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Thursday, June 29, 2006
THE TOBACCO WAR AND THE UNSEEN ENEMY
Illinois is jumping on the smoking ban bandwagon. Soon the
state will be infested with smoke-free zones, and there will be a sharp spike in
good health.
Second-hand smoke is supposedly emerging as about the greatest
menace to
health since God invented the health industry. Pridger doesn't quite buy it
though.
Second hand smoke is getting a rap that, in shear
breadth and scope, is pretty difficult to swallow – or inhale.
Everybody not genetically related to an ostrich has known for
an awful long time that inhaling smoke is not good for the health. It has been
known since the first European lit up that tobacco smoke is dangerous to the
health – just like wood, coal, and oil smoke – not to mention the industrial
pollution and auto emission that permeate the air we breath.
Yet tobacco use is as American as apple pie and a symbol of
the nation, and it goes back longer than national history itself. At one time
tobacco was even a widely accepted form of currency. During much of our history
the government has subsidized the tobacco industry, and during most of the
twentieth century Hollywood glamorized and promoted cigarette smoking – and,
though the tobacco industry has been sued, nobody has sued the federal
government or Hollywood for their very active roll in poisoning the nation.
But there have been a few pluses on the side of tobacco.
Smoking is a known stress reliever, and stress is another one of those things
taking a ghastly toll on the health of Americans. Aside from that, the case can even be made that our nation has won more hearts
and minds by passing out cigarettes and candy to friends and enemies alike than
by all the foreign aid, massive bombing and shelling campaigns, and nation
building we've thrown out at the world combined.
Of course, Pridger is not an advocate of smoking, though he's
a life-long pipe smoker and breather of his own second hand smoke. But there is
something starkly menacing, scary, and totally unnatural about the present
anti-tobacco campaign directed at producing a form of anti-smoking hysteria. The specter of cigarette companies airing anti-smoking
commercials is a very peculiar sign of the times. At the very least, it's
commercially and corporately unnatural.
Not only that. It is totally unpatriotic and
counter-productive to admit (at this late date), that we have a long national
history of poisoning not only our own citizens, but foreign friends and foes
alike – giving the world another motive and incentive for considering us the
"Great Satan." And if there is any international legal liability
attached to this history of killing people by getting the world hooked on
cigarettes, the litigation fallout will eventually make the big "tobacco
settlement" in the United States pale by comparison.
For decades smokers have been warned that "smoking is
hazardous to your health," and may cause cancer, right on the product
packages. But smokers have insisted on smoking anyway. And because some people
do insist on continuing to
smoke, a major scare campaign was initiated to convince the public that smokers
are killing the people around them. Well, maybe so, but second hand smoke can't
be as bad as they say it is. Common sense should tell us that, in spite of all
the high-flying medical "evidence."
In fact, one of the unintended consequences of demonizing
second hand smoke has been to get some people (particularly kids), to believe
that second hand smoke is just as dangerous, or more dangerous, than first hand inhaling
of tobacco smoke. Pridger remembers one young person explaining why she decided
to become a smoker.
"Many of my friends smoke," she said, "So,
since I was getting the second hand smoke anyway, I figured I might just as well
light up myself." She actually thought second hand smoke was so terrible
that no additional harm would be done by inhaling massive amounts of
concentrated tobacco smoke into her lungs! And this was a smart, well educated,
young lady!
Another unintended consequence of the belief of the dangers of
tobacco smoke (both first and second hand), has undoubtedly been to convince
kids that other (much more dangerous), recreational drugs may be comparatively
safer. Hollywood has even portrayed cigarette smoking as having a "real
drug" rush upon lighting up. The way many see it, they may as well light up
a reefer, or shoot up on something even more stimulating.
The medical industry itself kills an astounding number of
people every year. Yet there's no big scare campaign to ban it or encourage
people to avoid doctors and hospitals. Automobiles kill large numbers of people, yet you don't see
auto companies running ads to discourage automobile use.
And when all is said and done, if the nation ever becomes 100% tobacco smoke free, Pridger suspects that people will continue to die of
lung cancer and all the other killer diseases at an increasing rate. The many
various forms of cancer have become "the" national disease now, and there's no way that cigarettes and
tobacco can be blamed. New diseases keep stepping up to the plate also, and we can be fairly
certain the trend will continue.
Where are the warning signs in junk food restaurants, sugar,
and sugar substitutes? Where
are the warning signs on automobiles and airplanes? Where are the warning signs
on all the unhealthful food additives at the supermarket?
Has the public been duly warned that it is now part of a
massive national and global experiment in bio-engineered and genetically altered
foods? No telling what the long-term effect of this experiment will be. There's
no massive media campaign to warn the public of the potential hazards to the
public health, or the threat to the environment involved in these very big
corporate invasions and alterations of the human food chain.
In fact, every effort is being made to keep the public
ignorant of the facts and the potential health threat. Labeling food as
genetically altered or irradiated is not only not mandated by the FDA, it isn't
even allowed! What could the purpose of this madness be, if not to get the world
hooked long before the results of the experiment are in?
Genetically engineered foods are now thought to be as safe as
smoking was once thought to be. The food industry (and their agents at the Food
and Drug Administration), assures us that it's all very safe – just as the
tobacco industry once declared their products were safe. But, as in the case of inhaling
pure concentrated tobacco smoke (along with several additives, paper smoke, and
herbicide and pesticide residues), simple common sense should tell us otherwise.
