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1 January 2010
An excellent
article by Niall Ferguson, author of THE ASSENT OF MONEY, appeared in
the November 28, 2009 issue of “NEWSWEEK”. The article was titled “An
Empire At Risk”. What makes it an excellent article is simply the
single-track-express of facts used to conjure fear—as in FEAR, as in
TERROR. According to the article, America, the “empire” of the
title, is going bankrupt because of its huge debt-to-GNP ratio. For the
year 2009, the debt was $1.6 trillion which is twice the amount the
government collects in individual tax revenue. This forces the
government to borrow even more money. A road to disaster? Really. . .
A few facts left out of Ferguson's fact
express include the $1.3 trillion 2001 Bush tax cuts which created a
mushrooming deficit, merrily ballooning as 9-11 and the Afghanistan and
Iraq wars sucked revenue for the political ether, “'cause we just don't
do tax increases regardless of circumstances”. Once upon a time, didn't
America pay for its wars? Taxes, war bonds, lemonade stands, etc.? But
the upshot is that at the end of World War II, American debt-to-GNP
ratio was twice what it is today. Yet, America got it under control.
Common sense, without the need to conjure FEAR and TERROR, tells us that
there are simply two ways to address the national debt crisis: lower
expenditures or increase taxes. It ain't rocket science. Yet. . . .
Ferguson apparently assumes that, going
forward, American politicians will be dolefully sitting on their mouths
and raise not a whimper or fart about the NATIONAL DEBT. He might want
to consult
THE
GREAT GAME OF POLITICS: WHY WE ELECT WHOM WE ELECT by Dick Stoken
(reviewed here in November 2008). If, as Stoken contends, America
arrived at its place in history by see-sawing between Republican
capitalism (the ruling elite doctrine of “Old Europe”) and Democrat
social egalitarianism (Jeffersonian everyman idealism), then the
electorate will pull the plug on a rising national debt in due course.
(The only concern here is that the Republican Party, once the party of
debt-reducers, as in curtailing expenditures 'cause they don't do tax
increases regardless of circumstance', seems to have been co-opted by an
angry bunch of bed-room police and blood-pals whose mantra, “family
values”, places the welfare of the republic in the category of a LEAVE
IT TO BEAVER type beauty contest. And given the Republican Party's two
previous onstage performances, most recently represented by George W.
Bush, their propensity seems to be to pile on the debt “for a good
cause”, the same as their Democratic Party counterparts, 'cause we don't
do tax increases regardless of circumstances'. . .
Ferguson observes that spending on
everything “other than health, Social Security, and interest payments”
will drop from 12 percent to 8.4 percent of GDP. This is bad for an
“empire”. He states, “As interest payments eat into the budget,
something has to give—and that something is nearly always defense
expenditure”. Did he consider the F-22 Raptor fighter jet as “defense
expenditure”? Congress added $2.7 billion to the 2009 supplemental
budget to buy more C-17 and C-130 aircraft—neither of which were
requested by the Defense Department. Was that $2.7 billion “defense
expenditure”? What is “defense expenditure”? What if we call it the
Defense Industrial Complex Welfare System, or DICWS for short? Smart
versus stupid; reduce the deficit by reducing expenditures or by raising
taxes. Or, maybe we can do both—reduce expenditures and raise taxes.
Where are leaders when you need them?
New topic. A
little Nostradamus the Prophet conjectural analysis: Nostradamus speaks
of a twenty-seven year war:
Centruy VIII, Quatrain 77
L’antichrist trios bien tost annichiliez,
Vingt & sept and sang durera sa guerre
Les heretiques morts, captifs, exilez,
Sang corps humain eau rogie gresler terre.
The Third Antichrist soon annihilated,
Twenty-seven years his bloody war will last:
The heretics dead, captives exiled,
Blood soaked bodies, and a reddened, icy hail
covering the earth
You can fiddle with the HISTORY CHANNEL
over whether Nostradamus saw the future or whether his prophecies are
over-cooked oatmeal. But here's our take.
The Soviets invaded
Afghanistan on December 24, 1979.
On February 15, 1989, the
Soviet invasion force left Afghanistan, defeated for all intents and
purposes.
Meanwhile, Iraq invaded Iran
on September 27, 1980, ten months after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan
on December 24, 1979.
You can add 27 years to December, 1979, when
the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and arrive at December 30, 2006, the
date Saddam Hussein was executed.
Was Saddam Hussein Nostradamus' Third
Antichrist?
In 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraq
invaded Kuwait which in turn lead to the U. S. invasion of Iraq in 1991
(the Persian Gulf War).
The Taliban took over
Afghanistan in 1996, starting their march to power in 1994 in the
southern part of the country.
Finally, with the aid of the
Taliban in 2001, Islamic extremists attacked the United States which
lead to the United States invasion of Afghanistan in the same year. The
United States then invaded Iraq which in turn lead to the execution of
Saddam Hussein.
There is something missing here.
Nostradamus designated three Antichrists. All
grew out of the “abomination” of the French Revolution. Napoleon
Bonaparte was simply the French Revolution personified—Man usurping
God's orderly universe. Adolph Hitler and the Nazis brought the French
Revolution to its natural zenith—Man and his religion of science
dictating the value of human life. The third Antichrist will be
combination of the these two.
The way Nostradamus apparently saw this, the
Soviet Union gave birth or laid the groundwork for the Third Antichrist.
The foundation of Soviet communism was the idea of never-ending,
perpetual revolution. The “worker's” utopia would not be safe until the
entire world was a one-world worker's proletariat. The aim of communism
was to eradicate social and spiritual hierarchies—especially the
hierarchy of a divine. In other words, the Soviet idea of communism was
simply a continuation of the French Revolution—a bastard child run amok.
The radical Islamic extremist movement is an
extension of the Soviet Union's world view—the caliphate in which every
person is under the yoke of one version of Islam dictated by the
interpreter of the Prophet Mohammed. The radical Islamic extremists
are seeking to accomplish the same objective sought Soviet communism.
The difference of course is that the radical Islamic extremists see
their “ideals” as God-Man following the science of Man-God.
So, how does Saddam Hussein fit into the
global terrorism of unremitting communist revolution and an Islamic
fundamentalist world-dictatorship devoid of a crowning spiritual or
divine hierarchy? More to the point, was Saddam Hussein Notradamus'
Third Antichrist?
For the answer, look at the last line of the
quatrain: “Blood soaked bodies, and a reddened, icy hail covering the
earth”.
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