THE ROAD TO THE FMI OR IMF OR FIM OR FIN OR FINIS OR WHATEVER IS FOREVER OPEN

Officially, US debt stands at more than $17 trillion. In reality, it is many times more. The cost of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq may be more than six trillion dollars. President Obama's illegal invasion of Libya cost at least a billion dollars and left that country devastated. The costs of US regime change efforts in Syria are likely thus far enormous, both in dollars and lives. That's still a secret.
So who in his right mind would think it is a good time to start a war with Russia over Ukraine? And worse, who would commit the United States to bail out a Ukraine that will need at least $35 billion to survive the year?
Who? The president and Congress, backed by the neocons and the so-called humanitarian interventionists!
The House voted overwhelmingly last week to provide $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine. That is just the beginning, you can be sure. But let's be clear: this is not money for the population of that impoverished country. The Administration is sending a billion dollars from US taxpayers to wealthy international bankers who hold Ukrainian debt. It is an international bank bailout, not aid to Ukrainians. And despite the escalating anti-Russia rhetoric, ironically some of that money will likely go to Russia for Ukraine's two billion dollar unpaid gas bill!

O ALIENISTA - MACHADO DE ASSIS Y ASSAD - THE BASTILLE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE IS KAPPUT ....THE UCRANIAN - VENEZUELAN - SYRIAN DEBACLE

The ALIENISTA OR THE ALIENADO ANALISTA OR  Psychiatrist" follows the scientific efforts of
 Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a prominent Portuguese physician whose obsession for discovering a universal method to treat and consequently cure pathologic disturbs drives inhabitants of the small Brazilian town of Itaguaí to fear, conspiracy and revolutionary attempts.
 In a short space of time,
 Bacamarte's madhouse, popularly named "Green House", passes to take inside of its walls not only mentally ill patients but also healthy citizens who, according to the doctor's diagnoses, are about to develop some sort of mental illness. 
Porfírio, the town's barber, indicts Bacamarte for his corruptive influence over the Municipal Assemlency, which since the beginning approved the experiments taken place at the Green House, "the Bastille of human Knowledge".

QUATERNARY EXTINCTIONS: A PREHISTORIC REVOLUTION THAT NEVER ENDS .....AND IS GOING NICELY...

Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution FROM GIANT CAVE BEARS TO LAME VICUÑAS

4.What caused the extinction of so many animals at or near the end of the Pleistocene? Was it overkill by human hunters, the result of a major climatic change or was it just a part of some massive evolutionary turnover? Questions such as these have plagued scientists for over one hundred years and are still being heatedly debated today. Quaternary Extinctions presents the latest and most comprehensive examination of these questions. —Geological Magazine

"May be regarded as a kind of standard encyclopedia for Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology for years to come." —American Scientist

"Should be read by paleobiologists, biologists, wildlife managers, ecologists, archeologists, and anyone concerned about the ongoing extinction of plants and animals." —Science

"Uncommonly readable and varied for watchers of paleontology and the rise of humankind." —Scientific American

"Represents a quantum leap in our knowledge of Pleistocene and Holocene palaeobiology. . . . Many volumes on our bookshelves are destined to gather dust rather than attention. But not this one." —Nature

"Two strong impressions prevail when first looking into this epic compendium. One is the judicious balance of views that range over the whole continuum between monocausal, cultural, or environmental explanations. The second is that both the data base and theoretical sophistication of the protagonists in the debate have improved by a quantum leap since 1967." —American Anthropologist

Paperback, 892 pages is a little ...but is good to killing mosquito plagues and vicuñas

KONEC PROKRASTINACE AND HOW LIVE WITH IT - THE RECORD OF VARIATIONS OVER REVERSIBLE WEAKENINGS ....NEXT TOPIC TROPHIC FOOD-BORNE DISEASES...OR ARE WE NOW FACING SUCH A FOOD CHANGE

