic liberty, when worldwide production grew by a factor of six and the volume of exports by a factor of 17? Must investment capitalism abroad, the engine of extraordinary, racing progress for many previously poor countries, be banned just because it often brings links to America? an Iraqi Family We French have had little to say against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, the imams of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the bosses of China and Vietnam. We reserve our admonitions and our contempt and our attacks for the U.S., for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and for Europeans like Margaret Thatcher, Silvio Berlusconi, and Tony Blair, because they are insufficiently hostile to capitalism. Our enemy is not the dictator but the free market economy. Anti-globalizers make the same mistake. What’s important to them is not the eradication of poverty. Rather, it is the propaganda value they gain from linking poverty to the spreading market economy. But this puts them on the wrong side of all evidence, of reality, of history. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life expectancy in Third World countries has more than doubled during the free-market dominated second half of the twentieth century. In India, food production has grown by a factor of ten, leading to the elimination of massive famines. In Latin America, per capita income doubled between 1950 and 1985. Over the past 50 years, Latin America on the whole has experienced an annual growth of 5 percent. No European country can boast an equivalent rate. These figures show to what an extent the mantras about ever-increasing poverty spring from ignorance or simple dishonesty. Where poverty continues to exist today it is almost wholly due to ruinously inefficient public sectors. This is most obvious in Africa, the only Third World continent to have actually declined. Impoverishment there has political, not economic, causes. It is statism, not the market, and socialism, not capitalism, that has destroyed the African economies. After independence, the African elites who formed the political leadership generally adopted the Soviet and Chinese systems. Thus they were able to assume absolute power with access to the levers of personal enrichment. And from communism they borrowed an infallible recipe for agricultural ruin: collectivizing the land, from Algeria to Tanzania, setting up “cooperatives” that quickly became unproductive. in the United Kingdom In these fatal mistakes the Third World has had false friends. In particular, the privileged pseudo-revolutionaries of Seattle and Göteborg have encouraged them down the primrose path of anti-capitalism. Lacking any real knowledge about the African cataclysm, and careless about finding remedies, the anti-globalist agitators prefer hurling brickbats at their perennial hobgoblin to the moral imperative of saving and improving lives. This just licenses Africa’s socialist dictators to commit their robberies. In Madagascar, the anti-American radical Didier Ratsiraka received a fortune in francs, but the starving Madagascan people never had the slightest whiff of it. An investigative journalist could do well to search for traces in Switzerland or elsewhere of the billions of dollars stolen by the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. And what’s the point (other than irritating America) of defending Robert Mugabe, a typical dictator who has rigged every election in Zimbabwe and managed in 20 years to transform one of the most fertile lands of Africa into one of the most desolate? Between 1960 and 2000, Africa received four times as much funding and aid per capita as Latin America or Asia. How was it that these last two continents took off, and not Africa? By practicing capitalism and establishing world trade. But it is pointless to set forth facts like these to anti-globalizers; they simply howl in indignation. In spreading the lie that globalization impoverishes the most needy, the protestors simply act upon their twin enthusiasms: anti-American and anti-capitalism. Their floating mass of some hundreds of thousands of demonstrators is their compensation for the frustration of having seen all the socialisms and all the revolutions fail. At a time when they have no positive alternative, yelling slogans and trashing cities and blocking international gatherings provide them with the illusion of moral action. Published in Are We Being Run Over By Global Capitalism? June 2004 Stumble It!

Chicago the Sears Tower American Wheelchairs and Things I was listening to WLS talk radio today on the internet out of Chicago. Don Wade and Roma the hosts, were talking about an Illinois State Employee who had worked over 20 years for state government, in a repair shop fixing state equipment and such in a nature park. He had lost his leg in an accident on the job years earlier, and the State paid for a special wheelchair that could prop him up from a sitting to a standing position so that he could continue his work for the State. Well they laid him off, and since the wheelchair was State property, they took that also and left him on the street. So people were calling in giving their opinions, and one lady in particular agreed it was a good thing the State took its property back because her taxes were too high anyway. That 25,000 dollar wheelchair especially built for him now sits in a State warehouse gathering dust. That is State government in Illinois. That reminded me about my own situation with my mother before she finally died of leukemia; a slow process that took seven years, that included many amputations including her right leg. My mother was on Medicare being over 65, and her health care provider was a State licensed for profit HMO (profits of 8%-20% yearly,) that had won the Government contract to manage the Government Medicare Program in our area. About the same time I was fighting the HMO trying to get my mother an electric wheelchair, (she was frail and thin and could not manage a manual one, and I was unemployed at the time living and caring for her in an apartment) , the Feds raided the Hospital in our neighborhood (northwest of Chicago,) and jailed several high income doctors on staff for double billing Medicare for services never performed. They scammed billions. It had been going on for years. The Health Care Provider said they would review my mother's claim a process that would take six months. To make a long story short I started calling lawyers out of the phone book. One lawyer told me "the way politics are in Federal Government I should forget it. He was a lawyer and could not get one for his mother." I got lucky and found a specialist. On the phone he wanted me to make an appointment, and he wanted a big fee upfront, and he told me that there was a law that would make it possible. He offhandedly mentioned "Elder Law." I called the State of Illinois Department of Insurance, and was lucky to reach a nice young lady training on the job, smart and idealistic. I asked her to look up "Elder Law" on the internet, and had explained the problem and given her my mother's government health care number. She said she and nobody in her office at the State of Illinois Department of Insurance, had ever heard of "Elder Law." Some time later the Illinois Department of Insurance called back, the same young lady said, "I found that Elder Law, its very specific and long. Your mother will get that wheelchair, its in the Law." So, because I was not a lawyer, and because another lawyer mistakenly mentioned the word "Elder Law," and I called and got hold of the right person, the Illinois Department of Insurance found out about "Elder Law," and my mother finally got her electric wheel chair three weeks before she died, (the Health Care Provider was ordered by the State to supply it.) Stumble It!

