Pridger vs. the New World Order

PROGRESS IN NATION BUILDING

With the big 9/11 congressional investigation going on, the news is now all about how 9/11 might have been averted through better intelligence gathering and preparedness. But nobody is looking at the policies that, over decades of time, planted the seeds, fertilized the seedbed, cultivated the crop, and finally brought forth an inevitable harvest of hatred for America. That which has resulted in us being considered the Great Satan to a significant segment of the population in an area that has become vital to American interests. 9/11 was an outbreak of a disease that had been incubating for many years. Indeed, it is a wonder that the symptoms were never officially noticed, much less diagnosed and treated. And it's a wonder that the acute outbreak took so long in coming.

Rather than attacking the disease at any time during its formative stages, we've only lamented the recurrent and increasingly obvious symptoms of hatred of America among Arab peoples. Then, when the acute 9/11 attack occurred, we finally struck out savagely at one of the festering manifestations of the symptoms. And then we went the extra mile to attack Iraq (which had nothing to do with 9/11, and had never seriously posed a threat to us), just in case it might be a future festering manifestations of the symptoms. Iraq, of course, was an enemy primarily because we had continued to be at war with it since the first Gulf War -- a period of over a decade of debilitating economic sanctions and intermittent bombing. More importantly, Iraq was an enemy because it was perceived as a serious and potentially growing threat to Israel.

So now we are in Iraq for better or worse. And it looks worse all the time.

Bush promises to turn sovereignty over to an Iraqi government on schedule, regardless of the lack of any united front in that still deteriorating nation. He also promises to stay the course militarily, even though the going is getting tougher despite the fact that victory was declared a year ago. It's beginning to appear that it took a man like Saddam Hussein to successfully rule Iraq, but no viable replacement appears to be in sight.

We've apparently managed to cobble together a disjointed Iraqi committee, and called it the beginnings of a democratic government, but it is unlikely to actually rule Iraq and bring order out of increasing chaos. But the president insists there's light, freedom, and democracy, at the end of the tunnel in Iraq. All Pridger can say is good luck.

With what appears to be a deteriorating military situation in Iraq, our position is beginning to resemble Israel's situation in the occupied Territories. But what else could be expected when we appear, at least to Arabs, to acting as Israel's proxy in Arab lands? A pattern of Iraqi insurgent actions, followed by retaliatory reactions of escalating ferocity, can do nothing but increase resentment and resistance to our occupation. As our responses unavoidably kill and wound more innocents than guilty parties, the Iraqi's cannot be expected to feel a great deal of enthusiasm for our occupation. When mosques are bombed to root out rebels, the assault becomes one against all Moslems -- at least that's how it will be characterized by many Iraqis and most of the Moslem world.

And to think, a small band of box cutter wielding hijackers, under the direction of a robed Moslem fanatic and a rag-tag terrorist organization without a country, has brought us to this impasse. Box cutters! It's still a little difficult to believe. And here we were worrying about apparently non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Bush administration was sure that Saddam had'em. He's used them on his own people. Dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands, of people died because of those weapons of mass destruction. We, along with the Russians, had done all we could to arm Iraq to the teeth with everything it needed -- those WMDs had to be there. Saddam had gassed some of his own enemies with them. But apparently Saddam got rid of them like we told him to.

Now it's a little embarrassing to have initiated a major preemptive war (something that was totally un-American, and against all the tenets of international law that we have been trying to foist upon the world for nearly a century), on faulty assumptions. Was this due to a break-down in intelligence service data gathering, or merely the result of a breakdown in the intelligence levels of our elected and unelected officials in Washington? Whatever it was, it certainly makes the president look bad, and it makes our country look like the rogue state that we like to accuse other nations of being. It won't be easy to live down. In fact, the world has changed and America has lost the respect of most of the world.

Well, maybe that's an unfair assessment. Fear is a form of respect, and the rest of the world has come to consider us as a highly dangerous superpower.

Now even the Russians pulling their people out of Iraq. The new democracy is simply getting a little too dangerous for them. Others will follow. The New World Order is changing too, and gas prices are going out of sight at American gas pumps. If we can just keep Red China on our side, and refrain from going after North Korea's weapons of mass destruction, maybe WalMart and Wall Street will hold up for a while longer.

We aren't hearing much about "body counts" in our present war. That was the great gauge of our successes in Vietnam. If non-American body counts were high, we knew we were winning and that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

It would really be nice to know what the body count really is in Iraq since we started the war. How much human collateral damage has really been done? We only hear of our own casualties, and that more insurgents are being killed than Americans. But how many innocent people have been killed or maimed since we went in to save the Iraqi people?

Pridger wonders how our body count would compare to that of the former Butcher of Baghdad? Chances are, we've already outdone Saddam hands down. In our eagerness to make America secure by saving the Iraqi people, we've inadvertently swapped roles. All good intentions aside, we're failing to win the hearts and minds of the survivors.

Salvation, of course, is dangerous business and collateral damage cannot be avoided. Doing God's work is thus a thankless task. The Iraqis seem to be less and less appreciative of the salvation we've delivered as time goes on. We claim that most Iraqis are glad to be rid of Saddam, but now they are much more eager to be rid of our occupying forces than they ever were to overthrow the Butcher of Baghdad.

This bodes ill for our nation building in the Iraqi, as our "success" is looking less and less successful at winning the love and respect of the Iraqi citizens. It also bodes ill for a Bush reelection in November, giving John Kerry and the Democrats plenty of ammunition to attack Bush's war and nation building record.

All of this might have been foreseen by even the most detached observer since well before the beginning. But Bush had a mission. Unfortunately we have lost most of the international sympathy we initially had as the result of 9/11, and most of the world considers our Iraqi War a colossal blunder, if not the criminal act of a superpower rogue state. Sooner or later our coalition allies will be seeking to disassociate themselves from our nation-building effort, as Spain is threatening to do. Tony Blair of England is probably on the way out in that country, and if the English pull out of Iraq, we'll be left to cope with the mess we've created virtually alone. This is a tragedy of momentous proportions for America's apparent foreign policy goals. And it doesn't bode well for the New World Order and globalism either.

The New World Order is dead without the unmitigated support and leadership of the United States. But if America is considered a superpower pariah and rogue state by the rest of the world, who's going to continue to follow such a leader without dragging their feet a little?