The scary thing about genetically altered food plants is that
once they are wide spread (and they already are, particularly in the United
States), there may not be any way to turn the clock back. Many constitute
"new species" that invade natural species through the natural
processes of pollination – a process that is beyond the control of humans.
Many plant, animal, and insect species are in marked decline
or even becoming endangered, due to "mysterious" environmental causes. The
valuable honey bee
population has been mysteriously declining, while other insects are
proliferating. What would common sense indicate the cause might be? Forget the
science – most food scientists (like tobacco industry scientists), are in the
pay of the business corporations with a stake in their own new technologies. And
their mission statement is usually "to
save mankind" and feed the world. But those same industries and
technologies may ultimately lead to the human depopulation as well as the
depopulation of insects and other species.
In fact (to think the unthinkable), since the population
problem continues to be a major global concern, human depopulation could conceivably
even be part of the program – the program that dictates that "Though
shalt not bad-mouth bio-tech, raise uncomfortable questions about new food technologies, or advise the public that it is being used as human guinea
pigs." And while the human race is the subject of a risky experiment, food
seed-stocks are becoming the "intellectual property" of corporate
monopolies while natural plants are becoming irretrievably contaminated with
bio-tech innovations.
What do herbicide and pesticide residues in our food mean
long-term human health? What effect does flouridization of the water supply have
on the mental acuity of human beings? What does irradiation do to our food?
The marked increase in cancer and other exotic diseases (as we
"live longer and more productive lives"), is almost undoubtedly the
result of this accumulating witch's brew present in our food and the air we
breath. And common sense would (or should), tell us that.
Take something as widely "accepted" and practiced as
the irradiation of food. It results in a much longer shelf life for food
products. The food won't spoil nearly as quickly as non-irradiated food, and
this is the only positive result. Never mind that we did very well before the
advent of irradiation. But what does that tell you if you engage your faculties
of common sense? It tells you that something is done to the food to prevent
natural spoilage processes – that bacteria and micro-organisms present in all
natural foods has been killed or curtailed. Bugs don't want to eat it. And, if
bugs don't want it, there's probably a very good reason. It has either become
poisonous to them, or so lacking in nutritional value, that it is simply no
longer food to them. And if it isn't food to them, perhaps it should not be food
to us either.
The very air we breath is tainted with multiple pollutants, of
course. And second hand tobacco smoke is probably such a small factor that it is
negligible, even in smoke-filled bars. And though we've cleaned up our own industrial environment considerably
in the past several decades, we've mainly accomplished it by sending our
industry, and the primary burdens, elsewhere. And elsewhere industrial pollution has gone on
steroids, increasing the contamination of the global environment and the
atmosphere of the planet. Not only have not escaped it, we've gone out of our
way to stimulate and increase it.
In Pridger's studied opinion, the war on tobacco is simply
another diversion – like building democracy in Iraq. People already know about
the dangers of tobacco, and are free to avoid smoking if they so choose. And the
widening war, concentrating on the alleged dangers of second-hand smoke, is
simply a wider diversion – to convince us that governments are "doing
something" to save us and make us healthier. But they aren't doing anything
significant beyond trying to turn the whole world into a corporate polluter.
Tobacco and smoking (over a span of several centuries), never
threatened to depopulate the world, but other things do. The real enemy remains
protected – and, though in plain view, officially out of sight and out of
mind.
As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and the enemy
is us."
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Another of those emails is making the rounds once again. Pridger has
received this one two or three times in the past. It's brief and to the point.
THREE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:
1. COWS
2. THE CONSTITUTION
3. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
ON COWS
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls.
But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give them all a cow.
ON THE CONSTITUTION
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours?
It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.
ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse... You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" and "Thou Shall Not Lie"
in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians -- it creates a hostile work environment.
They were able to track those mad cows perfectly well without a
National Animal Identification System (NAIS), but we're apparently going to get
NAIS anyway. Actually it should be called "NAILED" because it nails
the small livestock producer or animal owner to the wall (makes him
"liable"), using regulatory nails.
Pridger says nail the big boys, but not every animal owner in the country. The
big boys are already perfectly traceable (if not accountable), and accustomed to self-imposed
corporate regulation. So it
won't be a great burden to them. In fact, they probably want it anyway. The NAIS
database will allow them to have instant national livestock inventory database in
order to further control the markets and fine-tune their trade and marketing strategies.
As for the idea of seriously trying to track down eleven or
twelve million illegal aliens, that's clearly a xenophobic, discriminatory, and
un-American activity. America belongs to the world, not some exclusive club
known as citizens.
And the Constitution – Pridger is amazed that our government
can still officially claim it as the "Supreme Law of the Land." It's
been disused and abused so long that the very claim that we have a
"constitutional government" has almost become a laughable farce.
How could a "limited" government (constrained by the
Constitution), tax literally everybody who is gainfully employed, or even
contemplate making all animal owners register their animals like so many
Thompson sub-machineguns?
How could a constitutionally limited government seek to remake
the world in its own fallen image, without first determining its own infallible
status and the unlimited scope of its powers?
The Ten Commandments are clearly much more
outdated than the Constitution. Aside from their dubious origin, they are
totally incompatible with a progressive and hedonistic society such as the one
in which we now glorify. The Ten Commandments cannot stand where a whole array
of "big lies" comprise the de facto "Supreme Law of the
Land" – where coveting and governing that which is others' has become the national
business, and where killing our neighbors (on the other side of the world), has
become our declared rightful and righteous way of bringing freedom and salvation
to those deemed less progressive than ourselves.
