(24 May06)“… Yugoslavia is gone, forever. The country that emerged from World War I and Versailles as the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, land of the South Slavs , has passed into history… In 1991, Macedonia peacefully seceded. Slovenia and Croatia fought their way out, and Bosnia broke free after a war marked by the massacre at Srbenica and NATO intervention…The nation-state is dying. Men have begun to transfer their allegiance, loyalty and love from the older nations both upward to the new transnational regimes that are arising and downward to the sub-nations whence they came, the true nations, united by blood and soil, language, literature, history, faith, tradition and memory…” The death of the nation state by Pat Buchanan “..Transnational institutions, the embryonic institutions of a new world government to which the elites of the West and Third World are transferring allegiance and power, include the United Nations, the EU, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the International Seabed Authority, the Kyoto Protocol, the IMF and the World Bank…not only are nations subdividing, losing their monopolies on the love and loyalty of their peoples, but they are being superseded by "non-state actors" that are challenging the monopoly on warfare enjoyed by the nation-state since the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War…”
The Four Horsemen Gallop Through the Horn of Africa
(7May06)“…A strange sense of déjà vu hangs over all these stories about hunger in the Horn of Africa. Haven't we been through all this before? Didn't Bob Geldof take care of this problem back in the 1980s by having a bunch of famous rock-'n'-rollers like Sting do benefit concerts for Africa? Didn't Bill Clinton send our boys into downtown Mogadishu in 1993 to fix everything?... The climate in Africa isn't the problem. Drought recurs there periodically, as it does in many places. It is predictable, and can be dealt with. Oklahoma sometimes experiences severe drought, but nobody holds telethons to benefit the starving children of Muskogee…” The Four Horsemen Gallop Through the Horn of Africa “…The problem in Africa is – as it has been ever since the departure of the European colonial powers – corrupt, tyrannical, and unaccountable government…All of this can be credited to the legacy of Socialism. When the colonial powers left, Marxism took root in much of Africa, as it did in so many parts of the Third World. And African Socialism was a particularly brutal and despotic strain. With the collapse of worlwide Communism, the countries in question were left with simple brutality and despotism, unfettered by ideology…”
How Bad Is Inflation in Zimbabwe
(5May06) “…For untold numbers of Zimbabweans, toilet paper — and bread, margarine, meat, even the once ubiquitous morning cup of tea — have become unimaginable luxuries. All are casualties of the hyperinflation that is roaring toward 1,000 percent a year, a rate usually seen only in war zones…..Zimbabwe has been tormented this entire decade by both deep recession and high inflation, but in recent months the economy seems to have abandoned whatever moorings it had left….Those with spare cash put it not in banks, which pay a paltry 4 to 10 percent annual interest on savings, but in gilt-edged investments like bags of corn meal and sugar, guaranteed not to lose their value…Inflation, about 400 percent per year last November, edged over 600 percent in January, but began to soar after the government revealed that it had paid the International Monetary Fund $221 million to cover an arrears that threatened Zimbabwe's membership in the organization…” How Bad Is Inflation in Zimbabwe by Michael Wines, New York Times “..Hyperinflation is a cradle-to-grave experience here. The government recently announced that the price of childbirth, now $7 million, would rise 463 percent by October. Funeral costs are to double over the same period….Critics say that Zimbabwe's rulers are oblivious to such suffering — last year, Mr. Mugabe completed his own 25-bedroom mansion in a gated suburb north of town, close by the mansions of top ministers and military allies…As a whole, the nation has only now sunk to standards common elsewhere in Africa….the government may have reached the limit of its ability to do anything about it. Cutting spending seems impossible, and raising taxes further is unthinkable. That leaves one option: "much more inflation," he said. "Because this government is always going to be printing its way out of its current difficulty…"
A New Threat on the Horizon: The Quiet Game
(20Mar06) An interesting read and well worth watching…
It is difficult - but essential - to gain a perspective on the predicament facing the United States . We need to understand the precariousness of the dollar, the impossible debt burden we collectively face, and the emergent storm clouds on our financial horizon. First, the mountain of debt we are facing. President Bush and the current Congress have together authorized and borrowed more money from foreign governments, banks, companies, and citizens than all of the previous 42 U.S. administrations combined. From 1776 to 2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions….Two-thirds of world trade is conducted in dollars. Over 70% of central banks' currency reserves are held in the American currency. The U.S. dollar is the sole currency used by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF)…. This confers on the U.S. a major economic advantage: the ability to run a trade deficit year after year. It can do this because foreign countries need dollars to repay their debts to the IMF, to conduct international trade, and to build up their currency reserves. The U.S. provides the world with these dollars by buying goods and services produced by foreign countries, but since it does not have a corresponding need for foreign currency, it can sell far fewer goods and services in return. Thus, the U.S. always spends more than it earns, whereas the rest of the world always earns more than it spends….” A New Threat on the Horizon: The Quiet Game by Chuck Missler “…This U.S. trade deficit has now reached extraordinary levels, with the U.S. importing 50% more goods and services than it exports: currently $800 billion annualized….The Iranian Oil Bourse is scheduled to commence operations on March 20, 2006. This bourse will be a trading exchange whereby the nations of the world will now have the option of selling and purchasing their oil in euros rather than dollars. This Bourse will directly compete with the two American-owned exchanges: The International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) in London , and the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange). This represents a direct threat to the supremacy of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. The availability to shift to non-dollar reserves would create a major structural change in the global monetary environment and could usher in a traumatic effect on the U.S. economy….”