Saddam & Rumsfeldt A Blast From the Past *Rumsfeldt & Saddam; Good Old Boys *Iraq Like Panama *Saddam the Long Time American Puppet *the Rest of the Story Stumble It!

The pack wolf managerial style is simply: You get a small pack of managers in key positions...then feast. The pack defends the pack. The clueless sheep think everyone in the organization are sheep working for the good of the whole. They mistake your pack for just part of the herd. If ever a sheep catches on or threatens the pack, then the pack attacks. After all, what is good for the pack is good for the herd. Stumble It!

one of several activist groups exposing the Bush coup d'etat, and opposed to the Bush occupation of America. One of countless Iraqi children who are victims in the Bush War. Stumble It!

And When He Gets To Heaven, To Saint Peter He Will Tell: "Just Another Soldier Reporting Sir, For I Served My Time In Hell." (portions in Video ... allow 10 seconds to load) He's five feet two and he's six feet four He fights with missiles and with spears He's all of 31 and he's only 17 He's been a soldier for a thousand years He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew and he knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will kill you for me my friend and me for you Buffy Sainte-Marie, from the song "Universal Soldier" Stumble It!

Blogs and Writings of Merit *ANNE OF GREEN GABLES *Fanny-hill *An American "Running Into the Great Wall" In China *COMENIUS - THE LABYRINTH OF THE WORLD AND THE PARADISE OF THE HEART *New Internationalist *One Good Move *Adventures of an American Girl In Germany *Socialist View *bellblog *Zeldman Stumble It!

from the American Left *U.S. Media Covers Up American War Crimes *American Deserters: We Won't Go To Iraq *Why Blair Won't Tally Iraq War Dead Stumble It!

USA East Coast Next Target? The next Tsunami (could start near the northwest of Africa (Canary Islands area), travel west and hit the American East Coast full force. What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean. Stumble It!

Islamic Iranian Small Arms Stumble It!

the Face of Fundamentalism Stumble It!

Fundamentalist Islam

Stumble It!

IRAQ Direct

Iraq Votes Despite Terror *Iraq Friends of Democracy Video News

Kovno Ghetto: Remebering The Holocaust

Remembering 60 years after the Holocaust 60 Years Remembering the Holocaust (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) (you will be prompted to install the Macromedia Shockwave player, say yes and it will auto install into your browser, allowing you to view multi-media and digital films on this and other sites.)

