May I, too, wish everyone reading this a happy and really good 2007.
Money? Health? Happines? In fact, they are all related and pretty much part of the same thing.
If you want to talk about heart problems or cancer, welcome to my home; if you want to knock money then you go enjoy public health services; if you want to be happy then have enough of the health and wealth to allow that rare state of being to flourish once in a while.
Being or not being rich has eff-all to do with killing the world. Simplistic blame-placing is possibly a greater evil than that which it seeks to condemn; we are all headed to hell in a hand-cart because we are human and, having the power to self-destruct, we will use it (the power, if not the hand-cart).
Sadam was rubbed out this morning; so what do you hear? One side crows and the other bleats. Nothing is learned, nothing will change for the better and life will go on in the same dark-ages manner it always has. I'm afraid that veneer of civilization is, indeed, paper thin. We send money to charities to discover that they function from within corporate-style offices; a little of that money reaches into the areas of horror to what avail? some other dictator builds up his bank account with it. The poor are still starved whilst their despotic rulers buy fleets of Mercedes as they encourage their dumb supporters to kill off the opposition...
Having said that, one still believes in a better day. That's the other side of the human condition: despite what you see and know to be true, you still can have faith. In something else.
Enough already, as might be said in the middle east; enjoy the brighter side of everything that comes your way but don't expect to change what is man.
Ciao - Rob C