Greetings USED KARMA readers - and those of you who access this column through John Derrickson's PsyPlan(tm) site (www.psyplan.com)! Finally the outer planets have gone direct, so energies that have been stuck can start to open up again. One interesting harbinger of this energy is the courageous and heroic Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon. Judge Garzon is the person with the cohones to attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet from England to Spain to face charges of crimes against humanity. Although Pinochet is immune to prosecution in Chile (due to legislation he passed while dictator), because Spanish citizens were killed in Chile during those dark times the good Judge Garzon is attempting to deliver justice.
Ironically, the right-wing Spanish government is embarrassed by the entire affair and is opposed to Pinochet's extradition. However, the point is not whether Garzon succeeds or not. The point is not even whether Pinochet is tried and convicted for his extensive crimes against humanity. The point is that one individual has the guts to challenge the entire corrupt governmental power structure running this planet. If one individual can make that kind of a difference in world affairs, what can millions of like-minded individuals acting in concert do to change the destiny of this planet?
And now France wants to extradite Pinochet for crimes against humanity, while Spain wants to extradite Cuba's Fidel Castro for genocide. Is justice finally on its way? You decide.
The good thing about the immense greed of the ruling class collapsing the world's economy is that it lays to rest once and for all the self-serving fiction that free trade is good for the world. Free trade is only good for the rich people touting it. Meaningful economic and trade regulation is required for a healthy and functional global economy. But how did we get into such bad shape?
Let's start with the stock market. Several years ago, while working as a technology attorney for a large international Wall Street brokerage firm and investment bank, I had the opportunity to take a preparation course for the Series 7 exam. The Series 7 is the license that lets people become stockbrokers. I found the course fascinating and nauseating. Why? Because understanding the details of how the stock market works made me realize that the entire thing is set up to benefit rich folks. Rich people can insulate themselves against any market fluctuations and profit from it. The ordinary investor is going to lose big time if s/he stays in long enough. Did people learn this from the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987???
But why are things so bad now? Even rich people are suffering in this cycle. How could large hedge funds crash and burn so horribly? Answer: the old boy network is based on connections instead of merit. In other words, people were VERY VERY stupid. If you had invested large amounts of money with a hedge fund, wouldn't you want to examine in great detail what they were doing with your money? Of course you would. So why didn't all the rich folks who lost big time do this? Because they blindly trusted people who had made money in the past. They blindly trusted people who had made so much money they won Nobel prizes for economics. Because they stupidly believed that the market would go up forever. Because they lived in a fantasy of old-boy connections and thought they were invincible "masters of the universe," to steal a phrase from Tom Wolfe.
As usual, one must be wary of the government/corporate-controlled media. We keep hearing the television and radio talking heads - politicians, pundits and alleged journalists - talk about America's booming economy. Yet every day I pick up the business section of the New York Times and read about how major corporate profits are down significantly over the third quarter of last year (Disney and much of Wall Street), how many firms are laying off workers and going bankrupt. If the economy is in such a boom, why is it that corporate profits are down significantly and workers continue to get laid off?
You may have heard about ABC's blooper prescience in the November elections. It is routine for computer nerds in television news organizations to do dry runs the night before an election with dummy data. However, ABC accidentally made their Monday night dummy data public, with startling results. You can read the full story at www.freedomforum.org / technology / 1998 / 11 / 4abc.asp, but I'll summarize a few salient facts here.
It turns out that ABC accurately predicted winners in 61 out of 70 contests - a hit rate of 87%. Not only is this much higher than chance, but it is much higher than any pundit, analyst, psychic or bookie in history. Naturally ABC was rather embarrassed about the entire incident. It does raise the interesting question of whether or not we actually have free, fair and democratic elections in this country - or anywhere on this planet, for that matter.
