Priests for export?

Indian seminarians around 400 of them, good prospects where some of then can be sent to America.

Click on colored link.

America as mission area.

A Catholic priest from Kentucky is sorting out emails to find out if there are priest outside America who wants to serve Kentucky.

Even priests can be exported? Or is America another mission area?

China, rising giant.

How China was able to hurdle its development problems. A short clip update.

Overseas parents, a generation affected.

There are millions of Filipinos who are abroad because the State has failed to generate employment. According to some economist, the failure of the State to industrialize, to harness their material forces towards machine based production of goods.

Due to this underdevelopment overseas worker becomes a function of that very underdevelopment.

Click on colored link for full article.

One for entertainment

Obama is carrying Hussein

Obama will try to win over Muslim to the side of American democracy.

A critical analysis on who are going to attend in this global conference.

Click on colored link to lead you to full article.

Labor in America

In the US it is the labor sector that bears the brunt of the economic crisis.

Click on the colored link.

Is China going to rescue America?

No, according to Thomas Friedman. But China is closely related to America consumers.

America has a solution according to Friedman.

Best of luck.

Click on the colored link above.

World most influential company.

World most influential company.

Just click on the colored link.

Christmas and the Jewish Chanukah

Chanukah & Christmas: When Hope Triumphs Over Cynical Realism
By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Christmas and Chanukah share a spiritual message: that it is possible to bring light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But whereas Christmas focuses on the birth of a single individual whose life and mission was itself supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national liberation struggle involving an entire people who seek to remake the world through struggle with an oppressive political and social order: the Greek conquerors (who ruled Judea from the time of Alexander in 325 B.C.E.) and the Hellenistic culture that they sought to impose.

Though the holiday celebrated by lighting candles for 8 nights recalls the victory of the guerrilla struggle led by the Maccabees against the Syrian branch of the Greek empire, and the subsequent rededication (Chanukah in Hebrew) of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C.E., there was a more difficult struggle which took place (and in some dimensions still rages) within the Jewish people between those who hoped for a triumph of a spiritual vision of the world embedded (as it turned out, quite imperfectly) in the Maccabees and a cynical realism that had become the common sense of the merchants and priests who dominated the more cosmopolitan arena of Jerusalem.

The cynical realists in Judea, among them many of the priests charged with preserving the Temple, argued that Greek power was overwhelming and that it made far greater sense to accommodate to it than to resist. The Greek globalizers promised advances in science and technology that could benefit international trade and enrich the local merchants who sided with them, even though the taxes that accompanied their rule impoverished the Jewish peasants who worked the land and eked out a subsistence living. Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theatre of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

To the Maccabees, the guerrilla band that they assembled to fight the Greek Empire and its Seleucid dynasty in Syria, and to many of the Jewish supporters of that struggle, the issue of Greek militarism, social injustice and oppression were far more salient than the accomplishments of Greek high culture. Whatever might be the value of Athenian democracy, the reality that it exported to the world through Alexander and his successors was oppressive and exploitative.


The "old-time religion" that the Maccabbees fought to preserve had revolutionary elements in it that went far beyond the Greeks in articulating a liberatory vision: not only in the somewhat abstract demand to "love your neighbor as yourself," "love the stranger," and pursue justice and peace, but also concretely in Torah prescriptions to abolish all debts every seven years, allow the land to lie fallow every seven years, refrain from all work and activities connected to control over the earth once a week on Sabbath, redistribute the land every fifty years (the Jubilee) back to its original equal distribution.

The identification with the oppressed, enshrined in Judaism in its insistence that Jews were derived from slaves who had been liberated, and in its focus on retelling the story of being oppressed that was central to the Torah, seemed atavistic and naïve to the more educated and enlightened Jewish urban dwellers, who pointed to the reactionary tribal elements of Torah and sided with the Greeks when they declared circumcision and study of Torah illegal and banned the observance of the Sabbath.