But what are the choices? Can the rest of the world somehow invigorate and empower the United Nations to take the lead in the world? No, the New World Order cannot be guided by a big, sprawling, parliamentary committee like the United Nations. Try as it might, the international community cannot make the United Nations a world leader. It's an impossibility. As much international regulatory power as the United Nations and its multitudes of regulatory agencies have been given, it totally lacks anything like cohesive leadership capabilities. Though it was born as the supposed embryo of World governance, it has never matured into anything but a much bigger embryo with mega tons of bureaucratic regulatory power. Without United States' leadership, however, the UN would have been an abortion, pure and simple (like the League of Nations before it). In any case, where would the United Nations be without American financial support?

Frantic attempts will be made to keep globalism on track, of course, and the United States will do whatever it thinks necessary to maintain its leadership role in the world. The world's only remaining superpower could be expected to do no less.

It's increasingly appearing that the next presidential administration is going to give the left hand of government (the Democrats), the job of trying to salvage the New World Order. It will also have to try to salvage something out of what is increasingly viewed as our Iraqi misadventure. The left hand of government, of course, is comprised of "Global Village" people who have a general disdain for any sort of "nationalism" or patriotism. Appeasement both in Iraq and among the global community can be expected to be their main mode of operation. They will seek to hand our Iraqi problem off to the United Nations, with the American taxpayer footing most of the bill for whatever comes to pass in that region. Of course, they will want to do all within their powers to empower and help focus that august body, and further subvert American sovereignty in the spirit of international cooperation.

Unfortunately, the choices the American people have in national leadership today (right hand or left hand of government), are choices between the lesser of two or more possible disastrous scenarios. There are nothing but disastrous scenarios out there on the table.

Not that Pridger is a pessimist or anything. Everything will work out in the end. Trouble is, the end may not be where we wanted to go. But the survivors will make do, and Pridger has no doubt that there will be many survivors.

Pridger firmly believes that the American government should have concentrated on making a better America for Americans rather than a better world for everybody else. If we had our act together, maybe we could have had a much more positive effect on the rest of the world. What we are managing to do is to destroy ourselves in an effort of build an unworkable New World Order based on a usurious global financial system and corporate power, masquerading as a "global free market system," backed up by military might.

If this really was a "Nation Under God" (maybe with a New Testament Christian president, rather than an Old Testament Christian president -- or, better yet, a Thomas Jefferson), we wouldn't be in Iraq. We'd be right here at home making this land of milk and honey an even better place. As it is, we're "over there" bringing democracy to the heathens with eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth diplomacy, efficiency, and determination, worthy of God's Chosen People taking possession of the Promised Land.

THE BIG FREE TRADE CON

Pridger never ceases to be amazed at the bold-faced lies and distortions that politicians, court economists, and policy wonks engage in to promote and preserve the holy grail of free trade policy. The proponents of globalism and free trade keep reminding us that we cannot turn our back on what has made this country so economically great and strong. They speak primarily to the under 30 generation that does not remember how great this nation was before the advent of the "new international economic order." As for the rest of us, they hope we've either forgotten or have come to believe the oft-repeated propaganda line.

They are getting things exactly backwards and expecting people to believe them (and many actually do). We turned our back on what made this nation great when globalism became national policy. We didn't become great under "new international economic order" policies -- we became great before that, back when Americans produced just about everything America consumed. We became great under policies of reasoned trade protectionism and at least half-way enlightened business regulation.

Today's young to middle-aged population has grown up and been educated to believe that America was actually a very socially and economically backward nation until the blossoming of free trade and the new international economic order. International interdependence, like multi-culturalism, is now an accepted given -- the norm of the American status quo. Even many true conservatives have been successfully conned, and believe that globalism actually represents the blossoming of greater economic "freedom." Libertarians are also hooked on the supposed transcendental truth that "free trade" is unquestionably good -- it has to be, because it has the word "free" in it!

But our so-called "free trade" agreements, for which "fast track" has been employed, are not free trade agreements nearly as much as they are "investment agreements," allowing (and encouraging), American capital to go abroad, hire cheap labor, and then produce for the American market. A perversion on the very face of it! -- and the process of "fast-track" itself ought be be judged totally unconstitutional. "Free trade" is not really about free trade, it's about freeing up capital to exploit the world in a wholesale manner.

Of course, unfettered trade does represent greater economic freedom for multi-national corporations and runaway flag businesses. But it has meant the end of national economic independence, and the betrayal of American labor. And American labor constitutes the vast majority of the population -- "We the People" -- the former owner/operators, and primary stakeholders, of the American domestic marketplace.

We are even told that factory and job export, including all nature of job outsourcing, is actually good for American workers and will eventually result in the creation of more job opportunities for Americans. Incredibly, many people apparently still actually believe this! This makes it frustrating for those of us who have kept our eye on the ball since long before the Reagan administration whipped the new international economic order out on us. Old reprobates that we are, we still think that it is more than just self-evident that we were much better off when we were an economically and politically independent nation.

Just a few nights ago Pridger saw our own Treasury Secretary reiterating the great con on national TV. The clinching argument to "prove" that free trade and globalism are good for American labor was the simple statement that (to paraphrase), "America represents only 5% of the world's population. That means that 95% of the global market is outside of the United States. Selling goods and services to that 95% of the world's population is the great hope of American workers." That market potential is supposed to be our salvation -- why worry about a the loss of our own paltry 5% share of the global market? Why worry that American jobs are going overseas, when the 95% percent of the potential market for "American production" is growing ripe for American exploitation?

These simple numbers represent something that all Americans can understand, and that's why it makes such a good con. 95% of the market is still out there for Americans to tap into!

What's wrong with that argument? First, our 5% percent of the world's population is "us" -- We the American People -- and our continental real estate, its industries and its markets ought to still be ours too. The job of protecting that real estate, our industry, and that market was one of the few legitimate roles of our limited, constitutional, republican government. Second, that other 95% of the global market "out there" is "theirs" not "ours," and we aren't even going to come close to having a significant share of it unless American labor is able to underbid Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and Bangladeshi labor. Since we've already lost so much of our own market, we'll be very lucky just to regain our own 5% share of global markets.

Our share of the global market had become the richest, most productive pocket of economic dynamism the world had ever known. It was "our" share of the global consumer marketplace, and when our paltry 5% share of the global population produced for itself, the nation was economically unassailable. We produced and consumed 30% of the global GNP! The American economy became the economic wonder of the world. Naturally, a lot of people didn't like that and wanted "their share of it."