Konec prokrastinace je nová kniha Petra Ludwiga o prokrastinaci, chorobném odkládání důležitých úkolů a povinností.
 Historie lidského odkládání
Prokrastinací trpěli lidé od nepaměti. Již antický básník Hésiodos na tuto
problematiku upozorňoval ve své básni Práce a dni:[
„Na zítřek se nespoléhej,
na pozítří neodkládej;
Neboť člověk zameškalý
stodoly nenaplní,
Ani člověk odkládavec;
Zato píle množí dílo;
Ale člověk nedodělka
Bude tříti bídu s nouzí.“
Člověk zameškalý, člověk odkládavec, člověk nedodělka – tak by se dal
popsat i dnešní prokrastinátor.
Také římský filosof Seneca varoval: „Zatímco ztrácíme svůj čas váháním
a odkládáním, život utíká.“ Tento citát vyjadřuje hlavní důvod, proč je dob­
ré se naučit s prokrastinací bojovat.
Prokrastinace je jednou z hlavních překážek, která nám brání pro­
žít náš život naplno. Nedávný výzkum ukázal, že lidé více litují toho, co
ve svém životě neudělali, než toho, co udělali.
 Lítost a s ní spojené vý­
čitky kvůli promarněným příležitostem vydrží výrazně déle

Co je prokrastinace? and how we live with it

Podívejte se Když prokrastinujeme, nedokážeme se přemluvit k plnění úkolů, které
bychom měli nebo chtěli dělat. Místo důležitých věcí, ve kterých vidíme
smysl, často děláme něco nepodstatného.
Sledujeme seriály, zaléváme květiny v  kanceláři, hrajeme počítačo­
vé hry, trávíme hodiny na sociálních sítích, jíme (i když nemáme hlad),
opakovaně uklízíme, chodíme bezcílně po pracovišti nebo jen tak zíráme
do zdi. Později kvůli výčitkám a frustraci přichází pocit bezmoci vedoucí
k tomu, že opět nic neděláme.
Ale pozor. Prokrastinace není čistá lenost. Líný člověk nic dělat nechce
a je s tímto stavem spokojen. Prokrastinující člověk by naopak rád něco dělal,
ale nedokáže se k tomu přemluvit. Rád by něco dokázal, ale nejde mu to.
Prokrastinaci nelze zaměňovat ani za odpočinek.
Při odpočívání zís­
káváme novou energii. Při prokrastinaci ji naopak ztrácíme. Čím méně
energie máme, tím větší je šance, že naše úkoly opět odložíme a znovu nic

  


































Stává se vám, že odkládáte i věci, které opravdu dělat chcete? 
Snažíte si sami sobě poručit, ale neposlechnete se? 
Děláte místo důležitých věcí, ve kterých vidíte smysl, něco nepodstatného?
 Cítíte občas i vy, že jste se dostali do prokrastinačního začarovaného kruhu?

• Znáte pocit, když se vám nechce začít dělat na nějakém úkolu?
• Stává se vám, že odkládáte i věci, které opravdu dělat chcete?
• Snažíte si sami sobě poručit, ale neposlechnete se?

THE TIMES OF CHANGE THAT THE HERD LOVE AND THE HERD FEAR ARE COMING AND ARE COMING FAST

The first phase of that readjustment is necessarily destructive. The conceptions of life and obligation that have served and satisfied even the most vigorous and intelligent personalities hitherto, conceptions that were naturally partial, sectarian and limited, begin to lose, decade by decade, their credibility and their directive force. They fade, they become attenuated. It is an age of increasing mental uneasiness, of forced beliefs, hypocrisy, cynicism, abandon and impatience. What has been hitherto a final and impenetrable background of conviction in the rightness of the methods of behaviour characteristic of the national or local culture of each individual, becomes, as it were, a dissolving and ragged curtain. Behind it appear, vague and dim at first, and refracted and distorted by the slow dissolution of the traditional veils, the intimations of the type of behaviour necessary to that single world community in which we live to-day.

Until the Chronological Institute has completed its present labours of revision and defined the cardinal dates in our social evolution, it is best to refer our account of the development of man's mind and will throughout this hectic period of human experience to the clumsy and irrelevant computation by centuries before and after the Christian Era, that is still current. As we have explained more fully in a previous book*, we inherit this system of historical pigeonholes from Christendom; that arbitrary chequerwork of hundred-year blocks was imposed upon the entire Mediterranean and Atlantic literatures for two thousand years, and it still distorts the views of history of all but the alertest minds. The young student needs to be constantly on his guard against its false divisions. As Peter Lightfoot has remarked, we talk of the "eighteenth century", and we think of fashions and customs and attitudes that are characteristic of a period extending from the Treaty of Westphalia in C.E. [Christian Era] 1642 to the Napoleonic collapse in C.E. 1815; we talk of the "nineteenth century", and the pictures and images evoked are those of the gas-lighting and steam-transport era, from after the distressful years of post-Napoleonic recovery to the immense shock of the World War in C.E. 1914. The phase "twentieth century", again, calls forth images of the aeroplane, the electrification of the world and so forth; but an aeroplane was an extremely rare object in the air until 1914 (the first got up in 1905), and the replacement of the last steam railway train and the last steamship was not completed until the nineteen-forties. It is a tiresome waste of energy to oblige each generation of young minds to learn first of all in any unmeaning pattern of centuries and then to correct that first crude arrangement, so that this long-needed revision of our chronology is one that will be very welcome to every teacher. Then from the very outset he or she will be able to block out the story of our race in significant masses.

