The Fire

I feel as if the world is covered in gunpowder and the sparks are flying.

The Middle-East, like a dropped cigarette in an old cotton-stuffed couch, has been smoldering for many years.  Like that couch, it will eventually flare up and burn the whole house down.  India and Pakistan are in constant conflict, trading bullets and bombs, while Pakistan is quickly being overtaken by Taliban influence and Radical Islamist terror.

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen ... all of them and more ... face a bloody and uncertain future.  The Middle-East is a monstrous powder-keg of conflict.  Nobody knows what future they have, only that the "Arab Spring," created by Radical Islamists (Al Queda, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.), is designed to turn the entirety of the region into the next Caliphate and destroy Israel and the Jewish people altogether.

In Europe, from Britain to the Czech Republic, and Norway to Greece, the same Islamist terrorists threaten to overtake the population.  Paris is entirely ringed by vast Muslim communities whose populations grow at an alarming rate while non-Muslim birthrates have declined to the point of negative growth.

Socio-communist public sector Unions have bankrupted nearly every European nation with entitlement demands.

Europe stands on the brink of collapse, propping each other up with money they borrowed from their own banks (and ours, too, since B. Bernanke's Fed has been secretly dumping fake American money into that same pit).  Most places, if you borrow money from yourself, you end up paying all of the NSF fees to the bank AND the people you wrote the bad check to.

Not in our 'global' economy.

Here, you simply print more, or have the money electronically created so you just send some electrons from one bank to another across a network.

Valueless money from an empty bank to empty banks across the planet.  Nothing backs the money except hot air and rhetoric.  We all know that the rhetoric is useless hot air, as well.

Russia and its ally 'states' are governed by old-school communist leaders and their mafia.  Her people suffered under the USSR and continue to suffer under the current government.  There is very little hope for their near-future.

China continues it inexorable march toward subjugation of the planet with its "Thousand-year Plan" while nearly all of her people survive on a subsistence-level economy.  Taiwan's future is precarious at best, with China's army looming in the near distance.  India and Pakistan are in constant religious war with one-another.  Taiwan's future is precarious at best, with China's army looming in the near distance.

The Korean Peninsula faces one of two futures. Either many more years of conflict with their brethren, while the North and her people make bread from grass and weeds and the South prospers with Western influence; or they'll be faced with war and death until one or the other succeeds in unifying the peninsula.  The USA will be in the middle of that one until the end of time.

The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and almost every other Pacific and Oceanic nation face the same fate as Asia and Africa - Communist takeover, Islamist takeover and economic destruction from within and without.

the African continent, birthplace of the human race, is in constant civil war.   Her shores are patrolled by pirates and her lands controlled by evil men.  Here, too, are the Muslim terrorists sowing the seeds of destruction.  No one seems to care about Africa.

South America, Central America and Mexico are endangered by socialist dictators, drug cartels, rebel insurgents, government imposed poverty, and class warfare on a massive scale.  Look anywhere in Brazil and  you will find islands of prosperity nestled behind high walls, surrounded by gigantic slums known as "Favelas."  Seldom are the differences so distinct and obvious as they are in Brazil.

Iceland crumbles under debt and volcanic ash, suffering the same future as Europe, crushed by the demands of socialist policies and public-sector union entitlements.

Who remains?

The States of America, once united in purpose, are now stumbling blindly along, leaving behind the blessings of Liberty, and absorbing the worst parts of the world's ills.  Among them: Europe's money problems, American Socialist and Communist politicians praise Mao, who once starved seventy million people (food farmers, no less) to death in order to feed his communist armies.  Public sector unions drain the coffers of their state tax accounts, garnering no-cost and low-cost health care plans provided by taxpayers that often have no insurance at all , lavish retirement packages that last well into the lives of their grandchildren, all the while the real producers and earners in America literally pay all of the taxes of the rest of the population.  In addition, it has come to light that we, the American Taxpayers, not only cover all of the taxes for 50% of America (those that, every year, pay no taxes at all), but we are also propping up friendly and unfriendly nations, without our knowledge or approval, with those same tax dollars.

Yes, the planet is covered in gunpowder, and sparks are everywhere.  If you have a God, now would be the time to pray to him or her or them or whoever.

My greatest hope for the future is that whatever follows our current situation will be a world of Liberty and Personal Freedom.

My greatest fear for the future is that it is the same as this present.