Nostradamus Prophecies

Do You See What Is Coming? Do You See What Is Already Here? Nostradamus (1503-1566) Nostradamus Armageddon Prophecies In the year 1999 and seven months The Great King of Terror will come from the sky, He will bring back to life the great king of the Mongols. Before and after Mars [the God of war] reigns happily. After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches. The great cycle of the centuries is renewed: It will rain blood, milk, famine, war and disease. In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a tail of sparks. The Sun in 20 degrees Taurus [May 1-10, 2000?] There will be a great earthquake; the great theater full up will be ruined. Darkness and trouble in the air, on the sky and land, When the infidel calls upon God and the Saints. Saturn joined with (Scorpio) transiting toward Sagittarius, At its highest ascendant, Pest, Famine, Death through military hand, The century as well as the Age approaches its renewal. The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude, Fire approaches the great new city [New York City lies between 40-45 degrees] Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up When they want to have verification from the Normans [French]. At a latitude of forty-eight degrees At the end of Cancer (July 22) there is a very great drought. Fish in the sea, river and lake boiled hectic, Bearn and Biggore (Southwestern France) in distress from fire in the sky. Because of heat like that of the sun on the sea, The fish around Negrepont will be half-cooked. The local people will eat them When in Rhodes and Genoa there is lack of food. In a short time the colors of the temples; With black and white, the two will be intermingled. The red and yellow ones will carry off their possessions from (their temples). Blood, earth, plague, hunger, fire, maddened by thirst. Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth Will cause the towers around the New City to shake: Two great rocks will war for a long time, And then Arethusa shall color a new river red. Leave, leave Geneva everyone! The grim reaper will change gold to iron Those against RAYPOZ [?] will be exterminated. Before the invasion the heavens will show signs. In the year when Saturn and Mars are equally fiery, The air is very dry, a long comet: From hidden fires a great place burns with heat, Little rain, hot wind, wars and raids. Mabus will soon die, then will come A horrible undoing of people and animals, At once one will see vengeance, One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass. The great mountain, 4,247 feet in circumference, After peace, war, famine, flooding, [The impact?] Will spread far, drowning great countries Even antiquities and their mighty foundations. In the Cyclades, in Perinthus and Larissa, [Greece] In Sparta, all of Peloponnesus: [also Greece] A great famine, plague through false dust [fallout?] Nine months it will last and through the whole peninsula. Very near to Auch, Lectoure and Mirande, [Southwestern France] Great fire in the sky for three nights will fall: A very stupendous and marvelous event will happen, Very soon after the earth will tremble. The speeches of Lake Leman [Geneva] become angered. The days drag out into weeks: Then months, then years, then all will fail, The authorities will damn their useless powers. At the founding of the new sect, The bones of the Great Roman [Peter?] will be found, The sepulchre covered by marble will appear, The earth trembles in April, badly buried. Rain, famine and war in Persia [Iran] will not cease, A trust too great will betray the monarch; For the end was planned and conceived in France, A secret sign for one to be more sparing. You will see, sooner and later, great changes made, Extreme horrors and vengeances: For as the moon [Islam?] is thus led by its angel, The heavens draw near to the reckoning. One day the two great leaders will become friends, Their great power will be seen to increase: The new land will be at the height of its power, To the bloody one the number [is] reported. The two will not remain united for long, And within thirteen years [they give in] to Barbary [Libyan/Arab] power. There will be such a loss on both sides That one will bless the Bark and cape. The great famine which I sense approaching Will often turn [up in various areas] then become worldwide. It will be so vast and long-lasting that [people] will grab Roots from the trees and children from the breast. The great mountain, seven stadia [4,247 feet] in circumference, After peace, war, famine, flooding, [The impact?] Will spread far, drowning great countries Even antiquities and their mighty foundations. The voice of the unusual bird is heard, In the pipe of the breathing floor: Bushels of wheat will rise so high, That man will devour his fellow man. In the Cyclades, in Perinthus and Larissa, In Sparta and the entire Pelopennesus: [the Balkans and all of Greece] Very great famine, plague through false dust, Nine months will it last throughout the entire peninsula. From the vain enterprise honor and undeserved complaint, Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood, And diverse plagues will be upon mankind. Very great famine (caused) by a plague-ridden wave, Will extend through long rain the length of the Arctic pole: "Samarobryn" one hundred