* [Nothing of this is to be found in Raven's notes.—ED.]

The Chronological Institute is setting about its task with a helpful publicity, inviting discussion from every angle. It is proposing to divide up as much of the known history of our race as is amenable to annual reckoning, into a series of eras of unequal length. Naturally the choice of these eras is the cause of some extremely lively and interesting interchanges; most of us have our own private estimates of the values of events, and many issues affecting the earlier civilized communities remain in a state of animated unsettlement. Our chronology is now fairly sure as to the year for most important events in the last 4,000 years, and, thanks largely to the minute and patient labours of the Selwyn-Cornford Committee for Alluvial Research, to the decade for another hundred centuries. So far as the last 3,000 years are concerned, little doubt remains now that the main dividing points to be adopted will be FIRST the epoch of Alexander and the Hellenic conquests which will begin the phase of the great Helleno-Latin monetary imperialism in the western world, the Helleno-Latin Era. This will commence at the crossing of the Hellespont by Alexander the Great and end either with the Battle of the Yarmuk (636 C.E.) or the surrender of Jerusalem to the Caliph Omar (638 C.E.). NEXT will come the epoch of Moslem and Mongol pressure on the West which opened the era of feudal Christendom vis-à-vis with feudal Islam: the Era of Asiatic Predominance. This ends with the Battle of Lepanto (1571 C.E.). Then THIRDLY there will follow the epoch of the Protestant and the Catholic (counter) Reformations, which inaugurated the era of the competing sovereign states with organized standing armies: the Era of European Predominance, or, as it may also be called, the Era of National Sovereignty. Finally comes the catastrophe of the World War of 1914, when the outward drive of the new economic methods the Atlantic civilizations had developed gave way under the internal stresses of European nationalism. That war, and its long-drawn sequelae, released the human mind to the potentialities and dangers of an imperfectly Europeanized world—a world which had unconsciously become one single interlocking system, while still obsessed by the Treaty of Westphalia and the idea of competing sovereign states. This mental shock and release marks the beginning of the Era of the Modern State. The opening phase of this latest era is this Age of Frustration with which we are now about to deal. That is the first age of the Era of the Modern State. A second age, but not a new era, began with the Declaration of Mégève which was accepted by the general commonsense of mankind forty-seven years ago. This closed the Age of Frustration, which lasted therefore a little short of a century and a half.

The date upon the title-page for the first publication of this History is C.E. 2106. Before many editions have been exhausted that will be changed to Modern Era (M.E.) 192 or M.E. 189 or M.E. 187, according to whether our chronologists decide upon 1914, the date of the outbreak of the Great War, or 1917, the beginning of the social revolution in Russia, or 1919, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, as the conclusive opening of the Age of Frustration and the conflict for world unity. The second date seems at present to be the more practicable one.

In C.E. 1914 the concept of an organized world order did not seem to be within the sphere of human possibility; in C.E. 1919 it was an active power in a steadily increasing proportion of human brains. The Modern State had been conceived. It was germinating. One system, the Soviet system in Russia, was already claiming to be a world system. To most of the generation which suffered it, the Great War seemed to be purely catastrophe and loss; to us who see those hideous years in perspective and in proportion to the general dulness and baseness of apprehension out of which that conflict arose, the destruction of life and substance, unprecedented as they were, has none of that overwhelming quality. We see it as a clumsy, involuntary release from outworn assumptions by their reduction to tragic absurdity, and as a practically unavoidable step therefore in the dialectic of human destiny.