John Q. Pridger
Saturday, June 17, 2006
GLOBAL WARMING AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Speaking of Al Gore, at least he seems to have a pretty firm
handle on the global warming situation. Global warming has supplanted the
population explosion as being the number one threat to human survival. How times
do change.
There seems to be ample evidence that global warming is taking
place. Ancient glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. So are the polar
icecaps – and the Snows of Kilamanjaro are already almost history.
The only question is whether this is the result of man's
activities, as Al Gore and many environmental scientists contend – or is it
happening within the context of a larger, unknown, natural cycle of climate
change beyond our control?
Naturally, Pridger doesn't know the answer, but it is fairly
obvious that man is wreaking significant havoc with the global environment,
whether or not he is causing global warming. But for the sake of discussion,
let's assume that we are guilty. Chances are very good that we are, at least
partly, despite
anything Rush Limbaugh has said.
Al Gore thinks we still have the ability to reverse global
warming and save our civilization. The only thing presently lacking is the will,
and that's a mighty significant commodity. Al Gore is busily trying to get the word out so something might be done in time
to avoid certain catastrophe. Pridger wishes him the best of luck.
But the present course of the New World Order itself –
globalism – has got us exactly 180 degrees off course. In other words,
globalism itself, because of all the vested interests involved, will not only
forestall any collective "will" to tackle the global warming problem, but it will
also prevent any real efforts to halt or reverse it. It effectively makes meaningful solutions all but impossible,
and will perpetuate and acceleration of all associated problems.
This may see rather ironic, and it is. Since global warming is
a global problem, it must be tackled on a global basis. Some sort of
"globalism" would seem necessary to do the job. But we have
willy-nilly adopted the wrong sort of globalism – one catering to corporate
bottom lines.
Today's globalism supposedly seeks to make everybody in the world a
facsimile of an American style super-consumer – the entire population of the
earth as conspicuously consumptive and wasteful as the "standard
issue" SUV driving American. It seeks bottom-line oriented corporate
business solutions for all problems facing mankind.
It seeks a McDonalds, Starbucks, and WalMart on every city
street and in every village. It seeks two or more cars in every garage, and a super
highways to everywhere. It effectively seeks to place chainsaws in the hands of
every Amazon basin tribesman. And it seeks to both stimulate and satisfy growing
consumer demands which naturally leads to more and more exploitation of the earth's dwindling resources.
It seeks more bigger and bigger ships to carry more and more
international trade goods. It seeks speed and efficiency in every avenue of human endeavor. It
encourages faster and easier travel, by jet-liners from everywhere to
everywhere.
And it seeks the massive dislocation and destruction of local
self-reliance in agriculture, business, and industry everywhere. It seeks to
make everybody in the world dependent on corporate employment, payrolls, food,
and manufactured goods.
It seeks international interdependence, without an iota of a
"Small is Beautiful," environmentally friendly, human scale, component
of any significance.
Oh yes, the environmental problem has been noted. The Kyoto
Treaty and all that. But environmental concerns take such a distant back seat to
international corporate business that it's bound to be about as futile and
ineffective as Pridger's blog.
At best, all present efforts to address global environmental
problems amount to a very large case of searching for "how we can have our
cake and eat it too" – and do it at a profit. It's based on the presumption that business and
profits come first, and all people everywhere have an unalienable right to become
conspicuous consumers. Global capital is willing do whatever it takes to
"save the world" – as long as it doesn't interfere with supplying
the needs of the "consumers" and their own bottom line.
Corporate globalism is going to dominate and trump all environmental
issues,
and it is going to remain profitable regardless of any other concerns. As long
as this remains true, there may be some environmentally friendly rhetoric, and
maybe a few fragmental half-measures taken to placate people like Al Gore, but
no meaningful reform.
It does little good to "clean up" polluting
industries, if all the environmental dividends are immediately cancelled out by
rampant expansion of those lesser polluting industries into every nook and
cranny of the planet.
But salvation will not be forthcoming. Sooner or later,
whether from global warming, general environmental degradation, or war, the
present system of globalization is bound to break down. And even before that, it
is likely to experience a debilitating financial melt-down, because the whole
program is not only unnatural, but a house of cards built on shifting sand.
The corporate model for all systems is perpetual,
accelerating, growth. "Grow or die!" is the rule of thumb of corporate
business. But this presents a clear impossibility in a finite world of dwindling
natural resources and growing populations. The population problem was recognized
as the greatest problem facing mankind until global warming made its relatively
recent debut. Now that still growing population is supposedly being saved by
giant parasites come to save the world by accomplishing the impossible task of
making everybody into conspicuous consumers.
The situation (environmental as well as financial), is bad
enough without even taking global warming into consideration. The greatest
potential hazard of global warming is a significant rise in sea levels, which
would leave most of the world's coastal plains, including many of the world's
population centers, under water. The scary thing is that it seems to be
happening at a very alarming rate – a rate that may impact this very
generation.
Al Gore has both Pridger's support and respect on this issue.
But Pridger fears he's whistling into the winds of a tempest (much like Pridger
himself does). The only insurance
against the impact of global warming is to move to higher, preferably fertile,
ground before it's too late – and hope it isn't too crowded to set a garden
out. What a nightmare it will be if people begin fleeing the coastal areas and
cities in significant numbers.