leagues from the hemisphere, They will live without law, exempt from politics. Those at ease will suddenly be cast down, The world put into trouble by three brothers; Their enemies will seize the marine city, Hunger, fire, blood, plague, all evils doubled. The horrible war which is prepared in the West, The following year will come the pestilence So very horrible that young, old, nor beast (will survive), Blood, fire, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter in France. Very near to Auch, Lectoure and Mirande, [Southwestern France] Great fire in the sky for three nights will fall: A very stupendous and marvelous event will happen, Very soon after the earth will tremble. With Mars and Mercury and the Moon in conjunction, Toward the south there will be extreme drought: In the depths of Asia one will say the earth trembles, Corinth, Ephesus then in a troubled state. The trembling of the earth at Mortara The tin island of St. George half sunk; Drowsy with peace, war will arise, At Easter in the temple abysses open. Sun twentieth of Taurus the earth will tremble very mightily, It will ruin the great theater filled: To darken and trouble air, sky and land, Then the infidel will call upon God and saints. I weep for Nice, Monaco, Pisa, Genoa, Savona, Siena, Capua, Modena, Malta: For the above blood and sword for a New Year's gift, Fire, the earth will tremble, water an unhappy reluctance. A very mighty trembling in the month of May, Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury in Taurus: Venus also in Cancer, Mars in Virgo, At that time hail will fall larger than an egg. From the three water signs will be born a man who will celebrate Thursday as his feast day. His renown, praise, rule and power will grow on land and sea, bringing trouble to the East. One who the infernal gods of Hannibal Will cause to be reborn, terror of all mankind Never more horror nor the newspapers tell of worse in the past, Than will come to the Romans through Babel (Iraq). Mabus then will soon die, there will come A horrible slaughter of people and animals: At once vengeance is revealed coming from a hundred hands, Thirst and hunger when the comet will run. One day the two great leaders will become friends (and/or "halved, split"), Their great power will be seen to increase: The new land will be at the height of its power (America), To the bloody one the numbers are reported. The rule will be left to two; they will hold it for a very short time. Three years and seven months passed, they will go to war: Their two vassals rebel against them, The victor is born on Armenian (?) soil. The Antichrist very soon annihilates the three, Twenty-seven years the blood of his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled; With blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth. The chief of London through the realm of America, The Isle of Scotland will be tried by frost: King and "Reb" will face an Antichrist so false, [or "Roy Reb" or "Reb the King"] That he will place them all into the conflict. Michel de Nostradame was born on December 14, 1503 at St. Remy in Provence, France to a family of "Christianized" Jews. He was taught a wide range of subjects by both his grandfathers. By the time that Michel began his formal education in Avignon, where he learned philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric, he was already well versed in classical literature, history, medicine, astrology (then a legitimate science), and herbal and folk medicine. Nostradamus (the Latin version of his name) first became well known due to his novel and very successful treatment of bubonic plague, the infamous Black Death that ravaged France in the early 16th century. His innovative cure consisted basically of cleanliness and vitamin C. The first step when he entered a village was to have all of the corpses removed from the streets. He then prescribed for his patients plenty of fresh air, unpolluted water, and his "Rose Pills," which consisted of rose petals (and, perhaps, rose hips), sawdust from green cypress, iris, cloves, calamus, and lign-aloes. He did not allow his patients to suffer "bleeding," then a popular, although futile, treatment for everything from a minor cold to the Great Plague. He truly was successful in combating a disease for which there appeared to be no cure and no relief. It is estimated that over one-quarter of the entire population of Europe was killed by the Black Death during its sporadic visits. In 1537, plague struck Agen, where Nostradamus was living with his wife and two children. He confidently began to treat his fellow citizens but, unfortunately, was unable to save his family from his old enemy. Distraught and questioning his own abilities, Nostradamus began to wander through Europe aimlessly for the next six years. It was during this time that he first became aware of the awakening of his prophetic powers. When plague broke out in Aix, capital of Provence, for nine months Nostradamus again applied his proven skills to save as many of the populace as possible. After the plague dissipated, the city showed its gratitude by bestowing upon him a pension for life. Ten years after the death of his wife and children, Nostradamus settled in Salon and remarried, eventually fathering three daughters and three sons. He had the upper floor of