---

2. — HOW THE IDEA AND HOPE OF THE
MODERN WORLD STATE FIRST APPEARED

The essential difference between the world before the Great War and the world after it lay in this, that before that storm of distress and disillusionment the clear recognition that a worldwide order and happiness, in spite of contemporary distresses, was within the reach of mankind was confined to a few exceptional persons, while after the catastrophe it had spread to an increasing multitude, it had become a desperate hope and desire, and at last a working conviction that made organized mass action possible.

Even those who apprehended this idea before the epoch of the Great War seem to have propounded it with what impresses us today as an almost inexplicable timidity and feebleness. Apart from the great star of Shelley, which shines the brighter as his successors dwindle in perspective, there is a flavour of unreality about all these pre-war assertions of a possible world order. In most of them the Victorian terror of "extravagance" is dominant, and the writer simpers and laughs at his own suggestions in what was evidently supposed to be a very disarming manner. Hardly any of these prophets dared believe in their own reasoning. Maxwell Brown has recently disinterred a pamphlet, The Great Analysis,* dated 1912, in which a shrewd and reasoned forecast of the primary structure of the Modern State, quite amazingly prescient for the time, was broached with the utmost timidity, without even an author's name. It was a scheme to revolutionize the world, and the writer would not put his name to it, he confesses, because it might make him ridiculous.

* (Here for once the editor knows better than the writer of the history. This pamphlet was written by William Archer, the dramatic critic, and reprinted under its author's name with a preface by Gilbert Murray in 1931. Apparently the book collectors of the years ahead are going to miss this book.—ED.)

Maxwell Brown's entertaining Modern State Prophets Before the Great War is an exhaustive study of the psychological processes by which this idea, which is now the foundation of our contemporary life, gradually ousted its opposite of combative patriotism and established itself as a practicable and necessary form of action for men of good-will a century and a half ago. He traces the idea almost to its germ; he shows that its early manifestations, so far from being pacific, were dreams of universal conquest. He tells of its age-long struggle with everyday usage and practical commonsense. In the first of his huge supplementary volumes he gives thousands of quotations going back far beyond the beginnings of the Christian Era. All the monotheistic religions were, in spirit, world-state religions. He examines the Tower of Babel myth as the attempt of some primordial cosmopolitan, some seer before the dawn, to account for the divisions of mankind. (There is strong reason now for ascribing this story to Emesal Gudeka of Nippur, the early Sumerian fabulist.)

Maxwell Brown shows how the syncretic religious developments, due to the growth of the early empires and the official pooling of gods, led necessarily to monotheism. From at least the time of Buddha onward, the sentiment, if not the living faith, in human brotherhood, always existed somewhere in the world. But its extension from a mere sentiment and a fluctuating sympathy for the stranger to the quality of a practicable enterprise was a very recent process indeed. The necessary conditions were not satisfied.

In the briefer studies of human innovations that preceded his more important contributions to human history, Maxwell Brown has shown how for the past ten thousand years at least, since the Cro-Magnards stamped their leather robes and tents, the art of printing reappeared and disappeared again and again, never culminating in the printed book and all its consequences, never obtaining a primary importance in human doings, until the fifteenth century (C.E.); he has assembled the evidence for man's repeated abortive essays in flying, from the fourth dynasty gliders recently found at Bedrashen, the shattered Yu-chow machine and the interesting wreckage, ornaments and human remains found last year in Mirabella Bay. (These last were first remarked in 2104 C.E. after an earthquake in the deep sea photographs of the survey aeroplane Crawford, and they were subsequently sought and recovered by the divers of the submarine Salvemini belonging to the Naples Biological Station. They have now been identified by Professor Giulio Marinetti as the remains of the legendary glider of Daedalus and Icarus.) Maxwell Brown has also traced the perpetual discovery and rediscovery of America from the days of the Aalesund tablets and the early Chinese inscriptions in the caves near Bahia Coqui to the final establishment of uninterrupted communications across the Atlantic by the Western Europeans in the fifteenth century C.E. In all there are sixteen separate ineffectual discoveries of America either from the east or from the west now on record, and there may have been many others that left no trace behind them.

These earlier cases of human enterprise and inadequacy help us to understand the long struggle of the Age of Frustration and the difficulty our ancestors found in achieving what is now so obviously the only sane arrangement of human affairs upon this planet.

