BLOG
ARCHIVES

MAR. 2007
FEB. 2007
JAN. 2007
DEC.  2006
NOV. 2006
OCT. 2006
SEP. 2006
AUG. 2006
JUL. 2006
JUN. 2006
MAY  2006
APR. 2006
JAN-MAR. 2006
JUN-DEC. 2005
MAY-JUN. 2005
APR. 2004
MAR. 2004
FEB. 2004

BACKLOG
Of Unorganized
Diatribes

Monday, 30 April, 2007

NEW PREAMBLE AND BILL OF "NON-RIGHTS"

Here's another of those emails that circulate around. The subject is interesting enough to include here, followed by a little commentary. Though Pridger has not verified it, the following is attributed to Libertarian writer and former U.S. Senate candidate Lewis Napper.

NEW PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION

"We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great- great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights."

ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes . (This one is my pet peeve...get an education and go to work....don't expect everyone else to take care of you!)

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE IX: do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you came from!

ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!

If you agree, share this with a friend. No, you don't have to, and nothing tragic will befall you if you don't. I just think it's about time common sense is allowed to flourish. Sensible people of the United States speak out because if you do not, who will?

Pridger goes along with just about everything on the list, almost 100%. But Article II prompts a little comment.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

Of course "no individual" or "special groups" should have a "special right" never to be offended – but society itself (if only to protect and raise children that aren't infected with trench mouth from earliest youth), should have a right to expect high standards of common decency in public prints and entertainment media.

Perhaps Pridger is a nostalgic old foggy, but it seems that the greater public should not have to put up with being offended at every turn, in every establishment, when turning on practically every TV station, watching most movies, or when overhearing the kids' latest popular recorded "music hits." Society should have some enforceable standards of common decency, as it did pretty much throughout the history of Western civilization, until about the 1960s when things began to change.

Just about all of us (white, black, brown, or yellow), can pretty much agree on what offensive language is, and most of us know what comprises obscenity, vulgarity, and blasphemy. And most of us agree that people, as a general rule, should not use offensive language, and even more of us can probably agree that children should not be raised with the vocabulary of drunken sailors (not to disparage sailors, of course, Pridger is [or was] one himself).

As a Libertarian, however, the author of the articles of "Non-Rights" could be one of those ultra-libertarians who believe in letting it all hang out – no rules, regulations, and certainly no silly things such as "common decency" laws. Pridger doesn't know anything about Mr. Napper, but some (not all), Libertarians are like that – believing that everything should go, and nothing should be held back however foul or offensive.

But, as is readily apparent and repeatedly demonstrated in our liberalized society, the net result of the elimination of common decency and obscenity laws, has been that anybody can offend the majority sensitivities with impunity and the kids grow up with trench mount. And when Pridger speaks of the "majority" in this context, he means the majority of "decent people" of all races. But not only are "special minorities" specifically protected, but certain ones of them have somehow attained special license to be as absolutely offensive as they are inclined to be. And their offensiveness has become a highly profitable marketable item.

This abandonment of previous concepts of "common decency" (especially in the media), and license for a few to shock and outrage, is one of Pridger's pet peeves. He is sorely disturbed that almost all the major corporations behind the most offensive rap "artists," and movie productions, and even network television to a lesser degree, have put profit far ahead of consideration of what was once considered the minimal standards of common decency.

When about 80% of the movies produced, and a high percentage of "family viewing" material on TV, are of the variety that "traditionally" sensitive viewers (or parents with young children), would be obliged to "leave the room, turn the channel" etc., something is sorely amiss. And it has been sorely amiss for a long, long, time.

The most annoying thing, as Pridger sees it, is that what has become known as "adult content," or "adult language," is injected into movies totally unnecessarily – obviously, just to get it in for the ratings. The movies would be so much better, from the standpoint of most of us, without it. Such movies (including most of the best produced today), are spoiled because some of us (and Pridger hopes it's a whole lot of us), are offended by obscenities and semi-explicit sex scenes that are totally unnecessary.

The standard has become that "redeeming literary content" is sufficient to justify not censuring what our children are bound to see, hear, learn, and adopt as their own model for language and conduct. But good literary content doesn't, cannot, be deemed justification for what has been happening to our society. Why not simply regain the moral high ground that once ruled, and leave the smut, to the gutter oriented to peruse in private? In other words, clean up at least the "airways" through regulation, and let those so inclined find their own gutters to waller in.

Such fare has been so widespread and blatant, and has been going on for so long, that whole generations of Americans have grown to adulthood, and immigrants assimilated into the society, thinking that the "f" word, and pornography itself, have always been central to the American language and American culture.

There is little wonder that large segments of humanity are not at all tickled about the cultural aspects of our New World Order.

Moral debasement is attractive to an ever-present class of people in every society. And it is very easy to debase moral standards – much easier than upgrading. Always setting the moral bar to the lowest common denominator, leads to a downward spiral.

The kids of today use language that would have formerly have even made soldiers and sailors blush (because even most soldiers and sailors once at least respected "common decency" when in the company of women and children). This is the result of over a generation of "Adult content" in entertainment media, and setting the moral bar lower and lower.

Pridger remembers a time when even seamen's bars were likely to have signs that read "NO PROFANITY!" and the request was usually respected. Today, the signs themselves are more likely to be obscene – and profanity, vulgarity, and blasphemy in almost all bars – in "normal" conversation – is the norm. "Adult language" is considered not only "cool" but a requisite of adulthood. And, of course, all kids aspire to be cool adults, and learn the requisites at increasingly early.

Pridger is nostalgic for the good old days when "bad language" was not considered "adult" at all, but simply bad. It was the language of a few wayward juveniles and adult miscreants, but certainly not responsible adults – at least not while in mixed company or around children. And it certainly wasn't encouraged by either the print or entertainment industries as it is today.

There was once a "Broadcasters' Voluntary Code of Good Broadcasting Practices" and it included a list of at least seven unmentionable words. Now we have more than seven unmentionable words, and all of them are regularly showered on us by the entertainment industry that has chosen to define them as "adult language." On network TV, the words are merely bleeped out, but the full context is there (usually with "adults" acting up and out in very juvenile ways), and the kids all know exactly what is being said.

Yet, while we have become a very hedonist society populated by vulgarians, we have at the same time become so super-sensitive in so many other ways. It's okay to call somebody a "MF," SOB, bastard, or any number of other things, but not okay to call a Negro the "N" word (which, to many people at one time was merely another word for Negro, and many blacks continue to be very fond of using the word themselves.) It's okay for a black "artist" to call all women whores, and men "MFs" but not okay for anybody to call him "nappy headed." It's okay for a black man to refer to white men as Honkies on TV (laughter in the audience), but it isn't okay for a white man to return the compliment. If the "N" word is allowed in (say a black sit-com), the audience dutifully boos and moans.

"Common decency" should be a common thing. But, while most people do try to be kind and considerate, the concept has been abandoned as a "professional standard" by Hollywood and the music industry, and increasingly in professional sports. Three of the most socially influential establishments in society have totally abandoned any sense of responsibility to promote common decency by exercising even a modicum of common sense and self-censorship for the common good.

SPEAKING OF OUR WARPED CULTURE...

Imus said a lot more than just "nappy headed hos." He said, "That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos ... That's some nappy-headed hos there." Given Black hip-hop and rapper language, and what seems to be black vernacular in general, Imus was obviously trying to pay the girls a compliment in "Black English" – something like what a rapper might say of them. But, in spite of his good intentions, it went over like a lead balloon. That's the price a white man has to pay for thinking he's bullet proof.

We have just about come down to where we are all speaking the same language. That was the point of lowering the standards. In the early years of Civil Rights, quick fixes were mandated. It was much easier to get white boys to adopt gutter language than to bring the gutter linguists (and they weren't all black), up to polished language standards. But though we may now speak the same language, white men like Imus can't get away with throwing black compliments to black ladies. Only blacks can do that.

A certain class of white men used to use the same sort of compliments to their fellows, and still do. "Why, you old bastard!" might be interpreted as, "My good old friend!" in the right company. The "right company" meant everything, and still does.

Leveling the language and culture downward has worked pretty well at some levels – especially the juvenile level. As Time magazine recently pointed out:

"Now, however, we live in a mash-up world, where people – especially young people – feel free to borrow one another's cultural signifiers. In a now classic episode of Chappelle's Show, comic Dave Chappelle plays a blind, black white supremacist who inadvertently calls a carload of rap-listening white boys 'niggers'. The kids' reaction: 'Did he just call us niggers? Awesome!'" (TIME, April 23, 2007)

White kids have been making the grade! The same article quoted above ("Who Can Say What?" by James Poniewozik), says of Imus' thought processes:

"... (A) 66-year-old white male country-music fan rummaging in his subconscious for something to suggest that some young black looked scary, and coming up with a reference to African-American hair and a random piece of rap slang."

That's probably about it. Imus meant no harm. If the some of the girls were tattooed and looked like black gansta' rappers to Imus, he was merely trying to ingratiate himself to them and the black community.

John Q. Pridger

COMMENTS ON THE IMUS FLAP BY DEBRA DICKERSON

Debra Dickerson is a black columnist and writes for Salon.com and is the author of The End of Blackness. She expressed her "Viewpoint" in the April 23, 2007 issue of TIME magazine which featured the Imus crises as it's cover story, "Who Can Say What?" Debra entitled her Viewpoint "Makes Me Wanna Holler."

"...I'm not angry," Ms. Dickerson says, "I'm deeply, deeply hurt."

"Imus targeted the greatest vulnerability of black women – our non-European looks – with the express purpose of reminding us that we are not, and can never be, beautiful. Feminine. We had to be put back in our place, demoted to sex objects, but we couldn't even do that properly with all those braids and broad noses. So we had to be made into men. Criminals and freaks of nature. Makes me wanna holler.

"Imus' words keep repeating in my head, like a violent, midday mugging. One minute, you're putting gas in your tank. The next: BANG! A gun in your face. Your response to being blindsided is not anger but a debilitating sense of violation and helplessness. If Imus is fired tomorrow, I won't feel any better. I'll still be wondering who else sees a 'jibaboo' in me.

"... well, let's just say it'll be a while before I'll be criticizing my own again. Why bother? I'll get over it, but till then... why bother?

"The only upside is all this has been the chivalry with which black men have rushed to defend us. Thank you brothers. You've made me feel like a lady again."

Wow! Pridger feels Debra's pain. But Imus was not capable of demoting anybody. Anybody who feels demoted has a separate problem of his or her own.

Ms. Dickerson took Imus' remark about "nappy headed hos," real personally – far too personally. She was hurt so deeply, Pridger suspects (though she isn't angry), she wants to inflict as much pain as possible on that terrible white man that did it (and the rest of us too, of course). Imus has made her realize that she is not only non-European, but that black women cannot be beautiful, or feminine – can't even be proper sex objects because of "all those braids and broad noses" – and worries how many others may see a "jigaboo" in her.

"Braids and broad noses"? What's wrong with braids or broad noses? The braids, when tastefully done, can be very attractive, and if broad noses are a problem for her, she shouldn't suggest that it should worry those who actually have them. She's being pretty callous for such a sensitive lady.

Because of all of these racial attributes that seem to bother Debra, she felt black women had been demoted and "made into men" – and "Criminals and freaks of nature"! How cunningly cruel that Imus was! 

The message Debra got from Imus' dumb remark was that black women are not just nappy headed hos, but broad-nosed, non-European, criminals and freaks of nature – man-like jigaboos that can't even properly serve as sex objects – all with braids. That Imus certainly is sneaky to be able to infer so much with three little words. But it took Debra to point all of this out to us, otherwise we'd have thought "nappy headed hos" was bad enough.

Pardon the inference, but it seems Ms. Dickerson has revealed some sort of latent racial self-loathing, which does not speak well of her racial self-image. She definitely has a problem. Talk about a super-sensitivity racial complex carried to the nth degree!

The title of her book, The End of Blackness suggests that Debra would much prefer to be something else – probably a straight-haired, blond, blue-eyed European. And she apparently thinks that all other blacks should feel the same way – wanting an end to their blackness.

In spite of her lack of anger, one gets the feeling she'd like to see Imus shot or lynched rather than just fired and condemned to perpetual penitence, condemnation, and self-recrimination. Better yet, maybe he ought to be required to wear black face and nappy hair and braids under his cowboy hat from now on.

Didn't Debra get the message that black is beautiful and white is cold as ice? Whether or not she got the message, the very idea that any black person should, in any way, consider that there's something wrong with being non-European, is ludicrous. But apparently Debra actually feels this way – or wants us to think she does – and has been made to feel totally debased because of a simple, stupid, remark made by a white, so-called "shock-jock." And the remark was aimed at somebody else entirely!

Apparently she wants those girl basketball players to realize just how insulted, humiliated, and ashamed, they really ought to be.

The only serious insult, as Pridger sees it, would be in the word "ho" rather than "nappy headed." There's nothing wrong with being nappy headed – and saying "kinky haired" probably wouldn't have been taken much better. But to be called a "ho" is somewhat insulting to most women – even most prostitutes. But Debra apparently didn't take too much offense at that word – she was offended because she was reminded that she is black and that blacks tend to have features that are different from Europeans.

As Pat Buchanan asked in a recent column, entitled "Imus Lynch Party" (April 9, 2007): 

"If the word 'hos' is a filthy insult to decent black women, and it is, why are hip-hop artists and rap singers who use it incessantly not pariahs in the black community? Why would black politicians hobnob with them? Why are there no boycotts of the advertisers of the radio stations that play their degrading music?

"Answer: The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is – a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity."

As for the Reverend Al Sharpton (presumably one of Debra's knights in shining armor), Buchanan rightly asks, who is he to "sit in moral judgment" on Imus or anyone else? "It says something about America that someone with Al's track record can claim the role of national censor."

"Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite public opinion," Mr. Buchanan wrote, "and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree."

Pridger had never heard of Imus until the big hubbub, but Pat Buchanan has Pridger's respect. It turns out that Imus has been quite a benefactor to a lot of people – kids with cancer, the cause to find a cure for autism, help to the families of Iraqi war dead, etc. But now he'll probably have to divert some of his funds to the NAACP in order to cleanse himself and be whole again – if he can ever be whole again.

Pridger disagrees with Debra's view of her race. There are all kinds of extraordinarily feminine, and downright beautiful, "nappy headed" women – even real black ones – and if they appear to be sex objects, it's much more likely to be because they are feminine and attractive rather than black. And, it would seem to Pridger, they ought rightly to be more insulted by one of their own intimating otherwise, rather than by some white guy who pulled off a suicidal coup billed as entertainment.

Pridger would like to remind Debra that "ugly", offensive, criminals, and whores, come in all colors and hair types. Being black and kinky haired is a racial attribute which doesn't necessarily enter into any such category, any more than straight haired European blonds with blue eyes.

In Pridger's opinion, Imus's remark would be taken in the same spirit in which it was made – offensive trivia, below serious consideration. After all, he's just a scruffy looking white guy trying to be "cool" – doing what he's paid for – who has embarrassed himself by shooting himself in the foot and pocketbook. Making rude and thoughtless remarks in disparagement of innocent young ladies is hardly a mark of a gentleman.

Perhaps Debra won't criticize her own again for a while, but surly she's already said enough. She inadvertently sells herself and her race short – apparently due to an inferiority complex. Shame on her!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor, Cynthia Tucker, expresses her "Viewpoint" in the same issue of Time. Among other things, she says:

"I've grown accustomed to an undercurrent in public policy debates that blames black women for an array of social and cultural failures. Without making distinctions, that racist sentiment casts us all as lazy and drug-addled welfare queens, thoughtless breeders of criminals, and unwed heathens who are sacking the sacred institution of marriage. The obverse, of course, is the black woman who presumes to move into the American mainstream. That woman is not successful. She is uppity...

"I'm not much troubled by... radio-active racists. My parents taught me to ignore them. But I'm surprised that Imus continues to enjoy the support of so many political and entertainment celebrities."

Cynthia and Debra, by the obverse definition above, are members of that uppity class of black women. Pridger isn't surprised that Imus continues to enjoy support.

Cynthia shouldn't be surprised that Imus has supporter either. The so-called "hip hop" culture, and a whole array of rappers, enjoy the same sort of high level support that Cynthia says Imus has. There's a very "uppity" class of very successful black "artists" and entertainers out there who provide all sorts of  ammunition to aspiring white sleaze-jocks. All they have to say is, "if they can do it, we can too. Isn't this supposed to be a free country for us too?"

Others have been pointing this out too, and now even a few black leaders are just beginning to take issue with the sort of "entertainment" that has propelled so many vulgar and offensive black artists to stellar success, wealth, and notoriety. Such a pity that it has taken a whole generation for any high profile blacks to become critical of the long-matured black license for offensiveness. Always before, it was merely a matter of their "freedom of artistic expression." Now that white men are beginning to cross the line into the same sort of thing with publicly aired comments about blacks, all of a sudden there is some concern. 

Though most whites who were initially exposed to rap were shocked, they were a docile and compliant race by then, and disinclined to protest – muzzled for fear of being considered racist. And, of course, there was that inevitable minority of whites who thought the vilest rap music was the greatest thing since the First Amendment had been penned – and young people of all races were particularly vulnerable to the spell cast by the raw sexual lyrics and thumping cadence. 

Rap music caused a crises in Pridger's household almost twenty years ago, when his teenaged daughter started listening to it and bringing it home. Pridger was shocked and outraged at the lyrics, and banned all music of the rap gender from the house. Pridger was equally outraged that his daughter's vocabulary and outlook had probably already become tainted, along with perhaps millions of others.

Pridger's "irrational" reaction to that vile music branded him as being guilty of "prejudice" in his daughter's eyes. But Pridger isn't nearly as prejudiced (certainly not against good people), as "discriminating" in his tastes. As for music, he preferred Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, the Platters, etc., and most of the old brands of black music – the Negro spiritual and rhythm and blues – all wonderful sounds, and most with uplifting lyrical poetical content.

Most rock-n-roll (black and white), was relatively harmless (at leased in its released format) – though a harbinger of things to come. Those things essentially came when blacks gained full freedom of expression and record and movie companies saw dollar signs in the raw. Now that a white public figure has presumed to be a little too loose with his tongue, there's a crises.

Of course there are brands of white music that appalled Pridger too (and still do), such as "Heavy Metal" or some such thing. This abomination came along before rap, and the noise alone was enough to repel Pridger and prevent him from ever hearing any lyrics. Back then, it never even occurred to Pridger that the lyrics of broadcast music might be vile – the fact that much of the yelling sounded downright hateful was enough to prompt him to avoid it like the plague.

And rap came on as a plague, too. When somebody suggested to Pridger that there were decent rap artists, with clean uplifting lyrics, he wasn't any more likely to listen to it. Once one has tasted poison, and got deathly ill from it, he doesn't want anything that tastes like that ever again.    

Pridger apologizes for spending so much time commenting on the Imus tempest in a teapot. But when a ridiculous national crises like this arises, it's difficult to resist putting in at least a couple of cents. However, the underlying cultural and political implications that have generated the controversy are extraordinarily important – and this quite aside from strictly racial sensitivities.

As for racial issues, it's natural for all races to consider themselves superior to others (even those that don't come up consistent winners), but the race to which one has been born is strictly the luck of the draw. Pridger is fully cognoscente of the very real problems of racial discrimination. But he believes in such simple, but sometimes elusive, remedies as society-wide high standards of common decency, good will toward all men and women, and universal adherence to the Golden Rule. If everybody would go along, we'd all get along.  

Pridger, of course, is proud he was born of north European stock (his isn't bashful about that pride), but had he been born black, or of any other race or culture, he believes he would be just as proud as he now is in his current incarnation. He wouldn't spend any time fretting about the color of his skin, or spend money redoing his nose or straightening his hair, or lamenting that he was not European. He'd wear his racial attributes as a badge of honor, knowing they are what God has given him, and do his best to do honor to his race. 

John Q. Pridger

Friday, 27 April, 2007

SPEAKING OF WALLS AND FREE TRADE...

The May, 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine features and article by Charles Bowden (with photographs by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel), entitled "Our Wall." It's about our southern border and the Wall that is gradually lengthening in numerous places along its over 1,900 miles of length. Here's an interesting quote that agrees with much that Pridger has had to say about with regard to NAFTA:

"The flow of illegal immigrants exploded after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s, a pact that was supposed to end illegal immigration but wound up dislocating millions of Mexican peasant farmers and many small industrial workers."

Seeing all the damage that NAFTA has done to workers in both the United States and Mexico, our leaders have since gone forth and passed CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And now they are working feverishly on the North American Free Trade Agreement (which is billed as a security agreement in addition to a trade agreement), and still very much have their sights on a hemispheric Free Trade Zone of the Americas – so we can all be one happy family form Canada to Patagonia.

Total lack of common sense is no barrier to what our trusty leaders will do to us. Ben Franklin once observed, "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn by no other" – but what do you call those national leaders who refuse to learn anything even by experience? Pridger, of course, calls them "mis-representatives" – and that only to be kind and considerate. Our exalted statesmen jest cain't he'p it.

Congress has given the president "Trade Promotion Authority" (TPA), so that he can negotiate free trade agreements even more easily than he can plunge us into aggressive, nonsensical wars. After the agreements have been made by the president and his corporate cohorts, our representatives can vote on them with an up or down vote. So far, Congress hasn't had enough collective common sense or guts to vote one down.

Naturally, the administration does all of its negotiating in secret, using "private talks" with  the leaders of the other trading countries, and an array of non-governmental organizations and corporate representatives to come up with the plans and work out all the finer the details. This not only totally keeps the public from finding out the details of what is being done (totally negating the concept of "consent of the governed"), but it also keeps our legislators in the dark, where they seem to be most comfortable.

This gives our mis-representatives an arguable cover of plausible deniability. In the end, all they have to do is weigh the pros and cons of the agreements. Naturally, since the agreements are heavily weighted with so many attractively presented "pros," the pros always win out and the agreements are passed – perhaps with a little argument from a precious few representatives who see a few more cons than pros.

TPA, of course, is a makeover of what was formerly called "Fast Track" under which the WTO, NAFTA, and probably a lot of other minor trade agreements were ramroded through. TPA supposedly limits the president's ability to push free trade agreements real fast. Now the president has to give Congress 90 days notice on trade pacts. If they don't come up with something in that amount of allotted time, apparently, it has to go back to the drawing board. And TPA itself apparently has a time limit – the current TPA period is set to expire at the end of June.

If the president doesn't get all his trade agreements done by then, it's too late (if Congress doesn't extend or renew TPA). Congress can sabotage any deals by failing to vote on them before expiration of TPA. But, again, Congress hasn't had enough collective common sense or guts to do this yet.

While most of us have been sleeping somewhat soundly, in spite of the continuing disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, our illegal immigration problem, and NAFTA, etc., few of us have become aware of the major Free Trade deal about to go down with South Korea – not to mention smaller ones with Columbia, Peru, and Panama.

Pridger, in an odd moment of wakefulness, was alerted recently by an article in the April 23, 2007 issue of FarmWeek. An article entitled "Trade under the gun," by Dean Kleckner, makes the case for speedy approval of the pact. (Agribusiness is always strongly behind free trade agreements.)

"It was signed... just 22 minutes to midnight...

"Negotiators for the United States and South Korea reached a free-trade agreement just that much before an inflexible deadline that would have rendered further talks pointless.

"They were under the gun because... With TPA currently set to expire at the end of June... any new trade deals essentially needed to be concluded on April 2.

"...The accord with South Korea now joins agreements with Columbia, Peru, and Panama that await congressional action...