If there is ever to be any true equity in the world, it stands to reason that, if we represent only 5% of the global population, our rightful share of global markets will be exactly 5%. The very core goal and purpose of globalization is to bring economic parity and the "good life" to all of humanity. This would naturally imply that no nation should have any more than its proportionate share of global wealth, based on population.

Our rightful share of global markets; our share of production; our share of consumption; and our share of global resources will be 5%, as long as 5% remains our share of the global population. How is it then that because 95% of humanity lives elsewhere it represents a potential economic bonanza to us? Answer: This is just globalist smoke -- a snow job to quiet and pacify the restless natives until they finally "wake up homeless in the nation their fathers occupied."

Is 5% of the world's population somehow going to exploit the other 95% after it has given up its own share of the market to the foreign competition? Is the other 95% percent of humanity going to stand by and let us exploit it? No! Not even the Third World is going to stand around passively and be exploited any more. That is the very problem globalism purports to fix in the first place! The "experts" know this, of course. It isn't going to be the American people who intend to exploit the world -- they've already been slated to join the other 95% in fraternity and equality. The American people are not to be allowed any material advantage over the rest of humanity -- that would defeat the whole supposed purpose of globalism. They (that is, us Americans) must become more competitive -- and that means, in general terms, a lot less affluent.

The fact is, corporations (not people or nations), are the real entities vying for international market share. Any laws of diminishing returns and notions of equity and quality of life are irrelevant to corporations. They (whatever false flag they may fly), intend to profit no matter what pattern the distribution of global wealth may take. The real goal is for international capital and large multi-national corporations to capture 100% of the global resources, agricultural and industrial production, and consumer markets. That, in spite of all the wonderful rhetoric attached to globalism, is the "real" program in a nutshell. That is what is happening while we watch the shells of the game make their deceptive moves.

The United States has always represented only a comparatively small percentage of the global population. Yet the United States of America, with its small population, by the middle of the twentieth century, had created and was consuming almost 30% of the global GNP. Not only was it the economic wonder of the world, but it became the most militarily powerful nation in the world. This did not happen by accident. It happened because we had been getting something right. But we're not getting it right any more.

Not only did the United States "consume" 30% of the global GNP, it was also responsible for "creating" the wealth represented by that share of the global GNP. True, we were exploiting and consuming more than our share of the world's natural resource production -- and that was one of the reasons the rest of the world (represented by foreign internationalist planners), decided that America had to start sharing its wealth more "equitably" with the rest of the world. Another reason was that most of the rest of the world simply wasn't getting very much right, and there was (and continues to be), a lot of economic jealously on that account.

What America and the rest of the advanced industrial nations really needed to do was to perfect themselves rather than commit the economic suicide which we have been conned into thinking was the solution to the great "North-South" disparity in wealth. Perfecting ourselves would have meant learning to live within our means so that the rest of humanity would be able to upgrade economically without having to consume an impossible 600% of global GNP -- the percentage amount of current GNP which would bring the rest of the world up to U.S. and "western" standards of affluence and consumption.

Even the term GNP (Gross National Product), as it is being comparatively used is totally inadequate for the purposes, and thus very deceptive. The advanced western nations (and a few others, of course), created the lion's share of global GNP that the world is now sharing. The rest of the undeveloped world, for various reasons, simply hadn't created a significant share of global GNP. Thus deficient, they were merely told that the West (or North, as the international brain trust calls it), was "taking" more than its rightful share.

Colonialism was blamed for fact that most underdeveloped nations, even after thirty years and more of independence, were failing to make the grade. They were still being exploited, they were told. This, of course, was true. But that was only a small part of the story. Many of those nations would never have known what GNP was had they not been colonized and exploited to begin with.

The colonial powers had developed the only real "industries" most of them have ever had. It was colonialism that had made them "aware" of the potential of their own natural resource wealth. But for western colonialism and exploitation, many would have remained just as the original European explorers found them. Whether or not that would have made it a better world is perhaps debatable, but it is also irrelevant at this late date.

The point I am trying to make here is that GNP is, or should be, just what the term implies, "Gross National Product." Gross national product is created within each nation by its own peoples. American GNP is the product of the American economy, just as England's, Germany's, and France's GNP are the products of their economic activities.

There are many large nations which are richly endowed with intelligent populations and abundant natural resources, but nonetheless have not contributed their rightful share to the global GNP. Some never suffered western colonization. Others did. The United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were once English colonies. But they were special cases. Why were they special cases? What happened in Spanish/Portuguese-America? South America is as rich in natural resources as North America, and just as diverse in climate.

Some developing nations, such as China, were never conquered or colonized. China is particularly noteworthy. It had an ancient and high civilization that predates those of the west. China remained isolated and backward both by circumstance and design, however. But now that China has decided to modernize, it is developing at breakneck speed, and has made up for centuries lost in two short decades. Within a few more decades China will be capable of a GNP greater than anything the United States has ever known.

But China has several special advantages. Not only does it have a highly developed civilization and culture, but also a very intelligent and energetic population. And, even more than that, it has the American market and plenty of American money -- and it has positioned itself to take maximum advantage of it's new-found situation -- a situation that was almost thrust upon it. China's unique situation as both America's indispensable provider and creditor has been the result of the astute planning of the Washington Brain Trust -- a "Trust" which promises one thing while delivering something altogether different.

Most Latin American nations have enjoyed independence about as long as the U.S. and Canada have. Yet, rather than producing large GNPs of their own, they now want "their share" of "our" share of global GNP. Why haven't they created their own rightful share? (These matters will have to wait for other posts.) And what of rich, wonderful, sub-Sahara Africa? In many African nations, the colonial period remains the nearest thing to a "golden age" any of them have yet experienced. And this after forty years of independence. They, too, want "their share" of "our" share of global GNP.

Liberia, the oldest independent black republic in Africa, (and the world's second largest merchant ship registry), is even more backward than most of its ex-colony neighbors. Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa, once the only economic success stories in sub-Sahara Africa, now also need help badly, and their political, social, and economic fortunes continue in precipitous decline.

Our trusty national leaders have chosen to share our wealth by relinquishing our national marketplace to the rest of humanity and sending what we have (our national assets: factories, our jobs, our money, etc.) to the competition so they can successfully compete with us and upgrade to our former economic status. The great fiction and the great con is based on the impossible proposition that, by these means, the rest of the world will soon enjoy the same economic standard that we have known. In the end it will not be a sharing of wealth, but the sharing of poverty.

