Hi Asher,
on a personal note with a Glas of Bourgogne, I do not have a lot of hope that we will see significant modifications in the right direction. As we speak I read an article on FRONTEX which is a european agency working on intelligence to secure borders.
It is estimated that last year alone 6.000 people died by attempting to cross the border into europe. The westafrican coast appears to turn into a mass grave.
Borders? I always wondered about that medival arrangement. The only border I can think of is the only border that counts and we all have in common, it is the one that protects us from outerspace, nothing less. - Btw. Yesterday I saw Michael Moore's "Sicko", you will be particulary interested in that edition Asher, as it deals with the Health System and it's pitfalls in the USA. It is one of those films worth your time in deed! -
So what about borders? An Inhaler that cost something like 120 Dollars goes for 5 cents over the counter in Cuba. Insurance companies hire Doctors whose sole job is to write letters of denial, people were refused treatment and died as a result.
Last week a couple of "old friends" passed over, Floyd "red crow" Westerman and soon after that Oscar Peterson. Sad, but then again, I guess they left just about at the right time.
Reflecting on the past few years and pondering what is to come, my heart is heavy and I do not see a lot of positive change, in opposite, my wild guess is that it will become worse, much worse in deed. Having said that, I am no Doomsayer, but I can not avoid the facts at hand.
Somehow, we still are this wild bunch that scavanges and plunders through the world, just these days we have more gadgets at hand that allow us to plunder and murder more efficiently.
In germany from January on all data traffic is recorded and stored, well they say for 6 month, but I doubt that. The governments plan to remotely install a trojan horse onto everybodys computer has raised serious issues, it was meant to be a trojan that can spy out all your data. I can not avoind to think, Hitler would have been proud of them. Somehow the flippin germans were always very efficient when it comes to BS like that. <grmbl>
There are chances that we will face a global economic crisis on a level like the great depression of the 30s, the indicators are surprisingly equal in deed. A friend of mine from canada, a retired school teacher just nailed it down to the point in my opinion.
It wasn't the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression. The antecedents were rooted in the Great War and the Roaring Twenties - make people want what they couldn't afford through incessant advertising; let the rich get richer while the working poor find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet; lower the tax rates on the upper crust under the guise of fallacious tax cuts for all; widen the gap between the miniscule "HAVES" and the ever ballooning "HAVE NOTS"; forget to steadily pay down the war debts; make tons of money on paper by artificially bloating stocks values; allow corrupt get rich schemes for the wealthy power brokers without government oversight, then say whoops when they get caught; mess up mortgages and loans, then foreclose on record numbers of families; keep telling the country that the economy is strong, everything will be OK; avoid government intervention programs to save those who are going to lose everything they've worked for - (Hoover's let them pull themselves up by the boot straps); allow an ineffective idiot president in power long enough to screw things up; ... etc. etc. etc.
You know, sometimes I envy people who have a strong faith, I guess it makes things easier from a psychological point of view.
Somehow, history has a way to repeat itself.
What will be the word of the year 2008? ....Refugee?
Don't know how stuff like that affects you folks, but thinking too much about all that has the effect of a deep rooted tiredness on me. This world is such an amazing place, full of miracles and amazing beauty, the power of creation to be seen around very corner, and what do we do with it?