"The deal with South Korea is big. In fact, it's the biggest trade pact the United States has negotiated since the North American Free Trade Agreement...

"...The 'Wall Street Journal' says total trade between the United States and South Korea could approach $100 billion in just a few years, up from $75 billion last year. Much of the benefit will flow to American producers, as... South Korea promised to open its market to all kinds of products.

"They should cheer the deal in Detroit. South Korea has pledged to drop its tariffs on imported cars... only 3.5 percent of the cars sold in South Korea last year were built abroad...

"American farmers will come out ahead as well. ...half of all current agricultural exports to South Korea will become duty free immediately. Other tariffs will be phased out over the next five years.

"...(T)his trade deal is definitely good. By letting Americans sell more of what we make and grow to South Koreans, it will enrich us all.

"One of the sure signs that this is a good deal comes from South Korea itself, where the local protectionists are already screaming hysterically. They know that this accord will force inefficient sectors of their economy to compete with Americans.

"They may not want this result, but we should welcome it..."

It's the same old Pied Piper refrain – "it will enrich us all." Author Kleckner wreaks with enthusiasm for free trade on behalf of American farmers (i.e., international agribusiness and multinational corporations). They're still very happy with NAFTA – "a pact that was supposed to end illegal immigration but wound up dislocating millions of Mexican peasant farmers and many small industrial workers."

As Kleckner says, the protectionists know that this accord will force inefficient sectors of the South Korean economy to compete with Americans. What does this mean for Koreans? It means that mom and pop merchants will soon have to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart, and small family farmers will be destroyed by the international agricultural commodities combines. It means that many small productive businesses will be doomed, in favor of the international big boys who can move in with their huge corporate industrial efficiencies of scale.

The idea that Detroit should cheer is ludicrous too! Free trade already has Detroit on the ropes. If Koreans begin purchasing more foreign built cars, you can bet the overwhelming majority of them will be from Japan and China. Any imported American cars purchased by South Koreans are likely to continue to be novelties and status symbols of the rich, and very few at that.

It will be a long time before Detroit will be able to produce cars that will undersell Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cars and become popular in the South Korean market. The only way GM and Ford might crack the South Korean market would be if they move their production to that country. When they do that, they might even begin to make some market gains in the United States again – having finally cut American workers out of the loop. 

South Korea already has a highly efficient industrialized economy, able to produce just about everything South Koreans need or want, and South Korean industrial workers still work for considerably less than Americans. The "Made in Korea" label is only slightly less common on American consumer shelves than "Made in China", "Made in Taiwan", "Made in Mexico" or made in dozens of other places. American products are simply not going to flood the Korean Market, tariffs or no tariffs – with the exception of certain major agricultural commodities.

In spite of our ability to destroy many South Korean farmers and some small businesses, our trade deficit with South Korea is destined to increase, just as our trade deficit with Mexico increased after the passage of NAFTA.

But the New World Order agenda is to totally disrupt and supplant local and national economies and lay them open to the continuing onslaught of multinational corporations – all at the expense of local self-reliance, economic independence, and individual self-determination.

Utopia is supposed to be when everybody in the world is obliged to purchase his every consumer item, and his every morsel of food, through approved corporate trade channels, and almost everybody is on the corporate payrolls – at the lowest possible wage levels.

Speaking of corporate payrolls – one of the reasons this program is continuing and "succeeding" (in spite of all the damage done to local farmers and businesses everywhere  that free trade has imposed), is that almost all of "those who really count" are already on corporate payrolls, or heavily invested in the worlds various stock markets. This includes most national heads of state and leaders in "compliant" states – perhaps including a high percentage of our mis-representatives in Washington.

In other words, this is a program of the elites, for the elites. The rest of us merely go along because we really have little choice but to accept the prices of cheap imports at Wal-Mart. The elite corporate planners know consumers cannot resist an exceptionally good deal.

The "good deal," of course, is what is commonly called "the hook".

The public is never consulted, it's enough for them to simply be made aware that "Free Trade is GOOD," and that "we'll all be richer in the end."

Any national leaders that don't go along with the program are declared enemies or at least irrational and short sighted. Their nations are usually called "rogue states," and are thus slatted for either economic sanctions or worse.

If the American people actually realized the real cost of all of our cheap imports – what free trade is actually doing to us – there would be a revolution tomorrow. But since they don't, they're happy just to know that free trade and globalism will eventually "enrich us all."

In the end, nobody likes to admit that they have been had. So, we'll go along until the inevitable crises of the future arrive. Then, of course, international corporations, combined with governments with emergency powers, will find all the necessary solutions. And the solutions will be duly imposed.

John Q. Pridger

RATIONALIZATION

Scientific rationalization can be used to rationalize, justify, and make either desirable or seemingly necessary, just about anything required for any preconceived, desired, or planned outcome.

When confronted with meticulous rationalization for something that seems to lead us in the wrong direction, one usually only need return to the basic premises used as the foundation for that rationalization. There is where the flaw in reasoning is most likely to be found, and often it can be seen as an initial departure from good old common horse sense. Usually the application of common sense can point it out.

Any grandiose plan, no matter how carefully thought out and rationalized by brigades of scientific minds, will lead in the wrong direction if the basic premise is fundamentally flawed.

When the experts are schooled in certain things (economics, for example), sometimes they miss the initial flaws (or deceits), that precede the rationalization that has convinced them of the correctness of the study at hand. But, not being cognoscente of the initial departure from reason, they often contribute (sometimes unwittingly), to an ongoing snow job. But then, they are the experts, and the rest of us are expected to take their word as gospel.

John Q. Pridger

Tuesday, 24 April, 2007

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION NOT A PROBLEM?

From the old mail bag again. Pridger hasn't verified the following statistics, but they allegedly come from the L.A. Times, circa 1998. Whether they are accurate or not, they do indicate a problem. If they are accurate, we've got a very serious problem, and it's worse today than in the late 1990s.

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County ( L.A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
   

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
   

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
   

4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
   

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
   

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
   

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
   

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
   

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.
   

10. In L.A. County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish.
    
    (There are 10.2 million people in L.A. County ). 
    
    (All the above from the Los Angeles Times) 
    
    Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
    
    Over 70% of the United States ' annual population growth (and over 90% of California , Florida , and New York ) results from immigration.
    
    The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was, (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay), a NET $70 BILLION/year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University ]. The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE number.
    
    29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
    
    If they can come to this country to raise Hell and demonstrate by the thousands, WHY can't they take charge over the corruption in their own country?
    
    We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue.
    
    THE U.S. VS MEXICO

On February 15, 1998, the U.S and Mexican soccer teams met at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Mexican even though most lived in this country.

They booed during the National Anthem and U.S. flags were held upside down. As the match progressed, supporters of the U.S. team were insulted, pelted with projectiles, punched and spat upon. Beer and trash were thrown at the U.S. players before and after the match. The coach of the U.S. team, Steve Sampson said, "This was the most painful experience I have ever had in this profession."

Did you know that immigrants from Mexico and other non-European countries can come to this country and get preferences in jobs, education, and government contracts. It's called affirmative action or racial privilege. The Emperor of Japan or the President of Mexico could migrate here and immediately be eligible for special rights unavailable for Americans of European descent.

Corporate America has signed on to the idea that minorities and third world immigrants should get special, privileged status. Some examples are Exxon, Texaco, Merrill Lynch, Boeing, Paine Weber, Starbucks and many more.

DID YOU KNOW? ... that Mexico regularly intercedes on the side of the defense in criminal cases involving Mexican nationals?

Did you know .. that Mexico has NEVER extradited a Mexican national accused of murder in the U.S. in spite of agreements to do so?

According to the L.A. Times, Orange County , California is home to 275 gangs with 17,000 members, 98% of which are Mexican and Asian.

How's your county doing?

According to a New York Times article dated May 19, 1994, 20 years after the great influx of legal immigrants from Southeast Asia , 30% are still on welfare compared to 8% of households nationwide. A Wall Street Journal editorial dated December 5, 1994 quotes law enforcement officials as stating that Asian mobsters are the "greatest criminal challenge the country faces." Not bad for a group that is still under 5% of the population.

Is education important to you? Here are the words of a teacher who spent over 20 years in the Los Angeles School system. "Imagine teachers in classes containing 30-40 students of widely varying attention spans and motivation, many of whom aren't fluent in English. Educators seek learning materials likely to reach the majority of students and that means fewer words and math problems and more pictures and multicultural references."

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I remember hearing about the immigrants that came through Ellis Island.

They wanted to learn English.

They wanted to breathe free.

They wanted to become Americans. 

Now, far too many immigrants come here with demands. They demand to be taught in their own language. They demand special privileges ... affirmative action.

They demand ethnic studies that glorify their culture. 

NOW ..

WHY CAN'T WE SEND THEM HOME?

One reason we can't send them home is that once an entire body has been infected with a debilitating disease, it is incapable of overcoming the infection and ridding itself of the agent. Once the body is overwhelmed, it cannot cure itself.

Our nation once had a natural immunity and effective remedies for the disease. That immunity, along with all effective curative agents, have since been thoroughly discredited and effectively banned by the head of the ailing body itself.

Those natural immunities and cures are now referred to as racism, xenophobia, protectionism, and isolationism. These were once administered through immigration and trade laws, but are now officially considered the worst diseases of all. (Of course, some discriminatory laws were very unjust, and have rightly been purged – but the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.)

The results might have been expected and, indeed, were. But anybody that pointed it out, or recommended a continued commitment to our European Cultural roots, and the American society, culture, and national racial mix that developed from them are condemned as bigots, if not devotees of Nazism.

We cannot blame "immigrants" for our national woes, of course. After all, we have always been a nation of immigrants. And even most illegal aliens are essentially good people. But we were once very discriminating about which immigrants we welcomed and which ones we excluded or only allowed in in very limited numbers. And we were also very discriminating about who had the voting franchise. But this discrimination has been outlawed – rightly so in the estimation of most of today's Americans, certainly all of those who were formerly discriminated against.

(There is nothing wrong with Mexicans, of course. They are essentially just like the rest of us, and just as capable of being good and productive citizens. By definition, however, there is something wrong with anybody who breaks just laws anywhere.)

In other words, we have become very "good" – a lot better than we were before, at least from as strictly humanitarian perspective. But in becoming so good, we have laid our nation open to the disease that is bound to destroy it in the fullness of time. As Pridger's old Pappy was once fond of saying, "There is such a thing as becoming so good, that you're good for nothing."

Any nation that has lost control over its culture, economic destiny, and borders, is doomed to be transformed into something it was never intended to be – and something its citizens never thought it would be.

On the matter of discrimination, Pridger doesn't like to be discriminated against either. But if Pridger goes to a foreign country, he certainly wouldn't expect all the benefits that nation provides to its own citizens – and most certainly not if he has broken that nation's fundamental laws. Remember, there is (or should be), a distinction between "rights" and material "benefits."

Pridger doesn't fault the Japanese for considering him perhaps a welcome visitor but excluded as an immigrant or beneficiary of public subsidies. The Japanese consider that only Japanese can be Japanese, and that is not only their right, but their key to national and cultural survival.

Mexico is little different, though perhaps much less racially exclusive than Japan. Mexico is still pretty much reserved for Mexicans, as is only right and proper. Gringos are welcomed as visitors only as long as they bring their own money and scrupulously observe all Mexican laws. They are not welcomed as immigrants at all, except under very strict conditions of law – not the least of which is that he must bring significant wealth or economic benefit with him rather than expect to "earn it in Mexico." This is only fair.

When immigrants come to the United States, they are only doing what is expected, and what seems a positive move to them. This is true whether they come here to actually assimilate and become Americans or with a secret design to transform the nation. We, in all of our goodness, by welcoming all comers, and turning a blind eye to illegal immigration from Mexico, have hamstrung ourselves. We have no defense against immigrant invasion short of our immigration laws. And if we don't enforce those law, we don't even have that.

We, as a nation, are already in an extremis situation. The disease (which is a disease of the leadership first and foremost), is too far advanced to really cure. Yet we can't just roll over and let "peacefully" invading hoards take over. Expelling the illegal aliens (including the good, the bad, and the ugly) remains the only "legal" remedy available to us. Doing so would be the very least we could do, and perhaps the most we can do. But even this will probably prove politically impossible, for the infection is already metastasizing, and there is a great lack of nationalistic will and backbone among our leadership.

A leadership that has not only allowed our current situation to develop over a period of half a century, but also actively encouraged it, is unlikely to make the necessary corrections to effectively change the suicidal course of our history.

The problems we face are a lot more than just immigration, of course. That's merely a major symptom. The disease is not only of the flesh, but of the national spirit and mind. The national leadership (which actually appears to be under the thumb of alien influences), has proven that it is incapable of nationalistic thought – "nationalism" itself having become a naughty, politically incorrect, word.

Large and growing minority voting blocks, often with their exclusive agendas, have already effectively paralyzed our body politic. As the complexion of the voting public changes, this will only get worse – and hope for preserving or resurrecting the nation of our founders, and even of our fathers, will increasingly become less of an option.  There are no remedies in sight, though there will be plenty of hand-wringing and suffering – and probably future conflict.

NATIONALISM: BAD, BAD, BAD? OR GOOD?

Unfortunately, we're presently preoccupied with a global war on terror, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there are plenty of other wars in the offing. We're told by the leadership that we should get on board our war efforts in the name of "national security" (or at least in support of our troops), and support all the war efforts whatever the objective, rationale, costs, or ulterior motives.

Pridger is a nationalist. That is, he's proud to be an American (proud of what America was supposed to be), and hopeful that we can rescue and preserve our nation. The way Pridger sees it, this should be one of the main goals of all of our "national security" efforts.

But, though "national security" is now bantered about as the great imperative of our times, "nationalism" is a bad word. Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan are always cited  as examples of a nationalistic nations. But this is all smoke. Nationalism has nothing to do with being aggressive or bent on conquest of other nations. Nationalism is nothing but patriotism and love of country – and the desire to preserve ones own nation for posterity. This does not mean at the expense of other nations, but in defense of our own culture and real estate. Self-preservation is as much an attribute of nations as it is of all other organisms. Once it is abandoned, the end is near.

It is impossible to have national security without a spirit of nationalism. Nor can we have national security by thinking it requires that we fight "to preserve the American way of life" everywhere except the homeland. In fact our present wars, combined with our suicidal march into a fundamentally flawed New World Order, are producing the very antithesis of national security.

Unfortunately, when a nation is not predominately comprised of people of similar cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, national cohesion becomes increasingly difficult. At some point, it becomes impossible. And the way Pridger sees it, this is part of the program. The New World Order is about the destruction of local control and local systems, and about the repudiation of national cultures and sovereignty. This can best be accomplished when populations have become diluted, amalgamated, and culturally confused.

Significantly, this is happening with breakneck speed in almost all of the advanced Western European nations, and most concertedly, and irrevocably, in the United States. Most other nations of the Third World are advancing industrially, but are much more carefully preserving their nationalities. The United States is the only nation that is seemingly eagerly committing nation suicide – and (most ironically), doing it while trying to rule the world.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 23 April, 2007

NOW THIS TAKES THE CAKE! WALLS ARE GOING UP IN BAGHDAD!

Not long ago Pridger received a mail solicitation to contribute $150.00 for "his foot of wall" along the U.S. Mexican border. Though Pridger, sympathizes with the cause, he doesn't think a wall along our southern border is a solution to our illegal immigration problem. However, such a wall would make a whole lot more "national security" sense than walls around Baghdad sectarian neighborhoods.

Amazingly, that's where our government has chosen to start building walls! In Baghdad! What are our leaders thinking? Pridger wonders what each foot of those walls are costing our children and grandchildren? (In fact, some of the bill is bound to come due even in our own lifetime!) Talk about adding absurdity to national strategic incompetence! 

Remember when our national foreign policy was based on "containment" of the entire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Nobody even thought of building a wall around it. And when the USSR build the Berlin Wall, we showed them what airplanes could do. Now our policy has come down to the level of containment of Baghdad neighborhoods – with walls. We're apparently taking lessons from our former Soviet enemies and our Israeli friends who are doing the same thing to Palestinian areas of the West Bank! (And they are insulted when former President Carter refers to theirs as a system of Apartheid!)

This Berlin Wall mentality is so incredibly ridiculous that Pridger isn't even going to comment further on those Baghdad walls our troops are working so hard on. Our national leadership is hopeless and hopelessness leads to desperation – security in Baghdad neighborhoods at any price!

It's also pretty ironic that we, the very nation that has been promoting free trade, open borders, and the Global Village, are being "forced" to build reinforced concrete walls around neighborhoods, if not nations. If nothing else, this is evidence that our borderless world is a Utopian delusion.  

THE IMMIGRANT INVASION

Though the costs would be prohibitive, and the effectiveness highly questionable, it would make a lot more sense to build a two thousand mile wall along our southern border than around Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods on the other side of the world! 

There is no doubt that we have an ongoing unchecked invasion across that border. It's not just a labor invasion of people seeking better economic opportunities, it's also an articulated political invasion with with the "re-conquest" of the American southwest as its objective. This has become quite clear in the last year or two as Mexican's on our side of the border, emboldened through the strength of their growing numbers, demonstrate in our city streets proclaiming their reconquista aims.

Looking to their high percentage of Native American blood, Mexicans are now saying that we can't keep them out, because this is their land in the first place. Yet they fly the Mexican flag and say ownership of this land is, and ought to be, vested in Mexico. This, in itself is rather strange, since Mexico is hardly a Native American political entity, ruled (or misruled), as it is, buy an elite that is still largely of Spanish extraction.

These Mestizos, looking to their diluted native American bloodlines, purport to claim the American southwest as their own – on behalf of Mexico! Yet Mexico is the nation that has failed them and caused them to wish to flee north into the land of the Gringo where they might find economic opportunity to better their lot!

You would think our Mexican Mestizo friends would recall that the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and most of South and Central America, was about the bloodiest era of colonial conquest anywhere. There was no dickering around cheating the natives out of their land over long periods of time, and no extended periods of negotiations and false treaties involved with taking territory. The Spanish went for the jugular with a vengeance, and appropriated the land with swift and unadulterated cruelty by force of arms. Almost the entire native population of Mexico was quickly subjugated into a peonage to serve Hidalgo landlords – and this included the very sparsely settled regions of what is now our American southwest.

The fact that we have this immigrant invasion is confirmation that the Mexican government has somehow come up short. And to add insult to injury, the Mexican government, which continues in this failure, is encouraging its poor and hungry masses to leave and re-conquer the territories it once claimed in the north. And it claims it is our obligation, and our responsibility (as a matter of simple justice), to accept them.

The only real way to address the invasion would be to strictly enforce our immigration laws, and begin to remove the incentives Mexican have to cross from their own country into ours. There are two major economic incentives propelling this migration: (1) the continued existence of object poverty and lack of economic opportunities in Mexico, and thus the incentive of the poor to seek relief north of the border, and (2), the great and growing abundance of low paying jobs in the United States that most Americans supposedly don't want or don't need.

One of the great ironies of the state of the Mexican socio-economic system vis-a-vis the United States is that the Mexicans went the extra mile to reclaim Mexico for the Mexicans over a century ago. They expelled American capital interests that had been developing and exploiting their country. Now they are playing catch up again, hoping American capital can save their broken system. But the mechanism of exploitation this time is as destructive to the United States as it is to Mexico.

There was nothing about the Maquiadora Program or NAFTA that helped alleviate any of Mexico's problems. In fact, both have merely further exasperated them. All the industrial development that has taken place in Mexico as the result of these programs has been aimed at enriching American corporations (and Mexican subsidiaries), at the expense of both Mexican and American workers.

The idea was not to develop Mexican markets for the Mexicans, as it should have been, by "giving them factories" that would pay Mexicans high wages (in their own country), and supply the Mexican markets with affordable consumer goods. The idea was to put American factories on Mexican soil so they could pay low Mexican wages to supply the American consumer market. Most of our imports from Mexico are merely consumer goods that were once produced north of the border, and should still be produced there.

On both sides of the border workers came up losers. In Mexico, because the workers (who at least got the jobs), still couldn't buy the goods they produced – and in the United States, because every new Mexican job meant at least one less American job. The process is still ongoing, of course.

The only way to stop the mass migration of Mexicans out of Mexico and into the United States would be for the Mexican government to figure out ways to make Mexico more attractive to Mexicans. The United States could perhaps have helped, but it decided to exacerbate all problems instead. This, because the real rationale behind our policy, as initiated and ongoing, is not to help Mexico or Mexicans (or Americans), but to further the aims of corporate globalism – which, of course, is simply increased profits.

Naturally, when Mexico's northern border region became industrialized, tens of thousands of Mexicans came to the border area for the jobs. There weren't enough jobs for everybody, of course, so thousands are merely taking the next step north. The next step north has since developed into the main program – a massive migration. And since nothing has improved in Mexico for the vast majority of Mexicans, the incentive to move north has increased.

Part of the purpose of NAFTA was to open the Mexican market to American exports. This, naturally, means American agricultural products – the ones that we are still able to produce in excess and sell at global fire-sale prices. This, in turn, helps destroy local agriculture in Mexico, putting "inefficient" Mexican farmers out of business. This results in more and more economically disenfranchised Mexicans who look to American agricultural industries (the still labor intensive ones), for opportunities. Mexican farmers have been marching north in increasing numbers for decades. They have become America's itinerate farm laboring class.

The idea of a wall along the border is an abominable one any way you look at it. If there was such a wall, and if it were impregnable, the sky and sea remain open – and so will all the NAFTA bridges and the planned super-highways and rail corridors! It is planned that sealed freight containers will be crossing the border on trucks and rail cars by the millions in the decades ahead – in addition to the hundreds of thousands of trucks that already do. Mexico's sea ports are destined to increasingly serve the United States, as an additional trade corridor from Asia and elsewhere.

Since one of the major goals of globalism is "open borders," the idea of a wall along our southern border is going to meet with all sorts of obstacles. For one thing, one of the great selling points of NAFTA is the idea that we can help Mexico if thousands of American tourists and entrepreneurs can flood into Mexico to boost their economy with tourist dollars. The effect of this has been to cause many American tourist Mecca's to mushroom and flourish all over Mexico.

These tourist Meccas are designed and priced for Americans, not Mexicans (cheap for wealthy Americans, but out of bounds for most Mexicans). Mexicans work in them as servants, or gather in to catch a little "trickle down." And land prices in such areas are pushed far above normal Mexican market levels, making it impossible for Mexicans to afford land anywhere near where wealthy Americans congregate to have their jet-set gatherings.

John Q. Pridger

PET DEATHS POINT TO OUR GROWING NATIONAL INSECURITY

National Security is supposedly a major concern in Washington D. C.. They and our valiant servicemen and women are working hard on it over in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when it comes to real national security, we're becoming more vulnerable all the time.

We all know how economically vulnerable we are in the realm of energy. The nation couldn't function without our required daily dose of foreign oil. While most Americans are becoming acutely aware of our national energy vulnerability because of continually rising gas prices, very few stop to think how vulnerable we have become in a whole massive line of vital consumer products.

Everybody knows that our economy would take a quick nose-dive if our lifelines to OPEC and the Middle East were severed. But it would take just as pronounced a dive if our lifeline to China and the Far East were somehow severed.

Many of the nation's pet owners have recently found out something else. The health of their pets depend on the Chinese. Now isn't that a crock? Free trade is killing our pets! At what point will it begin to kill us too?

Dependence on trade is not a good thing for a nation perfectly capable of being largely economically independent. Trade is something a nation does to supplement its economy, not something to sustain it. Trade should be used to market excess production, not provide necessities or facilitate excess consumption.