"The meek shall inherit the earth,"
Jesus said. And maybe he was right. Chances are, when modern systems begin to
break down in a wholesale manner for whatever cause, the meek – those few poor
humble tribesmen left grubbing in arid soil – will be the "lucky"
survivors. The luckiest ones will be in out of the way places, without even a
WalMart or McDonalds within a three day walk, and their lot will not be easy by
any stretch of the imagination. But their friends who sought salvation in the
jobs of the cities will likely experience all of the inconveniences of hell.
As presumptuous as it may be, sometimes Pridger gets the
sneaking feeling that he's a prophet. He hopes he's wrong. But just in case he's
right, he's working at being meek, staying on high ground, and not betting his
future on Archer Daniels Midland or WalMart stocks.
John Q. Pridger
6/17/2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Once again Pridger has received an email that has been making
the circuit since shortly after 9/11/01. Included with the email are photos of
the World Trade Towers before, during, and after their collapse. Here's the text
of the email:
It was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of
Lt. Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration.
There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning!
He was being drilled by a senator; "Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?"
Ollie replied, "Yes, I did, Sir."
The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, "Isn't that just a little excessive?"
"No, sir," continued Ollie.
"No? And why not?" the senator asked.
"Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir."
"Threatened? By whom?" the senator questioned.
"By a terrorist, sir" Ollie answered.
"Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"
"His name is Osama bin Laden, sir" Ollie replied.
At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?" the senator asked.
"Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of", Ollie answered.
"And what do you recommend we do about him?" asked the senator.
"Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth."
The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.
By the way, that senator was Al Gore!
Also:
Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners."
However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands, The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released.
Thus Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center. This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified.
It was censored in the US from all later reports.
If you agree that the American public should be made aware of this fact, pass this
on.
Ollie North apparently had Osama bin Laden's number 14 years
before the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. (This would seem
to be during the time bin Laden was still our friend and ally.) His solution – to
send an assassin team to "eliminate him and his men from the face of the
earth," (in Pridger's opinion), would have been more appropriate even after
9/11 than the perpetual global war – the anti-solution President Bush choose to pursue.
They say that hindsight is always 20/20,
but this is seldom true if large relevant tracts of history have been neglected,
and the facts of the case of 9/11 itself remain shrouded in mystery – there
still appears to be many unanswered questions.
Of course, Pridger doesn't claim to have any of the answers,
and the more he learns about the events of 9/11, the more obvious it becomes
that he still doesn't know exactly what happened and who was responsible. All
Pridger can do is look at the broader picture in the context of more or less
"settled" history, leaving the details of the events of 9/11 to those
better equipped, and more inclined, to ferret them out than he.
At the very core of the matter, however, is the issue of "foreign
entanglements" and what might be termed the law of "unintended
consequences" – the sort of consequences our founders (including George
Washington in his Farewell Address), clearly foresaw and warned against.
Jefferson particularly warned of the "danger of standing
armies." And this is another very relevant factor in our present
circumstance. The ability to send armies anywhere in the world at the drop of a
hat, for any reason, is a formidable ability. And it's an ability that is
costing us dearly in blood, treasure, and ongoing and future unintended consequences.
Of course, our foreign entanglements pre-dated the nation
itself. But one of the main purposes of declaring independence was to throw off
the colonial yoke, which was itself a pre-natal foreign entanglement. While we did establish national
independence, we never really managed to throw off the net of banking and
monetary entanglements with the banking houses of England and Europe,
and this has caused us a lot of historic and ongoing problems. This, again, is
something Jefferson warned of very specifically.
Though those ongoing financial entanglements continue to be
one of the elemental "seeds" of our problem today, it
wasn't until the Spanish American War that we began a wholesale slide into
increasingly complex foreign entanglements of an imperialistic nature. And this
was a stepping stone into World Wars One and Two, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and dozens of
lesser wars and police actions around the world.
The League of Nations and the United Nations have served as
the Yellow Brick Road to the mother of all foreign entanglements – which is
the New World Order and globalism itself – together with such things as being
labeled the "Great Satan," the 9/11 tragedy, the global War on
Terror, and our current tragic entanglements in the Middle East.
The great contest between international communism and
international capitalism warped our very perception of what our nation was
actually supposed to stand for. We became convinced that "international
capitalism," rather than constructive nationalism (and minding our own
store), was the cure for all that ailed the world.
When the focus of our national leadership became global rather than
national, the nation of our founders was effectively totally overthrown. Yet few
look at it in this way. Many actually believe we are doing the right thing in
trying to "bring McDemocracy to Iraq" and the rest of the world – that it is somehow our national
business and duty to do so. But this makes an absolute mockery of every concept
of "limited" republican government.
Meanwhile, as we seek to remake the world in our own
increasingly tarnished image, America has been transformed into the very
antithesis of what it was intended to be, and most Americans – even those who
disagree with our Iraq War – are blind to most of the facts.
Foreign entanglements – commercial, political, and military
– have become our national heritage, and
they are literally consuming the nation. Additionally, our leaders have effectively given
"our" nation to the world (without the fully informed consent of the
governed), while pursuing policies that aim at
preserving the global hegemony of what is officially considered
"American" global capital. This, while our national wealth is being
effectively transferred from Americans into foreign hands.
How could a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal" become labeled as the
"Great Satan" by many of the leaders and followers of one of the
world's major religions? And even in the the rest of the non-Muslim world we are
increasingly being viewed with a jaundiced eye.