(19Mar06) I think you'll get the point when you read this
“…Gerin oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of characteristic symptoms, often of an antisocial or self- damaging nature. If administered chronically in childhood, Gerin oil can permanently modify the brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions which have proved very hard to treat…” Opiate of the Masses (Gerin Oil) by Richard Dawkins. “…Gerin oil addiction can drive previously sane individuals to run away from a normally fulfilled human life and retreat to closed communities from which all but confirmed addicts are excluded. These communities are nearly always limited to one sex, and they vigorously, often obsessively, forbid sexual activity…As with many drugs, refined Gerin oil in low doses is largely harmless, and can even serve as a social lubricant on occasions such as marriages, funerals and ceremonies of state. Experts differ over whether such social use, though harmless in itself, is a risk factor for upgrading to harder and more addictive forms of the drug.
Carjacking: the everyday ordeal testing South Africa
(5Mar06) “…Thousands of motorists are ambushed at gunpoint each year in South Africa . The lucky ones are left by the roadside, shaken and without their cars. The unlucky ones are abducted, raped and murdered. ..Yesterday, staff from the British High Commission attended the National Hijack Prevention Academy , a private course run by former police officers at a racetrack outside Pretoria which advises diplomats and other clients on how to respond if ambushed…. Carjackings peaked at more than 16,000 cases in 1998, prompting one entrepreneur to market a car with a flame-thrower. The annual rate has subsided, with 12,434 reported last year, and commentators say it shows South Africa is maturing and adapting to post-apartheid realities. The middle class was badly shaken by a surge in violent crime which accompanied democracy and the end of apartheid in 1994. "In the late 1990s there was so much hysteria, almost a national panic…” Carjacking: the everyday ordeal testing South Africa The Guardian…Robberies tend to leave victims traumatised but unhurt because carjackers know that any assault may invite greater police attention. About a fifth of cases involve physical harm, including rape. "Males get raped as well," said Frikkie Page, a senior superintendent with an anti-hijacking taskforce in Johannesburg . "But unlike females they tend to keep quiet about it, it's not something they want to advertise."
Indonesia's 1969 Takeover of West Papua Not by "Free Choice"
(19Jan06) “…Over six weeks from July to August 1969, U.N. officials conducted the so-called "Act of Free Choice." Under the articles of the New York Agreement (Article 18) all adult Papuans had the right to participate in an act of self-determination to be carried out in accordance with international practice. Instead, Indonesian authorities selected 1022 West Papuans to vote publicly and unanimously in favor of integration with Indonesia ….A consular trip to West Irian in early 1968 observed that "the Indonesian government directs its main efforts" in the territory to "maintaining existing political facilities and suppressing political dissent." Because of neglect, corruption and repression at the hands of Indonesian authorities, Western observers agreed almost unanimously that "Indonesia could not win an open election" and that the vast majority of West Irian's inhabitants favored independence… Indonesia's 1969 Takeover of West Papua Not by "Free Choice" The Indonesian government firmly rejected the possibility of a one-person, one-vote plebiscite in West Irian, insisting instead on a series of local 'consultations' with just over 1,000 hand selected tribal leaders (out of an estimated population of 800,000)… Ambassador Frank Galbraith noted on July 9, 1969 that past abuses had stimulated intense anti-Indonesian and pro-independence sentiment at all levels of Irian society, suggesting that "possibly 85 to 90%" of the population "are in sympathy with the Free Papua cause." Moreover, Galbraith observed, recent Indonesian military operations, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians, "had stimulated fears and rumours of intended genocide among the Irianese."