The miracle of Chanukah is that so many people were able to resist the overwhelming "reality" imposed by the imperialists and to stay loyal to a vision of a world based on generosity, love of stranger, and loyalty to an invisible God who promised that life could be based on justice and peace. It was these "little guys," the powerless, who sustained a vision of hope that inspired them to fight against overwhelming odds, against the power of technology and science organized in the service of domination, and despite the fact that they were dismissed as terrorists and fundamentalist crazies. When this kind of energy, what religious people call "the Spirit of God," becomes ingredient in the consciousness of ordinary people, miracles ensue.

It is this same radical hope, whether rooted in religion or secularist belief systems, that remains the foundation for all who continue to struggle for a world of peace and social justice at a time when the champions of war and injustice dominate the political and economic institutions of our own society, often with the assistance of their contemporary cheerleading religious leaders. It is that radical hope that is celebrated this Chanukah by those Jews who have not yet joined the contemporary Hellenists.

Radical hope is also the message of Christmas. Like Chanukah, it is rooted in the ancient tradition of a winter solstice celebration to affirm humanity's belief that the days, now grown shortest around December 23rd, will grow long again as the sun returns to heat the earth and nourish the plants. Just as Jews light holiday lights at this time of year, so Christians transform the dark into a holiday of lights, with beautiful Christmas trees adorned with candles or electric lights, and lights on the outside and inside of their homes.

Christianity took the hope of the ancients and transformed it into a hope for the transformation of a world of oppression. The birth of a newborn, always a signal of hope for the family in which it was born, was transformed into the birth of the messiah who would come to challenge existing systems of economic and political oppression, and bring a new era of peace on earth, social justice and love. Symbolizing that in the baby Jesus was a beautiful way to celebrate and reaffirm hope in the social darkness that has been imposed on the world by the Roman empire, and all its successors right up through the contemporary dominance of a globalized rule of corporate and media forces that have permeated every corner of the planet with their ethos of selfishness and materialism.

Seeing Jesus as the Son of God, and as an intrinsic part of God, was also a way of giving radical substance to the notion that every human being is created in the image of God. For God to come on earth, bring a holy message of love and salvation, and then to die at the hands of the imperialists and be resurrected to come back at some future date was and is a beautiful message of hope for a world not yet redeemed, and became an inspiration to hundreds of millions who saw in it the comforting message that the rule of the powerful was not the ultimate reality of existence. And yet, using the specificity of one human being and identifying him as God, a move made by St. Paul but not by Jesus himself, did not fit into the framework of Judaism, which could not accept Jesus as messiah either because of its view that the messiah would bring an end to wars and all forms of oppression, an end that had not yet taken place during or after Jesus' death.

Jews and Christians have much in common in celebrating at this time of year. We certainly want to use this holiday season to once again affirm our commitment to end the war in Iraq, to end global poverty and hunger by embracing the Network of Spiritual Progressives' version of the Global Marshall Plan, to reduce carbon emissions and population growth and to save the world from ecological destruction. We live in dark times--but these holidays help us reaffirm our hope for a fundamentally different reality that we can help bring about in the coming years. And that despite the fact that we must acknowledge that the Chanukah revolution led to the rule of the Jewish Hashmona-im whose rule devolved into tyranny and self-destructiveness, and that the beauty vision of early Christianity devolved into the tyranny and anti-Semitism of Constantinian forms of the merger of religion with state power.