How could such a nation become the target of those who
perpetrated the attacks of 9/11? How could such a nation come to
"invent" a new sub-class of human beings called "enemy
combatants" who have no civil rights at all? How did we get here from such
a splendid beginning?
In spite of our massive contribution to the bloodshed, we made
it through World War Two with our reputation as a bastion of freedom and justice
largely intact – this mainly because we went the extra mile, extending the
olive branch to our wartime enemies and rebuilt Europe and Japan. But only
since "winning" the Cold War (when global peace actually seemed to
become a possibility), have we apparently fallen, helter-skelter, from the
widely perceived moral high ground and became the Great Satan to some, and the
great bully to others. And we seem
determined to remain the Great Satan and the great bully, in spite of all our our leaders' Christian
rhetoric about how we respect Islam, and how we have the best interests of all
humanity at heart.
By far, our most nationally destructive foreign entanglement
of all has been our special relationship with the state of Israel. Our error was not our friendship with
Israel, but our total failure to "see" the gross and massive
injustices that had been dealt to the Palestinian Arabs. They had been crying
out long before the nation of Israel was declared, but they were largely
ignored.
They were ignored as massive areas of Palestine were ethnically
cleansed – something that, when it has occurred elsewhere more recently, has prompted us to
(still selectively) take
corrective military action. Between about 1920 and 1948 the ethnic mix in the areas that
became Israel went from about 10% Jewish and 90% Arab (both Moslem and Christian), to
about 90% Jewish and 10% Arab. And this reversal of fortunes for the Arab population
in what was their own land, was not done by voluntary means. If that isn't
ethnic cleansing, Pridger doesn't know what the word means.
Prior to 1948, the British held the League of Nations Mandate
over Palestine. And, though they had been at the very core of the developing
problems in the Middle East, and the very authors and "facilitators"
of the Jewish Homeland there, at least they had made some attempts to honor a commitment to look to justice for the Palestinian people. But we totally
neglected the plight of the Palestinians, and lent no support to the British in
their attempt to control the situation. The British finally had no option but to throw
up their hands and get out of Palestine.
Organized terrorism was almost born in Palestine, as Zionist
"gangs" terrorized and murdered Palestinians, forcing hundreds of
thousands of them to flee their homes in terror just prior to the birth of the
Israeli state.
Yet, in spite of these bloody birthing pains, we vied with the Soviet Union to be the first to
recognize the newly declared state of Israel, and hastened to give it
international legitimacy. And since the 1967 Arab Israeli
War we have become the guarantor and defender of Israel, right or wrong.
Few
Americans remember that prior to 1967, Israel was much more closely aligned with the
Soviet Union than the United States. And while the Soviet Union remained a
"closed" and locked down nation for almost all other citizens, Jews
from Soviet block nations provided the bulk of the Jewish settlers immigrating
to Palestine and the new State. In fact, Israel was intended to be a model
socialist nation.
To add insult to injury, after the British exit from Palestine
in 1948, we had stopped a British and French effort to regain control over Suez
(circa 1956). Our reward for this came when Egypt chose the the Soviet Union as
its patron superpower while saddling ourselves with the defense of Israel against the whole Arab
world. And the Suez Canal was closed as the result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
In defending Israel, we totally neglected the Palestinians
whose land Israel occupied. Not because we had anything against the Palestinians
particularly, but because we were faced with an impossible situation. What was
impossible about it was the fact that two radical "Eye for an Eye, Tooth
for a Tooth" Peoples were vying for the same real estate, and we'd not only
officially recognized Israel, but had a powerful Israeli lobby in Washington,
capable to breaking politicians who did not toe the Zionist line.
Not until after 9/11 – a real wake up call – did an American administration
seriously attempt to address the impossible situation with a "Road Map for Peace."
But too much too late. Too much damage had already been done, and too much blood
had already been spilled. And by now our military presence in the Arabian Peninsula
and Gulf States is so pronounced and overwhelming that it is this overt military
entanglement, rather than just our historic and ongoing neglect of the
Palestinians, that has become the main bear of contention.
Israel can never coexist with a "viable," truly
independent, Palestinian State. Thus all attempted solutions are, and will
probably continue to be, stillborn. And the time when Israel might have become a democratic nation in
partnership with Palestinian Arabs died with the very acts that created the
"Jewish State" in the first place.
Oil, of course (in the total absence of a serious U.S. energy
independence policy), has played a significant role in our Middle East policy
and added a major dimension to our foreign entanglements. With the kingdom of Saudi Arabia the
very cornerstone of our Middle East commercial interests, and our total
commitment to the defense of Israel, we have been juggling mutually exclusive
interests, using astronomical bribes (billions to Egypt to offset the billions
to Israel, for example), to keep the peace (such as it is). But
bribes don't make friends. Turn off, or even downsize, the bribes, and you have
an enemy.
The tortured recent history of Lebanon, the Islamic revolution
in Iran (that brought "our" Shah down), and our support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraqi war, were other
manifestations of the incredible messiness of our Middle East entanglements. And
this merely scratches the surface. And
always, our commitment to Israel has insured that we can never be considered a
friend to the Arab world, in spite of our ample and mutually profitable "oil
business interests" and our monumentally expensive diplomatic and military efforts.