It's ridiculous that American pets are dying because we apparently have decided that the Chinese are able to produce pet food cheaper than Americans can. If Americans realized what a high and growing percentage of our "people food" is also being imported, they would likely begin to feel a little uneasy.

John Q. Pridger

THE MAIL BAG

Pridger just received the following virus warning...

Statements from Nancy Pelosi.

This woman is frightening!

Take a good hard look at what she wants. Take special note of the last
paragraph.

Insanity Personified : Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi condemned the new record highs of the stock market as "just another example of Bush policies helping the rich get richer". "First Bush cut taxes for the rich and the economy has rebounded with new record low unemployment rates, which only means wealthy employers are getting even wealthier at the expense of the underpaid working class".

She went on to say "Despite the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq our economy is still strong and government tax revenues are at all time highs. What this really means is that business is exploiting the war effort and working Americans, just to put money in their own pockets".

When questioned about recent stock market highs she responded "Only the rich benefit from these record highs Working Americans, welfare recipients, the unemployed and minorities are not sharing in these obscene record highs". "There is no question these windfall profits and income created by the Bush administration need to be taxed at 100% rate and those dollars redistributed to the poor and working class". "Profits from the stock market do not reward the hard work of our working class who, by their hard work, are responsible for generating these corporate profits that create stock market profits for the rich. We in congress will need to address this issue to either tax these profits or to control the stock market to prevent this unearned income to flow to the rich."

When asked about the fact that over 80% of all Americans have investments in mutual funds, retirement funds, 401K's, and the stock market she replied "That may be true, but probably only 5% account for 90% of all these investment dollars. That's just more "trickle down" economics claiming that if a corporation is successful that everyone from the CEO to the floor sweeper benefit from higher wages and job security which is ridiculous". "How much of this 'trickle down' ever get to the unemployed and minorities in our county? None, and that's the tragedy of these stock market highs."

"We democrats are going to address this issue after the election when we
take control of the congress. We will return to the 60% to 80% tax rates on the rich and we will be able to take at least 30% of all current lower Federal Income Tax taxpayers off the roles and increase government income substantially. We need to work toward the goal of equalizing income in our country and at the same time limiting the amount the rich can invest."

When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied "We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long ways to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as "Americans"."

Send it on to you r friends. I just did!!

Now Nancy makes several good points, and Pridger will point out where he agrees with her. But Ms. Peloshi also reveals why Democrats still cannot be trusted to govern. They're still more Dangerous than Republicans, in spite of the fact that Republicans have totally fouled our national nest, there is every indication that Democrats would foul it even worse.

First, let's take a look at that last paragraph where Nancy really falls on her sword. If we have any obligation to "raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities," her idea of doing it with tax money is ludicrous, but typically liberal Democrat. Those poor and unemployed don't need handouts from taxpayers – they need good jobs – and government is the only thing that can foster the conditions necessary to bring good jobs back to our shores. She neglects to mention this.

As for "minorities" being included, this is more typical bleeding heart liberal minority coddling. If our minorities aren't to be considered on equal terms with non-minorities (as American citizens rather than a "special" underdog class), then we're still stuck in the divisive victim manufacturing business. Poor, unemployed minorities don't need anything that other poor, unemployed, people need. Again, that is decent job opportunities.

That Peloshi would apparently specifically include the "estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities" it totally unconscionable, if not downright traitorous.

Illegals immigrants are violators of our laws, and the only obligation American taxpayer have (not to them, but to themselves), is to get them deported back to Mexico (or wherever they came from), as soon as possible. That will be difficult and expensive enough! But it must be done, or there will be no hope for ever securing the border and preventing the reconquista. Talking as if Americans have any other obligation with regard to them is about as counterproductive as anyone can get.

The plea that "illegals are people too," and shouldn't be discriminated against, is like saying all other lawbreakers "are people too," and shouldn't be held accountable for their transgressions. Admittedly, the overwhelming percentage of our illegal immigrants are essentially good people who just want a better shake in life. But they have the idea that our immigration laws are meaningless, and their first act is to break the law. If Pridger breaks a law (even if he thinks the law is meaningless), and gets caught, he's very likely to have to pay the piper anyway – even though he, too, is a person. The same goes for illegal aliens who flout our laws.

Breaking out immigration laws do not constitute victimless crimes. The American people are the victims. And the bleeding heart liberals who pontificate otherwise, or simply say "we can afford it in the name of humanitarianism" are a large part of the problem. Perhaps they are the largest part of the problem – even more guilty than the hapless immigrant, risking life and limb, sneaking across the border into the "Promised Land."

The embarrassing truth is, most of those illegal aliens are already employed, and they are taking the jobs that poor Americans should be taking. And those poor Americans would be taking those jobs if the wage and price structure wasn't already geared to tap into the illegal alien labor pool – or if taxpayers were not already subsidizing them making it unnecessary to take just any old job.

Peloshi says "Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as 'Americans'." She is apparently already including those 12 illegal aliens as "Americans"!!!

It's true that a lot of employers are getting wealthier at the expense of the underpaid working class. And that underpaid working class will continue to grow, and be even more underpaid as the nation fills with new immigrants willing, or compelled, to take lower wages.

When Nancy says that "Despite the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq our economy is still strong and government tax revenues are at all time highs. What this means is that business is exploiting the war effort and working Americans, just to put money in their own pockets," Pridger has to scratch his head a little. Granted, it may be that our economy is still strong because of the Iraq war. Without it, the stock market "corrections" of 2000 would probably have continued. War is, and always has been, great for the economy, and has always been a profiteering business which leaves the taxpaying public with all the unpaid bills in the end. But many American workers are also profiting from the war. Naturally, no matter who profits, the bills will eventually have to be paid through taxation.

What could Ms. Peloshi possibly mean by "There is no question these windfall profits and income... need to be taxed at (a) 100% rate and those dollars redistributed to the poor and working class"? Is she saying that all the profits of war profiteers and workers should be confiscated and given to the poor and working classes? Wow! If this could be done, we'd never be able to have another war – ever! But didn't Peloshi and almost all the other Democrats vote for the war?

Perhaps the next time Congress gives the president the green light to start a war, and funds the envisioned war effort, the war can be cancelled (maybe by telling the president, they'd changed their mind), and the appropriations simply distributed to the poor and the working class.

As for a market windfall profit tax, such a tax would merely rearrange a surreal stock market playing field. But "merely" could have profound implications. The question is, how do you define a stock market windfall profit? And who or what, would be actually taxed? Is a windfall profit caused by an irrational market bubble, or is it caused by a successful business making extraordinarily good profits? Do you tax real beneficial business enterprise in the same manner as smoke and mirror profit windfalls?

Pridger agrees that the market has departed from reality. Much of the alleged value is smoke and mirrors, and if you impose a windfall profit tax, a lot of bubbles might be pierced and quickly deflate. The problem is such that a significant "correction" could very easily trigger a major collapse, which would hurt the entire economy – which has become a house of cards built on shifting sands.

Not even Nancy would want a major economic meltdown. So, before we start thinking of new ways for the government to get money from the system based on the false notion that the poor would profit thereby, it might be better to look at such things as systemic reforms aimed at bringing the markets into some facsimile of reality conductive to both stability and sustainability. We need a major revamp of our corporate system – at the core of which is our system of finance itself, and how money is literally made.

This said, Pridger agrees that there has been a systematic, and unconscionable, transfer of wealth from labor (the working man), to Wall Street since about 1980. Every industry, factory, or job exported or outsourced has taken wages out of the pockets of working men and women and put them into the pockets of corporate CEOs and stock owners – with a small portion going to overseas workers. This has been going on unabated for at least a quarter of a century. Democratic Congresses have served as willing abettors of the process at every step of the way. Clinton rammed NAFTA through with great determination.

NAFTA, of course, has been a major factor in taking jobs from Americans and giving them to others elsewhere so that corporations could reap huge profits and help inflate the stock market. You can't blame George Bush II for this, though he is an eager agent and advocate for the process.

When it comes to transferring wealth from American workers to corporations, Democrats have been in the vanguard right along with the Republicans. While the Republicans may have been looking after the welfare of corporate entities, the Democrats are in the New World Order train too – supposedly out of their concern for poor Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese workers. Democrats are eager to give the wealth to the poor, the unemployed, the downtrodden rather than to rich Americans. And they apparently extend the handle, "rich Americans," to include those that have (or had), good paying industrial jobs.

Democrats were big anti-business throughout the era when big business was the goose that laid the golden egg for the once prosperous American middle class. But they didn't mind sending that big business offshore to help poor people elsewhere – or to help rid the nation of "dirty" industries. So they have lent their support to the New World Order policies that would supposedly level the economic playing field around the globe and facilitate ungodly corporate profits and a runaway stock market.

And while this process really gathered it's head of steam during the Reagan administration, the policies that have led to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer have very much been a bi-partisan affair, with the Democrats acting as the left hand of government and the Republicans the right hand of government.

Peloshi's threat to return to 60% to 80% income tax rates on the rich, is not as bad an idea as it would seem. There would seem to be something obscene, in multi-million dollar yearly salaries for CEOs, entertainers, sports stars, and movie personalities, when the best industrial jobs command less than $50,000.00 a year – and real hard, backbreaking or dirty jobs, command much less. And when it is possible for individuals to accumulate personal fortunes measured in the billions of dollars, something is definitely wrong.

Of course, people like Rush Limbaugh would say it's merely a measure of their worth (to society), and they shouldn't be penalized for excellence and success. But Pridger says there ought to be limits on how much good an individual should be allowed to accomplish, however talented he may be. Very few, it should be noted, are as generous as their fortunes would suggest.

If the poor man's fair tithe or tax is 10% on a modest income, then a rich man's tithe or tax should be proportionately larger, for the rich man can neither eat nor drink significantly more than a poor man.

A man with a $10,000,000.00 income taxed at 80% would have $2,000,000.00 left with which to buy groceries, invest, or start a new business. That ought to be enough, for on $2,000,000.00 a year he wouldn't really have to do anything at all.

Even a man with a million dollars in the bank at 5% will have a comfortable $50,000.00 yearly income without the necessity of lifting a hand. But a man with a million dollars in the bank is hardly called a rich man in this day and age.

Friday, 20 April, 2007

IMUS FIASCO UPSTAGED BY TRAGIC VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTING

Move over Imus, Cho has has center stage now. Before the nation had sufficient time to fully absorb and recover from the big Imus scandal, a young Korean kid came along to put the issue into perspective. The continuing Imus drama has been relegated to the back pages where it rightfully belongs – along with Dear Abbey, Ann Landers, Tips for Tots, and "Just Ask Pridger".

What an unspeakably appalling and heart rending tragedy! Cho has outdone all previous mass murderers – at least of the "troubled lone gunman" variety without an army behind them – and this time an Asian kid has wrested the title away from the Anglos. His carnage literally takes the cake – for the time being.

These events that are played and replayed and analyzed to death by the national media for days on end are not good things. It seems to work as a challenge to others who hunger for some sort of morbid media stardom. One Anglo has apparently already made the brag that he'll do even better than Cho when he goes on his rampage.

Just since the Virginia Tech tragedy, several schools around the nation have already gone into lockdown for fear that another event is imminent. As one media executive is alleged to have quipped a couple of decades ago, "What we dwell on expands."

With a few kids like Cho, his predecessors, and a few aspiring adults of the breed, who needs terrorists? Our cup of mayhem and potential mayhem seems to runneth over.

Naturally, there will be a hue and cry from the gun control people. If Cho (a known mental case), had not been able to go out and legally purchase a pair of semi-automatic pistols and several clips of ammo, his killing spree would not have been accomplished quite so easily. While there may be a great deal of sound reasoning behind this, there's no reason to believe it would cure the problem.

For example, had Cho not been able to purchase his firearms easily, he might have been smart enough to make a pretty effective IED (improvised explosive devices), and perhaps have done an even a more explosive number. Unfortunately, bombs are pretty easy to make at home (much easier than making a revolver or semi-automatic handgun), and bombings are probably the next step in mass murderer one-upmanship.

Probably the only reason IEDs have not already been employed by American nut-cases is because media role models, such as the Terminator and Rambo, have not yet suggested it as a "cool" and masculine way of getting the job done – and the Arab terrorist Terminator model is still not very popular in our culture. Moslem extremist suicide bombers – even those that use box cutters and jet airliners – are still routinely portrayed in the media as cowardly nincompoops. Cho's photos and video tapes show that he saw himself in an all-American Terminator or Rambo role.

One wonders why, since gun purchases now require instant police background checks, troubled people like Cho don't get on the police registers? It seems he should have been on at least the local police register as a person not to be trusted with a gun. Maybe this problem will be fixed.

Another thing. Though Pridger is a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights in the broadest context, it makes abundant good sense to keep guns out of the hands of unsupervised children and out of schools. It would seem that college and university campuses should be considered schools too when it comes to guns in the hands of students. It would seem reasonable that even adult students living in campus dorms should be legally prevented from purchasing and owning guns, since the only place they would presumably have to keep them would be on campus.

It's also difficult to imagine why a student that caused some teachers to feel uncomfortable and threatened can successfully make it through three years of college. Had Cho been expelled when he was first observed to be unstable and potentially dangerous (even just to himself), he might have been forced into a lesser crime much earlier and thus many lives might have been spared.

But the common assessment is that these bizarre occurrences simply cannot be foreseen and guarded against. And this is very true in general terms, unless we start running schools, colleges, and workplaces like concentration camps or maximum security prisons. The only thing that would perhaps have mitigated the disaster once in progress (or maybe even have prevented it in the first place), would have been if Cho knew that a few teachers, and maybe some other students (responsible ones), were carrying guns. Had there been some other armed persons on hand, they probably could have stopped Cho before his toll reached the double digits.

It seems that we have been advancing into a less civilized society. In light of this, and our growing history of school and campus shootings, perhaps it is time for willing teachers in schools and colleges, and perhaps some of the more mature and responsible willing students in colleges and universities, to be trained and licensed to carry guns. Perhaps ROTC and on campus law enforcement programs could play a role in this, and provide a small cadre of armed student police to discourage future Terminator wanabes.

We used to involuntarily institutionalize obviously unstable people unable to properly function in society – especially those who seemed likely to pose a threat to themselves and others. But we've advanced to the point where we merely medicate them and turn them loose so they can vote in elections, and we make special laws to insure they are not institutionally discriminated against in any way. Then we wait for those who are so disposed to commit crimes before being able to legally institutionalize them. This system doesn't seem to be working. Unfortunately, the tendency under our ultra liberal system is to extend all coercive laws aimed at remedies to the greater public, rather than "discriminating" against those most likely to commit crimes.

THE AMERICAN GUN CULTURE

In the wake of every senseless mass murder by gun wielding psychopaths, the American gun culture comes under media scrutiny, and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is again questioned and threatened.

We're asked to look at ourselves as those in other nations supposedly look at us – as a people with a juvenile fixation on guns and gun ownership – and false notions of "rights." The pragmatists and rationalists ask, "When are you gun-crazed Americans going to grow up?" or "When are we going to join other civilized nations and do away with our silly and dangerous gun culture?"

The short answer is that we'll "grow up" just as soon as we have been defeated and totally enslaved – and not a moment before. But we wouldn't consider it "growing up" but rather going down to defeat. The transition would be one from what we perceive as American sovereign citizenship into a status of subjection. The right to keep and bear arms is one of the tattered threads by which we hang onto our most cherished national birthrights.

Many are fond of saying they'll give up their guns when they are pried from their cold dead hands. Those are brave words, but it is a continuing reminder to the powers that be that some Americans retain the spirit of resistance to tyranny. This said, however, it remains to be seen how long it takes for a majority slave mentality to force the issue through, by slow, incremental, democratic processes under the influence of expert propagandists under the direction of a "mature and rational" ruling class that will feel threatened as long as some fire power lingers in the hands of the masses.

Fortunately, despite that arrogant ruling class behind them, our politicians still have to at least pay lip service to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights in order to get elected or retained in office. The Second Amendment and its large and powerful following remain a major factor in insuring that this circumstance continues. 

The American gun culture is here to stay, at least until the whole nation goes on emergency lockdown and every law abiding citizen forcibly disarmed. This won't happen any time soon, though, since most of us still want to have at least a fighting chance against both the criminal elements in society as well as against future government tyranny and oppression.

Some of us, of course, secretly know we are probably kidding ourselves. We, too, are a pretty pragmatic race. Ultimately democracy itself, on a national scale, is probably aesthetical to freedom. We seem destined to have government tyranny and oppression in this country in spite of everything anachronistic patriots say or do. But we still want to put it off as long as possible – and to imagine ourselves free and sovereign until we're forced to surrender after a good fight.

We are not going to be totally enslaved as easily as would be the case if at least a sizable segment of the population failed to retain the spirit of resistance to tyranny. Some actually intend to die fighting when the final shoe falls. But as long as fifty million Americans remain armed and potentially dangerous – and know their rights – it's going to be a pretty long time before that final shoe falls. There can even be some hope that the final shoe will not fall at all.

If that final shoe does fall, one of the reasons will be that the cohesive nation that we once had will have already have become history. By then there will be plenty of new battles being fought in many places – and they will be here rather than the traditional "over there" – for there will always be some who will never give up. In time, it may become illegal for individuals to own arms, but there will be an array of armed factions that will make a once peaceable nation into a battleground once again. Unfortunately, the battle lines will probably be drawn between ethnic and religious groups rather than between right and wrong, liberty and tyranny.

In the mean time, an armed citizenry is a deterrent to premature overt enslavement and the turbulence that is almost inevitably coming in spite of all.

ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Freedom was never won but by force of arms, and the willingness on the part of a few people to die for a principle. And only arms can preserve those principles in the face of armed enemies.

Not even the mightiest, best equipped, armed force of any state can long prevail against a determined people – whether armed with guns or stones. But a determined people armed with guns, has much better odds than one armed only with stones.

Unfortunately, our chains and shackles are being fashioned covertly, and sold to the public as safety devices for its own safety and protection. And, since we live in a democracy, and the majority always hungers for safety and security at any price, we will likely lose our freedom, along with our safety and security. Only then will the masses awaken to reality.

The light shining behind the dark cloud, however, is that it only takes a few good men to stand up for freedom and liberty at just the right time – in order to motivate a critical mass of people (always a small minority), to begin making the necessary corrections.

If this happens while we are still a relatively cohesive and peaceful nation, perhaps those corrections can be accomplished without bloodshed. But if we are forced to wait until the nation has become too divided and fractured to function as "one people" the corrections will be much more problematical, if not totally impossible. And time is running out.

The real enemies of American freedom and liberty are not in far off places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or even North Korea. They are much closer to home. Perhaps we should look toward those who advocate more "international interdependence."

John Q. Pridger

 Wednesday, 18 April, 2007

THE ESTABLISHMENT RETHINKING GLOBALIZATION?

Every once in a while Pridger reads something totally sane about geopolitics that actually gives him a little hope. But even reading a hopeful morsel usually makes Pridger want to start pulling his hair, because that hope (as in this case), is so terribly late in coming and, at best, still merely a vague hope. In today's instance Pridger received the latest issue of The Nation (April 30, 2007 edition), featuring a cover story by William Greider entitled, "The Establishment Rethinks Globalization".

The article says many of the things that Pridger has been saying (along with a lot of others), for a long time. William Greider is a pretty savvy sort of writer and comes down on the right side of most issues most of the time, as he does in this very important case. But his title is a little bit over optimistic. There is no indication that Pridger can see that the "Establishment" is really actually rethinking globalization. At best, a couple of "establishment types" have had some things in focus for quite some time – and are now perhaps gaining an audience among some other establishment types. There's really nothing to get excited about or celebrate yet.

One of the insiders is Ralph Gomory, who was a senior vice president at IBM for many years. Greider points out that Gomory, "...helped manage IBM's expanding global presence as jobs and high-tech production were being dispersed around the world. The experience still haunts him. He decided, in retirement, that he would dig deeper into the contradictions. Now president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, he knew something was missing in the 'pure trade theory' taught by economists. If free trade is a win-win proposition, Gomory asked himself, then why did Americans keep losing?"

Gomory's explanations "sound like pure heresy to devout free traders." In collaboration with William Baumol (a respected economist and former president of the American Economic Association), Gomory published a little book on the subject called Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, some seven years ago. Apparently nobody was interested, and the book got little exposure, until recently.

To the Establishment (and presumably our trusty representatives in Washington), Gomory's ideas are "a pretty new message," and "Now Gomory is attempting to reeducate the politicians in Congress." He has been joined by a group of similarly concerned corporate executives called the Horizon Project. "Its leader, Leo Hindery, former CEO of the largest US cable company and a player in Democratic politics, shares Gomory's foreboding about the destructive impact of globalization on American prosperity. Huge losses are ahead – 10 million jobs or more – and Hindery fears time is running out on reform." (Emphasis added)

All Pridger can say is that it is about time somebody got the ear of somebody in Washington policy making roles. Pridger has been saying that the United States has been on a suicidal economic and strategic trajectory for well twenty years! Gomory saw the steamroller doing it's stuff that long too. But policy has continued to be one of willful national suicide. So much in Greider's article reflects what Pridger has been saying over the years that he cannot resist extensively quoting from it here:

"At IBM back in the 1980s, Gomory watched in awe as Japan and other Asian nations captured high-tech industrial sectors in which US companies held commanding advantage... Gomory marveled at Singapore, a tiny city-state, as it lured American manufacturers with low-wage labor, capital subsidies and tax breaks. The US companies turned Singapore into a global center for semiconductor production.
     "'It was an unforgettable transformation,' Gomory remembers. 'And it was pretty frightening.'
     "The Gomory-Baumol book describes this as 'a divergence of interests'...'This overseas investment decision may... proveto be very good for that multinational firm... But there remains the question: Is the decision good for its own country?...'
     "American multinationals, as principal actors in this transfer of wealth-generating productive capacity, are distinctively free to make the decisions for themselves without interference from government. They want profit and future consumer markets... Without recognizing it, the two are pulling in opposite directions – the 'divergence of interests' most US politicians ignore, evidently believing church doctrine over visible reality.
     "...What made America much wealthier than the Asian nations in the first place? ...It wasn't that they went to better schools, then or now, and I don't know how much schooling it takes to run a backhoe.
     "The situation today is that the companies have discovered that using modern technology they can do all that (production) overseas and pay less for labor and then import the product and services back into the United States. So what we're doing now is competing shovel to shovel. The people in many countries are being equipped with as good a shovel or backhoe as our people have. ...(and) we are helping them make the transition. We're making it person-to-person competition, which it never was before and which we cannot win. Because their people will be paid a third, a quarter of what our people are paid. And it's unreasonable to think you can educate our people so well that they can produce four times as much in the United States.
      "...Free-trade believers insist US workers can defend themselves by getting better education, but Gomory suggests these believers simply don't understand the economics. 'Better education can only help,' he explains. 'The question is where do you put your technology and knowledge and investment? These other countries understand that. They have understood the following divergence: What countries want and what companies want are different.'
     (Just outcome through global income leveling?) "'Americans become less rich, others in the world become less poor. That might be 'a reasonable personal choice... But that isn't what the people in this country are being told... what we usually hear is: 'It's going to be good for everyone. In the long run we're going to get richer with globalization.'
     "Gomory and Baumol are elaborating a fundamental point sure to make many economists (and political leaders) sputter and choke. Contrary to dogma, the losses from trade are not confined to the 'localized pain' felt by displaced workers... In time the accumulating loss of a country's productive base can injure the broader national interest – that is, everyone's economic well-being.
     "...Many of our 'dismal science' colleagues speak unguardedly as though they believe free trade cannot fail, no matter what...
     "Some nations... do indeed become 'losers,' ...(and) the United States is now one of them... The United States got cheap goods, China and India got the jobs... putting the United States in the bind where their gain becomes our loss...
     "The US predicament is vividly reflected in the nation's swollen trade deficits... The country consumes more than it produces. It borrows heavily from trading partners, led by China, to pay for its 'excess' consumption. ...(Americans will be) compelled to reduce their consumption and pay off the overdue bills. Postponement will deepen the ultimate injury...
     "...(T)he problem is grounded in US politics. The solution can be found only in Washington. China and other developing nations are pursuing national self-interest and doing what the system allows. ... so are US multinationals... It's a system that says companies have to have a sole focus on maximizing profit.
     "...(G)overnment must impose national policy direction on the behavior of US multinationals...
     "If the government adds rules of behavior and enforces them through the tax code, companies will be compelled to seek profit in a different way – by adhering to the national interest... Other nations do this in various ways. Only the United States imagines the national interest doesn't require it.
     "...The political system has never really had an honest, open debate on globalization in the past thirty years. The dogmatic church of free trade – 'free trade good, no trade bad' – wouldn't allow it.
     "Gormory's vision of reformation... wants to re-create an understanding of the corporation's obligation to society, the social perspective that flourished for a time in the last century but is now nearly extinct. The old idea was that the corporation is a trust, not only for shareholders but for the benefit of the country, the employees and the people who use the product... 'That's the way we thought – good for the country, good for the people, good for the shareholders... We should measure corporations by their impact on all their constituencies..."