There are reasons to not mush together these separate holidays. The tremendous pressure of the capitalist marketplace has been to take these holidays, eliminate their actual revolutionary messages, and instead turn them into a secular focus whose only command is "Be Happy and Buy." One might have imagined that the current economic meltdown would significantly modify these messages, but that has not yet happened in December, 2008. The huge pressure to be happy and the media's ability to portray others as beaming with joy makes a huge number of people despondent because they actually don't feel that kind of joy, and imagine that they are the only ones who don't, and hence feel terrible about themselves, something they seek to repair by buying, drugging or drinking themselves into happiness. And when that too doesn't work for very long, they become all the more unhappy with themselves or with others. The pressure to buy as a way of showing that you really care about others puts many people into the position of spending more than they have, putting themselves into further debt, and then feeling depressed about that. Still others have no way to buy "enough" on credit, and then their children, saturated by a media specially attuned to the best ways to market to toddlers and everyone older through their teen years, make their parents or others feel inadequate because they have not bought what the media portrays as the standard for what a "normal family" buys for the holidays. Jews, seeking to fit into American society, grabbed onto this path of the holidays "not really being religious but only a time to celebrate," and thus many embraced Christmas in the one way they could-buying presents for their non-Jewish friends and neighbors and celebrating Christmas as a "non-sectarian, American holiday." But this well-intentioned move to fit into American society only helped the capitalist secularists, and unintentionally further undermined the ability of Christians to hold on to the religious and spiritual intent of their holiday. This is why spiritual progressives of the Christian faith have urged Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives to NOT celebrate the holiday as one undifferentiated "holiday season" but to celebrate them as religious and spiritual holidays and to affirm the specific religious message of each one depending on which fits your particular faith.

Yet we also want to affirm the goodness in what secularists have tried to do with these holidays in removing them from their religious specificity. There has been far too much anger and killing in the name of religions in the history of humanity. We at the Network of Spiritual Progressives do not believe that most of that killing was actually motivated by religious differences so much as by power struggles that were given religious justifications and appearances. And we are all too well aware that in the 20th century over a 150 million people were slaughtered in the name of secular belief systems and secular powers (1st WW, 2nd WW, Korean War, Vietnam War, Stalinist gulag, Maoist gulag, colonial and anti-colonial wars, etc.), so we are not going to buy any notion that says that eliminating religion will increase world peace (though we wouldn't shed any tears if the fundamentalist and ultra-nationalist forms of religion disappeared into the dustbins of history). Many of those who have sought to secularize the holiday season do so from the fear that without that kind of secularization, it will be harder for people to express caring and mutual support if they have to do so through the frameworks of religions of which they are not apart. Certainly, when it comes to interfaith marriages and families, the need for this kind of smooth path to affirming both traditions is really much needed. And yet, as a Jew, I want to recognize the particular importance to Christians of having Christmas be about Christ, not about gifts and drinking and merry making but about the meaning of the Christ for Christian belief. In this respect, there is a fundamental asymmetry here. Christmas and Easter are the main Christian holidays, while Chanukah is only a minor holiday that has become major only because some (mostly assimilating) Jews in the West felt the need to provide their children with something that could compensate them for not having Christmas with its attractive glitz and lights and toys. But our major holidays are Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur and Passover (and of course, weekly Shabbat), and so when Chanukah gets secularized we don't lose as much as Christians do when Christmas is secularized.

As we enter this holiday season, let us stay conscious on all these levels, resist the allure and the seductive charm of the capitalist marketplace and its capacity to reduce all reality and all loving to the consumption of "things," and instead return to the deep spiritual messages of our own traditions, while lovingly supporting each other to stay true to our own deepest truths.

And as we affirm hope, so we must also remind ourselves to not allow our hopes for the Obama presidency to silence our prophetic critique of the powerful should it turn out that those hopes are not realized in the actual policies followed by Obama and his array of establishment-oriented politicians appointed to high offices in his Administration. We can at once celebrate the incredible advance of having white America vote into the presidency a Black man, and yet still insist that this new Administration embrace policies that favor peace and abandon the fantasy that security will come through domination or military victories, that economic and environmental well-being can be consistent with endless "growth" and expansion, or that the quality of human relationships can be improved while living in an economic system that values selfishness, materialism and "looking out for number one." So just as Christmas and Chanukah represent ideals that were quickly distorted by those who tried to make them consistent with the power-structures of a world based on inequality and domination, so too our contemporary victory of the Obama forces can be distorted. Our job is to stay true to the ideals and challenge the distortions, even while celebrating the moments of hope.

Chag urim sameyach-happy holiday of lights.
Chag Chanukah sameyach-happy Chanukah.
Merry Christmas.
Happy Kwanza.
Mubarack Eid.