Though the rhetoric has been our desire to produce peace and
democracy in Iraq and the other Gulf States, cynics have often said it's all
about oil. But it is much less about oil than about doing Israeli's will. The
great concern over weapons of mass destruction, was really born of our
determination to insure that Israel remains the dominant military power, and the sole nuclear power,
in the
region. And now Israel and it's powerful defenders within the United States are eager for us to attack Iran to make sure it does not develop nuclear
capabilities.
Naturally, as long as Israel remains a nuclear power, it only
seems logical that other Middle East states should want to arm themselves with
nuclear weapons too. That's just the way things work, even if it doesn't suite
our fancy.
Clearly, we continue to face an impossible situation in the Middle
East, and it's an impossible situation largely because of the existence of
Israel amidst hostile neighbors – and the power of the Israeli lobby (and its
many friends), within the United States. In the Middle East, everything is
literally a
"damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation.
That's just one of the fruits of foreign entanglements. But for our foreign entanglements, and our superpower status,
we'd be forced to leave the complex problems of "others elsewhere"
for others elsewhere to take care of. And we'd be stuck with concentrating on the task of
minding our own national business and defending our own shores and borders.
All good intentions aside, try as we might to remake the
Middle East into something we might consider satisfactory, in the end what we
will get will be more and more unintended consequences – not the least of
which will be our own continuing moral decay and eventual financial bankruptcy.
Putting Saddam Hussein away and killing Osama bin Laden will
not solve any of our problems. Clearly de-Husseinizing Iraq has already been
exposed as a ghastly mistake. He might have been a bad guy, but we've supported
worse, and at least he was able to keep Iraq together, and relatively harmless
as far as being a real security threat to us. He was a security threat to
Israel, of course. But Israel should not really be considered the keystone of American national
security.
Pridger hates to say it (since we're so committed), but we'd
come closer to solving our global security problems by following Osama bin
Laden's advice and vacating the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States.
In case you are thinking that Pridger must be anti-Semitic,
here's a proposal that should straighten things out somewhat. Pridger figures it
would be far cheaper, and much less bloody in the long run,
to simply resettle all the Jews in Israeli Palestine to the United States.
All we'd have to do is withdraw our support from Israel, and
open the immigration door to Israeli immigrants.
Perhaps such a solution would not meet with the approval of
many other American patriots (at least not initially), but out nation is already
being sold to the foreign competition and undulated with foreign immigration.
Most of the current flow of immigrants are from cultures (including Mexican), much more alien to our
own than that of most modern Jews. We could use a few million Jews to
counterbalance the influence of 12 million illegal Mexicans – some of whom
have revealed themselves as de facto invaders working toward the Mexicanization
of the the lower forty-eight states.
If we had all Israeli Jews here, the security of the United
States would be practically assured, and the long-term survival of the U.S.A.
much more likely than it presently is. At least the timetable for sending all us
of Western European stock back to Europe would probably be set back by a century
or two.
Who would deny that our Jews comprise one of most valuable
components of our population? As a minority group they are the most successful
of all (though Asians are giving them a run for their money), and they outdo the
Gentile ethnic majority hands down.
The only major problem Pridger presently has with
the Jews is that so many of them are more devoted to Israel than the United
States. And they are already so powerful and politically influential here that
they have got this nation into one heck of a mess, defending Israel. That
problem would be solved if the United States (or some State therein), became their only Promised Land.
It may sound rather radical, but that's the only solution
Pridger sees for Israel and the related problems of the Middle East. Without
Israel, the Palestinian Arabs could have their Palestinian State, and all Arabs
could live happily ever after in their own exclusive and extensive part of the
world. Falling short of that blissful future, they might return to their age-old
pastimes of tribal feuding and warring among themselves. But, chances are,
they'd never have cause to focus too much attention on the U.S.
Arabs don't hate us because of what we are or what we have.
They hate us because we are messing around too much in their own bailiwick. Of
course, they will never really like us (and never have), simply because we're infidels.
Not that Pridger thinks Israel doesn't have a "right to exist." It has just as much right to exist as any nation.
But it is both surrounded and impregnated with bitter enemies with birthrates
that put the Israelis to shame. In the long run, it's a losing battle. And if
Israel cannot survive even today without ongoing extraordinary outside help, perhaps it
shouldn't exist – at least at the present site. If it's existence puts a great
burden on the region and world, and threatens perpetual conflict and bloodshed
(even Armageddon), perhaps it would be more practical to rethink the whole thing
and find a workable alternative.
Nobody will give this any serious thought, of course.
There's a lot more involved here than mere practicalities. Things like
"vested interests," and religion, are intimately involved. So, in the end, we'll probably opt for a lot more "Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace" and/or some facsimile
of Armageddon.
MISSING THE WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS
This may raise a few hackles, but Pridger was never very fond
of the World Trade Center towers. Long before 9/11 and the previous attack on
one of the towers, Pridger had made the "Tower of Babel" analogy. To
Pridger, they weren't symbols of American greatness, but an overly arrogant and grandiose
symbol of a misconceived New World Order.
There was certainly nothing artistic about them. They were
simply square pillars – elongated boxes set on end – with some starkly
attractive columns near the base. They were simple, stark, monuments to
arrogance.
The towers seemed grossly out of place even in New York –
totally out of proportion – dwarfing that magnificent city's older skyscrapers
and doing aesthetic violence to the city's historic skyline. They were built on
an obscene scale to an unconscionable height. They seemed an example of the
man's towering arrogance and somebody's commitment to one-upmanship. And, to
Pridger, they always looked like towering death traps, because everything that
goes straight up must eventually come down.