his house transformed into a private study, where he installed his magical equipment: astrolabe, magic mirrors, divining rods, and a brass bowl and tripod, designed after the type used by the great Delphic oracles. Under cover of night, he would retire to his study where he would sit before the tripod upon which simmered the brass bowl filled with water and pungent herbs (probably bay laurel or a combination of herbs). For a few years, Nostradamus struggled with the dilemma of whether he should make his findings public. In 1550, he published his first almanac of prophecies -- twelve four-line poems called "quatrains." Each quatrain gave a general prophecy for the coming year. The acclaim that he received due to the almanac encouraged Nostradamus to continue. He produced an almanac every year for the rest of his life. His most famous work, The Centuries, was begun in 1554. Eventually these prophecies were to consist of ten volumes of 100 quatrains each. Centuries 1 through part of 4 were published in Lyons in 1555. The remainder of 4 and the subsequent Centuries through 7 were published later that same year. The last three were printed in 1558, but Nostradamus decided not to have them widely distributed. The Centuries have remained constantly in print for over 400 years. In his own time as is true today, Nostradamus' quatrains have received mixed responses. The combination of French, Provencal, Greek, Latin, and Italian written as riddles, puns, anagrams, and epigrams are complex and demand that the potential interpreter have knowledge in a wide range of subjects. Many people from the 16th century through modern times have been enthralled by the prophecies and have tried to make sense of them. Some quatrains could fit descriptions of just about any era. Others are more exact, and it is those quatrains that have established the well-earned reputation of Nostradamus as one of the world's greatest prophets. To the ignorant, closed mind, Nostradamus was a creature of the devil, babbling in cryptic, evil verse. From philosophers, Nostradamus continues to draw praise and curses. Poets remain perplexed by the meaning of his wild verses. Interpretation is open to all. Except for those prophecies that were fulfilled in his own time and acknowledged by the prophet himself, no one can give a final, definite interpretation to any of the prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled. This is an area that is open to individual, solitary study. Perhaps that was the intent. According to witnesses, Nostradamus stayed alert to the end of his life, even though he was in great pain caused by arthritis, gout and dropsy. When his assistant wished him goodnight on July 1, 1566, Nostradamus replied, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." As one might expect, he had predicted his own death. In his last almanac, Nostradamus had written: On his return from the Embassy, the King's gift put in place, He will do nothing more. He will be gone to God. Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood (will find him) Completely dead near the bed and the bench. On the morning of July 2, the assistant escorted family and friends to the study, where Nostradamus had spent the previous night. They found his body on the floor between the bed and a bench that he had placed there for aid in getting out of bed. His wife carried out his last wishes, that he be interred standing upright and that his coffin be enclosed within the walls of the Church of the Cordeliers of Salon. The translation from Latin of the inscription on his tomb reads: "Here rest the bones of the illustrious Michel Nostradamus, alone of all mortals, judged worthy to record with his near divine pen, under the influence of the stars, the future events of the entire world. He lived sixty-two years, six months and seventeen days. He died at Salon the in year 1566. Let not posterity disturb his rest. Anne Posart Gemelle wishes her husband true happiness." [From: Nostradamus: The New Revelations by John Hogue] "Christianized" Jews in the Time of Nostradamus In the 15th and 16th centuries, religious feeling against Jews was strong and hateful. Devout Christians condemned them as Christ-murderers. Rumors that Jews had poisoned water supplies, thus causing the Black Death, were rampant. The Inquisition was in full swing in Europe. Throughout Europe, particularly in Spain, Jews were presecuted and killed. Many from Spain and other ghettos flocked to Provence where they found sanctuary -- until 1501. In that year, Charles of Maine, heir to the throne of Provence, died, and the region was formally acquired by France. The new French king, Louis XII, decreed that all Jews must be baptized as Christians or be banished. Members of Nostradamus' family were baptized and were accepted in St. Remy as model Christians by the time he was born. However, in private, they followed the Jewish faith and preserved their religious and cultural traditions. This may help to explain why Nostradamus had to be exceedingly cautious when exercising his prophetic skills and publishing The Centuries. This was an era without constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Indeed, it seems as if the only guarantee one would have while expressing unorthodox thoughts was that of personal harm in one form or another.