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun www.tikkun.org
Chair, (with Sister Joan Chittister and Princeton U. Professor Cornel West) The Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org

Rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley and San Francisco

Bagosara and two others gets life sentence in Rwanda.

Bagosara of Rwanda gets life sentence.

Just click on the colored link.

No Better Idea by Antonio Abaya

No Better Idea

By Antonio C. Abaya

Written on Dec. 17, 2008

For the Standard Today,

December 18 issue

This should be titled Anachronistic III as it is a sequel to the previous articles of the same title, and it seeks to answer the question of Can the Arroyo Government defeat the Communist insurgency by the year 2010, as it pompously claims it will.

My answer to that question is No.

The successful countries around us defeated their Communist insurgencies, in the 60s and 70s, by a combination of a) draconian measures that hounded their Communists without let-up, and b) a broad-based prosperity, brought about by correct economic strategies that made Communist ideology irrelevant and uninteresting to most of their people..

Such draconian measures, exemplified by the Internal Security Act (ISA) that the Malaysian and Singaporean governments inherited from the British colonial government aimed at destroying the above-ground front organizations of the Communist movement, even ahead of the armed guerillas.

In pursuit of that strategy, the ISA empowered the Malaysian and Singaporean governments to legally and constitutionally arrest and detain, indefinitely and without trial, anyone merely suspected of being a Communist or Communist sympathizer.

But that was in the 60s and 70s, at the height of the Cold War, when Communism was considered a global threat and the Soviet Union and Maoist China actually lived up to that reputation by sponsoring and arming "wars of national liberation" in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

At the same time that they marginalized their Communist malcontents with draconian measures, Malaysia and Singapore laid the groundwork for broad-based prosperity in the 70s and 80s by gearing their economies towards the export manufactured goods and by riding the tourism boom in the 90s. (The Philippines did neither one.)

So for the average Malaysian and Singaporean citizen, there was a trade-off. In exchange for diminished civil and political rights – much of which continue to the present – they enjoyed general prosperity that reached all levels of their multi-racial societies.

Such was not the case in the Philippines, where the authoritarian President Ferdinand Marcos employed only half-baked measures against the local Communist movement and at the same time did very little to upgrade the Philippine economy from archaic import substitution to the more wealth-creating export of manufactured goods.

For example, at the same time that he allowed his military to assassinate selected Communist leaders, he also permitted the Communist-led labor unions of the KMU to organize openly and to stage strike after strike against our few export-oriented industries (e.g. garments factories) until their owners got fed up and moved their factories to other countries.

This would never have been allowed at all by the constitutional authoritarians of Malaysia and Singapore, much less by the military governments that ruled South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand in the 70s and 80s.

In the first decade of the 21^st century, Communism has faded as a global threat, having collapsed from the accumulated weight of its failures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-91 and the calibrated transformation of China (since 1979) and Vietnam (since 1986) into capitalist economies.

Any attempt now to revive the draconian anti-Communist measures that were standard in the region in the 60s, 70s and 80s would be universally condemned and would make the Philippines an international pariah. It would dry up the flow of foreign direct investments and official development aid for this country.

At the same time, having missed the exports bus in the 70s and 80s and the tourism bus in the 90s, the Philippines does not enjoy the broad-based prosperity that is self-evident in South Korea, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and even in Indonesia and Vietnam.

Given this absence of broad-based prosperity and the now political incorrectness of draconian measures against the Communist movement, it is hard to envision how President Arroyo can live up to her promise of defeating the Communist insurgency by 2010.

A credible, visionary president, armed with a Better Idea, could conceivably overcome these handicaps and convince the remaining 5,000 Communist insurgents to abandon the armed struggle and return to the mainstream. It is safe to assume that most of them are no longer ideologically driven but are merely reacting to conditions of social injustice, poor governance and hopeless poverty.

But President Arroyo is neither a visionary nor is she credible. Her concept of a Better Idea is limited to looking for creative ways to remain in power beyond 2010. Unless she steps down or is removed by force, there is no future for this country. *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

Black Hole, short film

FaceBook now used for sending legal papers

FaceBook is now used for sending legal papers by Australian lawyer.