The fruitlessness of all these premature inventions is very easily explained. First in the case of the Transatlantic passage; either the earlier navigators who got to America never got back, or, if they did get back, they were unable to find the necessary support and means to go again before they died, or they had had enough of hardship, or they perished in a second attempt. Their stories were distorted into fantastic legends and substantially disbelieved. It was, indeed, a quite futile adventure to get to America until the keeled sailing ship, the science of navigation, and the mariner's compass had been added to human resources.

Then again, in the matter of printing, it was only when the Chinese had developed the systematic manufacture of abundant cheap paper sheets in standard sizes that the printed book—and its consequent release of knowledge—became practically possible. Finally the delay in the attainment of flying was inevitable because before men could progress beyond precarious gliding it was necessary for metallurgy to reach a point at which the internal combustion engine could be made. Until then they could build nothing strong enough and light enough to battle with the eddies of the air.

In an exactly parallel manner, the conception of one single human community organized for collective service to the common weal had to wait until the rapid evolution of the means of communication could arrest and promise to defeat the disintegrative influence of geographical separation. That rapid evolution came at last in the nineteenth century, and it has been described already in a preceding chapter of this world history.* Steam power, oil power, electric power, the railway, the steamship, the aeroplane, transmission by wire and aerial transmission followed each other very rapidly. They knit together the human species as it had never been knit before. Insensibly, in less than a century, the utterly impracticable became not merely a possible adjustment but an urgently necessary adjustment if civilization was to continue.

* [Not Recorded by Raven.—ED.]

Now the cardinal prominence of the Great War in history lies in this, that it demonstrated the necessity of that adjustment. It was never considered to be necessary before. Recognition lagged behind accomplishment. None of the pre-war World-State Prophets betrays any sense of necessity. They make their polite and timid gestures towards human unity as something nice and desirable indeed but anything but imperative. The clearest demand for world-wide cooperation before the war, came from the Second International. And even after the war, and after the vague and vacillating adumbration of a federal super-state by the League of Nations at Geneva, most of even the most advanced writers seem to have been still under the impression that the utmost adjustment needed was some patching up of the current system so as to prevent or mitigate war and restrain the insurrectionary urge of the unprosperous.

Even the Communist movement which, as we had told already, had been able by a conspiracy of accidents to seize upon Russia and demonstrate the value of its theories there, lapsed from, rather than advanced towards, cosmopolitan socialism. Its theories, as we have shown, were hopelessly inadequate for its practical needs. The development of its ideology was greatly hampered by the conservative dogmatism imposed upon it by the incurable egotism of Marx. His intolerance, his innate bad manners, his vain insistence that he had produced a final doctrine to put beside Darwinism, cast a long shadow of impatience and obduracy upon the subsequent development of Communism. He was bitterly jealous of the Utopian school of socialism, and so, until Lenin faced the urgencies of power, the "orthodox" Marxist took a quite idiotic pride in a planless outlook. "Overthrow capitalism", he said, and what could happen but millennial bliss? Communism insisted indeed upon the necessity of economic socialization but— until it attained power in Russia—without a glance at its technical difficulties. It produced its belated and ill-proportioned Five Year Plan only in 1928 C.E., eleven years after its accession to power. Until then it had no comprehensive working scheme whatever for the realization of socialism. Thrown back on experiment, it was forced to such desperately urgent manoeuvres, improvisations and changes of front, and defended by such tawdry and transparent apologetics, that the general world movement passed out of its ken.

The reader of this world history knows already how the moral and intellectual force of the Communist Party proved unequal, after the death of Lenin, to control or resist the dictatorship of that forcible, worthy, devoted and limited man, the Georgian, Stalin. The premature death of the creative and adaptable Lenin and the impatient suppression by Stalin of such intelligent, troublesome, but necessary types as Trotsky—a man who, but for lack of tact and essential dignity, might well have been Lenin's successor—crippled whatever hope there may have been that the Modern State would first emerge in Russia. Terrible are the faithful disciples of creative men. Lenin relaxed and reversed the dogmatism of Marx, Stalin made what he imagined to be Leninism into a new and stiffer dogmatism. Thereafter the political doctrinaire dominated and crippled the technician in a struggle that cried aloud for technical competence. Just as theological disputes impoverished and devastated Europe through the long centuries of Christendom, and reduced the benefits of its unifying influence to zero, so in Russia efficiency of organization was prevented by the pedantries of political theorists. The young were trained to a conceit and a xenophobia, indistinguishable in its practical effects from the gross patriotism of such countries as France, Germany, Italy or Scotland.