The whole facade is so transparent that it is a wonder that the Global Village has been pulled off. But it has, and now we're eyebrow deep into a New World Order that negates everything that we once supposedly knew, stood for, and benefited from as a well endowed nation state. Most of us were too busy making a living to concern ourselves with global geopolitics, so we left our fate in the hands of our trusty representatives in Washington -- and they have turned out to be mis-representatives.

A great and graphic example of the perversity of globalism is readily apparent in NAFTA. If there were anything really altruistic in NAFTA, we would not have sent American factories and jobs to Mexico so that cheaply paid Mexican labor could produce for the American market. We would have given Mexicans the wherewithal to create GNP for themselves -- earn more and produce for the Mexican market. This would have given Mexican manufacturers the incentives to raise Mexican wages so that they would be able to purchase and enjoy the fruits of their own productive labor (the Henry Ford lesson).

Americans should have kept their factories and jobs at home so they could continue to be as productive and prosperous as ever. New factories and jobs in Mexico, even if they had to initially be capitalized by American taxpayers, should have had the purpose of producing new wealth in Mexico for Mexicans (increase their GNP) -- rather than simply transferring American wealth-producing assets to Mexico so multi-national corporations could enjoy greater profits. Maybe the American taxpayer would have been repaid with interest rather than growing trade deficits, and Mexicans would not be so eager to leave Mexico for the United States. But this would have required simple common sense -- something that has become particularly rare in the halls of political power.

The perversities of the New World Order were not the result of any thinking in Washington. In fact, until the 70's our national leadership resisted deregulation and unfettered international free trade. Then, somehow, they totally lost their way. Since then, they've apparently ceased to think at all -- being satisfied, instead, with the wondrous windfalls of the Wall Street bubble and towering GNP statistics. Budgetary deficits and the national debt are no longer any great concern. The thinking and planning was done by others elsewhere, and our mis-representatives in Washington, armed with "fast track", have acted as a rubber stamp, committing the American people to perdition.

The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 12, 1974. It sought to establish "'generally accepted norms to govern international economic relations systematically,' and to promote the creation of a New International Economic Order."

Of course, the New World Order would go nowhere without active American support -- and this active support would eventually undermine it's own economic well being as well as its ability to shape its own economic and political destiny. As Henry Kissinger remarked, "Where the world is going depends importantly on the United States." (Time Magazine, October 27, 1975) And it was "regretted that the United States, like most other countries, has yet to develop the internal mechanisms which make it possible to discern desirable directions..." (RIO)

Of course, our trusty leaders went for the proposed new international economic order. Henry Kissinger, in a speech read by the United States' Ambassador to the U.N., told the Third World and global planners: 'We have heard your voices. We embrace your hopes. We will join your efforts.'" With this statement, and the policy changes that followed (as Congress caved in to the globalist's plans in increasingly large increments), our nation was unequivocally set on a course of national economic suicide.

The international brain trust told us, "A free market implies the free movement of labour and capital as well as goods and services. Yet immigration laws in almost all rich nations make impossible any large scale movement of unskilled labour in a world-wide search for economic opportunities... not much capital has crossed international boundaries, both because of poor nations' sensitivities and the rich nations' own needs... The rich nations have in fact used the 'free market to construct a protective wall, which even enhances their privileged positions..." ("RIO -- Reshaping the International Order -- a Report to the Club of Rome," 1976)

Prior to letting the United Nations and the international brain trust (Club of Rome, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, et. al.), dictate the future of American trade and economic policy, and signing onto their "new international economic order," the purpose of the American government was to represent and protect the interests of the American people, i.e., protect them not only from military invasion but unwanted immigrant and import invasion as well. That's what we're still paying taxes for. But that isn't what we're getting. Instead, the American middle class is being sold down the river while being told they're on the way upstream to better environs.

Our leaders were apparently finally convinced that continuing to represent the American people was too dangerous, because we are such a small minority in the world. Obviously they have since been representing the "People of the World" in hopes of escaping international censure. Conveniently, however, it was possible for our leaders to do this by empowering international capital (as the personification of global economic interests), and make the great transition of American policy, and the advent of the new international economic order attractive by making it appear that it would mean more profits for all. In short, the New World Order, like the capitalist principle itself, would be made to worship at the altar of Mammon.

By this means a global capitalist tide was set in motion to lift all boats, and if the boat of the American middle class happened to sink in the process, at least it would not be reflected in levels of GNP nor in the levels of wealth pumped into Wall Street and the international financial markets. A great shell game had been created so that the illusion of economic progress could be used to blind and fool the masses.

We have since changed our immigration and trade policies to conform to the plans and dictates of the international brain trust. Now "We the People" are reaping the fruits of these fundamental national policy changes -- and (as president Reagan might say), "We ain't seen nothing yet!"

But the fruit the American people (as well as most of the other 95% of humanity), are reaping is little more than the dried peelings, while the rest goes to the owners of international capital. Yet few people realize how badly and successfully they've been conned -- though many are beginning experience some discomfort and have a few suspicions.

The gold at the end of the rainbow for American workers is repeatedly reiterated. It is that 95% of humanity that lives elsewhere. All American workers have to do to realize and profit from that golden opportunity is sell their production to the other 95% of the global population. All will then be right again. We are told that America merely needs to export more to the rest of the world. This argument is as fallacious, wrong-headed, and downright ridiculous, as the notion that we ultimately deserve any more than our rightful 5% share of global markets in an equitable world. Remember, the goal is supposed to be an equitable world in which everybody shares the wealth.

Export more? Well, we have long been exporting food to the rest of the world. And the fire-sale prices we get for our agricultural commodity production (because we cannot sell at American parity prices into impoverished foreign markets), has already helped bankrupt most American farmers. (The result of that, of course, is that American agriculture is now largely in the hands of large corporate scale producers -- as planned by the USDA.)

Now we are supposedly expecting to export manufactured goods into a poorer world too. Are we to believe that Africans and Asians needs American made toasters; that the Japanese need American made automobiles; that the Chinese need American made chop sticks, computer components, and hand tools; that Mexicans need American made cars and tortillas? Well, yes -- if we can just produce and ship them cheaply enough to crack their markets.