Portugal's tradition

One for tradition, Portugal's Christmas fish.


http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/16/europe/16cod.php

When mud burries your village.

Just click on link below:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/15/asia/mud.php

Parents fined in Korea

In Korea parents can be liable for the crime of their son.

Copy paste link below to your browser.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7782245.stm

In China it will be electric cars.

China is fast producing their electric hybrid cars. What will they come up next? And what would happen to American car manufacturing?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7779261.stm

What is happening to America?

(Forwarded to Tapatt by Krip Yuson)

The Coming American Revolution?

I was shocked that Fox would air such a segment.

They mentioned that before 2012:

1. America will be the first undeveloped country
2. Revolution, food shortages, riots, marches
3. Food instead of gifts for Christmas

Seriously, I was shocked. The segment lasted for more than 6 minutes. He said things like parents shouldn't send their kids to get business degrees or psychology degrees and send them to community colleges to learn a real skill. He kept implying that food will become the most important thing for us. He said the retail industry will die off completely but local markets will thrive.

The host even introduced him as a guy who's "predictions always come true".

Gerald Celente's website: http://www.trendsresearch...

Here's a well written prediction from Celente: http://www.earthfiles.com...

After Wall Street Bailout, 
Is Main Street Headed for Depression?

© 2008 by Linda Moulton Howe


"This Wall Street bailout is really taxation without representation." 
- Gerald Celente, Editor and Publisher, The Trends Journal

October 17, 2008 Rhinebeck, New York - The American government bought $250 billion in ownership of United States banks this week of October 13th. The week before, it authorized nearly a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street that included even saving the world's largest insurance company, A. I. G.

But what about all the struggling Americans on Main Street who are watching their 401(K) savings and their pensions shrink as the Dow moves up and down 700 points a day? What about the estimated million Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosures in the sub-prime mortgage mess? Who is bailing out the Main Street taxpayers who are being used by the United States government to bail out Wall Street? And what happens to shopping malls and other retailers as the government reported this week that retail sales are down 1.2% in September 2008 - and are expected to keep falling?

Virginia Cervasio, Exec. Dir., of the Lee County Suicide Resource Center in Florida told Associated Press this week: "A lot of people are telling us they are losing everything. They're losing their homes; they're going into foreclosure; they've lost their jobs."

On October 13, 2008, Associated Press reported: "As Economy Sinks, Officials Fear Violent Solutions"

- An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide.

- A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

- In Massachusetts, a housewife who had hidden her family's mounting financial crisis from her husband sends a note to the mortgage company warning: 'By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead.' Then Carlene Balderrama shot herself to death, leaving an insurance policy and a suicide note on a table.

- In Ocala, Florida, Roland Gore shot his wife and dog in March 2008 and then set fire to the couple's home, which had been in foreclosure, before killing himself. His case was one of several in which people have killed spouses or pets, destroyed property or attacked police before taking their own lives.


On October 9, 2008, Gerald Celente, publisher and editor of the highly respected Trends Journal issued a Trend Alert headlined: "Washington Bailout A Bust. Depression to Follow." This week I asked him why a Trend Alert about an economic depression when the American government seems to be doing everything it can to hold off financial collapse?

Gerald Celente, Editor and Publisher, The Trends Journal, Rhinebeck, New York:"All they are doing is throwing good money after bad. This is unprecedented. This isn't the United States of America. It's now the United Soviet States of America. They are buying banks, brokerages, insurance companies. We (U. S. government) now own the world's largest insurance company! And mortgage companies. And they are doing it all with taxpayer money. So, anyone with a little common sense, Linda, could figure it out.

If the boys on Wall Street botched a deal before, what makes anyone think that the inept people in Washington are going to pull it off any better? They are not. What they (government bureaucrats) have better than the scammers on Wall Street is that they (government) has unlimited funds from the U. S. Treasury by taxing the people and taking all the money they want to do their deals. So, nothing good is going to come out of this. All they are doing is bailing out the preferred shareholders, the foreign banks that have loaned the money – all on the backs of the American people. This is a 'Foetus Tax' in the sense that generations are going to have to pay for this. This will do nothing, nothing! to stop the economic depression that is coming. All it will do is bailout the 'too big to fail' companies.