Because of this subordination of its mental development to Politics, Russia passed into a political and social phase comparable, as Rostovtzeff pointed out at the time in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, in its universal impoverishment and its lack of any critical vigour, to the well-meaning but devitalizing autocracy of the Emperor Diocletian. From its very start the Russian revolution failed in its ambition to lead mankind. Its cosmopolitanism lasted hardly longer than the cosmopolitanism of the great French revolution a dozen decades earlier.

This almost inevitable lag of the constructive movement in Russia behind Western developments was foreseen by the shrewd and penetrating brain of Lenin even in the phase of its apparent leadership (see No. 3090 in the thirteenth series of the Historical Documents Collection, Left Wing Communism). But his observation found little or no echo in the incurably illiberal thought of the Marxian tradition.

It was in Western Europe especially that the conception of the organized and disciplined World-State as a revolutionary objective, ultimately grew to its full proportions. At first it grew obscurely. In 1933, any observer might have been misled by the fact of the Fascist régime in Italy, by the tumult of the Nazi party in Germany, by similar national-socialist movements in other countries, and by the increase in tariff barriers and other restraints upon trade everywhere, to conclude that the cosmopolitan idea was everywhere in retreat before the obsessions of race, creed and nationalism. Yet all the while the germs of the Modern State were growing, everywhere its votaries were learning and assembling force.

It needed the financial storm of the years 1928 and 1929 C.E. and the steadily progressive collapse of the whole world's economic life, of which this storm was the prelude, to give the World-State prophets the courage of their convictions. Then indeed they began to speak out. Instead of the restrained, partial and inconclusive criticism of public affairs which had hitherto contented them, they now insisted plainly upon the need of a world- wide reconstruction, that is to say of a world revolution—though "revolution" was still a word they shirked. The way in which this increased definition of aim and will came about is characteristic of the changing quality of social life. It was not that one or two outstanding men suddenly became audible and conspicuous as leaders in this awakening. There were no leaders. It was a widespread movement in human thought.

The conclusions upon which intelligent people were converging may be briefly stated. They had arrived at the realization that human society had become one indivisible economic system with novel and enormous potentialities of well-being. By 1931 C.E. this conception becomes visible even in the obstinately intellectualist mind of France—for example, in the parting speech to America of an obscure and transitory French Prime Minister, Laval, who crossed the Atlantic on some new undiscoverable mission in that year; and we find it promptly echoed by such prominent loud speakers as President Hoover of America and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald the British Prime Minister.

That idea at any rate had already become sufficiently popular for the politicians to render it lip service. But it was still only the intelligent minority who went on to the logical consequences of its realization; that is to say, the necessity of disavowing the sovereignty of contemporary governments, of setting up authoritative central controls to supplement or supersede them, and of putting the production of armaments, the production of the main economic staples and the protection of workers from destructive under-payment, beyond the reach of profit-seeking manipulation.

Yet by 1932-33 this understanding minority was speaking very plainly. These immense changes were no longer being presented as merely desirable things; they were presented as urgently necessary things if civilization was to be saved from an immense catastrophe. And not merely saved. The alternative to disaster, they saw even then, was not just a bleak and terrified security. That was the last thing possible. There was no alternative to disorder and wretchedness, but "such an abundance, such a prosperity and richness of opportunity", as man had never known before. (These words are quoted from a Scottish newspaper of the year 1929.) Enlightened people in 1932 C.E. were as assured of the possibility of world order, universal sufficiency and ever increasing human vitality as are we who live to-day in ample possession of our lives amidst the practical realization of that possibility.

Clearness of vision did not make for the happiness of the enlightened. Their minds were tormented not simply by contemporary fears and miseries, but by the sure knowledge of a possible world of free activity within the reach of man and, as it were, magically withheld. They saw hundreds of millions of lives cramped and crippled, meagrely lived, sacrificed untimely, and they could not see any primary necessity for this blighting and starvation of human life. They saw youthful millions drifting to lives of violence, mutilation and premature and hideous deaths. And beyond was our security, our eventfulness and our freedom.