That's the only major obstacle. American labor is not yet quite competitive enough, though it is still being told that it is the most productive in the world. The key to American competitiveness in the international marketplace is, of course, the "cost of labor." If the cost of America labor can just be brought down to acceptable global levels, American exports can flood foreign markets. No that won't even do it. American labor must be even cheaper than global levels to crack the markets! So this won't happen on any great scale any time in the near future. A lot more American industries will have to die, and a lot more American jobs exported or outsourced before this can happen.

This, of course, is a very bad joke. Actually, it's more like a nightmare. And in the end, nothing will work quite as planned. The rest of humanity (especially in poor nations), is eager to produce and consume for itself -- like America used to do. Right now poor countries are producing for the American market solely because American consumers are still able to purchase that production.

No foreign nation really wants American goods, unless they are both high quality and ridiculously cheap. Why try to fool ourselves? How can we be thus fooled into thinking we have a chance at cracking poorer markets -- or any significant market share? The Japanese are no longer poor, but they like Japanese cars. The Chinese will sooner or later begin to need and use the things they produce, and they'll prefer their own products to American products. Will Indonesians and Bangladeshis ever develop a taste for American made shoes and garments? Unlikely.

Of course, when American labor is finally willing to work for Third World wages, American consumers will no longer be able to afford to purchase what the rest of the world has to sell. It will be just as cheap to produce them in America -- and why add shipping costs? Then we'll have to start producing for ourselves again.

EXPORTING MORE AMERICAN PRODUCTS IS NOT THE ANSWER!

In a viable national economy, capital and labor must work on the same team in order to deliver the benefits of modern industrialization. Talk of a "post-industrial" America is dangerous, and economically suicidal, double-speak.

President Ronald Reagan was Pridger's favorite modern president. He mostly said the right things -- i.e., "Government doesn't solve problems, it is the problem." He ran on a strong "we must balance the budget" platform. But more wrong things happened on his watch than even the Clinton administration could conjure up in two terms. Reagan initiated, or at least marched out, the "new international economic order", he was a devout "supply side" economics man, and coined the term "trickle-down economics." He was a free trader, committed to an international free market system. He was a champion of business capital, and when he "got the government off our backs" he didn't mean "our" backs, he meant the backs of corporations -- the very entities that most needed continued regulation. He stated in full pride that America was going "post-industrial," and was going to become a high tech, "service economy." He initiated the Maquiladora program, which was the pilot for NAFTA. I believe that the first great illegal alien amnesty program came down on his watch too (but I haven't checked the date). All of this validates the cautionary, "Watch what he does, not what he says during the campaign," note when assessing politicians and presidents. If Pridger were a liberal, the list of wrong things the Reagan administration accomplished would be ten or twenty times longer.

Pridger's old Pappy, an old-line Democrat (though finally totally disgusted with the whole political party facade), pointed out that, "A service economy is where everybody makes a living by taking in each other's laundry." Bangladeshis make the clothes, the Mexicans make the washing machines and dryers, and the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese make everything else we need to enjoy splendid comfort.

Reagan's trickle-down economics worked okay, but for one small thing. Capital fashioned such large and bottomless pockets for itself that precious little ever managed to trickle down.

In short, the country was turned upside down during Reagan's presidency. He spoke like a true conservative, but produced the International America of the joint liberal/capitalist internationalist cabal, in accordance with the dictates of the International brain trust's plan for a New World Order.

Perhaps Reagan can be excused. At least Pridger cuts him that much slack. He survived one assassination attempt -- and whether the would-be assassin was anything other than a lone girl-crazed gunman, a brush with assassination is likely to bring most any president to heel.

On the other hand, Pridger has no illusions as to the fact that Reagan had long before been taken in by the rhetoric and promises of free market economists. He probably sincerely believed that if the free market system could produce an economic miracle in a protected America, it could also produce the same economic miracle for the world. In this, he was sorely mistaken. In order to attempt the experiment, capital had to be unleashed from all its national shackles.

Capital, like fire, can be a wonderful servant, but makes a fearful master. Capital unleashed, and cut free from all social or national purpose and responsibility, can only revert to its purest and most predatory nature.

So, here we are, two decades down the road, in one heck of a mess -- yet we're still being told we're going up the river.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Divide and conquer is the way to accomplish almost any perverse end. We're told that in order to get out of our present economic fix, all Americans need to do is export more to the rest of the world. In order to do that, American labor still has to be taken down a few more economic notches in order to be internationally competitive. The way this is being accomplished is by dividing the American producer from the American consumer. They were once one in the same person. American producers, in a mutually beneficial partnership with capital, produced for the American market and they also consumed most of their own production.

When the American producer and consumer were one in the same person, employed by "domestic" American capital, capital had an incentive to keep the wages of labor high. There was no such thing as a "jobless recovery." If Wall Street and the economy were booming, American labor was fully employed and doing well too. Only when the employees of capital are also the primary consumers of capital production can a broad-based prosperity be created. This is why the American industrial middle class developed as it did -- and all other workers throughout the economy were drawn upward on the coat tails of industrial labor and the industrialized economy.

Divorce capital from labor and this critical partnership is broken. When capital employs labor to produce for export, there is no incentive for capital to keep the wages of labor high. The opposite becomes the case. Labor merely becomes another cost of production to be cut by any means available in order to increase profits. Since labor is not also the customer, capital could care less whether labor gains the wherewithal to maintain any particular standard of living.

This is why an export economy is no replacement for an economy that produces primarily for domestic consumption. Yet none of the "experts" are pointing this out to the American people. In fact, all the experts are vigorously pushing the opposite message.

There's another down-side. Rich countries that seek to export into poorer markets have to price those exports to sell in those poorer markets. It ought to be readily apparent that this can result in nothing less than a race to the floor. But what economist is pointing this out to the American people? What politician is pointing it out? None!

Almost all of the poor, under developed, nations (including former colonies), no matter how rich in natural resources, have been export-based economies -- where the consumers of their production are always "other people elsewhere." Keeping domestic wages low has always been part of their national economic policy in order to attract foreign investment and take profits.

Usually Third World nations are so overburdened with debt (which is always gladly accepted when the rulers get their part of the action), that once the international banks, the corporate business owners, and grasping local politicians are paid, there is precious little left for labor. In typical Third World nations these circumstance and processes are institutionalized, and aren't changing as the New World Order bull rushes in to finish goring its hapless benefactors -- they remain peon labor, little better off than slaves or serfs.