Amen! But we are already over thirty years into this losing game! Tens of millions have been negatively impacted, and even if we change course right now, the negative impacts will linger for at least a generation or two. Why has it taken so long for somebody in the establishment to start waking somebody up? Why haven't millions awakened to the obvious realities of globalism? Why hasn't our trusty national leaders awakened to realities in three decades of nation debauchery they have been actively pursuing – as national policy – supposedly on behalf of the American people?

Pridger, an ignorant hillbilly, saw all of this as plain as day from the very beginning. Many others did too. What have our so-called representatives been thinking all this while? As Henry George pointed out a long time ago, "We cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or political economy to college professors." We need a lot of "non-expert" thinkers in the hallowed halls of government.

We need thinkers well grounded in both American political ideals and common sense  – who think for themselves rather than allowing their thinking to be done by corporate funded "think tanks" and corporate funded university political science and economics departments. We've had a great abundance of connivers and corporate yes-men in public office who found it very easy to accept the "dogma of free trade" even though such things had been very carefully sorted out and refuted in the nineteenth century.

Neither Greider, nor Gomory and Baumol, expanded the discussion into the realm of national security. In this new age of national security paranoia this ought to be of utmost concern. No nation that depends on "others elsewhere" to do its chores of production, and depends on international trade for material and economic survival, can be in the least strategically secure. Having become economically vulnerable and dependent, we have also become very strategically vulnerable. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist, four star general (or even a politician), to figure that out.

But concerns over economic and strategic vulnerabilities of the United States, and the welfare of the American people, totally misses the real point of globalism and the New World Order. It remains an unarticulated truth that globalism is ultimately about world governance rather than American governance, freedom, prosperity, or security.

This has remained unarticulated, because if the whole truth were brought into the light of day all at once, it would expose the fact that a massive conspiracy has been under way for a long time. Globalism is about security for international finance and capital – and control. Control of markets, nations, and people – using the latest scientific corporate mechanisms rather than overt political coercion. That's why none of our so-called leaders have been able to see the large-print writing on the wall that we are engaged in national policies intentionally calculated to result in national suicide. What sane politician could admit to such a thing?

John Q. Pridger

Tuesday, 17 April, 2007

SUNSET INDUSTRIES AND THE WONDERFUL NEW WORLD

Pridger caught the tail end of a discussion about globalism on Public Radio the other day. An expert was talking, but Pridger didn't get the name. While he was admitting to the hardships and difficulties American workers are presently facing, he was for pouring on the coals and pursuing globalism at all costs. Things will get better, he said – in time.

He assured us that the process – the great shake-out – has only begun. As Reagan might have said, "We ain't seen nothin' yet." There will be a lot more plant closings and a lot more out-sourcing, and it will perhaps go on for another generation. The expert said this is just one of those realities we'll have to face before reaching the Promised Land. 

It's the same old story. American workers just have to be retrained. They must become educated enough to do the work of the twenty-first century. These will be "smart jobs" of the "sunrise industries" of the future. The jobs that are disappearing are those passé jobs of the "sunset industries." They are going whether we like it or not – and, according to the expert, they ought to go.

Displaced American workers (or at least the children of displaced or downsized American workers), simply have to tune into the "sunrise industries," and latch onto all the wonderful jobs that are bound to appear in the fullness of time. The expert didn't give any hints as to what the sunrise industries might be, and what kind of jobs they will provide. They won't be boring production jobs, and, presumably they will all be good, clean, high-paying jobs – work fit for highly educated people like the expert.

The gentleman cautioned us, as usual, not to make the mistake of entertaining thoughts of returning to protectionism. Protectionism, he said, didn't work. This sort of makes one wonder how the United States managed to become the greatest, most industrialized, most productive, most prosperous, and most powerful nation in the history of the world – almost all during our isolationist and protectionists periods.

The great American middle class – the American economic miracle – evolved under protectionist trade policies. Many of our industries enjoyed protection and their workers enjoyed good, high paying, production jobs. We always enjoyed a favorable balance of trade. We produced enough for ourselves with plenty left over for trade, and the nation traded at a profit. And during the latter part of our protectionist period, the United States managed to become the world largest creditor nation. But the expert said (and all the court economists say), protectionism simply didn't work – free trade is the only way to go.

And go is right. Gone are our trade surpluses, replaced by trade deficits or obscene magnitude. Gone are our balance of payments surpluses. The public debt went through the roof a long time ago, and is now going through the stratosphere. Gone are most of the best production jobs American workers once depended on. We are now the world's largest debtor nation, and all these deficits are increasing at a rapid rate. Our national middle name is "DEBT" – "Debt Economics Burgeoning Trade" – driven by debt money, used to produce a great and growing abundance of un-payable debts.

It appears that the sunset industries are all of those industries that produce things, combined with all of those that can be electronically outsourced to cheaper labor markets abroad. As long as American wage scales and living standards are appreciably higher than in Third World labor markets, these jobs will continue to disappear. Not just the production jobs, but white collar jobs and telecommunication and data processing jobs too, and many more as well, including computer programming and all nature of high tech jobs.

What does that leave? As far as Pridger can see, it leaves all the burger flipping, trash collecting, and laundry jobs. But as far as those are concerned, we are currently busily importing a whole new working underclass to do those jobs. So those can't be the jobs of the sunrise industries.

Of course, we can't export our domestic construction industries, but we are importing more and more cheap labor to do those jobs. This is part of the Wonderful New World package.

We can't export our agricultural industry but we export the products at fire sale global prices that can't sustain American farmers, and import the cheap labor necessary for corporate farms that require workers. 

As for jobs that can be considered "knowledge worker" jobs, they turn out to be the ones that are most easily electronically outsourced. So, if they are considered sunrise industry jobs, fewer and fewer American workers are destined to see a disappointing sunrise.

The big money jobs, such as Corporate CEOs for major corporations would be nice to have. Those big wage and benefit packages are pretty attractive. But we all know there aren't enough of them to go around.

Hollywood entertainers, major league sports stars, high profile pop music artists, etc., get pretty attractive pay and benefits, but we can't all be stars or get into the major leagues.

The main sunrise industries destined to employ American workers in the future seem to be most in financial services, marketing, brokering, government, consulting, civil service, prison guards, Department of Defense contracting, health care, education, etc. But there is nothing even there that can't also be outsourced or satisfied by cheap imported labor. Even government could be outsourced.

There are plenty of intelligent, well educated Indians and Filipinos who could do our domestic teaching and high tech work – they can either come here to do it or do it a home at even more savings. Mexicans are flowing across our southern border to take all the lousy jobs, and as many good ones as they can find and qualify for.

Speaking of the Mexican invasion (and that's what it is), Mexicans first arrived in numbers in Pridger's home town in the heartland about the time the first Tequila's Restaurant appeared. Those Mexican waiters and cooks were (and are), a pretty rough looking bunch. Now there are many more Mexicans in town, working in the kitchens of several other restaurants. And they are working in construction too. Since there are many "moneyed residents" in Pridger's home town, he wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a thriving domestic servant industry here as well. We haven't had any pro-illegal immigrant demonstrations here, of course. Our Mexicans are still a very small minority – very quiet, and well behaved. But the numbers are increasing.

In the mean time, Mexican labor has a great natural advantage over our own domestic brand of menial laborers. They are willing to work very hard and diligently, for long hours, for relatively low wages. The typical "standard American" youth, ordinarily doesn't want to work at all, much less work hard for long hours at low pay. Hard work for an hour is about all they can tolerate, unless the pay appears to be commensurate with the labor being performed.

There's no reason to continue to believe that Americans are uniquely qualified for any kind of jobs at all. Naturally, there's always room for more enterprising and innovative entrepreneurs, but there is no reason to believe that anything but a very small portion of the population is sufficiently self-motivated to be successful entrepreneurs.

What the expert was actually saying was that things will get a lot better when we have a Utopian egalitarian world. This Utopia will come when Americans can compete on an equal basis with what is now considered cheap labor elsewhere. When an American youth is willing to work hard for long hours at low pay, he'll be able to compete with the Mexican imports, or the overseas Chinese and Indians.

This is expected within about a generation. In the mean time, things will get much worse. But when the golden age arrives, things will level out to a uniform level of desperation, and our children and grandchildren will be about equally desperate to make a living at any price as their counterparts in Mexico, India, and China.

But how are we going to compete even when this time? Our educational system is already failing us, and has been for some time. And whole generations of well educated foreigners are outpacing what our system is producing. In another generation, our nation will be overrun by better qualified imports, as we are already being undulated and overwhelmed by imported consumer goods now as well as imported menial laborers.

Academically, Americans are slipping fast. According to a recent article by Pat Buchanan in The American Conservative, "Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills had risen from 20 percent to 27 percent..."Only 35 percent of high-school seniors... had reached a proficient level in reading. In 1990 it was 40 percent... Only 29 percent of white students, 16 percent of Hispanics and 6 percent of black students were proficient in math by (their) senior year in high school..." But the "25 percent of white students and 50 percent of black and Hispanic kids who had already dropped out of school" were not factored into the above percentages of achievers. And this doesn't even consider how far down we'd already come by 1990. The effectiveness of our educational system has been in steady decline at least since the 1960s.

So where is the hope for a highly educated "American" work force to handle all the up and coming jobs in the sunrise industries of the future? Apparently they will continue to have to be imported. Our best and brightest are far too few and far between, and the rest of our underachievers (whether college educated or high school dropouts), cannot compete with motivated foreign workers.

What all this points to is that the experts eagerly ushering us into the Wonderful New World are doing a snow job on us. And they are succeeding wonderfully. In fact, they have already succeeded. We have been sold down the river while being assured that we're going up the river.

None of this makes any economic or political sense. But the experts are doing an excellent sales job, and the politicians are going with the flow, selling us out – and they've been doing it for a long time. The goal is a global corporate Utopia – not a peoples' Utopia.

The fact is that there is a natural order in human society, or the human condition, that cannot be overcome. About 75% of the people – no matter what the state of the arts in education and science – are suited only to be drones. This doesn't mean they are not intelligent and capable. It only means they are naturally suited to be either individualists or followers rather than leaders and "go-getters." There are relatively few natural leaders amongst us – or people dedicated to succeed at any cost. Human nature simply doesn't work the way the experts and planners say it must in the Wonderful New World.

We call those drones the "common people." Pridger is one of them – otherwise he would have become rich or at least president by now. If the common people don't have a country in which they can be free independent farmers, merchants, tradesmen, or industrial workers (with their prerogative protected within national boundaries), they will be destined to return to peasant and peon status, which was the rule almost everywhere before the advent of the American Republic.

The United States of America was a country that once afforded the common man an abundance of opportunities to be freemen, whether they wanted to be farmers, congressmen, or anything else. And in most working fields they could do it without being required to attain a college degree. Today, we are being told that if we don't at least have a college degree, we're societal and economic dropouts, and there will be no opportunities for realizing the American dream – the dream that every willing worker could once realize.

Americans got used to good industrial jobs. It was those good industrial jobs that facilitated attaining the American dream. But now those production jobs are gone or disappearing, and the children of the great middle class, still with high expectations, languishes in confusion. The lucky ones of the working middle class, like Pridger, have managed to retire with a decent pension. But millions face a much more uncertain future.

Why do we now need at least a four year college degree? For one thing, only people with college degrees can be assumed to be able to read and cipher above what was once a junior high school level. A four year college degree will qualify a worker for a standard hack job with wages and benefits commensurate with the standard good industrial production job. For assured success, even more formal education is now required.

We have largely bought into an absurdity and been railroaded into a circumstance where we have no opportunities unless we knuckle to certain well defined patterns. If we do not become entrepreneurs, entertainment personalities, sports stars, or college educated "professionals" of some sort, we have no right to complain about the lack of "good jobs" and opportunities.

Can the necessity of attaining a college education in order to survive economically be construed with "freedom?" It certainly isn't the kind of freedom that we once enjoyed.

The absurdity is the idea that we can remain a rich nation without actually producing anything. Wealth is the result of production. There's no two ways about that. If we don't produce the things that we need in life, then no preponderance of brains or education is going to sustain our national wealth and economic system.

If we were still producing all the consumer goods that we need and use, there would still be an abundance of good jobs and opportunities for the common people who do not aspire to riches or require a super education to fulfill their personal dreams. We should have a full array of industrial jobs for all the high school drop-outs. And we wouldn't have to warehouse over two million of our underachieving citizens in the prison system.

In earlier times, it was a given that third grade dropouts could do just about any production job in the industrial sector. Even today, third grade dropouts could still handle most of the new jobs being created in our service economy. Burger flippers and waiters don't need much formal education.

Almost anybody can be trained to do computer data entry in a matter of hours. If a guy can read proficiently, he can teach himself almost anything. All that is required, besides native intelligence, is a true desire to learn. What he can't learn through study alone, he can learn on the job in a matter of weeks. Why pretend that everybody needs a college education?

Naturally we have a need for a lot of highly trained people in technical fields today, but we should also have a place for the 75% of the population suited only for those jobs that don't require a high degree of technical training. But we're giving all that work to foreign workers, either overseas or imported.

There was a time in our country (and it wasn't all that long ago), when beginning teachers were recruited right out of the graduating high school classes. Educational standards were much higher then than they are now, of course. Today a candidate for an assistant librarian job is expected to have a full-fledged college degree just to make sure she (or he), has the intelligence and knowledge to begin to learn the job – in other words, just to be sure the candidate can read!

We seem to have totally forgotten it in this country, but all the material wealth that is created in this world is still delivered up by the hand of labor – the kind of work that usually doesn't even require a third grade education. The experts keep telling us that we don't need to do that anymore. Others can do it elsewhere. But this concept is so short-sighted and destructive that it begs credulity that anyone purporting to be intelligent would advocate such economic heresy.

To have all the wealth and riches that we still have in this country, yet not be actually producing that wealth, is a total farce and evidence of monumental short-sightedness on the part of our leadership – it has produced an economic anomaly that cannot be sustained even if every American child attains a PhD.

In truth, we really don't have the riches we think we have. Too much of our profusion and gross waste is purchased on credit. We possess it, but we owe for it, and thus we no longer own it. And we owe for it become most of it was furnished by others elsewhere, rather than by American labor. If American workers had been providing it, those self-same American workers would have been paid for it. And they would be buying with cash rather than credit.

China will probably dominate the latter half of this century. Not only is China producing for us (much of it effectively on credit), but it can, is, and will continue, to produce for itself. China has a vast market of its own, and it has only begun to develop it. If the Chinese are as smart as Pridger suspects them to be, China will be able to produce for itself even if there is a catastrophic global economic collapse that totally cripples us – because China has developed the industrial infrastructure to do it. In the mean time, we've been shipping our industries to China, and increasingly purchasing our manufactured goods, much of our industrial infrastructure, and more and more food, from there.

But even if there is no catastrophic economic collapse in the West, the plan is for a corporate world, wherein everything – every single necessity of life – is provided by multi-national corporations with no natural relationships between producers and consumers. And, of course, where all opportunities for "good jobs," or any jobs at all, anywhere in the world, will be through corporate employment offices. Without our corporate bosses, and corporate sources for all our stuff, we'll all be like lost children in the wilderness. Only the Amish will carry on as usual (if they can withstand the pressures of marauding hordes).

In such a Brave New World, there is no place for the old American dream of a nice farm and family independence, or any sort of individual, regional, or national, independence at all anywhere.

One of the main rationales for the New World Order is that world government, finance, and corporate systems of production, based on the latest science, are the only things that can save the world from future starvation as populations continue to explode. But the corporate systems that are now in place to accomplish this Utopian task are literally expending global resources at a rate that will bring on a crises of truly global proportions. Certainly greater than any that would occur under systems of local national and regional independence and local stewardship.

The big key words for this global monstrosity are "international interdependence." Of course, at some levels we cannot avoid being internationally interdependent, but interdependence should not be a goal aimed at the total abolition of national independence and local and regional self-reliance. To become totally dependent on others elsewhere for everything (and all dependent on well oiled, high tech, production and delivery systems), is a recipe for future disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Rather than facing and solving localized and regional problems as they arise, we may soon face a global catastrophe that will put the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression to shame. And if a "crash" situation can be avoided, global warming is being exacerbated by over industrialization on a global basis, which will bring on a slow crises of increasingly momentous proportions.

All "systems" eventually break down. There's always that unplanned natural inevitability waiting in the wings that throws an unexpected wrench into the works. We have several such wrenches threatening. We know they are threatening (even the experts know they are threatening), but we are nonetheless being ushered into an extraordinarily dangerous closed box.

Most absurdly, we are still being told that the goal is to deliver "the American way of life" to all of the people of the world – that everybody in the world can and should be just as conspicuously super-consumptive and super-wasteful as the "new" American ideal. In a generation we will should see some corrections of one nature or another – perhaps in both policy and "events." Unfortunately, Pridger probably won't be around to say, "I told you so!"

John Q. Pridger

THE VALUE OF AN EDUCATION

Speaking of education, we all know that knowledge, of course, is a form of power. The more education the better is hardly a matter in dispute anywhere. But, in reality, few people become truly educated, or "highly" educated. Most people simply don't aspire to higher education. They simply aspire to a good job, and when that is attained, along with some peace and security for their family, they are satisfied.

Not long ago Pridger happened to read a very unusual and interesting higher education cost/benefit analysis. It came in a email that had been written by someone in the business hierarchy of one of the Linux operating systems. Unfortunately, Pridger misfiled the email, so will have to wing it to convey the gist of it.

The truth is, the standard four year college degree has become a very expensive investment in both time and money, and in spite of the general belief that education is always a good investment, the rewards are usually not really all that great. The lion's share of college graduates end up getting a starter job that pays less than a decent industrial wage. They may have more upward mobility than the average industrial worker, but not really all that much.

There's only a limited amount of room at the top of any corporate chain or field of professional endeavor. And, unfortunately, the numbers of college graduates who actually end up doing something they really love is strictly limited. Many end up in fields totally different that what they studied for, and often they are fields that might not have required a college education at all.

Upward mobility is often open in many fields for truly intelligent people who like what they are doing, whether they have a college education or not. Knowledge is not limited to college graduates, but is always available to all who pursue it, and experience continues to keep perhaps the greatest school of all.

Be this as it may, formal education is always highly desirable. Yet it isn't necessarily cost effective as either a personal or national policy. Most college students go into a great deal of personal debt during the course of their education. $25,000.00 a year is probably a pretty conservative estimate of the average overall cost of a college education. And if a four year student finds himself $100,000.00 in debt at the time he seeks his first job at the age of 22, he's already way behind the financial eight ball before even beginning work. For further education beyond the initial four year term, costs increase considerably.

Had he taken the $7.00 an hour burger flipping job at age 18, he would have already earned about $58,000.00. He may have even become manager by age 22 and be making $10 or $15 an hour. The $7 an hour worker will make about $684,000.00 in his 47 year working career, to age 65.

Had he taken the highway flagman job, or started at a factory or mine, he might have started at $10 to $15 an hour, and may have earned as much as $124,000.00 by age 22. The $15 an hour worker will make about $1,466,000.00 during his 47 year working life.

The college student graduating with a $100,000.00 debt will be lucky to start out at $10 or $15 an hour – and though he may look forward to a progressively increased salary throughout his working career, he will have a pretty tough time besting a well paid industrial worker with regard to their comparative lifetime income and retirement benefits. His chances of truly enjoying his work may be only marginally better than the industrial worker.

The college man or woman would be very lucky to double the income of the $15 an hour worker, and earn as much as $3,000,000.00 during his working career.

Of course there are illiterate sports stars making much more than that per year, not to mention rap artists, movie stars, and corporate CEOs that "earn" many times more than that.

Fortunately, many college students don't have to bear the total cost burden of their college education. Often parents pay for it, and most of them never expect to get the money back.

Now, if the prospective student had been able to get that $100,000.00 from his parents and invest it rather than spending it on an education – and leave it invested until retirement – many (perhaps most), would end up better off taking a hack job right out of high school. At 7% an investment doubles, approximately, every 10.3 years. There are thus about 4.5 doubling periods in 47 years. It's as simple as 2, 4, 8, 16, 24. So the investment would be worth approximately $2,400,000.00 at retirement – a pretty respectable retirement nest egg. Combine that with the $1,466,000.00 for the $15 an hour career, and we have $3,866,000.00, a life-time earning figure most college graduates would have a difficult time matching.

THE MOST WONDERFUL NEW WORLD

This brings up another amazing thing about our system – especially a system where nobody actually has to produce anything tangible and voodoo economics makes everything financially possible. If the government would only endow every newborn American with his Social Security in advance, it could probably solve a lot of fiscal problems. Let's say a decent living American wage ought to be considered $50,000.00 per year. $725,000.00 invested at 7% yields $50,750.00 in interest or dividends each year.

By setting up a $725,000.00 account for each newborn American citizen, each citizen could enjoy a $50,750.00 yearly income for life without having to undergoing any of the inconveniences of higher education or work. The government could do this very easily in this day and age. The principle would not be a cost, since the government would retain actual "ownership." It would be a investment. The $725,000.00 would be a simple Treasury Bond of the type the government's creditors presently hold, and it would pay interest on a similar basis, but geared to providing an income for an individual for life.

What would all of these non-working citizens do? The same things they hope to do now – be conspicuous consumers, and members of the leisure class. They could see the 1,000 places that everybody should see before they die. They could write books, paint, or write poetry. They could play "survivor" or paint ball. The recipient of the 50K yearly income would spend most of his money into circulation thereby fueling the consumer economy. This would pay for all of our Chinese and other imports. The system would be fool proof.

John Q. Pridger

Thursday, 12 April, 2007

IMUS OVERSHADOWS WAR IN IRAQ AS LACROSSE PLAYERS ARE EXONERATED

Pridger had never heard of Don Imus until a couple of days ago when he upset a lot of people by insulting some girls on a college basketball team. Imus, who looks like an old Horse Whisper, a shaven old hippy, or a very famous Wyoming lawyer, didn't mean any harm at all. He was just being flippant and cute.

After all, he's one of that breed of comedian-commentator known as "shock jocks." As such, he's built his career by insulting society at large, and just generally being outrageous. He's apparently been getting well paid by the establishment media to do it for a long time. And, even at that, he isn't nearly in the league with the worst of them.