Sinking into the past: A desperate nation living on the scrap heap
(5Dec05) “…Across Zimbabwe the scene is the same: townships that were once models for Africa have become stinking health hazards. The big cities are not much better. Some parts of Bulawayo have not had water for seven weeks. Refuse collection in Harare is sporadic. Power failures are routine….agricultural output — the mainstay of the economy — has dropped 80 per cent. Without dollars the Government cannot buy the £70,000 worth of parts it needs to fix the sewerage plant in Chitungwiza, where dozens of people have already contracted dysentery. It also cannot buy fuel….Air Zimbabwe cancelled all its flights for a day last week because of a lack of jet fuel..” Sinking into the past: A desperate nation living on the scrap heap from the TimesOnLine “…Prices have doubled in the past month. Annual inflation reached 411 per cent in October, according to official numbers. But, a supermarket chain, estimated that it was closer to 700 per cent, based on a typical shopping basket…Only 15 of the country's 175 railway locomotives are in running order… The hardship is tearing at the social fabric of a country where the life expectancy is now just 37… The IMF has refused credit unless urgent economic reform takes place. Donor countries have long closed their wallets…”
(13Apr05) The Gate of Hell by Alexander van Straubenzee was recently published in the Telegraph. It is an eyewitness account of the liberation of Bergen Belsen 60 years ago on April 15 th 1945.
"We were totally unprepared for what we had stumbled across,….About 30 yards into the camp, my Jeep was suddenly surrounded by a group of around 100 emaciated prisoners,…….Most of them were in black-and-white-striped prison uniforms and the rest wore a terrible assortment of ragged clothes. It was the state of these inmates that made me realise that this was no ordinary PoW camp." The Gate of Hell by Alexander van Straubenzee “But there was worse to come. Further on, Randall and his driver found a pit, 50ft square, containing a mass of semi-clothed and naked dead bodies of both sexes, lying in contorted positions, one on top of another…..”
(9April05) This is worth a look. Once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Havana is today a city in ruins. The Real Cuba. This is the Havana that the tourists don't see, because the tourists stay in compounds where Cubans are not allowed to enter, but this is the Havana where the real Cubans live!
(5Apr05) “….Even as the editorial writers fulminated and the dissident clergy fumed, the Holy Father drew the young in the tens of millions….. But what made him great? asks Pat Buchanan. “…All the churches that have drunk the Kool-Aid of modernity are dying…. While the mainstream Protestant churches shrink, the more orthodox and militant churches that make demands upon their flocks to live by Christian truths are attracting converts…”
Fear of modern life makes shoppers splash out on bottled water
(17Jan05)Is this proof that the world really has gone mad and as Phineas T. Barnum once noted, that “…there's one born every minute..” ?
“… two psychiatrists have analysed the British love affair with the stuff (bottled water) and say it is driven by a fear of modern life….One brand, Blue Water, claims to have had "negative memories" removed and replaced with "beneficial energy patterns". It costs £11 a litre…..The marketing of bottled water exploits our worries about health in the modern world, they say. "Bottled water is the natural antidote to chemicals and technologies full of risk and hazard - genetically engineered food, radiation, harmful medication and sinister viruses," they write in the British Medical Journal .Fear of modern life makes shoppers splash out on bottled water By Health Editor Jeremy Laurance.
Moody's and the International Rating Agencies
George W. Bush used the term “compassionate conservative” but this “need to qualify conservatism by re-branding it as a product now found in a sweet-smelling pink 'compassionate' version is hideous and a concession to your enemies right at the beginning."- argues Mark Steyne in the National Post- when he writes that The Real Enemy in this War is Ourselves .
“Black people aren't animals” is from the December 2001 edition of the Spectator magazine. It is an absolute MUST read.
Ron Brunton writes for the