regarding the rise of the rest of the world ...

Who cares ?

What does any of that measure exactly ?

How does any of that help me, as a human being, get through another day working to survive on Planet Earth ?

Sure, those things give architects and engineers something to boast about, something for producers and fund managers to crow about, but how does any of that help you put food on your table, or know what to tell your child about the future of human existence ?

I am reading a Newsweek article written dutifully by Fareed Zakaria who wants to examine why "America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world" which he says contributes to an "atmosphere of malaise" felt by Americans today which is not explained by "unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks" and American "levels of gloom" polls show at "30- and 40-year highs."

Americans are said to be "really glum" - feeling "a financial panic and looming recession, a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the ongoing threat of terrorism," that "81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the wrong track," worried anti-Americanism is on the rise and "that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled."

Then Zakaria says something truly significant:

"... while we [Americans] argue over why they hate us, "they" have
moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic
parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to
post-Americanism."

The American Empire which now pretends to dominate our world, well past its 1980s prime as the latest and greatest of empires, is perhaps the most perverse display of empire there ever has been because it seems so intent on destroying itself - not a bad thing for the world, but empires by their very nature are made to be destroyed.

Too bad for "patriotic" Americans still caught up in the scam, all living Americans today having been indoctrinated in the United States' more than a century-old "natural right" to police and control the entire world "for the common good" as they are, because the balance of power in the world is shifting, as it must, and the basis of that shift is so very natural.

American "leadership" decided at some point in a dim past to regard human beings generally in a Machiavellian "light" - that all are evil and can be bought off - so they continue in their deluded way to view most peoples of our world as children who need to be taught Western ways and attitudes so as to bring them "in line" with an elite view of human beings as a market - populations to be worked, mined, fed and housed, taxed - nothing more than a source of revenue.

Any illusion of "Pax Americana" in the human mind today as something other than "enduring fiefdom" now resides only with those who are mentally incompetent.

President John F. Kennedy's words of June 10, 1963 [http://www.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm] recall earlier words of "Professor Woodrow Wilson" who may have said, "every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time" and little did I know as I myself graduated about that same time what "a man of his nation" really meant - how little it means in reality.

For all the huffing and puffing any government can conjure up, a free market will remain our "medium of exchange" and we will seek it out regardless, you and I, in that way determining what is fair in price and quality and purchasing no more than we need.

"In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew their economies at over 4 percent a year. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa," Zakaria reports.

"Antoine van Agtmael, the fund manager who coined the term "emerging
markets," has identified the 25 companies most likely to be the world's
next great multi-nationals. His list includes four companies each from
Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan; three from India, two from
China, and one each from Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.
This is something much broader than themuch-ballyhooed rise of China
or even Asia. It is the rise of the rest - the rest of the world."

The world of the Twenty First Century, like a child "emerging" into adulthood, decides for itself what "advice" of the parent is worth following or adhering to, and synthesizes a separate existence different from that of the parent, and one might say, "father knows best only until child knows better."

U. S. economic power presented itself through "deregulation" (favoritism and cronyism) of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, and since then that economic power has been concentrated and maintained largely by playing other nations against themselves to the continued benefit of those who control the U. S. economy, and thus the world economy, with their money, but not with their efforts.

The labor and creativity of the people themselves has kept that economic machine running, delivering trillions of American dollars paid as tax on their incomes, while those in other nations are taxed in different ways - some benefitting from such "tribute" but not all.

In some quarters, the shift away from American industrial, financial, social, and cultural dominance to something more diverse, multi-cultural, is a surprise - even a shock - but just as the energy of the people was the driving force of the industrial and agricultural progress of Nineteenth Century America, the same is true today around the world rather than in any single country.

Some hold these changes are simply natural, while others credit themselves with "planning" which has influenced U. S. leaders to "unwittingly" bring about an increase in prosperity for peoples those leaders intended to subdue, rather than allow them to go off in their own directions, as if such restrictions were ever any more realistic than a parent deciding what career a child would choose once "out of school."

The difficulty for many Americans will continue to be laboring under false perceptions of, as Zakaria puts it, "terrorism, rogue states, nuclear proliferation, financial panics, recession, outsourcing, and illegal immigrants" - all of which are illusions created by governments to justify continued demands for increasing taxation so that government can better protect The People.

Protection from what ?

Terrorism is no more than a last ditch response to oppression, and if you brand of "terrorism" is successful, you may very well have tea with the Queen one afternoon; if not, your family will be targetted for assassination.

Nuclear proliferation has been, and still is, most successfully manufactured by the United States, for which any other nation with an intention to survive will find a way to have its own nuclear "defense" system, and as long as that nation purchases its weaponry from the right sources, it will be regarded as an ally instead of a "rogue state" by those "sources" even as it is clearly a threat to any neighboring nation, which will then find a way to defend itself appropriately.

Financial panics, recession, depression - all resulting from the System that was sold to the American people as the "end of bank failures" in the United States - make it abundantly clear The Federal Reserve System provides no one any "protection" at all from panics, recessions, depressions, all of which are caused by insiders who have prior knowledge of what manipulated markets will do, while the general population forcibly gives up almost have of its honest earnings to keep that Ponzi scam going.

So "the rise of the rest" may be seen as THE truly great revolution of our time - a time when nations of people who continue to struggle under the yoke of "organized government" will be viewed as "rogue states" trapped in ancient artifactual thinking, while free peoples of the world simply walk away from "government services" they no longer need, nor agree to pay for.
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