What do WAR, TRADE and DEATH have in common?
They are the three mysterious Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
They represent some of the true forces shaping our world today.
Second Seal
"And when He had opened the second seal..here went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him and to him that sat thereon it was given to take peace from the earth, and that they should slay one another: and there was given unto him a great sword." Rev 6.4
This second horse obviously represents war, as there has hardly been a day in the Worlds's history without people killing each other. Horse is red as the color of blood.
Third Seal
"And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come. And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand.
Rev 6:6 And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a shilling, and three measures of barley for a shilling; and the oil and the wine hurt thou not." Rev 6.6
Here we see coming the horse of commerce , the horse of money and heartless capitalism,and with it famine. One symptom of famine is a skin condition called Xerosis, as the condition grows worse, the skin is often mottled, or has dark blotches with different shades of color.
Fourth Seal
And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, Come.
Rev 6:8 And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death; and Hades followed with him. And there was given unto them authority over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with famine, and with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth. So the final horse is death in all its forms.

First Seal
And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon had a bow; and there was given unto him a crown: and he came forth conquering, and to conquer.
This first Horseman is obviously Jesus, with a crown, all in white, going forth conquering and to conquer. At the time of this revelation the early christians indeed went forward and conquered the Roman Empire. The message of love and redemption more powerful than any human force.

Conclusion
In these few verses we have a remarkable description of the true forces shaping humanity today. First and foremost Jesus, the Son of God. Second, War, the total opposite of love. Third commercialism, capitalism, motivated by greed, for the benefit of the few and the exploitation of billions. And finally fourth, Death in all of its forms.

·Extracted from: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, published by Allen Lane

"So while the reconstruction of Iraq was certainly a failure for Iraqis and for US taxpayers, it has been anything but for the disaster capitalism complex. Made possible by the September 11 attacks, the war in Iraq represented nothing less than the violent birth of a new economy. This was the genius of Rumsfeld's "transformation" plan: since every possible aspect of both destruction and reconstruction has been outsourced and privatised, there is an economic boom when the bombs start falling, when they stop and when they start up again - a closed profit-loop of destruction and reconstruction, of tearing down and building up. For companies that are clever and far-sighted, such as Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, the destroyers and rebuilders are different divisions of the same corporations.

The Bush administration has taken several important and little-examined measures to institutionalise the privatised warfare model forged in Iraq, making it a permanent fixture of foreign policy. In July 2006, Bowen, the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, issued a report on "lessons learned" from the various contractor debacles. It concluded that the problems stemmed from insufficient planning and called for the creation of "a deployable reserve corps of contracting personnel who are trained to execute rapid relief and reconstruction contracting during contingency operations" and to "pre-qualify a diverse pool of contractors with expertise in specialised reconstruction areas" - in other words, a standing contractor army. In his 2007 State of the Union address, Bush championed the idea, announcing the creation of a brand-new civilian reserve corps. "Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," he said. "It would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time."

A year and half into the Iraq occupation, the US State Department launched a new branch: the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization. On any given day, it is paying private contractors to draw up detailed plans to reconstruct 25 different countries that may, for one reason or another, find themselves the target of US-sponsored destruction, from Venezuela to Iran. Corporations and consultants are lined up on "pre-signed contracts" so that they are ready to leap into action as soon as disaster strikes. For the Bush administration, it was a natural evolution: after claiming it had a right to cause unlimited pre-emptive destruction, it then pioneered pre-emptive reconstruction - rebuilding places that have not yet been destroyed.

So in the end, the war in Iraq did create a model economy - it was just not the "tiger on the Tigris" that the neo-cons had advertised. Instead, it was a model for privatised war and reconstruction - a model that quickly became export-ready. Until Iraq, the frontiers of the Chicago crusade had been bound by geography: Russia, Argentina, South Korea. Now a new frontier can open up wherever the next disaster strikes.