A New Kind Of American Empire

Globalism: the New World Order "Deluded people: You must understand that there exists a conspiracy in favor of despotism and against liberty; incapacity against talent; of vice against virtue; of ignorance against light! It is formed in the depths of the most impenetrable darkness, a society is to rule the world, to appropriate the authority of sovereigns, to usurp their place." Marquis de Luchet, 1789 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anti-Globalism = Anti-Americanism By Jean-Francois Revel How to understand this war against globalization, which has grown in scope and virulence over the past five years? First, we must realize that it is a war in the real, not the figurative, sense of the word. It is a physical struggle being fought in the streets, not just theoretically. The demonstrators who are its shock troops are organized by activist organizations, many of them subsidized by governments, and they sack cities and lay siege to international meetings during their battles. anti American Rally in Pakistan What motivates this extraordinary resistance? Globalization simply means freedom of movement for goods and people, and it is hard to be violently hostile to that. But behind this fight lies an older and more fundamental struggle—against economic liberalization, and against the chief representative thereof, which is the United States. Anti-globalism carnivals often feature an Uncle Sam in a Stars-and-Stripes costume as their supreme scapegoat. In this way, the new movement taps into an old socialist tradition, where opposition to economic freedom and opposition to America are impossible to separate. The simplistic article of Marxist faith that capitalism is absolute evil, and that it is incarnated in and directed by the United States, may be the most important principle shared by the current crop of anti-globalizers. America is the object of their loathing because for a half century or more it has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on earth. But ultimately it is something even bigger that the anti-globalizers want to destroy: liberal democracy and free-market economics. Or quite simply liberty itself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- American anti War Rally According to the anti-globalists, the global marketplace will breed ever-increasing poverty for the profit of an ever-richer minority. This is of course the outcome Karl Marx predicted in the middle of the nineteenth century for the industrialized nations of Western Europe and North America. But we all know how history has confirmed that brilliant prophecy. So the old prediction has been transferred to a new locale, new time, and new active agency. Ah, the genius of “scientific socialism.” But today’s anti-globalists are much more than false prophets. Their violence has gone far beyond legitimate protest into real savagery. They have killed people through charming acts like bombing McDonald’s restaurants. In Seattle, Nice, Genoa, and other cities, rioters destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and attacked officials and police. Anti-globalists have tried to replace democracy with a despotism of the mob, advancing the brutal proposition that street demonstrators are more legitimate than elected governments. Wherever they have been active, their goal has been to prevent elected heads of state or appointed officials of international organizations from meeting. Like other totalitarians, they treat the mere expression of ideas contrary to their slogans as a crime. Anti-globalizers have no ambition to advance a program by democratic means, for the simple reason that they don’t have a program, or coherent ideas, or facts on their side. So instead they beat relentlessly on the archaic anti-capitalist and anti-American drum. In Genoa we saw red flags adorned with hammer and sickle, effigies of Che Guevara, and the acronym for the Red Brigades. American Anti War Protester in San Francisco The anti-globalists are often incoherent. They brought mayhem to Seattle in the name of combating a “savage” globalism that “profits only the rich.” Yet which groups met in Seattle? The World Trade Organization (WTO), whose role is precisely to monitor international economic transactions so as to prevent them from being “savage.” There has not been a country in the world that hasn’t been eager to be admitted into the WTO, and the poorest are the most eager. At Genoa, the hooligans who smashed the facades of banks before the conference even began said they objected to rich countries that didn’t care about the poor countries of the world. Actually, the goal of the international summit they were warring against was specifically to help poor countries. The eight leading industrial countries present were meeting to target aid for economic development in the Southern Hemisphere, and for creation of a global fund to finance the medical campaigns against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you ask the developing countries what they want, they will tell you they want more globalization, not less. What they desire most of all is freer access to the world’s best markets for their products. So when well-heeled young radical protestors try to subvert meetings whose goal is to extend free trade and strengthen poor countries’ ability to export goods, they actually act as enemies of the world’s poor. The 2001 conference meeting in Quebec City that was invaded and wrecked by protestors, for example, had been organized to lay out the basis for a single American market that would open the rich northern countries of U.S. and Canada to the products of the poorer South American countries. So it is astonishing when European leaders declare themselves “impressed” by the rioters, and convinced of the necessity to “dialogue” with them. It is grotesque to see the leftist press and political stratum, seemingly having learned nothing from the socialist catastrophes and absurdities of the last generation, now greet this new crusade against capitalism with open arms. The president of the French republic, Jacques Chirac, paid tribute to a “global social consciousness” and pleaded before his peers in favor of “normal and permanent dialogue” with the demonstrators. Governments discredit themselves when they give in to violent demonstrators, because violence paralyzes democracy itself. Democrats worthy of the name should not forget that power is conferred by ballots, not by bricks hurled through windows. It is disturbing that the Left too often ignores this principle. Republicans Gone Wild Rally in the USA It’s important to recall that it is only market globalization that the Left rejects. In fact, the Left has always hoped for globalization without the market—an ideologically correct world government. Soviet and Maoist communists always felt the vocational urge to impose their models on the whole of humanity, if need be by armed subversion, which they did not hesitate to use on five continents. Although they lack the means to undertake bellicose operations on such a scale, today’s anti-globalizers are no less internationalist in their ambitions. But history shows that only capitalism can deliver a form of globalism whose balance sheet, while not without liabilities, is on the whole positive. The beneficial effects of widening commerce were evident as far back as the Middle Ages and ancient Rome. But it was not until after the great explorations of the late fifteenth century and the growth of transatlantic trade that globalization in the modern sense of the term began. Merchant capitalism developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the industrial revolution spread throughout Europe and North America from about 1840 to 1914. It was Europe that created the first world markets, as her capital, technologies, languages, and people spread over every continent. She was the driving force of an international circulation of commodities, scientific knowledge, ideas, and techniques. After the catastrophe of World War I, Europe drew back and turned in on herself. Her supremacy became a thing of the past. She even became divided within as her countries erected barriers against each other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- anti War Rally in Berlin On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States, Argentina, and Brazil, whose immense territories were traditionally open to immigrants and foreign products, barricaded themselves in turn. International trade plummeted, capital could no longer circulate, exchange controls were instituted and there were efforts to fix currencies by decree. All over the world, economic life stagnated and came to resemble what today’s enemies of globalism desire for us. The result was not long in coming: the stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression, with tens of millions unemployed. (France would not return to her 1914 per capita income level until the beginning of the 1950s.) After World War II, the United States became a powerful advocate in favor of free world commerce. If world economic activity at the turn of the millennium is now thoroughly global, capitalist, and U.S.