He thought he was so well loved by his audience, and such an asset to his employers and sponsors, that he could insult innocent black female teenage students with the very same impunity with which he can outrage the broader community. He must have imagined himself totally bulletproof. But what was this white dude thinking? When he, oh so off-handedly, referred to that college basketball team as "nappy headed hoes," he thought he had the same immunity of a black rapper. 

It's as if he had been living in some sort of a drug-induced bubble, and is now awakening to cold, cruel, reality. No white man is bulletproof. And, to be perfectly fair, it is unlikely even most black rappers would have dared sinking to the level of calling a specific girls' basketball team a bunch nappy headed hoes.

Doesn't he know that even though outrage is "in," and he can get away with saying almost anything that would insult any sense of common decency, there are still some very large taboos? In spite of our liberalized "freedom of expression," even soldiers and sailors are required to take sensitivity training classes these days before being unleashed into a surprisingly touchy world. In fact, in many ways it's a touchier world now than it was when society was a lot more prudish.

Young girls may now curse like sailors (or rap like artists) – and do it with impunity – but be careful when you speak to or of young girls! Or women, or racial minorities!

Imus is now reawakening to reality and learning the same lesson many others have learned before. Doesn't he know what kind of a society he lives in? Doesn't he know that there are some things you can say and do and other that you can't? How did he get to where he is today – or where he was before he used the nappy and hoe words? 

It's pretty cool for media personalities to insult society at large. The white race can be insulted, and Christians can be insulted, but it is particularly unwise to insult specific innocent groups of individuals – especially members of a college athletics team. Particularly a girls' team – and, most particularly, when they are mostly black girls. Talk about pushing all the wrong buttons with one nimble remark!

In spite of all the strides we have made with regard to freedom of vulgar and offensive expression in the media, it's not yet quite cool to refer to young female student athletes as whores – not even in the most flippant of jest – not even using the "cute" black vernacular word "hoe." That might be about the cutest word in the language, but it still has repercussions when not handled properly.

When black comedians started using that word it was considered real cute. It has become very popular – almost as popular as the "f" word and all the other formerly banned words. But it is unlikely that using it in reference to a team of female students would have left even the most popular black comedian unscathed. They would likely know better (even if forgiven more readily). 

Significantly, it wasn't militant females who came forward to defend the girls' image, and to wreak revenge on this lip-loose media personality. It was the militant black "leadership." And they have come forth with a vengeance to make a huge mountain out of a little trashy mole hill – a comment made strictly in jest. It's become a major race issue, and major news media fare.

Apologies are never enough in such cases. Inus can't grovel and squirm low enough to satisfy those demanding his blood. That he was just joking is totally irrelevant. He deserves to be totally squashed. He must be fired from his job. He needs to commit himself into some sort of rehabilitation facility. He sorely needs to make some sizable donations to the NAACP and other black causes. He needs to rejoin the fight against AIDS in Africa. He needs to go on a lecture circuit, lecturing against the evils of racism, sexism, and insensitivity in general.

If he doesn't have the grace to do at least some of these things, perhaps he should be brought up on hate crime charges and serve a little time – just as an example to other white comedians that think they can call girls "hoes" and get away with it. He certainly should have known better.

It didn't take long for several major sponsors to succumb to the pressures of black activists. They'll sponsor any outrage at all, as long as the ratings are up and no minority group is ever offended. Society as a whole, of course, can be insulted and outraged to no limit. The only recourse for sensitive people who prefer decency in media, is to ignore the program and watch or listen to something else. But don't cross into racial or sexist jokes or insults. That's media personality suicide.

In Pridger's opinion, there are a lot more entertainers out there than just Imus who ought to have their acts cleaned up, or totally cleaned out. Imus is merely one festering pimple on a rotten body – a whole class of entertainers who have been running rough shod over our former concepts of common decency for several decades. And Imus is not the worst of them by any stretch of the imagination. And corporate media and corporate sponsors have been backing gutter media entertainment and music all along the way.

At least the matter has given us a break from having to worry about all the death and destruction going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's almost as though we'd lost our focus on the more important things and the Imus affair has brought us back to reality.

In another development, the three lacrosse players who were accused, tried, and convicted, by the media and prosecutors about a year ago are now off the hook. It seems somebody goofed, and the boys were wrongly accused. Sorry about that boys. 

Apparently their main transgression was being at a party with an unprincipled hoe. Nothing against hoes, or ladies in general, of course. Unprincipled prosecutors and media are very much in the same league as unprincipled hoes. Boy, isn't that a cute and handy word! (The famous painting, "The man with the hoe," now has a new meaning, and the artist has finally been exposed as a sexist bigot!) 

One of the main problems with our justice system is that public prosecutors are almost always much more concerned with gaining convictions than with justice. Once a prosecutor commits to a case, justice is no longer a serious consideration. Conviction, right or wrong, becomes their only goal.

This is one instance where justice finally prevailed against all odds. The only thing on the boys' side seems to have been the evidence – and somehow, somebody noticed.

The only reason this lacrosse affair had become such a media friendly case in the first place was because the accuser was a black woman and the accused were white boys – and the school itself is a high profile bastion of white elitism. It was a wonderful case for national publicity and great fanfare – had it only turned out right. What an embarrassing disappointment!

John Q. Pridger

Sunday 31 March 2007

STOCK TIP REVEALS HOW TO "PLAY" THE MARKET

The Stock Market has been a speculative game for well over a century. In the early years it was the exclusive domain of financiers, industrialists, institutional investors, and a relatively small number of high-rolling individual investors. Now it's a game that anybody can play like a fiddle – for a price. It's become both a money making toy and a den of thieves. You can make money if you play it right, and you can loose money if you don't.

Hot stock tips now circulate on the Internet like multi-level marketing chain letters (directed at "opportunity seekers" mailing lists), used to circulate through the mails. But, since sending emails are cheap, the new opportunities are much more democratic. "Subject: CNNMoney: Bush hits Democrats on Iraq Deadline | Video Video." That's the subject line of the latest hot stock market tip to hit Pridger's inbox. The totally irrelevant subject is a trick, or "hook," to get you to take a look at a moneymaking opportunity. The message reads:

Are you aware of the biggest Wave Sweeping the Telecom 
industry right now? It's called VOIP and it's taking the 
sector by Storm. We are bringing you an Amazing Play that 
is Right in the Thick of the business.

This winner is Peopleline Telecom (PPTM). As with all Tech 
plays it's about Catching that Rising Star on the Ground 
floor and riding it Up. 

PPTM is in just such a position. Trading at around 30 
cents with Astounding news on the way, this is one play you 
can't afford to miss! The Upcoming news and Promotion is 
going to see this one at around $1.00 in no time!

Pridger hasn't investigated PPTM. It's probably a legitimate stock and maybe even a legitimate company. Otherwise there would be no point in sending out such an email to a large mailing list. As stock "trading at 30 cents with Astounding news on the way" sounds pretty attractive. Perhaps "this is one play you can't afford to miss!"

At $.30, a block of a 10,000 shares would only cost $3,000.00. When (and if) it reaches the $1.00 target price, those 10,000 shares would be worth $10,000.00. The profit potential it $7,000.00 on a $3,000.00 investment in a matter of days! The math is that simple.

Here's how it works. (1) Purchase, or otherwise acquire or construct, a large email list. Even a random email list system will do. (2) Pick a likely small startup "penny stock" company that is being traded on the exchange. It should be in an attractive field, such as the telecommunications industry. (3) Purchase as large a block of stock as you can afford. (4) Start your email campaign. If you are in this with several other people who will be coordinating with you, all the better. (5) Watch the stock start going up as the gullible email recipients start buying. Others will follow as the price starts up, kicking it up faster. (6) Sell just before the target price is reached and take your profit. When you sell, the stock the price will likely begin to collapse. (7) Start the process over with another stock.

It's a wonderful system. The whole stock market spikes and dives on rumors and comments by such luminaries as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Individual stocks of small companies are more susceptible to individual manipulation – with or without the collusion of the company itself. Actual collusion by the company would be a prosecutable crime, but manipulations by outside investors "playing the market" seems to be acceptable – it's all part of the game.

As in the example above, the "market" means nothing. A stock can be bid up or down by "investors" where or not the company is good, bad, or indifferent. The company could be no more than a shell and the same thing can happen. The larger market, which is a major gauge of national prosperity and economic health, really bears no relationship to any reality. It's a national or international casino game.

Gas prices reflect the same sort of irrationality. Gas prices go up in response to rumors or minor events in the Middle East and elsewhere when absolutely nothing has yet happened with regard to the actual supply and demand situation. It has become a game the oil companies play with consumers to grossly enhance their bottom lines.

John Q. Pridger

Tuesday March 20, 2007

THE RE-CONQUEST OF THE united STATES OF AMERICA

The illegal alien problem in the United States is much more serious than most Americans realize. Of course, the main reason it is much worse is that the fundamental plan of globalization is not only about free trade but open borders as well, where labor is free to cross borders as freely as trade goods. In fact, the New World Order is all about erasing national borders and the nation-state system itself. Illegal Mexicans are looked upon by the One World planners as nothing more than free-roaming labor. Naturally, getting upset about Mexicans coming to the United States (legally or otherwise), is antithetical to the whole program of globalization.

All of this was planned a long time before President Reagan first publicly announced the "new international economic order" and President Bush, the 1st, announced the "New World Order." The United States of America has effectively been gifted to the world as the first step to accomplishing the ultimate goals of globalization. As the present President Bush has said, America is not a place, it's an ideal. And as President Reagan might have said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Of course, Pridger hasn't read all the literature available on the "great plan," but he's read enough to get more than just the general drift of things intended to come. For those who are shy of conspiracy literature, Pridger recommends reading such works as; Socialism and International Economic Order, by Elisabeth L. Tamedly (1969, the Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho); RIO, Reshaping the International Order, A Report to the Club of Rome (1976, E.P. Dutton, New York);  "North-South, a Program for Survival, The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues und the Chairmanship of Willy Brant (1980, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Those are only three of many semi-official works produced by those who have helped define the rationale and "socio-economic imperatives" behind the great New World Order plan. They reveal the genesis and intents behind the United Nations and the "later advent" of socio-economic globalism.

An autographed copy of One World, by Wendell L. Willkie (1948, Simon and Schuster, New York), is another work that happens to be in Pridger's library. Willkie, of course, was Franklin D. Roosevelt's opponent in the 1940 presidential election. He had been against FDR's New Deal program (first as a Democrat, then a Republican), and prior to World War Two he had been a non-interventionist, against war with Germany. Later he supported Roosevelt's programs which resulted in our entry into the war and the war effort itself.

Willkie was not one of the major players in the creation of the United Nations (he died in 1944). Significantly, however, he referred to the WWII allies as the "United Nations" throughout his One World book (as did FDR and Winston Churchill). The book was undoubtedly very influential in promoting the "One World" idea, particularly from an industrialist's standpoint. This is significant in that the real powers behind globalism have not been the socialists, liberals, and academic Utopians who have been so strongly behind the United Nations and the idea of a New World Order, as much as financial capital and multinational corporate interests. These have been the real muscle, and prime profit-making beneficiaries, of economic globalization. 

The United States of America, as the linchpin and spearhead of globalism, must lead, at least in part, by example. The opening example has been to open our markets to all nature of foreign produced goods, both natural resources and manufactured products. We began by opening our markets to the re-industrializing post-war nations – most significantly Japan, which proceeded to totally absorb and supplant many of our emerging electronics industries, and capture a huge share of our auto market – Toyota now threatening to eclipse General Motors as the world's largest automaker. 

The free trade idea was merely the big foot in the door – the camel's head under the flap of the tent. The ultimate program is supposed to lead to totally open borders. "From America's standpoint," because no other major industrial nation has given up its markets to the degree we have. For example, American products have not significantly penetrated the Japanese market and probably never will. And now we see Chinese goods on just about every American consumer shelf. But China does not import many American goods, other than raw materials, money, and whole industries, which are going to China.

It's almost certain that the "Made in America" label won't penetrate the Chinese markets. But that isn't to say that American capital isn't cashing in on China's big economic boom. Wall Street is being looked after, but American labor has been totally cut out of the loop. In fact, we have been actively de-industrializing as a means of facilitating the New World Order, and thus are increasingly unable to produce for ourselves, much less others elsewhere, even if we could be competitive. Not only can we not compete because of the high cost of American labor, but because we've also managed to get rid of the industries that produced the necessary goods.

Cheap imported foreign oil, automobiles, electronics, and other consumer goods have been an easy sell with American consumers. The American public has literally been a  pushover for such things, and "stores" like Wal-Mart have become so popular that they have been allowed to rearrange the national commercial landscape with hardly a peep of protest from the public. Consumers love it, and "Super-Wal-Marts" are now popping up around the nation like corn in a virgin field.

Freeing up immigration has been going on a bit more stealthily than free trade – usually accomplished as the result of various, apparently unrelated, geopolitical events. Such "events" have conveniently contributed major surges of immigration, to soften us up and make us a multi-cultural nation without any effort. Wars and related instances of foreign imperialism have played the major role. The Spanish American War opened the doors to Caribbean, Philippine, and other immigration. This was even before the current metamorphosis of the New World Order plan was solidified and adopted as a national policy goal in the decades after World War Two.

Since the solidification of the of the present genesis of the New World Order plan, we've had a major liberalization of immigration policy. That change conveniently coincided with with Civil Rights movement, and was even demanded by it. We no longer favored the immigration of kindred peoples from Europe and began curtailing it while welcoming all comers from the Third World.

Since the communist takeover of Cuba, we've had massive immigration from Cuba, which transformed southern Florida. And we've had large numbers of immigrants from such poorly run nations such as Haiti. The tragic conclusion of the equally tragic Vietnam War resulted in a massive and ongoing surge of immigration from Vietnam and Asia. Every other small war has resulted in surges of immigrants by displaced persons and political refugees. The Cold War caused considerable political turbulence everywhere, including Latin America, which resulted in large numbers of South and Central American immigrants, not to mention the large numbers of Russians and Eastern Europeans that began to immigrate to America. 

Perennial turbulence in Africa has resulted in a steady stream of African immigrants. The ongoing strife in the Middle East has caused large numbers of Arabs and others to immigrate to the United States.

India and the Asian subcontinent have provided large numbers of immigrants. Indian doctors and other professionals have become common throughout the nation. Many came to study in the United States under various government subsidy programs, and they simply stayed because "we needed them" (it ain't easy for an American to become a doctor), and this is where the money is. And it seems that the low-end hotel-motel industry has mysteriously been ceded to Pakistanis and other Asians.

The advent and growth of the Welfare State, combined with Civil Rights and immigration policy liberalization, conveniently provided a huge incentive for further immigration. Since the Civil Rights era, whole generations of poor Americans found they didn't have to work for a living. A large percentage of the American working under-class was effectively put on paid vacation for more than a generation, and many mothers with dependent children are still effectively paid to stay home and mind their children. Naturally, our welfare system also resulted in a huge growth in the numbers of unmarried mothers with dependent children.

When huge numbers of poor Americans were no longer obliged to take just "any job" to make a living, we began to import a whole new laboring underclass, mostly from Mexico – "our" most conveniently situated Third World country.

While the welfare benefits were a great draw that considerably lessened the risks of immigrating, the overwhelming majority of the new immigrants from poor countries came to take the jobs poor Americans no longer needed. As the natural result of this increased influx of labor, wages have been bid downward in several industries, making jobs in those areas less attractive to "regular" Americans, and a further draw to immigrants.

Mexicans have been arriving to take those jobs ever since, and the opportunities and incentives to immigrate are still expanding. The numbers have come to be of major significance and don't show any signs of abating. This massive immigration of a new laboring underclass has been very effectively encouraged by our "world oriented" government. As part of our national New World Order agenda, the national economy has been actively transformed into a service economy which creates more and more low paying jobs that appeal to immigrant labor but not most "traditional" Americans. At the same time, good jobs, factories, and whole productive industries, have been exported to Mexico, China, and elsewhere.

This immigration "problem", of course, was never addressed, because it was really part of a greater agenda that has never been revealed to the general public, and it has been self-feeding.

Naturally, aside from being part of an active (though unspoken), policy, politicians are deathly afraid of massive minority voting blocks. When the black population was finally firmly enfranchised, it totally changed the way our politicians viewed the voting public. The Mexican/Hispanic block of the population has finally exceeded the black voting block.

Though some of our politicians now say they are concerned with illegal immigration (with estimates of as many as 12 million illegal Mexican immigrants already here), they are much more worried about the many times more millions of the friends, relatives, and supporters of those illegal immigrants – because these are already fully qualified citizen voters. Politicians must be more concerned about the catering to minority voters than with the shrinking, ineffective, unorganized, and divided majority – because the minorities can easily make the difference between their ability to attain and retain political office.

At the apex of our political system, with much more power than the other supposedly "co-equal" branches of "representative" government, are the presidential administrations. And the powers behind the executive branch (who care not which party is in power, or what the president may personally stand for), have been committed to a New World Order at least since the Wilson administration.

Since World War Two, no president has managed to buck the powers behind the throne to any significant degree. Kennedy perhaps tried, and look what happened to him. Nixon probably tried, but was forced out of office. Reagan might have tried, but he nonetheless went along with the program set out for him. A brush with assassin's bullet (whether by a "lone gunman" or otherwise), can be pretty persuasive.

Since the Reagan administration, all of our presidents have been unequivocally committed to the New World Order. Bill Clinton (though a bona fide New World Order man who pushed NAFTA through), went through a period of conflict with some of the powers behind the scenes and had a brush with serious scandal and impeachment – but he finally saw the light (signaled by a vigorous bombing campaign in Iraq), and came off wearing his impeachment experience as a badge of honor, and was even re-elected!

Ironically, our national commitment to the defense of Israel seems to trump even the New World Order to some degree. Perhaps not, however. Though it seems that edifice of the New World Order has been somewhat shaken by our present War on Terror and in Iraq and Afghanistan, the aims of those wars – besides insuring Israeli security – are clearly to bring recalcitrant "rogue" nations – particularly the oil-rich ones – to heel to the NWO agenda. We can't have the "free world" the corporate powers want if some of the nations insist on a serious degree of independence.

The "free world" is about having a world in which capital is unfettered by any notion of national independence or sovereignty. And it is about a world where labor is also free to go wherever the best jobs seem to be. Thus our Mexican immigrants (legal and otherwise), are merely doing what they are expected to do.

The North American Union is very much intended to facilitate open borders between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and the Pan American Union would do the same for the entire hemisphere. These programs are being methodically pursued in semi-secrecy by the administration and our un-elected shadow government. The Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission are two domestic organizations that comprise the movers and shakers of the shadow government. There are several others in the form of both liberal and conservative "think tank" organizations.

Once the trilateralization of the world is complete, with the European Union, American Union, and Asia-Pacific Union solidified, the stage will be set for the placing the final cap-stone on a single system of World government.

The growing issue over illegal immigration in the United States is an acute embarrassment to the "free world" agenda. It isn't that the powers behind globalization care in the least about labor (Mexican, American, or otherwise) – they only care about capital and profit – but the New World Order agenda could never have been sold to liberals and academic social visionaries unless it was a program "for the people" (not the American people, of course, but the people of the world). To them, that's what it is supposed to be (One World), as in Hillary's It Takes a Village. The liberals and academic visionaries (and the whole establishment of the left), have been a major component and tool of the One Worlders since the very inception of the great plan.

In fact, this has constituted a very convenient cause for much of the confusion that has played into the hands of the powers behind globalism. Most of the conservative right thought the New World Order was a communist plot throughout most of its history, when it was really very much a capitalist plot the whole while, with considerable accommodation for the whole leftist political spectrum.

Ironically, as it is being instituted, the New World Order comes much closer to Hitler's vision of a new order than the communist-socialist model. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the individual free enterprise system of the American Republic, or even the pre-1960s "American capitalism" – and is certainly far divorced from any lingering notion of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." What we effectively have is a global form of National Socialism – a system of world fascism, with financial and industrial capital, rather than any government, in the driver's seat.

The Mexican illegal problem is beginning to awaken and anger some Americans. Few enough recognize the larger agenda for which mass immigration to the United States plays a significant role. But when the majority peoples begin to wake up to the fact that a very real invasion of the nation is taking place right in front of their eyes, and the government is not doing anything about it, there are bound to be increasing problems. This is happening in the case of Mexican immigration.

Significantly, the supporters of illegal immigration have become bold enough to demonstrate in a very offensive and "in your face" manner, laying their agenda right on the line for everybody to see for the first time. The reconquista has been under way for quite some time, and it has enough confidence to come out of the closet. This isn't in the New World Order plan, of course, and in fact threatens the prospects of the American Union. Some South American leaders are also becoming a little recalcitrant.

The push to subvert and destroy our nation has been going on for a long, long time – and so few seem to care that anything like a united front against it has not only failed to materialize, but seems totally impossible. The patriot movement that appeared to be forming up prior to Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Oklahoma City bombing more or less sputtered out as the federal government got tough and started killing and imprisoning people, with the full apparent consent and endorsement of the overwhelming majority of the population. The silent majority remains silent. Both patriots and "conspiracy theorists" have continued to be portrayed as crazies by the establishment media, which is fully in charge of (and are very good at), molding national public opinion.

Since this has become a multi-cultural nation with huge and powerful ethnic voting blocks, traditional nationalist patriots can now easily be shouted down as xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, protectionist, isolationist, paranoid crazies, and a host of other bad things. In other words, if a strong potential national leader ever appears, he is certain to be shot down (literally or otherwise), on any one or combination of those scores, long before he has a chance to ascend to national prominence.

The ability of the media to form public opinion continues in spite of the fact that growing numbers of Americans (perhaps even a small majority), no longer believe what the media tells them. Though they don't believe it, they have lost hope and are without direction. We have no American leadership to which to turn, and no way of getting any such leadership. This is why dictators tend to rise like meteors when a certain point is reached in a nation, just as Hitler rose in Germany.

Don't say it couldn't happen here. It can – just as 9/11 happened. President Bush isn't the man. His usefulness is just about ended – his intended mission apparently in chaotic disarray. Hitler had plenty of help from a lot of unlikely sources when the time became ripe for him in Europe, just as the Bolsheviks, enjoyed plenty of help when their time had come.

The Oklahoma City bombing, which took the lives of many innocent men, women, and children soured the public on "patriots." Few have come to realize that there was much more behind that incident than just Timothy McVeigh and a few deluded, overzealous, patriots.

9/11, and the ongoing wars that have followed, have refocused the nation on external threats and further empowered those intent on destroying this nation – obscuring the real threats, and where the real fight for national security lies. It's almost as though Osama bin Laden and his bunch were still on the CIA payroll.

There is much more to 9/11 than most people know. There are many wild conspiracy theories that are gaining currency, and indeed (mixed in with the wild stuff), there are many perplexing, unanswered questions. But what we can be fairly certain of is that it didn't just happen as out of the blue because of a few radical Muslim "liberty-haters" as the administration claims. Of that we can be certain.

Some people are beginning to wake up to the threats posed by illegal Mexican immigrants. The big pro-illegal demonstrations actually woke up a few sleepers. Most importantly, some true, very vocal and articulate, activists for the American cause have been awakened. They have recognized that the immigrant invasion is much more than just a lot of Mexicans coming to the United States to seek jobs. It is literally a foreign invasion with a well articulated political goal – the goal is literally the re-conquest of the American southwest, and more!

As mentioned, Pridger doesn't think this is part of the script, but it will be used in one way or another to convince Americans than a North American Union will be in our best security interests.

