Like most people that use the Internet regularly and receive emails from friends, family and others, I often receive emails that get me thinking. Today one arrived from a friend with the title "I do not apologise for passing this on". Usually I don't bother with most of those types of emails because they are mostly rubbish and not worth reading let alone passing on. Many are hoaxes and I always check up on the hoax websites to check before I become party to the hoax.
This email however contained a number of photos depicting soldiers overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a statement above each that noted what we the readers might be doing at the moment (such as climbing into a hot tub) while the soldier was doing something much more meaningful such as carrying a dead child in his arms, crying over photos from home, cradling a dead mate in his arms. I read them all and looked at the pictures and that got my mind working in overdrive. Whilst I don't support a lot of stuff that comes out of the USA because of my own beliefs about the wars they are involved in and why I think they are involved, this was about the men, not the wars.
War inevitably involves young people, mainly young men. As a mother I anguished that my two sons could be taken out of the life they knew into one they didn't know where they would be expected to kill or be killed. Having been a teenager during the Vietnam War, I remember only too well the dreaded numbers game, and the young men (boys) I knew that were called up. Some died, some were injured physically and mentally destroyed; none ever came back the young innocent men they were before they were conscripted.
We lived in fear for our brothers, our cousins, our boyfriends and our friends. Where in World War II the men came to the cities from their family farms and joined the armed forces to fight for what they believed in, these boys were taken away to a war created by another nation that had nothing to do really with Australia - as far as I saw anyhow. They didn't get an opportunity to choose to go, they were chosen. And if they didn't go they were gaoled and called cowards. And when those that were lucky enough to survive the terror of war returned to Australia, they were booed, and spat on, and ignored.
Some men choose to be soldiers or join the air force or the navy. They have choice and they make the choice being aware, or I would hope they are, of exactly what they are signing up for. Those that are conscripted have no choice at all but to try and come home alive. I dread the thought that conscription could ever be allowed again in Australia. And for those young men and women who do choose to join the armed forces, my thoughts wander to them now and again and to their families waiting at home.
I wonder about the philosophy of going to war in countries far away from Australia. What if suddenly the tides changed and someone with eyes on Australia decided to move in. Where are our soldiers to protect our country? Overseas. We aren't allowed have guns anymore (only the criminals are allowed have them besides the Police and others). Fat chance we would have of protecting neighbours let alone our families or ourselves.
Men make wars and it's a sad fact of life that some men are born fighters and controllers and they believe in causes that others don't believe in or understand. They are the movers and shakers and their game of chess doesn't involve wooden or metal chess pieces - it involves real human beings. Those human beings are considered fair pawns and the risk factor of death is acceptable for the hopefully end result of game/set/match. After all, war does make nations falling into decline discover a new and powerful patriotism where the people of the world get behind their countries and work long hours doing drudge work they would never have considered, to aid their fighting men and women.
Once the fighting is over and the world starts to rebuild, many corporations and governments and individuals reap the benefits of the war and become millionaires. Those that destroyed them rebuild the countries decimated by the war; the medals are awarded to those that survived or to the families of those that died for the cause. Once again we have more marchers in our remembrance parades to fill the empty places of those soldiers, airmen and sailors who have aged and passed on. It starts all over again until the next time with years of hardship for millions.
Is the world gearing up for another great war? I'm sure that I am not the only one who thinks that this is more likely to happen than not to happen. As great nations like the US are predicted to be heading into recession, something will need to be done to change the course of events - war is inevitable and it will only take one nation to start the ball rolling.
If you have ever read Nostradamus, or heard about his future predictions for the world, you probably heard about the East rising up against the West and the West (even well-known enemies) banding together to defeat the East. I'm not a reader of his predictions, and I'm not sure I got that quite right. I've just heard them bandied about during my lifetime and I realise that people who do read his predictions put their own slant on them; but it's still eerie how correct he appears to have been. And after all you would have to be someone living in a glass house not to recognise that there have been, and still are, people in the world that do have the power to foretell the future and to find answers for the unanswerable in the present. I believe he was referring to World War III and that it will happen probably sooner rather than later.
I decided just as I was writing the above thoughts to do a surf on the net about Nostradamus, mostly because I wasn't sure I spelt his name right and then because I wanted to reassure myself that what I was writing could be backed up. I found numerous websites and clicked on one that referred to a Dr Michael Rathford who has written a book on his findings from the writings of Nostradamus, called "The Nostradamus Code - World War III 2008-2012". That knocked me for a six because what I wrote above came out of my head just from thoughts I had in there and could have just been meaningless words.
If you are interested in Nostradamus and his predictions, I quote below from the website. You can purchase the book there and have it posted or you can download the book as an e-Book with all rights to share the book, email it to friends, and copy from it. I find this totally refreshing as our hands are usually bound by copyright infringement clauses. I chose to order the book and to wait for it to be posted as I still find it 'normal' to hold a book in my hands while I read what's inside the covers.
"In May 2005 the Italian National Library in Rome found buried in their archives an unknown manuscript by Michel de Nostradame or Nostradamus (1503-1566). The manuscript was handed down by his son and later donated to Pope Urban VII. It did not surface again until 2005, some 400 years later.
Dr Michael Rathford has studied the Quatrains of Nostradamus since 1975. He has written a book, after deciphering the latest manuscript of Nostradamus, and called it The Nostradamus Code - World War III - 2008-2012.
The predictions foresee:
A conflict between the US and Iran
The next terrorist attack on the US
Osama, Obama and "Mabus"
The nuclear destruction of Rome
The identity of the third anti Christ
Military confrontations & terrorist attacks
Radical new weapons described in striking detail
The advent of the "New World Order"
Geological earth shifts by man-made weaponry"
I will be extremely interested to get my hands on the book and read all about the above predictions. Perhaps some of my readers might like to do the same ... the book costs $19.95 plus postage (US$); the e-Book is $14.95 with no postage of course. It appears like it was meant to happen that the Quatrains should be found in 2005 as they relate to the years 2008-2012 as being when World War III will be fought. Believe it or not.
Let's all hope that the greed of those in power and their need for control of the masses will not gain momentum and another great war will not erupt. If it does it will be more terrible than one can imagine as each world war brings more death and destruction than the one before it. I believe that terrorism will be a large part of any war and that civil wars will break out within countries because of the mixed races now living in most cities on the planet. Where the Germans and Japanese were incarcerated there are now hundreds of races that will come under scrutiny. How awful it will be for everyone.
Gloom and doom. And yet this is a human world and ever humans have been on this earth there have been conflicts - man against man - for a myriad of reasons. As we in Australia are now almost totally reliant on our food and water being delivered to us via shops or pipelines, what are we going to do when there is no food to go into those shops and the pipelines are perhaps destroyed?
What can you harvest out of your backyard to eat? Do you have a water tank large enough to sustain your family through a time when there is no water? And how will you protect your food source and water source from neighbours and others? Frightening to think about and yet it could happen. I was told a few years ago that the United Nations believed in the near future there would be civil war breaking out all over the world and what the people would be fighting for would be food and water. Just stop for a moment and think about how reliant you and your family are on getting everything that you eat from a shop close by. Scares the pants off you doesn't it?
War is also an excellent way to cull the masses of people being born around the world, many into lives of poverty and death. I doubt that the big guns would care about a few billion wiped off the face of the earth as it would just make it that much easier to get going again and would ease the numbers needing food and water. Sounds like a sci-fi novel and yet ........
Vena McGrath
©2008