-led, this has nothing to do with “arrogance.” The enfeebling of the Europeans’ position in the world is self-caused: They alone are responsible for their own heaped-up aberrations and follies over the first half of the past century. This weakening entailed the corresponding and virtually automatic rise of the United States. Strikingly, Americans continue to increase their lead, even since the consolidation of the European Union. That a united Europe hasn’t yet risen to the challenge is obviously not for lack of material and human resources, but rather for lack of understanding of how to use them. Inhibited by ideological prejudices, Europe, despite her successes, continues to live overshadowed by America. Witness the fact that the health of her economy is dependent on the state of America’s economy: Whenever the latter goes into recession, as in the beginning of 2001, Europe falters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elsewhere, American-style market capitalism is equally successful and dominant. Third World countries have developed at sharply different rates basically according to the degree to which they have respected free markets, and left economic activity to private enterprise rather than to undertakings of the state. Even in nations like China where political communism has artificially prolonged its existence, it has done so only by thoroughly expunging economic socialism through privatization, appeals to foreign investors, deregulation of commerce, and establishment of cross-border trade agreements. Only Cuba and North Korea have clung to economic collectivism, with utterly disastrous results. Corporate Pigs for Profit Only Will jealous activists from Europe and some other nations treat globalism as poisonous merely by virtue of its association with America? In July 2001, when the “Network of French Cultural Cooperation” gathered at France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French foreign minister Lionel Jospin called upon the participants to fight liberalizing, American-style globalization with their brand of globalization, which Jospin said would be based on the “affirmation of states against the unbridled laws of the market.” In the process, France would replace America as the global leader. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This crusade has deep roots. Back in May 1944, Hubert Beuve-Méry, the future founder and editor of Le Monde, the most influential journal in France today, was able to write that “The Americans constitute a real danger for France…. They cling to a veritable cult of the idea of liberty [and] don’t feel the need to liberate themselves from the servitudes that their capitalism entails.” The fact that an important Frenchman was able to argue this even while France was occupied by the Nazis, with the possibility of American liberation being their only hope for a different future, indicates the depth of both the hatred for economic liberty and the anti-American obsession in France. Resentments that lead to the rejection of every idea that comes from America simply because it is American can only weaken countries. To follow such a course is to let phobias become guiding principles. Does anyone really believe today that nations which substitute government edicts for economic markets are likelier to prosper? Must we close our eyes to the achievements of the last 50 years of increasing economic liberty, when worldwide production grew by a factor of six and the volume of exports by a factor of 17? Must investment capitalism abroad, the engine of extraordinary, racing progress for many previously poor countries, be banned just because it often brings links to America? an Iraqi Family We French have had little to say against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, the imams of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the bosses of China and Vietnam. We reserve our admonitions and our contempt and our attacks for the U.S., for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and for Europeans like Margaret Thatcher, Silvio Berlusconi, and Tony Blair, because they are insufficiently hostile to capitalism. Our enemy is not the dictator but the free market economy. Anti-globalizers make the same mistake. What’s important to them is not the eradication of poverty. Rather, it is the propaganda value they gain from linking poverty to the spreading market economy. But this puts them on the wrong side of all evidence, of reality, of history. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life expectancy in Third World countries has more than doubled during the free-market dominated second half of the twentieth century. In India, food production has grown by a factor of ten, leading to the elimination of massive famines. In Latin America, per capita income doubled between 1950 and 1985. Over the past 50 years, Latin America on the whole has experienced an annual growth of 5 percent. No European country can boast an equivalent rate. These figures show to what an extent the mantras about ever-increasing poverty spring from ignorance or simple dishonesty. Where poverty continues to exist today it is almost wholly due to ruinously inefficient public sectors. This is most obvious in Africa, the only Third World continent to have actually declined. Impoverishment there has political, not economic, causes. It is statism, not the market, and socialism, not capitalism, that has destroyed the African economies. After independence, the African elites who formed the political leadership generally adopted the Soviet and Chinese systems. Thus they were able to assume absolute power with access to the levers of personal enrichment. And from communism they borrowed an infallible recipe for agricultural ruin: collectivizing the land, from Algeria to Tanzania, setting up “cooperatives” that quickly became unproductive. in the United Kingdom In these fatal mistakes the Third World has had false friends. In particular, the privileged pseudo-revolutionaries of Seattle and Göteborg have encouraged them down the primrose path of anti-capitalism. Lacking any real knowledge about the African cataclysm, and careless about finding remedies, the anti-globalist agitators prefer hurling brickbats at their perennial hobgoblin to the moral imperative of saving and improving lives. This just licenses Africa’s socialist dictators to commit their robberies. In Madagascar, the anti-American radical Didier Ratsiraka received a fortune in francs, but the starving Madagascan people never had the slightest whiff of it. An investigative journalist could do well to search for traces in Switzerland or elsewhere of the billions of dollars stolen by the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. And what’s the point (other than irritating America) of defending Robert Mugabe, a typical dictator who has rigged every election in Zimbabwe and managed in 20 years to transform one of the most fertile lands of Africa into one of the most desolate? Between 1960 and 2000, Africa received four times as much funding and aid per capita as Latin America or Asia. How was it that these last two continents took off, and not Africa? By practicing capitalism and establishing world trade. But it is pointless to set forth facts like these to anti-globalizers; they simply howl in indignation. In spreading the lie that globalization impoverishes the most needy, the protestors simply act upon their twin enthusiasms: anti-American and anti-capitalism. Their floating mass of some hundreds of thousands of demonstrators is their compensation for the frustration of having seen all the socialisms and all the revolutions fail. At a time when they have no positive alternative, yelling slogans and trashing cities and blocking international gatherings provide them with the illusion of moral action. Published in Are We Being Run Over By Global Capitalism? June 2004