The administration in Washington, along with the media, have naturally played all of this down. In fact, the administration is still openly pushing for amnesty, a worker program, and the American Union! In other words, the administration, and our Washington representatives in general are, and have been for a long time, on the wrong team! But the negotiations for such things as the American Union are largely being done secretively by non-governmental organizations. Our legislative branch isn't even in the loop. As in most other "free trade" agreements, they are merely expected to put their stamp of approval on it as a "done deal" after the agreements have been "finalized" by the executive branches of the respective nations involved.

The North American Union is supposed to enhance our security by pushing our "security perimeter" out to the extents of North America. In other words, Mexico will become part of the security zone. Mexico is going to become part of our national security team. And, of course, the Union would be economic too. That means the free flow of goods and services across the boarder, including labor. You can't have a fence at the border in that case – it would make no sense whatsoever.

Meanwhile, some courageous Americans are not only speaking up, but doing things. Private citizens have organized and are patrolling our southern border – much to the embarrassment and chagrin of the powers that be in Washington and Mexico City. They have been able to do this because a large and growing segment of the American population is in their corner. Enough Americans are beginning to feel threatened that our democratic processes are actually beginning to function again in a limited way in the border areas. Even some politicians are beginning to grow backbones.

If enough of the American public ever get the right message and figure out what is going on, a lot more politicians would grow backbones, and we could get some real representation. The fact is, as dysfunctional and perverted as our political system has become, our representatives can only be as firm and dedicated to American freedom and liberty as their constituents. If the people don't stand up and demand representation, and do it in significant and vocal numbers, they won't get it.

Politicians tend to represent those who put them in office and keep them there. The people may do the voting, but if they are merely choosing between two agents of an alien agenda, they are merely putting a democratic face on a subversive agenda disguised as the way to freedom, prosperity and security.

If businesses, multi-national corporations, and internationalist foundations, fund them, set the agenda, and make their election unavoidable, those are the forces our elected officials will represent. If the people who finally elect them by voting don't have any idea of what needs to be done, and do not give those representatives some solid direction, they have assuredly elected mis-representatives. And that's what most of our so-called representatives are today – mis-representatives, doing the bidding of the New World Order power structure.

The North American Union, economically integrating Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, is part of the New World Order agenda, just as NAFTA was, and the WTO is, and the American Union will be, if the North American Union is successfully instituted.

There is little wonder that the Bush administration is dragging its feet on immigration reform and any attempt to solve the illegal immigration problem. All such attempts are totally out of sync with the real agenda that Bush and the New World Order insiders are actually working toward. Total economic integration is their goal. And open borders. Not just in the Americas, but globally.

Father Bush announced the New World Order and George W., has gone the extra mile and admitted that "American is not a place, but an ideal." That effectively means that the American people are no longer in possession of their own land. America belongs to the world, and the World is supposedly going to become a mirror image of what people like the Bushes think "American" (as the embodiment of the New World Order), should be. 

The ideal is a borderless world where everything runs on an assured profit basis according to dictates of corporate planners. People shouldn't be artificially divided into nationalities, races, or cultures but merely members of the same corporate family, with the full benefits of secure corporate employment.

The New World Order is intended to turn the world into a corporate civilization. And it is intended that the Global Village will be a big company town that provides everything for everybody, with full employment.

But there are troubles brewing on the ground. American is the key to the whole program and some courageous Americans are beginning to stand up and make themselves heard. Not in Congress, of course (at least not very much yet), but on the streets of San Diego, California and Tucson, Arizona.

There are signs that there is a gathering storm, with indignant Americans actually getting out there on the front lines and confronting the ongoing invasion from Mexico. They are confronting police at the barricades, lecturing city councils, and stirring up trouble – trouble that is already here, but ignored and played down by both politicians and the press. It could be the beginnings of a movement that will not only stop the re-conquest of the American southwest, but re-take our nation from the forces that now command the loyalty of most of our most powerful politicians.

The gathering storm on our southern border is only once facet of our national malaise, but it is an exceedingly important one.

Consider this email Ross Dove and check out the YouTube links:    

>From the desk of Russ Dove ~ dove@adfasb.com  ~ 520 591-4588
Founder, Americans Defending Freedom At Sovereign Borders
ADFASB/Russ Dove 3661 N Campbell Ave #383 Tucson, AZ 85719

Folks, I don't know how you feel about the social changes that are being forced around and upon us; the increase in lawlessness inside and outside the system and the increasing need to be armed in our own neighborhoods? I for one have had enough!

Now, if you are satisfied with the non-conformational Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of the many MinuteMen projects (MMP) watch and report, but don't confront—just report. Report to who; our own government, it is the one most responsible, by their inaction, for this problem and do nothing when we report an invasion crime. If you think that sending the MCDC $25.00 to put an American Flag on the little over one-mile of fence they have built, which anyone can dig under in less than 4 minutes, than please go to https://secure.responseenterprises.com/mmflags/?a=762 and put an American Flag on the border. You have several other MMP groups to choose from; all seem to have "politically correct" passive SOP's. Don't get me wrong anything is better than nothing and the MMP's have increased the awareness of the American people; still 20,000 illegal aliens came across the border last night. 20,000 is a daily average, so that means that 13,800,000 illegal's have entered this Country since the first MMP muster in April of 2005. What changed? As for me, I'm having a real problem in understanding how a "politically correct" passive SOP is going to overcome the obstacles listed below. I have many problems with the, co-opted by a corrupt system, leadership of the MMP's that I may cover in a later email.

The Nation of Aztlan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIW-BZ8oLrk
Aztlan Rising - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCVUot-hBo
La Reconquista Manifesto - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VSDiiRJMcg
The Aztec Al-Qaeda - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1XAQc8hS8
MEChA de Notre Dame - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fOqnt979TE

Aztlan is mytho-propaganda used to pump up the peons who make up the majority of illegal aliens from Mexico and South America in America today. Peon's are more willing to suffer if they have a cause. According to three retired Border Patrol Officers, with over 112 years service combined, it was agreed that as much as 80% of the illegal's from Mexico already in Country or crossing illegally had Aztlan leanings. Why not, this is what they are taught in Mexico's government operated primary schools, equivalent to a 6th grade education. The very same Aztlan mytho-propaganda is being taught right here in most of America's schools through MEChA. This plan has been advanced by at least the last four presidents of Mexico. Their plan is to dislocate us with poverty, drugs and crime; so as to re-take our land by colonization. And, for the last 29 years our last four American presidents have done everything to help and nothing real to stop them, on our dime.

At the rate I am watching their escalation we had better do something now while we still have standing, or we will be required to use deadly force to protect ourselves later. By vote or by violence is the motto used in declaring their claim to ownership of American Soil. In 2004 American's in The Great State of Arizona, passed Proposition 200 which started the end of their vote fraud plans and although never properly enforced; far to many Americans are watching now for them to continue on with their plans to occupy US with out force; via the vote. If these people fully intend to follow through with their plan of action laid-out in their motto; their only option remaining is violence—by their own words, promises and threats of violence over the last 20 years. By the way Aztlan, MEChA, La Raza, LULAC, MALDEF and the whole host of anti-American invasion/overthrow-Freedom/occupation fronts are supported by the corporations and Our own government. I have a real big problem with the fact that part of the money my government takes from me and the money that the corporations take in profits from me; are being used to fund the destruction of Freedom in America today!

Smuggler War - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTfKqG4d_Cc
Pro-illegal Mentality - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVnefuNYEkQ

Border violence is increasing with wars between American Border Law enforcement and several factions of the Mexico infrastructure; drug lords and human traffickers. Small towns all across America are having their lawful government stolen out from under their apathy and fear by drug lords; creating a safe haven for the distribution of drugs, contraband and humans. Violence, crime and drug abuse is growing in the streets of EveryCityTown, uSA, exponentially to the growth of the illegal alien population.

Communists Declare War pt1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyWjOFWkUw
Communists Declare War pt2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jhf89SG1kU

Without getting into a long story; I have spent most of my life watching the increase of socialism/communism as it advances through all of America's Institutions. I was taught of the dangers of communism and the values of a Constitutional Republic from a very young age and have kept a vigilant watch for those Russian's to attack US, as did most of America. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the government of Mexico was using pages out of the Communist Handbook to invade America and our government was helping them. This is what my translator had to say about the characters in this video-log, "I hope everyone gets to see/read what the commie revolutionaries are saying about mental borders and the Border Patrol. Also, the guy with the black hat had EZLN written on it. EZLN stands for Zapastita Army for National Liberation. They are a commie rebel army on the south part of Mexico. They are Che Guevara and Fidel Castro lovers!" Don't think it can't happen here; 140 years ago China was occupied by a God Fearing people living under a Republic form of government; we now know them as Communist Red China. It is happening here already!

Occupied America - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQTksbT7rPA

Christy SDPD Corruption pt1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXo38DGJ5Uc
Christy SDPD Corruption pt2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BUIPSITg3Q

Americans are being segregated by color, discriminated against and arrested based on racial profiling; on behalf of the Mexican government. The video highlighted in the first clip shot by Christie Czajkowski is what brought the wrath of the Mexican government and its occupying agents of the San Diego government down on her. That they, under color of law, stole her livelihood, all of the evidence she had against the corrupt system and her ability to continue to video-log their criminal activity is what gives Christie standing in the Federal Courts. How do I know that the Mexican government had something to do with this, you say. Christie was investigating the corrupt SDPD's connection to the Mexican drug lords and through her video-logging was exposing the corrupt occupation forces in the same manner in San Diego, Ca, that Roy Warden and I are doing here in Tucson, AZ. I know for a fact that the in-land-puppets-of-Mexico are directly responsible for the action against Roy and I. As San Diego is nearly completely occupied with a little over 10% English speaking only population remaining; there is no question who is responsible for the actions against Christie!

The "political correct" passive SOP may work on the border, to avoid conflict; it will not work in our cities! Now I'm not yet ready to advocate offensive violence or necessarily violence of any kind—except in self-defense. The fact is, violence is upon us now; with 9,000 Americans killed last year alone and over 140,000 sex related crimes committed against our women and children in that same time period; all at the hands of illegal aliens. I am however advising that you quickly take a strong physically armed (Second Amendment) defensive position to stand against their increasing advances. I am advocating that you make full use of your Soapbox and every legal standing that can be brought before the local, county, state and/or federal Court system—if you don't you will be forced to use your Ammo Box later or surrender. I am also advocating that you take a very strong legal activist position; find a problem; focus on it and regularly complain to someone in your local government and make public your complaint and their response. Go in to your downtown area during lunch with a bullhorn, the bigger the better, and let your voice be loudly heard, while standing on your Soap Box—this is proving to be very effective. As for the courts; Roy Warden has proven that a clear understanding of the law and the proper application of it works. That using legal action through the courts is a powerful legal weapon against this illegal invasion/occupation of American soil.

The fact is every time you bring a bag full of Truth into a room full of liars; you will have a room full of angry offended liars. The only way to avoid conflict is to surrender, go along to get along and hope that today by chance conflict does not find you and that if it does you can successful run/hide from it. Where would we be today if our Founding Father's and all who came before us who paid the ultimate price of Freedom had this passive non-confrontational attitude?

We Put Tucson On Notice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LqHtgk6Jbo
We Put Tucson On Notice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozqIL3ijtzw
We Take The Protest Downtown - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wayrzN7mNUY

These are some video-log's that show legal offensive activism. Just showing up with half-of-an-idea of what is going on makes the enemies' of Freedom in America uneasy. We must create lawful resistance to this invasion/occupation and the only way I know how to do this; is to stand armed in the public square, everywhere the invaders are and tell them NO! I am starting to believe that the enemies of America really don't have a working/workable plan to meet resistance, thus even a small amount of resistance has crippled them. A large show of resistance is all that we may need to show and put a stop to this—maybe not. I would rather do something now while we have a fighting chance than to wait until we have no chance at all. If we do not resist them we will lose for sure—it is a choice now; later, not so much!

Three American's have standing too advance this border/invasion/occupation battle into the Federal Court System; we need your help! If we lose these legal actions that are already being processed in the court system; precedent will be set and the next court battle may not be winnable. We could all use continuing sponsorship; however, only Christie requires your assistance NOW! You can learn about Christie's situation at A Case to Establish the Christie Czajkowski Defense Fund
http://adfasb.com/adfasb/christie.html.

By helping today; you will be empowering yourselves to a victory tomorrow. Do nothing and when this battle arrives at your door step, and it will, you won't have enough resources to fight it because the court's rulings (precedent) will have already been set against you; because we lost these early court cases. A little today or everything tomorrow; take a month off of the end of your retirement and invest it today for a Free Country to retire in--think about it. Pick some luxury you enjoy each month and sacrifice it, that while we still have standing, we may be victorious in these court battles. This is not a long time need; within two years the judgements awarded to us against the enemies of Freedom in America will be more than enough to cover our living costs. It is a choice; choose to HELP CHRISTIE TODAY and please send this message to everyone on your email list.

If you havn't already figured it out; we're not asking for help to make a living off of the problem, no, we are asking for help to live while we solve this problem! For 30 years a lot of people have made a lot of money living off of this problem; this too, I am very tired of. How about you?

One resource Christie and I are out of is system Hard Drive(HD) space — video-logging the invasion/occupation/corruption uses a lot of HD space. I have over a TB of video and am down to maybe 50GB HD space remaining and Christie has enough to operate her computer remaining—no room for new video-logs. If you have any 100GB or larger IDE hard drives laying around we could sure use them; new 500+ GB HD's would be real nice too! New Mini-DV tapes are in short supply also. Please send all hardware/supplies to me at the address at the top of this message.

Please send all checks or money orders to:

Christie Czajkowski/Defense Fund
1687 Jeremy Point Court
Chula Vista, CA
truthbrigade@hotmail.com

Or you can visit the Donation Page [PayPal] - http://www.adfasb.com/#donate
Thank you for your time and for your consideration of this request,

s/Russ Dove
TiANews.com
ADFASB.com
YouTube.com/Sov777

Christie Czajkowski is one of those dedicated activists who seem to be irrepressible. We have frequently seen her type on the left – on the wrong side of issues (on the anti-American side) – but seldom on the right, on the right side of such issues as Christie is.

Russ Dove is just as dedicated and just as much on the right side of the issues at hand as Christie. And there are many others heating up the debate over illegal immigration. With men like Russ on the front lines, more and more Americans are bound to begin to wake up to what is happening to our country, in spite of inevitable attempts by the media to blank out their message and portray them as crazies.

We have come to a point where people like Christie, who is a single mom, and Russ, who looks a lot more like a biker than a politician, are the only ones with enough guts to stand up and make themselves heard – literally, with bull horns, confronting police and illegal alien groups in the streets, and politicians in their chambers (and by publishing their message and video footage where it will do the most good in today's video based web community). They are evolving into about the only leadership capable of commanding attention on some of the most important issues facing the nation today. Most mainline politicians (even those who would like to), are afraid to speak out and champion the national cause of the majority, because of the power and threat of large ethnic voting blocks.

Behind their radical form of activism and outspokenness, there is an abundance of solid reason and common sense. Russ is a particularly gifted and articulate spokesman on a broad spectrum of political issues. He's a true American patriot who believes in the nation our founders sought to create. We need many more like him. 

Russ, Christie, and their friends, have Pridger's admiration and support, and maybe through the dedicated efforts of people like them, a few politicians will begin to grow backbones of their own. At some point they may begin the process of stopping the demise of the American Republic and begin putting America back together again.

That's a lot to hope for under such dire and depressing conditions as we have in our nation today. But people who speak up and make themselves heard have the power to energize large groups of followers, and therein lies our only hope of gaining worthy leadership within our presently very anemic representative system of government, wherein special interests with alien or corporate agendas routinely trump the majority.

John Q. Pridger  

Wednesday, 14 March, 2007

WOMEN'S WORK

Another of those jokes that circulate on the Internet prompts Pridger to do a little pontification. Here's the joke:

A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed home. He wanted her to see what he went through so he Prayed:
     "Dear Lord: I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my wife merely stays at home. I want her to know what I go through, so please allow her body to switch with mine for a day. Amen.
     God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man's wish.
     The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman. He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate, awakened the kids, set out their school clothes, fed them breakfast, packed their lunches, drove them to school, came home and picked up the dry cleaning, took it to the cleaners and stopped at the bank to make a deposit, went grocery shopping, then drove home to put away the groceries, paid the bills and balanced the checkbook. He cleaned the cat's litter box and bathed the dog. Then it was already 1 P.M. and he hurried to make the beds, do the laundry, vacuum, dust, and sweep and mop the kitchen floor. Ran to the school to pick up the kids and got into an argument with them on the way home. Set out milk and cookies and got the kids organized to do their homework, then set up the ironing board and watched TV while he did the ironing.
     At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and washing vegetables for salad, breaded the pork chops and snapped fresh beans for supper. After supper, he cleaned the kitchen, ran the dishwasher, folded laundry, bathed the kids, and put them to bed.
     At 9 P.M. he was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren't finished, he went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint. The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and said:
     Lord, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so wrong to envy my wife's being able to stay home all day. Please, oh please, let us trade back."
     The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied: "My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to the way they were. You'll just have to wait nine months, though. You got pregnant last night."

Voted Women's Favorite E-mail of the Year!

If you agree, send it to all your friends who would enjoy this! And thank your wife, and then thank God for her! Amen?

The message is a positive one. For one thing, there are apparently still enough "traditional households" in the nation for an email of this nature to find a circulation. Some women have not abandoned the home and the most challenging, complex, and important job of all – that of caring for a home, husband, and (most importantly), children.

In spite of concerted efforts and frequent efforts obituaries, traditional family and gender roles have not yet perished from the national landscape. At least not completely. But it has become increasingly difficult for some women to feel comfortable in their God-given role. There are tremendous societal pressures to "denature" gender roles.

Unfortunately many traditional housewives, of even happy marriages, labor under the impression that their role somehow relegates them second class citizenship and they are thus unable to rise to their full potential. But, given the requisite of a happy marriage, the job of being a housewife and "homemaker" is not only potentially the most fulfilling of occupations, but arguably the nation's most important one.

Of course, this iteration may be discounted as the mere opinion of a male chauvinist warthog. As a male, Pridger admittedly has a great deal of capital invested in his own male ego and his presumed role in the world. That role, of course, is rather complicated – but it essentially boiled down to settling down to the job of marrying, having children, protecting home, hearth, and providing for his family.

Young men, of course, tend to linger in a state of immaturity, and are still usually somewhat empty headed when they emerge from their secondary schooling. Even Pridger was like that. So they make the best (or at least most appropriate), risk takers, dare devils, and soldiers. Most go through a period of adventure seeking and the "sowing of wild oats." If they join the service, they'll go out, do what they are told by their superiors, and fight and die, if need be, for the nation – or any other thing that happens to be on the agenda. ("Theirs is not to wonder why, but merely do and die.") It remains for older, more experienced, and hopefully more educated, men to seriously ponder the reasons why, lead the followers, and to defend both the culture and the Constitution.

Young women, generally mature faster than men. Nature has decreed that they be prepared to assume their biological roles, and society once assigned their cultural role. Though they may have the same urge to seek adventure and sow some wild oats, there has traditionally been considerable social pressure on them to be much more socially responsible earlier than their male counterparts. Traditionally, they marry earlier in life than men, and they usually marry slightly older men of broader experience and (hopefully), superior learning – settled men capable of providing them with a secure home in which to rear their children.

Men, naturally remain boys for an extended period of their lives. Some remain boys until they die. But girls become mature women early – in time to carry out their most sacred and important roles. Generally, they soak up early education much more readily than boys, so they will become competent to nurture their children and begin their education as soon as they are receptive to learning. Good wives and mothers, in the protective environment of a secure home, are the key to producing quality, well adjusted, and properly prepared children who will go on to serve the same roles in the following generation.

This is the natural order that has served mankind well since long before the dawn of civilization. But things have been changing – breaking down. Modernity, being what it is, has tended to radically alter this model – simply because we imagine (as a society), that we have totally conquered nature and have risen above the former imperatives of any "natural order" or God-given roles of the sexes.

Women now seek to be the equals of men, and do the empty headed things that young men have always done. They want to be bread winners. They want to go off to war. They want to lead. They want to abandon their most important roles, and leave the children (if there are any), to be mothered by men or the state itself. And they are doing it. The state itself is conforming – becoming the maternal state with nanny police powers.

Yet, we've run into innumerable problems with our new social order – problems that have become much more than just obvious as they become more and more intractable. They spread far beyond the problems we now see in families, or the disintegration thereof. The entire nation is in trouble, spiritually, culturally, politically, and economically. The nanny police state is extraordinarily expensive.

Gender roles are stamped upon children by both nature and society, but these fundamental roles are things that we have attempted to repudiate in our march into our present brand of modernity. We now have an increasing problem with gender confusion. Often boys are not taught to be boys, and girls are not taught to be girls.

Still, however, boys tend to be boys and are likely grow up (these days), wanting to be like Rambo or the Terminator rather than, say George Washington, or Hopalong Cassidy. In light of the cultural war against maleness, it is somewhat ironic that strong mean men (good or bad), are the modern role models rather than strong, well mannered, and considerate, men. And increasing numbers of women want to be Rambos too.

It had always been a man's world – this since the first man found he was physically able to overpower a woman and make her do his bidding. But civilization, religion, and learning, gradually encroached on barbaric ways of our forefathers and gave women special protections against male barbarians. In time, they found themselves in an enviable position in societies like ours – on a pedestal in many cases, and certainly co-equal in many ways. In this country the harried and henpecked husband became much more common that the wife abuser.

Wife beating was frowned upon in our society. But now that women have finally been liberated, girl-friend beating is more common than wife beating, and women drink and do drugs just like their fallen male counterparts. And increasing numbers of women have become truck drivers, longshoremen, and warriors.

This reminds Pridger of the lady longshoremen gangs in Vietnam during that war. Smaller than men and weaker than men, they could do the backbreaking work, and they had to work harder than men to do it. Of course, those Vietnamese women weren't there because they particularly liked the work, or because of any feminist agitation for better paying jobs for women. They were there because the fighting, bloodletting, and mayhem, was considered strictly men's work, and the war's use of men resulted in a labor shortage on the waterfront.

Men no longer have their traditional exclusive places of refuge – the military being only one significant example. There is no longer much remaining in the establishment dedicated to reinforcing the idea of being a man and developing masculine instincts, in spite of some of the male stereotypes that roll out of Hollywood. The divide between the sexes is maintained in the field of most professional sports, however – but even there upstanding, decorous, sportsmanship has gone by the wayside in favor of juvenile displays of anger when losing and childish exuberance, jumping up and down, and self-congratulatory "power salutes" upon winning. This has become true in both men and women's sports.

Everything else that men have the privilege of attending these days is co-ed, whether he likes it or not, and men are required to suppress their male instincts in order to avoid sexual harassment or "hate charges." There is no longer such a thing as a "man's army," or "this man's navy," as Pridger knew it. There are no longer any male only military academies. Only women can have exclusive colleges if they want them, but not men. Exclusively "men things" discriminate against women, thus they are no longer allowed. 

In short, society is being transformed into one where there is no longer supposed to be any reason for men to take pride in being a men. Though few men have ever had a desire to wear dresses or skirts, women wear pants or dresses at their pleasure. There's nothing men can do that women cannot also do – and more and more women are insisting on doing them. Of course, many women can do them just as well or better than men. But if they can't, men are expected to make all necessary allowances, overlook their deficiencies, and certainly not reveal any sexual attraction to them in the co-ed workplace or military.

Women, on the other hand, can not only take abundant pride in being women (in whatever role they chose to take on), but increasingly take pride in being able to usurp all the former natural prerogatives of men – including crashing men's exclusive "private" clubs. Men no longer have any special prerogatives and are socially being neutered while women are increasingly being empowered.