Third World nations that developed from former colonies and had plantation economies developed to supply and serve the mother country. Little has changed. They are still plantation economies, but they are going industrial and high tech. But all else remains the same, because most of the wealth they produce is for export to others, elsewhere. This system is just as institutionalized today as when they were colonial "possessions." The only difference now is that multi-national corporations, with the help of the World Bank and IMF, run the show rather than "mother countries."

Pre-Civil War America provides an excellent example of a nation regionally divided between two distinct economic systems. The North had a vigorous agricultural and industrialized economy, and it protected its market. The South had an export-based plantation economy. Cotton was the major export, and cheap labor was institutionalized in the form of chattel slavery.

The South needed "free trade" in order to sell cotton abroad and prosper. The North needed "protectionism" in order to prosper and keep its money and products at home. Naturally, the two could not co-exist as one nation, and the Civil War finally resulted. The North was getting something fundamentally right, and the South was locked into a system that was fundamentally wrong and economically flawed. The North won, of course.

This American North-South divide was not all that much different from the present global North-South divide that the international brain trust has successfully exploited in bringing on the New World Order. But in the present case, the North is being required to mortgage itself to the South to bring equity to the global economy. This certainly isn't getting it right -- certainly not for us in the North -- yet our leaders have followed their dictates, and the rest of the world is apparently eager to follow in our footsteps.

Pushing toward making America into an export-based economy is like moving the nation back toward what the South was before the Civil War, and what many nations were under the yoke of colonialism, and continue under (but now the yoke is the yoke of international capital). That's why so many of us have for so long referred to the New World Order as the Global Plantation. The Global Plantation may now be going industrial and high tech, but it is still the same animal in every important respect.

The plantation owner is no longer either the people nor the rulers of any nation -- it's a cabal of international capital interests. The people have been blinded and hoodwinked, and the rulers paid off. Our overseers are an array of global corporations, and "We the People" are the serfs, peasants, peons, and slaves. Our governments now merely function as the overseer's controlling "police power," charged with fashioning, and controlling, a docile international corporate work force. The means of control are all nature of coercion, from educational indoctrination, taxation without true representation, macro and micro-regulation (of people, but not capital), welfare and other subsidies, providing "golden parachutes," to threat of fines, penalties, prosecution, and actual lengthy incarceration.

When we hear that free markets rules, we should also consider who rules the markets and who or what benefits. Of course, we've swallowed all the bait, as intended -- hook, line, and sinker. And the reason that we have swallowed it is that we are so well and successfully propagandized, still considerably over-fed, and have plenty of cake and circuses (not to mention wars), to divert our attention.

Is any of this the result of any real altruism or any genuine desire for global peace and prosperity? Or is it about "control" and locking in perpetual profits for international corporate interests? You be the judge.

HIGH GAS PRICES A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

Well, gasoline prices are once again at an all time high, and the major presidential challenger is pointing the finger of blame at the incumbent administration. Meanwhile, the incumbent administration is attempting to appear to be "doing something" while denigrating the challenger's accusations and proposals.

Of course, it is always stylish to blame the Arabs, OPEC, oil companies, and the incumbent administration for spikes, and ever-higher plateaus, in the price of crude oil and domestic energy supplies.

A few politicians are once again talking about the need for energy independence. Some energy "experts" use such occasions to resurrect the nuclear power genie as the only viable, long-term, alternative to fossil fuels for domestic power production.

But just who is responsible for our present dependence on foreign sources for oil? Has some Arabic enemy pushed us into our present and growingly vulnerable strategic and economic position? (Was it Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda?) No, it's our voracious and increasing appetite for oil. As in the case of our present dependence on China for a large and growing amount of our consumer goods, "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us." (To quote Pogo, or somebody) We have not only nationally continued to go down the road of more than just "conspicuous consumption" -- as a nation we have absolutely refused to live within our financial or energy resource means for half a century.

Rather than trying to become energy independent, and thereby showing the rest of the world how to conserve their own resources, we've gone the extra mile to become even more dependent in every significant thing. We've prepared a bath called total international interdependence and then jumped into that bath like a hog easing into a mud wallow from a five foot diving board. Now we wonder why we seem to be unable to shake the mud off.

Ironically, China, which is now a MAJOR "producer" of American consumer products (thanks to the Washington Brain Trust), is also becoming another voracious consumer of energy, and a major competitor for global energy supplies. This growing competition is a significant and growing part of the story of increasing oil prices in international markets and increasing gasoline prices at American gas pumps. Our mis-representatives in Washington have shot us in the foot so many times that we've forgotten what it means to walk upright on two feet. We walk on crutches and think we're the ablest and freest people in the world.

When relatively cheap, fuel-efficient, Japanese cars first began entering the American markets in the early sixties, the energy crunch handwriting was already on the wall. America was becoming far too dependent on petroleum bases fuels and, more importantly, on imported crude oil. America was no longer fuel and energy independent, and this creeping dependency should have been a major wake-up call and leading economic indicator. Then came the big Oil Embargo of 1973, which (among other things), was the result of our support for Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

For the first time in our history there were long panicky lines at gas pumps, and Americans were rudely awakened to the fact that America was becoming dangerously dependent on hostile alien sources for one of its most important energy resources. If common sense had ruled, we would have regained energy independence within two decades even if it meant putting half the nation back on horses or bicycles, or into ultra-light horseless carriages fueled by methane gas generated in Washington by the bottomless pit of the Brain Trust.

It would have been relatively easy to have remained energy independent, or regained it once we noticed that domestic oil resources couldn't satisfied the market. The major obstacle was the fact that short-sighted economic experts, national policy makers, and profit hungry industrialists and multinational corporations, had been busy for half a century making it a necessity for everybody to have to drive two tons of rubber, glass, and steel everywhere they went. Basic economics courses should have stressed too things before getting into the finer scientific points and profound statistical analysis, i.e., "Live within means," and "Plan ahead."

Actually, our "experts" did plan ahead, but with the faulty and arrogant assumption that American capital would always have easy and cheap access to everybody else's natural resources. In addition to this, most economists, as well as the schools that train them, are on corporate payrolls. So we launched ourselves into the world as a post World War II superpower, eager not only to show the world how much of its resources we could consume, but teach the rest of the world just how to consume just as much as we do.