Maxwell Brown, in a chapter called "Tantalus 1932", cites forty instances of these realizations. But the legendary Tantalus was put within apparent reach of the unattainable by the inexorable decrees of the gods. Mankind was under no such pitiless destiny. The world-wide Modern State shone bright upon the living imaginations of our race within a decade of the Great War, absurdly near, fantastically out of reach. For a century of passionate confusion and disorder, that modern state was not to be released from potentiality into actuality.

It is to the story of these battling, lost and suffering generations, the "generations of the half light", that we must now proceed.

 When now we look back to the scattered and diverse individuals who first give expression to this idea of the modern World-State which was dawning upon the human intelligence, when we appraise their first general efforts towards its realization, we need, before we can do them anything like justice, to attempt some measure of the ignorances, prejudices and other inertias, the habits of concession and association, the herd love and the herd fear.....

EUSEBIO - DOS CARGO CULTS FROM CULTS TO INCULTS IN THIS NEW OPIUM WAR THAT THE CHINESE ARE WINNING

THE NEW OPIUM WAR THAT THE CHINESE ARE WINNING - PARADOX INTERACTIVE

THEY ARE THREE OPIUM WARS AND THE LAST ONE ONLY HAVE SYNTHETIC DRUGS

China wins the Opium War THE 1839-42 OPIUM WAR? THE 1856-60 OPIUM WAR

THE 1992-2014 OPIUM WAR IS ALREADY WON...  

The Real Dangers of Synthetic Drugs in The 21st Century ... Describe the current trend of synthetic drugs of abuse being marketed as “legal” household CHINESE products ...

Current Drug Trends CHINESE TRENDS THE NEW SILK ROAD OF SYNTHETIC DRUGS Synthetic designer drugs; Slightly altered molecular structure of known starter or parent drug; Mimics characteristics of other illegal drugs; Sometimes called ...CHINESE FINEST

So, I love playing as China because they have such a huge population that the Industry that you can achieve with them is just silly. This is especially true if you set the ruling party to Beiyang which is Pro-Military and has Full Citizenship allowing you to promote any of pops you conquer into Craftsmen to drive your massive factories.

Anyway, I think there should be some sort of alternate future where China wins the Opium War, and where this victory awakes a modernization movement. Specifically, I'm working on an event that will trigger the Self-Strengthening Movement without you having to lose the Opium War and Arrow Incident.

I'd like to get some thoughts on what I have so far. There's only one truly new event (99001) which introduces a new flag for China winning the war and flags the end of the Opium trade. The second event is just a slight modification of current Self-Strengthening Event (12518) just changed so that it fires if China wins the Opium War instead of when it loses the Arrow incident. The whole idea is to trigger the whole line of events with the flag flg_Self_Strength = 1.

What do you think? Does the event make the game too easy? Should there be more hurdles to make it more challenging or interesting?

min o ingleis techno mademe min num pesco nem lapas…
bolas o soares apadrinhou-te em que loja
do pateta alegre disse: eu levei aquele gajo para a academia e o gajo fez-me esta desfeita
No entanto, Soares, uma pessoa que nunca se interessou por futebol, economia, inglês, francês, português, oratória ou mesmo por direito, apesar de ser o único curso do qual se conhece um certo percurso além do curso de exilado e de pardal na gaiola, dos quais não percebia nada, mas mesmo assis ou assad botava discurso, disse sobre Eusébio:
completar os espaços a seguir aos pontinhos…
“Um homem bom”…mas burro
“Agradável”…mas um pouco bronco
“Pessoa bem formada”…mas alcoólico
“Modesto”… gente pelintra…“Simpático”…um pobre de espírito
“Interessante”…uma curiosidade de circo, como mon ami bettino craxi ou mid enterrando que tinha uma filha na gaveta
“Muito agradável”… não me contradizia e dizia sempre sim senhor doutor
“grande futebolista”.
Considerou-o “com pouca cultura, uma besta mas evidentemente não se estava à espera que fosse um pensador, cada um é para o que nasce, só se ganha cultura nas lojas.. aquilo não é um futre nem um zézé camarinha bolas pá era um preto lá das cleptocracias
joga-se futebol vai-se pra ministro
Olha o Eduardo dos santos
olha o Pelé tudo jogador de futebol que chega AO governo sem ser republicano laico e maçon ou mason ou masson….”
e acrescentou que “bebia muito uísque, de manhã e à tarde, mas julguei que não lhe fizesse mal…pois alcoólicos neste país há muitos e os pretos aguentam bem a bebida
foi assim que lhes comprámos áfrica embebedando-os e dando-lhes colares de contas e panos crus…..e cozidos…
uma perda imensa para o país diz santana lopes
uniu o país de gentes de diferentes cores
reforçar identidade cultural Eusébio vai fazer-nos muita falta
genialidade com humildade
foi para o pé de deus
brasil e Eusébio vai fazer muita falta
eu acredito que ele vai estar por lá
até santana lopes fez melhor elegia
também….
capacidade de ser interiormente grande