This, of course, is a natural result of "democracy." Our founders chose a constitutional republic as our federal form of government because it meshed with the natural order of things in light of our civilization and the then current society. The federal and state governments were not intended to be pure democracies, but representative republics. Democracy is something that can only work at local levels, where state and federal representatives (who are supposed to be chosen by the people), are elected.

Most people in this "democracy" would be surprised to know that nobody has a specific constitutional "right to vote" at all. The federal Constitution is as absolutely silent on the matter as it is on the right to an abortion. Amendments dictate that the "right to vote shall not be denied" on the basis of race, sex, or previous state of servitude, but the actual right to vote is not thereby granted. That is a state prerogative. Significantly, however, the inalienable God-given right to life, was proclaimed in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, along with the right to "liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

The peoples' only directly elected representatives were their locale elected officials, state representatives, and federal congressmen. The senatorial branch of the House of Representatives was originally intended to be composed of representatives of the states governments themselves, elected by state legislators. The idea of a full and direct democracy at the federal level didn't come into force until 1913, with the adoption of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provided for direct popular election of senators by the people.

This, of course, was merely a further centralization of federal government power in the guise of producing a more complete federal democracy. As for voting for president, that still remains a state right, vested in the electoral college system. The popular vote for president, as shown in the election of George W. Bush, is little more than a ruse – democratic shadow boxing. In this sense, we retain a federal republic of republican states.

With universal suffrage (including irresponsible youth, the dim-witted, the ill-educated, the completely ignorant, and illiterate), we have developed the worst kind of pseudo-democracy. Political candidates slated for election are actually selected and financed by business interests – or other well-healed men of influence, whose hands are seldom shown. And, of course, the great body of the voters themselves are so easily manipulated by the mass media that the very idea of a national democracy is nothing but a joke. 

And, as H. L. Mencken observed, "Wherever universal suffrage, or some close approach to it, is the primary axiom of government, the thing know as 'freak legislation' is a constant evil." This statement has been proven out over the decades. Women didn't even have the vote when the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1919, yet Prohibition was nonetheless an instance of freak legislation demanded by women who were also demanding the voting franchise. And when women actually did get the vote a year later (the 19th Amendment), unusual things were bound to start happening in the fullness of time.

Women, it must be remembered, comprise a natural majority of the population, and thus the electorate. For this reason, there will never again be a Congress able to stand up to the women, or any women's lobby. And while women are very happy to gain the same, or more, political power as men (even if it is mostly smoke), they are also very eager to preserve, expand, and vigorously enforce, all the special protections our society has provided for women. 

Naturally, women would wish to curtail all the powers men had traditionally exercised over women, but they will never relinquish the natural powers women have always had over men. Of course, with women thus politically empowered, still enjoying special considerations (with all elected representatives obviously beholden to them), women have become, as Orwell's pigs in Animal Farm, a little more equal than others.

Fortunately, in spite of all this, most women are still women, and take pride in their appropriate roles, whether in the home or at work. They tend to share the values and political views with their parents or husbands. (But this too, is changing, of course.) The real political power (or abuse thereof), coming from their voting franchise (as is the case with any advocacy group), emanate from "their" activists. Most minority activists, however, tend to be the most radical and atypical of the class they purport to represent. They seldom stand for what the majority of their supposed constituents themselves stand for. Thus, the "women's agenda" is more likely to be that of radical feminists than the majority of women.

In spite of the fact that our democracy is somewhat of a travesty, voters do have considerable power, and representatives (who are popularly elected), must have all due respect for it. But since policy agendas always emanate from either entrenched power or "activists" with narrow agendas, only those agendas get voted on by the supposed representatives of the people. Congressmen and women may respond to the squeakiest wheels among their constituents, but that's about as close as we actually get to representative democracy.

As the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, writing on the subject of "democracy" said (to paraphrase), in a democracy men become more like women, and women become more like men. Gender confusion becomes generalized social confusion – and spiritual confusion. The rising political "power" of homosexuals, and the peculiar advent (and even acceptance), of such travesties as same sex marriage, is ample evidence of this. Laws favoring same sex marriage, or even "unions," cannot but come under the general category of freak legislation.

Homosexuals have a natural ally in women. Effeminate men, of course, often want to be women, and usually have their sympathy. And assertive and masculine women, while wanting to be men in most every way, are the primary power behind the feminist movement, and new laws designed to "liberate" all women. They want to put man into his place, and his place is becoming less clear every day.

We have had to learn that men make just as good of mothers as women. So we also have stay at home "Mr. Moms," with the mother being the family breadwinner. And, of course (we're learning?), that same sex couples make just as good parents, and can provide just as good a home life, as heterosexual couples.

Equality of the sexes, as we have come to know it, has had a tremendous, but widely ignored, impact on the national economy in addition to its devastating overall impact on our national morals. We try to ignore these things, because we have come to view equality of the sexes as fundamental social justice. But the moral fabric of society is demonstrably collapsing, at least in part to this cause. And, though it cannot be blamed solely on women voting habits or women entering the workforce, our economy (both national and global), has become a house of cards built on shifting sand.

As for morals, it isn't that women are any less moral than men. In fact, it seems fairly obvious that even liberated women tend to be more moral than men. Men still have a near monopoly on organized crime, white collar crime, and crimes of a violent nature. Murder, rape, and burglary are almost exclusively male activities. Literally all mass murderers have been men.

The inconvenient truth, however, is that women simply cannot be the equals of men if their natural God-given role is to be fulfilled. No woman can be considered equal to a man if she can be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. To remedy this, feminine political pressure has resulted in Roe vs. Wade, and legal, easily obtained, abortions. Since this landmark Supreme Court ruling, a literal mass genocide has been underway in this country, and women are the primary perpetrators.

Women are no longer morally bound by the necessity of giving birth when a child is conceived, and they are no longer bound to the household or the nurturing and training of children. That would be discriminatory and crippling.

Now women enjoy "freedom of choice." They can choose to be Christian women with a reverence for life, in and out of the womb, or they can choose to be the killers of their children in order to compete with men in the marketplace. "Why not?" they say, "they're the bosses of their own bodies aren't they?" They've got a point there, and any little life within them is little more than so much bodily waste, to be discarded at will.

How can they be faulted? The highest court of the land says its okay. No unborn child has a "Right to Life" according to the men and women on the highest court in the land. In today's way of thinking, it's "right to life" only comes in the event that he or she manages to make it to certifiable birth and not a moment before. There is little wonder that it has become a nation political imperative to squash the idea of the United States being a Christian nation.

If abortion can be termed a form of infanticide (which it most definitely is), then women have been guilty of millions of more murders than men. Infanticide has become a woman's right, and such murders are un-prosecutable. For women, they simply aren't crimes in the eyes of the increasingly all-powerful state. They are merely a necessary convenience that permits women equal to men.

If men cannot be impregnated and forced to bear nine months of pregnancy and the pains of bearing a child, followed by a few years of nurturing the young, why should women be forced into such things? That is the reasoning, and the Supreme Court has thus ruled that infanticide of the unborn is not punishable. It has become a simple means of birth control, actively encouraged – forcibly in some countries. 

Naturally, to kill their unborn children, requires a total repudiation of Christian religious moral precepts. But thousands, if not millions, of professing Christian women troop off to the abortion clinic whenever an unwanted pregnancy occurs. For their own convenience they allowed the Supreme Court to determine what is and is not moral. So they can have the equality they have come to see as their right. Women, in their quest for equality can now be just as promiscuous as drunken soldiers and sailors – in fact they can now also be soldiers and sailors.

Women, once spared the horrors of having to participate in the gory spectacle of war, insist on doing their rightful share of the bloodletting. They want to be warriors, and want to do their duty in defending the nation against all enemies – considering this a higher calling than staying home and nurturing children. If women are still a little weak in hand-to-hand combat, at least they can shoot rifles, launch missiles, and drop bombs on enemy peoples – which almost always results in the killing of innocent men, women, and children.

Taking part in the killing of innocent men, women, and children has never been a great ambition for most women. But today, such things can be done by literally anybody. No remorse is required in this kind of killing. It's easy – and there is an excitement involved that used to be the sole prerogative of men. So why not women? If they are to be equal, they've got to share in the carnage of war. It becomes their duty. It's a moral obligation that exceeds that of childbearing and nurturing. Why should they be exempt from the glory business of war? And the guilt? (If there is any.) The death, and the debilitating and crippling wounds?

There are increasing numbers of women who want a part of it – all of it. Being nurses and pencil pushers behind the lines – or homemakers and mothers at home – is no longer good enough for many women. They want to draw blood in more exciting environments than in hospital wards and field hospitals.

They are now marching off to war alongside their male counterparts. The military has come to a point where it couldn't function without the ladies – regardless of all the additional troubles and expense this has inevitably caused (after all, most women are still women, and most men are still men – even in the military).

Today we see the heartrending specter of young mothers leaving their husbands and small children to go off to fight and die in foreign battlefields. It's now just as natural for men to be left at home, widowers to mother and raise small children. Pridger finds this totally both bizarre and gut-wrenching. But we are supposed to struggle with our native gender consciousness, and consider this to be the new normal order of things.

Aside from all this, women entering the workforce in large numbers, and taking many jobs that once were considered part of a "man's world" have had a much great impact on economic development that most imagine. Technology and automation were already taking good jobs away from men. Now women are moving in to take even more jobs away from them.

Women, of course, want equal pay for equal work, which is only fair. But what really happens is that when more people enter the job market, wages are bid downward. New hires usually get lower wages, of course. With more women entering the workforce, employers intend to bring men's wages down to those of new hires, many of which are now women.

Where once a thousand families required only five hundred good breadwinning jobs, now a thousand jobs are required, if not more. This, in terms of economics, is a much bigger deal than at first meets the eye. All of a sudden, at a time when the population is mushrooming, we need twice as many jobs in relation to the population. As mentioned above, wages (at least in terms of purchasing power), were bound to be reduced as women flooded the workplace. And this began to happen at a time when factory jobs – real wealth producing jobs – were destined to begin disappearing, first through automation and then through "free trade."

The natural result is that more and more frequently we find both parents must now work in order to make ends meet. Long before women received the voting franchise, perceptive individuals foresaw all that has been happening. Nietzsche, among others, pointed out that should women invade the labor marketplace, the inevitable result would be that soon it would require two jobs, rather than one, to support a family. We find this to be the case today in many, if not most, remaining "traditional" families.

This transformation, from the single breadwinner middle class to a two breadwinner middle class, has occurred in Pridger's working lifetime. Now that our trusty leaders are leading us into a post industrialized economy, low paying jobs, economy-wide, are becoming the pattern of the future.

This is totally reasonable. A post-industrial economy produces much less tangible wealth and cannot afford to pay labor high wages. So now both parents must work and somebody else has to look after the children, while others elsewhere make all the things required to make life bearable at home.

Not only does the dual breadwinner family require two jobs, but two cars to get both workers to their separate workplaces. This has required many more workers to make cars (though mostly elsewhere), and has also nearly doubled the pollution of auto-exhaust, and greatly increased our dependence on foreign oil.

Just as common as two breadwinner families, are single mother households. Since women have been empowered, many men have felt absolved of their natural responsibilities, and can continue to be boys. Often the boys try to gain wealth without a real job, and end up in the penal system. Children grow up without fathers, and usually without discipline, direction, or positive male role models. And seldom have single mothers who choose this path for their children become prepared to give their children the sort of early education they need to become receptive to formal education or productive citizens.

Single mothers either require government support, and/or need to find work themselves. Both single and married working mothers leave us with a big and growing problem – how to care for young children with working parents unable to care for them?

The only "logical" answer is a massive pre-school "child-care" industry, where once the "natural order" automatically took care of that problem. In fact, it wasn't a problem at all when families were whole and only one breadwinner sufficient. This new problem and remedy, of course, subjects children to government indoctrination through professional child-care practically from the cradle onward, making sure they grow up with the prescribed degree of social sensitivity without sex roles or traditional family values being impressed on them.

Mothers used to be our child care providers. And mothers were about the most important person in the world for most of us who had the privilege of growing up in traditional family environments. We admired and often feared old dad, but almost all of use admired and loved our mothers. What would we have done without them? We're finding out now in the lives of the younger "degeneration" (as Pridger's old Pappy used to call it).

John Q. Pridger

Sunday, 4 March, 2007

WHAT KIND OF A PRESIDENT WOULD AL GORE MAKE?

There is increasing speculation that Al Gore could slide into the Democratic presidential lineup some time before the election.

Pridger, it might be noted, has descended from a long, unbroken, line of Democrats that goes back at least to the Civil War when his ancestors (at least those Pridger is aware of), were known as "peace Democrats" or copperheads. But the chain of Democratic party affiliation was broken when Pridger (a child of the rebellious 50s), became the first totally apolitical spawn of the family.

Though Pridger got some interesting lessons in politics in the early 60s, but didn't actually begin to become very politically aware until the early 70s, as both the political and social landscape had already undergone radical change. Neither major party looked good to him when he began his awakening. Like many youth with the challenges of adulthood and responsibilities staring him in the face, he naturally tended to be a bit liberal. Then, when he finally reconciled himself to working for a living, he tended more toward being a conservative – first of a libertarian bent, then a nationalist-constitutionalist persuasion. Neither party seemed to be getting things right, but the Republican party seemed much more right than the Democrats (before the Republicans gained power). Reagan gave us some hope after the Carter administration, and momentarily enhanced the image of the Republican party in the 1980s. But that turned out to be a false hope, so Pridger has continued to have absolutely no party loyalties.

Both parties have consistently beaten up on the Constitution – the Democrats being the left hand of big government and the Republicans the right hand of big government, in a good cop, bad cop, charade – and both are now obviously joined at the hip as internationalist New World Order parties. Both parties have been instrumental in progressively selling the nation down the river. Third parties have been the only hope for any meaningful change, and precious little hope at that. The president is going to be either a Democrat or a Republican, and that's that.

Still, Pridger had always considered the Republicans the lesser of two evils – at least until the first Bush administration. This mainly because the Democrats tend to consistently fall on the wrong side of the divide in the cultural wars and Republicans at least somewhat consistently continued to give some lip service to some of the values Pridger holds dear. The present Bush administration, however, has just about wrecked any hope that the Republicans have a Constitutional, or truly Christian, bone left in their body politic.

Clinton was Pridger's idea of the worst possible president imaginable, and held that title until the eleventh of September, 2001, when Bush II, saw his opportunity to assume the title.

This being so, Democrats may have apparently become the lesser of two evils, in spite of any and all empty rhetoric on both sides. So maybe we have to look to a Democratic victory this time around, provided Hillary doesn't end up being the anointed one.

Although Pridger has always liked something about Al Gore's personality, his long association with the Democratic party and his previous loyalty to Bill Clinton have been sufficient to prevent a Pridger endorsement for a Gore presidential administration. Gore shot himself in the foot badly, in Pridger's opinion, when he stood up beside President Clinton (after Clinton had been acquitted of impeachment proceedings), and said he thought Clinton would go down in history as one of the nation's greatest presidents.

In Pridger's book, that remark was about as close to political suicide as a presidential aspirant could get. Needless to say, Pridger isn't a Clinton fan (Bill or Hillary). And Pridger harbors about as much continuing distrust for the Democrats as he's gained for the Republicans, despite growing evidence of populist sentiments in the Democrat party.

Barack Obama is the nice guy Democratic hopeful, but he seems to lack any real vision for meaningful change. He may be outspokenly against the war in Iraq (which is significant in itself), and otherwise relatively flawless, but he doesn't seem to stand for very much besides his own apparent common decency. Of course, he may merely be wise enough to avoid tipping his hand before getting nominated or elected. If he is really a good man for the job, it would kill his chances to reveal his agenda. But if it turns out that he become the "anointed one" for the job, he'll merely turn out to be another New World Order yes man.

How are we to judge? Unfortunately, we can't, and that's the wonder of democracy in America. Gore is a little different. He has a strongly articulated mission in the world. He stands for something – a cause that he really believes in. 

Pridger has always had a great deal of respect for Gore's concern for the global environment. At least Al Gore stands for something – and stands firm – and it is something of importance to everyone. And a firm stand on anything has become a very unusual attribute in presidential candidates. So, if we can ignore or forgive Gore's former loyalty to Bill Clinton (after all Clinton was his boss then), maybe he's worth a second look. Nobody else in either the major Democratic or Republican lineup seems to stand for very much.

Having recently viewed Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Pridger took Gore's 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit" down off the shelf to read a little more thoroughly than he had before.

The book sheds considerable light on Gore the man, and what he believes in and thinks of aside from strictly environmental concerns. Among other things, Pridger found some rare and valuable insights in Chapter 10, "Eco-nomics: Truth or Consequences" worth quoting. He points out some inconvenient truths that Charles Walters of Acres U.S.A. has been attempting to shed light on for several decades.

Walters points out that there is only one free source of power on the earth, and that happens to be the sun itself. The earth itself is a mere captive satellite of the sun, and thus part of its own greater being. The sun is the source of everything that we depend on for life. Everything that we use has had input from the sun – literally every resource that we use was, or is, created compliments of the sun, from the hydrocarbons we extract to the crops that feed us, are the result of past and present photosynthesis, a primary, ongoing, and sustainable, creative life process.

Both Walters and Gore point out that our system of economics is fundamentally flawed because in the calculations from which we derive such empirical data as gross national product (GDP), we fail to account for the expenditures of natural resources, many of which are irreplaceable in any number of human lifetimes. Thus all of our economic measuring sticks are seriously deficient when it comes to measuring economic reality. This means our capitalist system is running on many false and deceptive assumptions. Gores says:

"Free market capitalist economics is arguably the most powerful tool ever used by civilization... 
     "...But capitalism's recent triumph over communism should lead those of us who believe in it to do more than merely indulge in self-congratulation. We should instead recognize that the victory of the West – precisely because it means the rest of the world is now more likely to adopt our system – imposes upon us a new and even deeper obligation to address the shortcomings of capitalist economics as it is now practiced.
     "The hard truth is that our economic system is partially blind. It 'sees' some things and not others. It carefully measures and keeps track of the value of those things most important to buyers and sellers... and indeed, money itself. But its intricate calculations often completely ignore the value of the other things that are harder to buy and sell... 
     "...The first step (in addressing our shortcomings), is recognizing that economics, like any tool, distorts our relationship to the world even as it gives us impressive new powers...
     "Much of what we don't see with our economics involves the accelerating destruction of the environment... In calculating GNP, natural resources are not depreciated as they are used up. Buildings and factories are depreciated; so are machinery and equipment, cars and trucks. So why, for instance isn't the topsoil in Iowa depreciated when it washes down the Mississippi River after careless agricultural methods have lessened its ability to resist wind and rain? Why isn't that loss measured as an economic cost of the process by which our grain was produced last year? If the rate of topsoil loss is high enough in a given year, the nation may end up poorer, even when the value of the grain produced is taken into account. Meanwhile, our economic reports will assure us that, to the contrary, we are richer for having grown the grain, and richer still because we didn't spend the money required to grow it in an ecologically sound manner and thus keep the topsoil from washing away. ...we have (already) lost more than half of all the topsoil in Iowa.
     "...the heavy use of pesticides may ensure that the grain we grow achieves the highest possible short-term profits, but the careless and excessive use of pesticide poisons the groundwater reservoirs beneath the field... And largely because we have failed to measure the economic value of clean, fresh groundwater, we have contaminated more than half of all the underground reservoirs in the United States with pesticide runoff and other poisonous residues that are virtually impossible to remove. ...GNP treats the rapid and reckless destruction of the environment as a good thing! ...
     "Classical economists... presume to know all the facts surrounding their choices, even if marginal errors of judgment are allowed...
     "...But every production process creates waste; why isn't it accounted for?...
     "Indeed, improvements in productivity – the single most significant measure of economic 'progress' – are currently calculated by a method that embodies yet another absurd assumption: if a new technique has both good and bad consequences, it is permissible, under some circumstances, to measure only the good and simply ignore the bad.... But what if the clever new process result not only in the increased production of good things but also in an even larger increase in the the number of bad things? Shouldn't that count? After all, it may cost a lot of money to deal with the consequences of the extra bad things.
     "And the absurdity doesn't stop here. Later, when expenditures are required to clean up the pollution, they are usually included in the national accounts as another positive entry on the ledger. In other words, the more pollution we create, the more productive contribution we can make to national output. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, and efforts to clean it up, to take one example, actually increased our GNP.
     "Classical economists also fail to account properly for all the costs associated with what we call consumption. Every time we consume something, some sort of waste is created, but this fact is conveniently forgotten by classical economists."

So we can see that Al Gore has a handle on some of the most fundamental flaws in our capitalist system as we have come to know it, and its system of economic planning and accounting. These are large issues that go far beyond environmental concerns. In Chapter 9, "Self-Stewardship," Gore asked, "...how did we make so many poor choices along the way?"

"Aside from its uninspired response to the environmental crises, our political system itself has now been exploited, manhandled, and abused to the point that we are no longer making consistently intelligent choices about our course as a nation. For one thing, the way we make political choices has been distorted by the awesome power of the new tools and technologies now available for political persuasion.
    "...why present genuine ideas and true character if artificial ones are more effective in the marketplace of power. And nowhere is this lack of authenticity more of a problem than in our political dialogue. 'Get it while you can; forget about the future' has been enshrined as the political ethic of the age. It is not so much the easy lies we tell each other as the hard truths that are never told at all... Somehow, we have convinced ourselves that that we care far less about what happens to our children than about avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of paying our own bills. So instead of accepting responsibility for our choices, we simply dump huge mountains of both debt and pollution on future generations.
     "It is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that our political system is itself is deep crisis... And the resulting frustration is intensified because so many people feel our civilization's deepening crisis in their bones and want to see it addressed. ...candidates promise bold leadership but after the election run with the pack. And as voters lose faith in the ability of their elected leaders to make a difference, they inevitably lose faith in their own ability to make a difference. At that point, it becomes clear to everyone that the political system is simply not working."

Cognoscente that the political system is in deep crises and the capitalist economic model that we are now following is seriously flawed, Gore says:

"...the political imagination of Western civilization has been focused on the New World, the place where hope has a second chance... self-government is one of the most sophisticated technologies ever created... the Constitution is a blueprint for an ingenious machine that uses pressure valves and compensating forces to achieve a dynamic balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community, between freedom and order, between passions and principles... a point best illustrated by the fact that despite today's dizzying pace of change, a document written more than two hundred years ago is still universally recognized as the world's most forward-looking charter for self-government.
     "...America's hold on the imagination of all humankind has grown steadily stronger. More and more people everywhere have come to believe that the United States, for all its mistakes and excesses, holds the key to important truths about the future of human civilization.
     "...Now that the human community has developed into a truly global civilization, we have a choice: either we search for the means to steer the changes shaping our new common history or we will be steered by them – randomly and chaotically. Either we move toward the light or we move toward the darkness."

Unfortunately some of these ideas might already seem somewhat dated. In Pridger's modest opinion we have been moving toward the darkness for quite some time – including the period when Gore was vice-president. But obviously Gore still sees America's potential to make a difference in the world, based on its founding ideologies. Pridger agrees. The question is, what would an Al Gore presidency do to get us back on the right track toward the light? Could he make a difference if he were elected president?

Gore obviously sees a lot of the big picture – perhaps more than any major party hopeful. Yet when Gore expresses the typical opinion that "isolationism and protectionism" are no longer an option for the United States, and says, "I have therefore come to believe that an essential prerequisite for saving the environment is the spread of democratic governments to more nations of the world," Pridger begins to have a few reservations, though Gore probably wouldn't dream of instituting democracy in foreign nations by force of arms as the current administration is trying to do.