WHY DID THE DOLLAR GO UP DURING THE CHAOS?

Gold went down, the dollar went up. The markets are so highly manipulated. There are reports coming out of banks shorting gold positions by the hundreds of thousands trying to keep gold prices down. There are reports of people lining up in Europe and other countries to buy gold and cashing out.

Because when people realize that their paper is not worth the paper it's printed on and people start going into gold, the whole system could collapse immediately. So, they are doing everything they can to prop the dollar up and to push gold prices down. They are propping the dollar up also, so that the people that are in dollars that want to get out have an opportunity, such as the Chinese and all the other foreign banks that are holding so much of the dollar debt.

WHO HAS THE ABILITY TO PROP UP THE U. S. DOLLAR?

The central banks because remember they are in control of the printing press. So you have coordination between the world central banks and the Federal Reserve and they are trading heavily into the markets to keep it going.

SO, THE CENTRAL BANKS MIGHT HAVE MORE EFFECT ON WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH THE DOW NOW THAN JUST NORMAL STOCK INVESTORS?

Absolutely! The game is rigged. It's being rigged in broad daylight and we see it right in front of us.

Goldman Sachs has now taken over the White House with Henry Paulson in Treasury. When they had the A. I. G. bailout, the biggest financial insurance company in the world. They just got $85 billion and just asked for another $40 billion and we taxpayers just paid for a half million dollars worth of perks for their A.I.G. Commissars to go to the resorts like they used to do in the Soviet Union.

Do you know who the only person sitting in on that meeting was outside of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve? It was Blankfein from Goldman Sachs! It's criminal activity from top to bottom.

WHAT DOES THAT LEAVE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WITH IN TERMS OF ANY KIND OF POWER TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM?

It leaves them with anger and when they are broke and desperate, that's when denial no longer rules. Denial, by the way, is still pretty prevalent among a lot of people. But when the reality hits and they see how bad things are, you're going to start to see tax revolts. It's going to start taking place at the local level. People can't afford these school taxes. They can't afford the property taxes. I mean it's a joke! Property taxes keep going up and they keep re-evaluating. But when the value goes down, the bureaucrats don't lower the taxes. What is going on here? People are not going to be able to afford it and that's when the tax revolt happens and that's what we are going to see.

What Could 2009 America Look Like?

YOU HAVE BEEN SO ACCURATE SINCE 2007 IN CALLING EXACTLY WHAT HAS UNFOLDED IN 2008. COULD YOU HELP THE GENERAL NORTH AMERICAN AUDIENCE UNDERSTAND WHAT THE TRENDS JOURNAL AND INSTITUTE WOULD SEE IN DETAIL AS WE GO FORWARD NOW FROM OCTOBER 2008 TO OCTOBER 2009?

First, we have to remember there are many wild cards that are thrown on the deck that nobody can ever anticipate and that's why nobody can really predict the future. You can see the face of it, but you really never know what's going to happen (in detail).

Having said that, there might be wars. Geopolitical tensions are always coming to light just as happened this past summer with Georgia invading South Ossettia and the belligerency shown by the United States on behalf of Georgia in support of their invasion. So that was the beginning of a new Cold War. How is that going to play out? We're not sure. But here's what we know, for example, about that. We know when that happened, the Russian stock market collapsed and it has not recovered since. So, the Russians are very angry at America for having instigated that war, as the Russians believe. So, we don't know all the geopolitical tensions.

If things remain constant on the economic and political fronts, what we're going to see in the beginning of the New Year 2009 is a very cold winter. February and March 2009 are going to be very, very bleak. We're going to see the depression really start to set in.

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF A DEPRESSION?