JÁ SANTANA FLOPES ACREDITA QUE DEVIAM TIRAR O TELEFONE A SOARES

FORAM DURANTE DÉCADAS OS DOIS SÍMBOLOS DE PORTUGAL

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TAL COMO QUALQUER ANIMAL SENTE AS MARÉS NO SEU SER DE ÁGUA FEITO

SENTI O SONHO NUM DIA EM QUE A GUERRA BALCÂNICA ESTAVA NO FIM

OU JÁ TINHA ACABADO JÁ NEM ME LEMBRO DOS IDOS DE 199?...ENFIM UM ANO QUE

OU ERA PAR OU IMPAR MAS NÃO ACABAVA EM TERMINAÇÃO NULA...

NO SONHO IA À CASA DE
Stavros Constantinou Dionisos
que por acaso ou não tinha um
nome grego, era ou se calhar ainda é um daqueles gajos que come o melhor de todas as crises
desde a carne às bebidas ditas espirituosas e outras untuosidades, a rua era empedrada como em Évora e estava lá escrito no empedrado Neznámý klonový voják číslo, alguém andava em cuecas pela casa, durante o sonho
lembrei-me que aquilo não era usual e comecei a desconfiar que aquilo era um pesadelo grego muito soft, da janela de trás via-se uma subida enorme era talvez o caminho para a dívida ou o mito de Sísifo ou outra mitologia qualquer, a janela estava a um metro do chão, aqui a memória falhou-me que os sonhos esquecem-se depressa, a casa foi aumentada ou inflacionada no sonho, era um 4ºaNDAR mas surgia como um 4ºlugar, não tem altura, prolonga-se para o infinito na parte de trás...que há poucochinho tinha uma janela, aqui começo a desconfiar da realidade, mas como nunca confiei muito nela, lá fui andando, entra-se numa porta com degraus e está uma rapariga deitada, é magra como os refugiados eslavos da guerra ou as anorécticas alemãs e inglesas que andam nas praias gregas...cabelo revolto e olhos azuis, penso é vulgar não é bonita, tirando os olhos, volto a pensar que não é vulgar é estranha como um gato de olhos azuis...Neznámý klonový voják číslo ah penso esta porta não estava ali e as letras ainda menos..eu já vi isto antes mas onde? nem sequer é uma frase que faça assim muito sentido Neznámý klonový voják číslo
afinal não é uma porta é uma janela em xxx empilhados parece de ferro ou madeira, esta parte onde está escrito Neznámý klonový voják číslo, levanta-se do chão como se fosse uma janela guilhotina, a casa é de pedra e atrás da casa vê-se a sede do PSD, A sede do quê? aí duvido que esteja num lugar racionalmente ou geograficamente correto
duas bandeiras flutuam Neznámý klonový voják číslo, volto para dentro e saio, saio de onde? não sei mas o raio do sonho continua e não acordo, ainda há mais?
o pater famílias ia à biblioteca, a mãe fazia umas cousas de massa, há um folar e eu digo...ah é Páscoa e tudo fica claro estou temporalmente situado no  sonho..a cozinha é enorme há um irmão e mais um rapaz...um moço de lavoura? um eslavo do sul fugido da guerra?
eu pergunto : é o teu irmão que faz anos?
mas não é isso o que eu falei digo Neznámý klonový voják číslo
bolas penso isto está a ser repetitivo....se bem que até é parecido ao é o teu irmão que faz anos se não formos muito exigentes e se bem me lembro , eu não era, havia duas revistas de muié pelada na mesa, a internet ainda não era o principal motor da pornografia e mais uma revista qualquer e eu ia levá-las à Biblos era uma Biblos muito pouco convencional, depois não vou, tiro as calças e continuo a andar com uma túnica dentro de casa ou um lençol enrolado ou umas cuecas...uma cousa dessas 
foi um sonho extremamente lúcido ou se calhar nem por isso