26 Nov 2007
The end of America!
24 Nov 2007
Death of Mrs Hoeh
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Isabell Flora (Kunkel) Hoeh
15 May 1924 to 21 November 2007
Mother is remembered for a skip in her step and a songbird's "hello" for each of us. Our days began with the sound of Mom in the pre-dawnkitchen promising a sunlit day. This prepared us for each day and Mother then had time to enjoy her garden.
Her pioneer spirit of mid-west origin had opportunity to mingle with metropolitan and even global society. In this she was friendly andhad a kind or at least a considered and tempered word for all she encountered.
Like a tree in a favorite sitting place, memory of her gives moment to contemplate the gravity of life's journey.
The family wishes to thank you for your thoughtful and heartwarming cards and letters which supported us and our Mother over the lastfew years. There will be a private service for family only.
Donations in her memory can be made to your local food bank.
19 Nov 2007
Chinese vs EU economy: there is no contest!
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November 17, 2007
Economic Juggernaut Of China Just A Mirage?
For the last few years, analysts have warned that China's growing economic power would threaten America's leadership position on trade and and the global economy. Two days ago, in a mostly overlooked Financial Times report, an American economist threw a healthy dose of cold water on such speculation. The tea leaves, Albert Keidel insists, show an economy barely over half of what most analysts assumed in China:
China's economy is 40 percent smaller than most recent estimates, a US economist said Wednesday, citing data from the Asian Development Bank and guidelines from the World Bank.
Albert Keidel, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US Treasury official and World Bank economist, made the comments in a report published by the US think tank and in a commentary in the Financial Times.
Keidel told AFP he made the calculations based on a recent ADB report that made its first analysis of China's economy based on so-called purchasing power parity (PPP), which strips out the impact of exchange rates.
"The results tell us that when the World Bank announces its expected PPP data revisions later this year, China's economy will turn out to be 40 percent smaller than previously stated," Keidel wrote.
"This more accurate picture of China clarifies why Beijing concentrates so heavily on domestic priorities such as growth, public investment, pollution control and poverty reduction."
Poverty has been sharply underestimated, hidden by the vagaries of the exchange rates in play. Instead of 100 million Chinese living below the dollar-a-day poverty line, that number moves to 300 million -- the rough equivalent of the entire US population. And while China's economy has begun to move past Japan's as the largest in the Pacific Rim, it will take two decades longer than expected for them to challenge the US for global economic leadership.
Keidel notes that the efforts to move people out of poverty in China and India -- which Keidel also re-evaluates in this report -- was much larger than first thought, and the progress made has not been as impressive as assumed. China has moved perhaps 40% of the poor as defined by the World Bank to a better standard of living over the last twenty years, but not the two-thirds most economists had assumed. Because of this, the Chinese priorities for economic development make more sense, as does its monetary policy, to which the US regularly objects.
For the rest of the article go to http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016027.php
10 Nov 2007
Rare and old WCG & AC theses and papers
A virtual online Ambassador College has been established at http://www.friendsofsabbath.org/ABC.htm.
Note: this is the first tentative step toward the online college. It will be developed and improved upon over the months and years.
Please read the list of theses and papers we are still trying to locate and contact us if you can help us obtain copies of them.
4 Nov 2007
Free book offer: Occult Holidays or God’s Holy Days—Which?
What's Ahead for America?
Iranian President Ahmadinejad has been invited to Moscow for further talks. Only a short time ago he was allowed to vent his anger against America inside our own borders, perhaps chiefly because the United Nations (UN) headquarters is located in New York City. As US News and World Report Editor-in-chief Mortimer Zuckerman observed, "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to America to stick his thumb in our eye and deliver a sanitized version of 'Death to America and the Holocaust Never Occurred'" (October 8, emphasis added throughout).
Naturally, both Russia and Iran oppose the eastward movement of NATO. Iran is counting on Russia and China to oppose any proposed future sanctions against Iran by the UN Security Council. According to the Financial Times, "Russia and China have resisted every attempt to agree to a UN sanctions resolution for six months and may never agree to anything that bites" (October 27).
We've looked briefly at the international front. Now consider some of what is happening on the American domestic scene and how it is viewed from abroad.
Alan M. Webber is founding editor of business magazine, Fast Company. On a recent business trip to Europe he heard some disturbing thoughts about the United States. At one gathering in Austria the observations came in the form of laments. "You used to be such a great country…What happened to the great idea that once defined America?"
Now consider Mr. Webber's comment on America, viewing the country from afar: "You realize how far the United States has drifted from its promise, how large the gap is between what we profess and what we do...how diminished our economic superiority has become; and how worn our once impeccable image has become."
The dollar is currently viewed as a second-rate currency in Europe. The euro is looked at as towering over the once vaunted American dollar. Alan Webber asks: "Is there a point where diminished prestige actually becomes diminished economic leadership?"
Summing up he concluded: "In America, it's business as usual. We've simply learned to accept our way of life, rather than confronting the reality of our decline. Maybe that's what happens to once-rich, once-powerful superpowers as they gradually decline. They lose track of their own standards" (USA Today, October 19).
Most disturbing today is the stubborn persistence of our moral problems: abortion, pornography, adultery, male and female homosexuality and out-of-control national and personal debt—to name just a few. In response to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, one correspondent wrote to a major American newsweekly: "Why does it perplex us when these violent eruptions take place? One needs only to channel surf the television any night of the week to see show after show dealing with murder, rape, stalkers, violence toward police, gangs, war and domestic violence."
We don't seem to want the Ten Commandments in our schools or in our public buildings. We break all ten of them in ways we don't even realize anymore. Yet they provide the crucial key to a much needed moral awakening. Summing up God's spiritual laws as revealed in the Bible, they reflect proper love and respect for both God and neighbour.
While you and I cannot change the world, Jesus Christ does tell us that being a light to the world is important (Matthew 5:14-16). To be a proper example each of us needs to apply the moral values embodied in the Ten Commandments. We also need an understanding of what biblical prophecy reveals about the moral decline of the United States and other Western nations and the results we can expect from it.
1 Nov 2007
The EU's war against US companies!
Microsoft waved the white flag this month by dropping all appeals of the European Union's 2004 ruling against the software giant. The episode shows that Europe now writes the rules for global business across the board -- unapologetically to the benefit of its own industry. American companies are learning they have little choice but to obey.
The result is a quiet but concerted war on non-European commerce, and especially on U.S. companies. Antitrust policy in Brussels is a battlefield, particularly for high-tech firms. Mario Monti, the former EU competition czar who issued the ruling against Microsoft's software "bundling," told an Italian newspaper last month that putting such U.S. giants in their place was "the true strength of a united Europe." His successor, Neelie Kroes, celebrated a court decision upholding that decision by musing about how low she'd like Microsoft's market share to fall. Next in her sights are Intel, Qualcomm, Apple and Google, among others.
The larger theme here is that unelected officials in Brussels, and protectionist politicians in EU capitals, are using their regulatory power as a tool of economic nationalism. Under the cover of some nice-sounding social goals, they are harming U.S. companies and reducing commercial freedom. This is a growing threat to U.S. prosperity, and American politicians and regulators had better wake up to it.