In the early 70's the automotive industry, both here and abroad, had been engineering cars to cruise comfortably at 85 MPH for some years. We were just completing our new Interstate Highway System (as national defense project), engineered to make such speeds relatively safe. Automotive America was really taking off! But a national speed limit of 55 MPH was passed as a fuel saving measure -- a speed that seemed tediously slow in late model cars on the new highway system. Nobody liked it, of course, but, amazingly, a lot of people actually kept their speed down to the new limit as a patriotic gesture. The national motto became "Stay alive! Drive 55!"

At the same time, the best continental and short-run railroad track and rolling stock infrastructure the world had ever known was being neglected and allowed to fall into disuse and ruin, along with local mass transit systems in most sizable metropolitan areas.

When Jimmy Carter gained the presidency in 1977 the oil crises and inflation were still huge problems. He began to initiate some positive programs toward national energy independence through alternative energy sources. For example, it became easy for individuals to get licenses to construct experimental alcohol fuel distilleries. Solar, thermal, wind, bio diesel, and other types of alternative energy research and production were also given special treatment, encouraging development by individual entrepreneurs and small business concerns. But this first serious official push toward domestic energy independence was to be short lived. Gas prices came down somewhat and Americans became convinced that the oil shortage had been contrived -- the world was still floating on cheap oil.

Meanwhile, as foreign imports pressed the issue, American automakers made great strides in improving the fuel efficiency of their cars. Compact, sub-compact, and mid-sized cars became more and more numerous on the nation's highways. Even the traditional, full-sized, American luxury car became much more fuel efficient. This, together with the combined power of the the auto and oil industries, continued to keep the nation increasingly dependent on automotive solutions and imported oil. With America becoming evermore dependent on foreign oil imports, international oil brokerage became as important to global oil companies as oil production itself. This, especially after many foreign oil fields had been nationalized (some time before), reducing the profits gained through strictly productive activities. The international oil trade became one of the world's biggest businesses, and for some time our only real serious trade imbalances were in the international crude oil trade.

Many other things were going on, too, to make sure the American public was increasingly hooked on their automobiles. Ironically, the massive deconstruction and reconstruction of our cities, that resulted in part from forced integration, played a significant role. Urban blight was followed by Urban Renewal, just as the Interstate Highway System was significantly changing both urban and rural landscapes. Great swaths of city centers and suburbs were sliced up and isolated by new high speed, limited access, highways. Small towns and communities were being written off of the beaten path. Travel patterns and requirements were radically changed. Ease of automotive travel was an integral part of Urban renewal and national economic planning.

White flight sucked the life and industry out of the inner cities, and made them into dangerous enclaves that not even Urban renewal could hope to remedy, cities were literally chopped up. Large corporations and business concerns saw a new rainbow of opportunities in the remaking, and the suburban malls, shopping centers, and fast food restaurants began filling an increasing need for people who no longer wanted to risk going down town to shop. It was becoming necessary for almost everybody to own a car. Literally everything was being laid out for the convenience of motorists, rather than for pedestrians or those who used urban mass transit systems. To enjoy the American dream, the automobile had become a vital necessity for urban man. Most city mass transit companies began losing their passengers, and could no longer make a profit. Many small and intermediate cities completely lost their mass transit systems.

The same things were happening in smaller cities and communities. The commute to work or mall, or even the "local store" became almost an impossibility without "wheels." And city life was becoming so devoid of "community life" of any kind, that frequent excursions out and away from the maddening traffic jams became a requirement for anything resembling a quality lifestyle. This reformation of American cities and countryside had some good repercussions. It probably saved American car makers from the increasing onslaught of foreign competition. But it also insured that Americans would continue to be increasingly dependent upon, and wed to their personal automobiles for transportation; and, needless to say, increasingly dependent on imported foreign oil. We ended up with cities and a nation that had been redesigned and rebuilt with the personal automobile in mind, making it a necessity for all time. This was not the road to energy independence.

When Reagan was elected to the White House, big oil and international capital also gained office. The new international economic order was on the way. The special experimental alternative energy programs designed for individuals and small business concerns began to run out and were not being renewed. Most small alternative energy companies went under. Gas prices had found a plateau and subsidies for alternative energy research ended. Once again, the big boys enjoyed exclusive favor, and the biggest boys were committed to petroleum based fuels, at least until such time as they could gain a monopoly position in any of the potentially viable alternative energy industries.

The Reagan administration, unfortunately (an in spite of his conservative base), became the instrument of wholesale globalization -- to be accomplished through deregulation of business and the Yellow Brick Road of free trade. Many conservatives had been seduced and snowed by the "free market" economists, and the Republican party was about to adopt the internationalism promoted by the neo-conservatives who were to offer the nation an alternate "compassionate conservative" option.

President Reagan introduced us to the "new international economic order" and made it the cornerstone of American economic policy. Where did he get that idea? Was the New World Order really an American policy initiative?

"...It is increasingly clear... that a new international economic order is essential if the relations between rich and poor nations are to be transformed into a mutually beneficial partnership..." (Kurt Waldheim, 1975)

"...the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (was) held in April and May 1974, following initiatives taken by Algeria and supported by the Group of Non-Aligned countries. The session culminated in the adoption of two important resolutions: the first expressing the collective desire of member states to work towards the 'Establishment of a New International Economic Order'...the present system of relationships between nations fails to serve the common interests of mankind as a whole and that only through the establishment of a new international order can existing injustices be rectified and the basis established for a more just and peaceful world." (The Aims and Scope of the Report "Reshaping the International Order -- a Report to the Club of Rome," 1976)

President George H. W. Bush introduced the "New World Order" as his own phrase to describe the new international economic order, and grandly proclaimed it to be the continuing cornerstone of American foreign and economic policy. Where did he get that idea?

It had been around for a long time -- since the great One World conspiracy, in its varied and metamorphosing forms, began. The motto "Novus Ordo Seclorum" was emblazoned and enshrined on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America before the Constitution was written and ratified. That, to some, translates to "New World Order" rather than "New Secular Order." And a New World Order was at the very core of the League of Nations as well as the international communist agenda. And the United Nations inherited or adopted both the term and the mission from those former organizations and movements. Conspiracy theorists had been thoroughly familiar with those very words long before President Bush pulled them out of the closet.