We don't go by unemployment numbers. They reached almost 25% in the last Depression of 1929. Now, there will be masses of working poor doing two to three jobs just to make ends meet, plus you're going to have a lot of people unemployed as well – probably in the 15% level at least. Again, the numbers are cooked all the time because what happens is that once a person is no longer looking for work and their unemployment benefits have run out, the government no longer counts them as unemployed!

Again, the United Soviet States of America! Just as the bureaucrats don't include energy and food into the core inflation numbers.

Mall and Retail Store Collapses

This whole notion that we need a Wall Street is a fallacy because Wall Street killed Main Street by giving all the real estate developers money and special tax breaks and grants given by the cities and states to build all these huge malls and outlets that have sapped the vitality out of Main Street. That vitality is going to be re-invigorated and it's going to start now in the New Year 2009. You're going to see more vitality spring up in the dead areas because we're only talking now in the media about the financial collapses. Let's start talking about the retail collapses that are going to follow soon. You're going to see big name retailers buckle under and go under. You're going to see malls become ghost malls.

Desperate People, Tent Cities, Rise in Crime

It's going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we're going to see many more.

We did a piece about self-storage units really taking on the true meaning of their name. People are going to start living in these things and it's going to be better than living in a tent out in the street or risking your life in a homeless shelter.

We're going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It's going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It's going to come as a shock and with it, there's going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people's minds weren't wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody's comprehension.

Tax Revolts

WILL THIS COUNTRY EVER CHANGE BACK TO WHAT IT WAS BEFORE THIS CORRUPT COLLAPSE?

There will be a revolution in this country. It's not going to come yet, but it's going to come down the line and we're going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.

We're very confident of that because as we look through history – tracking trends is a way of understanding where we are, how we got here and where we're going. Throughout the entire 19th Century, and even into the early 20th Century, the major issue was the central banks taking over the country. That's why you had people like Andrew Jackson. It's been a major issue since our founding fathers and will continue to be. This is only a temporary take over.

BUT HOW DO THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE NON-WALL STREET PEOPLE GET ENOUGH LEVERAGE TO HAVE A REVOLUTION AGAINST A CORRUPT WALL STREET AND GOVERNMENT IN TERMS OF THEIR PRIORITIES?

The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That's going to be the big one because people can't afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You're going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.

From that taxation issue because that's what's going on right now – this Wall Street bailout is really taxation without representation. It worked before; it will work again. That's what we see as being the glue that brings this third party movement together because now it's not a question of becoming involved because it's a political or ideological belief. It's in your pocketbook. It's staring you in the face. People cannot make ends meet. What are they doing? They're going around begging to bailout disenfranchised Wall Street executives?!?

No, you're going to start seeing the revolution and it's going to take the form of tax revolts.

Main Street Renaissance?

You're going to see a lot of changes that are going to make it better for the average person. The system right now is built on too-big-to-fails. There's not enough money in the world to save them. So, we're going to see a Renaissance as well. Something old is dying and something new is being born.

DO YOU MEAN THAT THERE COULD BE SOME SORT OF REJUVENATION BECAUSE PRICES WILL BE FORCED DOWN TO SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE CAN HANDLE?

The prices will be forced down, but we're going to go through a period of hyper-inflation the likes of which we have never seen before. The government is just printing money on a daily basis. They are just manufacturing it out of thin air! So, we're going to see hyper-inflation, the kind you used to see in Argentina and Brazil when they went through currency crises. The prices are going to go lower, but in real dollar terms, it's still going to cost a lot.

Where the change is going to come about is that people are going to start re-thinking about what consumerism is about. That's the real dynamic change. You can't buy what you can't afford and don't need. That's going to be a wake up call. You don't borrow to build. You only build with profits.

So, as that happens, we're going to see more community spirit. The small towns that made this country great in the first place are going to re-emerge. With that, family, friends, relatives – a whole different structure starts taking place rather than doing it all on your own, you don't need anybody, you can make it to the top mentality. So again, something old is dying and something new is being born. *****

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Read CNN's article.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/05/happiness.social.network/index.html?eref=rss_latest