To the terrorists that brought them down, they were an open
and inviting target – and the very scenario of 9/11 had suggested itself to
fiction writers and military planners long before the tragic event took place.
Had Pridger were chosen to design a monument to our national
greatness, or even to a "workable" new world order, he'd make it
resemble the Great Pyramid of Egypt – and not even as steep-sided than the
pyramid depicted in the Great Seal of the United States, as seen on the American
One Dollar Bill. And, as in that mysterious symbol of the nation, the cap would
be omitted as an acknowledgement of man's meekness and fallibility and in
respectful deference and reverence to the Great Architect above. Structurally,
it would have been a web of reinforced concrete triangles and vertical columns,
with no glass on the outer walls, and would have taken a direct nuclear hit to
bring it down.
Such an edifice would perhaps seem out of place in New York
City too. But at least if terrorists decided to commit suicide by driving
jetliners into it, they'd do comparatively little damage even if they had a
squadron of them, and take far fewer innocent victims with them on their journey
to Paradise.
John Q. Pridger
6/14/2006
Tuesday, 6 June, 2006
It occurred to Pridger that he ought to write something down in
observance of this date (i.e., 6th day, 6th month, of the 6th year of the
century, corresponding to the famous 666 mark of the beast) – just in case something strange fails to happen. But he'll leave
full implication of the possibilities to those with more knowledge of Bible
Codes. Pridger's just glad that the sixth of June didn't fall on a Friday the
13th this year. (But there are probably some economists who think it's a strong
possibility).
The date 05/05/05 was supposed to have been one of special
significance. All the things that one would expect on a particularly bleak
Friday the 13th were supposed to have happened on that date. A rare planetary
lineup was supposed to have tipped the Earth's gravitational balance. The Antarctic
ice cap buildup (and too much weight at the bottom of the planet), was supposed
to cause a catastrophic shift the Earth's polar axis – and the shift, by as
much as 23-1/2 degrees would (once again), upset the earth's apple cart, causing
mass extinctions, etc. The Antarctic
polar ice would slip into the South Pacific or Indian Ocean causing a devastating
rise of global sea levels, radical climate change, extraordinary seismic
activity, and 09/11/01 and the War on Terror would have been avoided.
But 05/05/05 passed as uneventfully as the 01/01/00 computer millennium
bug crisis, or the 01/01/01 millennial transition. 05/05/05 was not biblical prophecy, but
Great Pyramid prophecy, as deciphered by maverick Egyptologists. The end of the
world failed to materialize, however, and here we sit, still contemplating the
End Times, the New World Order, the War on Terror, and approaching economic
Armageddon. Thank the Lord for small favors.
Safe in his sanctuary on Paradise Ridge, Pridger hasn't been
tuned in to the 06/06/06 prophecy situation (there's bound to be some), and merely
happened to notice the date after it arrived. It's 9:00 A.M. Eastern Daylight
Savings Time. The sun is shining, it's partly cloudy, and all seems to be well
– so far – and Pridger plans to go out later and work on the new chicken
house as usual.
9:23 P.M. Nothing unusual, but Pridger hasn't turned on the radio.
GEORGE BUSH'S JOB RATING
Poor president Bush. His ratings are about as low as any sitting
president has ever experienced, and he's coming in for more and more criticism.
Even many erstwhile War on Terror and War in Iraq patriots are gradually fleeing the ship
like a pack of rats.
Pridger would like to take this opportunity to put in a good word
for president Bush. Not only is President Bush a good and upstanding specimen of
humanity, he's a staunch and unwavering leader – just the kind of president we
would need if the nation were threatened by foreign armies. He knows his own
mind, says what he means, and means what he says – and he means well – all
sterling qualities in a national leader.
Unfortunately, he seems to be the wrong president, at the wrong
time – and he's saddled himself and the nation with the wrong wars, in the
wrong places, at the wrong time, fulfilling the Orwellian "Perpetual War
for Perpetual Peace" prophecy, and all the awards that go along with such
distinguished national service.
Of course, maybe he can be excused for most of the really big
things that have gone
wrong during his administration, if not the actual direction he has persistently
led us. The terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 brought a
tremendous amount of pressure to bear on him. Clearly, as the nation's leader,
he had to act. He had to do something, even if it was wrong.
That he took
the wrong path can almost undoubtedly be attributed less to his own propensity
to do right (even God's work), than the monumental pressures applied on him by the brain trust
behind the presidency. And, of course, he had clearly seen a bigger than life
Hitler in both Osama
bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. What would any self-respecting friend of Israel
do?
But Pridger has to hand it to the president. He determinedly
took the bit firmly between his teeth and forged on like the champ that he is.
Trouble is, when the 9/11 attackers handed him a lemon, he proceeded to try to
make a democracy out of it – over in Afghanistan and Iraq. That was a rather
strange thing to do with a lemon. Lemonade would have been more appropriate –
maybe something like trying to find out who really did it and why
they did it, then maybe working on the problem without immediately mobilizing
for perpetual global warfare. He might have even found a solution to the problem
and fixed it. And while he was doing that, he might have spent some time
preserving freedom and liberty right here at home.