"In international fora, Soviet spokesmen have continually argued that the new world order should in fact represent indemnification for former colonial exploitation and that since the centrally planned countries have not participated in this exploitation, it cannot be expected that they should share in the compensation... Chinese spokesmen have reiterated the indemnification argument...(motivating) Peking's lack of enthusiasm for current attempts to shape a new world order. It originates in the all too familiar theses of China: 'The current international situation is excellent, there is great disorder under heaven'." (The Position of the Centrally Planned Nations "Reshaping the International Order -- a Report to the Club of Rome," 1976)

We learn from the same document that in 1973, "...(OPEC) took the initiative to use their power and raised the price of crude oil... to about four times the previous level. This development, facilitated by a temporary and perhaps unexpected coincidence of interests between Western oil companies and OPEC nations, caused the industrialized countries considerable distress... (and resulted) in a temporary two per cent transfer of the GNP of the industrialized countries to the OPEC nations; it also contributed towards accelerating recession in economic activity which had started in 1972... Economists struggled to explain 'stagflation', the unique combination of high inflation and industrial recession; Keynesian economics, which had helped to steer courses away from impending crises in the past, this time seemed perilously inadequate... seventeen million people flooded the employment offices of the richest countries... Prosperity has brought anxiety to the Western World, a gnawing fear that the good times might well be over, even though aspirations for still greater material benefits remain. If the Western world is to come to grips with this, with its growing list of problems -- social as well as economic -- it must, in its own long term interests, seek to create new international structures based upon global cooperation."

The 1973 oil crises was then an instance of the OPEC countries "taking the initiative," to get things straight between the exploited and the traditional exploiters once and for all, and they did it with the collusion or tacit approval of Western oil companies that also stood to gain. This was but one of the opening salvos of the New World Order to be announced almost twenty years later by a Republican president.

The the pressures that came to bear on our national leadership, which forced a recently independent America to seek "solutions" in dependence and subservience in a globalized world are starkly revealed. We lost mastery over our national destiny by making the "new international economic order" the dream of a changing breed of American leadership.

The problem, as perceived in 1975, was that North America, with only 6.1% of the world's population, had a 30% share of the global GNP, while Asia (excluding Japan), with 52.7% of the global population, only had 10.2% of the global GNP. This disparity in the distribution of wealth was "officially" determined to be the legacy of colonial exploitation.

Thirty years later North America still has about 6% of the world's population and 30% of the global GNP. The U.S. share is 5% of the population and 27% of the global GNP. The major change that globalization has brought within the United States during those 30 years has been a growing economic divide between rich and poor, along with a growing dependence on the rest of the world for its continued prosperity. In wealth distribution, the U.S. is now beginning to look like the traditional Third World nation .

Some of the rest of the impoverished world is coming up in terms of wealth too, though "the peoples" themselves seldom enjoy much of the wealth. China, for example, has experienced more economic growth, both real and artificial, in recent years than any other nation. This economic miracle can be largely attributed to America's willingness to invest in China and open its markets to Chinese production.

There is another way to look at it, however, and apparently nobody has thought to look at it that way yet. Prior to their colonial conquests, the European nations of the day were already well "advanced" compared to most of the rest of the world. There was no concept of GNP yet, but European nations certainly had more than their share of developed wealth. And 90% of the world's population was as just as impoverished, and often much more enslaved, than it has been since the most predatory and exploitive period of the colonial era.

Here's an interesting thing to ponder. Just try to figure out what the world would be like today had the Europeans stayed home and minded their own business!

For one thing, North America would still be a "virgin" continent full of stone-age native tribes warring among themselves, and so would Africa. Europe probably wouldn't have advanced as far as they have. But, chances are, they'd still be periodically battering each other with machine guns, bombs, tanks, and mustard gas.

The United States of America, which had become the most successful and prosperous nation in the world, unlike the European colonial powers, had never tied its national economic destiny to global colonial exploitation. America's belated ventures into colonial and economic imperialism, in fact, actually helped to cripple it economically and render it much less independent than its own political institutions and raw material resources had endowed it.

America's 30% share of the the GNP of the world was largely the result of American industry and innovation. True, America was already gaining a voracious appetite for raw materials from foreign sources (especially oil), this was largely because long-term planning was being done by the short-term minds of short-sighted people.

Apparently the program was that, if we had no option but to become increasingly dependent on foreign oil, we might just as well become dependent on foreign suppliers for a lot of other things too. There were big profits to be made by American businesses if they could be cut loose from the domestic labor market while still retaining favored access to the domestic consumer markets. The international wage differential game was a great rainbow of opportunity awaiting American capital in the guise of international "free market economics." The neo-conservatives of the the "new" Republican party loved the idea, and so did the bleeding heart internationalists of the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

Both true conservatives and true liberals were fooled for an amazingly, and embarrassingly, long time. The New World Order has indeed been a bi-partisan creation, while the silent majority (of whatever political stripe it might be), slept on overstuffed bellies and remained more than adequately entertained while it was having its economic legs knocked out from under it.

Now that we're at war with terrorism, and the Arab oil producing nations, as well as having most of the rest of the world are increasingly hostile to us, and gas prices are at record highs, the topic of energy independence has reemerged in the Democratic presidential primaries.

There probably isn't one American in ten thousand who doesn't believe that we have both the resources and technological ability to make ourselves energy independent, if we only had the political will. But how can we have the political will after the public has become convinced that all the former oil crises were actually fraudulent and artificial? How can we convince the families that have to have two or three cars so everybody in the family can make it to work, or down to the mall, that we have been living beyond our means when it comes to tons of steel and gallons of gasoline required to support what has become the American way of life?

We all know that we can do it -- but nobody really wants to have to pay the piper. Paying the piper means doing more with less -- ultimately, much less. The gas-guzzling SUV hasn't become the most coveted American status symbol over night. It took years, not only to convince the American people that the world is floating on untapped oil, and that we Americans have the right to it no matter whose land it happens to be under, but to make them confident in a future of plenty again. Now, after all, could it be that we really do need to tighten our belts? Not many are buying it -- yet.

The New World Order (the American perspective, at least) promised that oil would not only be available, but that money is no object in satisfying the American appetite for "cheap oil" and "cheap consumer goods." It matters not how expensive it really is -- as long as the true prices are not reflected at the gas pump or Wall Mart counter. Let the price show up on April 15th or in the staggering level of the national debt -- but not at the pump or checkout counter.