Does Gore think democracy is working here? Or is our system in deep crises, as he said? And, whether or not democratic governments in more nations of the world would help save the environment, our first job is to get it right here before we entertain the thought of getting it right elsewhere.

Gore, in spite of his studies into the causes of global warming, seems to have omitted at least one of the major causes. As the editor of Acres U.S.A. pointed out in an interview with Richard Heinberg ("The Future of Agriculture" in the March 2007 issue), "...carbon dioxide, of course, is a global warming gas that's running amok. You know that we have taken agriculture to high nitrogen use, not only in the United States, but worldwide, and this nitrogen is mostly wasted because it goes off into the air – especially anhydrous, less so with natural nitrogens – where it locks into the oxygen and becomes one form or another of nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide, in turn, is 183 to 212 times more polluting in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide. Yet we find that Al Gore doesn't even mention it in his film, An Inconvenient Truth." Heinberg responds, "That's right... That's yet another reason why we have to reform our entire food system, and very quickly."

"(W)e need to reform our entire food system." That's a big issue! In Earth in the Balance, Gore did mention the problem briefly:

"Fertilizers, too, demand that we make a difficult bargain... widespread use of nitrogen fertilizers can stimulate oxygen deprivation and cause the soil to produce excessive methane and nitrous oxide. As it happens, concentrations of both methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are increasing and together now account for more than 20 percent of the cause of global warming... the use of nitrogen fertilizer is now considered one of the major causes of increased emissions..."

Though Al Gore may may not have the whole picture, and whole solutions, exactly right, he obviously has many times more relevant issues in focus than any other potential candidate for the presidency who has come forth as a contender. Al Gore both thinks and stands for something – rare commodities in presidential politics. For this reason he is probably unelectable and probably will not be drafted. A Gore presidency would threaten too many powerful vested interests.

We, in all our supposed wisdom and power, have managed to get the whole world going right down the same ecologically and economically disastrous path that we have foolishly taken in all of our presumed wisdom. In a very short-sighted attempt to "clean up our environment" we have sent our dirt industries elsewhere, and have managed to help China and other countries start down the very same wrong paths we have taken – over-industrialization, and conversion to chemical based, industrial scale, agriculture.

Gore, being a Democrat, would likely attempt to find global solutions, through the United Nations and the Kyoto treaty process, rather than concentrating on getting our own national house in order first as quickly as possible with comprehensive national solutions. It's too bad that we've gone to such lengths to get the rest of the world to follow our unenlightened example. But, though it is important to continue to work within the international community to effect change, we must begin where we have the most influence and ability to effect positive change the most quickly – at home. We should work on our own house first, and get it right (because that's where we live), and, once we get it right, then we can righteously expect the world will follow. 

John Q. Pridger

Saturday, 3 March, 2007

THE STOCK MARKET HAS THE HICCUPS AGAIN

Some investors are getting a little nervous again as well they should. It can probably be safely assumed that the stocks in general are still substantially overvalued, and a grossly overvalued market is a weapon of mass destruction poised to go off without notice.

The stock market was not actually established to be a massive gambling operation, but that's what it has nonetheless become. It's a huge casino where people win and lose by buying and selling stocks for profit. The difference between winning and losing is getting out in time. Most of those who don't sell quick enough become losers.

Originally, the idea was to make it possible for the public to purchase an ownership stake in corporate stocks. If the company did well, it would pay dividends to the stockowners. That was the original hope of gain in owning stocks. Generally speaking appreciation of stock value was not a company function, though if a company did well it's stock prices would naturally be bid upward by buyers as the company was presumed to be worth more. The company could gain the benefit of these increases by issuing new stock to the public at the higher rates the market dictated.

The stock market evolved into a gambling casino well over a century ago. There was a basic value-cost ratio formula for determining a basic fair value of a company's stocks – to determine whether any given stock might under or overvalued. But more and more frequently in recent times the market price of stock goes up or down on the power of the bidding process on the strength of rumors or market impulses. Sometimes stocks go up without any connection to any sort of reality. Now ownership of companies is hardly a major consideration in acquiring stock. Who cares about the company, as long as the stock seems to be a good bet? And bet is the correct term.

Most individual investors today look at the market as something to "play." They play the market in hopes of buying low and selling high. Value of the company is secondary. Dividends have become secondary. Some companies don't even bother any more. They prefer to reinvest gains and ad value in order raise stock values so they sell new stock at higher rates, rather than to make distributions to stockowners who couldn't care less about the company.

Stock values are bid upward by the market more often, and more regularly, than value is gained in the company itself. With the advent of individual computer trading, more and more investors are of the "day trader" variety, buying on an up trend and selling as soon as a clear profit is to be taken.

The entire market is subject to mass psychology and hysteria. A word from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve can send stock prices up or down. A mere rumor can do it. These things are at work with individual stocks as well as with the entire market. And, since the financial and stock markets are now global, a hiccup in the Chinese or European market can be telegraphed into the American market overnight, resulting in the sort of "corrections" we've experienced in the past week.

Everybody is edgy because the markets are actually a lot more volatile than we like to think. Stability is a facade – buoyed by hope and, more and more frequently, desperate behind the scenes maneuvering to is used to prevent or retard massive sell offs.

We have a global problem on our hands and it is called the American dollar. We live in a global economy that is tremendously inflationary. It's almost impossible for the Federal Reserve to do anything about it but continue to inflate. To fail to continue inflationary policies would be to invite a catastrophic crash in the markets. But continuing to inflate will insure that the value will continue to leak out of the dollar at an accelerating rate.

Unfortunately, the market is not significantly under the control of the Fed or anybody else. The Fed can only tinker a little by manipulating prime interest rates, and must do it very cautiously. Beyond that, (along with the Treasury Department and maybe the Department of Homeland Security), it probably has some emergency machinery in place to try to stop a major crash by purchasing massive amounts of stock with new dollars (more inflation). But, in the final analysis, markets always tend to be self-correcting, and they can make the correction on their own, and probably in spite of any safety value gimmickry. Both the dollar and the markets survive on public faith – something that was once reserved to the religious faithful. If and when those levies of faith are broken, a massive, perhaps unstoppable, selling panic is bound to follow.

The up side of a catastrophic stock market crash (if you could call it an upside), is that it's about the only way to effect a serious deflation of the currency. Such an event would sorely hurt everybody whose wealth is directly or indirectly invested in the stock market (which is most of us). But a crash would help save some of the value represented by "cash" and deposit dollars by simply evaporating all the dollars represented in the market losses. A crash could effectively wipe out hundreds of billions of what is effectively false wealth restoring the vitality of remaining dollars. This would leave holders of cash, and especially hard assets such as gold, in an enviable position (provided they can find something to eat).

John Q. Pridger

IF PRIDGER WERE ELECTED PRESIDENT

The first order of the day would be to pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We've done about as much damage in that part of the world as we ought to permit ourselves for the time being. We'd apologize as best we could and tell the Iraqi's and Afghanis to send us a bill when they've got everything sorted out and added up. We'll send the money, provided the amount is reasonable, just as soon as they have settled down and learned to rule themselves again. Lord knows we've given them enough lessons. Now it's their turn to get their house back into order.

Of course, we might reason that we've already paid for all the damages once, but since about $12 billion in cash have simply disappeared, the fault is not with the Iraqis nearly as much with the ones who shipped the cash over there in the first place.

Most importantly, it's high time we started getting our house back into order. Our leadership should have recognized that a long time ago but have failed to recognize that we have a serious problem that requires insight, dedication, and a lot of hard work.

Pridger's New World Order plan would be to go back to the drawing board with a clean sheet of paper – then leave the paper blank for a while. Under a Pridger administration the United Nations would no longer anything having to do with American citizens, American industries, any piece of American real estate, or how we conduct our trade. We'd protect our own markets to the extent they should be protected to insure control of our own national economic destiny and security.

We would cooperate with the United Nations on problems concerning the global environment and perhaps several other areas such as discouraging aggression and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but no United Nations "Law" or "Regulation" would be applicable within any United States jurisdiction, or with regard to our ships on the high seas.

This said, the United States should be the international leader, not a follower, in solving global environmental and economic problems. It should lead by example, without arrogance. And, while jealously guarding the interests of the American people, be receptive and cooperative when "good ideas" come from any other nation or the body of the UN itself – but never relinquish an iota national sovereignty or allow itself to become legally fettered by UN mandates.

This is not crawling "back into an isolationist and protectionist" shell, but merely reasserting the right of national self-protection – the right of every sovereign nation has to be secure within its own borders with a national economy calculated to nurture the conditions conductive to the "right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Under a Pridger administration, there would no longer be any call for us to answer charges of international military aggression or human rights abuses. We'd return to being the global champion of what was once known as "Truth, justice, and the American Way." Nobody would have call to lecture us on human rights or consider us a Great Satan.

While we would reserve all of our rights as a nation, we would be first and foremost in exercising those rights with utmost responsibility and consideration to and for the global community of nations.

Perhaps a time would evolve when we might once again consider ourselves a Christian nation, and no longer have cause to be ashamed of such recognition. If not that, at least be considered a "good nation" once again.

Pridger would issue an executive order mandating that all of our legislators and top officials, including federal judges, re-examine the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist Papers, and the writings of our founders. 

Then, they would be strongly encouraged to scrutinize American history and attempt to determine what led to our success as a nation – what we did right, and what we have done wrong.

Pridger, as president, would present Congress with a comprehensive national plan – essentially a national economic plan – as a rough guideline to what a sustainable, environmentally friendly, national economy should look like, and how to begin moving in that direction. It would combined agrarianism refocused on the family farm system; distributionism, with regard to individual free enterprise activities, including mercantilism and all nature of small business enterprise; and national capitalism for a productive and sustainable industrial sector. It would also include a plan for a new national monetary system, separate from, and independent of, international finance.

The goal would be to reestablish national independence with a productive and sustainable economy that would serve as an example to all other large and viable nation-states.

Pridger's New World Order would be one where national self-reliance in food and consumer goods, rather than international interdependence in such things, is considered the predominate imperative. We cannot help but be internationally interdependent in many ways in a modern world, so Pridger doesn't advocate that nations build brick and mortar walls around themselves, but merely that all nations try to take care of their own ballywhacks for the benefit and security of their own citizens, while engaging in trade with other nations on a truly mutually beneficial basis.

To illustrate what whet wrong we might begin with a look at the following simple illustrations:

The two illustrations above show Pridger's idea of economic progress we've seen as a nation – the most solid economic structure on the left, and a dangerously inverted economic structure on the right. We experienced our most stellar, and still very stable economic development from the early 1900s through about 1950. This period is represented by the barrel shape captioned 1900. In the latter half of the twentieth century, be began to develop some serious economic imbalances.

In the illustration directly above, the green colored areas represent the agrarian sector of the economy – the economic foundation of any nation. The yellow areas represent the private industrial and service sector of the economy. The red area represents the degree our economy depends on foreign trade. The orange areas represent the public sector (government, etc.). The colored areas are not scientifically accurate, but are close enough to make the point intended. The shapes (pyramid, barrel, top), indicate degrees of stability, equilibrium, and sustainability.

When the nation was young it was largely agrarian with a strong base of family farmers that insured a secure and abundant food supply for the nation. Wedded to the ground, they were the base and substance of the national economy. The rest of the economy was largely tradesmen, artisans, and merchants. We were dependent on foreign trade for many of our manufactured goods, and government was relatively small.

By our middle years our agrarian base had shrunk somewhat in terms of people involved due to progress in farming methods and machinery, but production had increased and continued to produce a food surplus. But the agrarian sector was still large enough to provide a solid and sufficiently broad base. We had developed a huge and growing industrial sector, and our dependence on foreign trade was much smaller than it had been earlier. In fact, we were almost totally industrially independent, exporting much more manufactured goods than we imported. We had actually overdeveloped industrially, which soon made the theretofore unnoticed problems of industrialization apparent. Government had grown too, of course, and has grown steadily throughout our history.

Presently, we see the original pyramid shape again, only inverted. Our agrarian sector, in terms of people involved, relatively self-reliant family farms, and diversified farming practices, is just about gone. Though corporate sized farms and agribusiness continue to produce more than sufficient food, the industry is no longer self-reliant nor sustainable. It depends on huge, unsustainable, mono cropping operations and equally huge chemical inputs, and on literal factory farm "meat" operations.

Our agricultural base now depends on so many non-farm inputs that it would collapse without them. And it may collapse anyway because it is vulnerable to many other things, such as plan and animal diseases that can take a swift and devastating toll over such large numbers of crops and animals. This is not conductive to national food security.

The industrial sector has shrunk considerably, too, as the new international economic order has taken its toll – and we have become evermore dependent on foreign trade and foreign producers to provide our consumer goods, and even an increasing amount of our food. This effectively renders us (despite our vast wealth), no longer an economically viable nation.

The global economy seems to work fine now, but it is not sustainable. Government has continued to grow until it is now so large that it is consuming a significant share of the wealth the nation produces. It is the nation's largest employer and requires much more money to function than it is able to tax from the rest of the economy. Thus we have increasingly leveraged our national wealth by using foreign credit, putting our whole economy into a very unstable condition.

Pridger sees our nation as being like a top. As long as sufficient spin continues, it will maintain equilibrium. It spins on foreign energy inputs, lopsided foreign trade, and debt expansion. When the spins slows, it will wobble. Before it stops, it will tumble.

The Great Seal of the United States shown on the left above (being the reverse of the seal), is symbolic of something our founders had in mind. It was adopted as a symbol of the nation literally at the time of it's birth. Though most Christian American patriots view the symbol (which they attribute to the Order of the Illuminati [founded in Bavaria, Germany in 1776]), as a symbol of evil incarnate, Pridger (who describes himself as a "Jeffersonian Christian"), takes a slightly different view. And, of course, he loves to play with symbols.

Illuminism can roughly be translated as "enlightenment," but as in all things, even enlightened are divided between good and evil, and all the shade in between. Those of us who consider ourselves Christians would consider Jesus as the very epitome of enlightenment. The period of history known as the Enlightenment, of course, spawned both good and evil men of enlightenment (in the contexts of knowledge and understanding). In the political and revolutionary realm, one version brought a new enlightened form of government to the new United States of America – a New Secular Order in the New World. The other seems to have engineered the bloody excesses of the French Revolution.

Good illuminism – true enlightenment – is embodied in the teachings of Jesus, Who Was (to Christians) the bearer of light and illumination (wisdom, and salvation). On the other hand, evil illuminism perhaps looks to Lucifer as the bearer of light.

Pridger, of course, wants to make it clear that he is not a member of any secret esoteric, or any other exclusive, society. Nor does he have any "special knowledge or insights" supposedly claimed by or associated with such groups. It may even be true that the symbolism of the Great Seal was a device of the infamous Illuminati, but the interpretations given here are merely his own insights and views, based on a modest amount of study, personal observations, and a little thought. Pridger uses these symbols to make what he believes are some important points.

One such point is that illumination means "light," and there are enlightened men who are both good and wise – and there are others who are "brilliant" but not necessarily good or wise. Intellectual brilliance is to be found on both the light and dark side of every human issue.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of a "New Secular Order" (literal translation of "Novus Ordo Seclorum"), in the New World (or anywhere else for that matter). Nor is there any reason to believe any of our founders envisioned a new secular order for the World as a whole. There is every reason to believe they intended to build an new order in the New World, and the called it the United States of America. 

This said, however, there is little doubt that Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati Order (which was German in origin), did indeed have such a vision, and we might well consider those who have brought us the New World Order are the direct intellectual descendents of that Order of the Illuminati.

As for a secular order of government for the new United States, it merely meant there would be no divisive religious sectarianism incorporated into the new government – no built-in errors of religious doctrine, dogma, or superstition – no coercive hypocrisies as institutions of government, and no "tyranny over the minds of men" (as Jefferson stated it), by any officially recognized priesthood, clergy, church, or (hopefully) government.

Our founders came from a variety of religious backgrounds, all of which were Christian based (from the Puritans to the Unitarians). Some were deists, but literally all recognized the profound value of "true religion" and the central and essential Christian message of morality and good will toward men. 

There was another major thing which all of our founders recognized beside the imperative of a strictly secular government. That was that God had favored what they had undertaken in declaring independence from England and fighting the Revolutionary War – and the seal proclaims, "He (God) has favored our undertaking" (the translation of "Annuit Coeptis").

Nonetheless, a secular "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" (as Lincoln later summarized it), if made up of Christian peoples, could not help but be a Christian government. And this is how American government was always considered, and presumed to be, a Christian government – and the nation a Christian nation – at least until relatively recent times.

Pridger is not saying that a government based in the religious teachings of others (Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, etc.), could not be just as good. On the contrary, pure religion of almost any variety ought to produce an enlightened and good society. But the American government just happened to have stemmed from Christian civilization – and (for this and perhaps other reasons), it demonstrably produced the most materially successful and prosperous nation in the history of mankind.

Good plans, however, do sometimes go awry, as they obviously have in our great nation. The national leadership became increasingly infected with brilliant men who were neither wise nor necessarily good (in Pridger's modest opinion). Since that process began, everything has been turned upside down, as illustrated on the right hand side of the illustrations above.

The New Order in the New World was, for some time, an example of good government and stellar economic and industrial progress and success. Though always far from perfect (and there were some terrible bumps on the way), the nation essentially remained on a fundamentally positive trajectory until the early twentieth century, and reached it's productive apex after mid-century and still retains its military might and global economic influence.

When the focus changed from government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to One World, things began to change rapidly and they have been changing for the worse in spite of all the positive reports to the contrary.

The pyramid, as evidenced in the Great Pyramids of Egypt, is the most enduring and stable structure ever devised and constructed by man. Compare its longevity, for example, to that of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, or any other man made structure. And imagine what would have happened had those jet airliners been driven into the side of the Great Pyramid! So it was an appropriate symbol for the New Order which was to be represented by the United States of America – which was intended to be as permanent and stable as the Great Pyramid.

All human organizational and economic structures are pyramidal, especially all organizations such as governments. In every case, the broad base represents the multitude of the people and the small region near the top represents the leadership.

The symbol shows the pyramid without a cap, indicating that completion and perfection remain goals. And small triangle above symbolizes the fact that the true source of ultimate leadership is reserved to the Grand Architect of the Universe – that which most of us call God.

The "All Seeing Eye" of God is represented above the pyramid in the small triangle, denoting our faith in God as a nation and a people. Naturally, all sorts of Satanic meanings are attributed to this symbol by some Christians (and particularly by fundamentalist conspiracy theorists), but Pridger (a conspiracy theorist himself), prefers to see this as a graphic symbol of God's omnipresence in the Universe and above all the positive works (and failures) of mankind. After all, these are just symbols not idols, and meanings may vary according to the eye and heart of the beholder, no matter who or what originated the imagery.

Probably the only place most of us have seen the image of the reverse of the Great Seal is on the U.S. one dollar bill. This circumstance is quite significant from a symbolic perspective when we consider what our government should be, and what our money should represent. Just as significantly, the dollar (and all of our money), displays the motto, "In God We Trust."

Most of us were taught somewhere along the line that "money is the root of all evil." Though we later learned that it was not the money itself but the "love of money" that was the root of all evil, money is still associated with evil, even as we unabashedly strive to earn or "get" more and more of it. We love the things that money can buy, including security, if not love.

But money can be an evil thing if it is not what it purports to be. And this brings up something else Pridger would do if elected president. He'd apply maximum pressure to institute an honest monetary system. What we have today is the credit dollar. Credit, of course, is a good thing when properly used, but when money itself represents credit, and hidden interest costs, it does not constitute an "honest dollar." In spite to the symbols on our currency, what we have today is a "skinner" dollar, by which we are all being skinned.

The nation needs an honest national currency to served the exchange needs of the people and the commercial needs of domestic industry and commerce. Another system or medium is probably needed to satisfy the requirements of international commerce where barter trade is not feasible.

What's wrong with credit dollars? Here in a nutshell is what is wrong with debt currency like our Federal Reserve Note. Such money can only come into existence as notes representing outstanding public indebtedness.

First, let's pretend that we're the very first person to express a need for money. And let's also assume that the machinery is there to satisfy our needs. So we borrow a million dollars, and that's all the money there is in the world. Furthermore, we managed to borrow the whole amount at an amazingly low rate of one percent annual interest.

Suppose we save every penny and pay the lender back right on time a year later. The trouble becomes obvious. Though we've repaid the entire amount we've borrowed, we still owe that measly one percent interest – $10,000.00! But there is no other money in existence with which to pay. Being unable to pay, we'd be bankrupted and have to forfeit any collateral we had pledged against the loan.

Of course, in the real world of debt money there's always as much money as there are uses and borrowers – and there's always more where that came from, provided the collateral is there. But an interest bearing debt is created with every single dollar created, making it obvious that debt will always exceed the money supply. That's the the sticky trick in the money system we have.

Though the government has the sole sovereign power and right to issue money by fiat, and could do so interest free at great savings to the nation, it doesn't do that any more. It goes through other channels to make the transaction "legitimate" and ends up putting its stamp of approval on money that is just as fiat as any paper money has ever issued, but is also "debt instruments" that it has to borrow at interest before it can put it into circulation.

When the government needs money, it only has two ways to procure it, by taking it from the people in taxes, or borrowing it. Increasingly it borrows it. And if it needs $10 billion it doesn't have, it incurs up to $20 billion in debt in order to procure it. This is totally irrational, though it has become more than just routine – it's the only way it can be done under our system!

As the old argument for greenbacks went, if the government can print a bond that serves as collateral against a loan, it can just as easily print dollar currency in the amounts necessary to satisfy its needs. And, indeed, this is true. The government could print and issue national money in as unlimited amounts as it now borrows – and it wouldn't owe interest on any of it.

The classic argument against government issued fiat money (U.S. Note "greenbacks" [yes, we used to have some honest money]), is that such money is "inflation money." And, yes, if you print and issue money in unlimited amounts, it is inflationary. But we are doing that right now with Federal Reserve money. But we're borrowing it at high interest rates. It makes absolutely no sense. Debt money is just as inflationary as honest money, only much worse because of interest liability.

To demonstrate that, if the Treasury issues a million greenback dollars and spends it into circulation, it has both incurred and discharged a debt with those same acts. They cancel one another out, and the money is still in circulation serving its real purpose.

But under the Federal Reserve System, the government issues a bond to cover the money it needs plus interest (this effectively serving as collateral, representing printed evidence of the full faith and good credit of the nation). This can be done internally, or the bonds may be of the type sold to the public or foreign governments which it "sells" it at a large discount – meaning it may sell a $2 million bond for $1 million. Then it spends the money into circulation. But this act doesn't cancel the debt, it merely makes it official and binding on the American people. The debt is not satisfied until the bond is redeemed in full.

Why not just cut all the bologna and issue greenbacks and spend them into circulation? The bankers who control the Federal Reserve and other central banks (the general global "money power"), don't like those sort of ideas. For one thing, it would totally upset the global financial status quo upon which the New World Order has been built. Thwarting the bankers has been tried before. For example, both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson both successfully unseated the aims of the bankers long before they were as powerful as they are today – and Lincoln and maybe John F. Kennedy tried to regain a modicum sovereign control of the monetary system. The bankers managed to consolidate their control during Lincoln's administration, and really sowed it up with the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.

If Pridger were elected president, he would try too. Of course, he would probably be assassinated. Maybe that's why Pridger isn't campaigning too hard for election. And maybe that's why none of our elected representatives never bring the subject up. 

John Q. Pridger