You can say one thing about the way President Bush has handled
the situation. There has been no mealy mouthed wavering or indecision, no back peddling, and no
self recrimination. We're in the wrong wars, in the wrong places, at the wrong
time, for the long haul. Hopefully, it won't be as long a haul as President Bush
and his war hawk brain trust apparently envision. But we've alienated so many
people that getting back to being an international good guy will be pretty
problematical.
About three years ago, one of Pridger's few Jewish friends –
an Israeli Navy and Army commando veteran, and present day furniture mover in
the greater LA area – predicted that we would throw in the towel in Iraq by
the time our military causalities reached 5,000 dead. We're about half way
there, and it appears president Bush may be safely retired from office when that
number comes up.
Not that Pridger believes old Joe is a prophet, but he seemed
pretty well informed and somewhat insightful, and Pridger was inclined to agree with him
at the time. It'll be interesting to see just how close his prediction will pan
out.
Joe, like many other Israelis (especially former Israeli
military vets), bailed out of the Promised Land in Palestine (where he'd been
born), to become a furniture mover the Promised Land of the U.S.A. Like most
American Jews, Joe is a strong supporter of Israel, and covets his Israeli
passport and dual citizenship. But he's also a realist. His heart bleeds for his
native land, but he's very glad to be a
successful furniture merchant in LA. He bailed out of Israel with his eyes wide
open.
Hurricane Katrina is another painful thorn in President Bush's
side. But hurricanes happen, and sometimes they are even worse than expected.
The federal response wasn't what many think it should have been – but, then,
neither was the preparation and response of the city of New Orleans or state of
Louisiana. There's plenty of blame to go around, of course, but natural catastrophes (as
acts of God), are pretty much outside federal domain. Washington is no match for
the fury of God, and FEMA is not fully capable of dealing with the aftermath of
such fury at the drop of a hat. We may have G.O.D.
(Government Omnipotent and Deified), but government is still pretty puny when it
comes face to face with the destructive power of the Real Thing.
Katrina happened according to one of Pridger's own personal
prophecies. Only a couple of years back, Pridger opined, "God will probably rattle our
cage soon." And He has. The scary thing is that He's perfectly capable of
doing it again, and no amount of "Separation Clause" or "federal
preparedness" is going to have a significant impact on the results. The
federal government is limited by the Constitution (and by God), in ways that not
even the ACLU is likely to effectively address.
Armies are well known to spend a lot of time getting ready to
fight the last war again, but seldom does the last war ever happens again. The
next one is usually a totally new ball game.
THE GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT
One of the objections to the Bush administration, so-call,
"Gay Marriage" amendment, is that it would be like writing "discrimination"
into the Constitution – sort of like putting minus signs on the Bill of Rights.
Ordinarily Pridger would be against such a amendment himself.
After all, you
don't promote freedom by subtraction of freedoms. But when we speak of gays'
"right to official holy matrimony," and the a "legal
standing" any such thing might have under the law, we're not really talking
about freedom at all. We're talking about redefining words and undermining age-old usage and
meaning. And when words have a specific meaning in statute law, changing them
may have unintended consequences.
Pridger is 200% behind President Bush's purposes in proposing
a constitutional amendment defining the legal meaning of word "marriage." If we
have come to such a sorry point in our national history that it takes a
constitutional amendment to define something as universally known as the meaning
of marriage (and we apparently have), there is no other cure for what ails us.
The amendment wouldn't be discriminatory, it would merely be
"definition-atory." Gay couples can go find
another word to twist and malign and have it sanctified by law if they can.
Better yet, make up an entirely new word (gays are creative enough to do it).
They've already ruined the once perfectly settled and delightful definition of
the word "gay." But that was minor compared to redefining marriage in law –
at least in a society where a modicum of tradition stands, and the majority is
still somewhat anchored to age-old precepts of Christian morality. The idea of
gay marriage, in fact, flies in the face of all cultural and religious concepts
of morality everywhere.
Never mind homosexuality itself – that's another matter
entirely, with a tradition of its own that is as old as mankind. Pridger backs the right of
homosexuals to do whatever they want with each other behind closed doors or out in the woods. He
believes they should even have the the right to form their own
"families" too, if they want them – but don't drag kids into those
unnatural circumstances in an effort to make such "families" appear "normal" in a society
that still considers homosexuals a social aberration, if not a downright
abomination.
There's no reason that "partners" shouldn't have the
same contractual benefits (shared health insurance, etc.), as a married couple.
Nothing particularly objectionable in that. But why should marriage-like
"partners" contracts be limited to homosexuals? Shouldn't
"straight shooters" have the very same opportunities and rights?
What's so special about being a homosexual as to give them special, exclusive
rights?
The fact is, homosexuals have never
managed to become a majority in any society, so they have never managed to turn
any society upside down. Yet they are attempting to do it here by perverting the
language and attempting to have those perversions recognized in law.
The nation was founded and the Constitution was written and
ratified long before anybody ever thought confusion might arise over such common
terms
as "marriage." Any law, or body of laws (especially in this modern
age), must go into considerable specific detail about the definition of terms
critical thereto. If we are to preserve the Union, we must have a unified
definition of some basic words. In this extraordinary case, a constitutional
amendment is the only thing that come get us back toward any sort of national
unity.
Bill Clinton, when embroiled in the results of his own moral
deficiencies, defined the problem we face as a nation when he iterated, "It
depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Of course, when homosexuals become the majority, they can
change the laws and rewrite definitions, and amend the constitution to their
hearts' content. But in the mean time, the present majority still ought to have
the ability to make the rules.
John Q. Pridger
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