While the idealist in me would love to believe that this ABC episode was truly a fluke, the realist in me believes otherwise. I simply have too much experience with statistical analysis to believe that this incident was random. In fact, I recently read a very interesting and totally frightening book about the New World Order people (George Bush, Madeline Albright, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Robert C. Byrd, Ronald Reagan, and a cast of mind-controlled thousands) that I highly recommend you all read. The book is called Trance Formation of America: The True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave by Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips. It is available from Amazon Books (www.amazon.com). After reading this book I find it wholly plausible to believe that all US elections are rigged. The ABC incident merely adds fuel to the fire.
But don't take my word for it - read Cathy O'Brien's book yourself and what you think!
I write this in the orb of Mercury retrograde. Mercury, the planet of communications, goes retrograde on November 22nd. Mercury retrograde really messes up all forms of communication. This is particularly true for this cycle, because Saturn is retrograde as well.
Thus I found it particularly interesting to note some interesting Internet phenomena. On November 6th I received the following humor piece via e-mail:
| "When John Glenn returns to Earth everybody wear ape suits. Pass it on." |
Aside from the basic hilarity of invoking the image to John Glenn coming back in the Space Shuttle to a movie set from "Planet of the Apes," it was even more interesting to remark upon how this e-mail initiated joke was making the rounds. When I got to work, I started telling the joke to my co-workers. One of my co-workers told me that he, too, had received the same e-mail that morning. Then I went to a party that evening and told the joke, and one of my friends said that he also had received this joke in the e-mail. This is very interesting, in light of the fact that my co-worker and my friend are not acquainted with each other, nor with the woman in Massachusetts who forwarded the joke in the first place.
Aside from the Internet's wonderful capacity to speed joke delivery, I find it very interesting to see how jokes circulate around my daily social network. Of course, those stupid and false virus messages circulate the Internet as well, but people forward those because they think they are helping others. (My old friend John Gilmore says these virus messages are the REAL viruses!) Humor is another matter. People forward jokes to people they like and people they think will appreciate their particular brand of humor. Thus it is arguable that jokes travel a different path than social service messages. Write and what you think.
Last year I had egg on my face when I predicted that Boris Yeltsin would die of natural causes before 1997 was over. Now, however, he is too sick to work. Members of his own government are telling the press that Yeltsin is a drunk who is usually too intoxicated to work. In any event, the Russian president has been canceling meetings and spending time recuperating from what is alleged to be bronchitis. I think it is pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that Yeltsin is seriously ill and possibly dying.
So I was off by a year, but I believe my failed prediction will be realized soon. Time is a dimension that is often very difficult for psychics to predict accurately. So perhaps I was seeing winter of this year instead of winter of last year (as I thought last year).
One thing I missed completely was Newt Gingrich's resignation from Congress. While we all knew his star would fall, it is interesting that the former feisty political pugilist is now walking away from confrontation so easily. I suspect it is because somebody blackmailed him with something so awful he did not want to turn into the next Monica Lewinsky. Given the man's moral character, it is not at all difficult to imagine the existence of some truly ugly dirt with Newt's name on.
Here's my psychic suspicion. I believe Newt was forced out by ultra-right forces in his own party. The extreme right is comprised of some truly nasty people who are delusional enough to actually believe that Republicans lost ground in the November elections because they weren't far enough to the right!!! Thus these people believe they are saving their party and their precious sociopathic agenda by forcing out "moderates" like Newt Gingrich.
The real message is that the people are fed up with a do-nothing congress that does not focus on the issues they care about (such as education and campaign finance reform), so it will be interesting to see if the new Congress actually pays attention to the people. Wouldn't it be novel for politicians to remember that the people are the reason they are in Washington in the first place? Of course, with all their obligations to the corporate interests that fill their campaign war chests one can't exactly fault them for forgetting they are there to serve the people. Let's all keep reminding them!
As usual, keep your eyes and ears open and what you think. Power to the people!
Copyright 1998 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.
This article represents the author's personal views and in no way shape or form reflects upon the author's employer, although the author's employer is very cool. See http://www.ericmarder.com.
Psychicbabble is a service mark of Marcy J. Gordon Copyright © 1998 Marcy J. Gordon Webmaster - John G. Derrickson - 1998NOV21 PsyPlan is a trademark of Psychic Planner, Inc.
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