WLS Chicago Talk Radio

Chicago the Sears Tower American Wheelchairs and Things I was listening to WLS talk radio today on the internet out of Chicago. Don Wade and Roma the hosts, were talking about an Illinois State Employee who had worked over 20 years for state government, in a repair shop fixing state equipment and such in a nature park. He had lost his leg in an accident on the job years earlier, and the State paid for a special wheelchair that could prop him up from a sitting to a standing position so that he could continue his work for the State. Well they laid him off, and since the wheelchair was State property, they took that also and left him on the street. So people were calling in giving their opinions, and one lady in particular agreed it was a good thing the State took its property back because her taxes were too high anyway. That 25,000 dollar wheelchair especially built for him now sits in a State warehouse gathering dust. That is State government in Illinois. That reminded me about my own situation with my mother before she finally died of leukemia; a slow process that took seven years, that included many amputations including her right leg. My mother was on Medicare being over 65, and her health care provider was a State licensed for profit HMO (profits of 8%-20% yearly,) that had won the Government contract to manage the Government Medicare Program in our area. About the same time I was fighting the HMO trying to get my mother an electric wheelchair, (she was frail and thin and could not manage a manual one, and I was unemployed at the time living and caring for her in an apartment) , the Feds raided the Hospital in our neighborhood (northwest of Chicago,) and jailed several high income doctors on staff for double billing Medicare for services never performed. They scammed billions. It had been going on for years. The Health Care Provider said they would review my mother's claim a process that would take six months. To make a long story short I started calling lawyers out of the phone book. One lawyer told me "the way politics are in Federal Government I should forget it. He was a lawyer and could not get one for his mother." I got lucky and found a specialist. On the phone he wanted me to make an appointment, and he wanted a big fee upfront, and he told me that there was a law that would make it possible. He offhandedly mentioned "Elder Law." I called the State of Illinois Department of Insurance, and was lucky to reach a nice young lady training on the job, smart and idealistic. I asked her to look up "Elder Law" on the internet, and had explained the problem and given her my mother's government health care number. She said she and nobody in her office at the State of Illinois Department of Insurance, had ever heard of "Elder Law." Some time later the Illinois Department of Insurance called back, the same young lady said, "I found that Elder Law, its very specific and long. Your mother will get that wheelchair, its in the Law." So, because I was not a lawyer, and because another lawyer mistakenly mentioned the word "Elder Law," and I called and got hold of the right person, the Illinois Department of Insurance found out about "Elder Law," and my mother finally got her electric wheel chair three weeks before she died, (the Health Care Provider was ordered by the State to supply it.)

The USA & Saddam: A Profitable Relationship

Saddam & Rumsfeldt A Blast From the Past *Rumsfeldt & Saddam; Good Old Boys *Iraq Like Panama *Saddam the Long Time American Puppet *the Rest of the Story

Predatory Capitalism

The pack wolf managerial style is simply: You get a small pack of managers in key positions...then feast. The pack defends the pack. The clueless sheep think everyone in the organization are sheep working for the good of the whole. They mistake your pack for just part of the herd. If ever a sheep catches on or threatens the pack, then the pack attacks. After all, what is good for the pack is good for the herd.

Citizens For Legitimate Government

one of several activist groups exposing the Bush coup d'etat, and opposed to the Bush occupation of America. One of countless Iraqi children who are victims in the Bush War.

the American Soldier

And When He Gets To Heaven, To Saint Peter He Will Tell: "Just Another Soldier Reporting Sir, For I Served My Time In Hell." (portions in Video ... allow 10 seconds to load) He's five feet two and he's six feet four He fights with missiles and with spears He's all of 31 and he's only 17 He's been a soldier for a thousand years He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew and he knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will kill you for me my friend and me for you Buffy Sainte-Marie, from the song "Universal Soldier"

Literary Corner

Blogs and Writings of Merit *ANNE OF GREEN GABLES *Fanny-hill *An American "Running Into the Great Wall" In China *COMENIUS - THE LABYRINTH OF THE WORLD AND THE PARADISE OF THE HEART *New Internationalist *One Good Move *Adventures of an American Girl In Germany *Socialist View *bellblog *Zeldman

the American Leftist

from the American Left *U.S. Media Covers Up American War Crimes *American Deserters: We Won't Go To Iraq *Why Blair Won't Tally Iraq War Dead

the Next Tsunami ... USA?

USA East Coast Next Target? The next Tsunami (could start near the northwest of Africa (Canary Islands area), travel west and hit the American East Coast full force. What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean.

Islamic Iranian Small Arms

the Face of Fundamentalism

the Face of Fundamentalism

Fundamentalist Islam